It was beautiful and absolutely terrifying. Gabe’s guts shivered. All this time they’d lived with the Valleymen, thinking they were no threat. Peaceful, timid, needing protection. Now Gabe wondered who needed protecting from whom. The Valleymen could have forced the Alarians back without any help whatsoever.
“We go now, ndargo,” Kimotak said. “Get rest of your friends.”
Before Gabe could do anything, Kimotak and his fellows were gone, nimbly clearing the broken walls and dashing away into the chaos.
“It’s amazing,” Rafe breathed. “I never would have thought the Valleymen could fight like this.”
Gabe responded with a wordless mumble. His mind still had to catch up to his eyes.
“Gabe,” Ofelia said, tugging at his pants leg. “Can you do something for me now?”
He crouched, forcing himself to concentrate on the one thing he knew. Her legs were in rough shape but no worse than a hundred other injuries he’d healed in the past several months. The problem was, he’d used all of his magic on du Serres. Looking up at Ofelia, he said, “I’ll do what I can.”
Ofelia nodded.
It wasn’t much. Without his magic, without his surgery, he was reduced to inspecting her wounds with numb fingers and eyes straining to see in the dark. He tidied them up as best he could, wincing each time she hissed in pain or flinched. Cutting bandages from his shirt and Ofelia’s he rebound them and sat back.
“I’m sorry.”
Forcing her expression from disappointment to relief, Ofelia said, “Thank you. It feels better.”
“My pleasure,” he muttered and made himself stand.
Things had changed while he’d been occupied. The number of Delaluzians within the hospital ruins had increased massively. Every prisoner had been released from their huts and congregated here. He saw Dem and Rafe at the wall not far away, rifles moving in unison as they tracked and fired. In the middle of the hospital was Captain Meraz. She had resumed command with a firm, confident hand, ordering these men here and those women there. Lieutenant Pena sat not far from Gabe, held back from joining the fight by several other soldiers too injured to be of help. Gabe went to help them, but they directed him to Meraz.
“Captain,” he shouted over the din, “do you need me?”
Meraz glanced at him. “Good to see you, Mage Castillo. I’m fine, see to the freshly wounded first. Dulce, help him organise triage.”
About to return to his corner, Gabe was stopped by Dem. The young man pushed a large bundle at him.
“One of the natives brought this for you. He said you would need it.”
Opening it, Gabe found a comprehensive medical kit, Alarian by the look of the bottles and pots.
“Trust Kimotak,” Gabe muttered.
Between him and Dulce, they set up a space in the corner of the hospital for him to see the wounded. He worked fast and dirty. When there was more time, he’d have most of those he sent away now back again. He lost himself in the simple processes, assessing, cleaning, stitching and wrapping.
He lost track of time, the world becoming a blur, the only constant Dulce’s presence as she worked alongside him. She wasn’t as perfect as Dina, no one ever would be, but she was a fine field Sacerdio. He could think of her as such, because neither of them used magic but she still called him mage.
However long later, Gabe felt trickles of magic begin to appear. He didn’t use it, letting it accumulate, wondering why it was happening. Scant hours had passed since he’d healed du Serres. His magic shouldn’t have even begun to be replenished and yet, here it was. Ignoring it, he continued as he was, working with his hands and eyes and knowledge until he felt as if his arms weighed a hundred pounds and his eyes were coated in grit. But he kept going. So long as there were wounded, he would do whatever he could to help them. There would be time enough to die later.
By the time Dulce told him there were no more wounded, the tarnished silver of dawn through the rain was creeping across the camp. Gabe sat back on his heels, aching and tired. His last patient, a man with a missing hand, nodded his thanks and let two of his fellows help him up and left.
Dulce knelt by him. “Are you all right?”
“Give me a moment.”
“We won,” she told him, trying for bright but barely reaching weary joy. “The Alarians are all captured. Even those outside the walls.”
