Banebringer

by Carol A Park

  Burning skies, why did he care?

  He sighed. He was starved for company—real company—that was all. It had been half a year since he had been back with the Ichtaca, and even there, he had been lonely. His status as the son of one of the wealthiest noblemen in Setana had put a barrier between himself and most of the other Banebringers, even though it hardly mattered anymore—would never matter again. Yaotel was free with him, but Yaotel was their leader, and he also wouldn’t hesitate to have Vaughn imprisoned if he felt Vaughn was going to threaten their cause.

  He wanted the company of someone who didn’t care if he were a Banebringer, or the son of a nobleman, or anything else.

  He blew out the flame in the lantern, deciding to get some sleep himself.

  When Ivana woke, natural light was seeping into the room through the window. Vaughn was sleeping a few feet away from her, and her leg felt strangely…well. She pulled aside her skirt to look at it and found fresh bandages. Vaughn had apparently tended to her wound again while she slept.

  She sighed. Better that she had been asleep, than reminded of the last time he had bandaged the wound for her.

  She tried to stand. She was a little wobbly, but she could walk, and without much pain. It was needed relief after the hours of agony she had just endured. Even better, the side-effects of too much star-leaf had mostly worn off. She still felt a little dizzy, but that could be as much from exhaustion as anything else.

  She found the bucket and dipped fresh water from the well, and then went about splashing her face with the water. It felt good; she sorely needed a long soak in a hot bath, but just washing her face and rinsing out her mouth refreshed her a bit.

  “You’re awake,” she heard from behind her. “And moving around. I assume that means your leg is feeling a little better?”

  She didn’t turn around. “Yes.”

  Vaughn moved over to the table and leaned against it to face her, arms folded across his chest. “I looked at that leg,” he said. “There’s only so much I can do, and it’s not healing like I had hoped. You need to see a doctor.”

  “As much as I would love to secure professional treatment,” she said, “that’s out of the question until I’m well away from here.” Ironic that she had a full purse, enough to pay the best doctor, and couldn’t even spend it.

  He bit his lip, but said nothing more. He had to know she was right. Still, he watched her, eyebrows furrowed slightly.

  His gaze made her uncomfortable. “Stop looking at me like that,” she said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re…concerned about me.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I am concerned about you.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not someone you should spare your concern on.”

  “No? Are you not a person?”

  No, she thought. I’m a wraith. She turned away from him, so she couldn’t see his face.

  As she did so, she saw a shimmering raised patch on her arm. Perplexed, she craned her neck to examine it further. Ah. Vaughn’s blood from earlier.

  She picked at the patch and then peeled it off. She made to flick it away, but he stopped her, sounding horrified. “What are you doing? You can’t just toss that! I can use it. It’s valuable.” He held out his hand.

  Just to annoy him, she tucked the bit of aether snugly between her breasts. “Good. Perhaps I can sell it to Tenoch the next time I’m in Weylyn City.”

  He raised an eyebrow, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Do you really think that would stop me from retrieving it, if I wanted to?”

  She drew her dagger and pointed it at him. “I wouldn’t try it.”

  “You won’t hurt me,” he said.

  “Why would you make such a dangerous assumption?”

  “You could have left me behind in the sewers, and you didn’t.”

  She snorted. “That’s because you’re still some use to me,” she said, gesturing toward her leg with her dagger.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But I think it’s more than that. I think that blade is a part of your disguise.” He held up one finger when she opened her mouth to protest. “An effective disguise, I’ll give you that. But I don’t believe for an instant that it’s who you really are.”

  She rolled her eyes. What did that even mean? She was a professional killer. It was what she was, and who she was. She had left behind any other persona long ago.

  “Fine,” he said. “Let’s pretend your motives were entirely selfish in not leaving me behind. What of your inn? Do you really need to hire the women that you do?”

  “Who would suspect the altruistic innkeeper of something more nefarious?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “I don’t believe it.” He pointed at her midsection. “I think it goes deeper than that.”

  Her girls were her one weakness, and she didn’t like it that he had not only discovered it but was trying to understand it. Hunger gnawed at the inside of her—hunger to believe his insinuation—that something of her old self remained—and it infuriated her.

  She shoved him backwards, into the wall, pressing the tip of her dagger into his throat. “I don’t know what you think you know about me, Dal Vaughn,” she hissed, “but let me make myself perfectly clear: we are not friends. If I’m feeling generous, there are exactly six people left in this world that I would not betray, hurt, or kill if it became necessary for me to do so. You are not one of those people.

  “I have one goal right now, and that is to find those people and see them to safety. I am tolerating your presence because for now, you are aiding me, rather than hindering me. Should that change…” She pressed the dagger in just enough to draw a bead of blood.

  He met her scowl evenly. There was uncertainty in his eyes, but it didn’t stop him from speaking. “Is that Sweetblade talking, or Ivana?”

  Her rage lashed out, and she struck him on his injured cheek, and then again, and again, to punctuate each of her words. “There. Is. No. Difference!”

