The Silvered

by Tanya Huff

  No. Not a carpet.

  A wolf’s head and front paws flopped down over the wall.

  No. Not a wolf.

  “I was amazed by how long he lived, even given the silver knives. He changed twice after they had the skin off him, you know, and then continued to twitch for some time.”

  Danika could hear Kirstin and Jesine throwing up. Stina’s heavy breathing. Annalyse sobbing. But she was Alpha. She straightened her back, clenched her teeth, and swore that Leopald would die before any of the children were born.

  * * *

  The smell of cooking meat pulled Mirian up out of a dream of flying. She opened her eyes, blinked several times to little effect, and finally had to grind the heels of her hands against the lids to bring the rock overhead into focus. Rolling onto her side, she peered out of the overhang at a brilliantly sunny day, at the ground beyond that rose and fell in such a random pattern it looked as though it had been stirred by a giant hand, and—although she had to squint to bring it into focus—in the shelter of a flat rock rising nearly half her height into the sky, at a smokeless fire with a carcass roasting over it on a skewer of green wood.

  Her mouth watered. She threw off the blanket, crawled two steps toward the food, realized she was naked, and dragged the blanket back over herself again. Cheeks hot, she vaguely remembered wet clothes being removed and a warm body pressed tight to keep her from freezing. The memory of the body flipped between fur and skin.

  “Tomas?”

  He was there so fast he must have been just out of sight. Toenails skidding against the rock, he bowled her over and then pushed his cold, wet nose against every bit of exposed skin he could find, as though he’d forgotten what she smelled like.

  Giggling—cold and wet tickled—Mirian grabbed two handfuls of fur and dragged his head up so she could see his face. “I’m fine. Really. Except that you’re heavy!” Releasing her grip and stroking the fur smooth, she added, “How late is it?”

  Tomas’ body rippled, changed, his forearms pushing up under her shoulders, his weight on his elbows just under her armpits. He stared down at her, eyes wild. “Two days. You were asleep for over two days.”

  “No…”

  “Yes.” He dropped his head and sniffed a bit frantically along the edge of her ear. “I couldn’t wake you. I didn’t want to leave you, but I had to make sure the search parties weren’t on our trail. The Imperials can’t track for shit, and this area’s never been hunted so there’s lots of small game, but you wouldn’t wake up.” He growled the last bit with his mouth against her shoulder, and Mirian shivered although she wasn’t at all cold.

  No point in apologizing since it hadn’t been her fault, but she tucked his hair back behind his ears and let her finger linger over the points. “How did you know I was only asleep?”

  “What?”

  “You said I was asleep. How did you know?”

  She felt as much as heard him swallow, then he raised his head and grinned. “You snore.”

  “I do not.”

  “You do.” His grin broadened. “I was terrified the Imperials would come close enough to hear you. Actually, I was terrified they’d hear you back in Aydori.”

  He’d been frightened; she could still see the fear lurking behind the laughter in his eyes. No excuse. “You brat! I don’t…” Her laughter escaped before she got the last word out and, an instant later, he joined her. It didn’t take long before she ran out of breath although that was more likely due to the solid weight of the idiot roaring with laughter on top of her than to any lingering effects of the drug that had put her to sleep for so long.

  “Come on, stop!” She poked his side, just above his lowest rib.

  “Ow!” He snapped his teeth by her ear, so she poked him again. “All right! Bully.” Eyes bright, he smiled down at her, and she suddenly became aware that there was only a blanket between them. Not even a blanket in places. Skin to skin.

  “Tomas…”

  “You smell amazing.” He wasn’t laughing now.

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “I want…We could…”

  They could. And she wanted to. At least part of her wanted to. Wanted the comfort. Wanted the closeness. Wanted the distraction. None of those were bad reasons, and another time they might be all the reasons she needed—but not this time. Here and now, they couldn’t use the excuse that they’d been overwhelmed by circumstances. This would be a decision they’d both have to live with when the comfort and the closeness and the distraction was over, and she wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t sure Tomas was ready for that either, in spite of his evident arousal.

  But no seemed too final after everything they’d been through together, so she took as deep a breath as their positions allowed and said, “Not now.”

  “Not now?”

  “Tomas, I just woke up. I’ve been asleep for two days.”

  “I know!”

  “And I really have to…” She bit her lip and thought, Seriously? He’s naked. You’re naked. At this point you’re missish? “I really have to pee.”

  “You have to pee?”

  She gritted her teeth and stared up at him.

  After a long moment, he snickered. “You have to pee.”

  “Stop repeating it!”

  “Sorry.” For a moment, she thought he was going to say something else, but instead he rolled off her, changed, ran out from under the overhang, and disappeared off to the right.

  Mirian crawled after him, wrapped the blanket more securely around her body, then, once clear of the overhang went in the other direction.

  Soaked in rain then dried in the sun didn’t make her clothes clean, but it made them significantly cleaner than they had been. Mirian dressed quickly in skirt and shirtwaist and applied herself to the rabbit. When Tomas finally returned, he changed, pulled on his trousers and shirt, and declined the meat she’d left for him.

