The Silvered (55 page)

Curled on the floor, pressed tight to the crack under her door, Danika rubbed at the thin scar on her chest and took long, careful breaths. Inhaled slowly. Exhaled slowly. Fought the urge to pant. To whine. To keep screaming. She knew she’d lived a fairly sheltered life. Everyone she knew had lived a fairly sheltered life. Before Aydori was attacked, even the soldiers in her family or among her extended acquaintance were more about showing off their uniforms for pretty girls than they were about danger and pain. Her brother had fallen off the roof when he was ten and broken his arm, and the more dominant members of the Pack had scars, but she’d gone from being a slightly bored schoolgirl, to excelling at the university, to a loving marriage without ever being hurt badly enough for her to remember it now.

Kirstin had heard her scream. Her words on the air had not only been frantic but forceful enough to reach all of the others, and the net had clamped down. She was probably in more pain now than Danika, who had only the memory of pain.

Murmuring comfort to the others, Danika made plans. They had to find out if Adeline Curtin was the keeper of the second artifact and, if not, where it was kept. Stina had to finish freeing the hinges on her door. And they had to escape before Leopald took his testing to its logical conclusion and injured one of them—injured her—in a way Jesine couldn’t heal.

“Well, you’ll never fucking fit in his, but I might be able to help.”

Mirian stopped trying to lay words onto the breeze—she’d been practicing all day, and couldn’t figure out how Lady Hagen had made it seem so effortless—and waited to see if Jake would speak again. Gryham and Tomas had gone out hunting, disdaining the downpour that had held them at the cottage for a second day, and she’d been told to remember anything Jake said.

“What did you See?” she asked when he picked another potato out of the basket she’d matured and began to peel it.

He raised his head, gaze unfocused, and Mirian realized he still stared into the future. “Hurry.”

The knife slipped and he swore, back in the present as blood dripped on the floor.

“So, Captain Reiter, is it true there’s captured Aydori mages in the north wing?”

Reiter turned, surprising the woman seated next to him, who’d been leaning in, her breath warm and wine-scented against his cheek.

Her name was Onnyle Cobb. Her family was minor nobility. She did something at the treasury and wanted to do something more important. He had no idea who most of the people sitting down every evening at the formal dinner were, but over the last few days, he’d managed a reasonably thorough threat assessment of those he ate with.

Ate beside.

Over the last four meals, there’d been a bare exchange of common civility—he still wore his old dress uniform, making him the only one in the room except the guard not in court dress—but it seemed he’d been assessed in turn.

Cobb waited for him to answer, still pressed a little too close, her eyes lying about how interesting she found him. Reiter found himself suddenly thinking of pale gray eyes, narrowed in scorn, and how he preferred their honesty.

He turned his attention back to his chicken. He’d never been told not to speak of the mages, but, given that he alone accompanied the emperor to his observation booth, it didn’t take a genius to realize
that the Aydori mages weren’t common knowledge. In order for a thing to remain uncommon knowledge, those who knew of it had to keep their mouths shut.

“Is it true, Captain?”

Ignoring her didn’t seem to be an option. “I can’t say.”

A warm hand closed around his arm. “Ah, but rumor says you accompany His Imperial Majesty when he goes to visit them.”

Most of the men who’d been sent into Aydori had been reassigned to the other divisions. No surprise that one of them had bragged about a successful mission before he’d left Karis. Less surprise if it had been Lieutenant Lord Geurin; that ass would brag about taking a successful shit.

“People talk about you, you know. You were Seen by the Soothsayers. That’s impressive. Important. And now, because of the Soothsayers, you have the ear of the emperor.”

Reiter considered telling her that the emperor had his ear, that the emperor talked and he listened, but that would only extend the conversation, so he cut to the chase. “What do you want?”

She started but recovered quickly, allowing the flirtation to become business. “I’m wasted where I am. I have ideas that could revolutionize tax collecting. I want you to put a word in the Imperial ear.”

“No.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again. Reiter had sent soldiers to kill and he’d sent them to die and he knew how to draw a line in the sand. When Cobb turned her attention back to her meal, so did he.

“Head for the cleft…” Gryham put a hand on her shoulder and turned her slightly to the left. “…and that’ll take you to the Tardford Bridge.”

“Karis is this way.” Mirian turned herself back, squinting into the morning sun.

“And if you go that way, you’ll have to cross at the Vone at Chamon. Small town, everyone knows everyone, and they’re all suspicious as shit of strangers. No, you want to cross at Tardford. Second largest city in the old empire, shitload of people, and it’s easier to hide in a crowd. Lots of people wander into big cities looking for
work. No one goes to a small town unless they got friends or relatives there. You go to Tardford, you avoid the kind what think a uniform or a piece of paper gives them power they’ve no right to…”

“Bureaucrats, soldiers, priests,” Jake put in from Gryham’s other side.

