Mist-Torn Witches 03:Witches With the Enemy

by Barb Hendee

  Céline sat silently on her horse, and Amelie glanced at her in concern. Her expression had been queer, almost ill, since leaving Kimovesk. Amelie wanted to ask if she was all right, but then what could Céline possibly say? It didn’t matter whether she was all right or not. They were in the middle of this now.

  “And what do you suggest?” Damek asked Heath.

  Amelie found his contempt unfounded. Without Heath, they’d probably still be searching the forests around Kimovesk.

  Anton rode up to the front, keeping his voice low. “I think we should keep our arrival quiet, brother. If Maddox gets wind of us, he might take Rochelle and run.”

  At this, Damek’s tight expression eased slightly, and he studied Anton. Then he nodded.

  “How comfortable would Maddox wish to make her?” Anton asked Heath. “Would he risk taking her to an inn?”

  “Possibly,” Heath answered. “Though he is a most able soldier, he has a tendency to overestimate himself. If he and Rochelle are here, he probably views himself as safe . . . leagues away from our search.”

  “What do you mean if they’re here?” Damek asked.

  “I mean that we are following well-reasoned speculation and the word of a peasant girl. Nothing is certain.”

  The skin over Damek’s cheeks tightened again.

  “I suggest we split into two groups,” Anton said, “and conduct a quiet search. Damek and I will take the west side of town. Heath, you take the east. We’ll speak to every innkeeper and every tavern owner with a room to rent. I have some coin with me, and we can pay bribes if we must. Someone will have seen them or given them sanctuary.”

  Heath nodded at Anton’s sensible counsel. “Yes, I have coin with me as well.”

  “I’ll keep Céline with me,” Anton continued. “You take Miss Amelie in case you find Rochelle first. Amelie can offer her comfort.”

  Mild surprise, followed by pleasure, passed across Heath’s face. “It would be my honor.”

  Amelie found that a tad formal, all things considered, but she urged her black gelding toward his tall horse.

  “We’ll enter first,” Heath said to Anton. “Give us a few moments before you follow.”

  With that, Amelie rode into Chekalin beside him, with five Väränj guards following. It bothered her to leave Céline, but Amelie understood why Céline had wanted to come, and at this point, the sisters had no choice but to split up.

  They entered what appeared to be an open-air market that had been closed for the night with all the stalls covered. At this late hour, the town was quiet.

  “We’ll probably have to wake a few innkeepers from their sleep,” she commented.

  Heath turned east, and they rode down a well-maintained street past a row of neatly painted shops. As this town was in Damek’s territory, Amelie hadn’t expected it to look quite so prosperous—as most of his people were taxed near to death. Perhaps he’d overlooked it?

  Amelie herself had no problem with taxes. She and Céline paid taxes in Sèone, but Anton never overtaxed his people, and he always used the money for things like maintaining bridges, for helping the poor, for paying guards who actually guarded his people, and so on. He’d even funded a few small schools. She had no idea what Damek did with the taxes that Captain Kochè collected with such vigor.

  “Up there,” Heath said, pointing.

  Following to where he pointed, she saw a whitewashed two-story building with vines growing up a fenced porch.

  Upon reaching the building, Heath dismounted. Without waiting to be asked, Amelie climbed down as well, but he offered no objection. The skin on the inside her legs felt on fire, and she tried not to wince.

  “Stay out here,” Heath ordered his men.

  Amelie and Heath walked five steps up to the ivy-covered porch, and in the shadows of the front door, he stopped her with his hand.

  “You do . . . ,” he said quietly. “You do believe Rochelle was abducted, don’t you? It matters to me what you think.”

  Why should he care what she thought? But she nodded to him. “Yes. I wouldn’t blame any woman for trying to escape marriage to Damek, but I don’t believe Rochelle would run off with Captain Maddox. She cares for your family far too much.”