  “I’ve had plenty. Thank you. There’s lots of rabbits around here.”

  He seemed embarrassed, more formal with her than he’d ever been.

  “Tomas!”

  He glanced up as the leg bone bounced off the top of his head.

  “You weren’t being led by your nose. It was the right reaction, just the wrong time.” Jaspyr Hagen had been no part of her decision. Mirian opened her hand and let the last of that possibility go. When she looked up from brushing her empty palm against her skirt, she realized Tomas was staring at her, brows drawn in, confused by her mime. “When it’s the right time, we’ll both know.”

  “When?”

  “If!”

  His teeth flashed white and very pointy, and he snatched the rib out of the air before it hit him. “So you’re saying we may later?”

  “I’m saying you’re an idiot. What do you think ‘not now’ means?” She rolled her eyes as he looked more cheerful and began cracking the bones to get at the marrow. Something told her that would have been an easier conversation if the Imperial army had left her the collar instead of the telescope, but she had no intention of examining that something too closely. “Is the Imperial army still searching for us?”

  “No. As frightening as it was not being able to wake you, going to ground for a couple of days was probably the best thing we could have done. You can’t track someone if there’s no tracks to follow. Not,” he added thoughtfully, “that they can track for shit.” His eyes widened. “Language. Sorry. Sometimes I forget you’re not Harry. I mean, I know you’re not Harry, I just forget you’re not…” He caught the third bone, too. “Stop that.”

  “Stop being an idiot. I’m honored that you sometimes forget I’m not Harry.”

  “He died.”

  She stretched out her leg and pushed against his knee with her toes. The Pack was tactile. Not all of her mother’s advice was bad. “I wish I could have met him.”

  “You’d have liked him. He’d have liked you.” Tomas closed his hand around her bare foot and squeezed gently. Then he exhaled emphatically and said, “Unle
ss they had a problem on the road, the Mage-pack reached Karis about the time you went to sleep. Maybe before.” He squinted up at the sky. “We’ll be three days behind by full dark.”

  “Then we’d better get moving.”

  There was a lot of money in the pouch she’d taken from Captain Reiter and more than she expected in Chard’s. Perhaps enough to pay for a seat on a mail coach and…

  …arrive in Karis drugged, chained, or locked in a small box. Or all three. Captain Reiter seemed like the type who didn’t take unnecessary chances.

  Or hadn’t taken unnecessary chances.

  Mirian let the coins spill over her fingers, absently noting the metals that made up each, and wondered why Captain Reiter had freed her. It wasn’t one thing that had changed his mind, he said. He hadn’t done it on the spur of the moment. He’d planned it. Had set it up to look as though a powerful mage had overcome every possible precaution. She thought of the circle of trees blown flat and wondered if perhaps she couldn’t have freed herself.

  “Mirian?”

  “Coming.” Sliding the coins back into the purse, she tied the bedroll, and draped the rope over her shoulder—although she held the whole thing against her body as she crawled out from under the overhang.

  “Ow!”

  Tried to crawl out from under the overhang.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” She touched her forehead and then stared down at the drop of blood on her finger. “I didn’t see the rock.”

  “Really? I’d assumed you smacked into it on purpose.”

  “I’m going to smack you,” she muttered, but accepted his hand, allowing him to pull her to her feet. “You’re going to stay in skin for a while?”

  He shrugged. “I thought you might want someone to talk to.”

  Or he might. He’d been more than two days on his own. But all she said was, “I would.”

  Following him away from the overhang, she marveled at the slabs of rock surrounding them…“Ow!”

  “You all right?”

  “Fine.”…and at the shards of rock underfoot. There were enough edged, broken pieces that she locked her eyes on the ground, careful where she put her feet. They were going to have to go through the whole shoe thing again. And trade her clothes for clothes more likely to be worn wandering about with someone wearing what Tomas was wearing. Suddenly stepping out into the open, Tomas grabbed her arm as she teetered on the edge of an enormous crater.

  It wasn’t so deep the bottom looked blurry, but it was deep enough for all that. It looked like a giant’s footprint. “What is this place?”

  “An artillery range. This close to the border, it’s the empire showing off.”

  Mirian didn’t know if Tomas knew a lot about artillery or just a lot more than she did. The explanation he began seemed thorough. After a while, as they found themselves back under the cover of a second-growth forest, she glanced up at the sun and interrupted, “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?”

  “We have to swing north to make sure we don’t pass too close to the garrison.”

  That made sense. “I should have searched the captain’s pack for a map.”

  “To Karis?”

  “Good point.” Once in the empire, all roads led to Karis. A captain in the Imperial army wouldn’t need a map to find the capital.

  Tomas stepped up and over a fallen tree, waiting for her on the other side. “My grandfather told me once that Earth-mages never get lost.”

  Mirian thought of Bernard walking the promenade with her at the opera and hoped he was alive. “Always knowing where you are doesn’t necessarily mean you know where you’re going.”

  “Do you…”

  “I’m not an Earth-mage.”

