by Carol A Park
A grin split his face. “Wait, was that an admission that you needed my help back in the city?”
She lay down the ground. “I’m going to get some rest. If you need me to watch at some point, wake me.”
“If that happens, you might want this.” He tossed her dagger in front of her. She took the dagger, but raised an eyebrow at him.
He shrugged and smiled. “I trust you.”
Vaughn’s words seemed to irritate Sweetblade. She glared at him and turned her back on him this time when she lay back down. She fidgeted and shifted around, no doubt trying to get comfortable on the hard stone.
There was definitely more to this woman than she let on. An assassin who had a cover as an innkeeper? Sure. But an assassin who used that cover to employ and house single women and their children? He had never seen her act in a manner that might be called affectionate toward any of her women during his stay at her inn, but there had to be some measure of compassion beneath that cold exterior for her to even entertain such an idea.
And was it his imagination, or had her interest in what he was doing with the aether extended beyond the practical concern of knowing what she was putting on herself? Curiosity, perhaps, from the hardened assassin?
And why had she gone after his father after all, even when there was nothing in it for her? And with such sudden rage? There must be a history there he knew nothing of.
And those scars…
He glanced back at Sweetblade; it looked like she had finally fallen asleep. He rolled up one of his sleeves to look at the faded scars on his own arm. He knew how he had obtained them; there was only one way to obtain aether from a Banebringer, and that was to let their blood. He could, of course, burn the aether in his own blood without having to spill it, but there was a theory that the more a Banebringer did that, the stronger the pull on the other side of the veil, and thus the greater the quantity—and ferocity—of the monsters that would come through at the sky-fire in the fall.
Since there was no way to link a monster to a particular Banebringer at the sky-fire, the theory was supported only by the apparent reality that when a Banebringer died, the same was true—and the monster his or her death spawned could be concretely linked to that Banebringer.
The woman in the city was a good example. She had been caught using her abilities to heal people—his guess was that she had been secretly doing that for a long time. And what had been spawned in exchange?
One of the worst kind of bloodbane in existence.
It was still anecdote, of course, but he didn’t like to take chances. He didn’t like to think that his use of his own powers might bring even worse monsters into the world.
The bloodbane spawned when he had been “gifted” had caused enough death.
His father’s mocking words came back to him. Was that his name?
His stomach tightened in anger and a pang of grief.
He took a deep breath, willing the grief back into the persistent but almost ignorable ache of long felt sorrow, and looked at his scars again.
So he let his own blood, so he didn’t have to burn his aether directly except when necessary.
Why did Sweetblade have those scars?
She would have told him if she were a Banebringer as well, wouldn’t she? He had never met a Banebringer not glad to meet one of their own.
One of their own. As if they were not human.
And that was another thing about Sweetblade. The word demonspawn had never left her lips. She had never judged him, never asked what he had done to deserve this curse, never assumed he was in league with demons.
She treated him like any other person. Well, any other person whom she hated, but at least her dislike of him didn’t revolve around his state as a Banebringer, which colored every other relationship in his life. Even among the Ichtaca it was always there, lurking. How could it not be? Yet she didn’t seem to care.
He supposed that was the real reason he was still hanging around her. It was pitiful that his desperation for company had brought him to following around an assassin who, until recently, had been determined to kill him.
But he knew what it was to be alone.
He turned away from Sweetblade to watch the woods, as he should have been doing.
There was no perfectly safe place to spend the night outdoors, but Vaughn had been running from one place or another for years; he knew enough tricks that he had almost become comfortable with it.
It also helped that bloodbane were a bit of a specialty of his; he knew their weaknesses, strengths, and the relative danger they posed given the location, time of day, and circumstances.
Right now, the likelihood of an unprovoked attack by a bloodbane was low. He was more concerned about the people who might be following them. Would his father send men after him? Gildas had seemed remarkably unconcerned about Vaughn after that strange Banebringer woman had covered Gildas in bugs and healed him of whatever dire injuries he had suffered.
And it had to be only injuries. No Banebringer magic could bring the dead back to life.
He felt just a bit responsible for whatever might happen to Sweetblade’s inn and employees. His father had burned down a village because one family had harbored him unaware. What would he do to punish her?
The least he could do was help her reach her destination safely.
The worst that could happen would be that it would delay his return to the Ichtaca—which he had been avoiding anyway.
He sighed. At least Sweetblade didn’t want to kill him anymore.
A small comfort.
Chapter Twelve
The Color of Blood
The night passed without incident. Vaughn woke Sweetblade after a few hours and took his turn to gain what little sleep he could. In the greyish light of pre-dawn, he rose and left her for about two hours to see what he could find out about any pursuers.
He ranged out from their position as far as he dared and was surprised to find that the search was half-hearted. He ran across only two units, one searching the road and its immediate surroundings—as if they would be stupid enough to follow it—and the other spread out across the span of a half-mile due north, directly toward the city—as if they would be stupid enough to go there.