“Excellent.” Gabe stared at his gloved hand, slowly curling his fingers. He hadn’t lost one patient throughout the night, and yet he’d done it without his magic. Perhaps Duke Ibarra was right.
“Mage Castillo?” There was worry in the clerk’s voice now.
“I’m fine.”
She didn’t believe him and he didn’t blame her. He wasn’t fine. Something was still wrong. He could feel it in his bones, in the expectant shiver from the demon bone in his pocket.
“Captain Meraz has moved back to the command tent. They’re holding the Alarian officers there. She said for us to join her as soon as we could.”
Gabe forced a deep breath, meeting Dulce’s concerned gaze. “Let’s go.”
She helped him stand and gave him a moment to take in the camp. It was eerily quiet in the hazy morning light. The rain had slowed to a light mist, cool against his heated skin, the low hanging clouds rising up to a decent height. Soft shafts of sunlight pierced the grey here and there. What he could see of the camp was deserted.
Dulce helped him clamber over the broken wall and they walked toward the central yard. All the movement was there. It was filled with seated Alarians surrounded by grim-faced, dirty Delaluzians, rifles and revolvers trained on their prisoners. Further back, the Valleymen stood, no longer the fierce fighters of the night, returned to their relaxed, careless-seeming selves. Rising up in the middle of the yard once more was the mesquala pole, the skeleton, a bit muddy but otherwise no worse for having been buried, tinkling in the mild breeze.
The main gates were open and through them were more Alarians, seated in neat rows, despondent and defeated, guarded by more Valleymen and a few Delaluzians.
But perhaps the most startling thing of all was the dirigible. It hung over the yard, engines purring just enough to keep it steady. A rope ladder hung over the side of the gondola, reaching the ground.
“No cradles remained for it to land,” Dulce said as she prodded him into action. “It arrived just as the Alarians surrendered. Apparently Mage Vendaval survived the initial attack and went to the next battalion for help.” She grinned. “He’s a hero.”
Gabe snorted. Trust Vendaval.
The sense of oddness surged and Gabe gasped, clutching at the demon bone.
“Mage?” Dulce asked.
It felt like a worm squirming inside his chest. He doubled over, unable to breathe as the pressure built inside. His heart slammed hard and fast, blood pounded through his veins, over his ears so all he heard was thump thump, thump thump, thump thump.
“Now you pay.” It was the stilted voice of the demon.
How? he wanted to ask but had no air to speak with, no strength to move his lips.
“They must be stopped.” An image followed the words, of two figures, blurred and moving fast through the shadows of the camp. One was tall and covered in weapons, the other smaller and robed in black. Even though he couldn’t see their faces, Gabe knew at least one of them so well he didn’t need to.
Dina.
She had escaped the night’s events. He knew the image was current because the light between the shadows was the same silvery light around him now. She would be trying to finish what she started by hiding Rafe.
Who was the other figure? Gabe couldn’t see him well enough to be certain but who else carried enough weapons to outfit a small army? Who else moved like that?
“Mage Castillo?”
Dulce’s panicked voice broke the last of the demon’s hold. He was released and the awful shifting inside his chest subsided a little and he finally realised he’d felt this before; when he’d accidentally touched D
avid with his bare hand, feeling the pull of Duke Ibarra’s compulsion.
It was clear what the payment for saving his life was. Stop Dina and David—if it was David but who else could it be? It didn’t make much sense. David’s whole reason for being here was to take the prince home, he wouldn’t join forces with the person trying to... what? Just what had Dina’s intent been? Stop Rafe from being discovered, definitely, but hadn’t that been David’s task as well? Take the boy back to his father before he could reveal Ibarra’s deceit to the world.
“Gabriel?” Dulce tugged on his arm. “We have to meet with Captain Meraz.”
Gabe nodded. “Of course. You go. I have to...” He shook her off and closed his eyes, remembering the image the demon had given him. It was the south-east wall. He recognised the layout of the huts, the latrine dug for the Delaluzians when they’d been held prisoner.
