The Silvered

by Tanya Huff

  “Good. About that,” he added when her eyes narrowed even further. Far too close already, a trio of priests hurried toward their fallen comrade. “Run!”

  A pair of soldiers flanked the courtyard door. Reiter shoved the redhead left. As the soldier on the right moved to intercept, Reiter drove a fist into his stomach and, as he folded forward gasping, gave him a hard shove out the door and down the four broad stairs. A mass of vines came up through the cracks between the pavers and held him in place. Although Reiter knew they couldn’t afford the time, he turned to stare at the brown-eyed mage.

  She shrugged as she ran by him. “Like weeds, those. Leopald’s gardeners is idiots.”

  Two small fountains erupted with force enough to blow a stone lion to pieces. People screamed and scattered. Roses grew to hedges. They had a clear run all the way to the balloon.

  There were Shields stationed on the palace roof, but it was a big roof and they were in an interior courtyard. Reiter grabbed the downed soldier’s weapons and ran to catch up, an itch between his shoulder blades.

  * * *

  “Ready!”

  As the guard on the other side of the door sheared the bolt, Mirian dissolved the hinges then reached out and called every piece of silver she could feel. She let the metal splash against the other side of the door, then reached deep for her last reserves, blowing door and silver out to slam into the mass of men. As Tomas and the eight adults charged past her, she lifted the boy onto her hip—skin and bones and light enough that, as exhausted as she was, his weight meant nothing.

  It seemed reasonable to assume that the light making her eyes water had been intended to blind the freed Pack as they attacked out of darkness. Bad planning. The Pack depended on their noses more than their eyes. Mirian could smell nothing over the stink of the boy in her arms.

  But she could hear.

  Wet tearing. Crunch of bone. A yelp. Even disarmed, the guards weren’t helpless and only Tomas was at anything near full strength.

  When the screaming stopped, the sounds grew wetter. She was about to set the boy down.

  Then stopped.

  Someone howled—it didn’t sound like Tomas.

  It bounced off walls and ceilings and floors, then faded and turned to the sound of nails against tile as the pack raced away.

  “Tomas?”

  Of course, he’d gone with them. Or after them.

  Mirian set the boy on his feet, pried his hands off her skirt, took his left in her right, felt his right grip her thumb. She could see shadows on the floor that might have been guards’ bodies, but, given the medieval dungeons already in use, they could have been pit traps. “I can’t see.” She could tell herself it was because she’d come out of darkness into bright light, but she knew it had more to do with the mage-craft she’d used freeing the Pack. “You need to direct me around obstacles. Can you do that?”

  He whined and hung on.

  She’d been speaking Aydori. When she repeated herself in Imperial, he sniffed and began pulling her carefully away from the door.

  When her foot caught under what felt like an arm, she kicked it out of her way.

  The boy understood Imperial. The ninth freed Pack had asked for a reason to live in Imperial. Mirian hadn’t noticed because she’d been speaking it for days. The emperor had not only encouraged Imperial citizens to kill and skin Imperial citizens, but he personally had them imprisoned and tortured.

  He was making war not only on Aydori, but on his own people.

  As the boy tugged her toward the sound of snarling, she ignored the way her boots slid on the wet floor.

  “Mirian!” Tomas grabbed her arm and pulled her into a room so bright she thought for a moment she could see.

  * * *

  The aeronauts watched wide-eyed as four women ran past them, torn sheets flapping. Reiter grabbed the arms of the young areonaut he’d spoken to earlier and yanked her out of Danika’s way.

  “They’re not allowed on the balloon! No one is!” She twisted in his grip. “His Imperial Majesty’s orders!”

  Danika and the redhead were already on board, ignoring the aeronauts demanding they come down. The brown-eyed mage was nearly at the top of the half dozen stairs, an aeronaut hanging off the lower edge of her sheet. While waiting her turn, the youngest seemed to be causing more havoc with the fountains, spraying them toward the doors, keeping people inside. Smart.

