“I know you don’t like what’s happened,” she said, taking the maid’s hands even as Moirae reached up to arrange her hair. “I know you must hate me now.”
Her eyes brimming with unshed tears, Moirae stood clutching the pearl-handled brush she’d picked up, and made no move to break out of her mistress’s grasp. “How could you do it, miss? How could you set Mister Julian up like that, when he loves you so?”
That Moirae knew what she’d done Dulcinea didn’t even think to doubt; the girl had a way of finding things out, which had made her invaluable. And because it was Moirae, Dulcinea swallowed her pride and said, “As the gods are my witnesses, I wish I’d had any other choice. I’ll be praying for forgiveness for the rest of my life. But I need to know he’s going to live, Moirae. Do you know where they’ve taken him?”
Moirae’s expression wasn’t precisely mutinous—she was too well trained and too good-hearted for that—but neither did it show any of the forgiveness Dulcinea’s own heart already sought. “I’ve my suspicions. But I don’t know for sure. Not yet.”
“But you can find out. Your brother will be one of the ones taking him away,” Dulcinea pressed. “I’ll give you both anything if you make sure he gets away. As far away from this benighted House as possible.”
“Milord will have our heads if we do that,” Moirae said, fear flaring in her eyes, a breathless squeak strangling her voice. “He didn’t kill Mister Julian on the spot, h-he said he’d let him live—”
“It’s not my husband I’m worried about. It’s the other one. He wants Julian dead.”
Even in her own chambers, Dulcinea was reluctant to speak that above the barest whisper—and even here, she didn’t dare speak Erasmus’s name aloud. But she didn’t need to.
Comprehension drained all the color from Moirae’s face, and she nodded, once slowly, then again with greater force. “You leave it to me, miss,” she said, matching her wary whisper. “I’ll make sure he gets to safety.”
Only then did Dulcinea let go of her. “Anything you need to make it happen, tell me. But Moirae, don’t...don’t tell him I’m arranging it. He may not trust it if he knows it comes from me. And he’d have every right not to.”
Moirae paused and then took the liberty of reaching to clasp her shoulder, a familiar gesture that Dulcinea would have rejected from any other servant, anywhere else in the house. Here and now, though, that small grace note of contact was sorely welcome. “You leave it to me, miss,” she repeated. “Will you be all right if I go now?”
“Go. And report back to me when you’ve done it. I won’t be able to rest until I know.”
The maid bobbed her head and hastened out of the chamber, as silently as she could, looking both ways along the corridor as she left. Not even when the door had closed behind her, not even when she was alone, could Dulcinea allow herself to weep.
She could only call, in her heart of hearts, upon any gods that would listen—Adalon, Nirrivan, she didn’t care—and pray.
* * *
Pain as bright as fire, the worst pain he’d ever experienced, scorched every edge of Julian’s existence. Yet unconsciousness was no refuge, for his dreams were filled with his brother’s thundering voice—and the inexplicable, mindless need that had gripped him at Dulcinea’s nearness. It still haunted him, making his dream-self struggle to reach her. But she was just beyond his reach, turning from him in contempt he’d never seen her express. The hand he threw out to grab her vanished in fire that in turn raced upward to consume his arm. His shoulder. And last of all, his eye.
His scream hurled him from sleep into wakefulness, with no appreciable lessening of his agony. Panic roiled through him along with the pain, for he couldn’t see, and when he unthinkingly tried to clap a hand to his head, his entire right arm shrieked. Panic turned to terror as he realized he had nothing with which to reach his brow; his hand was gone.
“Easy! Easy, Mister Julian, you’re safe. I swear to all the gods you’re safe. Can you hear me?”
He could, though at first he couldn’t recognize the voice. Not until his right eye shivered open did he get back enough unfocused vision to get a face to go with those urgently murmured words. “Who...?”
“It’s Moirae, Mister Julian,” the blurred face above him said. “I know you’re in such pain, sir, and I hate to make you move, but you’re in danger and we’ve got to get you out of here.”
That made all too much sense, even with the furor and fire that seemed ready to devour his every limb. “Danger,” he muttered. “My brother. Didn’t do it, Cleon, I swear I didn’t...”
