Title: Sea-change
For: Kalika
Links to: Hanging On, A Lady's Shield
Disclaimer: Tortall is the property of the amazing Tamora Pierce. All concepts and / or characters you recognise from the books belong to her: everything else is created by me.
Notes: Kalika requested a scene with Andi and Ryan. This is it, set sometime after A Lady's Shield.

Ryan Talver leaned over the rail as the breeze slapped at his face. It was a beautiful day; the sea glistened with diamond intensity, the sun was hot on the back of his neck, and the sky was bright above him, curving like a lover’s back in pleasure.

Unfortunately, Ryan was too busy trying to keep his lunch down to appreciate any of it.

“Still not got your sea legs?”

He turned a green-tinged complexion to the sailor walking past. “Nothin’ wrong with my legs. It’s my stomach that’s the problem.”

The boat lurched on a sudden swell and he shut his eyes as his stomach leapt with it. Breathe, breathe... After a few moments, he concluded he’d saved another small fragment of his dignity and opened his eyes onto the sailor’s black-toothed grin.

“Never mind, lad. We’re only a few minutes from port, then you can stagger back home and pretend you didn’t spend the month feeding the fish.”

Ryan nodded weakly, clinging onto the side with a limpet’s damp fervour. He should have listened to the Yamani harbour master, who’d warned him that taking passage with a merchant ship meant a long journey winding around every port, trading cargo and information. But he’d been so desperate to leave the Yamani Isles by then that he probably would have leapt on a skiff if it had been pointing in the right direction.

~*~

“I suggest you take a voyage to the Yamani Isles,” Numair had suggested acidly after he’d come to spring Ryan from the jails again. “Perhaps they can teach you the discipline you so very desperately need and that I am obviously failing to impress on you.”

“It were just a bet,” he’d protested, holding out his hands so the jailer could take off the chains. “I only took it for a lark.”

The mage’s black eyes had glittered with a cold anger. “It was the King’s crown, Ryan. It was stupid at best and at worst...well, let’s say there have been some whisperings of treason in the court.”

“Treason!” he’d squeaked. “I nicked a bauble, that were all.”

“Stealing the King’s crown – his symbol of office – the day before he is due to meet an embassy from Carthak and leaving it on one of the apes in the menagerie is not exactly the height of wisdom,” Numair pointed out coolly. “And agreed, those idiots talking of treason are troublemakers and hysterics, but...you’ve made enemies now, and it would be a good idea for you to leave until the hotheads have cooled down and the cool heads have moved onto grander schemes.”

“But the Yamani Isles...that’s miles away!”

“That’s the point.” The mage walked him out of the cells. Once they were out of earshot, Numair stopped and faced Ryan. His mouth was tight with disapproval, and under that stare, Ryan felt young and small and foolish as he had been when Numair first found him. “I thought better of you than this.”

Shame made Ryan drop his eyes. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea, tanked up on cheap Tortallan beer and surrounded by the University mages – boys who teased him about his accent, some in fun, some in malice, who were lord’s sons and full of tales of their own pranks.

When the guards crashed through his door the next day, he’d put on a show of bravado and thrown a few barbs their way...but inside, he’d felt sick with nerves, terrified that he’d finally ruined his life here.

It had been Numair who’d plucked him from the streets and spent hours patiently teaching him; he knew such great mages rarely took on students, and even when he was dreamy with ideas for amazing spells, Numair always made time for him – for questions that a Gifted child could have answered but that Ryan who had come late to magic and later still to literacy was dumbfounded by, for reckless spells that had got out of control, even for advice on life in the palace.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t think.”

“Yes, I suspected as much,” Numair said dryly. “It’s unfortunate that you will need your wits about you while you’re in the Isles.”

There had been a note of amusement in the mage’s voice. Ryan looked up to find him as stern as before, except for a softening about his eyes. “What d’you mean?”

“Make no mistake, the King wants you out of his sight. But it’s his opinion that while you’re there, you might as well use those thieving skills. Rumours have reached the spymaster of a plot in certain part of the isles – visitors from Tortall acting as traders and tourists who are neither. Against my advice, the King wants you to see what you can discover.” Numair raised his eyebrows. “And on my advice, you will also be spending a significant amount of time in the Emperor’s court, learning from his mages. Try not vex them, Ryan. They tend to deal very sharply with insolence.”

He realised his mouth was hanging open. A chance to see the fabled Yamani Isles; Kel had told him dozens of stories and he’d seen the Yamani ladies floating about the palace, pale and lovely and dressed in soft, silken robes that rustled around their feet, susurrations of rivulets and waterfalls following wherever they went.

Then a thought struck him. “But I ain’t got a word of Yamani.”