“…and you’ll be fine. You move your ass,” Gryham continued, wrapping an arm around Jake’s shoulder and pulling him in close, “you get to Tardford tomorrow. You take Old Capital Street right through town, then strike off straight for Karis. The road follows the river, but you don’t have to. It’ll take a day off your run.”

“We could get a ride.”

“Could you?” Gryham snickered. “You’re going to put a wolf in a wagon behind a horse?”

“We went from Abyek to the border in a wagon.”

“Flat on your back and sweating out drugs. You get into a wagon now and you better be sure you stay downwind of anything pulling it.”

“I could…” Mirian began, chin up, glaring at Gryham, but Jake cut her off.

“Ignore him. He’s missing the point. Horses are fine if you’re carrying shit or if you need to cover a short distance fast. You…” He nodded at Tomas. “…can run for longer than any horse. Not as fast, but longer. Can probably run longer than Master Musclebound here…ow! You…” He turned his slightly manic grin on Mirian. “…are rebuilding yourself to keep up to him. Why the fuck would you slow yourselves down by bouncing along behind a horse?”

Tomas stared out toward the cleft—although Mirian couldn’t see anything cleftlike, it was possible he could—and kicked at a clump of dead grass. “Tardford, Chamon; why don’t we just avoid people entirely?”

“And walk across the Vone?” Jake snorted. “They put towns where bridges are.”

“Mirian could part it.”

“You sure?”

“No,” Mirian answered before Tomas could. “I’m all about bridges!”

“You need to be around people or you’ll be screwed in Karis,” Gryham told them. Mirian didn’t appreciate the whole
you’re idiots
subtext, but he wasn’t wrong. “You’ve gone wild last few days. Can’t
say I blame you, but the capital’s not going to empty out when you walk in, is it? You need to practice being civilized.”

Tomas kicked at another clump of grass, looked down at his foot, then up at Gryham in triumph. “We need shoes to go into a town.”

“Well, you’ll never fucking fit in his,” Jake pointed out, smacking Gryham on the chest, “but I might be able to help.”

Mirian leaned around Gryham. “You said that…Saw that yesterday.”

“Did I? Well, now we know what I meant. Fucking yay. Stay here. Gryham…”

Gryham rolled his eyes, but allowed the smaller man to pull him back to the cottage. As they disappeared inside, Mirian untied the bedroll and pulled out the telescope. Aim for the cleft was all very well, but she couldn’t even see the cleft. She pointed herself at Karis, then moved as much as she thought Gryham had moved her, shut one eye, and held the telescope up to the other. The brass eye-piece warmed quickly.

“It’s right there.” Tomas moved in and shifted the telescope a little farther. “Can’t you see it?”

Without the telescope, the triangular cut in the distant hills blended into the landscape. With the telescope, she could just make it out, although the edges were fuzzy. “You’ve got good eyes.”

“It’s right there!”

“I can see it
now
.” More or less. “It’s hazy by the river.”

“No, it isn’t. Mirian…”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Because if they talked about it, she’d have to acknowledge what was happening. That wasn’t sensible, but she didn’t care. Mirian lowered the telescope as Gryham and Jake returned, and slid it away as Jake dumped the carpetbag he carried out onto the ground. “Why do you have so many pairs of old shoes?”

“I live in the middle of nowhere. I don’t get rid of shit.” He tossed a pair of work boots, tied by their laces, at Tomas who ducked. “Try these. They’re big on me and you lot have small feet for your size. I think it’s a paw thing.”

Mirian had never noticed Tomas’ feet.

“Now these…” Jack handed Mirian a pair of leather house shoes.
“…are soft enough the laces might pull them tight enough to fit you. You’re not what I’d call delicate.”

“Thank you.”

He grinned. “Any time.”

The shoes fit well enough, as much too big on her as the boots were too small on Tomas. They wouldn’t be comfortable, but if they had to rejoin civilization, they needed shoes.

“I never thought I’d say this,” Tomas murmured as Mirian packed them into the bedroll, “but I miss those wooden clogs.”

“Definitely easier to get out of,” Mirian agreed. “And not…”

“Just keep to the right, you’ll be…Your right, you idiot, not their right! Good
night
!”

They turned to see Jake staring toward the east, one hand holding a slipper, Gryham a step away.

“And now,” Gryham grinned. “…you know what to do tomorrow.” He reached for Jake’s free hand, but Jake snatched it away and stiffened.

“Hurry!”

Mirian felt as though someone had just stroked a cold finger down the center of her back. “Gryham. He Saw that yesterday, too.”

“About keeping to the right?”

“No. He said, ‘Hurry.’”

“Did he?” Graham wrapped his arms around the smaller man and pulled him close. “Then you’d better be getting a move on.”