by Kyra Halland
Silas walked back to the horses and coaxed them over to the meager shade of the tree’s bare branches. They snorted and fidgeted at being so close to the body, but Lainie set about watering them from the skins and giving them some oats and dried apples, and they soon settled down. Silas took his hunting knife from his saddlebags and climbed the tree to where he could reach the hanging rope. He cut the rope, and Verl’s body fell in a crumpled heap on the ground.
He climbed back down and dug into the magically expanded space in his saddlebags for his collapsible shovel. “This might take a while, darlin’. You sit in the shade and rest.”
The horses cared for, Lainie sat down, leaning against the tree trunk on the side away from the sun and Verl’s body. Silas shrugged off his duster and started digging the grave. The dirt was hard-packed, baked solid by the sun, so he used a little magic to help break it up. He didn’t want to signal his presence to any rogue mages who might be in the area, but he also didn’t want to spend the rest of the day and possibly a good part of the night in this spot. Even with magic, digging a grave big enough for Verl Bissom was going to take a while.
“Do you think this has anything to do with what that other hunter wants help with?” Lainie asked.
Silas took off his hat and wiped sweat from his face. Had Bissom also been coming to help Horden? Or had Horden received a call for help from Bissom? He would have to ask Horden when he saw him, and tell him what had happened to Bissom. “Maybe. Could be rogue mages at work. Or it could just be that he came across some settlers on the move and they found out he was a wizard.”
“Huh.” She didn’t sound any more convinced of that last notion than he was.
The sun had gone a considerable way down the western sky by the time Silas finished digging the grave. He rolled Verl’s body into it and arranged him properly. Bissom’s mage ring wasn’t on his hand or hidden in his clothing, but that didn’t mean anything. Plain folk could have stolen it as easily as a mage once he was dead. His gun, another likely item to be stolen, was missing from its holster.
Silas covered the grave with dirt, then recited the proper prayers to the Sunderer and the Gatherer and the Avenger to appease Bissom’s murdered soul, torn from his body by violence, and guide him safely to the Afterworld. He was no priest – far from it – but as part of the requirements for being authorized as a mage hunter, he had learned the proper burying of the dead. You kill them, you bury them, was the rule.
His duty to the dead man carried out, Silas sat down in the shade next to Lainie to rest. A light breeze blew up, drying the sweat on his face and body and bringing a brief moment of blessed coolness. They drank sparingly from their water flasks and ate a little jerky and flatbread, then Silas got out his message kit and sent the Mage Council a message informing them of Bissom’s death.
The whole time, that prickling sensation kept running up and down his spine. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. But there was nothing anywhere in the area, no big rocks, no other trees or tall brush, that would give cover to someone watching them. He checked again for shields, this time also looking for the heavier shields that would hide a person’s physical presence.
Nothing.
A sudden creaking sound from the branches above them made him glance sharply upwards. “Look!” Lainie gasped.
A knapsack dangled from an upper branch of the Onetree, swinging gently even though the breeze had died away. Silas could have sworn the knapsack hadn’t been there before. Had he just missed seeing it, or had a mage whose shields he was unable to detect, who was able to come and go unheard and unseen, put it there just now? He didn’t like that idea at all. “Wonder if it’s Bissom’s,” he said, trying not to show how much the knapsack’s sudden appearance had unsettled him. For Lainie’s sake, he had to try to appear calm no matter how he felt inside.
“I’d lay money on it,” Lainie said.
Silas climbed the rough-barked tree to where the knapsack hung. He reached for it, then pulled his hand back. It was too convenient… He probed thoroughly and carefully for any magical traps that might have been set on the pack, and found none. Gingerly, in case he had missed anything, he unhooked the pack from the branch and climbed down. He was tempted to go through it right away, to see if it held any clues to what had happened to Bissom or information about how to contact Bissom’s family. It was an unwritten rule among mage hunters that, if at all possible, no man’s family would be left wondering why they never heard from him again. But he also didn’t want to spend one more moment out here in the open than he had to. Someone had put that knapsack in the tree, and that someone had to still be close by even though Silas couldn’t find him. The contents of Bissom’s knapsack could wait until he and Lainie had the safety of walls around them.
