Hard Frost- Depths of Winter

by Thia Mackin

  After some rumblings, a female demon pushed her way to the front. “Guess that is me. Aix Harica. What do you need me to do?”

  Atkoy shook her outstretched arm, and I followed suit. “Tell us where the shot hits, and circle the mark once we each finish our turn.”

  She smirked. “Easy enough.”

  Atkoy aimed and fired. He holstered one empty gun, unholstered its replica, and continued firing. The cheering of the crowd caused me to lose count of the shots after ten, but it was hard to miss him pulling a third gun from the small of his back partway through. On that one, he did not empty the magazine.

  Harica called back to us that she planned to make a line through his shots so we’d know the difference when she circled mine. As she painstakingly went through the process, Atkoy reloaded his weapons and I pushed a few ideas around in my head. Unless we intended to break out a ruler, “center” was somewhat subjective without a marked target to hit. It’s why there was a bullseye on targets and not a blank piece of paper. Easier to distinguish. So how would we determine which of us performed “better”?

  Harica stopped by my side and let me know that the ward was back in place. Then I carefully took aim and fired.

  A few demons murmured, but whatever language Harica spoke wasn’t one I knew. Her tone pumped my pride a bit, though, which made me pause before moving to the next weapon. A couple deep breaths steadied me, and I finished it off.

  Harica moved forward and circled Atkoy’s—my—bullet holes until it looked like every circle had a line through it. I’d used his holes as my targets, and I hadn’t missed the spaces made by his .50 caliber bullets. A few of our comrades patted us both on the shoulder before disappearing. A couple still eyed the human, and now me, a little warily; their prejudice appeared to be the use of guns more than Atkoy’s demonic breed. A number offered to partner with us when the caravan rolled out.

  “Did I pass muster?” the blue-eyed demon asked calmly.

  “Did I?” I countered.

  We both smiled.

  Chapter 3

  Later that day, my shoulder bumped the door of the Banded Traveler—a bar owned by two friends of mine—as my hand twisted the knob a half-second slower than my body moved forward. Power fizzled through me from the wards upon the door, distracting me from catching myself. The effect sent me half-falling into the tavern, but two strong arms hauled me upright and wrapped around my torso in a crushing embrace.

  “Triswon,” I wheezed, “I cannot breathe.”

  Booming laughter from the co-owner of the bar filled the room, causing a few of the patrons to glance our way before quickly looking in any other direction. Most knew Triswon’s wife, Eliecha, and none wanted to cross her. Thus, they would all pretend that he wasn’t currently cuddling a stranger in the middle of the taproom. Unless these customers were around too often to not avoid the label of alcoholic, they wouldn’t realize that Eliecha and Triswon both treated me like they were proud parents of a particularly special child.

  After another squeeze, he released me. His brown eyes sparkled mischievously as he stroked his well-kept beard and mustache once to make sure it hadn’t been ruffled. “Elie is with a patient, but she told me you hadn’t eaten supper yet and needed a big hug. With the second taken care of, let’s handle the first. Tonight, we are having your favorite. And she made pie.” His arm wrapped around my back, half-lifting me until only the tip of my toes touched the floor as he ushered—or carried—me toward a table near the kitchen.

  Moments later, I was placed on the bench, and he disappeared to return quickly with a full bowl and a couple large slices of bread. “Thank you, Triswon.”

  “Don’t mention it, Snowflake. It’s the least I could do,” he grumbled, awkwardly patting my hand with his huge one.

  As I raised a spoonful of meat and veggies to my lips, I watched him glance around at the other patrons. His workers kept glasses full and took orders with ease of long practice. However, his concern for the customers did allow me to study him for a moment.

  The Tuatha de Danaan stood at least six inches taller than me, quite the contrast to his wife who was a foot and a half shorter than him. Sometimes, he resembled his alternate form—an Atlas bear—in both size and personality. Most fae were Gifted with the ability to shift into a specific Terran animal at will, often animals found closest to where the Tuatha de were born. The only other Gift he’d ever displayed to me was a boundless capacity to love—which he lavished upon his wife, his employees, his friends, and wastrels like me whom the Goddess graced by throwing me in his path.

