by Kyra Halland
In spite of the hunger’s demands, it was so peaceful lying there in the street, knowing that it was over and she and Silas and the baby had survived. She would tend to the hunger eventually, but right now, not even the needy emptiness in her body or the cold seeping into her bones from the churned-up snow and dirt could make her get up.
Footsteps crunched along the ground and stopped not far away. “Vendine. Miss Banfrey,” said a familiar voice. “Good to see you again. You two ain’t looking so well, but I suppose that’s only to be expected.”
Lainie craned her head back to see who it was. One of the mage hunters who had tried to capture her and Silas in Discovery was standing near her head, aiming his gun at her. The one who had fought with Silas – Halias, his name was. A scream of frustration tried to push its way out of her, but she was so exhausted all that came out was a whimper.
“Gods damn it all, what in all the hells are you sheepknocking sons of bitches doing here?” Silas demanded.
“That was a hell of an entertaining battle,” said the other hunter, Kort. He was aiming his gun at Silas. “Two against thirteen; mighty impressive.”
Silas exploded with a string of curses in the Island language. “You mean you gods-damned ass-sucking sheepknocking bastard whoresons just stood there and watched the whole damned time and didn’t try to help us?”
“We would have hated to ruin your accomplishment by offering help which you didn’t seem to need,” Kort said.
Silas growled out something else in the Island speech that Lainie guessed was probably even more obscene.
“Besides,” Halias said, “we weren’t sure which side to join. That white-haired gentleman was Merlovan Astentias, a member of the Mage Council.”
“That bastard Astentias was a renegade, you idiots! A traitor to the Mage Council. If you saw most of the fight, you heard what he and Madam Lorentius were planning. Once they were in power out here, how long do you think they would have left Granadaia in peace?”
“Be that as it may,” Kort said, “Halias and I have a bit of business to settle with you now, in the matter of the largest bounty ever put on the heads of a pair of rogue mages. We’ll be living in fine style for years on that payout.”
Somehow – Lainie couldn’t imagine how – Silas got to his feet, revolver in hand. Blood soaked the back of the left shoulder of his duster and the left leg of his pants. He picked up his hat from where it had fallen, jammed it onto his head, then faced the two hunters and aimed his gun at them. Did he even have any bullets left? Lainie tried to remember; the effort made her head pound.
“We didn’t come through all this,” Silas ground out, “just to give ourselves up to a couple of cowardly sheepknocking morons like you.”
With a huge effort, Lainie summoned the strength to move. If Silas could, she could too, and she couldn’t let him face the hunters alone. She tried to stand but the weakness in her legs and the burning, throbbing pain in her right thigh defeated her effort. She looked down at her leg; the kerchief binding the gunshot wound was soaked with blood. Still, the injury shouldn’t be enough to keep her down.
With her own gun still in her hand, she crawled over to where she could grab the back of Silas’s duster and hauled herself to her feet. “You can try to take advantage of us being worn out,” she said, aiming her gun at the hunters as well, “but we’ll go down fighting.”
Halias and Kort eyed the two revolvers pointed at them. “Excuse us a moment,” Halias said.
The two mage hunters turned away. She and Silas couldn’t possibly look that intimidating right now, Lainie thought. It was surely too much to hope that the hunters would decide to leave them alone after all.
After a moment of whispered conversation, the hunters turned back to Silas and Lainie, holstering their guns. “We do have to admit we’re impressed by the courage and fighting prowess the two of you displayed,” Halias said. “And we’ll concede that Madam Lorentius and her group could have been a threat to the Mage Council, and you might have done the Council and Granadaia a favor by, ah, eliminating the problem. Therefore, we’re willing to offer you a deal.”
Silas and Lainie held their aim steady. “Let’s hear it,” Silas said.
“Hand over your mage rings to us,” Kort said. “We’ll take them back to Granadaia, tell them you’re dead, collect our three thousand gildings, and that’s the end of that.”
