One of the rooms at Silverfire had been converted into an office for him. There was little in there other than a desk, a chair, and some shelves, but decorations weren’t Eclipse’s primary concern these days.
Information was.
Seating himself in the chair, as he had for days before, Eclipse reflected that he was getting a taste of the Grandmaster’s life. Silverfire Hunters were independent, for the most part, operating off their own resources and ingenuity, but there were still times when the school helped them out. And though Silverfire’s network of agents and informants paled next to, say, Cloudhawk’s, they had people in every domain—and Jaguar had given him full access to them.
The most dangerous part had been the early stages. Eclipse could not tell anyone the details of where he had been, and who he had been with—but he could and did ask very carefully worded questions. Bit by bit, he had learned what he needed to know.
He knew now which fort he’d been held in, and where it stood along Abern’s border. He knew that no obvious convoy of witches had left the area following his release—but there had been a suspiciously large group of nonwitches, with no obvious reason for traveling together. Tracking them was made more difficult because they changed their disguise spells more than once, but their path led northeast, through the Bridewell Pass, and into Kalistyi.
Now he was trying to learn where they’d gone to ground.
That Lady Chaha had given her support to the dissidents was common knowledge. By the reports Eclipse was getting, she was doing more than just talking about it, too. She had given them soldiers and some manner of base; he thought it was in the mountains that formed the domain’s western border, but nailing down specifics was difficult. The prevalence of the Nalochkan sect there meant that recruiting people to work for Hunters wasn’t easy, and besides that, Chaha was doing her best to guard the security of the dissidents. So his spies were having to dodge domain guards while they went about their work.
There was other information he could gather, though, and he strongly suspected its usefulness was the main reason Starfall hadn’t decided to play it safe and off him before he could be a threat.
Mirei would never stand for such a thing, he knew—but they didn’t have to tell her. They could make it look like the oath had struck home. Then no more worries about his loyalties, no fear that he might try to save his own life by taking hers. The warning had to have made them nervous.
So give them a reason not to act on those nerves, he thought, and turned his attention to the newest reports.
The rumor that a Nalochkan monastery near Lavesye had all but emptied out seemed to be true, and more to the point, now he knew where they had gone. The write-up collated notices from other domains of Nalochkan monks proselytizing in the outlying villages and towns, preaching against the Warrior.
The witches might have heard about that one already, but Eclipse set it aside as information to be passed along, wondering as he did so how long it would be before one Hunter school or another took exception to the monks preaching against the Warrior. That track of thought made the next report catch his eye even more than it would have otherwise. It was a scrawled note from Slip, who occasionally passed Eclipse tidbits that Jaguar chose not to share.
Confirmation: Ice is dead, the note said. Accepted story is Mirei killed her.
Eclipse bit back an oath. There had been a rumor going around about Ice, but they had the story from Mirei and knew she’d left the Thornblood alive. If Ice was dead, then it was because somebody was trying to set Mirei up. The dissidents? They were the most likely candidates.
Next sheet. A trio of ships had sailed from a port on the western edge of White Bay. No reliable information regarding who’d been on board or where they were headed; the portmaster’s logs had been suspiciously blank on the subject. Eclipse stared at the map nailed to one wall. The port was close to where he thought the dissidents were. If he could find out who the passengers were, then he could try and track where they’d come from.
Next sheet. Lady Chaha was drilling her troops, and had recruitment planned for the spring. Attached was an older paper that didn’t look like a Silverfire report, a political and tactical analysis of where Chaha might strike, should she decide to make war on anyone. The mountains kept her domain largely hemmed in; her main options were to try and take the Bridewell Pass into Abern, or to go east, after the triangle of land between the rivers and mountains that was a long-disputed territory of Trine’s. The analysis concluded that the eastern route was more likely, since there were gold mines in that area, and Kalistyi had been hurting for income since the silver mines in the north played out. Given the current alliance with the dissidents, though, Eclipse wondered if the Bridewell Pass weren’t more likely. If they were planning a direct attack against Starfall, they’d have to get troops there somehow.
Next sheet, and this one made Eclipse’s fingers go cold. Someone—no clear details on who—had visited the Wolfstar compound in Razi, and had bought up every unemployed Hunter in sight.
The fact that it was in his stack said that somebody, most likely Slip, thought it was related to Eclipse’s own work against the dissidents in Kalistyi. Could it be? By all indications, both Chaha and Shimi were too rabidly Nalochkan to even dream of sullying their hands with Hunters. He knew that Shimi had been a part of hiring Wraith, but that was before her religious convictions had asserted themselves like this.
Who would even want that many Wolfstars? They were assassins. People usually hired them singly, not in squadrons.
He tried to think of their potential targets. Hiring many assassins suggested there were many targets; otherwise it would be overkill, in a very literal sense of the word. Scattered targets, or a concentrated group?
Then a deeply unpleasant possibility occurred to him. The Primes have hired a Wolfstar before, to kill one of their own. Shimi wouldn’t be likely to use a Hunter again—but Satomi?
It could be that the witches had successfully located the dissidents’ base in Kalistyi, and hadn’t told him. And they could be preparing to deal with the problem their own way.