  His wife made up for his apparent lack of Gifts in spades. Her particular clan of fae believed that the Goddess specifically blessed them, as in more than other clans of Her children. The most blessed and beloved descendants of the Goddess received Gifts of Prophecy, Healing, or Empathy. Eliecha Bhinj had all three stuffed into a five-foot frame that weighed a hundred pounds on her heaviest day. She could have married any man, including but not limited to someone who would make her a queen. Instead, she chose the man sitting across from me… It was a story she wouldn’t tell me, but oh, how she smiled when I asked.

  “How have you been?” I asked between one spoonful and another.

  He grinned. “Excellent. We added another section onto the stable since the last time you visited, which was too long ago, little one. When you were stabbed that last time… Well, our Elie worried something awful until she knew you were healed. Why did you not stop here?”

  Frowning, I intentionally took a bite to delay my answer. If I lied, Triswon wouldn’t know, but Elie would. Instead of a lighthearted falsehood, the heavier truth came out. “I couldn’t make it here, not enough energy to Gate.” At the dark look on his face, I continued in a rush. “But Romtal is trained to open a Gate back to the stable where he was raised, so he took me there.”

  “Even knowing our Elie is never wrong, I had hoped…” His massive paws covered mine, squeezing gently though I still held the spoon. “Be more careful, eh, Snowflake? We’d miss you something terrible.”

  Something inside me tried to laugh his comment off, remind him that we’d only known one another for a few years—most of which I spent traveling and away from Mystor anyway. However, he was too sincere, and the thought of hurting his feelings to ease my discomfort tightened my chest. Since the day my own tiny Gift of Prophecy had shown me a petite female being brutally assaulted in an alleyway, my heart had opened to them. When Eliecha literally carried me—bleeding from various wounds and barely conscious—back to her inn after I killed the five men before they could do more than rough her up, she owed me nothing more and I began to owe her everything.

  A hand patted my shoulder from behind, and I set the spoon back in the bowl to turn and hug the woman behind me. Sitting, the angle was oddly perfect. “You owe me nothing,” she whispered in my ear, setting her palm against my cheek. “Not even your love… But I do value it greatly.” She sniffled, pulled away, and wiped her cheek with the back of her hand before sliding down beside me. Her caramel-colored hair draped so far down her back she pulled it around to the front to keep from sitting on it. Today, turquoise set in silver and dyed feathers accentuated a few of her smaller braids. “Now you finish eating. I sent a very uncomfortable young man to the Terra Plane to get blackberries for pie, and it has cooled most of the day waiting for you to arrive.”

  I groaned, grabbing my stomach. “I’m going to be so fat!”

  She grinned, her brown eyes lightening. “You will not. I can assure you.”

  My smile matched hers. “Then I may eat the entire pie.”

  Her laugh caused a number of the patrons to relax into their seats, raising the atmosphere in the room to a happier level. “Triswon would be sad, but he’d let you. He’s been eyeing it since it came out of the oven!”

  I winked at her husband as my spoon paused halfway to my mouth. “I have mostly good manners. I’ll share, but I get the bigger slice.”

  The conversation went back to t
heir stable addition. At some point, a waiter spirited away my dishes, refilled my drink, brought his bosses their favorite beverages, and set the pie on the table between us with saucers. Triswon cut the pie into three even slices, taking one onto his plate. After a brief look, Elie cut one of the remaining two in half and filled our dishes. Then we both watched in awe as Triswon quickly demolished his slice while we savored each bite of our smaller pieces.

  “You leave in a couple days?” he questioned to distract himself from the last piece, having finished his helping.

  “My partner and I are training together, trying to acclimate to how the other fights and patrols. The rest of the mercenaries are arriving, and I think we’ll be leaving a day earlier than advertised.”

  Eliecha set her spoon down on the edge of the saucer, only crumbs gracing the surface. Her husband would probably lick it clean if she offered. She glanced at me from the corner of her eye, her lips quirking with humor for a moment before she sobered. “The human was a good choice. I like him.”

  My eyebrows rose. “You’ve met him?”