He strapped the knapsack behind Abenar’s saddle, and mounted up. Then, with a silent nod to each other – neither of them seemed to want to speak out loud – he and Lainie rode on southwest along the endless, empty trail towards the slowly-sinking sun.
Chapter 2
RIPGAP SAT AT the base of a long range of rugged hills, immediately below a narrow gap between two hills which funneled a constant whipping wind down into the town. It was known as the Crossroads of the Bads, and indeed, in the middle of the town, two dirt tracks intersected: the one Silas and Lainie had followed southwest, continuing on in that direction as far as the eye could see, and a second track coming from the north, which veered southeast just beyond the town. Scattered around the intersection of the two trails were a handful of dried-mud huts, a saloon, and, blessed be the names of all the gods, a two-story building bearing a sign that said Hotel. A wellhouse at the western edge of town, near where the ground rose towards the hills, confirmed the presence of water.
“It ain’t exactly Bitterbush Springs,” Lainie said, looking around.
Silas had to agree. Compared to this place, Bitterbush Springs, with its two saloons, bank, stores, cattlemen’s co-op, and half a dozen well-built, comfortable houses, was a bustling center of civilization. Still, he couldn’t complain. “At least there’s a hotel. It’ll be good to have a roof over our heads.” And walls between them and whatever had been giving him that uneasy sensation of being watched ever since they found Verl Bissom.
“That sure sounds good to me.”
They rode over to the ramshackle stable next to the hotel. A scrawny, grimy man with a wild gray beard sat in the shade of the building, out of the relentless glare of the sun, which was still several hours from setting behind the hills. “Fifteen drinas a night for each horse,” he said without waiting for Silas to inquire. “Payable in advance.”
Silas inwardly grumbled at the price as he paid out for four nights. One gilding and twenty… At this rate, the twenty-five gildings he’d been paid for Carden wouldn’t last long. But supplies were scarce and hard to come by out here in the middle of gods-forsaken nowhere, and there were no other options.
The hostler put the money in a metal box, then took Abenar and Mala by the reins and led them to a pair of stalls. Silas watched with concern as the decrepit-looking fellow began tending the horses, but it soon became apparent that he knew what he was doing.
Carrying their knapsacks and saddlebags, Silas and Lainie went into the hotel. The lobby had bare wooden walls, a single rickety-looking chair standing next to the stairs, and a desk cobbled together from two planks laid across twin stacks of dried-mud bricks. At least the room was cool and shady. A skinny man, identical to the hostler except that he seemed slightly less dirty and his beard had more brown than gray in it, sat at the desk. He didn’t seem to take any notice of Silas and Lainie’s arrival, absorbed as he was in paring his fingernails with a large hunting knife.
“Got a room?” Silas asked.
“Twenty-five drinas a night, payable in advance,” the clerk said without looking up from his task.
Silas silently swore again as he opened his leather coin-pouch and put a gilding piece down on the desk, to cover fo
ur nights. “We may be here longer.” He hoped not; they couldn’t afford it, and he had no desire to hang around this gods-forsaken place any longer than absolutely necessary.
“Don’t matter how long you stay, so long as you pay in advance.” The man handed him a key. “Upstairs, first room on the left.”
“Do you have meals here?” Silas asked.
“That’d be across the street, at the Dusty Demon.”
“Anyone else staying here right now?”
“Nope. Some miners was here earlier, they got permission from the blueskins to prospect up in the hills. They’ve been out there a couple of ninedays now, maybe a month. Ain’t had anyone else since spring.”
