Dream

by Carole Cummings

  Dallin jolted and sat up straight, eyes wide and teeth clenched.

  “Oh no, you’re bloody not!”

  The badger, snapping its teeth without looking first to see if he was latching on to a garden snake or the tail of a dragon. The crow, flying too fast to see the glass ahead.

  The fear on Wil’s face when just the sound of Síofra’s voice had stopped him so cold it was like he’d died on his feet and forgotten to fall down.

  Síofra was small without Wil’s power to suck dry, but he knew how to get it. Considering him a small threat when Wil was safely away was one thing, but Wil ramming half-arsed into some stupidly brave mission to rescue his Guardian would surely get him caught again. If things went the way they looked to be going, Dallin’s time might well be limited. Who would be there to help Wil this time? Who would care? Síofra had done enough damage already—what if he got hold of Wil, found out how to take and use the rest of all that vast power? Síofra up there, perhaps waiting, and Dallin down here, shackled and useless. And Wil was going to walk right back into it.

  Dallin didn’t even have any money to give bribing a go.

  Bloody typical.

  “Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare, Wil! I swear, if you show up here, I’ll shoot you down!”

  No answer, no sense of propinquity, not even so much as a characteristic snarl or the snapping of ghost-teeth. Only silence, and into it the too-loud turn of the latch on the door.

  Corliss stood framed by Woodrow and the bored bailiff from earlier. Corliss’s eyes were avid, Woodrow’s close to terrified.

  Oh, thank the Mother.

  “We’ll take him from here, Tripp,” Corliss told the bailiff. “He’s our disgrace. No need for you to dirty your hands on him.”

  Dallin forgave her immediately. He stood as the bailiff looked him over with a disgusted grunt and waved his hand. Dallin made his way around the table, walked to the door with head bowed, and allowed Corliss to take one arm and Woodrow the other.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to get you out of here without starting a war,” Corliss muttered under her breath as they climbed the stairs, the bailiff lumbering his slow way up before them.

  “I still say we just kill the bugger,” Woodrow put in.

  “And you want to take out a company of the Commonwealth’s finest while you’re at it?” Corliss pressed her lips tight. “The orders were clear. We’re to serve and protect our ‘guest,’ and those boys are duty bound. We take one shot at the man, and they’ll open all twenty guns on us.”

  Woodrow flung her a sour glance. “Well, I wasn’t suggesting we do it right in front of them.”

  Dallin paused, waiting for the bailiff to reach the top of the steps and turn into the heart of the building. He frowned at Woodrow.

  “Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment, and certainly not that I’m complaining, Woodrow, but… why are you here?”

  Woodrow grinned—actually grinned. “Chief told me I had to get myself into the party. On account of how I told him I didn’t believe what they were saying about you, and it all looked pretty dodgy to me.”

  Dallin raised his eyebrows. “You were gossiping. With Chief Jagger.”

  Predictably, Woodrow blushed.

  Dallin shook his head with a wondering smile. “Forget what I told you before. You keep right on and gossip ’til the Mother takes you.”

  The grin came back. “Chief said I should’ve been an Aldrich man.” Woodrow’s broad shoulders squared beneath the remembered praise. “Said if we found you and you had orders for me, I should follow them like always.”

  “How is Jagger?”

  Woodrow’s smile fell, and he shook his head. “He looks bad. At least, he did when we left. I think that Síofra….” He shot a quick glance up the stairs and lowered his voice. “He’s got magic, I know he does, and they kept letting him talk to the Chief all alone, and I think—”

  “Who kept letting him?”

  Woodrow’s eyes widened. “Didn’t Corliss tell you?” He frowned and shuttled a puzzled look between them. “They called Wheeler in from Penley to take command of the constabulary. He’s the law of the Commonwealth now, and far too close with that Síofra fellow, if you ask me. First thing he did when he got to Putnam was cut loose anyone who wouldn’t speak against you or Jagger. Then he up and had Ramsford arrested too. He had Manning in several times for questioning, but last I heard he hadn’t been arrested yet.”

  Dallin almost staggered. “What?”

