Seeker (16 page)

Shinobu grabbed the knife, and his father rolled away, his fingers scratching at tree roots. Then he kicked at his son’s legs. Shinobu took a step backward, out of reach.

He should end this for his father. That was what you were supposed to do for a comrade caught in a disruptor field—end it. The field was permanent, and only a monster would let someone suffer like this.

If I am a monster
, Shinobu thought,
it’s because of you. You stood by and let me do it
.

He tucked the knife into his belt and walked away.

Quin was following the sound of John’s voice through the smoke, which lay so thickly around her that she was forced to creep along the ground, her cloak over her nose and mouth. She had been following that voice all around the commons, but at last she was getting close.

It wasn’t John’s real voice she was following, of course, but that strange, harsh metallic one he was using, as though it could separate him from what he was doing. She hoped Shinobu could hear that distorted screech as well and that he was nearby with an armful of weapons. She didn’t want to hurt John, but weapons seemed a necessity if she wanted to get her mother back.

“I don’t have what you’re looking for.” This was a new voice through the smoke—her father’s.

“You have it,” John said. “When you give it to me, you will have your wife back.”

“Have my wife back?” Briac repeated, a mocking tone in his reply. “That’s what you’re bargaining with?”

There was a breath of wind, and Quin came into a patch of clear air unexpectedly. The moon was up now, and she discovered she was
again near the smoking wreck of her own cottage at the edge of the field. Her mother was visible directly in front of her, still on horseback, with a man seated behind her. A short distance away, John faced Briac in the tall grass of the commons, the mounted men encircling them both.

Quin crouched low in three-foot-tall scorched stalks that had been a green meadow only a few hours before.

“You can kill my wife only once,” Briac said. “Then what?”

You’re a beast
, Quin thought, staring at her father.

“You’re a beast,” came John’s altered voice, speaking Quin’s own thoughts aloud.

“Aye, I’m a beast,” Briac agreed. “But I don’t have the athame.”

“All right,” John said.

Quin watched as John pulled out a pistol and shot Briac in the leg. Her father cried out and collapsed into a sitting position, blood blooming through his trousers along his upper thigh.

“There’s a matching scar for you,” John told him in his inhuman voice.

She knew the sight of her father bleeding should bother her, but Quin could not stop herself from feeling a fierce satisfaction at his pain.
Briac would kill any of us if he had to
, she thought, finally admitting the truth to herself.

Her eyes went back to John. She couldn’t see his face because he still wore his mask, but his hatred for Briac and his desperation for the athame seemed to radiate from his body.
Is he desperate enough to hurt my mother?
she wondered. She had the strong urge to pull the athame from her cloak and toss it to him. That simple action would put an end to the attack and make John happy all in a moment.

And then what?
she asked herself.
What if
we
were to decide, Quin?
John had whispered to her in the barn.
We’d do a better job
 …

“Where is the athame?” John demanded of Briac again, bringing Quin back to the present.

“I don’t have it!” Briac yelled, clutching his injured leg. “Kill me, kill her, kill anyone you like! I still don’t have it!”

It was time to act, while everyone’s attention was on her father. Quin moved in a crouch toward her mother, staying low in the grass. As she approached, she could see a wash of red over Fiona’s neck—her throat had been badly cut and was covered in blood. Had John done that to her?

Quin pulled a knife from its sheath at her waist, thinking,
I hope you’re sober now, Mother
. Fiona turned her head and looked directly at her, as though Quin had spoken the words aloud. Seeing Quin’s knife, she moved her head slightly, acknowledging that she understood. Her horse was the farthest back in the circle of men, away from notice at this moment.

“I was betrayed,” Briac said frantically as John got closer. “I don’t have it, I tell you!”

John shot him again, hitting his shoulder. Briac was thrown backward, and the new wound bled quickly, soaking his shirt.

“Don’t worry,” John told him in his awful voice, still approaching. “I’ll stitch those up for you. I’ve got a needle and thread around here somewhere.”

Quin saw her moment. She threw her knife, knowing she wasn’t as skilled at this as the Young Dread but hoping her talents were sufficient. The knife arced through the smoky air and buried itself in the throat of the man holding Fiona. He tried to grab the blade, but before he had a chance, Fiona twisted her head and slammed it back against him, crushing the knife farther into his neck.

Staying low, Quin ran to her mother. She eased both Fiona and her captor—the man desperately clutching his throat—off the horse.
By the sounds he was making, he would be dead in a minute or two. Quin retrieved her knife and slashed the ropes from her mother’s hands, and then they were running back into the smoke.

When they were past the burning cottages and among the trees, Quin paused to examine the wound at Fiona’s throat. Blood was still seeping from it, but the cut was shallow enough to pose no immediate threat. Had John and his men meant only to make a surface wound? Or had Fiona simply been lucky?

“Your father …” Fiona whispered.

“We’re leaving.” Quin said it firmly, and though unspoken, it was clear she meant:
We’re leaving without Briac
. “As soon as we find Shinobu.”

She took her mother’s hand, and they ran deeper into the woods, heading along the west side of the commons. Unless Shinobu had abandoned the estate, it was the only place he could be.

