A Wizard's Sacrifice

by Amanda Justice

  The minstrel stared at her, and Vic wondered what she Heard. She supposed some would hate the girl for what she’d done, but Vic did know all too well what had driven Wineyll that night, and the fact Wineyll had been there in the first place was Vic’s fault. Another failure. “You should come down tonight,” she said.

  The girl turned back to the wall. Biting back a sigh, Vic washed and changed into the dress and apron Helara required for tavern duty.

  As evening came on, craftfolk and shopkeepers arrived for ale and fish stew. Minstrels fringed the silent chatter with a fiddle and a drum. Maynon and Silla tramped in with some Potters and took a corner table. Vic cooed over Victory, snoozing in a sling round Silla’s shoulders, and asked about their cheery smiles. “What are we celebrating?”

  Maynon grinned. “The Potters took me back as a journeyman and apprenticed Silla.”

  “Well then,” Vic grinned, “first round’s on me.”

  “I’ll get it,” Geram called as his cousin Drak guided him through the door.

  “You made it!” Maynon shook Geram’s hand. Vic raised an eyebrow—the men had always butted heads when they were under her command.

  “Ow!” Geram jumped, flapping his hand as if he’d touched a hot coal.

  “My grip that strong, Fishlicker?” Maynon asked.

  “It’s always a shock to see you,” Geram quipped and hugged Vic while Maynon’s friends roared.

  “You’re not the only one who helped us keep the stove warm through the winter,” Silla confided to Vic as the men traded insults. “And one of you must have put in a word with the Kiln, since the guilds are dropping people, not taking them on.”

  “That was Bethniel’s doing.” Geram’s milky eyes crinkled as he kissed Victory’s tiny forehead.

  “Captain!” Vic opened her arms for Drak. His smile forced, the big man hesitated, then stepped back after a quick pat. She didn’t blame his reluctance—he’d seen her do many terrible things with the Woern—but she regretted it all the same. She used to count on Drak’s sense and sense of humor to keep her head straight.

  She fetched the party’s drinks while other craftspeople filtered in. The windows grew dark and tables filled. Servers slid through the crowd, taking orders, depositing dishes, sweeping debris. Helara poured and polished, lending half an ear and snippets of advice with every mug. Vic’s headache faded, and she found it easy to jest with the patrons while bringing their ale and stew.

  “I don’t think anybody expected Vic the Blade to become Vic the Maid.” Geram leaned an elbow on the bar while she stacked clean glasses on the shelves.

  “I like it,” she said. “Nobody gets killed.” Years ago, she would have disdained this life of soiled laundry and drunken patrons. An odyssey of captivity and warfare could do a lot to change a woman’s goals. There was only thing missing, she thought with a wistful frown at Victory, spitting smiles from Maynon’s arms.

  “Could have one of those, if you’d stop being stubborn.”

  “And you’re not my shrink anymore.”

  He stiffened, his head cocked, and stumbled against the railing.

  “Are you all right?” Her breath stopped. “Is it Ashel?”

  “He’s in trouble.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Marshal Victoria of Ourtown!” There was a scuffle, and the crowd pressed back from a swaggering figure. Two silver earrings glinted from an ear. A tuft of seabird feathers, four long ones tipped with white, clustered around the hilt of his sword. Below narrow, tilting eyes, a gap between his front teeth turned his grin ghoulish. “Victoria of Ourtown?”

  Vic’s blood ran cold. If it weren’t for the Caleisbahnin taking her off a beach in the distant north, she’d still be a Logkeeper, just now preparing to leave her father’s lodge, ready with the spring to make her rounds among the Oreseeker villages. The peaceful path of a teacher and scholar, not a violent journey through slavery and war.

  “My name is Gustave of Sect Dameron,” the pirate answered her silence. “I represent interests who would benefit from your skills in unique situations.”

  “Order something, or leave,” Helara said.

  “I’ll pay for the marshal’s time.” Gustave laid a gold coin on the counter. Gasps fluttered around the bar. Silver the only metal more common than gold, both were still rare enough that few Lathans had seen either. He held up the Herald’s pamphlet. “This says you destroyed Mount Olm.”

  “We used a lot of sulfa, pirate.” Drak muscled through the crowd, Maynon behind him.