  “They figured I was new and not loyal to anyone yet, so I was the one mainly to see to Jagger.” Woodrow nodded gravely. “He told me to tell Corliss and Litton and Edda and—”

  “Creighton,” Corliss put in.

  “Right, Creighton, he came along with us too—”

  “I saw him.” Dallin shook his head. “And don’t give me any more names. It might be best if I don’t know.” Though he could certainly guess, if put to it—anyone who’d been brought in by either Jagger or Dallin himself, and who had the sense of honor Jagger sought in his officers.

  Woodrow shifted uncomfortably. “He gave me a list of names and told me to have them say whatever those men wanted to hear, whatever would get them to let them stay on at the constabulary. Said if we were lucky, there would be a….” He glanced at Corliss.

  “Countercoup,” she supplied dismally.

  Dallin’s mind was still trying to stumble through all the startling information. Wheeler? Wheeler? What the hell was a career general doing taking over the law of the entire country?

  “Is it true?” Woodrow’s eyes were wide and somewhat frightened. “That lad—Creighton says he’s a sorcerer, and the people in the stables….” His mouth pinched down. “Creighton says maybe he magicked you and that’s why you—”

  “Creighton wouldn’t know a sorcerer if one walked right up to him and turned his nose into a potato,” Corliss put in with a growl.

  Dallin frowned at Woodrow. “Weren’t you listening?”

  “Corliss listened. I kept watch.”

  “I’ve not told him what I heard yet,” Corliss told Dallin. “I thought it best.”

  Dallin looked back at Woodrow. “And yet here you are.”

  “Chief told me to.” Woodrow shrugged.

  Dallin didn’t have a whole lot to say to that except “Thank you.”

  “If you two are through…?” Corliss gave them each a sharp look, then jerked her chin up the stairs. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do, how we’re going to get you out of here.”

  As though on cue, a roll of thunder rumbled its way through the building, vibrating the stone of the stairs, and shimmied right up Dallin’s boots. He didn’t even try to talk himself into thinking it a coincidence. His teeth clenched and every muscle in his body tensed.

  “Wil? I’m going to kill you.”

  Dallin shut his eyes and tried not to growl out loud. “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about it.” He turned a bit to the side. “Unlock the shackles but don’t take them off, then get me outside. I think I’ll be needing my hands.” He waited semipatiently while Woodrow fumbled out a key and did as he was bidden. Free, or at least mostly, Dallin started up the stairs again. “Find Calder if you can, but I doubt I’ll be able to wait for him. Where are my guns?”

  “Creighton’s got them.” Corliss scowled. “And how am I supposed to find Calder? You sent him off.”

  Dallin had to think about that one before the sense of it clicked. “No, that wasn’t Calder. He was only using the name when—it’s too complicated, but his name is Wil.”

  “Then who the hell is Calder?”

  “The man who was keeping watch at the stables.”

  “Ah.” Corliss rolled her eyes as they reached the top of the stairs, then turned in the same direction the bailiff had gone. “I’ll try, but I don’t know where—”

  Another blast of thunder shook the earth, like a bomb had just exploded over the roof of the place.

 
“Shit!” Corliss hunched in instinctively, narrowed gaze going to the ceiling.

  Dallin sighed. “I’ve a feeling it’s only going to get worse.” He really was going to kick Wil’s arse.

  The Chester constabulary, when they reached the main corridor, had turned to bemused chaos. Officers had left desks and tasks to wander to the big windows, peering out at a sky gone dark and threatening in the space of only a few minutes. Citizens who’d been perhaps brought in for questioning or to file a complaint, even two men in shackles—all of them were gravitating toward the windows to stare at the brewing storm.

  Dallin catalogued them without even thinking about it. That young man had likely been reported for prostitution, and they’d brought him in to give him a good scare. That woman had probably been caught trying to cast spells that hadn’t worked anyway, and would be fined for magicking without a license. That other woman was trying to press charges against her neighbor, who’d dug himself a small tributary from the stream their properties shared and was siphoning most of the shared water rights.

  Unthinking habit, and for the first time ever—standing here pretending to be under arrest in this foreign constabulary, in the process of widening the chasm between himself and the life he’d thought he loved—Dallin wondered how he knew these things.

