The Silvered (23 page)

Burned so badly, dead was better than alive. And not just for the soldier, Mirian was honest enough to admit. If he’d still been breathing, she’d have had to…

“I’d have had to sit beside you and wait for you to die. Maybe read to you, to take your mind off the pain. I couldn’t kill someone.” She could feel hysterical giggles rising and forced them back. “Except I killed you, didn’t I? But you’re a soldier and we’re at war, so you must’ve expected to die, right?”

It was said, although not in polite company, that high-level Healer-mages could talk to the dead. Didn’t seem so hard to Mirian. Hysteria rose again, and again she forced it back. It wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t even make her feel better, so what was the point. Reaching out, her hand dirty but steady, she touched the charred fabric of his trousers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Standing, even slowly and carefully, she had to steady herself against the tree. She’d be okay as soon as she got to where she could breathe deeply again. At school she’d learned that they burned their dead in the empire. In Aydori, they exposed the bodies and, in time, gathered the bones and returned them to the earth.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” she said softly, not looking down.

Back where he’d been hiding, facing toward the border, guarding against whatever came after the Mage-pack, the grass around his pack hadn’t even been scorched.

“Sensible,” Mirian reminded herself, easing back down to her knees.

She pulled a pouch about a third full of dried meat and hard biscuit from his pack, slipped a cheap compass into one jacket pocket, a worn coin purse into the other. He had a folding knife, a fire-starter,
and a telescope worth more than everything else in the pack combined. The shaft was rosewood bound in brass—ornamented brass—and there were extra lenses under the heavy cap. It looked nearly new. Mirian stroked the polished wood and thought about leaving it with him. It had the kind of worth that felt like stealing rather than the slightly less reprehensible scavenging.

After a moment, she laid it carefully on the small pile with the rest.

Not taking it seemed like disrespecting the man she’d killed. Which wasn’t exactly sensible, but it had been a long day.

He didn’t have a watch.

The pack itself was too obviously Imperial army for her to carry, but the blanket was gray wool, indistinguishable from a hundred others. Mirian dropped her finds and boots into it, rolled it up and tied off the ends with her stockings, leaving out only the half-full canteen and one biscuit. Her stomach protested at the thought of anything more and, besides, she had no idea of how long the food would have to last.

The other man would have more food and coin and maybe something else she could use.

She could see the line of his back. Tomas had killed him. Ripped out his throat…

Making her way to the track, she sighed at the feel of the smooth, cool dirt under her feet, gave thanks that the open blisters were up on the backs of her heels, and began walking toward Karis.

Danika’s scent had been strong on the ground, and the coach they’d locked her into wouldn’t be able to move quickly on the rough track. He could catch them. Hamstring the horses. Kill the guards. Save Danika. Save Danika and Ryder’s unborn child. And the others…He’d save the others, too.

He followed the scent off the track, onto what passed for a country road. The horses’ stride had lengthened, so they were moving faster. Let them. He could catch them. There was a town, no more than five or six miles from the end of the track. He had to catch them before they reached the town and potential reinforcements.

He heard them before he saw them. The pound of hooves against
packed earth. The long whips cracking above the horses’ backs. He rounded a curve and saw the back of the last coach. There wasn’t enough dust raised to give him cover, but he didn’t care. They’d die. They’d all die. Every last one of…

The first shot slapped dirt up into his face.

He didn’t even break stride. They couldn’t hit him.

His front legs stretched out, rear legs bunched up under his belly driving him forward. He was close enough to see the differences in the barrel bands that said this man had one of the new rifled muskets. Close enough to see his face as he finally finished reloading. The Imperial army required four shots a minute, skilled infantry could fire five, but no one could hit a moving target from a moving coach. No one.

Pain exploded out from his shoulder as silver shot plowed through flesh and shattered bone. Flung up and back, Tomas hit the ground, rolled…

“…and we followed her back to the battlefield but were unable to find her.” Report finished, Reiter stared over General Lord Denieu’s right shoulder at the billowing wall of the command tent. The army was in control of Aydori from the border to the outskirts of Bercarit while remnants of the Aydori army used the city as cover. And occasionally as a weapon.

The general refused to march his soldiers down streets that had become shooting galleries.
“He’s waiting for more artillery and more ammunition for the guns we have,” Major Gagnon said cheerfully, leading Reiter to the tent. “He’ll bomb it flat, then we’ll march over the rubble.”

Reiter waited as the general’s valet poured a glass of wine and the general took a long swallow. “There’s beastmen in the south continent, too,” he said, thoughtfully, turning the glass so the wine gleamed ruby red in the light. “I hear they’re different than our lot, slighter, but, still, I always thought they were purely a northern problem. Turns out there’s vermin all over the flaming place. Now then, Captain…” He picked up a pen and poked at the tangle, lying like a glimmer of gold across his desk. “…I think I can answer one of your questions at least. Gagnon!”

