Kiyun frowned as he watched her. “You’ve never done the healing like this before,” he repeated. “Even I could feel the power. If you’re pulling that out of yourself, or if you took it from one of us . . .” He shook his head.
“I’m not and I wouldn’t,” she said firmly. “I couldn’t ask for that much energy from either of you without killing you. The Aiueven could, but they’re built for that kind of power.” She laughed shakily. “Moons, but this world isn’t just a breeding ground to them, it’s a massive power cell.”
His brown eyes sharpened. “You mean they eat power?”
“Perhaps. I know that they use the energy in each creature or thing the same way we use firewood. It’s how they hollow out the ice and keep the rock caves from collapsing. It’s how they communicate, how they fly, how they reach the stars. They shift energy, channel it here and there.” She started to pace, shaking her hands to keep herself from scratching the new skin. “The young ones couldn’t control their own body temperature—that’s why they were in the deeper, warmer caves. When they learn how to channel enough power to ignore the cold, they move out closer to the adults.” She frowned to herself. “That’s why they mistook me for an infant. I channeled so little power.” She paused and seemed to look closely at herself from within. “But I won’t be able to handle much more than I did today . . .”
Tehena watched the wolfwalker with pale, sharp eyes. “Dion, the legends, the Aiueven sucking the life out of intruders and leaving only husks . . .”
Dion cocked her head as if considering the point. “They’re probably true,” she admitted. “The aliens simply channel the energy right out of the human until he dies. It’s effective. Clean. Good for intimidation.” Her voice grew faint. “Aranur would have liked it.”
Tehena and Kiyun exchanged looks. Kiyun frowned. “Dion, if you didn’t take the power from yourself or us or the wolves, where did you take it from?”
She hesitated. “I did take some from myself,” she admitted.
“And the rest?”
She looked down.
They followed her gaze. In the twilight, they almost missed it. There was no grass where she had been standing, and her boots no longer had soles. There was a shadow of powdered leather where she had stood, but no more than that.
Tehena cleared her throat. “Going to go through a lot of shoes.”
“Better boots than bodies,” she returned.
“Dion,” Kiyun started.
“I won’t experiment,” she said softly. “Not here. Not right now. It took me years to learn the limits before, and that healing was only a shadow of this power. I won’t risk you or the wolves.” Or my child.
The unspoken words were clear, and Kiyun nodded, satisfied. But Tehena eyed the wolfwalker thoughtfully. The lanky woman had felt the edge of that power as she lent her own strength to Dion, and it had been seductive. She wondered how Dion resisted the urge to cut it loose and let it burn away all the pain she carried inside. Perhaps it was the wolves. The wolves might have been Called to help the wolfwalker, but the creatures had also made their own Answer. It was a circle, she thought. The Call and Answer—the need that drove them and the solution that saved—they were the same thing: Ember Dione.
XX
Talon Drovic neVolen
Temper rage with empathy.
Temper eagerness with wisdom.
Temper the self with the world.
Temper the world with hope.
—from the Book of Abis
Dusk found Drovic’s group on the outskirts of a remote farm, where only half the fields had been harvested. It was the last farm along the road, and Talon, Drovic, and Kilaltian studied it for almost half an hour before acknowledging that there seemed to be only three people inhabiting it. The three farm folk knew a threat was close; the two dogs in the yard circled and watched the hills with unease.
Talon resisted the urge to rub at his wrist. It was purpled and swollen, making the pain in the hand even worse, and he desperately wanted the ice he knew would be stored in the coldroom below the farmhouse. Drovic’s men and women had cleaned up after the village raid, but had not yet updated the maps, and several of them—including Talon—needed to change the bandages over their wounds. “We won’t kill them,” he said flatly to Drovic.
Drovic answered absently as he studied the farm. “The dogs or the people?”
“Both,” he returned shortly. “We’re far north,” he added. “We can use this place again, add it to your list of caches. We go in, we stay the night, we don’t molest the woman, and we give her a few pieces of silver when we leave. She’ll say nothing to anyone else.”
