The Wolf's Quarry

by K. T. Harding

  She shot him a wicked grin. “Sure. You should learn this stuff, too.”

  He put the horse back in its stall and came back, but he wouldn’t come near enough to let her explain what she was doing. He watched from a safe distance under the apple tree.

  Raleigh got so absorbed in her new bow she forgot all about Dax and Bishop. She made thirty new bolts in her room while she waited for the bow, and now she had to adjust them along with the weapon. She shaved individual hairs off the feathers. She whittled the bodies to make them fly straight. She changed tiny details on the points to shift their weight forward or back.

  By lunchtime, she had a weapon almost as good as the bow she lost. She set up three more pumpkins to run a few rapid drills when Mrs. Mitchell shouldered her way to the kitchen door. “Put that away until after lunch.”

  Even Bishop obeyed Mrs. Mitchell when she talked like that. Raleigh stood her bow in the kitchen door and sat down at the table. Mrs. Mitchell put her plate in front of her, and Dax took the chair opposite.

  An unspoken question burned in his eyes. He wanted to know when he could go down to Hinterland with them. He wanted to know all about this mysterious suicide mission. He wanted her to get Bishop’s permission now so he could throw himself into preparing in earnest.

  Raleigh couldn’t answer any of those questions, not even for herself. She didn’t have the first idea how they would approach the Guild of Martial Arts. Bishop never even told her what he found in those shipping records Cassandra gave him. He never mentioned their mission at all after they got home.

  He fell back into his old habit of working in his lab by day and haunting his upstairs bedroom by night. On the odd nights he spent in Raleigh’s room, he never discussed work and she didn’t press him. She held their time together too sacred for that. Staring into his eyes, kissing him, and dwelling in the bliss of his touch occupied all her attention.

  Outside her room, she itched for combat just like Dax. If they were going to attack the Guild of Martial Arts, she wanted to do it now. In her mind, taking Dax along made too much sense. Bishop would have no choice but to bow to the obvious. Until that happened, or at least until Bishop broached the subject, Raleigh and Dax would just have to wait.

  In the last few days since his initial fight against Raleigh, Dax changed all over again. Her statement that he needed no further training worked a charm on him. He no longer slunk around the house like a frightened mouse. He no longer slaved in the armory or the stable like a servant no one wanted.

  He stood up straighter. When he went down to the armory at all, he spent hours surveying all the weapons. He fingered their straps and thumbed their edges to make sure they were sharp. He looked on them, not as a servant ordered to maintain them, but as a warrior who would someday use them in battle.

  He cared for the horse the same way. He was no poor stable boy anymore. The horse was his vehicle, his charge. He maintained the carriage and everything associated with it as a member of Bishop’s team. This was his domain. He’d earned the right to hold up his end of the bargain.

  He filled more space in the halls. He raised his head to look straight at Raleigh and Mrs. Mitchell. He did his own work without being told, and he even did some of Mrs. Mitchell’s work for her.

  More than once a day, Mrs. Mitchell set her hand on her hip, smacked her lips, and shook her head with a gasp when Dax passed through the kitchen. She never said anything to anyone about him, though. She didn’t have to. Everyone saw the change.

  He smiled at Raleigh when he washed his dish, dried it, and set it on the shelf next to hers. He started copying her in that, too, without being told. He kept the water bucket filled and emptied the ash in the grate before he went outside.

  For the hundredth time, Mrs. Mitchell shot a sharp glare after him. She gasped and shook her head. “Well, I just don’t know!”

  Raleigh laughed. “It’s good. He’s growing up. You wouldn’t want him to stay a shrinking violet all his life, would you?”

  Mrs. Mitchell cast that glance her way. “There’s some things in this world worth shrinking from. You should know that, Miss.”

  “Yes, I know, but not for Dax. He was made for this. It’s about time, too, I say.”

