by Carol A Park
Heilyn? Temoth, how had he managed to come across the same path as her? She had hoped to lose him, once and for all, since his knowledge of her identity no longer mattered.
Then again, it wouldn’t do to assume, and the branches wouldn’t hide her forever from someone determined to find her. Surprise would be her only chance, especially while injured.
She slid her dagger out of its sheath as the leaves compressed right near where she was sitting and held it in what she considered her off-hand—though in reality she was nearly as good with her left hand as right.
The footsteps stopped. The leaves moved as though the person were turning…
She took her chance.
Heilyn appeared a moment after she crashed into him. She kneed his groin and shoved him backward onto the ground as he crumpled.
Unfortunately, before she could get her dagger all the way to his throat, he had grabbed her injured wrist to try and wrest it away from him.
She cried out, and darkness passed in front of her eyes.
The next she knew, she was glaring up at him.
She had dropped her dagger, and he kicked it out of the way. He had pinned her to the ground, one hand on each forearm, and a knee in her stomach.
He didn’t look angry or grim; simply satisfied. “Looks like I’m the one on top of you this time,” he said.
Fury boiled up again. “Get—off—me!” she snarled, trying to knee his groin again, but he had been prepared for that and shifted his weight from his knee on her stomach to both knees on her thighs.
She glared at him. “You let me up,” she said, “and I’m going to kill you.”
“Best not let you up then.”
She gave another perfunctory struggle, but he was stronger and heavier than her, and she was both wounded and exhausted.
She gave up, chest heaving. She was emotionally wrung out; she couldn’t deal with this right now. “Fine. Let me up, and I won’t kill you.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Really?”
“Really.”
“And how do I know you’re not lying?”
She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, to hide his face, the face that reminded her so much of Airell. She wanted him off her! “You can take my dagger,” she said.
“As if that’s the only way you have to kill me.”
She couldn’t take it anymore. She screamed through clenched teeth. “Get off! Get off now!”
The pressure on her thighs released, and a moment later his irritating face was gone from above her. “You have anger issues, you know that?” He bent down and picked up her dagger.
She sat up, seething. She didn’t. She didn’t have anger issues. She wasn’t supposed to have emotional issues of any kind. And yet here she was, raw and laid bare, in a way she had never wanted to be again.
She pushed herself to her feet with her good hand. “Get away from me. I never want to see you again.”
“Wait, so you’re really not going to kill me?”
“Ri Gildas, who is infinitely more dangerous to me, already knows who I am. Killing you would now be a waste of my energy.”
“Well,” he said, relief in his voice. “I wouldn’t want to waste your energy.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” she snapped, “I have more pressing matters that require my attention.”
He failed to take the hint. Instead, he kept pace with her. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t believe that is any of your concern.”
“Wait—” He took hold of her arm, and she jerked it out of his grasp.
That had been a poor decision, as her wrist protested so loudly that she almost cried out. Instead, she clenched her teeth together. “What,” she said, finally stopping to face him, “do you want?”
His eyes flicked over her face and then down to her arm, which she was holding close to her body out of reflex. “You’re hurt.”
“Thank you for that perceptive assessment.”
“I have something that could help.”
“I believe I said this before: I neither need nor want your help. Now go away.”
“You may not want it,” he said. “But you need it.”
She snorted and started to turn away.
“You’re no fool,” he continued. “You don’t stand a chance out here by yourself for long, especially injured. You know that.” He held up her dagger. “And, you’re unarmed.”
Burning skies, he was irritating, and even more so because he was right. She would have to be out here overnight, and since she couldn’t travel near the road, it would take her longer to get back to the city than it had to get to Ri Talesin’s estate, which probably meant a second night.
Every night in uninhabited lands increased the odds a roving bloodbane might find her, and she knew her limits.
She had little to do with bringing down the behemoth in the city; if it hadn’t been for Heilyn, they would all be dead by now.
She glanced at him and realized for the first time that he had his bow and quiver again. When had he retrieved those?
He offered a placating smile when he saw her glance.
She gritted her teeth. She hated the idea of accepting his aid. But she hated the thought of dying more.
That was something, at least.
“I can find things to help with the pain,” she said.
“What I have will do more than help with the pain. It will help it heal faster.”
“Banebringer magic?”
“Something like that. But ideally I’ll need water and a fire.” He pointed. “There’s a creek that runs about a quarter mile that way. I know a good spot to take shelter for the night.”
She ran her tongue over her teeth. Ugh. She was tired, she was injured, and the defenses she had spent a decade building around herself were in ruins. She needed to regroup, rest, re-bury and re-build. She could do it, she knew, but she needed the time and space to do so—time and space away from him and everything he represented. And a few good assassinations wouldn’t hurt.
But she nodded curtly. “Fine.”
She let him take the lead, and, thankfully, he didn’t insist on further conversation on the way.