Drovic turned from his study and regarded his son like a particularly unpleasant grafbug. “Why?”
Talon gestured at the run-down courtyard, answering the obvious, rather than the unspoken question. “Look at her. The barn is missing planks at one end; the fences are barely mended. One of those pumps looks like the handle is barely bolted on, and at least half her fields are fallow. She’s poor. Her family isn’t large enough to keep this farm running. What woman wouldn’t take in a few boarders to help feed her children through winter?”
“We’re raiders, boy, not boarders.”
“And she will know it the moment we ride in. But she will pretend—and we can pretend—that we are a venge instead. She will shelter us tonight and cook stew and open the grog larder, and if we come back, she will shelter us again.”
Drovic turned his flat, blue-gray gaze back to the farm. “The shelter will be here, whether or not she remains alive. Alive, she can change her mind after we leave, and point a venge straight after us.”
“Alive, she will be convenient.”
Drovic’s voice was dry. “Aye, that’s the way the men will see it.”
“She is not to be harmed,” Talon said sharply. “Not the woman. Not the girl. Not the boy.”
His father gave him a hard look. “Brentak likes them female. Fit just likes them young.”
“A mother makes a vicious protector. Harm the girl or boy, and she will fight us knife and stone, tooth and nail.”
“All the more reason to take what we want and kill them before we leave.”
“No.” Talon struggled to suppress his anger. “Not this time. This time, we do it my way.”
“Why?”
“Because—” Talon’s voice broke off in frustration. “Because I see . . .” He shook his head. “We must not. Not this time. Not here.”
Drovic studied his son for a long moment. He turned away in silence, and Talon’s gut clenched. But Drovic merely motioned for the raiders to ride in after them. The man’s voice was wry as he ordered loudly, “We are not a pack of raiders; we are a venge. Behave as one.”
Sojourn raised an eyebrow, and Weed and Ki exchanged looks. But other than that, the hard-faced men simply nodded as the word was passed along.
As they approached the farmhouse, the two dogs rushed out. One massive mutt paced back and forth, its coat ruffled and its teeth bared, while the shepherd-cross dog barked viciously. The dnu, used to noise and danger, took their cue from the raiders and ignored the half-breed dogs.
At the house, the girl, then the woman and boy peered out the window. When the door opened, the woman held a sword in a half-ready position. Talon noted her stance: frightened, determined. She was obviously a novice with the blade, but she would fight. If she panicked, she might even wound one of them before she died. Talon hoped she would choose to live.
Drovic did not dismount. Instead, he held up his hand to halt the rest behind him and walked his dnu forward a few more steps. The dogs snarled and circled, but quieted at a command from the woman, and leaped to the porch to stand ready beside her.
“We are riding through to Kiren,” Drovic said formally. “We request the use of your home.”
The woman’s hand tightened on the hilt. But she replied, “Our home is yours as it is ours.” There was the slightest tremor in her voice, but she stepped asi
de to allow Drovic to dismount and enter. The dogs growled, and she hushed them, commanding one to stay on the porch, while the shepherd-mutt backed obediently inside. Drovic smiled as if to reassure her, but he dwarfed the woman, and his expression was more like that of a hunting lepa. She stepped involuntarily back. He glanced meaningfully at the growling dog inside, and she commanded it over to the children.
Drovic moved inside without glancing at her sword. It took only a moment to judge the rooms; then he returned to the porch, ignoring the farm woman who still held the blade, although now somewhat helplessly.
“Set up the barn,” he told his riders. He gestured to the porch. “Unload here. With your permission,” he added belatedly to the woman.
It was with difficulty that she kept her voice steady. “Of course.”
He nodded. “We will want stew and grog tonight; hay in the barn for the dnu. Breakfast at dawn.” He caught Talon’s warning expression. “Other than that,” he said dryly, “I suggest you keep out of our way.”
The woman nodded without speaking. Her knuckles were white on the hilt of her sword, but when she turned to go inside, her back was straight and her head was held high. Drovic almost admired her.
