“Indera.” The runner had gone, and now the elderly Hunter who was supervising their tack lesson in the stable was looking at her. “Amas. Grandmaster’s office, now. Leave your horses as they are.”
Indera’s heart thrilled when he called her name, but her enthusiasm faded when she heard Amas being added. Was this a good thing, or not? Couldn’t be about the scuffle the other night, or they wouldn’t be calling that prig along with her. So what was it about?
She didn’t have time to stop and consider it. No one kept the Grandmaster waiting. The two trainees left the stables immediately, side by side, and crossed the compound in the growing heat of the morning.
“I bet he has something special for us,” Indera said, to cover up her nervousness. She had to scurry to keep up with her long-legged year-mate, and it irritated her. “We’re being promoted to the second year. Or even the third. Because we’re better than everybody else.”
“We’re stronger,” Amas said in her soft voice. She never spoke loudly, or sounded angry. It drove Indera up the wall, like everything else about her. “We’re faster. We’re good at fighting. That doesn’t make us better.”
“We’re Hunters. Stronger and faster is all that matters.”
“We’re trainees, and you’re wrong.”
Indera slowed enough to glare at Amas’s back. What she wouldn’t give to beat the spit out of the other girl—but she couldn’t. The masters used to put the two of them together for sparring, and Indera knew firsthand the knack Amas had for kick attacks. With the other girl’s long legs, it meant that Indera couldn’t get inside her reach. A real fight between them . . . Indera wanted to believe she would win, but she couldn’t be sure. Not like she could with the others.
If she wants to act like she’s the same as everybody else, that’s her problem, Indera thought spitefully. She can be a dog. I’m a wolf. I’m going to be the best Hunter Silverfire’s ever had. Better than Mirage, even.
They reached the building, were waved up the stairs by Slip, and walked into the Grandmaster’s office.
“Mirage!” Indera blurted, forgetting even to salute the Grandmaster behind his desk.
Amas didn’t forget. Indera hastily copied her, flushing in embarrassment, and hoping that her idol didn’t notice.
It was Mirage. No other Hunter in the world had hair like that, flame-colored and cropped short in a Hunter’s practical cut. She was in a Hunter’s uniform, much like the trainee uniform Indera herself wore, and the body inside was lean and hard. Indera envied her long-fingered, capable hands, with their calluses and strong tendons, and wondered how soon she would look like that herself. This woman was the epitome of everything Indera wanted to be. Indera had never thought she would actually meet her, not this soon. Not until she was older, mostly trained, ready to claim a new name as a full Hunter.
Mirage was eyeing her—eyeing both of you, a corner of Indera’s mind murmured, but nevermind that—with cool gray eyes that betrayed nothing of what she was thinking. Indera stood bolt upright, hoping the woman noticed her own hair. Amas dyed hers, to hide the color that made people whisper about witches, but Indera’s was its natural red-brown.
The Hunter glanced away from them without saying anything and nodded to the Grandmaster. “All right. I’ll keep you informed, as best as I can.” Her voice was melodious and polite. The sound of it made Indera shiver.
“Very well,” Jaguar said. He had not told the trainees to stand at ease; they stood rigidly just inside the door. The Grandmaster rose and came to stand before them.
“You’re going to go with Mirage,” he said. “You both know who she is. Do what she says, when she says, without hesitation or argument. Treat her like she’s one of your training-masters. If either of you disobeys her in the slightest, she has the authority to punish you however she sees fit. And when you return, you’ll be punished for it a second time. So don’t disobey.”
Indera waited, hardly breathing, trying to figure out what he meant by this. We’re going with her? Where? And why?
“You may be young,” the Grandmaster said at last, “but you are of Silverfire. Don’t dishonor that.”
“Yes, sir,” Amas murmured, and Indera echoed her blindly. Could this mean what she thought it did?
Mirage stood and saluted Jaguar. He nodded to her, then turned back to his desk. “Come with me,” the Hunter said. Indera sketched a hasty salute and followed her out, dizzy with joy.
