by Kyra Halland
“We was just tryin’ to hang him, like you told us to, for provokin’ the blueskins,” Ollis said. “Then this fella comes up and shoots the rope apart and starts tellin’ us lies about you.” He looked at Lainie. “Don’t know who the gal is. His birdie, I guess.”
“Indeed.” The mage looked from Silas to Lainie, who had stepped out from behind Silas to stand at his left. “Ah, Miss Banfrey. A pleasure to see you again. And Mr. Venedias. You look in considerably better health than you did the last time I saw you.”
“Speaking of birdies, asshole,” Lainie retorted, “where’s Elspetya? Does your wife know about this?”
Astentias smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “You are as lovely and spirited as your grandmother, my dear. We had been given to understand that the two of you had perished in an avalanche in the Gap, along with a number of the Mage Council’s men. I’m glad to see the report was incorrect. Dare I hope that you have decided to join our cause, after all?”
Lainie drew breath, no doubt to give Astentias another piece of her mind. Silas took her hand and squeezed it before she could say anything. If they played along with Astentias for a bit, they might get some information out of him. Clearly, the Mage Council didn’t really believe that he and Lainie were dead, not if they had three thousand gildings in bounties out on them; they had probably planted that story to discourage the Hidden Council from searching for them. Astentias must welcome this unexpected opportunity to try again to recruit her.
“We were looking for Madam Lorentius to discuss matters with her when we saw this young man about to be hanged,” Silas said. “Given the Plains’ propensity for hanging mages, we assumed he was one of our people, and stopped to help. You could save us a considerable amount of time and trouble if you’ll tell us where Madam Lorentius is.”
Astentias gave Silas a genial smile. “Somehow, Mr. Venedias, I’m not convinced you’ve really come around to our side.”
The white-haired mage’s right hand glowed silver. Immediately, instinctively, Silas aimed at him and fired, but even as he pulled the trigger, a translucent silver shield went up in front of Astentias. Silas’s bullet struck the shield, slowed, and dropped to the ground. At the same instant, Astentias flung a bolt of silver lightning around the edge of the shield directly at Silas, in a risky and difficult maneuver. Silas ducked away from the bolt; rose-colored light smashed into it in a brilliant collision.
The men around them scattered, along with the kid they’d been trying to hang. Only the bearded man remained in place. He drew his gun and aimed it at Silas.
“Are you crazy, Bodgis?” Ollis yelled at him from a safe distance. “You want to get in the middle of a wizard fight?”
“He shot at our wizard!” Bodgis shouted. Silas fired just before Bodgis pulled his trigger. Bodgis’s hat flew from his head, and his bullet grazed Silas’s arm. Lainie fired; Bodgis’s gun went spinning from his hand. He screamed in pain as he grabbed his bleeding hand, and sank to his knees on the ground.
A second blast of silver light plowed into the dirt between Silas and Lainie, sending them both diving aside to the snowy ground. Silas got up on one knee, switched his gun to his right hand, and fired, then sent a ball of blue and amber power hurtling at Astentias. The white-haired mage put up his shield in time to absorb the bullet and block the magical attack, but he had left his right side open again to allow himself to counterattack. A rope of rose-colored power swooped around the edge of the shield and wrapped itself around his legs. Lainie pulled on the rope like she was bringing in a runaway calf and jerked Astentias off his feet. Silas took advantage of Astentias being momentarily subdued to reload his gun.
A sharp bolt of deep purple severed Lainie’s magical rope. “Be careful, my lord!” a man shouted, running over. Astentias got to his feet as the second mage, his hand glowing purple, reached his side. The two of them sent a wall of silver and purple hurtling towards Lainie. She threw a shield of rose streaked with amber, and the silver and purple wave hit it with a force that made her stumble back.
Silas shifted his gun back to his left hand, sent power and intent into it, and fired a paralyzing bolt towards Astentias’s heart. The blue and amber bolt was intercepted by another wave of silver and purple in an earthshaking explosion. Yet another sheet of silver magic flew towards Silas, and this time it engulfed him. He felt himself thrown backwards, then he slammed into the ground and the silver light gave way to darkness.
