The Silvered (10 page)

“B
EWARE THE NET FROM ABOVE.”

The underbrush grabbed at Mirian’s skirt. She caught her foot in a tangle of fallen branches and stumbled through a spiderweb. Resolutely not thinking of spiders in her hair or down her collar or climbing into her ears, she flailed at the strands hanging off her face as she ran.

Did Lady Hagen’s warning of a net refer to the gold glitter Mirian had seen hanging off the officer’s fingertips? It was hard to think of what else that glitter could be. Her father had spoken approvingly of the empire’s advances in technology—was this one of them? Had someone created a technology to neutralize mage-craft?

One foot dropped into a hole masked by ground cover and she fell, biting back a startled cry. The impact drove her hands wrist-deep into the leaf litter. As she pushed up, something cracked then compacted under her right palm. Soft and moist and horribly warm, it left a dark smear on her skin. Back up on her feet, she swiped her hand against her skirt and kept running.

The Mage-pack had been holding their heads in pain, unable to fight back.

The net from above, probably the gold glitter, neutralized mage-craft by wrapping around the head. Logically, the net had to do something more than merely wrap, but how it did what it did wasn’t as important right now as what it did.

Mirian ducked under a branch and wondered if the net would’ve worked on the Mage-pack had they been wearing hats. Last season, the style in Aydori had been for little knots of flowers and lace perched precariously on shell combs that dropped off during the change to fur. Would the Imperial army have taken fashion into account?

She jerked to one side as the pocket on her skirt caught then tore, bounced off a tree trunk, and through another web.

“Beware the net from above.”

The soldiers wouldn’t want her regardless of what the net was or where it came from. She wasn’t Mage-pack. Her professors had made it clear they considered her barely a mage. Still, Jaspyr Hagen had said she smelled amazing and Lady Hagen had sent a warning….

An evergreen branch slapped her cheek. She gasped, inhaled a bug, and had to stop to cough. As soon as she could breathe, she ripped tender new tips off the branch and tangled them in her hair until she wore a sticky green circlet. She’d probably have to shave her head to get it free. In Aydori, only the women of the Mage-pack cut their hair short to match the Pack who didn’t have hair but caps of fur.

Her mother would have fits.

Her mother might be the only person in Aydori currently worrying about hairstyles.

It seemed brighter off to her right, so Mirian clambered over a fallen trunk and headed toward the light, hoping it meant the underbrush had thinned and she could move faster. She had to get to Lord Hagen. She had to let him know.

Pushing through a thicket of shoulder-high, red stems, the sharp ends of oval leaves scored the bare skin above her collar and clusters of buds smeared sticky fluid on her clothes. Suddenly stepping out over nothing, she clutched at branches, but they bent with her, folding down into the ditch and springing back into place when impact opened her fingers and she released them. Scrambling up the opposite slope on her hands and knees, Mirian stared at the hard-packed
clay of the road. Had she gotten turned around? Had she been running in circles?

Lifting her head, she saw the road to the left curved around a stand of silver birch and disappeared, cutting off the sight of carriages and the captured Mage-pack. Cutting her off from the sight of the Imperial soldiers.

To the right, a family—a group of people anyway—plodded toward Trouge. Two women older than her but younger than her mother pulled a low cart piled high with goods and topped with three small children. An elderly woman plucked the limp body of a chicken as she walked.

Mirian stared at the old woman and wondered if the children perched so precariously on the cart were her grandchildren. Lady Berin had no grandchildren, although her son’s winter marriage no doubt meant there’d be some soon. Except her son was in the Hunt Pack and the younger Lord Hagen, Tomas, said the Hunt Pack had been killed. And her daughter-in-law was in the Mage-pack and they’d been taken by Imperial soldiers. And Lady Berin…

Lady Berin…

Mirian remembered a gray-furred body lying limp on the road, a shadow spreading beneath her.

Lady Berin was dead.