  “No,” she laughed. “I still like what I’ve Seen. He reminds me of you in some ways. Intelligent, competent, and entirely too underestimated for other people’s good. Did you know he speaks Raspea, English, Latin, and Spanish?”

  He’d used English and Raspea, but I hadn’t known about the other two. If we needed to communicate subtly, it was very doubtful that anyone else spoke Spanish, much less Latin. I finished the last bite on my plate, chewing slowly as I thought over the last few days. Everything I had observed indicated he could keep up, sometimes outshooting me with his preferred weapon. Honestly, my pride hadn’t been hit that many times in such a short span since my days shadowing Uncle Dukon.

  Triswon reached for the pie, but Eliecha swiped it. “This goes with Kinan when she leaves. You will be here for pie next week. It’ll be a few weeks before she has solid cooking again.”

  For a moment, I thought the fae might cry, but he sucked it all in. “Only for our Snowflake!” His grumble sounded genuinely torn between sincere love for me and love for the fruit and sugar delicacy between us.

  “How about we split the last piece?” I offered, patting his hand comfortingly.

  Never had he smiled so big, and for a moment, he seemed to consider lifting the table out of the way to hug me. Eliecha mock-sighed, cutting the remaining third in half. She slipped it onto his plate, and we silently watched him enjoy it after she passed mine to one of her waiters to prepare for travel. “Our new cook performs preservation spells,” she confided. “Foods that would ordinarily spoil without an ice box remain good for a week.”

  My eyebrows went to my hairline, and I wondered how much someone with that Gift would be worth.

  “More than I’m willing to discuss,” she answered, though I hadn’t asked. “However, we’ve done the math. We save in spoiled foods and can make less frequent trips to the market. So far—not even taking into consideration his non-magical gifts in the kitchen—he is making his wage back with interest every week. Plus, people leaving for trips tend to appreciate having home-cooked meals with little effort to take on the road. Our catering orders have increased by three hundred percent.”

  “Are the effects repeatable?” I asked aloud. If she were going to answer my silent questions, the friendly thing to do was keep Triswon from wondering what the conversation was about.

  “They are not stackable,” Triswon muttered, a little whiney despite his extra bit of pie.

  “If he casts the spell on a dish today and recasts it on the same food next week, the spell doesn’t take. It continues to age like normal, which he did advise prior to us hiring him.”

  Standard energy-working and spellcasting were two sides of the same coin, but energy-workers may not be able to spell cast and vice-versa. Myself, I knew nothing about how he used words or ritual to coalesce his energy. I didn’t need words or gestures or rituals to open a Gate or have a vision. Those things just happened.

  Standing, I left enough money to cover my meal on the table, though Triswon slapped his palms against the wood in frustration.

  “You are a welcome guest. You do not pay for meals.”

  I shrugged a shoulder. “We’ve had this argument before. All of the other people in this room are also welcome guests, and they pay. Also, there may come a day when I can’t afford the meal. Today is not that day, but I will appreciate it twice as much and feel half as guilty knowing that I paid when I could.”

  Eliecha hugged me, kissing the top of my head. “You will need that meal one day. If it makes you feel better to leave money now, I accept it as long as you do come to us when you need us.”

  I kissed her cheek in return. “Absolutely.”

  She reached into her pocket, pulling out a charm strung on a leather thong. Handing it to me, she didn’t release her grip until I looked up from the pendant. The Bhinj clan’s eight-pointed star symbol caught the light. “Sarki Elayne Kinan, I know you do not like to take orders, but please listen closely. Wear this at all times. When you need to reach our courtyard, grasp the charm and say my full name three times. The wards will open to you, and the spell will create a Gate for you.” She bussed my cheek, taking the necklace back and slipping it over my head before tucking it under my shirt.

  Part of me wanted to make light of her offering, but only they had shown such concern for my well-being since Uncle Dukon died. Such magic took a lot of time and substantial effort. Plus, jewelry equipped to channel spells were costly. This particular charm was priceless, made more so by the understanding that Eliecha gave it to me knowing I would have to use it.

  “Thank you, Elie. Now why don’t you two show me this stable addition that I’ve heard so much about today?”