  “You’ve the gifts of a shaman—the gift of the Shaman….”

  All right, then. Perhaps it was time to accept it, learn to use it, and keep moving.

  The air had gone heavy, thick and charged. Dallin could feel a light tingle that was all too familiar, a quick shift in pressure that weighed against his skin, making it prickle.

  He leaned in to Corliss. “Get me outside. Quick.”

  And then to Woodrow. “Get them all away from those windows. Stay in the center of the room and be ready to—”

  That was as far as he got before the pressure flashed and popped his ears. He only just had time to pull his hands from the loosened shackles, grab Corliss and Woodrow, and drag them both down. Corliss bleated a surprised little yawp as her knees hit the floor, instantly drowned out when every window in the place exploded outward in high-speed showers of lethal shards. Two women in bailiff’s uniforms were sucked out onto the street with the force, so fast they didn’t have time to so much as yelp. Lightning flashed outside, thick ropes of yellow-white that dazzled the eyes and crackled far too close, sizzling the air and leaving it thick with the bitter-burned stench of ozone.

  The entire room erupted into shouts and debris, people diving for cover, papers flying about in small whirlwinds. Pens and desk ornaments suddenly turned into airborne projectiles. It was all a dim distraction beneath the howl and roar of the wind.

  Dallin didn’t wait for Corliss or Woodrow, didn’t even glance at all the constabulary officers with guns on their hips. He half stood, keeping as low as he could, and took a straight line to the doors. They were swinging on their hinges, slamming into the wall and then careening back as the air pulsated past him and sucked them closed to thud and hammer into the jamb again in a heavy staccato. Muted shouts and frantic orders were being called out behind him.

  He waited for the air to shift again, expand around him, like being inside a living lung, and when it did, Dallin slid his fingers through the gap. He yanked the door back and threw himself through it.

  The street was even more chaotic than the constabulary had been. Clumps of sod and sheets of tin from various roofs flew around clouds of dust swirling up from the ground in tiny cyclones. Hailstones pelted man and beast, tearing at timber and stone. Bolts of lightning shivered spasmodically over the tops of buildings, grazing dazzling fingers just close enough to tease an arc, then scudding over.

  And in the center of it all, Wil stood in a pocket of calm, face set hard, brilliant eyes narrowed in concentration but still sweeping in every direction, seeking. Black hair whiffled gently around his face in the mild breeze enwrapping him. He brushed it absently from his eyes, tossed it from his brow, before clutching again at the rifle that now looked to Dallin like it was a permanent extension of those long-fingered hands. And Wil didn’t even need it anymore. He stood alone, straight and tall, people staring at him in fear from beneath whatever cover they’d managed. Every element was at Wil’s beck and call, and he held them each, danced their patterns, and wove their threads.

  He was intensity. He was strength. He was driving will and stubborn determination. He was reckless passion and guarded distrust.

  He was fucking beautiful.

  “Mother help me.” Dallin’s breath sucked harsh in his chest, air pressure and stunned desire both. He was completely lost, cut from every anchor he’d ever known. And Wil was the only beacon he wanted to see. “How did I let this happen?”

  As if Wil had heard him, he turned, nearly blowing Dallin’s mind when Wil’s shoulders sagged in relief and he grinned—grinned—as though pandemonium weren’t swirling around them in wide destructive waves.

  Wil waved his hand at the sky and laughed. “Air!” He broadened the grin, slanting it sly, and dipped a dramatic bow.

  Dallin couldn’t help it—he grinned back, then blundered down the constabulary’s stone steps and into the street. He saw Wil’s look of delight shift at the same time he heard Corliss’s call from behind him, saw Wil’s jaw clamp tight and anger flood the gleaming gaze as Wil’s hand twitched at his side, fingers moving.

  “No!” Dallin made a run for him, barked “Corliss, stay back!” over his shoulder, and closed the distance between him and Wil in four extended strides. “Wil, don’t!”

  Wil shot him a wary glance, flicked it like a knife back over Dallin’s shoulder. “She’s with him. They’re all with him.”

  “Not in the way you think. Trust me, all right, don’t—”

  “Aisling!”