  “Thank you.” He didn’t move. “And I know this is hardly the time, but I wanted to thank you for this afternoon, for staying in the hall and comforting my sisters with games and stories the way you did.”

  “Oh . . . you’re welcome.”

  After this, she expected him to enter the inn, but still, he hesitated. “It’s been a long time since Rochelle, Lizbeth, and I all played together like that, and I have you to thank. I’m not comfortable speaking to most people, but I find myself at ease with you.”

  Amelie tensed. Was he about to express interest in her? She wasn’t sure. Most men who met the sisters followed Céline with their eyes—but few men ever looked at Amelie. She had no idea how to properly respond and cut him off before he said something he might regret later.

  Quickly, she took a step away from him. “Baron, we should go inside and wake the innkeeper.”

  He flinched, as if hurt, and then recovered. “Of course. I only wished to thank you for this afternoon.”

  Turning away, he opened the door, and they stepped inside. The foyer was dark, but some light from the outer streetlamps came in through the windows. There was no counter, but a long table stood in front of a closed door.

  “Hello?” Heath called. “Is anyone here?”

  A moment later, shuffling sounded behind the door, and a stocky man with a shiny head emerged, pulling a robe around his shoulders with one hand and carrying a lantern in the other.

  He squinted at the pair of them and smiled sleepily. “Riding in so late? Do you need a room?”

  Amelie wondered how this should be handled, and she let Heath take the lead.

  “Yes and no,” Heath answered. “My wife and I had arranged to meet my sister, along with our family’s bodyguard, in this town, but I fear there was a miscommunication regarding the name of the inn. Do you have a lovely woman with my coloring, and a tall dour man with dark hair hereabout somewhere?” He smiled back.

  Amelie was astonished at the ease with which he lied, but she much preferred his method of questioning to Damek’s.

  “Sorry, lad,” the man answered. “I’ve only two guests here now, and both are older men, merchants, I think. But at this hour, you’d probably do better to stay here and find your sister in the morning.”

  “No doubt you’re right,” Heath answered. “But we’d like to try a few more places.”

  “Good luck to you,” the man said, turning away to go back to bed.

  Amelie led the way outside. “I believed him.”

  “So did I.”

  They headed back for their horses, to continue on and check the next inn.

  * * *

  “A lady about eighteen years of age, with red-blond hair, and she would be accompanied by a tall man in chain armor and a yellow tabard?” Anton explained to a sleepy woman in her nightdress and wrapped in a shawl. “The woman is my sister, and the man is her guard. We’re traveling together, and I sent them on ahead tonight when my horse threw a shoe . . . but we neglected to name a meeting place here.”

  Anton, Céline, and Damek had entered the first inn they came across. As Damek had almost no capability for polite inquiry, he’d let Anton do the talking.

  “No, sir,” she mumbled back. “I’ve no one here like that tonight. The only folks I have staying here now are regulars who come through every autumn to sell goods.”

  He could see she spoke the truth, and he thanked her politely.

  Turning, he saw Damek’s expression darken, and he motioned his brother toward the door. “Out.”

  Thankfully, Damek obeyed, but the moment he was through the door and on the porch, he hissed, “This is madness. It will take all night.”

  Anton had not yet closed the door, and worry over his brother’s mood gave him a spark
of an idea. He looked back inside. “Madam?”

  The woman was shuffling off, but she stopped, “Yes?”

  “How many stables are there in town? If we find where they stabled their horses, it would help narrow our search.”

  Rubbing her eyes, she nodded in approval. “Oh, that’s clever. We have three, all on the outskirts of town, one on the west side, one on the east, and one on the south. The east stable is the largest.”

  “Thank you.”

  When Anton stepped outside, Damek studied him curiously. Céline had not appeared to be listening, and he was becoming concerned about her. She’d been nearly silent and did not seem herself.

  “What are you thinking?” Damek asked Anton.