Hunters against witches. The two groups had never come into open conflict; Eclipse tried to think through how it might work. Killing a witch could be done; Tari-nakana’s assassination had shown that. To kill a lot of them, though, you couldn’t pick them off one by one; the others would become alerted far too quickly. A full-on attack, though, threw away the advantages the Wolfstars would have and put them right up against magic. They would have to find a way around that.
Poison? Wolfstars didn’t use it as much as Stoneshadows, their bonded counterparts, but that didn’t mean they didn’t know how. They’d have to get in close, though, to make that work, and surely the dissidents had defenses just as much as Starfall did.
So they would need the help of witches. Which Satomi could provide for them.
He couldn’t ask anyone if his speculations were right. All he could do was put the report in the stack of things he wasn’t going to report to Starfall. It was a delicate game he played, convincing them he wasn’t a threat to Mirei; exposing a plan to assassinate their own people wouldn’t help him any.
In the meantime—just in case he was wrong—he went back to trying to find where the dissidents had gone to ground.
INDERA DIDN’T MIND the witch showing up to make them practice. She would have done it anyway. She wasn’t like the others; she had drive. She definitely wasn’t like the witch-girls, who grumbled every time they had to do something physical.
But it wasn’t as satisfying with the witch there. However much Indera despised Mirei, who claimed to be Mirage but wasn’t, at least that woman knew how to make them work. The witch just waved vaguely for them to do their “usual things,” and left it at that. Even Ashin— Indera refused to think of the woman as her mother—had been better.
When practice was done with and the others were wandering off, Indera hung back. If she couldn’t have a proper practice, she could at
least have a longer one. Hone her body into a weapon, the way it was meant to be. She had to savor every moment while she could, before she lost it all.
The witch didn’t leave, though. She waited, too, as the other girls went back to the main halls, and then spoke to Indera.
“I’m impressed by the skill you girls show.”
“Thank you,” Indera began without enthusiasm, and then realized she’d forgotten the witch’s name and Ray.
“Tajio,” the witch said with a faint smile. “Void Head.”
“Tajio-ai,” Indera finished.
“I’d never seen a doppelganger before, you know, and I haven’t seen you girls much since you arrived. You truly are . . . interesting.”
The woman was looking at her like she was some kind of new bug. Indera wished she would go away; the air was chilling her muscles rapidly. At this rate, she’d have to warm up all over again if she wanted to practice more.
Yet Tajio kept talking. “If you don’t mind my saying so, though—”
I do, Indera thought furiously.
“You don’t seem entirely happy.” The Void witch gave her a sympathetic look. “Is there anything I might do to help?”
Indera threw her towel down and glared at the woman. “Not unless you can convince somebody to let me go back to Silverfire, where I could train for real.”
Tajio’s eyes widened. “What do you mean, ‘for real’?”
“I mean that if I were there, I’d be training every waking minute to be a Hunter. Not this slow, stupid—I’m not even going to get to be a Hunter. They could have at least left me there until it was time.”
“As I understand it,” Tajio said, coming closer, “you were in danger there.”
Indera scowled. “Oh, yeah. Danger. Just because one stupid Windblade disappeared. And she’s not even dead. If these other witches hate her so much, why haven’t they killed her?”
Tajio smiled thinly. “Oh, I’m sure they’d like to. But they can’t.”
“Can’t? What, you’re telling me a bunch of big magical witches can’t kill one girl? Or that some stupid Windblade is so amazing she defeats everybody they send against her? Or that they’re afraid of what’ll happen if they do kill her?” Indera snorted in contempt. “They’re already in trouble with the Void Prime. I doubt they care what anybody would think if they killed some girl.”
“No, of course not. What I meant is that they can’t kill Naspeth. Not without Urishin.”
That made no sense. “What?”
The Void witch’s eyes widened again. “You mean—Haven’t they told you?”
Now Indera was getting suspicious. “Told me what?”
“That you can’t be killed.”
It was like descending a staircase and thinking there would be one more step at the bottom. The ground thudded up unexpectedly beneath Indera. “I can’t what?”
“You share one soul,” Tajio said, and her tone took on the lecturing quality Indera was getting so very sick of here in Starfall. But this time the subject interested her, and so she paid attention. “Two bodies, one soul. If one body is killed, but the other survives, then the dead one will come back to life. They can’t kill Naspeth without Urishin.”
“You mean they need to, what, kill both at once?”
“Yes,” Tajio said. “Or else to get one to kill the other. That’s what they sent Miryo to do; did they tell you about that? If the witch and the doppelganger share a soul, then they are the only ones who can kill each other separately.”
Indera was fascinated against her will. “What happens if they do?”
Tajio shrugged. “The witch has always killed the doppelganger, so far as I know. When she does, then her magic stabilizes; she comes home and takes up duties as usual. She has to do that; if she doesn’t, then her magic will be out of control, and will kill them both.” She caught herself, and smiled thinly again. “At least, that’s how it used to be. But I’ve never heard of an instance of a doppelganger killing the witch.” Her expression became distant as she considered it. “Well, I can only imagine that it would eliminate the magic, since the witch-half is the one power is channeled through. I expect the doppelganger would continue on as it has up until that point, just as the witch keeps her power when the doppelganger is dead.”
