To the Gap (Daughter of the Wildings #4)

by Kyra Halland

  Silas lit the lamp, built up the fire in the cabin’s cookstove, emptied a couple of cans of stew into a pan, then set some canned tomatoes to warm in another pan. While the food heated, he sat back down on the bed with Lainie.

  “Did they have any books?” she asked.

  Silas picked up the sack and dumped the handful of penny-thriller novels he had bought at the mercantile onto the bed. All the way out here, books cost a drina or more apiece, but they could afford it. Lainie read to him out of the books most nights, and he had to admit they were entertaining, and not only at the scandalous parts. “These didn’t look familiar,” he said. In spite of the luridly illustrated covers and equally lurid titles, he could never tell one from another.

  Lainie sorted through the books. “No, these are all new – Oh! The Pirate’s Deadly Embrace! That’s the one that comes after The Pirate’s Poisonous Kiss!” Eagerly, she picked up the book in question and started reading while Silas dished out their supper.

  After they ate, he went to where he had hung up his duster by the door and took the silk pouch from Fine Things out of the pocket. “It’s almost your birthday, right?”

  A smile lit up Lainie’s face. “I forgot! I don’t even rightly know what day it is today, but I think you’re right.”

  He removed the box from the pouch and handed it to her. “Happy birthday, whenever it is.”

  “Oh!” She opened the box. Her eyes went wide and she gasped, “It’s beautiful!”

  “Your mage ring. It’s high time you had one.”

  “Oh.” Her face fell for an instant, then she smiled again, a little too brightly. “I’m glad you think I’m ready…”

  That wasn’t quite the reaction he’d been expecting. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” But her smile faded again, and she looked away. “It’s silly.”

  “Tell me. Nothing you want is silly.”

  “I was, well, I was hoping for a wedding ring sometime.”

  Silas mentally kicked himself. He should have known. Mages didn’t wear wedding rings, but the Plain custom was widespread among the Wildings settlers. Then a brilliant idea came to him. “It can work for both. I’ll show you.”

  Silas took the ring out of the box and slipped it onto the first finger of Lainie’s right hand, her strong hand. It sat loosely on her slender finger. “We’ll have to take it to a goldsmith to get it adjusted,” Lainie said.

  “No, we won’t,” Silas answered. “Watch.” He took his own mage ring from the chain around his neck and put it on, to help him focus on the magic he was about to do. Guiding his power and intent with a few words in the Island language, he worked the spell that would make the ring adjust itself to fit perfectly even if her finger changed size or she wore it on a different finger. Though a little tricky, this was a common spell; few people’s fingers remained the same size throughout their lives, but a mage was bound to a single ring his whole life, the rare and illegal exception being rogue mages who surrendered their ring and then made a new one.

  When he was finished, he sealed the spell in place with a few more words. “There. How’s that?”

  Lainie held out her hand. “It fits perfectly! And it’s so pretty. But what about wearing it on my wedding finger? It’ll still be too big.”

  “Let’s bind the ring to you first, then I’ll show you.”

  As was customary, Silas had made his own mage ring while he was at school with the guidance and assistance of his assigned mentor. In preparation for this day, he had spent the last few ninedays recalling everything he could about how to make a mage ring and working out the parts he couldn’t quite remember.

  Now he took Lainie’s right hand in his left hand. The blue stone and silver band of his own ring glowed as, with words and magic, he helped Lainie find the natural energies of her ring’s band and gemstones and weave a thread of her own power through them. Once the ring was thus bound to her, a small portion of her power would permanently flow through it, connecting it to her until she died or was Stripped. If she voluntarily gave up the ring, it would remain alive and linked to her, unless she surrendered it to a mage hunter who knew the illicit trick of severing a ring from its owner’s power, which would allow him to turn in the dead ring and claim the bounty while letting the renegade go free.