  “Exactly what I said. There are only three stables, so we should check those first. If we find a roan stallion and a white mare, we’ll know for certain that Maddox and Rochelle are here, and we’ll have narrowed the search zone.”

  Damek tilted his head. “Sometimes I underestimate you.”

  “Sometimes?”

  Anton walked toward his horse, Captain Kochè, and the Kimovesk guards, but he glanced back at Céline, who followed him without really looking where she was going. Something was wrong. He suspected it had to do with the scene back in the village.

  “We need to head west for the outer edge of town,” Damek ordered the guards. “We’ll start with the closest stable.”

  Anton helped Céline onto her horse and then he mounted up. She didn’t speak or look at him. His concern grew.

  They headed west and began doing a search for the stable on the outskirts of town. It didn’t take long to find. However, at this hour, the large double doors—wide enough to drive a wagon through—were barred from the inside, and the stable master had long since retired for the night.

  Captain Kochè walked to a small door near the left front corner of the stable. “My lord?”

  Damek walked over and Anton followed.

  “I could break this one quietly,” Kochè said.

  Damek nodded.

  Kochè gripped the latched, put his shoulder to the door, and shoved a few times. The door cracked and broke inward.

  “I’ll take a look,” Anton said. “You stand watch out here.”

  He knew Damek would have no interest in mucking about inside a stable, so he expected no argument—and neither did he get one. But then he reached out with one hand and motioned Céline toward him. “Come with me.”

  At that, Damek did raise an eyebrow. Hopefully, he would assume that Anton simply didn’t wish to leave her alone with the men from Kimovesk.

  She came to him and followed him inside, but her expression was still lost.

  He pushed the door back in place as well as he could and then started toward the back of the stable. “This way.”

  They walked down a long row of stalls, and he peered over the tops of the doors. There were no roan horses. He did stop at the stall of a white mare, but she was older and her coat was rough, and Anton knew the animal would not belong to Rochelle.

  The final few stalls were empty. The door of one was open, and there were crates stored inside.

  “Come in here and sit for a moment,” he said.

  “What?” She spoke for the first time, since leaving Kimovesk Village, and her eyes cleared a bit.

  He sat on a crate and pulled her down beside him. “We don’t have much time, and I need you to tell me what’s wrong.”

  Her dark blond hair hung forward over her face, and her cloak was askew, revealing the shoulder of her gown. “There’s nothing wrong.”

  He wasn’t good at this . . . at drawing things out of people. He was highly skilled at concealing emotions, but he had no idea how to draw them out of someone else.

  “If we find Maddox and Rochelle tonight, you will be needed. You’ll need to be my seer, and right now . . . you are not. Tell me what is wrong.”

  She stared at the straw on the floor. “I’d just forgotten how very little life or suffering counts for here. I’ve been in Sèone too long. Damek could have cut that boy’s hand off and then ridden away, and by the time he reached the edge of the village, he’d have forgotten the boy existed. But the boy would have spent the rest of his life maimed.”

  “I would have spared you seeing that if I could.”

  “I’ve seen worse, much worse. I’ve lived through worse.”

  Here, he was on dangerous ground. He knew that she and Amelie had suffered much at the hands of Damek’s soldiers, but the truth was . . . he wasn’t certain he wished to know how much they had suffered. He knew this was cowardly and self-centered, but he couldn’t help it. He had his own demons from the past, and he wasn’t sure he could effectively wrestle with the demons of someone else.

  “They killed my father,” Céline whispered. “Soldiers from Kimovesk.”

  He turned on the crate to look straight at her.

  “I saw it,” she added.

  “Oh, Céline.” Instead of awkward discomfort, a pity he could not describe washed through him. “How old were you?”

  “Nine.”

  Without thinking, he reached out and pulled her against his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” And he was.

  “He was trying to help someone else,” she whispered with one side of her face pressed against him, “and one of the soldiers stabbed him and then just left him there like he was nothing. There was no one to whom we could complain or report. There was no one like Jaromir to deal out justice. Those men rode away and forgot him, leaving two daughters without a father and a wife without a husband.”