“No, which is why you are to mix with the Tortallans there as much as you can. If these rumours are true, they’re likely to be as untrusting of the Yamanis are they are of one another. In all honesty, I doubt you’ll find much, so take the opportunity to think about what you have here. Think hard, Ryan. I’m getting tired of rescuing you, no matter how Gifted you are.”

Ryan flushed. “I’ll do me best.”

Numair gave him a brief smile. “It would make a pleasant change.”

~*~

When he got back onto land, the sickness persisted. Every street seemed to roll and sway, to be subsumed with heat haze that turned his world into an inconstant, rippling vision.

“I hate boats,” he muttered to himself as he lurched through the city. “An’ I hate the sea.”

He paused to let his stomach settle. Sweat prickled his forehead. “An’ I hate summer."

“Tell me, child, is there anything you don’t hate?”

He knew the woman who swept him up in her wake, looking for all the world like another of the whores bedecked in cheap jewellery and smiles. But this woman had eyes of a dark, clear green and a voice that held the promise of storms and surrender in equal measure.

“Stillness,” he said wistfully. “I like things that are still and flat and cold.”

The Goddess laughed, the sound soft and smoky. “You should be wary of saying such things to gods. Some of us would take you at your word and you’d find that a grave is as still and cold and flat as you could possibly wish.”

She walked beside him, not steadying him when he stumbled: he didn’t suppose it occurred to her.

“Why are ye here?” he croaked. “I didn’t think my homecomin’ warranted a visit.”

“It wouldn’t, but for your auspicious timing. What brought you back so early, child?”

There was a sharpness to the question that he registered but didn’t understand. “I just got tired of the place, that were all. Homesick. An’,” he added, “I got tired of bein’ beaten up by the court mages every day. They just ain’t used to honesty.”

“Hmm. Or outspokenness,” she murmured, but she sounded amused. “Or indeed your very special brand of rudeness. One day those rough edges will be polished off, Ryan Talver, but for now, I fear you need them still.”

Dizzy, he had to stop for a moment to rest. His lungs seemed to have shrunk, and in combination with the stifling air, he felt barely able to breathe. “I don’t understand.”

“You will. Hurry to the Palace, child. A dangerous enemy waits for you there.”

“I don’t think I really want to hurry to meet ‘em, then,” he mumbled. “Not in this state.”

But there was no answer. She was gone, vanishing with a cat’s infuriating efficiency.

~*~

By the time he reached the Palace, he felt worse than before. That shellfish he’d had last night clearly hadn’t been as fresh as the crew claimed.

When he wove up to the gates, he could barely speak his name. Luckily, the guards recognised him – obviously the long months hadn’t quite been enough to erase the infamy of his prank – and let him in. He was expecting ridicule: what he got was quite different.

“Master Salmalin will be glad to see you,” their commander remarked. He sounded anxious. “Are you all right, lad? You looked like you’ve been put through a mangle.”

“I feel like it, too,” he said, glad to collapse onto the chair that was offered. “Have ye any water? My throat’s drier than a bone.”

He gulped down the offered glass, and another, and a third after that, feeling as if his body was shrivelling into dirt and ash. By the time he was halfway down his fourth glass, Numair arrived, and one look at his face, wavering though it was, told Ryan something was wrong. Very wrong.

He looked absolutely astounded to see Ryan – as if he’d expected to find him dead.

“How did you get here?” he demanded, crouching down to peer into his face. His dark eyes examined Ryan as if he were searching for something. “Do you feel all right?”

“Horrible,” Ryan said succinctly. “An’ I got a boat off them cursed isles. I don’t care what ye think, havin’ six sorts of sh-” At the mage’s glance, he changed his words hastily. “chivalry kicked out of ye doesn’t teach ye anythin’.”

“Mmm.” The mage put a big hand to Ryan’s forehead and jerked it back. “You’re burning up. How does your head feel? Have you had any hallucinations?”

“Visions? Not unless ye count a visit from her mightiness.” The thought finally dawned in his muggy brain. “Why? What’s goin’ on?”

For a moment, he thought Numair wasn’t going to tell him anything, but then the mage said, “It’s Andrea.”

~*~

Seeing her knocked most of the fever clean from his head, replacing it with cold, crystalline horror.

“What happened?” he whispered, staring through the grate.

She was crouched in a corner, a dirty, wild thing. That once beautiful fall of hair was matted beyond belief, twisted into strings and knots. He saw no one he knew in those fierce, too-bright eyes, the only spark of radiance in her crabbed form.

“Dark magic of a sort that none of us recognise,” Numair said grimly. “My strength isn’t in healing, but even Duke Baird himself can find no solution. We can all feel the spell, but untangling it...it is vast and complex, and the first healer to try is now in the same state.” The pity softened his voice. “It is a kind of madness, but one so virulent it reaches out to devours anyone who becomes lost within the spell. It makes exploring it almost impossible. Any healer must be cautious, but the longer we wait, the less human she becomes.”