The farm woman took the two dogs out back and chained them to the porch while Kilaltian’s group took over barn duty. Drovic took advantage of the large dining table to set up his maps and notes. By the time Talon was done with his dnu, the great room was lined with packs.
Two hams stolen from the village were being cut up, and dried fruits had been dumped in a large bowl, from which the raiders grabbed up handfuls. The farmhouse had been painfully clean before they arrived, but the floor was now scuffed with boot prints and trail dirt. The walls, once starkly white, were now littered with smudges from dirty hands, while obscene smears already obscured the lower windows. Even as Talon took in the room, Liatuad stepped back from his latest window tongue-pattern and grinned at the man beside him. Al tugged on his red hair in admiration and nodded in return. “Not bad,” he admitted. “But watch this.” Talon turned away in disgust as Al spread his nostrils on the glass and began panting like a dog to build up enough steam on the window.
The woman and her two children were in the kitchen, cutting up tubers and mincing herbs. The three worked tensely while Fit leaned casually against the wall and watched the girl and boy. Talon barely glanced at the farm folk, except to note that, judging by the expression in Fit’s eyes, the girl was not young enough to stay untouched in this crowd. She’d have been safer in a Sidisport harem, he thought, where at least the laws would protect her till she came of age and was willing. He found the coldroom and chipped off a piece of ice, wrapped it in a bandana, and pressed it against his wrist before rejoining the other raiders.
Drovic was at the plank table, listening to the reports and marking the information on his map. It was an exquisitely detailed map, originally drawn by a Yorundan master, and Talon envied that detail. Harare had supposedly studied under such a master. The blond man updated their maps often, but even he didn’t approach the beautiful detail of the original. After giving his own, edited impressions of the village, Talon leaned on a chair while the rest of the raiders reported.
“. . . a trap door, but it led to a standard coldroom. The basement was flooded about half a foot deep from some sort of leak in the pipes.” Harare kept his voice as low as Drovic’s. In the kitchen, the farm folk would hear nothing other than the noise of the other raiders.
Drovic nodded and gestured with his chin for Weed to report. Weed always looked like an awkward scarecrow to Talon, unbalanced by the bony breadth of his shoulders, unkempt with the loose threads that always seemed to pull from his jerkin no matter how tight the weave. His cauliflower ear was a legacy of Weed’s own father, and one Talon didn’t envy. Drovic may have been a hard man, but he had never hit Talon with more force than to bruise. It was different now, Talon admitted, but he had become a danger to his father, not just another raider. As Dangyon began his report, it occurred to Talon that, like Weed, Dangyon didn’t belong with Drovic. The barrel-chested man had no desire to kill, though he had learned to do it with dispatch. Talon nodded at Dangyon as the older man finished his report and moved back to settle his gear. He realized that, as he had decided about Wakje and Weed, he would take Dangyon with him also. Then he grinned derisively to himself. He wondered if they knew he would be changing the course of their lives.
Ilandin spoke timidly and quickly, and Drovic nodded curtly to dismiss her. Wakje merely handed over a fast tally stick of his notes and takings, which Drovic set aside. Oroan and Fit had found one of the lab accesses for which Drovic searched, but it looked to be old, possibly as old as the village. The roof had collapsed less than three meters in, and the tunnel was long abandoned. Drovic carefully marked the information on the map, but Talon could see he was angry.
“Did you look for another door?” he asked tersely. “They wouldn’t just abandon an entire lab because one part of the roof caved in.”
The slender woman shrugged. Her wide-boned face was carefully expressionless, and her voice was flat as glass. “There wasn’t time. I kicked the pile, but we were in a hurry.”
“You kicked the pile,” Drovic repeated. “What else did you pick up?”
“A few coppers and a kilo of cinnamon-laced rou.”
Drovic’s voice was hard. “And?”
Oroan regarded him for a moment. “A pearl barrette.”
“You stopped and searched a woman’s armoire, but spared less time to look for the access that you were sent in to find.”