  “And three thousand Relmans fell at the Battle of Re, yet hardly any Lathans,” Gustave continued. “That’s an unprecedented victory, marshal.”

  “You need to go,” Vic said.

  Pink poked through the gap in his teeth. “We pay well, marshal, especially for someone with your tactical abilities.”

  “You were told to leave.” Drak shoved him, and the pirate grasped his sword hilt. Stone, porcelain, and crystal daggers whispered out of sheaths. The pirate was tall for a Caleisbahnin, but Drak loomed over him. “Go now.”

  Gustave’s eyes flicked over the weapons, and he stepped back, hands raised, his gaze landing on Vic. “The marshal stands unarmed, yet we all know she is the deadliest one in this room. We’ll meet again, Victoria of Ourtown.” His ghoulish grin widened. “The rest of you should follow me out, while you still can.”

  Murmurs rippled as the door banged shut. Vic dug her fingers into Geram’s arm. “What’s happening to Ashel?”

  A boom shook the inn. Glasses tipped off shelves and smashed on the floor. Shrieks and black smoke billowed from the kitchen. Helara bellowed orders while screaming patrons jammed the door.

  The Potters surrounded Silla and plowed through the crowd. Victory squalled, her mother’s hand cupped around her head. “Help Vic,” Silla cried to Maynon.

  “Clear the guests!” Helara cried, rushing upstairs.

  “Maynon, help her,” Vic ordered. “Drak, Wineyll’s up in the garret. Geram, go with Silla.”

  Maynon pushed Geram toward the Potters, then charged up the stairs after the captain and Innkeeper.

  “The cook is hurt,” Geram yelled as the Potters dragged him outside.

  Fire ballooned through the kitchen door. Vic threw up a shield of solid air, but the blaze shredded through it, flames scurling across the plank floor and paneled walls. The cook’s screams choked off, and scores of voices, dying in a nighttime conflagration, echoed in memory. Three hundred and twelve dead nomads. Elesendar, not here.

  Shutting her eyes, she spread her awareness through the air molecules vibrating near the blaze and willed them to slow. In the kitchen, white heat roared, blasting out of the bricks. She restrained the vibrating air, and the room chilled to an icehouse. The fire shrank as she bound the air together, smothering the flames with the thing that fed them. The cook lay near the back stairs, an enormous heap. Vic could spare nothing for him. It took all her concentration to hold back the fire.

  Helara burst through the door with a sodden broom. Wet straw slapped against an invisible wall. Mouth open, she stared at Vic.

  “Get the cook out. I’ll put out the fire.” Sweat froze in ribbons on Vic’s cheeks and neck, her head throbbing as if a balloon were expanding behind her eyes. A puff of smoke, then a gout of flame seared toward the ceiling. “Get out,” she ordered. “Now, Helara.”

  “The pamphlet—”

  “Get out!” Vic screamed, shivering with the cold and the effort. Smoke and flame sparked out of a dozen cracks. Air seeped through them, feeding the fiery monster that stretched once more toward the walls. “Let me do what I can do,” she pleaded as Helara stumbled backward, her eyes wild.

  “Help me with him,” Geram slipped through the door and hoisted the cook’s shoulders, groaning as he tugged. “Help me, Helara.”

  “Is the house clear?” Vic asked.

  “Upstairs is empty. Drak and Maynon got everyone out.” Geram grun
ted, and the cook’s bulk edged toward the door. “Shrine, he’s big. Help me with him, Helara.”

  “My inn?”

  “Vic’s taking care of it. We have to go now or your cook won’t make it.”

  Together, they dragged the man out. The fire melted. Embers dimmed. Smoke clambered along the solid air mass, hissing out of cracks. Outside, the fire brigade whistled toward the house. Charcoal billows fogged, and a cough racked Vic’s throat. Her head rolled loose on her shoulders.

  A trooper did what she had to. Keep fighting. Fold the sheets. Birth a baby. Smother a fire. Keep it up, she gritted at herself. Keep it up. Soot clouds twisted across the ceiling. Her concentration faltered, but the flames were only embers now. Sinking to the floor, the strength gone from her knees, Vic coughed out thanks to Elesendar, same as she did in battle. She was a heretic, but Helara wasn’t. And the inn was safe, thank Elesendar.