“Goddess,” he whispered, whether in prayer or oath, he did not know. “When did it happen?”

“Almost a month ago.”

The same time that his seasickness had manifested itself. The same time he had felt such a strong urge for home, for his city and his friends. Suddenly Ryan understood what it was that had gripped him so violently: tendrils of her insanity, reaching out along the bond between them to brush him, to weaken him. But he had fought back, not knowing what it was that had such a pernicious grasp on him.

“How?” he said, unable to tear his eyes from her.

“That we do not know exactly. Andrea was called to a house in the city to heal a child, but by the time she was found, wandering in the streets, she spoke nothing but gibberish. Whatever the house and whoever the patient, both are lost.” Numair’s face was grim, aged immeasurably.

Ryan knew the streets, knew their careless savagery and gluttony. “Did...did anythin’ happen to her?”

That earned him the first smile he had seen from the mage, faded as it was. “People claim that someone very much like you has made certain...dire threats to people. Something about turning their blood to acid and their bones to splinters.”

He met his tutor’s gaze dead on. “Must be my evil twin.”

“I suggest your evil twin stops making such comments, or he will find himself in the palace cells for good,” Numair said sternly. He paused. “But in this case...someone took heed. They found Hana Alhaz, and she in turn brought Andrea here.”

And what brought me here? he wondered. How did I know to come back? Something brought me. Was it her? If it was...if it was, maybe she’s still in there somewhere.

And if it wasn’t...?

No. I can’t think like that. That won’t help her.

“I need to go in,” he said. His head spun, but he forced himself to stand straight. He didn’t dare let them know how much her sickness affected him.

“Yes, I thought you might.” Numair looked him up and down. “You must be careful, Ryan. She’s more animal than person at the moment.” Something flickered in his eyes, some old shadow that he didn’t understand. “But others have come back from such a state.”

I don’t care about the others, he wanted to say. Only about this one.

~*~

When the prison door slammed behind him, he was briefly frightened, but then he steadied himself. She seemed more afraid than him, huddling in her corner and hissing at him between raised hands. He could hardly reconcile her with the girl he had left here, if not for the delicate lines of the face he knew so well, carried in the faithful mirror of his heart.

“Hello Andi,” he said, voice rough. “I’ve come to try an’ help ye, if ye’ll let me.”

If the words meant anything, it didn’t show in her eyes.

He approached her as he might a wild beast, step after wary step. When he was within reach, she swiped at him. The blow had all the force of a particularly sleepy kitten, but in his weakened state, it nearly toppled him.

So close, the power of the spell billowed from her like a dark miasma, and he found himself half-delirious, the walls of the cell contracting and receding, colours swirling before his eyes. He was almost overwhelmed, but then something rose from his mind, one well-honed reflex.

All that time in the Yamani Isles, the one useful thing he had learned was their core of deadly calm. Meditation was practically a national hobby there, and he had begun to see the benefits of it in those long sessions of calm: surrounded by the ambient noise of the night and the leaden light.

He called those slow times back to him now, washing the fever away with the surety of a river, the solid strength of wood. It was enough: he felt clear-headed, if unsure how long he could hold this fugue state.

And then he cupped her face in his hands, dodging her wayward blows. Strange, as soon as he touched her, her resistance ceased. She became as still and lifeless as a doll, only the blink of her golden eyes giving him any indication that she lived.

Into the smog of the spell he delved, understanding now what Numair had meant. It was like reading a strange language, a clutter of symbols and sounds that meant nothing to him except to glimpse its essential malice. It besieged him from all sides with its siren call, luring him ever closer to that edge between sanity and madness.

If he tried to untangle it, he would be here forever.

But...but maybe he didn’t need to untangle it. Other mages would, because how else would they know where she was within its Byzantine paths? But he didn’t need to sort through every thread of this magic: he had another way to find her, a straight path through this web to wherever she was cocooned in black sorcery and trickery.

It would be dangerous. Drawing on the bond between them was akin to drinking of her lunacy: becoming half-mad himself. But he could not leave her to decay within this trap. For all they had shared, she was the closest thing to family he had.

And so he sought the connection between them, magic of a different sort, tinged with divine fire. When he touched it, the madness poured forth thick and fast, and he found himself tumbling, adrift except for that slender link between them.

He crawled along the link as if it truly were a path, flinching as horrific images flew at him from the dark fog he moved through: monsters that roared and flung remains at his feet, slick blood-drenched things of nightmares. Voices of those he’d loved and lost, floating from the darkness to try and call him to them. Ghastly scents mingling with sweeter ones: perfume and blood and mud all mixed into one, gangrenous flesh and flowers, vomit and cut grass.