  * * *

  She wasn’t an Earth-mage, but she’d grown apples out of season. She wasn’t a Healer-mage, but she’d thrown off the Imperial drug, and the cut she’d got leaving the overhang had already closed. Tomas doubted she’d even noticed. She wasn’t an Air-mage, but she’d flattened a circle of trees.

  “Mirian…”

  “Yes, I think it would be a good idea for me to practice some mage-craft before we get to Karis.”

  “How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”

  She grinned, and he had to fight the urge to lean over and kiss the corner of her mouth. “It was all there in the way you said my name.”

  “Really?”

  “No.” She leaned sideways far enough to bounce her shoulder off his. Like Harry would have.

  * * *

  Reiter settled back against the barely padded seat in the mail coach and braced himself as the driver sprung the horses. Chard, who’d been staring out the window, would’ve fallen to the floor had there been room. As it was, he barely managed to stop himself from landing in Reiter’s lap, legs tangled with his musket.

  As Reiter shoved him back to his own side of the coach, he flushed and muttered, “Sorry, Cap.”

  “You might want to pay more attention. It’s still a long way to Karis.”

  Although, for a while, it had begun to seem like he wouldn’t be leaving the Lyonne garrison. No one had doubted his story, not when they’d backtracked Thunder to the camp and found the two of them still out and a perfect circle of shattered trees, but no one had been too willing to believe it either. The moment Reiter had woken, he’d been pulled from the infirmary into a meeting with the garrison commander who’d tapped the two sets of orders on his desk and informed him that he’d already sent a courier to Major Halyss.

  “You’re questioning an Imperial seal, sir?”

  The colonel had smiled tightly. “Given the way you were found, I’m questioning every flaming thing about this mess. Your report, Captain.”

  The report jumped from “…gave her a little privacy to relieve herself…” to “…opened my eyes in the infirmary with no idea how I’d got there.” but was, otherwise, complete. While the colonel chewed at it, Reiter marveled at how much difference leaving out a single sentence made. A single sentence: I let her go. And a name. Mirian.

  “How did she knock those trees down?”

  “She’s a mage, sir. Other than that I can’t say. I wasn’t conscious when it happened.”

  “Mage-craft is a dying art, Captain. There isn’t a mage in the empire who could do half—no a tenth—that damage.”

  Depending on how the battle at Bercarit was going, that might no longer be true. If the empire tried absorbing Aydori, they’d find themselves suddenly in possession of any number of powerful mages. For a while.

  “Did she have a weapon?”

  “Just her mage-craft, sir.”

  “Impossible.”

  It hadn’t been difficult to see why the colonel had been left behind in Lyonne rather than given a role in the winter campaign or the spring advance.

  Fortunately, Major Halyss had confirmed Reiter’s identity and supported his report as far as he’d been able.

  “Can’t say I’m not happy to be leaving,” Chard muttered, finally turning from the window. He pulled his stained and nearly shapeless bicorn down over his forehead, then slapped the barrel of his musket back and forth between his palms. “You get taken out by a girl and they look at you funny, you know?”

  “She was a mage.”

  “Still a girl, Cap.” Chard grinned across the coach at him as though that, at least, was undeniable.

  Reiter didn’t plan on denying it.

  He’d tried to leave Chard behind, the way he’d left Armand and Best in Aydori, at least partially because what was waiting for him in Karis was likely to be unpleasant, but Chard been surprisingly stubborn.

  “You’re an officer and you can leave me where you like, sir, but I think I need to go with you to Karis. I was there. You might need me to back you up.”

  Reiter knew flaming well that Chard’s word would carry no weight at all with the men who’d sent them out chasing prophecy’s tail, but he was selfish enough not to want to face th
em alone.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE CEILING OF THE ROOM was too high for Danika to get a good read on the air currents. Words she set loose might go anywhere, so she had to choose those first words carefully. Hands over her face, as though to block the memory of the dangling pelt, she stared up at the piece of wall once again covering Leopald’s rathole and breathed out through the crack between her hands, Talk to me.

  To me not to us. Her position meant she’d played more power games than the rest even if some of those games had been against Kirstin.

  The wall fit snugly; Leopald might never hear her. He certainly wouldn’t if she didn’t try.

  “Why?” Mouth partially covered by a napkin, Kirstin seemed to be listening to Stina’s low murmur of comfort, but her voice brushed past Danika’s ear.

  “He likes to talk, we need information. Knowledge is power.”

  Kirstin rubbed her thumb over the white lines the net had etched into her fingertips. “Power is power.”

  Without the net, the five of them had power enough to free themselves and while they’d never used that power aggressively, Leopald had ensured they’d be willing to. Telling Kirstin to leave the net alone would only annoy her, and, in all honesty, with the lingering headache from her own attempt pressing needles behind her eyes, Danika didn’t feel she had the right. “Remember, we’re terrified.”

  Horrified. Furious. Not terrified. Annalyse, still weeping silently in the circle of Jesine’s arms, her knuckles white around a fistful of her skirt, was grieving for the dead, not terrified or submissive. Marrying into the Pack required power, but it also required the ability to stand up to teeth and strength and instincts and face them down. Submitting in Aydori came with more layers of power and politics than Leopald could imagine.