  She left the room, but she halted in her tracks when she saw Bishop on the stairs. He didn’t descend. He just stood there and looked down at her. Raleigh’s heart flipped over in her chest. This was it. This was the moment she’d been waiting for. This was her invitation to enter his private world.

  He turned around and climbed up to the landing, and Raleigh followed. All the arguments she rehearsed in her mind to convince him to let Dax come with them vanished out of her head. She didn’t have the first clue what to say to him. Maybe he wouldn’t talk about that at all. Maybe he wouldn’t want to attack the Guild of Martial Arts. If he decided that, Raleigh would have to break her promise and leave Dax behind.

  She looked for Bishop in his lab. When she didn’t find him there, she checked his bedroom. He wasn’t there, either. She ventured farther down the hall to the parlor at the far end, where she discovered him sitting in a rough wool armchair in front of the fire.

  He turned the pages of the file folder she recognized from the mussel farm. Her pulse thumped in her neck. She sank into a chair opposite and waited for him to speak first.

  He closed the folder and set it on his lap before he raised his eyes to her face. “I was right. They’re keeping the twen inside the Guild Headquarters building in Pernrith.”

  “Do you have any plan for how to get inside?”

  He gave her a wry grin. “Do you mean aside from demolishing the whole building with depth charges laid under its foundation? No, I have no plan at all.”

  “We’ll need a lot more people to get inside,” she ventured.

  He gazed into the fire. “We can’t take any more people. It’s just gotta be you and me.”

  “We’ll be cut to ribbons. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “We’ve faced bad odds before. We can do it.”

  Raleigh sighed. “This isn’t bad odds. This is suicide. You said so yourself. Why won’t you listen to reason?”

  “Because, Raleigh. Reason would mean hiring a battalion of trained mercenaries, all armed with the most sophisticated weapons Pernrith can supply. It would mean weeks or months of drills, preparations, strategizing, organizing, and logistics. We don’t have that kind of time, and it’s not worth the money when you and I can do it just as well.”

  Raleigh took a deep breath. “At least take one other person. Even one more slayer would swing the odds in our favor.”

  He shook his head. “There’s not a slayer alive who could swing the odds in our favor.”

  “What about Dax?”

  He didn’t look up. He didn’t take his eyes off the flames. He must have known this was coming. “I’m not taking Dax.”

  Now that she crossed her Rubicon, she started talking faster. “Come on, Bishop. You’ve seen him out there. He may be young, but he’s as strong as you and me. His aim is better. He can hold his own. He just needs to fight. He’s got the power and the speed, if you’ll only give him a chance to hone it. Let him come. He could be the feather that tips the scales in our favor.”

  Bishop shook his head. “He’s an unknown quantity. I can’t have that on a mission like this.”

  Raleigh sank back in the chair. “The Guild is the unknown quantity. If we only knew what we would face inside, maybe we could prepare for that.”

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll face inside. We’ll face a couple thousand warriors better trained and better equipped than us. We’ll face every creature with every ability known in Hinterland, and they’ll all come at us to kill us at once. That’s what we’ll face inside.”

  Raleigh chose her next words with care. “What can you tell me about Dax’s heritage?”

  His eyes snapped around. “What?”

  “You heard me. Cassandra is a shape
shifter. Who is Dax’s father? He must have inherited some other ability from his father that makes him so valuable to the Guild of Husbandry. You wouldn’t have taken him from his mother if they weren’t still looking for him.”

  Bishop closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of his chair. “I don’t know anything about Dax’s heritage. I brought him here because he could not have survived in Hinterland. That’s all I have to say about Dax. He’s not coming with us, and that’s final, so let’s talk about what we’re going to do for our attack instead.”

  Raleigh knew better than to press him when he spoke like that. Now that she’d broached the subject and gotten his answer, she could relax in his presence. She had more important things to think about right now than Dax.

