Warsworn

turned, looking down at the gates, radiating fury.
    I stepped next to him. "If plague has returned, we must give them aid, and learn as much as we can. We need to send word back to Water's Fall."
    "What need?" Keir looked skeptical. "It will stay where it is, caught within those walls."
    "No." I rubbed my hand over my sweaty neck. "If they are that sick, they can't even tend to the dead, Keir."
    He grimaced, knowing all too well what that meant. "We will send for aid from Water's Fall. They can be here within five or six days."
    "We can't wait that long. If we wait for help from Water's Fall, we may only have dead bodies and no one to tell us what happened and how. I must go, Keir, and now." He glared at me.
    "I am a healer, and these people, your people , need my help."
    "These people are not worth one drop of your blood."
    I looked at him steadily until he looked away. "You are thinking as a lover, Warlord." His head snapped back, and his eyes flashed. "I am a lover, Warprize." My cheeks flushed at that, but I didn't give ground. "If your people had the healing skills, you would aid them."
    "Do you understand what you are saying?" Keir growled.
    "I understand exactly what I am saying, Keir. My people need yours, for protection now that our forces have been exhausted, for links to trade, for our future. My people have enough to see them through this winter but they will need every bit of harvest that can be salvaged from the fields to survive. If it is plague, if it spreads from here…" I closed my eyes against that possibility. "Why do you send scouts out, if not to know what you are going to have to deal with? We have to know and the only way to know is if I go in."
    "There must be another—"
    I glared at him. "And if it gets to the Plains? What of your people? Will the warrior priests aid them?"
    He stopped, jaw clenched, shoulders tight, his hands in fists. He started to curse and the words that poured from him at that point were not ones that I knew. He stopped, breathing hard.
    "There must be another way." He resumed his stalk, and started ranting. I'd not expected this to be easy, and it wasn't. As he paced, he repeated each of his arguments and I refuted them again, knowing that I was right. I started to work on the jerkin's lacings. These heavy leather garments were warm, and it was chaffing my neck. How did they wear this armor all the time?
    Finally he spun to look at me, and jabbed a finger in my direction. "We can send Gils. He—"
    "You'd send a boy to do a man's job?"
    He flared like a fire doused with oil. "You are the last living member of the House of Xy. I'll not risk you. I'll not risk what we are trying to do for our people." He took a step closer, and I fought the urge to step back. "I'll not risk all this for a tiny village. Who will know? Who will see?" He turned, headed for our horses.
    "The skies will know."
    He stopped dead, his back to me, his hands clenched in fists.
    My heart in my throat, I continued. "The Goddess will know." The silence between us lengthened. There was no sound, not even the bells in my hand. Just the wind, whipping at the grass and my hair.
    The tension left his hands first, as his clenched fingers slowly uncurled. Then his back and neck lost their stiffness as he took a deep breath. I moved the bells in my hand, letting them chime softly.
    He turned and walked back to me, a rueful look on his face. "I should have known. From the moment you defied me in the marketplace, I should have known. There is more honor and stubbornness in one slight Xyian woman than in my entire army."
    "Slight?" I raised an eyebrow.
    He smiled, and raised a hand to cup my face.
    "Keir, leaving these people would be as big a mistake as—"
    "As when I plunged my sword in Durst's chest."
    I nodded.
    "I would not do this, my heart's fire." Keir stroked my lips with his thumb.
    "All the other alternatives are worse. There is no choice, Keir." I stepped closer, and wrapped my arms around him. He enfolded me in his, and we stood for a long moment, a long moment of fragile peace.
    I stepped back, finally. "I have to talk to Gils."
    "We'll have him at the senel." Keir looked off in the distance, toward the army. "A few days delay will not be that great a loss."
    I opened my mouth to correct him, but closed it as he turned back to me. "Come, Lara. Let us be about this as quickly as possible."
    I took his hand without saying a word and we walked back to the horses. If Iften didn't remove that smug