Return of the Guardian-King by Karen Hancock

inexplicable liking to him over the course of their journey, one that had intensified since they’d arrived in Caerna’tha. “Master Alaric! Good morning, sir. I found some slingstones. D’ye think these would be any good?”
    He pulled several rounded oblong stones from the small pouch he’d tied about his waist and held them out for Abramm’s inspection. Lacking the heart to put the lad off, Abramm took up the stones, looked them over, then handed them back with a nod. “I think these will do for a start.”
    “So can we start, then?”
    “When the storm’s over, Rollie.”
    The boy’s face fell. “That’ll take ferever, sir.”
    Abramm tousled the lad’s hair and walked on.
    “Ye’re late again, Alaric,” old Totten Ashvelt commented as Abramm passed him. “The others’ve already gone down t’ the barn.”
    Clamping down on his irritation, Abramm gave the man a wave and descended the narrow stair into the kitchen, veiled in back-blown smoke. At the room’s far end two women stood near the cooking hearth, where the ash and embers of the breakfast blaze had been banked up to one side, and a man was standing in the fireplace. His upper body swallowed by the chimney, he moved the damper inside the flue, the metal squealing as he did. Meanwhile other women worked cleaning up, kneading bread, and preparing a side of mutton for roasting.
    Among them were Kitrenna Trinley and dark-haired Marta Brackleford, the latter already approaching him with a covered bowl of the morning’s porridge. “Good morning!” she greeted him cheerfully. “I saved this out for you, but I’m afraid it’s gotten really thick. . . . I could put some milk in it if you’d like.”
    He shook his head as he took it. “This is fine. Thanks.” He knew he sounded gruff, but her attentiveness grated at him. She reminded him too much of Maddie and, for some inexplicable reason, brought to mind his appalling attraction to the tanniym Tapheina.
    He’d learned from Caerna’tha’s community of permanent residents that the shapeshifters’ breath carried spore that paralyzed the will and dazzled the mind. If they had taken refuge under the bridge as Kitrenna Trinley had wanted, all of them would have died. No one but Rolland knew that Abramm had actually fallen victim to it, and not even Rolland knew to what degree. Abramm understood only that Tapheina had been deliberately seducing him and that, to his shame, part of him had responded.
    But he couldn’t blame Marta for that—nor for the fact that her presence and solicitous nature reminded him of the wife he’d not be able to see for another six months.
    “Are you sure you don’t want some milk?” she pressed. “I could water it down. And there’s honey, as well.”
    “I’m fine,” Abramm told her more sharply.
    His brusqueness only intensified her efforts to please. “An apple might help. How about I chop you an apple to put in it?”
    “How about you don’t?” he said, shoveling the porridge in as fast as he could.
    He saw the hurt flash across her face, but before she could respond, the old man working with the damper gave a shout, fell to his knees, then came scrambling out of the hearth as a dark heronlike bird dropped out of the flue after him. Feyna.
    One of the women shrieked and swung a soot-blackened broom at it, but the rhu’ema spawn darted between them, flapping up to the bread table, then the counter, provoking shrieks and ineffectual swats as it did. It bounced off the hearth and soared toward Abramm standing at the far side of the room. He watched it stupidly and, when it was nearly upon him, could only think to throw his mostly empty bowl at it.
    The vessel sent it tumbling and flapping across the bread table again, where Marta calmly struck it with a burst of Light from her slender fingertips. It stiffened, jittered briefly, and collapsed on the flour-dusted table in a puff of white.
    She picked up the carcass by one of its feet and handed it off to the