Horden wasn’t in town yet, then. Two ninedays after asking for someone to meet up with him here in Ripgap. Well, there was no telling where Horden had sent his request from. He could have been a fair distance away and was headed out here based on information he had come across. Silas hoped he hadn’t run into the same kind of trouble Verl Bissom had. Unlikely, he tried to assure himself. Horden had asked for backup, which suggested he was a cautious man. It could just be that he wasn’t staying at the hotel. Once they were up in the room, Silas would check to see if there was another mage in the area, according to his usual practice.
“Thanks, friend.” Silas shouldered his knapsack and picked up his and Lainie’s saddlebags, then they started for the stairs.
“Wait,” the man at the desk called out. “It’s an extra twelve drinas a night for the birdie.”
Silas and Lainie both stopped short. Though Lainie was looking down at the floor and not at him, Silas could see, beneath the brim of her hat, the flush of embarrassment on her face. Then she gave a short, sharp nod. Do what you have to do.
It sat wrong with Silas, having to let the clerk think Lainie was a woman of uncertain morals. But if he was going to be meeting up with another mage hunter, their marriage had to be kept secret, and Lainie knew that. He went back to the desk and put down another forty-eight drinas – almost half a gilding – to cover Lainie’s stay for four nights.
“Ya know,” the clerk said, “they got some mighty pretty gals over at the Demon. In case you want something a little more… interesting than what you got.”
With that, the fellow lost any chance he might have had of getting a tip. Silas fixed his coldest, meanest stare on him. “I’m happy with what I got, thanks.”
He turned away and followed Lainie up the stairs, her flaming face and rigidly-set shoulders telling him more than any words how humiliated she was.
* * *
THAT MAN DOWNSTAIRS thought she was a woman of easy virtue. Lainie’s face burned even hotter as the hotel clerk’s words went through her mind again. She understood the importance of keeping her and Silas’s marriage secret, especially when they might be around other mages, but that didn’t take away the sting of knowing what people would think instead, let alone hearing them actually say it.
To make matters worse, not only did the clerk think she was just some birdie, he thought she was an unattractive birdie and that Silas could do better with the local house ladies. Inside of her, a tiny, gnawing voice echoed the clerk’s words. People said she was pretty, but she was no great beauty, she knew that, and compared to some women, she didn’t have much of a figure. Silas had told the clerk he was happy with what he had, but he might have just been saying that to be nice in front of her, to make the best of being stuck with her and ending up on the wrong side of the Mage Council’s law on her account. Her shoulders slumped as the same old worry nagged at her again.
When they reached their room, Silas unlocked the door and they went inside. “Fool doesn’t know a good-looking woman when he sees one,” he said as he closed the door behind them.
“You really think so?” Lainie asked doubtfully.
“Blind as a rock. And about as smart, too.”
“It’s nice of you to say so, anyway.”
He grinned. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it, darlin’.”
Lainie’s mood lifted. He did sound like he meant it, and even if he didn’t, at least he cared enough about her feelings to pretend. She lowered her knapsack to the floor and looked around the room. The hotel in Bitterbush Springs had only been half-built when she left, and she had never been anywhere else, so she hadn’t known what to expect of a hotel. The lobby downstairs and the general looks of the town hadn’t given her much hope. But the room was surprisingly clean, and furnished just like a regular bedroom. There was a washstand, a table with a pair of stick chairs, and – wonderful sight – a double-size bed with a thick mattress, two puffy pillows, and a quilt. A pang struck Lainie’s heart as she looked at the quilt; it was a bird-in-a-cage pattern, just like the one she’d had at home, that her Mama had made before she died. She wished every day that she’d been able to bring it with her when she left home.
Silas set his knapsack and the saddlebags on the floor by the bed, shed his duster coat, gunbelt, and boots, and lay back on the bed with a long sigh, pulling his hat down over his face to block out the afternoon light coming through the window by the bed. “Praise all the gods, this is what a man needs after pounding his butt across the Bads for a nineday.”
