[Hurog 01] - Dragon Bones by Patricia Briggs

left then, not going through the passageway or the door, just disappeared, leaving me to my memories.”
    My instincts, eh? My father was dead, and I didn’t know if I was joy- or grief-stricken. Hurog was mine at last, but it wasn’t. Should I reveal myself? Say, “Thought you’d like to know I’m not really an idiot”? I wasn’t even sure that there was anything left of me but the stupid surface covering the constant vigilance underneath. I would wait.
    Â 
    I RESTED MY FOLDED arms on the top of the fence rail and breathed the early-morning air while Harron, one of the grooms, told me about the night’s excitement.
    Someone left the gate to the mares’ paddock open, and Pansy was found snorting and charging in the paddock with my father’s best mare (“Who was in season, damn the luck,” Harron said cheerfully). The other mares were safely in their barns, but Moth had been restless. Penrod had thought a night in the field might calm her. He had spoken to my uncle about it.
    As Harron talked, we watched most of the stable handsand my uncle chase Pansy with halters, ropes, and grain buckets. Pansy eluded his pursuers with a flagged tail and a shake of his magnificent head. My uncle saw me and left the stablemen to their job. While he climbed through the fence, I sent Harron to get grain and a halter.
    â€œSome idiot left the gate to the mares’ paddock open,” growled my uncle.
    It was too good an opening to miss.
    â€œI checked on them last night,” I lied. “Pansy was in the stallion’s paddock then.”
    My uncle stared at me.
    â€œI checked on the mare, too,” I said earnestly. I’d have to learn to be more cautious. My father saw what he wanted to see, but my uncle might not be subject to the same weakness. If I took every opening he gave me, he’d notice what I was doing.
    â€œHere ya are, Ward!” huffed Harron, and he heaved a grain bucket in my general direction—up. On top of the bucket was the halter I’d requested.
    I grabbed the bucket and rolled over the top of the fence.
    â€œThey’ve tried grain, Ward,” said my uncle. “They’ll get him eventually. Leave them to their work.”
    I continued walking but said over my shoulder, “Thought I’d catch the mare.”
    Moth, unlike the sex-ruled stallion, was greatly interested in the food. Moreover, she knew and liked me—and my father didn’t ride mares. When she realized what I carried, she trotted up to me, dancing a bit with early-morning pleasure and shaking her silver gray mane.
    â€œLiked that, did you?” I asked her, one conspirator to another. Both of us ignored the grooms chasing futilely after the stallion on the far side of the pasture. “I’d think he might be a little tough on the ladies, new as he is to this. But you have more experience. Looks like you showed him properly.” She preened a bit at the admiration in myvoice as she munched the treat I’d brought her with dainty greed.
    She allowed me to slip the halter on her. It was too big, but with her, it didn’t matter. I gave her a quick once over with my eye, but aside from a rough, dried patch of hair on her neck where he must have nipped her, she hadn’t come to any hurt.
    I led her out of the field and into the stallion’s paddock, and she, fickle thing that she was, paid no attention to Pansy, who’d finally noticed me stealing his mare and filled the air with frantic bugling. Harron, having seen what I was about, waited at the gate between field and paddock and shut it after the charging stallion was in the smaller enclosure. By then, I’d let the mare out of the far gate and just shut it behind us when the furious stallion struck it with his hooves.
    Grinning, Harron ran up and took Moth. She gave Pansy a coy look, then followed Harron quietly back to the mares’ barn.
    â€œHow did you know to do