“Sir!” The major stuck his head back into the tent.

“Is that captured mage still alive?”

“He was last time I looked, sir.”

“Get him in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know, it’s funny…” Denieu took another swallow of wine. “…we spent so much time figuring out how to kill the beastmen, raising taxes, gathering silver, we forgot about the mages. They blew up the rocket station. The one by the bridge. Reports say there was a fireball.” Another swallow and then he had to raise his voice slightly over the sound of approaching soldiers. “They can throw them now. Well, not throw them exactly, it’s that they blow them our way, but the effect is the same. So much for the
common
…” He threw a bitter emphasis onto the word. “…belief that mage-craft has dwindled to parlor tricks and creature comforts; killing the beastmen seems to have motivated them. And I always thought it was the female mages that…”

The open flap cut off the general’s thought as Major Gagnon led two soldiers—one of them a woman, Reiter noticed, evidence of the new draft—dragging a bound and half-naked, middle-aged man, his torso marked with bruises, into the tent. They dropped him and stepped back by the canvas.

“He’s still breathing, sir.”

“Good.” Denieu gestured with his glass. “Captain Reiter, test the artifact.”

“Yes, sir.” The women in the carriages had been farther from the tangle than this captured mage. If the tangle were still working, it would have done its job by now. Reiter hooked a finger through a strand of the net, carried it to the captive mage and draped it over his head. It slipped down over one swollen ear and remained entirely visible on top of the blood-streaked hair.

“Is that it?”

“No, sir.” The tangle had worked on the girl through more hair and more debris, pulling from his hand and fitting itself against her skull. “Looks like the damage she did when she removed it is enough to keep it from working.”

Denieu grunted. “Or it never worked.”

Or this mage is too close to dead.
Reiter kept the thought to himself. He didn’t want the tangle to work. He didn’t want to continue hunting the girl.

“Get him out of here, Major. I’d love to know,” the general continued as Reiter retrieved the artifact and the major beckoned the two soldiers forward, “what courtier with his head up his ass convinced the emperor to put his faith in the leftovers of ancient magic.”

As the lengthening pause seemed to indicate there was a response required, Reiter said, “Most likely the Soothsayers, sir.”

“Of course. You said they were involved. Inmates running the asylum. You want to put your faith in anything that isn’t a Morrisville smooth bore musket at three volleys a minute, you put your faith in science, Captain. That’s the future of the empire; science. Even Korshan’s rockets have a place if he could just get the flaming things to move in a straight line. They certainly performed as advertised against the beastmen.” Denieu drained his glass and held it out to be refilled. “The question now before me, Captain Reiter, is what do I do with you? I’ve got holes you’re more than qualified to fill, so…”

“General Denieu?” Major Gagnon stuck his head into the tent. “There’s a messenger out here from General Ormond. She says it concerns Captain Reiter.”

Ormond was staff, his position back at the bridge the one Reiter had decided to skip.

“You know what this is about, Captain.”

“No, sir.”

“Then send her in, Major. Her,” he added under his breath, “still not used to that.”

As far as Reiter could see, the messenger, red-faced and breathing heavily from her ride, looked like half the boys he’d had under his command. Eager and far too young.

She came to attention in front of the desk.

“Let’s have it, Corporal.”

“Sir. General Ormond’s regards. He says that if Captain Reiter makes himself known to you, he’s to be reminded his orders are from the emperor and he’s to return immediately to Karis with the mage.”

“And the general knows this how?”

“Runner from Lieutenant Geurin, sir.”

Hodges, Reiter figured. The boy was fast.

“Does the general want a response?”

“No, sir.”

“All right. Check with the major before you head back. I’m sure he’s got something you can take as long as you’re going.”

“Yes, sir!” The messenger snapped off a perfect salute, spun on one heel, and left the tent.

“She must be good on a horse,” the general said as the flap closed. “Even a scent of a beastman drives the big dumb brutes wild, and we can’t be sure we got all of them. I suspect there’s a few slinking around between Bercarit and the border.”

Was the girl’s beast one of them? He wasn’t sure how he felt about her finding him.

“I know Geurin’s father.” From the general’s tone, his opinion of the father was close to Reiter’s of the son. “It’s his uncle you have to watch, though. Smarmy bastard got himself a place at court. Looks like you’re returning immediately to Karis, Captain.”

“I don’t have the mage, sir.” The tangle hung limp from his fingertip.

“I’d lend you one of mine, but they’re all men.”

“It has to be a woman, sir.”

General Denieu took a long swallow of wine. “Then I guess you’ll have some explaining to do when you get to the capital.”

Mirian had no idea how long she’d been walking. Staggering. Stumbling. The best she could say about her pace was that she continued to move forward and time was passing.