Small, sturdy hands grasped his shoulders, holding him in place where he lay, with far more strength than he could begin to muster in that moment. “Not just milord Cleon. It’s the other one that did this to you, sir. We need to get you away so he can’t hurt you anymore.”
“We...?”
Another figure leaned in beside the girl Moirae, a young man, like enough to her in face and coloring that Julian could only dimly suppose them to be family—though he could barely remember his own name, much less this boy’s. “Me and a couple of the lads,” the youth said. “We can get you away tonight with no one the wiser.”
Gods, he couldn’t think, Julian couldn’t begin to think with his head and arm both burning, yet it began to sink in nonetheless that he was in terrible trouble. “They’ll come for me,” he said, struggling to speak, to force coherence into a tongue gone thick and dull with pain. “The watch...Cleon was going to give me to the watch.”
“And they’ll toss you right in the Barrows and no mistake,” Moirae said, “assuming you live that long. Neither of your brothers wants you to live that long, Mister Julian. Let us help you stick it to them. Let us get you out of here.”
Doggedly Julian began to sit up, an attempt that only inflamed the fire raging through his muscles, but he set his teeth and almost welcomed it. It cleared his hazed thoughts, at least a little, and let him see that he’d been laid upon a cot in a small building he finally recognized as the groundskeeper’s cottage on his family’s land. The groundskeeper was Moirae’s father and the father of the rangy lad kneeling beside his cot. The boy’s name returned to him—Momus. Why they had elected to help him, he couldn’t begin to fathom. Right then and there, though, he didn’t want to question his luck. It was all too welcome a gift, if both his brothers had finally turned against him in deed as well as spirit.
“I’ve got nowhere to go,” he rasped. “Where can you take me?”
With a grim, stony expression that would have been at home on the face of a man twice his age, Momus said, “If we’re lucky, Mister Julian, we can get you all the way to Shalridan.”
* * *
Near Dolmerrath, Kilmerry Province, Jomhas 27,
AC 1876
Their flight westward through the province felt disturbingly familiar, enough that twelve-year-old memories kept threatening to flare behind Julian’s eyes. The speed along ill-used roads, the urgent need to avoid detection, and the howl-inducing amounts of pain were all the same. But he hadn’t had Morrigh then, or Faanshi’s determined hands pouring power into him to keep him moving, or two elves to guard their backs and find them places to hide.
On the other hand, twelve years ago every Hawk in Kilmerry Province hadn’t been out for his blood, either.
Killing that last patrol sat badly with him. Not that they’d had a choice, and he’d do it again in a heartbeat if it meant preserving Faanshi’s life, but he never liked to kill without a contract. Moreover, he’d never slain Hawks before, by contract or in self-defense. And he could see nothing but greater danger for all of them, now that members of the Order had died in the name of a young healer’s freedom.
The second patrol that found them proved him right.
There were six of them this time, with faster horses and better weapons than the group that had come before, and they swept down upon them in the last few hours of their mad dash for the coast and the wooded cliffs where Dolmerrat
h lay hidden. All that saved them in the first stretch of that chase was that Morrigh, Elisel and Doreel were better horses still—and that Kirinil and Alarrah both were devils with their bows even in the saddle. They took down two of the Hawks with arrows straight through their necks, but that left four, all of whom swiftly demonstrated that they knew exactly how to duck. Alarrah took down a third only by virtue of shooting the horse instead of the rider, making the creature stumble and throw its Hawk from the saddle. The last three, though, kept with them all the way to the Wards.
The best and strongest protection for the hidden stronghold of the elves, the Wards operated with brutal simplicity on anyone of human blood, flooding the victim’s mind with overpowering fear. No thought would be left save that of the fastest possible retreat.
Julian might almost have admired it as a line of defense, if he himself weren’t vulnerable to the magic—and even worse, Faanshi. The girl was only half human, but her raw, barely trained power left her peculiarly sensitive to the Wards’ implacable strength.