  With nothing he could possibly say, he laid his face on the top of her head.

  Pulling back slightly, she looked up at him. “If you were grand prince, could you change things? Could you protect the people in a province like this one?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But I would try.”

  Her mouth was inches from his, and the pain in her eyes cut through him. Unable to stop himself, he touched his mouth to hers, and to his absolute wonder, she kissed him back and moved her hand up to the side of his neck, brushing it with her fingertips.

  It had been so long since anyone had touched him like this. He opened his mouth and kissed her more deeply. She responded, but the pressure of her mouth was soft and gentle, eager and unsure at the same time. His whole body felt alive, and he moved his right hand inside her cloak, feeling her small rib cage. She pressed in closer to him, and he’d never wanted anything in his life more than this.

  Then bells of warning rang in his head.

  She had been in a sorrow-filled and vulnerable moment. . . .

  He was taking advantage. . . .

  He could not marry her. . . .

  Damek and Captain Kochè were right outside.

  With a strangled cry, he jerked himself away and stood up.

  “Anton?” she asked in confusion.

  “We can’t . . . Céline, we can’t. Not like this.”

  She stared at him, beyond hurt. He knew he could never erase what he’d just done, but there was more here at stake, and he dropped to his knees. “I need you to be my seer tonight,” he begged. “I need you to come back to yourself. Please, Céline.”

  She blinked. “Is that why you . . . ?” She stood up.

  He’d said everything wrong. He had not kissed her or been kind to her so that she would recover herself and be useful to him.

  “Of course, my lord,” she said stiffly.

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Anton!” Damek called from the front of the stable. “What are you doing? Have you found anything?”

  “No. We’re coming,” he called back.

  Céline wouldn’t look at him. “Which stable next?” She sounded so cold, but maybe that was best. At least he couldn’t hurt her if she wouldn’t let him get close.

  “The one on the east side. The innkeeper said it was the largest.”

  She walked away, heading for the front of the stable.

>   * * *

  After trying several inns with no success, Amelie and Heath spotted a two-story tavern with what looked to be separate rooms on the upper floor—or at least from what they could guess by peering up through the windows.

  The bottom floor was well lit, and voices came from inside.

  Amelie shrugged. “It’s worth a try.”

  She had opted to walk and lead her horse, as she couldn’t bear the thought of climbing into the saddle again. So Heath walked beside her, leading his mount as well. They both passed their reins up to a Väränj guard.

  “Wait out here,” Heath told the men.

  He and Amelie headed for the front door of the tavern.

  Inside, it was less populated than she’d expected. There were only four patrons inside, all at the same table, but they were laughing loudly and appeared nearly drunk. A spindly man with an equally spindly beard stood behind the bar.

  Heath walked up to the bartender. “Good evening. Do you rent the rooms above-stairs?”

  The man glanced at Amelie, back to Heath, and smiled. “I do, sir. Clean rooms, and I’ll give you a fair price.”

  “Do you have any guests already tonight?”

  The man’s smile faded. “Why do you ask?”

  Something about this caught Amelie’s attention, and she watched the bartender as Heath repeated his story about the miscommunication with his sister. When he described Rochelle and Maddox, the man’s expression flickered.

  He shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t help. I don’t have any guests and haven’t seen ladies with red-gold hair. I’d remember if I did.”

  This time, Heath smiled. “One moment, please.”

  He motioned Amelie to remain where she was, and he walked over to the door, cracking it and peering out. “Lieutenant?” he called, and held up two fingers.

  As he came back to the bar, two Väränj guards in red tabards walked in and the table of drunkards fell silent. The bartender began backing away, and like lightning, Heath grabbed his wrist and slammed his hand down on the bar.

  The action caught Amelie by surprise. Heath didn’t look strong enough to pin another man like that.