  He helped her finish the binding, then withdrew his mage senses. “Oh!” Lainie exclaimed. The ring on her hand had begun to glow a deep rose color. “My power – It feels stronger. Like it suddenly came alive. Like it wants me to use it.”

  “If you’d had it when you were captured by the Ta’ayatan,” Silas said, “the wiseman wouldn’t have been able to completely block you from using your power.” He still blamed himself for having left her so vulnerable, though at the time she hadn’t been ready yet for her mage ring and, in any case, they couldn’t have afforded one until the very day that Brin Coltor paid them and they headed up into the mountains to look for his daughter.

  That was in the past, and couldn’t be helped, he reminded himself. Whatever lay ahead, she was now a little better prepared to face it. “I’ll show you how it can work as a wedding ring, too, but I need your permission to take it off.”

  She held her hand out to him in perfect trust. “Okay, go ahead.”

  He removed the ring from her right forefinger and slid it onto the fourth finger of her left hand. Again, the ring adjusted itself to fit.

  “It changed size!” Lainie said. She held out her hand, turning it this way and that to make the gems sparkle in the lamplight. “It’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever had in my life! And this is the perfect way to disguise it when I’m not using it for magic.” She looked at him, an idea lighting up her already-beaming face. “I know! You could do the same thing with yours. May I move it?”

  Though he instinctively cringed at the thought of letting someone else remove his mage ring, Silas said, “Go right ahead.”

  She took his mage ring from the first finger of his left hand and put it on the fourth finger. As her ring had done, his adjusted itself to fit the new finger. The ring felt odd there, but he liked the look of it. It looked… married. She was right; it was the perfect disguise.

  “See?” Lainie said. “Now everyone will think it’s a regular wedding ring. And the house ladies will know you’re already taken.” She grinned at him, teasing. House ladies did tend to gravitate towards him, although he made it clear to them, and to Lainie, that he was taken, body, mind, heart, and soul.

  “So, what else did you do in town?” Lainie asked as she admired her ring again. “Or did it take you that long to buy my ring?”

  “I found out that the cattlemen’s co-op is still hiring for the drive this year, so I signed us on.”

  Laine looked from her ring to him, smiling even more widely than before, if such a thing was possible. “You signed us on for the cattle drive? I always wanted to go, but my Pa would never let me!”

  Silas couldn’t blame Burrett Banfrey for not wanting to let his pretty daughter go off alone for months among hordes of lonely cowhands. “I thought you’d want to go. And I figured it’d be a good way to get to Piney Ridge without drawing attention to ourselves and to earn some more money at the same time.” He hoped that would be enough explanation for her. He didn’t want to ruin the evening by bringing up the question of going to Amber Bay – never mind sailing overseas – and he also wasn’t ready to tell her about the message, not knowing what it meant or what to say about it. “It’s good money,” he went on. “Twenty-five a month for me, and thirty-five for you. I signed you on as a cook.”

  “That’s more than it usually is.”

  “The co-op manager told me they’re expecting record prices at the market this year. That’s why they were still hiring; they’re taking on extra hands because more cattle are going and they’re expecting more trouble with rustlers than usual. The manager knows of your father, by the way. His name’s Landstrom.”

  “Landstrom.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I t
hink I’ve heard of him.”

  “He’s also heard of you. Said he heard you’d run off with some no-good wizard fellow. He was glad to see you’d caught yourself a good-looking husband like me instead.”

  She snorted with laughter. “I wonder what he thinks wizards look like?”

  “I was wondering the same thing.” Then he went on, more seriously. “We’ll need to keep our heads down and stay out of trouble around the Plain folk on the drive, especially since there’s rumors about us all the way out here. And keep your power suppressed, and remember the name-slip charms.”

  “I’ll be careful,” she said. She stood up and came around the table to him, and draped her arms over his shoulders. “If you ask me, I think wizards are very handsome. One of them, anyway.” She bent down and kissed him thoroughly as she started unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Hungry?” he growled though the kiss.

  “No,” she said. “I just love you.”