Dead. Killed.

And one other of the Pack. And at least one of the coachmen.

But Lady Berin…Mirian had just seen her at the opera. Had just seen her laughing and talking and alive. And now she was dead.

Shoving her fist into her mouth, Mirian muffled a noise she couldn’t stop herself from making. Scream, sob, pain, protest—she didn’t know what it was, but she couldn’t breathe around it and it hurt! After what seemed like hours, but was more likely moments given how much farther the family had progressed up the road toward her, she wiped her hands off on her skirt, took a deep breath, and stood.

Her legs felt shaky, disconnected from her body. Stepping forward, she wobbled. Took another step and had to spread her arms for balance.

She didn’t have time for this.

Lady Berin was dead. The Mage-pack had been taken. And Lord
Hagen needed to know. Lord Hagen would fix this. She swallowed a giggle before it could emerge and turn to hysteria. Her mother would be so pleased. It was the first time they’d agreed in months.

A deep breath. Another. She started to run.

As Mirian passed the family, someone yelled, “You forget your dancing shoes, lady?” and all of them laughed. The children laughed because the adults did, the adults laughed because the Imperial army was marching on Bercarit.

They didn’t try to stop her.

She brushed a chicken feather off her sleeve and ran faster.

At least the road ran downhill to the city.

Around another curve, she staggered to a stop beside an abandoned trunk, hand pressed hard against the pain under her ribs, and realized walks along the promenade and weekly dances at the Assembly Hall were not enough to prepare for this kind of a run. It occurred to her as she tried to work up spit enough to swallow, that she should have warned the family what they were walking into. Warned them about the soldiers. About the bodies.

“Too late…”

A raven investigating a pile of cloth on the other side of the road looked up as if to ensure she wasn’t speaking to him. There was a raven on the Imperial flag. A raven in flight over a shield, a spear, and a sword, each representing a division of the Imperial army. Each division an army on its own as smaller countries understood the definition of
army
. They studied the Kresentian Empire in Aydori schools; it was too powerful to ignore and forewarned was supposed to be forearmed. Except it didn’t seem to be.

A line of sweat ran down her side and she unbuttoned her jacket. The jacket, a military-styled gray wool with black braid and the new tucked sleeves hadn’t been too hot for a spring dawn, but she was starting to understand those evacuees who’d abandoned bundles of clothes.

Jacket open, she began to run again, fists tucked up under her breasts to keep them from bouncing painfully.

Her heel came down on a rock, her foot rolled, but she caught herself before she fell and ran on in spite of the throb in her ankle.

Ran until she had to walk to catch her breath.

Ran again.

Eyes on the road, concentrating on breathing, on moving her legs, she was at the outskirts of Bercarit before she realized.

It was quiet. The sky was clear, no smudge of smoke from cooking fires hung over the city. If there were people still around, and there had to be, then they were lying low.

She could see a smudge of smoke over the border. Except that the border was seventeen miles away and she only had first level Air so whatever it was she saw, it couldn’t be smoke from the battle.

Could it?

Did it matter?

She couldn’t run another seventeen miles. Every breath tasted like copper and it felt like steel spikes had been driven in under her ribs. Her feet hurt all the way up to her knees and she was drenched in sweat.

But Lord Hagen still had to know.

If she could find a pony…

Stupid. No one would have left a pony, and anyone who’d stayed wouldn’t
have
a pony.

They said that in the old days the strongest Air-mages could ride the wind. Lady Hagen was the strongest Air-mage in Aydori and, as far as Mirian knew, her ladyship had never gone flying. Not that it mattered what
they said.

Limping, she started down the wide avenue the Trouge Road became when it entered the city. Bercarit, unlike Trouge, was built for commerce. It had no city wall; trees and shrubs gave way to the homes of the very wealthy, each individually walled. Private gardens in front of large sprawling houses on property that ran down to the bank of the Navine. This was where the Pack lived. Where Lady Berin…

Scrubbing at her cheeks with her palm, Mirian caught a glint of silver. She turned toward it, and realized she’d glimpsed the river between two of the houses.