  “If we’re not going to demolish the building with depth charges under the foundation,” she replied, “we better come up with something pretty clever, ‘cuz we’re sure not going to take the place assaulting the front door. I almost wish we had a shapeshifter to sneak us in the way we had Cassandra working for us at the farm. If you don’t want to take Dax, we have to devise some trick to get inside without inciting thousands of warriors to try to kill us.”

  He opened his eyes. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular, but now that you ask, it seems obvious that we can’t succeed with a full frontal assault. We have to either distract the Guildsmen into attacking a false enemy, or we have to disguise the fact that we’re trying to get in so they won’t attack.”

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “What are you asking me for?” she shot back. “I’m supposed to be the apprentice here, and you’re supposed to be the Great Master.”

  A low chuckle rumbled out of his chest. “That’s a good one. You always have better ideas for these things than I do.”

  Raleigh’s heartbeat quickened. Now that her mind started working, her old excitement at working with Bishop flared to life. He wanted her ideas. He respected her as an equal, even if he did put his foot down about Dax.

  “Okay,” she breathed. “So we don’t have a shapeshifter. Is there any other way we can make the Guild believe a fully armed battalion is attacking? Is there any way we can make them think they have to respond to one place while we sneak in by another way?”

  Bishop frowned and stroked his chin. “Interesting.”

  “If we could, say, blow a hole in the side of the building and then make them think your battalion was rushing through the breach, the Guildsmen would all respond to that place. They wouldn’t notice us entering by the back door. Then we could find the twen and….do whatever we’re going to do with it. By the way, what are we going to do with it?”

  “I’ve been working on that. I’ve been preparing a place we can keep it until I hand it over to my client.”

  “And what have you prepared?”

  “Nothing, as yet. We aren’t anywhere near getting possession of the twen. When we do gain possession, I’ll contact my client. We might have a few days to care for the twen before we can hand it over.”

  Raleigh shook her head, but she didn’t reply. She didn’t like this. She wanted full control over their job instead of leaving these details for Bishop to solve. She trusted him. She knew he would solve them, but she still didn’t like it. She didn’t like leaving any part of the job in someone else’s control.

  “I like your idea,” he told her. “I like anything that doesn’t involve confronting the Guild’s full power.”

  “But you don’t like my idea of taking another person along.”

  He leveled her with his brilliant eyes. “I don’t mind the idea of taking another person along, as long as it’s not Dax.” He snorted out loud. “Dax isn’t going anywhere near the Guild of Martial Arts if I have anything to say about it.”

  She opened her mouth to argue, but when she saw him set his jaw, she gave it up. He would fight her tooth and nail. He would bring out all the guns in his arsenal to make sure he got his way. He worked alone too long to concede a point like this.

  He went to a lot of trouble to separate Dax from Hinterland. He wouldn’t stand by and let that work go for nothing, not even when Dax’s abilities stared him dead in the face. Dax’s abilities made Bishop want to keep Dax as far away from the Guild as possible.

  What did Bishop know about the Guild of Martial Arts that Raleigh didn’t know? Well, everything, to be precise. The Guild would give their eyes and teeth to get their hands on a specimen like Dax. Maybe the Guild of Husbandry bred a super-warrior for the Guild of Martial Arts. Maybe that’s why they wanted so badly to get Dax back.

  Raleigh let the matter drop, but she didn’t give it up. She gave Dax her word, and she would find a way to keep it. She would find a way to take him with her when she went back to Hinterland.

  Chapter 20

  Bishop tapped the ash out of his pipe into the fire grate. He strolled over to the window overlooking the eastern grounds. “I have a projector in my closet next door. It will project the kind of image you’re talking about, an image of warriors rushing through the door, but it’s only an image. Once the Guildsmen start trying to fight these images, they’ll realize they’ve been tricked.”

  “That won’t work,” Raleigh returned. “Whatever they fight has to keep them occupied. If they realize it’s just a projection, they’ll immediately start looking for whoever set up the diversion.”

  “We could lay charges around the breach site,” Bishop suggested. “They would be too busy pulling themselves together to realize the images aren’t real.”