  That, he thought as he stood and lifted her to carry her to the bed, was as good a reason as any.

  Chapter 3

  LAINIE AND SILAS set out for the mustering of the drive a day early, so as not to risk missing the departure and to get settled in and figure out how everything worked. Before they rode away, Lainie looked back at the cabin where they had spent the last three months. A lump formed in her throat at the prospect of leaving; it was the first home she and Silas had shared.

  Silas followed her gaze back towards the cabin. “It wasn’t much, but it was home,” he said.

  “I think it was just fine. I’ll miss it. But we still own it, so we can come back after the drive, right?”

  He didn’t answer. He hadn’t said anything more about going out to Amber Bay since the day they left Bentwood Gulch; she hoped he wasn’t still thinking about it. The danger they were in was real; she didn’t deny that. Even if the Mage Council didn’t know about her illegal and supposedly impossible abilities – and she and Silas had no proof that they did know – and even if there was no assassination order out on Silas, the eight hundred gilding bounty on him was proof enough that they were in trouble with the Mage Council. Not only that, they were also in danger from any sufficiently large and determined group of Plains who found out they were mages and decided to get rid of them.

  But running away wasn’t the answer. They didn’t know that there weren’t any other mages at Amber Bay, and the Plain settlers who had made their way out there would likely hate mages just as much as the folks here did. Going out to the western coast would mean never seeing her Pa again and leaving him bereft of anyone of his own flesh and blood to inherit his ranch. It would mean they would never have children. Even more, it would mean turning their backs on protecting the rights and freedoms of the Plain settlers of the Wildings and on working to make the Wildings a better place for Plains and mages alike to live.

  Most of all, running away would mean giving up hope. The people on the Mage Council could change their minds and change the rules, or new people with new ideas could come onto the Council. The Plain folk of the Wildings could come to understand that not all wizards were wicked, heartless monsters. But if she and Silas gave up hope and ran away, change was less likely to come about, and even if it did, it wouldn’t do them any good if they were so impossibly far away.

  “We don’t have to decide right now,” Silas finally said. “Let’s get going.”

  Lainie nodded. Sooner or later, they were going to have to settle the question, but right now, she didn’t want to think about it any more. Instead, she turned her thoughts to the adventure ahead. Excitement bubbled through her; her dream of going on the big cattle drive to the Gap was finally going to come true. She kneed Mala into a gallop. “Race you to the road!” she shouted.

  Silas took up the challenge, pushing Abenar into a gallop as well, and they raced side by side through the beautiful spring morning towards where the Windy Valley herd was gathering southeast of town.

  Several leagues on, they stopped to call on the rancher who had sold them the cabin. His wife answered the door, and they told her they were going on the drive and the cow and chickens would need to be looked after.

  “My husband’s already left to take our herd to the muster,” the wife said. “I’ll go out and fetch the animals back today, and tell him when he gets back in a day or two.”

  “We’re not sure if we’re going to come back here after the drive,” Silas added. “If we aren’t back by mid-winter, you folks can have possession of the cabin again.”

  He sounded like he already had his mind made up, but Lainie didn’t want to discuss it in front of someone else. So she just said, “I hope we can come back. It’s a real nice little place, and we like it.”

  “I’ll let him know,” the rancher’s wife said. “Though it’d be best if you spoke to him too. If you can find him. It’s always a mob at the mustering.”

  “We’ll do that, ma’am,” Silas said. He took a small pouch of coins out of his pocket. “Here’s the extra I promised you folks for not telling anyone we were here while my wife was recovering from her illness. We surely appreciated the peace and quiet.”

  The wife took the pouch and smiled. “Why, thank you kindly. I’m glad to see she’s feeling better.”

  “Thank you for everything,” Silas replied. He tipped his hat and they left.