The Navine looped around east of Bercarit, slowing as it deepened. This early in the season it would still be running fast, fed by the snowmelt and by runoff from a hundred mountain streams. Okay, maybe not a hundred. Mirian had no idea how many mountain streams fed the Navine and didn’t care. The river not only ran to the border, it curved to
become
the border for a part of its length. Somewhere there
had
to be a boat small enough for her to use.

She knew where the docks were. They topped her mother’s list of where good girls didn’t go. Good girls didn’t cross Beech Street.

Beech Street was nearly all the way across town.

Mirian weighed distance against the garden wall rising up beside her and turned to the wall, hurrying back to the last set of iron gates. Too large to squeeze through the vertical bars, she put her right foot on the lower crosspiece and jammed the toe of her left boot between the gate and the stone post, just above the hinge. Metal digging into her palms, she dragged herself up until her weight was on the hinge, braced her right foot on a bit of scrollwork, and pushed. Releasing the gate, she threw her upper body at the top of the post, moving her right foot to brace against a higher bit of ironwork, digging for imperfections in the mortar with the toe of her left boot.

Then her right foot slipped.

She lurched forward, trying to hook her fingers under the capstone. Began to slide back.

A delicate touch against the back of her hand.

Just a leaf…

The shriek didn’t count if no one heard it.

Where there was a leaf…Her fingers touched wood. Shoulder screaming, Mirian stretched an impossible amount farther and curled her hand around a thick piece of vine. With no choice, she trusted it with her weight. Squirming and kicking against the side bars of the gate, she managed to get up onto the top of the wall.

The vine made getting down a lot easier.

Boots sinking into the soft earth between clumps of daffodils, she sagged against the vine for a moment, and watched the bud closest to her hand swell and unfurl into a pale pink blossom. A few more, then a few more, until a spray of blossom bobbed up over the wall scenting the air with the promise of summer. First level Earth. Pretty, but useless and worse than that, unintentional. Given the way exhaustion ate away at her control, it was a good thing she hadn’t managed to learn anything more dangerous. As it was, it was still too cold at night for so delicate a flower, so all she’d done was expose the vine to an early death.

More death.

Eyes locked on the ribbon of silver, Mirian staggered toward the water. Just a little farther
and she could sit down. Just a little farther and there’d be a boat and it would take her to the border and she could find Lord Hagen. Jaspyr, too, if the Lord and Lady felt she was due some personal return for a horrible day.

Just a little farther.

The dock at the bottom of the garden was empty.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! SHIT!” Mirian had learned to swear at university from a woodcutter’s daughter who’d tested absurdly high for her station—although no one had pointed that out more than once. Only Mirian had tested higher and that had thrown them together for a few months until Adine had progressed as expected and Mirian hadn’t.

Uncertain of what she should do now, or rather how she should do what she needed to do, Mirian turned in place, the dock creaking ominously beneath her.

There was a dinghy tied at the dock at the bottom of the garden next door and the wall between the two properties only came down as far as the shore.

The water was ridiculously cold. The shock almost made her swear again.

Her waterlogged skirts were heavy, and the dinghy tilted dangerously when she stepped in. It nearly threw her out when she tried to cast off, but she managed to push away from the dock with one of the oars and force the boat out into the current.

It was faster even than she’d expected. The water dragged the oar from her hand and she almost went overboard reaching for it.

“A single oar can be used as a rudder,” she told herself, watching the second oar move farther away, her knuckles white around the edge of the seat. At least theoretically. All Mirian knew about boating she’d learned on the still pond at her brother-in-law’s farm and that had mostly consisted of not allowing her older nephew to fall in.

As the small boat sped past increasingly less affluent properties at a dizzying speed, not falling in seemed like an excellent idea.