  The Master Hostler of the Banded Traveler’s stable, Zeer Rezqwa’s enthusiasm for his improved domain had left Eliecha quietly giggling and Triswon’s lips fighting to remain pursed in a serious manner. Even with the extra stalls, only a couple were open. Plus, they had hired more hands. I’d probably argue they were one of the largest employers on the Plane, much less the city. By the time I returned to the barracks near curfew, Rezqwa had shown me—literally—every corner of the new space.

  Two days later, we were all called together in the courtyard. Obviously, another barracks had been filling up over the last week, because twice the number of people we’d been interacting with milled about. Since I only recognized half of the people, the housing for the additional manpower must have been somewhere else.

  Fifty was a large number of guards for a single caravan. This made me wonder what kind of mission we were taking. The rumble of murmurs indicated my brain wasn’t the only one that went there. From the center of the crowd, a voice boomed over the chatter. “Before everyone becomes too worked up, let me introduce myself! I am Leader Jorvan Abshoc. Seconds Kyerzan, Pwein, and Harica will run the other three shifts. Those of you grumbling obviously did not read your invitation to audition, if you will, for one of the thirty open slots. You are free to leave if you so desire.”

  During his pause, the seconds started herding people away from the center until a circle had been revealed. “Those of you still here, we do a two-minute hand-to-hand scenario. You each fight one match-up. We are not just looking for how well you fight but how you control yourself. If you break your opponent, you are automatically out. A guard with a broken arm is no good to us. If you are not well-versed in hand-to-hand but were hired for a different skill, please remind the seconds so they can record that information. Clear?” A few people nodded. “Let’s answer with ‘Yes, Leader Abshoc’ if you understand. Are my instructions clear?”

  “Yes, Leader Abshoc,” came the militant-sounding response.

  “Excellent. Any volunteers to start?” he called.

  I glanced to my right at Atkoy and found him looking my way. At his half-shrug, I nodded. “Yes, Leader Abshoc,” I called, pushing my way forward.

  As we entered the circle, Abshoc nodde
d to us both. “Kyerzan, notate these two as skilled sharpshooters as those of us here at the beginning of the week witnessed. Kinan, Atkoy, two minutes in the ring. Don’t break anything. Clasp arms, and go on my mark.”

  Standing in the middle, Atkoy leaned down until our forearms met. No wonder he carried such a huge gun. It probably took him a while to find a gun big enough to fit his finger through the trigger guard but small enough to carry regularly. I mean, damn, the man was huge.

  “When he said don’t break anything, he’s including my teeth. I rather like my teeth,” I murmured, looking up at him.

  He winked at me, showing the flirtation I’d witnessed in the taproom the past week. “No promises.”

  I rolled my eyes but added, “Knock out a tooth, I’ll cut off your trigger finger. Just so we understand one another.”

  His chuckle sounded as Abshoc—Leader Abshoc, that was—called “mark.” Immediately, I dropped my weight down and used my heels to kick into the back of his knees. As he tumbled backwards, I tried to roll free. Atkoy didn’t release my forearms. If he’d been a demon who’d heal faster than a human, I would have pulled my knees up so they landed in his kidneys. A non-human demon might pee blood for an hour. A human could die.

  The indecision allowed him to roll me beneath him. His fist pulled back. As he punched toward my face, I caught his hand in my own. “Ah, ah, ah,” I warned, grinning as I caught the other fist. Squeezing both hands to distract him, I maneuvered my right leg up and rolled him underneath me. Crossing his arm over his throat as I settled my hips between his so it would be harder for him to flip us, I growled as he used his ham-sized thighs to try to crush me. “Pretty sure pulverizing my pelvis counts as breaking me,” I growled. Then I slammed his own fist into his face, despite the resistance he offered. “Stop,” I warned, doing it a second time.

  “Time,” Leader Abshoc called.

  I released Atkoy, but it took him a second longer before he loosened his grip. He didn’t rub his throat or touch his face, but he obviously wanted to. Hell, I limped when we left the field. We passed a couple other volunteers but moved toward the back. Despite my height, we were far enough back that I couldn’t see the two demons in the ring.