* * *
LAINIE WOKE UP on a cold stone floor in a dark room. Moonlight streamed in through a single small window high up on the wall; more dim light shone from somewhere behind her. Memories came to her mind, the battle with Lord Astentias, and then a violent silver blast that slammed into her and sent her flying –
Fear jolted through her. She pressed a hand against her abdomen and frantically sought for the bright spark of her baby’s life.
It was still there, safe inside her and strong as ever.
Lainie’s relief quickly faded as she thought back on the fight. Astentias’s tricky shielding and sheer strength had taken her and Silas by surprise. He and the other Hidden Council mage had beaten them handily, and the fight was only going to get harder from here on out. Much as she wanted to protect her baby, she was going to have to be right in the middle of it. Silas’s ability to use his power had come back in an impressive way, but he was even more vulnerable to the Sh’kimech than she was. And it was her grandmother causing all this trouble; it was Lainie’s duty of honor to stop her.
She sat up, groaning at the aches and pains all over her body, and looked around the room. The window wasn’t barred, but it was too high and too narrow for anyone to climb through. Three of the walls of the small cell were solid, made of hard-baked mud brick; the fourth had a door of iron bars set into it. On the other side of the door, a barrel-chested man with the copper badge of a deputy pinned to his vest sat at a desk. His feet were propped up on the desktop and he was snoring softly. A half-empty whiskey bottle stood on the floor by his chair. Lainie and Silas’s gunbelts were piled on the desk.
Lainie pushed her face against the bars of the door to get a better look to either side of her cell, and found that she was on the left end of a row of four cells. “Silas?” she whispered loudly.
His hand waved at her from between the bars of the cell at the other end. “Over here, darlin’,” he answered, also keeping his voice down. “You and baby okay over there?”
“We’re fine. I’m kind of sore.” In truth, she felt like she had fallen off her horse. Everything felt bumped and bruised and scraped, but at least there didn’t seem to be any serious damage. “You?”
“Been worse. I’ll live.”
“How are we going to get out of here?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll have us out right quick. Let’s be ready to restrain the good deputy there if he wakes up.”
“I don’t think he’ll wake up; it looks like he’s got a good dose of whiskey in him.” At that moment, the deputy let out a loud, gasping snore. Lainie froze, waiting for him to wake up, after all. He mumbled to himself, then fell quiet again.
Lainie let out a long breath and called up a thread of power to bind the deputy if need be. A soft clunking sound came from the other end of the room, then the barred door of Silas’s cell swung open. He stepped out, looking banged up but otherwise unhurt. Noiselessly, he walked over to Lainie’s cell and set the forefinger of his left hand against the lock. The ring on his finger pulsed with faint light, blue streaked with amber. With a murmured word and a slight gesture of Silas’s finger, the tumblers in the lock turned and the lock clicked open.
“That was too easy,” Lainie whispered as she stepped out of the cell.
Silas nodded. “There was a charm on the locks that probably alerted someone when I opened them. We better hurry.”
They went quietly to the desk and buckled on their gunbelts, then left the jailhouse without waking the deputy. Outside, they stood in the shadows of the covered walkway, press
ed back against the wall of the building, looking to see if the way was clear. “How come you never showed me how to do that unlocking spell?” Lainie asked, still keeping to a whisper.
“I wouldn’t want to corrupt your morals, Miss Lainie,” Silas said with a wink.
“I’m afraid it’s far too late to be worrying about that, Mr. Vendine.” Lainie looked around at the dark, deserted street. The night was cold and quiet; the moonlight shone on the snow that frosted the roofs of the unburned buildings and lay piled along the edges of the street. “I wonder where that boy got to.”
“I didn’t see him in the jail,” Silas said.
Lainie’s heart froze. “I hope they didn’t hang him after they locked us up.”