  “Look at me!” Reiter tightened his grip, pulling the young woman’s attention from the balloon. “You don’t want to get blamed for what’s about to happen, and I don’t want to hurt you. Go!”

  “But they’re…”

  “You can’t stop them from taking it.”

  Her eyes widened. She seemed more indignant than angry. “It’s not that easy!”

  “You told me the balloon is always kept ready, in case the emperor decides to go up.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “It’s a big bag of air.” He glanced at Danika now staring up into the balloon. “Trust me, it’s that easy for them.”

  Four ropes hit the ground, the balloon surged up against the four remaining. The brown-eyed mage grinned, chips flying from the mahogany railing as she wielded the ax.

  Maybe it was the grinning. Maybe it was the ax. The aeronaut jerked free of Reiter’s grip, put two fingers in her mouth, whistled a complex pattern, and ran. The others ran with her. One held a length of sheet.

  The youngest, the Water-mage, was on board now.

  Two ropes remaining.

  He heard the shot the same time he saw the musket ball kick up dirt. The first man to the edge of the roof hadn’t taken the time to aim. Probably wasn’t entirely certain what he was supposed to aim at.

  “Captain!”

  He turned to find Danika staring down at him.

  “Are you coming?”

  He hadn’t…

  He’d assumed…

  He didn’t even know their names. He knew her name and Kirstin’s name, the name of the dead mage, but then they were redheaded, brown-eyed, and youngest.

  “If you’d rather die, Captain Reiter, I won’t stop you.”

  Another two shots. Not from the roof. There were Shields fighting their way out through the spraying water. He couldn’t get back to Mirian. But he had…they had pulled Shields from all over the palace and created one flaming fuck of a diversion for her. She’d be able to slip the Pack out in the chaos. Hide them in clothing as she’d hidden Tomas.

  Reiter had been a soldier most of his life. He’d always expected to die fighting for something he believed in. From the moment he saw Mirian in the square, he’d known he was a dead man. He hadn’t actually thought there was another option.

  As the balloon broke the final two tethers and surged up into the air, he ran up the stairs and launched himself at the break in the railings. Slamming down on his elbows, he bit his tongue, swallowed blood, and managed to get onto his feet in time to see the roof of the palace fly by.

  In time to see two men with raised weapons. In time to dismiss one and identify the other as Corporal Hare.

  Hare had been one of the first handed a musket with the new rifled barrel. Greater accuracy over a greater distance, and Hare had already been one of the best shots Reiter’d ever known.

  The balloon was basically a big bag of air. Put a hole in it and it was a big bag.

  Reiter raised his stolen musket to his shoulder. He might be able to distract…

  The sandbag hanging by the redhead’s hip exploded, spraying sand. She stared down at the mess, then up at the balloon. “He missed!”

  “No.” Reiter lowered his musket without taking a shot. On the roof, Hare took his time reloading. The wind whistled by, and Danika carried them out of range. “He hit exactly what he aimed at.”

  * * *

  When Mirian blew the door open, one of the guards had tried to run. Tomas, less distracted than the others by the rich meaty scent of fresh blood on his muzzle, had slammed him to the floor, closed his ja
ws around the back of his neck and crushed his spine. By the time he spun back to the mass of bodies by the door, growling low in his chest, the screaming had stopped and the feeding frenzy had begun.

  Not unexpected.

  The guards didn’t smell like Pack, or power.

  He’d been warned, entering the Hunt Pack, that this happened in war. He was the younger Lord Hagen, and he’d sworn to himself he’d never…

  They smelled like meat.

  The guards had taken strength away. They could give it back.

  Then Nine—he wouldn’t change again and tell Tomas his name, if he even remembered it, so Nine—Nine had lifted his head. Lowered it. Scrubbed his muzzle on the shoulder he straddled. Lifted it again, and howled.

  By the time the howl had faded, the whole Pack was running.

  A man.

  Over the scents of metal, and death, and piss, and lamp oil, Tomas had been able to catch the very faint scent of a man. Not one of the lingering scents of the many men and women who’d been through these halls. Fresh. A man standing somewhere close. Waiting.