Faanshi began to keen even as she pushed Morrigh for even greater speed, and even as old memories rose to frantic screams behind Julian’s eyes. He had to keep himself from clinging too tightly to the girl to remind himself of her living presence right in front of him, for she had to breathe to ride—but as the Wards roared into both their minds, it was all he could to keep from screaming at the vision of their pursuers’ guns shooting her right out of his arms.
Out of nowhere, Kirinil and Alarrah flanked them. Julian caught a glimpse of Kirinil twisting in his saddle, his eyes gone the hue of molten bronze as he flung an arcane gesture over his shoulder. What the motion did needed no explanation, not when the Hawks who still pursued them began to wail somewhere behind them in the trees.
Alarrah pulled just enough ahead of them that she was clearly in both Julian’s and Faanshi’s lines of sight, and shouted at them both, “Keep riding, and follow me!”
She wasn’t the strongest of lodestones to hold their attention, not when the power of the Wards roared through them. But Morrigh knew to follow the elves’ horses now, and moreover, Faanshi had mastered how to handle him. That she managed it even when gasping out great, racking sobs was a far greater goad for Julian’s own resolve. He held onto her, slamming his eyes shut, for Morrigh’s galloping set off answering reverberations in his skull. What he shouted at Faanshi himself he couldn’t begin to tell, and it wasn’t important, as long as he could hear her calling back.
He had to look up again, though, when shouts and the rumble of newly arriving horses sounded somewhere ahead. Julian’s vision blurred in and out, making it almost impossible to tell how many elves on horseback were charging out to meet them; it could have been three, or three dozen. The copper-haired elf in the lead, however, was unmistakable. Tembriel, more fierce-eyed than Julian had ever seen her, rode past them at breakneck speed. Both her hands were lifted, and both were wreathed in coronas of flame. She whirled them together over her head, weaving a larger and larger ball of fire, and Julian flinched from the sight of it as she let it fly. The panic of the Wards was still high in him—and for one single terrifying instant, she looked like the Anreulag Herself.
Then she and her compatriots had passed them, leaving Julian and Faanshi to their own desperate riding. It seemed to last for hours beyond counting, forcing the Rook to shut out everything that wasn’t the need to hang onto the girl and stay in the saddle, no matter what wild visions ripped across his consciousness. More than once he thought he felt bullets strike them both; more than once, he heard the Anreulag crying out with a voice of thunder. But neither bullets nor holy fire halted the stallion, and when Morrigh finally did stop, it took Julian several seconds to realize that they were safe.
Only then did he slide, half-blind, out of the saddle. Without thinking and without surprise that she’d come down with him, he crushed Faanshi close to his chest as they both fought to get their trembling under control.
“Julian, did we make it? Oh great Lady of Time...they almost had us, I was sure they’d shot you.”
“It’s all right, dove.” Had he called her that before? It felt familiar, though in that moment that wasn’t important either. “We’re all right. We’re safe.” He should have opened his eyes and lifted his head; he should have been looking to verify that they had, in fact, reached Dolmerrath. But just then Julian couldn’t bring himself to do anything but hold the girl.
Then someone else’s hands touched him and Faanshi both, and only when power flowed into him, replenishing his flagging strength, did Julian register the presence of Alarrah. “We’re here,” she affirmed as he looked up at last. “We’re in Dolmerrath.”
They’d reached the cavern where the elves kept their horses, though he had no clear recollection of how exactly they’d ridden in. Alarrah’s and Kirinil’s mounts weren’t far from Morrigh, and all three horses stood with lowered heads and heaving flanks. Just behind them, three more riders had come in—Tembriel, her eyes still visibly sparking with leftover magic, and two more scouts whose names Julian didn’t know. One of them was bleeding at the shoulder and leaning heavily against her companion, and as soon as the wounded scout made it off her horse, Alarrah whirled and ran to her. So did Kirinil, gray-faced and grim, to help the others with their mounts.
“The Hawks shot her,” Faanshi said, her voice still small and thin, but stronger now. “Because they came out to help us make it in. I should help Alarrah.”
But she didn’t move out of his arms, and though he was loath to let her go, Julian asked, “Can you handle it?”
