by Tanya Huff
Her mother would have fits.
Her mother might be the only person in Aydori currently worrying about hairstyles.
It seemed brighter off to her right, so Mirian clambered over a fallen trunk and headed toward the light, hoping it meant the underbrush had thinned and she could move faster. She had to get to Lord Hagen. She had to let him know.
Pushing through a thicket of shoulder-high, red stems, the sharp ends of oval leaves scored the bare skin above her collar and clusters of buds smeared sticky fluid on her clothes. Suddenly stepping out over nothing, she clutched at branches, but they bent with her, folding down into the ditch and springing back into place when impact opened her fingers and she released them. Scrambling up the opposite slope on her hands and knees, Mirian stared at the hard-packed clay of the road. Had she gotten turned around? Had she been running in circles?
Lifting her head, she saw the road to the left curved around a stand of silver birch and disappeared, cutting off the sight of carriages and the captured Mage-pack. Cutting her off from the sight of the Imperial soldiers.
To the right, a family—a group of people anyway—plodded toward Trouge. Two women older than her but younger than her mother pulled a low cart piled high with goods and topped with three small children. An elderly woman plucked the limp body of a chicken as she walked.
Mirian stared at the old woman and wondered if the children perched so precariously on the cart were her grandchildren. Lady Berin had no grandchildren, although her son’s winter marriage no doubt meant there’d be some soon. Except her son was in the Hunt Pack and the younger Lord Hagen, Tomas, said the Hunt Pack had been killed. And her daughter-in-law was in the Mage-pack and they’d been taken by Imperial soldiers. And Lady Berin…
Lady Berin…
Mirian remembered a gray-furred body lying limp on the road, a shadow spreading beneath her.
Lady Berin was dead.
Dead. Killed.
And one other of the Pack. And at least one of the coachmen.
But Lady Berin…Mirian had just seen her at the opera. Had just seen her laughing and talking and alive. And now she was dead.
Shoving her fist into her mouth, Mirian muffled a noise she couldn’t stop herself from making. Scream, sob, pain, protest—she didn’t know what it was, but she couldn’t breathe around it and it hurt! After what seemed like hours, but was more likely moments given how much farther the family had progressed up the road toward her, she wiped her hands off on her skirt, took a deep breath, and stood.
Her legs felt shaky, disconnected from her body. Stepping forward, she wobbled. Took another step and had to spread her arms for balance.
She didn’t have time for this.
Lady Berin was dead. The Mage-pack had been taken. And Lord Hagen needed to know. Lord Hagen would fix this. She swallowed a giggle before it could emerge and turn to hysteria. Her mother would be so pleased. It was the first time they’d agreed in months.
A deep breath. Another. She started to run.
As Mirian passed the family, someone yelled, “You forget your dancing shoes, lady?” and all of them laughed. The children laughed because the adults did, the adults laughed because the Imperial army was marching on Bercarit.
They didn’t try to stop her.
She brushed a chicken feather off her sleeve and ran faster.
At least the road ran downhill to the city.
Around another curve, she staggered to a stop beside an abandoned trunk, hand pressed hard against the pain under her ribs, and realized walks along the promenade and weekly dances at the Assembly Hall were not enough to prepare for this kind of a run. It occurred to her as she tried to work up spit enough to swallow, that she should have warned the family what they were walking into. Warned them about the soldiers. About the bodies.
“Too late…”
A raven investigating a pile of cloth on the other side of the road looked up as if to ensure she wasn’t speaking to him. There was a raven on the Imperial flag. A raven in flight over a shield, a spear, and a sword, each representing a division of the Imperial army. Each division an army on its own as smaller countries understood the definition of army. They studied the Kresentian Empire in Aydori schools; it was too powerful to ignore and forewarned was supposed to be forearmed. Except it didn’t seem to be.
A line of sweat ran down her side and she unbuttoned her jacket. The jacket, a military-styled gray wool with black braid and the new tucked sleeves hadn’t been too hot for a spring dawn, but she was starting to understand those evacuees who’d abandoned bundles of clothes.
Jacket open, she began to run again, fists tucked up under her breasts to keep them from bouncing painfully.
Her heel came down on a rock, her foot rolled, but she caught herself before she fell and ran on in spite of the throb in her ankle.
Ran until she had to walk to catch her breath.
Ran again.
Eyes on the road, concentrating on breathing, on moving her legs, she was at the outskirts of Bercarit before she realized.
It was quiet. The sky was clear, no smudge of smoke from cooking fires hung over the city. If there were people still around, and there had to be, then they were lying low.
She could see a smudge of smoke over the border. Except that the border was seventeen miles away and she only had first level Air so whatever it was she saw, it couldn’t be smoke from the battle.
Could it?
Did it matter?
She couldn’t run another seventeen miles. Every breath tasted like copper and it felt like steel spikes had been driven in under her ribs. Her feet hurt all the way up to her knees and she was drenched in sweat.
But Lord Hagen still had to know.
If she could find a pony…
Stupid. No one would have left a pony, and anyone who’d stayed wouldn’t have a pony.
