Aldo stood over Kord, but the diminutive young man hardly topped the seated Steadholder by a head. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“And you’re not married,” Kord said. “You don’t have any children. Any family that you know what it’s like to worry about.”
“I don’t have to have a family to know that you two,” he spun and jabbed a finger at the other two men in the group, Steadholder’s chains around both their necks, “should be on your feet and helping Bernard. Roth, what about when that thanadent was after your pigs, eh? Who hunted the thing down? And you, Otto — who tracked down your youngest when he went missing and brought him home safe? Bernard, that’s who. How can you just sit there?”
Otto, a rounded man with a gentle face and thinning hair looked down. He took a breath and said, “It isn’t that I don’t want to help him, Aldo. Furies know. But Kord has a point.”
Roth, a spare elderly man with a shock of white hair to go with his darker beard, took a pull from his mug and nodded. “Otto’s right. There’s more rain coming down than the valley usually sees in an entire autumn. If the valley floods, we will need every bit of strength we can save — to protect all of our lives.” He frowned at Aldo, his expression drawing wrinkles to his brow that time had not. “And Steadholder Kord is also correct. You are the youngest here, Aldo. You should show more respect to your elders.”
“When they whine like whimpering dogs? Should we do nothing because you might need your strength?” He turned and spat toward Kord. “Convenient for you. His death would end the Meet and you’d be off the hook with Count Gram.”
“I’m only thinking of everyone’s good, Aldo,” Kord rumbled. The shaggy Steadholder split his lips into a yellow-toothed smile. “Say what you want of me, but the life of one man, no matter how fine, isn’t worth endangering everyone in the valley.”
“We’ve ridden out furystorms before!”
“But not like this,” blurted Otto. Still, the man didn’t look up. “This is . . . different. We haven’t seen one this violent before. It makes me nervous.”
Roth frowned and said, “I concur.”
Aldo stared at them both, his hands clenching in frustration. “Fine,” he said then, his tone low, hard. “Which one of you wants to be the one to tell Isana that we’re going to sit on our hands and do nothing while her brother bleeds to death on the floor of his own hall?”
No one said anything.
Isana stared at the men, frowning, thinking hard. As she did, Kord passed his mug back to Aric, who refilled it and passed it back to him. Bittan, evidently recovered from his near-drowning, sat with his back against the wall, his head down, one hand half shielding his eyes as though his head hurt. Isana thought of his cruel treatment of Fade, and hoped that it did.
But something struck her odd about the Kordholders, about the way they had arranged themselves, or carried themselves, in the midst of the storm. It took her a moment to pick it out. They seemed more relaxed than the rest, less concerned about the battling furies outside the hall.
Carefully, she lowered her defenses, just by a bit, in the direction of Kord and his sons.
None of them were afraid.
She could feel nothing, with a casual reaching out of her senses, but a mild tension from Aric.
Thunder flashed again, and she knew she would never be able to raise her defenses again in time. She struggled to anyway — and again, the tide of terrified emotion came a beat later than she expected, enabling her to hold steady against it once more.
She found herself swaying on her feet, and then a hand gripped her arm, another her elbow. She looked up to find Fade standing beside her, holding her steady.
“Mistress,” Fade said, ducking his scarred head in a clumsy little bow. The blood on his cut lip had begun to dry, blackening. “Mistress, Steadholder hurt.”
“I know,” Isana said. “I heard that you found him. Thank you, Fade.”
“Mistress hurt?” The slave tilted his head to one side.
“Fine,” Isana breathed. She looked around at the families, huddling together and listening to the fury of the storm outside. “Fade. Does this storm frighten you?”
Fade nodded his head, his expression absent, eyes focusing elsewhere.
“But you’re not very afraid?”
“Tavi,” Fade said. “Tavi.”
Isana sighed. “If anyone can find him in this, it’s Bernard. Brutus can protect him from the windmanes, and Cyprus will help him find Tavi. Tavi needs Bernard.”
“Hurt,” Fade said. “Hurt bad.”
“Yes,” Isana said, absently. “Stay near for a moment. I may need your help.”
The slave grunted, without moving, though his distant expression left Isana uncertain that he had heard the command. She sighed and closed her eyes, reaching out to touch her fury.
“Rill,” Isana whispered. She focused intently on an image of Bittan in her mind, picturing the young man as he sat against the wall. The water fury was a ripple along her spine, across her skin, as she focused her concentration — weary, but willing. “Rill. Show me.”
Fade abruptly stepped away from her, mumbling, “Hungry.” Isana watched him go, frustrated but unable to divert much attention from directing Rill. Fade edged toward the fire, looking at the Kordholders apprehensively, creeping toward the stewpot again, as though he expected to be driven away from it with another swift blow. Then he stepped out of her immediate view.
Isana sensed the fury’s movement through the moisture-heavy air, brushing against her and then flowing outward. Isana felt the fury’s motion almost as though it was her own arm reaching out toward the young Kordholder against the wall.
Rill touched on Bittan, and a jolt of vibrant fear lanced back to Isana through the fury’s contact. She let out a gasp, her eyes widening, finally understanding what was happening in the room.
Bittan was working a firecrafting on the room, sending out a subtle apprehension to almost every person in it, heightening their fears and drawing their anxieties to the forefront of their thoughts. It was a subtle working—more subtle than she would have thought possible from the young man. He must have called his fury into the fire near him, which explained why he had claimed the space in front of it as his own.
With the realization, a wave of dizzying weariness passed over Isana. She lost her balance and stumbled forward, to her knees, lowering one hand to the floor to balance and lifting the other to her face.
“Isana?” Aldo’s voice came to her clearly, and talk in the room dropped away to a near silence as the folk of Bernardholt turned their attention to her. “Isana, are you all right?”
Isana looked up to find Kord’s sons looking straight at her, their expressions startled, guilty. Bittan hissed something to Aric. Aric’s face hardened.
She looked up to tell Aldo about Bittan’s firecrafting— and suddenly found that she couldn’t push the air out of her lungs.