“It’s true that you’ve broken some important laws,” Halias added, “but if all you really want is to live your own lives without troubling anyone else, we don’t have a problem with that, as long as you give up your mage rings, renounce the use of magic, and promise to stay out of trouble.”
Impossible, Lainie thought. They couldn’t – How could they turn away from using magic? Once, when she had first met Silas, she had said she would rather give up magic than go to school in Granadaia, and he had challenged her, asking if she could really do that. Now, a year and a half later, she knew she couldn’t; giving up magic would be like giving up breathing. And when Silas hadn’t been able to use his power, he had seemed like a shadow of himself, half the man he had been. They couldn’t possibly –
“It’s a deal,” Silas said. As Lainie stared in disbelief, he holstered his gun and, with only a slight hesitation, pulled the silver ring from his left forefinger and dropped it into Kort’s outstretched hand.
“You too, Miss Banfrey,” Halias said.
Lainie looked down at her right forefinger, at her pretty ring, delicate gold with three rose-red gems. Her breathing grew tight at the thought of giving it up along with her magic. “But it’s my wedding ring too,” she said, blinking back tears.
Silas touched her cheek. “It’s our freedom, darlin’.”
“But what if some other mage hunter recognizes us and knows we ain’t really dead?”
“Without a bounty on your heads, no one will care,” Kort said.
Silas nodded. “And no hunter would give away this little trick of ours. Not if he doesn’t want the rest of us gunning for him.”
“The honor among mage hunters would demand his silence,” Halias added.
Silas was right. This was the only way they’d ever be able to live without having to look over their shoulders for mage hunters all the time. Even if a hunter came along sooner or later who cared more about the money he could get for them than about this code of honor among mage hunters, at least for now they could have some peace. Lainie held out her hand and looked at her ring one last time. It gleamed in the moonlight, and she remembered how it had sparkled in the sun the morning they rode out to join the cattle drive, a few days after Silas gave it to her.
“You’ll do what you said, take the rings back to the Mage Council and tell them we’re dead?” she asked. “You won’t double-cross us?”
“Three thousand gildings says you have our word on it,” Kort said.
With a great sigh, Lainie pulled the ring from her finger. Halias reached for it, but Silas said, “I’ll do it.” He took the ring from her, and she felt a wrench as he severed the thin line of power connecting it to her. Then he gave the ring to Halias.
The two hunters each put the ring they were holding in their respective pockets; it seemed neither of them trusted the other to hold both of the rings. “You folks take care, now,” Halias said. Then they tipped their hats and walked away.
Lainie and Silas watched them mount up on their horses, hitched behind the remains of the Rusty Widow, and ride away. Lainie’s throat ached, and she wiped tears from her eyes. “That ring was the prettiest thing I ever had.” It was a stupid thing to cry over, after everything else that had happened, but right now it was more than she could bear.
“I reckon we can find one at least as nice at that jeweler’s in Bentwood Gulch,” Silas said. “And one for me, too. With the right colored stones, of course.”
Understanding dawned. Lainie looked up at Silas. “You’ll make new mage rings for us? But – that’s not allowed, is it?”
He gav
e her a wink and a grin. “We’re officially dead, darlin’. We can do anything we want.”
A light, free sensation bloomed inside Lainie, where she had felt weighed down by fear and worry for so long, and she laughed. She reached for Silas’s hand and gripped it tightly; he squeezed her hand just as hard. Hunger surged through her. “Let’s head out…” to my Pa’s place, she started to say.
The words died in her mouth as men began to emerge from the ruined buildings where they had been sheltering, moonlight glinting off of their guns.
Chapter 28
IN ONLY A moment, Lainie and Silas were surrounded by a couple dozen townsfolk, men and women, most of them aiming guns at them. Even the sheriff was among them. Lainie’s stomach turned to a lump of ice at the sight of faces she knew, faces she had grown up among, staring at her in hate and anger.