“I don’t want to leave you.” With eyes at once too unhappy and too knowing for his comfort, Faanshi stared up at him. “Your head and your hand. Julian, I can feel you hurting.”
Of course she could. Her quiet words shouldn’t have surprised him, much less disturbed him, but they did both. Tykhe take it, he couldn’t lie to those eyes, but their gaze was stripping him bare. “I’ll function,” he told her gruffly. It wasn’t as if he had a choice in the matter, after all. He had no time for weakness or vulnerability, no matter how badly he ached, or how much he had to struggle to see straight.
Faanshi didn’t look like she believed it, and as she came back over to join them, neither did Alarrah. “Don’t try to lie to a healer about your physical state,” she advised, her tone and her expression as weary as Julian felt. “Especially one whose magic knows every inch of you.”
This didn’t comfort him in the slightest, but nonetheless he said again, determined to make it true by sheer willpower alone, “I’ll function. We have much bigger questions to worry about.”
Alarrah didn’t argue, though she still stared at him with a gaze not unlike Faanshi’s, as if she could see straight through his flesh and down to his nerves, his bones. Just behind her Tembriel and her two compatriots made their slow way out of the cavern, with the wounded scout helped along between the other two.
Kirinil had turned his attention to stripping the gear from their horses, but he paused now, looking past the others to a new arrival storming into view. “For starters,” he murmured, “we’ll want to worry about that.”
They turned their heads to find Gerren striding toward them. The leader of Dolmerrath had no magic that Julian knew about, but fury as tangible as Tembriel’s fire radiated from every inch of his frame, turning his eyes hard and bright as crystal. Without a word he strode straight for his brother, and before any of them could react, he launched a punch straight at Kirinil’s jaw. Kirinil went down, making both Elisel and Morrigh sidestep nervously out of the way.
Julian had never before heard an elf snarl in his native tongue, but such was Gerren’s apparent rage that the Elvish syllables poured out of him in a harsh and unlovely torrent. Then he caught himself, snapped a sizzling glance around to them all, and added in Adalonic, “I’d strangle you with my bare hands, brother, if it wouldn’t take down the gods-damned Wards. The same goes for you, Alarrah, and we need you just as badly. Astà
llemerron! What were you thinking, running off like that?”
Faanshi pulled out of Julian’s embrace, and for a moment he thought she might wince, or struggle to meet Gerren’s eyes. She did neither. She spoke up, soft and clear, “I offer my humblest apologies for taking them away from your people and putting them in danger, akreshi. It’s all because they wished to help me.”
Something rolled through Julian then, something he had to work to recognize as wonder—because this, he realized, was a Faanshi arguably as changed as he. This was the Faanshi who’d faced down her master, his pet priest and all his men, not to mention surviving the Voice of the Gods.
“It’s true,” he offered. “We went to find Faanshi’s Hawk so she could heal him and get him out of her head. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without Kirinil and Alarrah’s help.”
“So you’re telling me that they chose saving two lives over protecting every one of our people?” Gerren growled. His gaze raked over his brother, even as Kirinil cautiously hauled himself to his feet, rubbing his knuckles along his jaw to wipe away a trickle of blood. Alarrah took a step toward him, only to provoke another furious glare in her direction. “And you! If you lay a finger on him, I swear by all the stars in the heavens I’ll strike you too. Two lives versus hundreds. I would’ve thought you among us all would know better.”
“Hìorollè,” Alarrah said, “the Mother of Stars Herself couldn’t ask me to make that choice when one of the lives in question is my sister. Nor would She, when my sister is the first mage in living memory to stand against the Anreulag.”
“She’s your...” Gerren froze. Then, though it didn’t quite overrun his anger, surprise flooded his face—Julian thought the elf might break his own neck, so quickly did he whip his head back round to study Faanshi. “She did what?”
“The Anreulag came to us. I made Her go away.”
Faanshi might have sounded innocent, even childlike, if not for the gravity and the exhaustion in her voice. Julian couldn’t repress a shudder, and that brought Gerren’s attention swinging back to him. Dolmerrath’s leader blinked, and then finally studied him with the same shock with which he’d regarded the girl. “Is she also responsible for how you look rather different than the last time you were here?”
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