  The Ruse

  The paddock was half a mile from the city gates, the closest steeds would come to the noise and stinks of Mora, Joslyrn explained. “You can coax a steed into a forest, even an abattoir, but not a city.” Ahead on the chalk road, a merchant train trundled west. In its wake, leatherwings squawked and dove after spilled grain, an undulating tail to a very long worm.

  Ashel breathed in the scents of dust and grass, felt the sun warm upon his head, the breeze brush cool across his skin. He shared an eager smile with Melba as they approached the twelve-foot paddock wall.

  “You look like a boy on Winterfest morning,” she said.

  “I really have wanted to see one all my life.”

  She grimaced. “They’re just ugly giant bugs if you ask me, although I’ll admit they’re fast, and I’m grateful to Joslyrn and his crew.”

  “Oh, Minstrel Melba, beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. There’s nothing prettier than a steed, except your crooning.”

  She laughed. “You haven’t heard Ashel yet.”

  Joslyrn stopped at the gate. “They like a tune, Highness. It makes them sweet on the singer.” His eyes slid to Melba, who grinned and knocked elbows with Ashel. He bounced on his heels, a thrill in his blood like he hadn’t felt in ages.

  “Better open that gate before the prince ruins his pants.”

  Ignoring the ribbing, Ashel followed Joslyrn into the paddock. Necks entwined, tentacled manes wound together, a pair of steeds wheeled to face him. Breath gushed from his lungs. Chest burning, he had to remember to suck the air back in. Multifaceted eyes glittered like jewels. Chitin segments gleamed a rich brown, like an alloy of iron and copper. He stepped closer, and narrow bodies glided back, feet drumming like piano hammers on muted strings. He’d read each steed had seven pairs of hooves, though the animals moved too fast to be sure.

  “It’s a smoother ride than a horse, if you don’t slide off,” said Joslyrn. “Saddle or no, if a steed doesn’t want you on its back, you won’t stay there.

  “They’re so lithe.”

  “Yep. Those are mares. Don’t like to bring the stallions into town—they could bust out of this paddock, and we need them to protect the herd from lupears, especially now in foaling season. These ladies are too old for foaling, but they’re still strong enough to bear two. You want to go for a ride?”

  “I do.” Melba was right; he was as giddy as a boy at Winterfest.

  Joslyrn disappeared into a stable and emerged carrying a saddle with dangling hooks instead of a girth. The seat looked long enough to sit two comfortably. Kelmair followed with a second saddle.

  Ashel gulped and averted his eyes from puckered brown aureoles crowning her small breasts.

  “Shrine, that woman’s a strange bird,” Melba muttered. “And she’s sulkier than a Weaver’s apprentice. What are you so embarrassed about? You’ve been to Traine.”

  Drawing in a breath, he wiped the shock off his face. He’d spent a summer in Betheljin’s capital and had become accustomed to seeing nude slaves paraded around like prize horses. That most mistresses appeared proud of their thralldom only made it more abhorrent. Yet he’d been callow enough to approach one young, red-haired mistress, standing alone during a festival, and ask her to dance. Thank Elesendar Vic had had the good sense to refuse him. He was still ashamed of himself for succumbing to selfish curiosity, when his temerity could so easily have gotten her killed.

  Joslyrn had fastened saddle hooks to the carapace on one steed, but the other creature danced away from Kelmair’s saddle. Clucking, she hoisted it toward the steed, but the mare slipped away, her eyes fixed on Ashel and Melba.

  “They’re making her nervous,” Kelmair grumbled.

  Joslyrn studied the steed, then tilted his head toward Ashel. “Try a bit of song, Highness.”

  He glanced at Melba. “Is that true, singing calms them?”

  She shrugged. “Coming out here, we sang a lot, but I thought it was just to pass the time.”

  As if he were stepping onto a stage, he embraced the tickle in his belly and began a herder’s ballad.

  The lupear’s howl fills the night,

  But not my heart.

  Its mournful cry echoes through

  This plain so empty without you.

  The mare snorted and stepped toward him. He paced closer, singing a herder’s lament for his lost love, drawn into the steed’s glittering gaze. She glided forward and pressed a chitinous snout to his forehead. A purr rumbled a rough echo of his song. Love poured through Ashel, a sensation as deep as it was sudden. Tears running, he caressed her thorax.