He almost took the risk of closing enough on a group to overhear their conversations, but invisible though he may have been, he was far from stealthy, and worry about drawing attention forced him to abandon that plan.
He saw no other sign of a search, and he wasn’t sure if that encouraged him or discomfited him. As he had proven many times before, and, indeed, had just proven again, his father was crafty. It made Vaughn wonder if some sort of trap were being laid.
But he could do nothing about it at present, aside from continue on.
Sweetblade seemed to grudgingly accept the fact that he planned on tagging along with her, making no comment when he immediately joined her as they left their camp that morning, or even when he insisted on walking close behind her. Vaughn could extend his invisibility to people he touched—and in turn people they touched, within limits—at the cost of burning additional aether. He wanted to be sure he could reach her quickly should the need arise.
Despite their proximity, she said virtually nothing the entire day. Attempts to engage her in conversation were met with silence, scathing looks, or at best one- or two-word answers.
She still hadn’t offered up where she was headed.
It started raining early afternoon—a steady drizzle that would likely last the rest of the afternoon and evening. The woods had thinned into patchy copses, so what little protection the leaves had offered had all but disappeared.
After about an hour of slogging through mud, Vaughn was getting tired of constantly wiping water out of his eyes. “Well,” he said, drawing to a stop.
Sweetblade stopped as well and turned to face him. “What?” she asked, sounding annoyed—but then again, perhaps that was how she perpetually sounded.
“We could try to keep goi
ng. Or, we could look for shelter.” He wiped at his face again, flicking water away with his hand—for what it was worth. “I vote for shelter.”
Her hands clenched and unclenched repeatedly before she answered. “Fine,” she said. “What would you suggest?”
He glanced around, trying to remember the lay of the land. They had traveled as far off the road as they had dared, and so he wasn’t sure of their precise location. He would guess the capital lay about 25 miles or so to the northwest, and if that guess was right, there was a village about a mile due west. They might be able to beg shelter there.
Or, better, borrow it, when no one was looking.
Despite the price that had been exacted from him, being able to travel invisible had advantages.
He opened his mouth to suggest it, when a shadow overhead darkened the greyish pall that passed for light.
Sweetblade yanked him down as a gust of wind accompanied by a chilling screech passed right over their heads.
Vaughn knew that screech. He burned aether reflexively, hiding both of them from the sight of the bloodhawk—but it already knew where they were and flew right at the spot where they had disappeared.
Vaughn had enough time to see the claws at the ends of its wings before it slammed into him, tearing him away from Sweetblade. He lost his concentration—and with it his invisibility—and crashed into the ground beneath the bird. It scrabbled at his face. One claw dragged across his temple, but he managed to grab the edge of each wing in his hands, barely keeping it from ripping his face off.
A moment later, a dark blur went hurtling across him, and the bird was caught in the momentum and pulled off Vaughn.
As soon as the weight was off his chest, he scrambled to his feet, reaching for his bow. It had fallen into the wet grass and slipped from his hands twice before he managed a grip strong enough to pull—
He paused as he sighted it on the bird.
Sweetblade was wrestling the creature.
She was sitting on top of it and had shredded one of its wings with her dagger. She was trying to find purchase with her blade on its neck, but its hide was too thick.
He moved his bow, trying to keep the bird in his sights, but it kept flapping wildly with its good wing, flinging her back and forth in an ever changing position, and he was afraid he would hit her instead.
The bird finally managed to dislodge her, and she rolled to the side, but not quickly enough—and it was furious. It flapped its good wing once and landed on top of her.
Damn! If he could just separate them long enough…
Stupid. Water. He always forgot.
He let go of the bow with one hand and stretched his palm out toward the sky.
The bird—if it could be called that—didn’t like Ivana’s dagger. The pain in its wing was probably a constant reminder of what it could do. So she kept stabbing toward it, even though she knew the blows wouldn’t land. The bird jerked back, trying to avoid the blade with a chilling intelligence, but unwilling to let her go.
Then the rain started to do something odd—it was swirling up instead of down.
The bird, as startled as she was, hopped back, screeching in confusion. The tornado of water solidified into a wall that then slammed back into the bird, hurling it several feet away from Ivana.
The bird tried to take off, but it could no longer fly. A second later, an arrow pierced its skull all the way through.
It flopped to the ground, twitched twice, and then lay still.
Ivana blinked once, twice, and then slid down to the ground, the events of the past few minutes a blur.
Vaughn’s feet appeared in her view, and he grasped her upper arm and hefted her to her feet.
“What was that?” she asked, brushing him off as soon as she had her balance.
He glanced at the corpse of the bird. “A bloodhawk. I’ve dealt with them before. Vicious creatures, though…” His brow furrowed. “They usually don’t prey on humans, unless provoked.” He shook his head. “Odd.”