They reached the creek a few minutes later, and then walked along it for a good twenty more before he finally stopped. Heilyn immediately knelt and started rooting around in the dirt.
Ivana surveyed the area. A tumble of boulders lay along the creek here; the boulders would shelter them on two sides while the creek was on a third. It wouldn’t stop a determined bloodbane—or anyone who might have followed them, which she was just as concerned about—but it was better than sitting out in the open.
“There we go,” Heilyn muttered to himself. He pulled a tangle of sod, weeds, and branches out of the way, and then did the same at another spot nearby, revealing two holes in the ground.
He reached down into the holes and pulled out handfuls of debris. When he seemed satisfied, he set to filling the larger hole with firewood and kindling.
She found herself drifting closer, curious in spite of herself.
That was all right. Intellectual curiosity offered a cool detachment that she welcomed right now.
She eyed the holes critically, considering the sunken fire pit and what must be a ventilation shaft connected to it underground. Huh.
“You’re building a fire that can’t be seen,” she said at last. She was…well, she hated to admit it, impressed.
“Thank you for that perceptive assessment,” he said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
She frowned. “A bit less obvious of a conclusion than my bruises.”
He brushed off his hands and pulled something out of a coin purse at his waist. “Not to me,” he stated matter-of-factly.
Hmm. No, she supposed someone used to running would have acquired a handy set of survival skills.
He rubbed his fingers together, and a fine powder floated down into the hole. A moment later, flames licked at the sides, and a small but funct
ional fire crackled in the pit. More Banebringer magic?
He got up and started looking around the immediate area. He came back with two flat stones about the size of her palm and a few long, smooth sticks. He dropped one stone into the fire pit, but the other he set to the side. He drew another something out of the pouch and crushed it between his fingers over the second stone. Again, shimmery powder trickled down, this time making a pile on the stone.
He lifted the hem of his shirt and used her dagger to rip a hole large enough for him to get his fingers into, and then tore a large piece of cloth off his shirt. He went to the creek and soaked the cloth, and then came back and dripped some water onto the stone. With his finger, he stirred up the mixture until it formed a silvery paste. Then, he folded the cloth a few times and wiped the stone clean of the paste with one side.
He held up the cloth and touched it to her injured cheek.
She flinched back and held up a hand to fend him off. “I can do it myself.”
“You can’t,” he said. “Not yet. It won’t work.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
“It has to be activated, and you can’t do that. It will know you’re not a Banebringer.”
She raised an eyebrow. “The…salve…is sentient?”
“No,” he said. “Not precisely. We’re still trying to understand it, but as far as we know, non-Banebringers are unable to burn—activate—aether.”
He wasn’t making much sense to her, but she forced herself to hold still and let him administer the makeshift compress. True to his word, a few seconds after he had pressed it gently against her cheek, he gestured for her to take it.
She did, and gingerly held it there.
“That should help with the bruising and swelling,” he said, sitting back on his heels. “If it’s going to work, it should start to feel a little better within a few minutes.”
If it’s going to work? “I was actually more concerned about my wrist,” she said.
“That’s more complicated,” he said. “But I’m working on it next.”
He pulled more of the same substance out of the pouch and held it in his hand. He cringed, and then he plunged his hand into the fire.
What—!
But when he brought his hand back up, it was undamaged. He was holding the stone he had thrown in earlier, and he dropped it to the ground, seeming relieved.
Even more Banebringer magic? She had never seen it, not like this. People knew Banebringers had ‘heretical’ magic, but rare was the person who had seen the magic at work.
Once again, he reached into his pouch—obviously not a coin purse—and this time, she saw what it was, because he set it on the hot stone.
He had produced a few fingers worth of tiny chunks of some silvery substance, which, once on the stone, melted rapidly into a viscous, silvery liquid.
She stared at it. It resembled the blood Heilyn had bled when she had first cut him with her dagger.
Heilyn was ripping off another piece of his shirt, this time more precisely attempting to tear off a long strip around the hem.
She removed the cloth he had given her and eyed the silvery paste again. “Are you having me put your blood on my face?” she asked.
“Perceptive. You should keep that on for a little longer.”
“I’m rather adept at noticing details,” she said, putting the compress back on her cheek.
A wry smile touched his lips, but he refrained from commenting. Instead, he held up the cloth and eyed the length of it, and then started ripping off another.
Did it not bother him at all that he was setting up camp—such as it was—with an assassin? Then again, he had never seemed particularly terrified of her, even knowing she had been looking for an opportunity to dispose of him.
In fact, sometimes he seemed downright determined to act rash and irritating enough to provoke her to kill him.
Still, he appeared to think that their common trials warranted a level of familiarity that she neither wanted nor was comfortable with.
“Not my blood,” he said, tying the two lengths of cloth together. “A bindblood’s. And it’s not exactly blood anymore. We call it aether.”