“You have to what?” Dulce demanded.
“Finish something.” He opened his eyes and gave her a gentle shove in the direction of the command tent. “Go. Tell Meraz there’s still a danger in the camp. Rafe will know what I’m talking about. Tell them to protect him at any cost.”
Dulce stared at him for a moment, then turned and ran. He made sure she was going for the command tent, then turned in the other direction and ran as well.
Chapter 34
Gabe had no idea what he was doing. He was simply following the strange drawing in his chest, letting it pull him forward, toward a confrontation he didn’t know how to deal with. David was immortal, and to all reports, Dina was too. How was he supposed to stop them?
A sudden pang for home nearly dropped him in his tracks. This wasn’t his fight. He should be at home. He wanted to go to sermon at the cathedral and spend the hour looking out over the ocean, letting Abbess Orellana’s voice blend into the heave and crash of the waves on the rocks. He even wished he’d never met Evellia, never fallen so desperately in love he’d ruined his life.
He wasn’t supposed to be here, but he was. He ran on.
He saw Dina before she saw him, as she darted between huts. Her robe was dirty, the red of her position ripped off so it wouldn’t stand out in the shadows. Hair dishevelled, mud streaking her face and arms, she was still lovely. Lovely and deadly.
As if sensing him, she stopped and faced him.
“Gabriel.” It was a whisper but it reached him well enough. He heard the sorrow in his name, the resignation. She would kill him but it would hurt her.
He took a few steps toward her. “Why, Dina?”
She trembled in the shadows, arms wrapped around herself. “I didn’t want to. He made me.”
“He?”
“Duke Ibarra.”
Gabe sighed. “How?”
Her hand clutched at her chest, much as he had moments ago when the demon had commanded him.
“My bone magic isn’t strong,” Dina said in a desperate rush, stepping into the dim half-light of the morning.
Gabe snorted. “Don’t fucking lie to me anymore, Dina. I’m strong and I barely managed to break the sleep you put Rafe into. All these months I’ve been killing myself to save these idiots and you could have done so much more than me. But you didn’t. You just stood back and watched me abuse myself over and over, pretending to care.”
Tears clouded her eyes. “It wasn’t like that. Not at all. If I could have helped you more I would have. You know how I feel about you.”
“No, I don’t. The only honest thing between us was when you stabbed me. Everything else was—”
“Shut up!” she screamed, lunging forward a few more steps. “Just shut up for once and listen.”
Stunned, he clamped his mouth closed. There was barely ten feet between them, close enough for her to reach him before he could get away. The only thing keeping him in place was the weight of the demon bone.
“I didn’t ask for this,” she snarled, her face screwed up in anguish. “When my magic first manifested, the local Dean thought it was strong enough for me to become a mage, so he organised my application to the Academy and funding. I went thinking I would become a mage and pay off the debt and then be able to help my family get out of debt as well. But half way through my training, it was decided I wasn’t strong enough. I would be a Sacerdio. I couldn’t pay back my tuition or help my family in time. They lost their home and business. My family ended up on the streets of Ibarra, begging for scraps. I went to Mage Borrego and pleaded for more work, anything to help them. He had nothing for me but asked others at the hospital. No one could help me, but then I got a message. Duke Ibarra wanted to see me personally.”
She lost the heat of anger, replaced with a despondency that would have tugged at Gabe’s heart under any other circumstances.
“I went to the meeting. I had no idea what he wanted. He told me he’d heard about my situation and that he wanted to help. He said he would pay my family’s debt, get them back the house and the shop. He would wipe my debt to the church as well. And all I had to do was agree to a small procedure.”
“What sort of procedure?”
Dina opened the front of her robe and pulled down the neck of her stained chemise. Between her breasts was a two inch scar.