“Mister?” a voice said from nearby. “Ma’am?”
Lainie just about jumped out of her skin. She and Silas spun towards the voice, hands instinctively going to their guns. A skinny figure stood in the opening of the narrow gap between the sheriff’s office and the neighboring building – Jimmo, the boy who’d nearly been hanged. Lainie willed her heart to stop pounding like a herd on the stampede. “Thank the gods, they didn’t hang you,” she whispered.
“No, ma’am,” Jimmo replied, lowering his voice as well. “When you were fighting them wizards, I ran and hid, but I could still see them haul you off to jail. I figured, you bein’ wizards and all, they couldn’t keep you in jail, so I hid back here and waited for you to break out. Some folks are sayin’ maybe the blueskin attack wasn’t my fault after all, but some are still wantin’ to hang me, and I wouldn’t lay money on the folks who say it wasn’t my fault winning the argument. So I figured I’d ask if I can stick with you folks and you can see me out to my girl’s place.”
“If we make it out of town,” Silas said. “We aren’t exactly the safest folks to be around right now, and I think we tripped an alarm getting out of jail. But if we make it out of town, we’ll make sure you get to your girl’s place. You’ll be safe there?”
“Yep. They’ve got a dozen hands working out there, all crack shots, and her Pa knows I was there that night and not out rilin’ up the blueskins.”
“And her Pa hasn’t got any other reason to be gunning for you?”
“No, sir.” Jimmo’s face reddened. “At least, I don’t think so.”
“Good. Stay close to us, but be ready to run if we tell you to. Did you happen to see what they did with our horses?”
“No, sir. I mean, I didn’t see them do anything with your horses. I reckon they’re still where you left them, if they haven’t wandered off.”
“They won’t wander,” Silas said, looking up and down the street.
Lainie looked as well, trying to pick out an escape route. They could keep to the shelter of the covered sidewalk and head for the east end of the street, the direction from which they’d arrived in town and where the gallows stood, and where – hopefully – the horses were waiting. No doubt they would be expected to go that way, as it was the shortest route out of town. Or they could go all the way down to the west end of the street, then circle back outside town to where they’d left the horses. But that would take much longer.
Lainie spotted a clear gap between two buildings across the street; they could make a break across the street and get out of town that way, then go back around to the east for the horses. It would leave them exposed as they crossed the street, but it was a shorter distance while also not being the most obvious escape route. She jerked her head that way.
Silas nodded back. “Let’s go. Come on, kid.”
Silently, the three of them took off running from the shadows of the covered sidewalk into the street.
Chapter 20
BEFORE THEY MADE it halfway across the street, a dozen or more men appeared from the buildings on either side of the street. Aiming their guns at Lainie, Silas, and Jimmo, the men spread out across the street, blocking all the routes out of town. Lainie and Silas threw a shield around the three of them; in the moonlit night, the shield shimmered rose, blue, and amber.
“The wizard told us you’d likely make a break for it, and set up a signal to warn us,” one of the gunmen said. His face was shadowed by his hat, but going by his size and voice, Lainie recognized him as Ollis, who’d been leading the gang that had tried to hang Jimmo.
Lainie braced herself for a fight. Though she had single-handedly taken down nine mages in Sandostra, the fourteen armed Plain men she counted around her presented their own challenge, even with Silas fighting at her side. She lowered the shield just enough to extend her mage senses past it, and found an unshielded mage close by, though not in the street. Not Astentias, but the other one. Where was Astentias? “Stay close to us, inside the shield,” she said to Jimmo.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“We don’t want trouble,” Silas said in that calm, cold voice that any man with any sense would pay serious heed to. “We’re after the people who started the trouble with the blueskins. If you don’t let us go, everything – the rules, the attacks, the hangings – will only get worse.”
The metallic clicking sound of guns being cocked was the only response.
“Don’t be stupid,” Silas said. “You know you can’t beat us. My wife and I are both sharpshooters and wizards. She beat nine wizards single-handedly not long ago.”