  Whoever he was, he was more than merely a man to the freed Pack.

  He’d been enough to pull them from food.

  Not far down the hall, Nine had turned, dove through what looked like an open cage with gears and pulleys up above and chains running down through holes in the floor, and into a white-tiled room.

  “So you got past the guards.” The man standing alone on the upper level had peered down through the bars into the room. He looked short, but that might have been the angle. When Tomas, caught up in the attack on this final enemy, had nearly sunk his teeth into the toe of a glossy boot, he’d danced back, but he’d seemed pleased rather than frightened or angry.

  Then Mirian’s scent had brought Tomas up onto two feet. Attention split between the enemy and the Pack, he’d gone to the hall to get her.

  He lifted the boy up into his arms as she walked carefully into the room, adding bootprints to the smeared red pattern on the floor. The boy nuzzled up against his throat, soft tongue licking along the line of his jaw.

  “Stop it.” Tomas reached across with his free hand and pushed the boy’s head away.

  The boy whined and snapped at Tomas’ fingers, trying to push his face back to…

  To the blood.

  “Fine. But no biting.”

  The Pack, exhausted, sat panting. And twitching. Except for Nine. Nine paced. Back and forth. Through the resting wolves. He brushed against Mirian’s skirt hard enough to leave a dark, wet stain behind but not so hard she stumbled, so Tomas let it go. He understood the need to move. The frustration at not being able to take this final enemy.

  He sucked blood off his teeth, shifted the boy to his other hip, and leaned closer to Mirian’s ear. “Twelve o’clock. Up about fifteen feet.” Her chin lifted. “Alone. No visible weapons, but he smells like power.”

  “Mage?” she asked quietly.

  “No. But sort of similar. Not a guard. Expensive clothes. Very expensive boots.”

  The man looked at Mirian like she was his. Tomas growled. The boy in his arms echoed it. Nine picked it up and then, one by one, the other seven. It grew, filled the room, until Mirian said, “Enough.”

  “Fascinating.” He smiled like a schoolteacher Tomas had particularly disliked. “So you’re my sixth mage, are you?”

  His sixth mage? Tomas tensed. The boy whined.

  Mirian’s lips pulled back off her teeth. “Ignore it. Reiter said the emperor was insane.”

  “Are you encouraging her to use mage-craft against me, abomination?” The emperor rocked back on his heels. Tomas wanted to snap the approving smile right off his smarmy face. “Well, that’s definitely a good idea, credit where credit is due and all that, but she’s already making the attempt. I can feel all six of my protective artifacts heat up. Actually…” Reaching into his trouser pocket, he pulled out a ceramic disk and slipped it into his jacket. “That was getting a little uncomfortable. Now…” Even at this distance, his eyes were so brilliant a blue Tomas thought for a moment he had mage marks. And mage marks on this man would be wrong for so many reasons. “According to the report from Abyek, you can use—and I think it’s fairly and unfortunately obvious why I say use and not control, isn’t it?—fire, air, water, metal, and earth. And then Tardford gave us healing.” His smile stretched into broad approval. “Six in one. As happens far too often I’m afraid, it seems the Soothsayers were misinterpreted. You’re the mage I was looking for all along. And let me tell you, understanding that makes it a lot easier to accept that the others have escaped. There is, of course, still the unborn child beginning it all to deal with, of course, but if that’s not a factor currently, I’m sure we can arrange things. Although, this time…” He wagged a finger at Nine who snarled and took another leap at the ledge. “…we’ll do it scientifically.”

  “Is he lying?” Tomas asked, not bothering to hide the question from the emperor.

  “About mage-craft having no effect on him?” Mirian tucked a strand of hair back behind her ear. “No.”

  Nine set up for another run. Tomas growled, and he settled, reluctantly, by Mirian’s other side.

  “First, why would I lie? Second,” the emperor continued as Tomas soothed the boy, “thank you for keeping my property from damaging itself, and third…”

  He opened his hand. Nine jumped for the flash of gold. Missed.