He picked his way over to the corpse of the bird, and Ivana followed, and they both stared down at it.
Its head and beak reminded her more of a vulture than a hawk, but it was easily four times the size of that mundane bird, and that was where the resemblance stopped. It had no feathers—more like a bat than a bird—and at the tip of each wing were needle-sharp claws.
“Bloodhawk? Looks more like a vulture-bat to me.” She glanced over at Vaughn. Blood was trickling down his temple, over top of a growing patch of silver, but it was hard to tell with the rain and his hair how deep the cut was.
He grinned. “But bloodvulture-bat doesn’t sound good, does it?”
She almost smiled.
Almost. “However,” she said. “I was referring to the rain.”
“Oh.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s one of the things I can do.”
“Control rain?”
“Water. And things that contain water.”
“Like wine?” she asked, remembering the exploding barrels in the Ri’s manor.
“I guess,” he said. “I haven’t experimented with it much.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You can throw around water and you haven’t experimented with it?”
He turned away from her, and he didn’t seem entirely stable on his feet, just like back at the manor after he had tossed the wine around. “It burns more blood than invisibility. Especially when I’m improvising like that.”
Burns more blood? She thought they had to use aether to work their magic. “I don’t understand.”
“Okay, more precisely, the aether in my blood. But that destroys the blood it resides in, so might as well be the blood.”
Ah. So he could use the aether in his own blood, internally. Why didn’t people know these things about the abilities of Banebringers? Again, her thoughts drifted to her father. He would have been fascinated. “You seem ill.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “I’ll be all right in a minute. I also regenerate blood more quickly.”
She moved to face him again. His hair was matted to his temple with water, blood, and…aether. She couldn’t help but stare. The flow of blood had slowed, and most of what remained on his face had hardened into a silvery substance. The wound was red with irritation and raw inside, like one would expect, but there was no crusted blood.
She knew Banebringers bled aether. Everyone knew that. And she had seen him bleed once before. But it was still fascinating.
Vaughn now wore a sardonic smile on his face. “Ready to call me demonspawn yet?”
Demonspawn. It was what they called Banebringers because their blood was silver—or turned silver, as she had just observed herself—similar to bloodbane.
It was a particularly offensive insult when used of someone who wasn’t a Banebringer. Like calling someone not human. She didn’t particularly like Vaughn, but Aleena was right: he wasn’t that bad. “There are people in this world who deserve such a moniker,” she said softly, “but in my experience it has little to do with the color of their blood.”
He didn’t say anything. Just looked at her.
It made her uncomfortable.
She nodded toward the gash on his forehead. “Some of that aether might help.” She touched her wrist for emphasis. When she had woken up this morning, the pain had already faded to a dull ache. She had used her off-hand to be on the safe side, but she was, once again, grudgingly impressed with his work, magic or not. “Do you have an actual idea about where to find shelter, or was that just wishful thinking?”
“If I’m not mistaken, there’s a village about a mile due west of here, but…” He glanced at the corpse of the bird. “Perhaps it would be better to find something a little closer.”
Vaughn led them to a cave to spend another night in.
Well, cave was generous. It was more like a large indent in the rock behind a waterfall of the same creek they had been following; it went about ten feet back, and the first two feet were flooded with puddles from
the waterfall, but it was relatively dry, and better, hidden. She only hoped they would make better time the following day. The rain and their zigzag course had severely limited how far they had traveled that day; every day lost was another day Gildas could get to her girls.
Vaughn’s eyes flicked down over her as they settled in, and he made no attempt to hide it.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your eyes—and hands, in case you’re stupid enough to need the warning—to yourself.”
He grinned. “You should wear more modest clothing.”
She glanced down at herself, observing the way her tattered wet dress clung to every curve and showed a generous amount of skin.
She glared at him. “I’m not responsible for your second—or perhaps I should say primary—brain, thanks.”
His grin broadened. “Touché.” There was a pause. “By the way. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For getting that bird off me. If you hadn’t, I’d be dead at worst, or faceless at best.”
She shrugged. She hated to admit it, but if he hadn’t been there, she would be dead too. “I need you—or at least your skills—for the time being.”
A half-smile flickered across his lips before he turned to search in his pouch.
She frowned at his profile. What was that?
He retrieved a piece of aether from his pouch, crushed it between his thumb and forefinger, and mixed in some water from one of the puddles with his other hand, forming the pasty substance again. He then proceeded to smear it in the gouge on his forehead. “So…where are we going again?”
She rolled her eyes. He had been trying to get that out of her all day. Very well. Perhaps he wouldn’t be so keen to follow her anymore. “Weylyn City.”
He had just rinsed his hands and was lifting a cupped hand to drink, and she took some satisfaction in seeing him spray water everywhere. “Pardon me?”
“You heard me.”