Then the woman’s eyes cleared, and she looked back to Indera, no longer lost in the airy land of speculation and theory. “But of course the entire point of this is to keep you both alive. And, eventually, to make you one person.”
“Yeah,” Indera said, losing her enthusiasm for the conversation. Her muscles had gone stone cold; there was no point in trying to practice more. She’d have to wait for tomorrow. “I should get back inside.”
“Yes, of course,” Tajio said, and gestured for the girl to precede her down the path. Indera picked up her towel and headed for the buildings, thinking about what the witch had said.
Chapter Sixteen
ASHIN HAD JAMMED a wad of cloth into her mouth before Mirei began the translocation spell, so when they came out of the Void she bit down hard on it and mostly muffled her screams. Mirei lurched off to one side the minute they reappeared, feeling none too well herself. Damn. Pulling people through hits me harder than just moving myself. She leaned against a rock and convinced herself not to vomit.
Falya had provided them with the perfect destination, she saw when she finally lifted her head. A stream wound its way down between the heavy granite knobs of the mountains, and plunged over a man-high precipice just to their left. In front of them, a gnarled cherry tree had taken root firmly enough that it formed a small, stubborn island in the middle of the stream, which flowed around it to either side before rejoining and continuing down into a meadow. This had been Falya’s favorite place to come when she was shirking chores. It was sheltered, with a jutting ridge of stone between it and her family’s cottage, and unless you went around the long way and came right up into the meadow, there was no way to see anyone here.
Ashin was regaining control of herself; her hyperventilation slowed, and she took the gag from her mouth. Righting herself from where she’d curled up on her side, she managed a shaky laugh. “When I first heard you could do that, I thought you could make yourself the most popular woman in Starfall, ferrying witches to wherever they needed to go. I’m sorry to tell you, but I don’t think people will be lining up for this.”
“It was brave of you to volunteer,” Mirei said.
Ashin shrugged with a growing semblance of her usual composure. “We used you in our schemes. Saved your life, as it turned out, but still—we used you. We owe you a debt for that. And I owe you for Sharyo’s life.” Another shaky laugh. “And Indera’s. Although I’m still not used to thinking of her as mine.”
“Do you talk with her often?” Mirei asked, picking up the bundle Ashin had dropped.
“Indera? No. She doesn’t like me very much.”
“Nor does she like Sharyo. I thought getting the two of them to meet would put her fears to rest, but I don’t think it has. Indera’s too fond of being a doppelganger, with all the associated benefits.”
Ashin shrugged again. “She’ll have to get used to the idea of losing them. But she has years before that will happen, at least.”
I hope time does the trick. Mirei pinched the nerve between her thumb and forefinger, trying to combat her headache, then gave it up as a lost cause. “Do you feel up for a little healing? I’d rather not be off my game while we’re here.”
The Hand Key gave her a sharp look. “You’re not well?”
“I’ve been getting headaches lately.” There was a bird’s nest in a crook of the cherry tree; Mirei climbed up to it and found a feather Ashin could use as a focus. The lacework of power settled over her, and the headache and nausea faded. “Keep the feather,” she said when the other witch was done. “With the distance we’re going to be walking, we may need it again before we get to Tungral.”
THE SUN WAS OUT when they began, but the sky soon grayed ov
er and the air became quite chill. Mirei was glad they had thought to allow for how much colder it would be that far north and up in the mountains; otherwise they would have been a very miserable pair of vagrants.
Which they might yet become, if the weather decided to dump snow on them like it seemed to be considering. They made their way from Falya’s family’s cottage to Lyonakh itself, then skirted the village’s edge. What the doppelganger had called “the big road” proved to be a rutted, stony track leading downslope from the village, which they found easily and began following.
“If I’m right about the distance, we could hurry and maybe reach it today,” Mirei said, keeping her voice as low and her accent as Kalistyin as she could. No one was around, but the practice was useful. “Kekkai won’t be looking for us until the day after tomorrow, though. I figure we keep our pace slow, camp out tonight, get to Tungral tomorrow. That leaves us the rest of that day to take a look at the town and figure out the situation.”
“Sleeping in the cold,” Ashin sighed. “What fun. Are we both going into the inn to meet Kekkai? I’d rather have a lookout, but on the other hand, if we have to get out of there quickly, we don’t want to waste time trying to get to one another. Unless you think you could move me at a distance.”
“Do you really want me trying that for the first time in the middle of an emergency?” Both of them shuddered. “Can’t say what the best approach will be until we’re there. I’d like a lookout, too, but you’re right about splitting up.”
They passed other travelers on the road. By the look of the signposts, there were a lot of little villages scattered in pocket side valleys, their own paths leading off from the road. Traces of early snow lingered in sheltered areas, but the road itself was still clear; it looked like a number of villagers were making one last foot visit to or from Tungral before settling in to wait for the deep snows that would make sledging possible.
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