They said that in the old days the strongest Air-mages could ride the wind. Lady Hagen was the strongest Air-mage in Aydori and, as far as Mirian knew, her ladyship had never gone flying. Not that it mattered what they said.
Limping, she started down the wide avenue the Trouge Road became when it entered the city. Bercarit, unlike Trouge, was built for commerce. It had no city wall; trees and shrubs gave way to the homes of the very wealthy, each individually walled. Private gardens in front of large sprawling houses on property that ran down to the bank of the Navine. This was where the Pack lived. Where Lady Berin…
Scrubbing at her cheeks with her palm, Mirian caught a glint of silver. She turned toward it, and realized she’d glimpsed the river between two of the houses.
The Navine looped around east of Bercarit, slowing as it deepened. This early in the season it would still be running fast, fed by the snowmelt and by runoff from a hundred mountain streams. Okay, maybe not a hundred. Mirian had no idea how many mountain streams fed the Navine and didn’t care. The river not only ran to the border, it curved to become the border for a part of its length. Somewhere there had to be a boat small enough for her to use.
She knew where the docks were. They topped her mother’s list of where good girls didn’t go. Good girls didn’t cross Beech Street.
Beech Street was nearly all the way across town.
Mirian weighed distance against the garden wall rising up beside her and turned to the wall, hurrying back to the last set of iron gates. Too large to squeeze through the vertical bars, she put her right foot on the lower crosspiece and jammed the toe of her left boot between the gate and the stone post, just above the hinge. Metal digging into her palms, she dragged herself up until her weight was on the hinge, braced her right foot on a bit of scrollwork, and pushed. Releasing the gate, she threw her upper body at the top of the post, moving her right foot to brace against a higher bit of ironwork, digging for imperfections in the mortar with the toe of her left boot.
Then her right foot slipped.
She lurched forward, trying to hook her fingers under the capstone. Began to slide back.
; A delicate touch against the back of her hand.
Just a leaf…
The shriek didn’t count if no one heard it.
Where there was a leaf…Her fingers touched wood. Shoulder screaming, Mirian stretched an impossible amount farther and curled her hand around a thick piece of vine. With no choice, she trusted it with her weight. Squirming and kicking against the side bars of the gate, she managed to get up onto the top of the wall.
The vine made getting down a lot easier.
Boots sinking into the soft earth between clumps of daffodils, she sagged against the vine for a moment, and watched the bud closest to her hand swell and unfurl into a pale pink blossom. A few more, then a few more, until a spray of blossom bobbed up over the wall scenting the air with the promise of summer. First level Earth. Pretty, but useless and worse than that, unintentional. Given the way exhaustion ate away at her control, it was a good thing she hadn’t managed to learn anything more dangerous. As it was, it was still too cold at night for so delicate a flower, so all she’d done was expose the vine to an early death.
More death.
Eyes locked on the ribbon of silver, Mirian staggered toward the water. Just a little farther and she could sit down. Just a little farther and there’d be a boat and it would take her to the border and she could find Lord Hagen. Jaspyr, too, if the Lord and Lady felt she was due some personal return for a horrible day.
Just a little farther.
The dock at the bottom of the garden was empty.
“Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! SHIT!” Mirian had learned to swear at university from a woodcutter’s daughter who’d tested absurdly high for her station—although no one had pointed that out more than once. Only Mirian had tested higher and that had thrown them together for a few months until Adine had progressed as expected and Mirian hadn’t.
Uncertain of what she should do now, or rather how she should do what she needed to do, Mirian turned in place, the dock creaking ominously beneath her.
There was a dinghy tied at the dock at the bottom of the garden next door and the wall between the two properties only came down as far as the shore.
The water was ridiculously cold. The shock almost made her swear again.
Her waterlogged skirts were heavy, and the dinghy tilted dangerously when she stepped in. It nearly threw her out when she tried to cast off, but she managed to push away from the dock with one of the oars and force the boat out into the current.
It was faster even than she’d expected. The water dragged the oar from her hand and she almost went overboard reaching for it.
“A single oar can be used as a rudder,” she told herself, watching the second oar move farther away, her knuckles white around the edge of the seat. At least theoretically. All Mirian knew about boating she’d learned on the still pond at her brother-in-law’s farm and that had mostly consisted of not allowing her older nephew to fall in.
As the small boat sped past increasingly less affluent properties at a dizzying speed, not falling in seemed like an excellent idea.
* * *
If the Soothsayers were right, the carriages they’d stopped had been the last out of the city. If the Soothsayers were right, the only people they’d meet on the road back toward Bercarit would be tired and not likely to challenge four Imperial soldiers even if they were armed. But not likely was not a sure thing, particularly not when Soothsayers were involved, and Reiter wasn’t going to lose a man by assuming the citizens of Aydori wouldn’t fight back. They needed to move fast in order to catch the sixth mage so they’d stay on the road, but they’d keep their weapons ready.
“Shoot if they look at us wrong, Cap?”
“Shoot if they aim a weapon at us,” he snapped. “Musket, pistol, cannon if it comes to it. Otherwise, leave them alone.”
“Crossbow?”
He turned to frown at Armin, who shrugged without breaking stride.