  Dallin didn’t know how Síofra managed to boom that thin voice the way he did, but it rang between them and drove a flinch from Wil. They both turned, Dallin reaching instinctively for Wil’s arm—support, comfort, reassurance… whatever Wil wanted to take from it. Wil didn’t shudder the way he had before, didn’t shrink in on himself, but he tensed measurably, the same fear spiking his gaze. Just how much had it taken for him to walk back into all of this, knowing Síofra was here and likely waiting?

  The air shifted so abruptly Dallin’s chest tightened with the pressure. The hail turned to rain, a driving downpour, and the small pocket of silence in which they stood collapsed, rain soaking Dallin to the bone in mere seconds even beneath the cover of the waxed cloak. Small spheres of crackling electricity buzzed and bobbed around them, dipping to the ground, then rising and wavering. Waiting.

  Wil half turned to Dallin, terrified. “He can… he can—”

  “Not without the leaf,” Dallin reminded him. “You’re stronger than him. He can’t make you do a damned thing.” He jerked his chin. “Look at him, Wil. He’s nothing without that leaf, and he can’t take anything from you that you don’t give him.”

  Síofra walked toward them slowly, smiling, the rain pelting him, drenching him, but he paid it no mind. Bold, he walked between balls of lightning as if he knew they couldn’t touch him, proved it when he turned his hand and they pushed apart to let him through. Giving the lie to every assurance Dallin had just offered. Already drawing away power, twisting it and molding what Wil had done to his own purpose. Síofra’s greedy eyes were solely on Wil, disregarding everything else, that same bottomless, cannibalistic hunger Dallin had seen in the boy in the stable—

  It hit him all at once, made his gut clench and his mouth go dry.

  He knew how this had to go.

  Dallin looked at Wil, saw the fear, saw the years of control and trickery, the betrayal and the pain. Saw the strength and steadily growing confidence beneath it, saw the potential, and saw the terror that thwarted it. Saw what Wil needed to do, how this had to end, and the ripples it would send out through the rest of Dallin’s country if it did.

  “What if you figure it out and it turns out tha
t it’s either me or Cynewísan?”

  Now here Dallin was, living the question. And what had he said back then, arrogant, reasonable Constable Brayden?

  “Then I shall have to figure something else out.”

  Only there was nothing else to figure out. There were several ways this could end but only one way Wil could walk away from it.

  Wil hadn’t come back for Dallin. He’d come back because he knew what he had to do, and he was expecting Dallin to help him do it, even if Wil didn’t know it. Dallin had bullied and pushed and swaggered, and now Wil needed it, needed his Guardian to stand at his back and tell him he could kill the monster.

  Except killing this monster meant war. And not killing it meant Wil’s future ended right here.

  Dallin was just a peon, damn it. This shouldn’t be his choice!

  Choice. That was… laughable. There was no choice here. And if there was, Dallin had made it that first day in Dudley when he’d sat in a cell and listened to the shaky, broken tale of what had passed for Wil’s life. And had kept making it, over and over again, ever since.

  Jagger sitting in one of his own cells, caught up in the greater cogs of war’s machinery, the fulcrum of which turned right in front of Dallin’s eyes. Ramsford arrested, Manning questioned, countless faceless strangers dead already, and who among those Dallin had left behind might be next?

  And why wasn’t his heart bleeding as it should be doing?

  Dallin swallowed thickly and cut the very last tie between himself and his life.

  “You’re going to have to kill him,” he told Wil. “He won’t stop ’til he’s got what he wants or he’s dead, and now he’s got two countries at his back.”

  And they had none.

  The Commonwealth troops had gathered behind Síofra, watching, looking to their captain for instruction, who in turn looked to Síofra. Síofra gestured them back, said, “The Chosen is mine,” and kept coming.

  A small whimper broke loose from Wil’s chest, barely audible over the roar of the wind and rain, but the rifle came up, barrel leveled at Síofra, finger twitching at the trigger. Wil’s dark hair was plastered to his head, thick sopping hanks dripping over his brow, into his eyes, but he kept his gaze steady, though his jaw twitched and his hands shook.