Oroan raised her eyebrows. Her crystal-green eyes fairly challenged the man, and Drovic stared at the woman for a long moment. The woman’s voice was steady, but Talon watched the set of Oroan’s oddly wide shoulders as they tensed the barest amount. “The dirt was hard-packed, Drovic. It was futile to do more.”
“And that was your choice to make?”
“As long as I’m the one down in the hole,” she agreed calmly. But her hands were too casual as they set on her hips, close to the hilts of her knives. “You owe me five silvers for the find.”
Drovic leaned almost negligently forward. Oroan didn’t flinch when his hard-calloused hand struck her brutally on the cheek. The woman’s head rocked back, and her eyes went still for a moment. Then she smiled—stiffly, because her wide lips had been smashed back against her perfectly straight teeth. She ignored the trickle of blood. “You owe me five silvers,” she said calmly.
“Get out of my sight,” the man snarled.
The flat-boned woman merely waited.
Talon put his hand on Drovic’s arm, and the older man shook him viciously off. Drovic fairly ripped the pouch from his belt. He cast the silvers down on the table so hard that all but one bounced to the floor. Oroan did not take her eyes from the man. Talon watched the silvers roll, noted the woman’s square chin—defiantly high, the flared nostrils of that broken, aquiline nose, and the empty, jewel eyes above it.
Talon said softly, “Oroan.”
Something flickered in those green-glass eyes. The woman finally stirred. She nodded once at Talon, wiped her chin of blood and, with an oddly delicate gesture, stooped and picked up the silvers.
Drovic watched without speaking. The woman rose and walked away without a backward glance. Kilaltian called out, “A drink, my wench,” and Oroan grinned in return.
“A slitted throat, my fancy fop,” she replied. The raiders laughed rudely, though none of them looked at Drovic. Wakje tossed the woman a flask of whiskey, and Oroan caught it one-handed. She upended the flask and took a double hit. Her glass-green eyes were brilliant when she tossed the flask back to Wakje. “I once was a loader in Breinigton—” She sang as she jigged a few steps on the floor. “—down by the lonely sea—”
The others grinned and chimed loudly in: “I mistook my pone for a piece of white bone, and shipped it to Portsindee.”
Oroan jerked a flask from Dangyon’s hand as she jigged past the barr
el-chested man, then slapped the raider only half playfully as he tried to retrieve his liquor. She chugged the fluid and choked like a cat with a hairball as Dangyon whacked her hard in the gut. The massive man plucked the flask from her hand, and she grinned at him even as she coughed to clear her throat, then cast a deliberate look at Drovic. “I once was an elder in Mandalay, over in high Ariye—”
The others roared, “I mistook my pete for some dried-up mesquite and burned it along with the tree!”
Drovic watched without expression, then turned back to his map. He studied it for a long moment, blindly seeing the notes and marks in his mind, not through his eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was low beneath the guffaws. “Someday, I’ll kill that worlag bitch.”
Talon’s voice was as quiet. “Someday, she’ll thank you for it.”
Drovic stared at his son. Then he barked a laugh. “Spoken like a true neVolen. I’ve missed you, boy.” Talon grinned, and Drovic slapped his good shoulder so hard that his teeth rattled. “Look here, now. We’ve confirmed another lab, and old or not, it should be investigated next year. This western area here—this is where I want to strike in spring. The lab here has to be large—the glass and resin shops have too much activity for standard exports—and two of the smaller greenhouses are growing agar.”
“Gels?”
“Could be, for that kind of quantity.”
Talon nodded. The gelatin was used for growing the bioforms like the rootroad trees that now included a luminescent bacteria. Although most labs were simple workhouses for improving the Ancients’ plants, some labs were geared more specifically. Those were the ones Drovic wanted. The chemistry and science could easily be turned into weapons, wielded like a sword in the right hands. Talon rubbed absently at the aching burn in his stiffened left hand, but stopped when Drovic noted it. “Tonic hasn’t kicked in,” he said shortly in explanation, though his hand itched to crush the pouch that the river had emptied of herbs.
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