  Pain jabbed, and he jumped back, sucking breath into cramped lungs while a vicious sting shot up his arm. Trilling, the steed lowered her head and butted his shoulder. Iron gray tentacles writhed, each bearing a knuckle-length lancet.

  Shrine, that hurts, said Geram. Ringed with tavern noises and scents, he shook the phantom pain from his hand.

  Ashel winced, recognizing the sounds and aromas—Geram was at the Cobblestone. The other man hugged Vic in greeting, and Ashel stroked the mare’s snout. “It’s all right, girl.” His hand throbbed, but the fire had already faded from his arm. The steed purred again. He swiped at damp cheeks as love swamped him again.

  Joslyrn gripped his shoulder. “I felt the same—both the gush and the sting—the first time I touched a steed. This one’s name is Meager, and you’ll want to wear these when astride her.” The old herder handed him a pair of leather gloves. The fit was snug and the fingers too short, but the hide was supple. A tug of the laces stretched them so they almost reached his wrists.

  “If we’re going, we should go. You’re with me, Highness,” Kelmair said.

  Joslyrn leapt astride the other steed. “They’re strong, but we shouldn’t overburden them with two men when we don’t have to. Melba, up behind me, if you will.”

  Ashel stared at the saddle. “There are no stirrups.”

  Lip curled, Kelmair clucked, and Meager hunkered low enough for Ashel to swing a leg over her. “You can take the front,” she said. “I’ll let you guide her, so long as you follow Joslyrn.”

  He settled into the saddle, Kelmair’s torso a hot pressure on his back, her arms locked around his waist as the mare rippled to her full height.

  “We don’t use bridles; you let her know where you want to go with the pressure of your knees,” Joslyrn said. “You sit her pretty well, I’d say.”

  Copying the Herder, he gripped Meager’s tentacles. Spines struck but did not penetrate the gloves. Joslyrn’s mount flowed out of the paddock, and Meager’s segments pulsed as she glided after.

  It’s like riding surf, Geram said, delighted.

  “Her gait truly is smoother than a horse’s.”

  “Wait ’til you feel her run.” Joslyrn hallooed, and the steeds hurtled over the flat dry plain beside the road. The wind tore Ashel’s whoop away, and his laugh was left behind as the grass rolled beneath their feet. In moments the stable had shrunk to a speck. In minutes, the city was only a smudge on the horizon. They sped west
, faster than a champion racehorse and far past the point where a horse would have collapsed. Ashel reveled in the way the mare wove smoothly round rocks and scrub, turning swiftly and easily according to the pressure of his knees. They rode on and on as the sun sank slowly behind them, and their shadows lengthened across the dry grass.

  “How long can they keep this up?” he asked.

  “A long time, and they’ll run faster if need be,” Kelmair said. “They’re anxious to reach the herd before the lupears catch our scent.”

  “Then shouldn’t we head back to the paddock?”

  He felt her chuckle. “We’re not going back, Shemen.”

  “What?”

  “We’re taking you to meet your father.”

  Adrenaline surging, he hauled on the tentacles. Meager squealed, and she became a bucking, writhing, sinuous snake. The hooks shook free of their moorings, and the saddle slid off. Kelmair’s muffled cry thrummed through Ashel as he landed atop her on the dry grass. They tumbled apart, and the mare’s drumming hoofbeats faded.

  Mouth and eyes fierce slits, Kelmair rolled to her feet. “You never, ever pull on tentacles like that!”

  “My father is dead!”

  Her sneer returned and she tilted her head at Joslyrn’s steed, hurtling after Meager. “Once they get back here, you’re going to Traine.”

  Wrath seized him, firing nerves and muscles into a blow that knocked her sprawling.

  Dust plumed as Kelmair sprang up, dagger in hand. “Easy, Shemen, or you’ll get hurt.”

  He charged, eyes on the blade. She ducked inside his grip, threw her arms around his in a clinch. She was small but strong, her skin slick with sweat, stretched taut over muscles hard as iron. The dagger hilt dug into his back, and he knew she might hurt him but wouldn’t kill him. He was too valuable to her. To Lornk Korng. Hatred flared, and he broke free, grabbed her knife arm and wrenched her wrist. His ears twitched as the dagger thudded in the dirt and his elbow slammed into her jaw. She staggered back, and he pursued, grabbed the back of her neck, slammed her head into his knee. She hit the grass and lay still.