“John may kill your father,” her mother breathed.

From their new location, they could see Briac again. John was approaching him with a knife. At that moment, Quin realized that she wanted John to finish him. Whether John was dangerous or not, sane or not, she wanted him to finish Briac. It would set her free; it would set all of them free. She was about to answer her mother
—If John doesn’t kill him, I promise you I will
—when her attention was drawn to a large shape moving deeper in the woods.

“Look!” she whispered. “There’s Yellen!”

The Young Dread and the Middle Dread were perched in the branches of a huge oak tree near the edge of the forest, watching the apprentice with the mask. He was holding a knife in his hand, approaching Briac, who lay wounded in the grass of the commons. Briac began to yell.

“You cannot stand aside! You cannot stand aside!”

Though her companion stood as still as stone, his breath so slow and soft that even she had difficulty hearing it, there was a tension about the Middle Dread as he watched Briac.

“You must help me!” Briac called.

He is speaking to us
, the Young Dread realized.
No
, she corrected herself,
he is speaking to the Middle. Those two have secrets
.

And the Middle was listening. She moved her head slightly to observe him. His body was tensing. He was preparing to speed up.

“Sir,” she said, forming the word with great concentration, “as you have said, we are only observers here.”

He could not strike her from where he was perched in the tree,
and this time he didn’t even seem to consider it. His mind was on Briac only.

Out on the commons, the masked apprentice had also become aware that Briac was speaking to the Dreads.

He stood up and yelled into the air, “You must—”

But the rest of his words were swept away by the inhuman screech of his false voice. He tried to yell again, but his words were nothing but noise. The device changing his voice was no longer working properly.

“If he cuts me,” Briac called out, “I don’t know what I may say. Or what he may find. The book …”

The Young’s eyes were on the Middle. He was poised between slow and fast, his feet at the edge of the branch. The Middle was scared of something Briac knew—of something he might reveal.
And the book
. She remembered the book, and the boy beneath the floor.

The apprentice ripped something from around his throat and yelled out with his true voice, “You must stand aside. You have rules. He has broken them first!”

The Young threw her sight at Briac. He was bleeding heavily from his leg and shoulder, visibly losing strength. If they waited long enough, he would certainly bleed to death.

“Sir, he is right,” she said. “Briac first took the athame—”

The Middle sprang into action. He reached across the tree trunk and yanked her from the branch, throwing her to the ground. It was only ten feet, and she rolled into the fall easily, but the Middle’s reprimand was unmistakable. From the ground, she looked up at him. He had a crossbow in his hands, and a bolt was already pulled into place.

“I decide,” he told her. “You must obey.”

“Help me!” Briac yelled again.

The Middle loosed the crossbow bolt, and one of John’s men toppled off his horse.

“Fire on them,” the Middle commanded her.

The Young Dread sped herself up, had her own bow in her hands, an arrow nocked almost instantly. She let the shaft fly and watched as it hit another of John’s men in the shoulder, as she had intended, sending him to the ground.

The apprentice and his remaining men—only two of them now—were in disarray. The Middle loosed another bolt as one of the men tried to gallop away. The horse was hit, and the man went tumbling.

The apprentice had only one man left now. They were scrambling to disappear, the apprentice on foot, the other man, the man with the disruptor, still mounted. The Young Dread followed the apprentice with her arrow. She could kill him easily. She had only to release her right hand. And yet this was not her duty, no matter what the Middle said. To avoid interfering, he had stopped her from helping the others on the estate. For the same reason, he could not rightly order her to kill John. They had done too much already. The boy who was a man now, who was running for his life, was not their jurisdiction.

The Middle had sprinted into the open and was dragging Briac back toward the trees. She met him inside the edge of the woods, her bow back across her shoulders. Still at high speed, the Middle set Briac down and lashed out at her. The Young ducked his arm, but he had a dagger in his other hand and he’d already buried it in the side of her abdomen.

She stepped back, feeling the blade of his knife slide out of her, her hand grabbing at the wound. Blood spilled through her fingers.

The Young’s own hand shot out with a knife and cut the Middle across his chest.

“You did not kill him,” the Middle said. His voice was still
speeded up, but his motions were already settling back into their sedate rhythm. His chest was bleeding, but he ignored the injury. “You should have killed him.”

The Young Dread didn’t answer him. She was ripping off a piece of her cloak and using it to stop the flow of blood from her abdomen. She tied another piece around her waist to hold the first tightly in place. She sensed her body growing weak, but as her old master had taught her, weakness meant little. You kept going regardless.

“Tie his shoulder,” the Middle ordered. He knelt at Briac’s left leg to make a tourniquet above the bullet wound. The Young knelt on the other side, stopping the blood at Briac’s shoulder.

When they were finished, Briac had almost gone unconscious. The Middle leaned over him and pulled up an eyelid.

“Where is the book?” he asked. The wound on the Middle’s chest was dripping onto Briac’s shirt, but still the Middle paid no attention to the gash.

“Safe,” Briac mumbled. “As long as I am.”