As she looked at the bed, Lainie felt her face heat up again. Sharing a couple of blankets on a patch of ground was one thing, but sharing a bed… That was serious. It seemed strange to think of herself as a married woman, a wife. It felt too big, too important, as though she needed to grow into it, never mind that she was nineteen, of age and plenty old enough to be married. She stood frozen in place by the sudden fit of awkwardness, looking from the bed to the chairs by the table.
Silas patted the quilt next to him. “Come on over, darlin’. I won’t bite.” He lifted his hat just enough to peer out at her from under it. “Not unless you want me to.”
Lainie’s face burned even hotter, but she laughed. Bed or blankets, in a hotel room or under the open sky, Silas was still Silas and she was still herself. She took off her boots, gunbelt, and hat and lay down beside him. He pulled her into his arms so that her head rested on his chest. Her body relaxed into the soft mattress, her aches and weariness melting away.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
“We wait for Horden to show up. And in the meantime, I’ll ask around and see if I can get a lead on who killed Bissom.”
“You don’t think Horden’s here?”
“I checked a moment ago. No signs of any other mages around. If there’d been a change of plans, I assume he would have let the Mage Council know and they would have passed the message along to me.”
“I hope he isn’t dead, too.” She didn’t like the thought that somewhere out there, there might be a killer who was hunting mage hunters.
“If he’s asking for help, I reckon that means he knows enough to stay out of trouble until help comes.” He shifted both of them into a more comfortable position. “Now, tell me the names of the different classes of shields.”
“I thought we weren’t going to work on my training when we’re around other people.”
“We can’t do anything using our power, but there’s a lot of other things we can work on, like learning the different classes and types of spells.”
She had already spent an awful lot of time memorizing and reciting long lists of spells. “I still don’t see what good that does.”
“Once you understand the basic principles of how different types of spells are worked and how the spells within those types are related to each other, the variations are a lot easier to learn, and you can even invent new spells that have a decent chance of doing what they’re supposed to do. So, what are the different kinds of shields?”
Lainie recited the list, which she figured she must have done a hundred times already, then said, “When are you going to teach me how to make it rain and snow? That would sure feel good right now.”
He chuckled. “You’re mighty ambitious, darlin’. Weather-working’s pretty difficult. We’
ve got some work to do before you’re ready for that. Anyhow, it’s not my strong point, and it takes at least three or four mages to pull together a decent-sized storm. Now, list five spells that are related to keeper charms.”
As she began reciting, his hand strayed. “See,” she said, interrupting her recitation, “this is the problem with us being married and you trying to teach me. How am I supposed to concentrate on my lessons when you’re doing that?”
He rolled over, pinning her beneath him, and grinned down at her from under his hat. “You aren’t,” he growled.
* * *
SILAS LAY ON the bed, the quilt pushed aside, the sweat on his bare skin cooling him as it dried in the hot desert wind blowing through the window. Lainie had fallen asleep snuggled up against him, an arm flung across his chest and one leg draped over his. He didn’t feel sleepy, but he also had no inclination to move from where he was. He stared up at the ceiling, feeling Lainie’s skin and hair and breath soft against him, and wondered again what he was doing, trying to teach her. He didn’t know how to teach. All magical instruction in Granadaia took place at a few schools authorized by the Mage Council, and he had never been allowed to so much as fetch a teacher’s willow-switch – except on the occasions of his own switchings, which were not infrequent – let alone do any teaching or tutoring.
Not that it mattered if he did know how to teach. Lainie’s power was vastly different from anything he’d ever encountered before, and he had already figured out that a lot of things he thought he knew didn’t hold true with her. She was of Granadaian descent, so he recognized that element of her magic; though his own power was of Island origin, it had been shaped and colored by the Granadaian soil on which he and generations of his ancestors had been conceived, born, and raised. The influence of the Wildings on Lainie’s power was equally deep and profound, and entirely foreign to him. He couldn’t tell her exactly how to use her power or predict exactly what the results would be, because he just didn’t know.