AS SHE WENT AROUND the Silverfire compound, gathering the supplies she needed, Mirei wondered what she had gotten herself into.
Two doppelgangers, in the abstract, were a simple enough idea. She could manage two doppelgangers. Somehow, though, she’d failed to realize that what she was really taking on board were two eleven-year-old girls, one of whom very clearly had a bad case of hero worship. It was flattering, in a way, but also unnerving. The last time she’d dealt with trainees for any real length of time, she’d been one herself, and then they’d been more occupied with giving her nasty looks than idolizing her.
Mirei left the two girls outside while she spoke to the quartermaster and the armorer. The latter stop was, as far as she was concerned, the more important one. She could keep herself fed through scrounging if she had to, but her pack of useful supplies had vanished with Eclipse, and things like sleeping oil and flash powder were not to be found by the side of the road.
The quartermaster promised to send her requirements to the stables. Mirei carried the special supplies herself, and found the rations already there. Slip must have sent a runner, too, because Briar had three horses waiting to be saddled.
“Where’s Mist?” he demanded of Mirei, suspicion chiseled into every line of his old face. Mirage had accused him once of caring more about the mare than about her, and he’d agreed.
“In Angrim,” Mirei said. Assuming Wisp hasn’t sold her off, out of irritation for me vanishing like that. “Resting. She needs it.”
“Where’s the horse you came in on?”
“Didn’t come on a horse. Why do you think I need one now?” Mirei didn’t want him continuing that line of questioning, so she turned to the trainees and nodded at the tack. “Saddle them.”
The last bags of supplies came while the girls were fumbling their way through the task. Mirei took them from the quartermaster’s assistant and dumped their contents out onto the ground, sorting through them and tossing various pieces to the trainees. “Put those on when you’re done.”
She realized, halfway through stripping off her own uniform, that while she was long since used to the communal bathing of Silverfire, the other two were new enough to be self-conscious. Mirei suppressed the urge to grin at their expense, and then lost all amusement when she realized her silver pendant had swung free. She caught it quickly and tucked it back into the shirt the quartermaster had provided. I hope no one noticed that.
The girls didn’t seem to have, and Briar was checking their work on the horses. The taller girl—must be Amas; she had the dyed hair—brushed at the long vest she wore over a pair of wide-legged trousers, expression puzzled. The stockier girl, Indera, was looking dubiously at a head scarf. “Askavyan peasant women?” she said.
Good on her for recognizing it. “That’s the idea,” Mirei said. She covered her own hair and tied the scarf in a tight knot. “Put your old clothes in the saddlebags, and get them lashed on.” Briar had finished checking the horses; as he turned to her, Mirei said, “I know, I know. I lame these horses, and you’ll lame me. Permanently. They’ll be fine.”
He cracked a brief grin. “Get you going, then.”
Disguised as Askavyan peasant women, the three of them rode out through the gates of the Silverfire compound, and Mirei wondered what she had just let herself in for.
THEY HADN’T GONE FAR before Mirei caught sight of someone lurking among the trees, watching them.
“Wait here,” Mirei said, and heeled her gelding off the road.
The woman she’d spotted tried to run, which she shoul
d have expected. Mirei pulled the scarf off her head, hoping it would help; if the woman was Shimi’s spy, then it probably wouldn’t make matters worse, and if she was Ashin’s, then she might stop.
She stopped. Mirei didn’t press her luck, but halted the gelding well back, holding her hands out unthreateningly. They were concealed from the road by a fold in the land at this point, so she didn’t have to worry about the girls watching.
“I’m Mirei,” she said, and drew out the pendant as evidence.
The woman nodded nervously. She didn’t look like a witch, but Mirei would have laid money on her being under a disguise spell. “Gichara,” she said. “Water Hand. Ashin sent me to watch the girls here.”
“So I guessed,” Mirei said dryly. “You’ve been seen. More than once, or do you have friends here?”
Gichara shook her head. “No, just me. Never been much good at sneaking. I told Ashin, but she said I was closest—my town’s in central Miest—and we needed the girls kept safe.”
