Reap the Wind (Cassandra Palmer 7)

“But say a Pythia did something . . . or caused something to happen . . . or helped something to happen . . . that changed time. How . . . bad is it?”

“That is difficult to say,” Rhea told me, looking a lot calmer than I’d expected. Like maybe that wasn’t as unthinkable a question as I’d believed. “It would depend on the circumstance.”

“Say it was something . . . kind of big.”

She still wasn’t looking freaked out. “I was always trained that time is malleable,” she told me. “And can heal itself to a large degree. An invention or discovery not made by one person can be made by another; a chance meeting, if missed, may happen at another time—”

“Yes, but say we’re not talking about chance meetings,” I broke in, because she still wasn’t getting this. “Say we’re talking about something serious. Something . . . like a death. That’s got to change things, right?”

“There are certainly things that can be done that the time line cannot compensate for,” she agreed serenely. “But your power should warn you of those instances, Lady.”

“But what if it doesn’t?” I asked, getting worried. “Because I haven’t heard anything. I never hear anything!”

For the first time, Rhea frowned. “You never hear—”

“And I should, shouldn’t I?” I cut her off, because I wasn’t feeling serene. I wasn’t feeling serene at all. “If I’m supposed to get a warning when I change something, then my power should be going off like a fire alarm right now! Because there was a death. A . . . a man . . . died who wasn’t supposed to, and it was my fault. But not a peep!”

Rhea thought for a moment. “The acolytes—the real ones—would be able to answer your question better—”

“You are a real acolyte. You’re my acolyte.”

She smiled suddenly, a small expression, but it lit her whole face. “Thank you, Lady. But the fact remains that they received training that I did not. However, I am certain I was told that a Pythia will know if the time stream is being disturbed. That she will receive an unmistakable warning. If you received none . . . then perhaps you did not change anything, after all.”

“But a man is dead—”

“He might have died soon afterward in any case.”

“Of what? A heart attack?” Because I didn’t think—no, I knew—that Pritkin wouldn’t have been fighting those fey if I hadn’t been there. He’d have probably gone into hiding as soon as they showed up and, based on what I’d seen, done a damned good job of it.

But with me in the picture, he’d have had to hide two, which didn’t seem like it would be a big deal. But then, people thought the same thing about shifting. Like, what’s one extra person when you’re already going somewhere anyway?

But it made a big difference—just huge—and maybe making someone else invisible wasn’t any easier. Not and keep it up for however long the fey might stick around, anyway. So he’d grabbed his stick and he’d grabbed me and he’d started booking it for the nearest highway—or, since it was medieval Wales, the nearest sheep trail—out of there.

But he hadn’t made it.

And now a fey was dead who shouldn’t have been.

But Rhea didn’t seem to agree.

“If you were given no warning, this man could not have survived,” she insisted. “By whatever means, he must have been fated to expire before he could do anything for which the time line could not compensate.”

Unless I was too out of it to notice the warning, I thought grimly. Or unless I didn’t know what a warning was supposed to sound like. Or unless whatever he was supposed to do, he did back in faerie, where my power didn’t work, so who knew what I’d just screwed up?

God, it was supposed to be so easy! Find Pritkin, have Rosier say a few words, done. But we’d missed him three times now, and I didn’t even have a way to get back for a fourth, and even if I found one—

“Lady,” Rhea said, and it brought my head up, because it sounded unusually stern.

I blinked at her.

Gray eyes searched my face, and the frown on her forehead grew. “You are tired,” she told me. “And have been working far too hard. You have had too many people depending on you and too little support. You are, if I may say so, badly in need of rest.”

“I know. I can’t shift again if I don’t get some sleep. But first I need to—”

But Rhea was shaking her head. “Not sleep. Rest. You need some time free from stress and worry. You need to relax. You need a—”

I burst out in half-hysterical laughter before she could say it.

“I’m sorry,” I told her after a minute. And I meant it, because she didn’t deserve to be laughed at. But a vacation was not in my near future.