  “What about the outcasts?” Raleigh asked. “Could some of them be recruited to make the assault? Maybe if they knew what it was for….”

  Bishop shook his head. “That would take too long. Every day that goes by brings the cabal closer to accomplishing their objective. If Soto found them a twen they could use, they might already be planning to operate on it to extract the oil from its brain. We have to act.”

  “Then why are we sitting here talking about it? We should have recruited the outcasts when we had the chance.”

  “The outcasts won’t fight. They’ve got their own problems to deal with.”

  “There may be another shapeshifter among them we can use, someone like Cassandra who could turn herself into a bunch of different people. She could change herself into a huge Endavor smashing down the wall. Then when the Guildsmen rush outside to fight….” She cast a glance up at his face. “It’s just an idea.”

  He turned away. “There must be a better way.”

  “Are you certain they have the twen in the Guild building? If they planned to move the twen, we could attack on the road. We would have a much better chance of capturing it there than taking on the whole Guild.”

  “No such luck. The records from the mussel farm clearly show the shipment going to the Guild building.”

  “But you said the cabal could be rogues. They could be operating outside the Guild’s official framework. If that’s true, they won’t be able to keep the twen in the building, much less operate on it. Besides, just because the mussels are going to the Guild building doesn’t mean the twen is there. They could be keeping it somewhere else and transporting the mussels to it. The rogues could be using the Guild building as a cover to throw us off their trail.”

  Bishop smiled down at her. “Are you done yet?”

  She waved her hand at him. “You’re a Guildsman. Isn’t there anyone you know who can give you information about what’s going on inside the building? Do you really have to attack them just to talk to them? You must know someone in the Guild who can help us.”

  He fingered his pipe. “Actually, there is.”

  Raleigh jumped out of her chair. “Great! Let’s go.” Then she froze. “Oh, wait. That would mean going all the way back to Hinterland.”

  “The person I’m thinking of isn’t in Hinterland.”

  “Where are they?”


  “She’s here. You’ve met her. It’s Angela Cross.”

  Raleigh blinked. “Angela Cross is a Guildsman of the Martial Arts?”

  Bishop nodded. “A very highly placed one, too. I should have thought of her first, but it takes you to come up with an idea like that, Raleigh.”

  Raleigh pulled her head down between her shoulders. “I don’t think Angela will tell us what we want to know.”

  “Why not? She’s a member of the Guild. If I thought for two seconds I could convince her, I would invite her to be our third member.”

  “Just think,” Raleigh murmured. “If she agreed and we took Dax along, we would have four.”

  “She won’t come. She’s retired, but she might talk to us. She’s been inside the building recently.”

  “How did she get inside if she didn’t fight her way in?”

  “She was escorted there by another senior Guildsman. His entourage escorts them in and out. They protect him from attack, along with anyone who’s with him. That’s the way most of the higher Guildsmen do it.”

  Raleigh fell into deep thought. She stared into the flames, but she couldn’t sort out her thoughts from her feelings. She didn’t like asking Angela Cross for help, but she certainly didn’t fancy the idea of assaulting the Guild of Martial Arts with only Bishop by her side. A trained battalion would be the minimum requirement she would ask for.

  Bishop startled her out of her reverie by slamming the cupboard door when he stored his pipes. “Come on, Raleigh. We’ll go visit Angela and see what she has to say.”

  When she got downstairs, she found the carriage waiting. Dax sat in the driver’s seat with the reins in both fists, but he didn’t hunch over in wretched depression. For the first time since Raleigh met him, he could wear this waiting with dignity. He didn’t mind waiting when he knew his long-awaited dream would soon come true. Now Raleigh just had to figure out how to make it come true.

  The carriage bumped along the streets, and Raleigh and Bishop got out in front of Angela’s house. Bishop didn’t have to tell Dax to wait, and Dax didn’t ask. Sultan escorted Raleigh and Bishop into the same parlor to wait until Angela called them upstairs.