  * * *

  Mirian felt the net snug up against her scalp, thought about hats, and bit back a giggle. It didn’t hurt this time, but that was possibly because she couldn’t feel anything but tired.

  “You didn’t think I only had the original six, did you?” The emperor smiled broadly. “This is the artifact we used for primary testing back when we first discovered the cabinet in the Archive, so I know this one, unlike the one you wore before, is entirely functional.”

  It didn’t feel functional, it felt old.

  Mage-craft had been wound through and around the gold links—a twisted combination of healing and metals.

  Gold. Soft. Malleable. Never tarnished. She’d seen coins of red gold once from Talatia in the Southern Alliance at her father’s bank.

  “Mirian, there’ll be more guards soon.”

  “I know.”

  The guards would have silver, and she couldn’t…

  She knew the gold. Not as well as she’d come to know silver, but well enough. Except…she had nothing left. She was only still standing because she was too stubborn to fall over.

  The emperor said the Mage-pack had escaped. That was good.

  But now he had Tomas. That was bad.

  “What is wrong with your eyes? They’re white, aren’t they? At first I thought it was just the room because, in all honesty it can be just a little overwhelming—the tile, the lights—but no, they’re white. No color to them at all. Wait, I’ve read about that. Hang on.” He lifted a hand as if he actually thought the gesture would hold them in place. “I’m sure I’ll remember in a moment. I know it was an old scroll. Very old…”

  “Used to be, everyone had to do a bit of everything to survive, but civilization means specialists because suddenly everything’s so bleeding complicated with foundries and gaslights and brass buttons, it takes all a person has to learn how to do just one thing and if everything’s that complicated, then mage-craft can’t be simple…

  “You need to be a river, not a bucket. Way I heard it, the power is everywhere, but the mage has to open themselves and say fuck these bullshit rules.”

  She had essentially blinded herself with the limited power in her bucket. In this room, in this light, she could see shapes, although she had to trust those shapes were her Pack. She felt as though she were looking through a series of overlapping veils. If she turned her head quickly, the veils shifted and she almost thought she saw Tomas watching her.

  What would unlimited power do? How many more veils would it add? What else would she lose? Sight. Hearing. Touch…

&n
bsp; Life?

  “Mirian?”

  Running off to rescue the Mage-pack from the empire might have been a bit crazy, sure, but she didn’t want to die.

  Or lose Tomas and the boy and the eight others in their broken Pack.

  Her life weighed against ten lives.

  If completely opening herself to power did kill her, at least she wouldn’t have to live with having failed them.

  So, that decided, how did she find the power Gryham had heard about?

  She knew how it felt lying dormant—trapped, heavy, not fitting in the skin that should be yours. She’d known that for years.

  She knew how it felt being used—like a breeze, a cool drink of water, warm earth underfoot, knowing the parameters of your body, silver running silken. Although that was more recent.

  Oh.

  Reaching out, she found Tomas’ hand and squeezed it. There was no time to explain, but if the worst happened, she hoped he’d remember and understand. “Fuck these bullshit rules.”

  * * *

  “Mirian!”

  Gold ran down her cheek and caught against the collar of her dress.

  When she screamed, the Pack howled.

  When she turned toward him, her eyes gleamed white from rim to rim.

  * * *

  Her body felt like it dissolved.

  It hurt.

  Then re-formed.

  That hurt more.

  “Mirian!”

  She turned toward his voice. She could see the way the air moved over and around him. Defining him. She could see his shape in the air, see him. He was mostly water. She hadn’t known that. She could see all of them for the first time. Faces. Expressions. Scars. For all the detail, there were no colors; it was all shades of gray. All but the silver fur that marked where the Pack had been collared—that blazed.

  Mirian pulled her hand from Tomas’ grip and stroked the backs of two fingers over his cheek. The movement shot pain down her arm as her new body figured out what she wanted it to do. The contact burned, then faded to a dull throb. “Don’t look so worried. I’m…” In all honesty, she wasn’t sure what she was.

  What else she was.

  She was Mirian Maylin.