“They will be,” Mirei said. “Ashin told the Primes where to find them, and so we’re bringing them all in. The one who isn’t safe is you. Get out of here before the Hunters decide to chase you down. It’s all being taken care of.”
Looking relieved, Gichara nodded. When she’d moved off through the trees, Mirei didn’t return immediately to the road. As long as she had privacy, there were a few things she should do.
First and foremost was the spell that would block any attempt to find her magically. She didn’t need to protect Amas or Indera; spells of that kind couldn’t locate doppelgangers or their witch-halves. From a magical standpoint, they were one person in two places at once. But now that she was a single person again, Mirei could be found, and she didn’t want Shimi tracking her to the doppelgangers.
When that spell was finished, she sang another one—to find Eclipse.
The resounding silence in her mind was almost painful.
Shaking her head to clear it, she cast the spell again, this time on Viper, just to be sure she wasn’t making a mistake; this was the first time she’d tried something like this. The spell returned a resonance that read as Silverfire in her mind.
Another try for Eclipse gave her the painful silence again.
So that, she thought grimly, is what the blocking spell feels like from the other side.
Which meant that Eclipse was the prisoner of a witch.
She sat on a tree stump near the gelding and stared at the grass in front of her. She needed to get back to the road—the girls would be wondering where she had gone—but she couldn’t move just yet.
Who could have taken him? She could see only three possibilities: Ashin’s conspirators, Satomi’s people, or Shimi. The former might have done it to keep him safe, but if so, why hadn’t Ashin said something about it already? Why hadn’t she let him go? He had to have gone missing before Shimi left, but she might have sent allies to capture him, once the Cousins were called off.
That, or Satomi had him prisoner, and hadn’t told her.
Mirei chewed on her knuckle for a moment more, then pulled out the parchment Satomi had sent with her. She scrawled a quick note, explaining his disappearance and concealment under a spell, then sang the quick phrase that would send it to Satomi’s matching sheet. If the Void Prime had kidnapped her year-mate, then pretending she didn’t know would not help anything.
But, after a moment’s consideration, she sent the message to Jaguar as well. He had no enchanted page, no mirror she could speak through, but she knew exactly where he was; she wrote out her message in Silverfire’s code on another scrap of paper and dropped it out of the air onto his desk. With no way for him to reply, she had no idea what he was going to do with the information, but at least he had it.
Then she rode back to where she had left the girls.
They were still there, looking horribly confused. Indera said cautiously, “If you please—Mirage—what’s going on? Why did Jaguar send us with you? Are you going to give us special training?”
The name gave her a pang; she didn’t like lying. On the other hand, she had very good reasons for not explaining her transformation just yet. It was going to be hard enough as it was, and she didn’t want to do it more than once.
“No,” Mirei said, in answer to the girl’s question. “That is— Well, Jaguar told me to train you while you’re with me. But it won’t be like you get at Silverfire, practically every waking minute spent on lessons. You’ll just have to pick up what you can, and then I’ll work on combat in the evenings, if we have time. But no, you weren’t sent with me for training.”
“Then what are we here for?” Indera asked, a plaintive note in her voice.
How much do they know? Mirei gave Indera a measuring look, then asked, as a test, “Who were your parents?”
“Um?” Indera had clearly not been prepared for that. “My father’s a carpenter in Gatarha. That’s in Liak. My mother’s an herb-woman. I used to help her, sometimes.”
“Farmers,” Amas said, when Mirei looked at her. “Rice, some oats, and a few sheep. In northern Miest.”
They don’t know a blessed thing. I don’t know if that makes my life easier, or not.
“Right,” Mirei said. “Well, I don’t want to have to explain things multiple times, so you’re going to have to live with curiosity for a while. Short form is, we’re going to Angrim, and while we’re on the way there we don’t want anybody noticing that we’re Hunters if we can avoid it. Hence the disguises.”
“Are we in danger?” Indera asked. She seemed excited by the prospect.
“Just don’t draw attention to yourself. Once we’re done with our business in Angrim, I’ll be able to tell you more.” And Mirei just hoped that, sometime between now and then, she would figure out a way to steal the Thornblood trainee.