“Lord Astentias got the better of you,” a man said.
The word “lord” grated on Lainie’s nerves as much as the reminder of the defeat. “Since when do Wildings folk call anyone ‘Lord’?” she snapped. “Have you all forgotten why you or your parents or your grandparents came out here? You’re a disgrace, letting that man come in and boss you around like this!”
“He’s protecting us from the blueskins!” another man answered.
“So where is he now?” Lainie demanded.
“He, uh, he rode off right after he took you two down,” Ollis said. “Said he had to go somewhere, talk to someone. It was important. In the meantime, we’re supposed to make sure you don’t go anywhere. He won’t like it if we let you get away; it’ll be us hanging from the gallows if we do.”
Bitterbush Springs, Lainie realized. Astentias must be going to Madam Lorentius. If he only wanted to warn her, he could have used a message box. But if it came to a fight, of course he would want to fight at her side. Which meant he wasn’t really expecting these men to stop her and Silas, just slow them down.
“We don’t have time for this,” Silas said to the men. “You can’t fight us. Why do you think Astentias turned tail and ran? And we don’t want to fight you. Let us pass, and no one will get hurt.”
A few of the men looked at each other uncertainly. “I don’t reckon we want to tangle with wizards,” one of them said.
“Remember what Lord Astentias told us!” Ollis shouted. “Don’t let them go! Or we’re all dead men!”
“Damn right, Ollis,” another man answered. He fired; the bullet pierced Lainie and Silas’s shield, slowed, and dropped to the ground.
“Whoa,” Jimmo said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Damn it, don’t be stupid!” Silas called out to the men. “I’ll lay money Astentias told you to keep us alive if you can, but we’ve got no problem killing you if we have to!”
“Keep this alive, wizard bastard!” the same man shouted back. He fired again, followed by the rest of the men opening fire.
“Run,” Silas ordered, pointing back to the narrow gap between the jailhouse and the building next to it, where they had just come from. Keeping the boy between them, Lainie and Silas dashed through the gunfire towards the shelter. Judging by the men’s aim, they weren’t shooting to kill, or maybe their marksmanship was just bad, and the shield slowed the bullets down to harmless speed. But maintaining the shield against the barrage of bullets from fourteen guns took effort and concentration, and if they let it slip, sooner or later one of the men was bound to get a lethal shot, even if by accident.
Lainie lunged for the gap; her hat fell off but Sila
s pushed her to safety before she could grab it. As they pressed back in the narrow passage, she looked down to the other end to see if they could escape that way. The alley led to a fenced-in stable yard; moonlight glinted off guns held by men moving around out there.
“Shield down,” Silas said.
Lainie dropped the shield, and Silas shot at the men in the street then ducked back as they returned fire. Lainie threw out a bolt of magic that scattered a few of them and left one lying in the street. As the men regrouped, Silas blasted them with a ball of blue and amber. That took down five or six, but several others were getting ready to fire again.
“We’re not getting anywhere this way,” Silas said. “We’re going to have to take them out. Though I’d rather not kill any more of them than we have to.” He stuck his head just past the corner of the building and fired. A searing beam of blue power shot out from his gun and plowed into the ground at the feet of several of the men. Dirt exploded into the air and the men fell back, covering their eyes. “Are you going to stop fighting us?” Silas called out. “Or do we have to get serious?”
A bullet hitting the wall next to him was their answer.
Silas ducked back into the gap. “You okay shooting left-handed?” he asked Lainie.
“You made me practice till I was,” she reminded him.
“Good.” He started reloading his gun, and she did the same. “I’ll work up something big,” he said. “We’ll go out attacking two-handed, shooting and using magic. Then you go on covering me while I take care of the rest of them. Kid,” he said to Jimmo.
“Yes sir?” the boy asked eagerly.
“Run out with us, but stay behind us, and stay out of our way. Got that?”
“Yes, sir!”
“I dropped my hat,” Lainie said. She didn’t feel right fighting without it; she must have picked that up from Silas.