Beside her, Silas tensed. “Look,” he said, “we don’t want trouble.”
“Damned lying wizards, trouble’s all you’re good for,” said Sanderton, the blacksmith. “We know you’re weak now and can’t use your magics, and there’s room for two more on that gallows outside town –”
“We just saved this godforsaken sheepknocking shithole of a town!” Silas exploded.
“If it weren’t for wizards, the town wouldn’t have needed saving in the first place!” Mr. Mundy shouted back. “Look what they did to our boarding house!”
“And my store!” Mr. Minton added.
“Got those nooses ready, boys?” another man, a hand from one of the ranches, called out.
Amidst laughter, two more men held up ropes with nooses tied in them. “Time for a party!” one of them shouted.
Quickly, Lainie and Silas reloaded their guns. Lainie could barely stand, and the hunger writhed through her body and tore at her thoughts, but she took up her position standing back to back with Silas, both of them aiming at the mob. “You’ll have to take us first!” she called out.
The people surrounding them hesitated. A few of them took a step back; with so many folks crowded around, some of them were bound to get hurt if it came to shooting. Lainie held her breath. Her gun hand shook with tension and exhaustion and the weight of her weapon as she waited for one of them to make the first move and prayed that they wouldn’t. She had killed enough people today.
From beyond the mob, a familiar voice called out, “Lainie! Vendine!”
“Pa!” Lainie cried out as Burrett Banfrey came riding in at a gallop from the west, with Mr. Dorson at his right hand as always, along with a couple dozen other men, hands from the ranch and others. Mala and Abenar followed them on leads. Relief at seeing her Pa and the horses all safe flooded through Lainie, but still she feared what the mob might do to him. “Pa, be careful!”
Burrett and the men with him reined in just short of the crowd and dismounted, accompanied by a racket of metallic clicks as they readied their guns to fire. “Stand aside,” Burrett said, “or we’ll start shooting.”
The mob was about evenly matched by Burrett’s men. At the good chance that they might get hurt, the crowd parted, muttering angrily. Lainie ran, stumbling and staggering, into her father’s arms. “Pa,” she wept as he hugged her tight.
“Mala and the big gray showed up at the ranch a while after that old hag and her gang hurried off to town,” Burrett said, “so I knew you two must be in trouble. It took me a while to round up enough men and get over here.”
Good horse, Mala, remembering the way home. And good for Abenar, following her like he knew he should. “Did they hurt you? I was so worried about you!” Lainie looked up into her Pa’s face. He looked even more worn and weary than she remembered, and a fading bruise colored his jaw. She touched it carefully. “What’d they do to you?”
“When they showed up wanting to move in, they didn’t see fit to take ‘no’ for an answer, and they weren’t the most agreeable guests. But I’m fine. Better than they are now, I’m guessing.”
“We haven’t checked on all of them,” Silas said, “but I can tell you for sure that Madam Lorentius, Lord Astentias, and most of the others are dead.”
“Good,” Burrett said. “Terrorizing our town, hanging innocent folk, plotting to take over the Wildings, I can only say good riddance to ’em. What about you, baby girl?” He stepped back a bit to get a look at Lainie. “What happened to you?”
“I’m shot through the leg, Pa.” All at once, the seriousness of her injury hit her, along with everything else bad that could have happened. She burst into tears again.
Burrett pulled her back in for another hug and patted her back. “Everything’s okay now, baby girl. You two come back to the ranch and I’ll see you looked after right and proper.”
With her father’s arm around her shoulders, Lainie limped over to Mala. She tried and failed to haul herself into the saddle, so her Pa lifted her up.
“You going to be able to ride, darlin’?” Silas asked.
“I think so.” She clung to the saddle horn like a greenfoot who’d never been on horseback before, almost too weak and weary to sit up by herself. But it wasn’t far to the ranch, just four leagues or so; with the prospect of home ahead of her, she could hang on that long. An unexpected face among her father’s men caught her eye now. “Mooden?” she asked.