Chapter Four
AN UNEASY PEACE reigned over Starfall for the next few days. No one else tried to leave in a manner that blatantly suggested they were fleeing to join Shimi; witches did leave, but they had to. Satomi could not bring the business of Starfall to a halt.
Ruriko came into Satomi’s office one morning, where the Void Prime sat dealing with the backlog of correspondence that had built up in the wake of Mirei’s dramatic arrival. “Aken, there’s someone who wishes to speak with you.”
“Who is it?” Satomi asked, signing off on a revenue report. Misetsu and Menukyo, but she hated dealing with the tedious economic work of keeping this place running. There were witches in the Path of the Head who handled most of it for her, but she still needed to stay informed—however boring she found it.
“Eikyo.”
The name didn’t ring a bell. “Path and Ray?”
“None. She’s a student. A friend of Miryo’s, I’m told, and she and Mirei were spending time together before Mirei left.”
The use of both names caught Satomi’s attention. She paused and looked up at Ruriko. “What does she want?”
“To help, Aken.”
Interesting. She had a meeting with Ashin in less than half an hour; the Hand Key had arrived that morning. Satomi could put off the revenue reports for a while longer, though, to meet with this friend of Miryo’s, and perhaps of Mirei’s, who wanted to help.
“Send her in,” Satomi said, and pushed the reports to one side.
The woman who entered looked faintly familiar. She was a student, yes, but one of the oldest; in fact, Satomi now recognized her as the one next in line for testing. Short, with a compact build that gave her an air of solidity even though she was plainly nervous about a private audience with the Void Prime.
“Aken,” the student said, and sank into a bow.
“You’re a friend of Mirei’s, I’m told,” Satomi said, choosing the name very deliberately.
The slight hesitation before Eikyo’s response illustrated the woman’s carefully chosen words. “In a manner of speaking, Aken. I was a friend of Miryo’s, and Miryo is a part of Mirei. I’m still getting to know Mirei. But I think we c
ould be friends.”
Satomi smiled at the shift in tone at the end. “If I weren’t hauling her into meetings and sending her off on errands, you mean.”
“Not at all, Aken.”
Of course not; Eikyo was clearly too discreet to be so cheeky to the Void Prime. “Ruriko tells me you’d like to help.”
“Yes, Aken. With the . . . the situation.”
Ah yes. “The situation.” How obliquely we all refer to it. “Why?”
Eikyo was keeping her eyes on the floor; it looked more like deference and nerves than a desire to hide anything. “Because Mirei asked me to.”
Satomi raised her eyebrows, but Eikyo did not look up to see, so she spoke into the silence. “Oh?”
“Before she left.” Eikyo took a deep breath. “She came to my room to have me cut her hair short like a Hunter’s. She wouldn’t tell me what she was going to do.”
Good, Satomi thought. The fewer who know, the better.
“—but she told me there would be things to do here, and that you would—” Eikyo cut off suddenly.
“I would what?” Satomi said.
“That you would need help, Aken.”
Which is true enough, and I suppose I can’t begrudge Mirei for sending me aid. Goddess knows I do need it. “What do you have to offer in the way of help? I don’t mean that in an accusing fashion. I’d like to know what you can provide.”
Eikyo shrugged uncomfortably. “Not a whole lot, I fear, Aken. I mean, I’m not a witch yet. And there’s only so much I can do without magic.”
But she might be useful among the students, if only Satomi could figure out how. “What are your inclinations? Do you know what Ray and Path you’d like to take?”
“Earth Heart, Aken. I get along very well with animals.”
Which was possibly the least useful answer the student could have made. Satomi didn’t let that show, though. No sense discouraging the woman, even if wildlife was the one group she didn’t expect to have problems with. “Well, Eikyo, thank you for coming to me. I’ll have to think about this, and consider what you might be able to do.” Satomi allowed herself a deprecating smile. “I fear I’ll only know what kind of help I need as more problems present themselves. But I’ll contact you if something arises.”
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