  He gasped and reeled back from her, eyes watering, one hand to his cheek.

  She re-sheathed her dagger and glared at him. “And the only reason you’re not dead for your audacity is because I don’t have the energy to deal with a bloodbane right now.”

  The events of the past week had thoroughly shaken her. She wanted him out her life, now. If she could disappear like he could, and slip away, she would do so, heedless of her leg injury.

  Vaughn turned away from Ivana, went to the window, and peeked out, if for no other reason than to try and hide from her that she had finally rattled him.

  Maybe he was wrong about her. Maybe. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that the reason she had lashed out at him was because he had touched a nerve.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her. He did. He had no doubt that if he got in her way, she wouldn’t hesitate to follow through on her threat, if only because he might push her far enough that she would snap.

  Was the reason he had been so insistent on staying with her because deep inside he hoped she would?

  He shoved away the ache in his chest and focused on the immediate future.

  The sun had started on its downward slide to the horizon. He supposed it would be wise to wait until dark to begin his trek back to the Ichtaca. He had nowhere else to go, and though he hated the idea of slinking back with his tail between his legs, he desperately needed a chance to rest and think about his next course of action.

  That gave him a few hours to work on building up another reserve of his own aether, should he run into trouble again.

  He turned around, intending to ask Ivana when and where she was planning on going, but she was nowhere to be found.

  He spun around in a circle, scanning the room, but there wasn’t anywhere for her to hide. Had she decided to leave without even saying anything? But he hadn’t heard the trapdoor open, and he had been standing right next to the door…

  Suddenly, her disembodied voice floated from a spot next to the table, right where she had b
een standing before. “Why do you look so bewildered?”

  He blinked and stared at the spot. From the floor beneath, perhaps? But then how would she know he looked bewildered? “Where are you?”

  “Right here?”

  As she spoke, a ghost of her outline flickered in and out. It was what could happen, any time, not only when the moon was full, when a Banebringer that didn’t have his profile used moonblood aether to turn invisible. It didn’t work perfectly, especially when moving.

  Impossible. That was…impossible! Unless…

  He moved toward the spot and reached for her. Sure enough, his hand met solid flesh. He felt her try to jerk away, and the air shimmered again. “What—?”

  But he tightened his grip, fear beginning to creep into him at this development. Why hadn’t she told him? Had this all been some sort of elaborate ruse on the part of his father after all? He had feared it, but had brushed it off, finding it hard to believe his father would work with a Banebringer. But he hated Vaughn enough that he might, in order to achieve his goal…

  “Let go of it,” he said, and his voice came out hard as iron. “Tell me what you know. Are you working with my father?”

  She broke away from him. The ghost moved to the other side of the room, and the shimmer of her dagger flashed before she disappeared entirely again. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “And you had better—”

  “You’re invisible.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous.”

  “Look in the damn mirror!”

  There was a pause and then a gasp, and her dagger fell through the air and hit the floor with a clatter. Almost simultaneously, she reappeared.

  He lunged for the dagger and reached it a second before she did.

  She snarled and tried to kick him in the groin, but he had been ready for retaliation. He jumped back, grabbed one of her arms, and forced it behind her back. She flailed like a cat caught by its tail and almost got loose after she elbowed him hard in his bruised ribs with her free arm, but with the help of a well-placed jab to the wound on her leg, he managed to grab that arm as well, shove her against the wall, face-first, and press her there with his body.

  “Let go of me!” she shouted, outraged, still struggling.

  “Not so fierce without your teeth, are you?” he hissed into her ear, though truthfully, he was having a hard time keeping ahold of her. “Now tell me who you’re working with.”

  “For the last time, I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

  “You’re a Banebringer,” he accused. “And you didn’t tell me.”

  “I am not!”

  Before he could think about it, he took her dagger and sliced it shallowly across her upper arm, and then jumped back to stand on the trap door, holding the dagger at ready. She whirled around, fury on her face as she touched her arm and looked at the blood on her fingers.

  “You idiot!” she growled at him. “You’ve seen me bleed. Has any of it ever turned to aether before now?”

  The logic she offered slapped him in the face, and he blinked, the anger draining out of him.

  She was right. She couldn’t be a Banebringer. And she had seemed shocked. He had chalked it up to her excellence at deception.

  “Then how did you turn invisible?” he asked, throat dry.

  “I. Don’t. Know.”

  They stared at each other across the room, he brandishing her dagger, and she standing in a half-crouch, chest heaving, though with exertion or anger, he didn’t know.

  He flicked his eyes to the cut on her arm, unable to believe that in a moment it wouldn’t turn to aether. But it didn’t. Red blood continued to trickle out of the slice.

  He dropped his hand, and then the dagger, too stunned for more words.

  She had retrieved the dagger in an instant, and he flinched back, expecting to feel it dragging across his throat, monster or no monster. But instead, she sheathed it with a snap and backed away from him, eyes wary.