The big, timid miner smiled shyly. “That’s me, Miss Lainie. Your Pa, Mr. Banfrey, was kind enough to hire me on, out of gratitude for me helping rescue you when they tried to string you up.”
Besides helping Silas rescue her from the hanging mob, Mooden had been kind to her during the ordeal beneath Yellowbird Canyon. His face was one of a handful from her and Silas’s adventures that Lainie was happy to see again. “That’s good. I’m right glad to hear it.”
Before Silas, Burrett, and the other men could mount their own horses, Sheriff Armley walked over. “Listen, Banfrey,” he said. “It’s a nice little family reunion you got going on here, and we hate to interrupt it. But wizards have caused enough trouble in this town already, and we don’t want nothin’ more to do with any of ’em.”
“You can’t tell me I can’t have my own flesh and blood out to my own place!” Burrett retorted.
“Vendine and the girl have three days, and then if they aren’t out of here we’ll take matters into our own hands.”
“An’ there better not be any trouble in the meantime!” one of the men holding ropes added.
Burrett’s face darkened. “You’re threatening my baby girl and her husband?”
He and the men glared at each other. The rest of the hostile townsfolk and the men who had ridden in with Burrett shifted their stances, ready to fight.
Lainie cut into the tense silence. “We got no need to stay where we ain’t wanted, Pa. If I can spend a few days at home with you first, I’ll be happy to shake the dust of this place off my feet. Let’s go.” She reined Mala around to head west out of town, and Silas and the other men mounted up and followed her.
* * *
AT THE RANCH, Bunky and Snoozer came running out to greet them, barking happily. Lainie slid down from Mala and knelt on the ground. The cattlehounds enthusiastically licked and sniffed at her, and Rat, the one-eared orange tabby tom, looking scruffy in his old age but no less fat, rubbed against her, purring mightily. Lainie’s throat choked up as she hugged the hounds and the cat and scratched their heads. She had figured her pets would live the rest of their lives and go on to the heavens without her ever seeing them again.
“Git off to the barn with you,” Burrett told the animals. “Come on, baby girl, let’s get you inside.”
While one of the hands took Mala and Abenar to the stable, Silas and Burrett helped Lainie into the house. Even though Lainie knew she couldn’t stay long, a feeling of sweet comfort came over her as she crossed the threshold of the house she had grown up in.
In the front parlor, Silas dropped to his knees before the household shrine and stayed there for a long moment, hands and forehead resting on the altar. Lainie knelt beside him, giving her thanks to th
e gods as well.
At length, Silas put a handful of gilding pieces on the altar as an offering and stood up, then he and Burrett helped Lainie to her room. They washed and bandaged the gunshot wound in her leg; the wound was clean, and had pretty much stopped bleeding by now. Silas’s own injuries, in his right upper arm, left shoulder, and the back of his left thigh, were also no more than flesh wounds. Burrett promised to have the doctor over in the morning to see if the bullets could or should be removed, then left the room.
Silas helped Lainie into a fresh chemise and drawers and a pair of thick socks from the clothes she had left behind in her wardrobe, and tucked her into her bed. As he spread the quilt her mother had made over her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down to her. Safe and alone at last, she didn’t have to fight back the aching demands of magical depletion any longer. “I’m awful hungry,” she said. “And not just for food.”
His mouth covered hers in a devouring kiss. “You sure you’re up for it?” he mumbled through the kiss even as he pushed aside the quilt and moved over her. “With your leg and everything?”
“No, but I don’t care.”
The door opened and Burrett said, “Thought you might be hungry, Lainie girl.”
Silas whispered a curse and pulled away as Lainie suppressed a moan. Her cheeks flamed at what her Pa had seen and what he must be thinking. “I guess so,” she said.
Burrett was holding a tray with a bowl of stew, some slices of bread, and a cup of milk. “There’s more in the kitchen, if you want some,” he said to Silas.