“He put something inside me. I don’t know what it is, but it makes me do things.” Her voice caught on a sob. “Things I don’t want to do. And it does things to me. I heal quickly and I can move so fast it scares me. It gives me power I don’t have. When I need to do something, like put the prince to sleep, it’s just there, all this power that’s not mine.”
“And a voice inside your head tells you what to do,” he muttered.
“His voice. Duke Ibarra’s. And when he speaks, I have to obey.”
Like David. Gabe chuckled, not at all shocked at the slightly mad tone to it. Like him, obeying the words of a demon. Was Ibarra a demon? He couldn’t be. It was impossible, and yet there was definitely something unnatural about the man. He put foreign objects in people and could control them like a puppeteer from thousands of miles away. Gabe could guess at what he’d put inside Dina’s chest. It was the same thing Gabe had taken from Ismael’s corpse. It was the same thing David had in his chest—a skeletal hand wrapped around his heart, making it beat when a normal person would have been thoroughly dead and gone.
But it wasn’t just like David. He’d been alive for a thousand years. Dina hadn’t. Duke Ibarra—well, this Duke Ibarra—hadn’t.
“Gabe,” Dina said, calling him out of his thoughts. “He’s talking to me now.”
Gabe met her panicked gaze. “What’s he saying?”
“We have to stop what’s going on here. He can’t afford the prince’s knowledge becoming known. He doesn’t want his son brought home anymore. He wants him dead. And I have to kill anyone who stands in my way.”
Swallowing a surge of fear, Gabe asked, “Like Ismael stood in your way?”
Dina went pale. “I didn’t hurt Ismael.”
“No? Someone sure did, and if it wasn’t you, then who?”
“Me.”
Gabe spun. A man had come up behind him, approaching with the silent predator-grace Gabe had only seen in one other person.
But it wasn’t the Immortal Soldier. It was the man he’d seen flitting through the shadows with Dina in the demon’s vision.
Palo de Torres smiled at Gabe, sword in one hand, revolver in the other, pointed right at him. “He discovered my secret the night he came to the hut where they were keeping the dead. The expression on his face when he saw me alive was much the same as the one on your face right now, Mage Castillo. I couldn’t reason with him, so I had to kill him.”
And more ignored facts slammed down on Gabe’s shoulders. Palo lying in front of him, his chest torn open, guts spilling over his legs, face blasted beyond recognition, and yet, the heart had kept beating. Twice it had happened and Gabe hadn’t thought much beyond the pain he was going to suffer while he fixed the boy up.
“I suppose you have a tale of debts and woe much like Dina’s.�
� Gabe’s stomach sank to somewhere around his knees.
“No. I just wanted to fight and get some glory. Duke Ibarra got wind of my enthusiasm and offered me everything I ever wanted.” He shrugged a little whimsically. “Can you imagine it, Mage Castillo? All those stories of the Immortal Soldier and they’re all true. Every single one of them. I loved those stories when I was growing up. I wanted to be him so much. And now I am.”
“I don’t think so.”
Gabe’s heart stuttered as David stepped from between two huts next to Palo. He fixed his dark stare on the young man, fingers curling and uncurling around the hilts of his swords.
“I’m the Immortal Soldier,” he said blandly. “You’re just a boy playing games.”
Palo’s smile twitched as he appraised David. “He’s telling me to kill you. You’re old and not as completely his as I am. As she is.” He nodded toward Dina. “As the others are. You’ve had too many masters to truly ever belong to him.”
Gabe glanced between the three unnatural beings surrounding him. He’d felt the force of the duke’s compulsion on David. If it wasn’t as strong as what Dina and Palo felt then Gabe pitied them. They would have absolutely no will of their own. Dina met his gaze for a moment, then dropped her eyes, ashamed.
“You can try to kill me,” David said to Palo. “It’s been tried so many times in the past I’ve lost count. Yet here I am.”
Palo ducked his head, almost shyly. “But how many of those attempts were made by someone as strong as you, as fast.” He looked up, grinning. “As immortal?” The revolver in his hand barked.
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