“Da’s got a crossbow in the shop, from his days in the army. He’d take it if he had to haul ass out of town.”
Reiter had once seen an old-timer put a crossbow quarrel through a plank. It might take forever to cock it, but a loaded crossbow was as deadly a weapon as a loaded musket. “Fine. If they’re pointing a crossbow, shoot.”
“What about a rock, Cap? You could get killed with a rock,” Chard protested over Armin’s laughter.
“Not if it hit your head,” Best jeered.
“More running, less talking,” Reiter growled.
“But, Cap…”
“A lot less talking from you, Chard.”
None of them seemed to have any trouble with the idea of hunting down another young woman and dragging her back to the empire. She was a mage, she was an enemy, and they were at war. The mages of Aydori lay with beasts and that made them…less. His men had their orders; their only concern was following them.
He gave the orders.
The beast had gold hoops in its ears. Her ears.
You have your orders, too, he reminded himself. And they were at war.
They heard a child complaining, high-pitched and peevish, as they rounded a corner and that was the only warning they got before coming face-to-face with a small family trudging up the road toward Trouge. Trudging up the road away from the inevitable advance of the Imperial army.
As the closer of the two younger women ran for the cart and the children, Reiter wished he was still a part of that faceless mass. Killing soldiers was one thing, they knew why they were there, but he had no stomach for killing civilians.
Suddenly in the sights of four muskets, she froze, both hands in the air. Her eyes were brown. No mage marks.
“I can ask her if she saw the mage, Cap,” Chard murmured.
“You speak Aydori?”
“I can say girl and how much.”
Of course he could. Probably in the same sentence. “Stick with girl.”
The old woman snarled and spat at Chard’s single word. The woman with her hands in the air lowered them, wrapped them around her body, and shook her head. The other one stumbled back, stopped by the crosspiece of the cart.
“They think,” Armin began, but Chard cut him off.
“I know.” He shook his head in turn, and ran in place.
The youngest of the children shrieked with laughter. The two elder all but sat on him to shut him up.
The old woman spat again, but the one by the crosspiece glanced up at the children and pointed down the road.
“Captain, if they have a weapon…”
“You run slow enough you’re still in range by the time they find it and load it, I’ll shoot you myself.” Reiter lowered his musket. Aydori eyes tracked the movement. “Let’s go.”
“I’d do the one on the left,” Chard observed, falling in behind Reiter.
“You’d do a diseased Pyrahnian whore,” Best grunted.
“If the price was right,” Chard admitted cheerfully.
Imperial infantry didn’t run into battle; the empire expanded and war waited for them. Oh, they’d all done some running—toward the front, away from the front, for their lives as one of Colonel Korshan’s rockets went off in a random direction—but Reiter couldn’t remember the last time he’d pounded down a road like a child escaping chores. Breathe in for two strides, out for two. Under his pack, his uniform stuck to his skin.
“We running all the way to Bercarit, Cap?”
“If we have to.”
They had to.
They took a breather on the last rise overlooking the city. It seemed calm, peaceful even. It reminded Reiter of Karis, the empire’s capital, in miniature. Gridded streets with frequent squares of green surrounding the city core—modern, built to design.
Armin snorted and said what they were all thinking. “Not burning yet.”
“Swords must be taking their own sweet fucking time at the bor…Cap!”
A flick of gray skirts against paler gray stone.
“I see her.” Reiter pulled the tangle from his pocket, thought he felt it
tug against the end of his finger before it fell to hang and sway. They were still too far from the mage for it to take her. “Come on.”
By the time they reached level ground where the road to Trouge turned into a wide avenue that split the city in half, she was gone.
If she was heading to warn her beast, she was heading toward the fighting. That meant they’d have to cross the city after her.
“Stay close to the walls. Someone heads toward us, you shoot.” The people who remained were likely thieves, taking advantage of the evacuation to fill their pockets and more than willing to take on four Imperial soldiers far from the might of the army.
“What about children, Cap?”
“No one’s left their children behind.”
“But what about puppies? What if they left the little beasts behind to guard…”
“We don’t shoot children!”
Gold earrings…
“Just as glad to hear that, actually. I like puppies. You know, the kind that aren’t likely to turn into a…”
Reiter stopped so suddenly, he felt Best’s musket hit his back before he could stop. When he turned, Best took a step back, Armin took a step away from Chard, and Chard looked confused. “Private Chard.” His voice was a threat he didn’t bother to find words for.
“Captain?”
“Shut up.”
Chard’s default squint widened, and he swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
A quick glance at Best and Armin showed the other two soldiers staring into the city like there was actually something to see.
Drawing in a deep breath, Reiter let it out slowly and…
Honeysuckle.
It was barely spring at this altitude. The honeysuckle on his mother’s cottage bloomed in high summer.
Mage-craft.
It didn’t take long to find the spray of flowers dipping over the wall and less time for the four of them to climb it and drop down the other side. Last time Reiter had gone over a wall, enemy soldiers had been shooting at him. This time, they found a woman’s bootprint heading toward the water. It could have belonged to anyone—there’d probably been women in the house that morning—but the honeysuckle suggested otherwise.