Through it all, he clung to their bond. On and on, terrified and half-shattered already, sure that there would be no world left to go back to, only the endless barrens of this empty place, only the crumbling pieces of himself.

He was in the cell and on the dark road: he was bleeding from a dozen places, he was slick with fever, he was whole and unharmed. He was two and six and ten and a thousand: he was multiplying like locusts, he was the only living thing left in the world. He was sane and mad and knew no difference.

He was...

He was...

With a gasp, he stumbled through the last of the fog – and he was there, in some grey sandy place where the only light was the dull blue of twilight, where he was knocked over by a hug, where Andrea was in his arms and her eyes were full of the sweetness he knew.

“You came for me!” She hugged him, and the nightmare place seemed a dim memory, if not for the swollen clouds that ringed the plateau. “Oh, gods, you came for me.”

There were tears streaming down her face, and she clutched him as if he might vanish. “Of course I came for ye,” he muttered, indignant. “Did ye think I’d leave you?”

She was gasping, patting his face to check he was real. “I thought everyone had left me,” she said, her voice hesitant. “I thought...I thought I’d been kidnapped.”

“In a fashion, I guess,” he said, and explained as best he could. He said nothing of his own grotesque visions, unwilling to admit those things had even a shred of reality. “Someone wanted ye harmed, lass. Someone powerful.”

A thought seemed to have struck her. “Are...are you sure it was just me they wanted? What if they needed you here too? I don’t know how to escape this place. Do you?”

“Well,” he admitted. “I had a thought. Seems to me whoever done this didn’t think I’d get to ye. Or if they did, they didn’t understand just what we’re capable of. Master Salmalin, he’s done a good job of protectin’ us, you know.”

“Despite you,” she murmured.

He glared. “Aye,” he said acidly. “Despite me. Can you reach your magic, Andi?”

“Yes,” she said. “It was about the only thing I had, but I wasn’t strong enough to destroy the spell.”

Her eyes were wary. The combined strength of their magic was more the sum of its parts, and it was dangerous in the extreme. The older they got, the more difficult it became to control, as if the mere fact of their aging was a catalyst of epic proportions.

“We can try, or we can stay here,” he said. “I ain’t got any better ideas.”

He knew the moment she decided: she took his hands, and he was surprised to find that he was taller than her, that her face held a hint of maturity that he didn’t remember. Her fingers knitted with his, seeking solace as much as contact. He called up his Gift, a turquoise blue well that simmered like volcanic springs; he felt the answering response in her, a vast, sunlit globe that shone out from her.

And then he dropped all the barriers between them, all the subtleties that divided him and her – and strange, he’d never minded before, but now he found that there were parts of his mind which were intensely shameful, which were dim and private, which were afraid of her. And she was there, gold and bright and burning, her thoughts as transparent to him as his were to her.

He saw his own face, changed, no longer so thin, so street-scrawny, the proud way he held himself, her awe of him: this half-stranger sweeping into madness to pluck her from it, almost a hero, but more like a thief slipping through shadows, light-footed, reckless. Her affection was warm, all-enveloping, and he realised that they were closer, that her hands had slid up his arms, that the inches had been shaved down into nothing.

Her face was tilted up, her lips barely parted, and he wasn’t thinking at all; he was only caught in all the intensity of her emotion while she’d been trapped here: her fear, her desperation, her fervent wish for him to come as he always had before mixed with the hot, horrible terror of abandonment.

I’d never leave you, don’t you know that? Didn’t you know that from the first time we met?

And that space waiting for a kiss, that was diminishing too, fading as their magic combined, and surged and-

And as the power blasted right out of them both, apocalyptic in its destruction, he never even knew whether their lips touched.

~*~

He only knew that he was opening his eyes to find daylight flooding over him, and the cell reduced to a few stones and an awful lot of dust.

“Oops,” he said weakly, and he found Andrea huddled against him, both of them kneeling down. Dust coated them both, though it was just another layer of grime on her. She was shuddering and he felt panic – what if he’d failed, what if-

She was laughing. Hysterical, high laughter, but it was an improvement.

“That was...interesting,” remarked Numair from what had been the outer passage. He looked impressively dust-free. “Count yourself lucky I was about to shield the area. Ryan, ward your work. I’m sure that was the first lesson I taught you.”

“Um. I forgot.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t said,” he murmured, sounding weary. “Andrea? Are you yourself again?”

“I think so,” she said, carefully disentangling herself from Ryan without looking at him. He felt obscurely hurt. “I...I need a shower.”

“You both do.” Numair raised his eyebrows. “Do you think you can manage that without destroying the entire palace? And then we’ll have to discuss what happened.”

Both of them nodded. And as Ryan went past, confused and fatigued, Numair said quietly, “You did well.”

I did something, he thought. I’m just not sure what.