  As Lainie and Silas rode on towards the mustering grounds, a broody silence fell between them. Lainie wanted to ask Silas if he really had made up his mind about not coming back. He had never before made a decision about what they were going to do without consulting her or giving her a choice. They had also never had a serious argument before. She was afraid this was going to be the first time for both of those. She didn’t want to argue, especially not today, and from Silas’s silence, she guessed he didn’t want to, either.

  After a few more leagues, the sound and smell of cattle distracted Lainie from her fretting. A cloud of dust hung in the air a league or so ahead, and, as they got closer, she could make out the shouting and laughter of cowhands hard at work and the frantic barking of cattlehounds. The smells and sounds and dust reminded her of the round-up at the ranch every year, before the cattle to be sold at the Gap were separated out and driven to join the local co-op herd. All the activity and the prospect of the long trip ahead had always seemed so exciting, but, no matter how she begged, her Pa would never let her go. The big drive was no place for a woman, he always said, though she knew that sometimes women did go, as cooks or even as trail hands. But those women usually weren’t young and unmarried. So she had tried to content herself with helping with the roundup on the ranch, and, a few times, her Pa had even let her help drive the herd to the Bitterbush Springs muster.

  But now, here she was, finally about to go on the big drive. She didn’t even care about the money. Just the thought of being on the trail for four or five months with thousands of head of cattle and then seeing for herself the legendary roundup and market at the Gap made her feel like she would burst with anticipation. “There it is!” she said to Silas. She leaned forward in the saddle and kneed Mala back into a gallop. Silas kept pace with her as they raced the rest of the way to the mustering grounds, leaving the uncomfortable silence between them behind.

  The mustering grounds were a jumble of noise and activity. Loudly bawling cattle, already bearing the individual ranch brands, were being herded through a large corral where they were branded with the local co-op mark. A big tent stood six or seven measures away from the branding corral, with a large painted canvas sign hanging on it that read Windy Valley Cattlemen’s Cooperative Association. On the other side of the tent from the branding corral stood a second corral filled with horses. A sign in front of that corral said Remounts – check horses here. Cowhands and other men hurried about between the tent and the corrals. Through it all, half a dozen cattlehounds ran around, barking enthusiastically while the constant wind carried dust and the smell of cow dung and burning hair everywhere across the grounds.

/>   Silas and Lainie rode over to the remounts corral and dismounted. A young man carrying a thin board with a sheet of paper stuck to it with a nail wrote down their names and a description of their horses. They unsaddled the horses, then took their bags and gear with them to the co-op tent while the horse wrangler led Abenar and Mala into the corral.

  Inside the tent, a sturdy, balding man sat at a table, doing battle with piles of ledgers and stacks of paper. The engraved nameplate on the table identified him as Argus Landstrom, the co-op manager. Three men were in line ahead of Lainie and Silas. As he spoke with each man, Mr. Landstrom checked his name off on a list. With two of the men, he took some coins out of a money box as an advance against their pay so they could buy whatever supplies they needed, and wrote the amounts down in a ledger.

  When Lainie and Silas got to the table, the man looked up, then shook Silas’s hand. “Vinson, right? No –” He glanced down at his papers again. “Vendine. Glad to have you with us. And Mrs. Vendine,” he said to Lainie. “I know your Pa. Banfrey sure turned out a fine daughter. Mr. and Mrs. Bington will be glad to have you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Landstrom,” Lainie said. From what Silas had said, she guessed Mr. Landstrom had some strange ideas about mages. Otherwise, he seemed like a nice man. Co-op managers had to be able to get along well with all kinds of people. With any luck, he would never learn the truth about Silas and her. On the other hand, if he did, maybe he would see that mages really weren’t that bad.

  The talk turned to the supplies they would need. The main things they didn’t already have were leather leggings, a necessity since straying cattle tended to find the prickliest, thorniest patches of brush to hide in, cattle quirts, and ropes long enough for roping. They still had a good amount of the ammunition they had bought in Ripgap, but Lainie thought it wise to replenish their supplies. Silas declined to take an advance against their pay.