There was that name again. At least she knew what it was called now, but that wasn’t a helpful answer. “I don’t know what any of that means.”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
“Try me.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re asking me to put it on my skin. I want to know what it is.” She told herself that was true, and it was, in part. But a tiny part of her was also fascinated. Knowledge of something new, something other people knew virtually nothing about? How often did she have that opportunity? Her father would have already been eagerly interrogating him on the subject.
She shoved that thought away.
He shrugged. “A bindblood is one class of Banebringer,” he said. “Their particular abilities lie in the areas of healing and hallucinations.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Give me your hurt hand.”
She hesitated.
He held up the double length of cloth. “I’m going to make a splint.”
Once again, she gritted her teeth, but accepted his aid. She gingerly placed the hurt hand in his palm, trying not to wince at the movement, but failed.
He was exceedingly gentle as he laid the sticks along her wrist and lower forearm, and then started wrapping his makeshift bandage around them. It was unnerving. “Do you typically bandage your wounds all by yourself?” he asked as he worked. “Because you’d think you’d never let anyone help you before.”
“Doctors tend to ask prying questions, such as, ‘How did this happen?’”
He chuckled. “Fair. What about…Aleena, was it?”
“She’s not usually around when I’m hurt.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but then he stopped and stared at her forearm.
She knew immediately what he was looking at, and she forced herself to remain still.
“Where did you get those scars?”
Despair. Guilt. Blood. “I went hands first through a glass window,” she lied. How had he even seen them, especially in the dark? They were so faded by now, a casual observer wouldn’t notice.
He studied her arm for another moment and then flicked his eyes up to hers. He was looking at her as though he thought that if he just peered hard enough, he would be able to penetrate her protective layers and find something different than what she was underneath.
It was unnerving and refreshing all at once. To her horror, it stirred up something inside her, something that shouldn’t be there at all. Yet it was there, and it reached out, straining to touch something genuine, to be known…
She shifted to distract herself. She was far too vulnerable right now. She wanted this to be over. “I don’t see how this is going to help it heal more quickly. Only keep me from injuring it further.”
“Patience.” He picked up the stone with the liquid…aether…and then slowly poured it on the outside of the bandage, while gently rotating her whole arm and using his fingers to smear it evenly in a thin layer around her wrist. “Don’t move,” he said when he finished.
She obeyed. A minute later, he tapped the bandage where the aether was, and it clicked against his fingernail.
“You think this is going to suffice as a cast?” That would break with an accidental flick of her arm.
“It’s not supposed to be a cast. It’s a focus.”
Ivana hated feeling ignorant. “I think this is where you should go back to telling me what exactly this stuff is. You said it was blood—aether—from someone called a bindblood.”
He settled back onto the ground, knees up and arms draped across them, and nodded. “It’s what we call our blood outside our bodies—after it turns to this silvery stuff.”
“We?” That wasn’t the first time he had used the first person plural. Other Banebringers? Did he frequently speak with them?
He just looked at her.
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bsp; She dropped it. She had no reason to waste energy trying to get him to divulge his secrets. She tapped the “cast.” “So, what did you do with it? How is this supposed to help me heal?”
“Like bindbloods themselves, aether from a bindblood has the ability to heal, even apart from the person it comes from.” He stood up, paced over to the stream, and looked up at the moon. “Of course, there’s no telling exactly what it will do, but with the bandages as a focus—”
She got stuck on the first part of his sentence. “What do you mean, there’s no telling what it will do?”
“Don’t worry. Bindblood aether is about the safest there is.” He looked back at her and shrugged. “Trust me. It will be fine. Probably.”
Laughter bubbled up from those too-recently-ripped open scars. “Trust you? And why should I do that? I don’t even know you—Dal Heilyn”
“Here’s a start. It’s Vaughn,” he said. “At least, that’s what I call myself now.”
She spat the words out like bitter herbs. “I don’t care.”
They didn’t seem to affect him. “So, where are you headed?”
“I believe I said that was none of your concern.”
“I can help you get where you’re going. I’m no healer, but if it works the way I hope, I’d say it’s going to be a couple days before that mends completely.” He nodded toward his bow, which he had set against one of the boulders. “You might be thankful for my help in the end.”
She just didn’t understand this man. Why was he here? Why did he even care? “Why would you want to help me? A few hours ago, I intended to kill you. Do you not believe that?”
“I believe it.”
“Then—”
“Because for whatever reason—and I’m sure it had nothing to do with me—you came back to kill my—Ri Gildas, and saved me in the process.”
“You’re right, it had nothing to do with you. You owe me nothing.”
“But mostly because I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible for the fact that you’re running.”
“Don’t. Ri Gildas knows who I am because I chose to attack him. My choices are my own.”
“You would never have been at the estate if I hadn’t shown up.”
“Correct. I would be dead.” She stood up, moved over to a spot next to one of the boulders, and brushed away a number of rocks and pebbles until the area was relatively smooth.