  “Do it again,” he said.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t know what I did in the first place.”

  He rubbed one hand over his face. She had to have used the aether she had inadvertently taken from him. It was impossible, yet he had just seen it happen.

  “Where is the aether you hid?”

  She searched for it, but came up empty-handed. “It’s not there,” she said finally.

  “You used the aether,” he said, his guess confirmed.

  “I thought you said that was impossible,” she said.

  “It is. It was supposed to be.” He glanced toward his bag, where his knife was, and hesitated. He wasn’t particularly keen on turning his back on her right now. “Can I have your dagger again?”

  “You must be out of your mind.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Understandable.” He bared his forearm. “Prick me. Enough to draw blood.”

  She hesitated, and then moved over to him and made a nick in his arm. A drop of blood welled up, and he waited a few moments, until it started to shimmer, and then turned to aether. He picked off the resulting flake and handed it to her.

  She took it between her thumb and forefinger.

  “Now try it,” he said.

  She looked at him and then the aether. “I honestly don’t know what to do.”

  “What did you do before you turned invisible before? What did you think?”

  She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I wished I could turn invisible,” she muttered.

  He wanted to comment on that, but he forced his mind back to the matter at hand. “Okay. Wish it again.”

  She stared at the aether, brow furrowed. It was almost cute. Not a term he would normally apply to her. “Am I invisible?” she asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Then it’s not working.”

  “Yet I know what I saw,” he said. “You didn’t see yourself in the mirror, did you? Am I crazy?”

  She shook her head. “No.” She was still staring at the aether, and her frown deepened. “If it’s true that I used that aether…” She hesitated. “Have you ever tried mixing the blood of a Banebringer with a non- Banebringer?”

  He tilted his head to the side. “No. Why would we do that?”

  She shrugged. “It’s the only thing that was odd about the situation. I was bleeding when your blood dripped on me. That blood might have had mine in it too.”

  He considered her words. And then he considered the implications, if she were correct. “Do you mind if we try an experiment?”

  She shook her head, and seeming to know exactly what he was thinking, she pricked her finger and then squeezed two drops of blood out of it, onto the table. She motioned to him, and he moved forward, letting her do the same to him.

  They watched the blood until it shimmered and turned to aether.

  She peeled it off the table and held it between her thumb and forefinger, like she had before. And then she disappeared.

  He blinked, mouth dropping open. “Impossible,” he whispered.

  “It worked?”

  He nodded mutely, head spinning.

  He heard her footsteps, and her outline flickered again, near the mirror. “How do I get back?”

  “Just…I don’t know. Do it. I don’t really think about it.”

  There was a pause, and then finally she shimmered back into existence. Some of the aether filtered down from her hand, powder.

  She set the remaining aether down on the table. Together, they stared down at it.

  “Burning skies,” Vaughn finally said.

  This was an incredible discovery. Non-Banebringers, able to use aether? If he had any doubts about going back to the Ichtaca, he didn’t now. Yaotel needed to know this. No doubt the researchers would be ecstatic about a new discovery to study.

  “Why do you think it works?” Ivana asked suddenly. Her voice was hesitant. As if she was afraid to voice the question.

  “I don’t know.” And he really didn’t.
/>   “The way you’ve talked about it, it sounds almost like it’s half-way sentient,” she said.

  “Sentient is the wrong word. It’s more like it’s designed to act a certain way given certain situations.”

  She nodded, as though that made perfect sense. “Then if it’s designed to react to Banebringers in some way, perhaps by mixing non-Banebringer blood with Banebringer blood, that subverts the system. Creates a loophole in the law governing it, so to speak.”

  Interesting theory. “You mean…like tricking it into thinking you’re really a Banebringer?”

  She shrugged. “Sure. Or maybe not. Just a thought.”

  He turned to face her. “How did you even consider the idea that it might be because our blood mixed in the first place?”

  “It was a variable we hadn’t accounted for,” she said. “We know I can’t use it straight. We know”—she cast him a look—“that I’m not a Banebringer. So there was something else changing the equation. Something…” She trailed off, seeming lost in thought.

  He continued to watch her, studying her face. It was then that he saw her. Sweetblade the assassin was gone. Ivana the innkeeper was gone. Even the tired face of the woman who had held the babe in that rocking chair was gone. Whatever she had been before this life, it was there, for a moment, in that faraway gaze. He was right.

  She started, as though suddenly realizing she had drifted off. Her eyes flew to his, and for the first time since he had met her, she flushed. And then the mask went back on again. Her lips pressed together, her eyes focused, and she turned away from him.

  He felt like he had just lost something, and he grabbed for it. “Is all of this calculating due to a lifetime’s experience creating effective poisons?” he asked, trying to make his tone light.

  Her back stiffened, and he wished he hadn’t said anything.

  But she indulged him. “My father was a tutor for a noble family,” she said, her voice emotionless. “I received a quality education.” She glanced at the window. The light was fading. “I assume you’re leaving as soon as it’s dark?”