by Kyra Halland
Lainie’s mind grasped eagerly at her grandmother’s promises. Silas free and well. Safety. Peace. A home. Children. Everything she wanted…
But could she really trade the freedom of the Plain settlers for those things? Could she agree to what her grandmother asked for Silas’s sake, and for the sake of her hopes and dreams? Or some of her hopes and dreams; what of her dream of making the Wildings a place where a person’s worth was judged by their character and actions and not by what they were born as?
She squatted down again in front of Silas. His hair was lank and tangled, his face creased with pain. The keening sound in his throat had grown slightly louder. He was a pitiable sight, and her heart ached at the thought of what he must be suffering. Had his gunshot wounds ever been properly treated? At least it looked like someone had tried to clean him up a little, and he was wearing different clothes from the ones he’d been captured in, which had no doubt been tattered and blood-stained. He still wore his mage ring on his left forefinger; mage rings might protect their owners from being cut off from using their power by a normal spell, but not from being Stripped, or whatever it was her grandmother had done.
What would he want her to do? In a moment of fear and anger, they had nearly turned their backs on the Plain folk and on everything they believed in and stood for. But she had to believe he hadn’t really lost the ideals he had built his entire life on since boyhood. He had still fought to save the herd, risking his life in a dangerous battle to protect the greatest source of the Wildings settlers’ prosperity. He had faced death in an icy, raging river to save one cowhand from drowning.
It was true, there were Plain people who had tried to hurt her, and who would try in the future. But there were so many good people, too, like her Pa and the hands on his ranch, Mrs. Horden, Paslund, Mr. Nikalsdon, and many others. How could she allow her grandmother’s corrupted Hidden Council to take away their freedom, even to save Silas?
“Silas,” she said quietly. He looked at her again, but this time, instead of glancing off to the side right away, his dark eyes held hers. He was in there, she saw, scared and helpless and in pain.
“Pretty lady,” he whispered, then his eyes shifted away from her and he resumed the soft animal noise he’d been making.
Lainie closed her eyes as a rush of grief threatened to overwhelm her, along with anger at the selfish, ambitious woman who had done this to them. She had said once that she would do anything to protect Silas except ask him to be less than the man he was. And now she knew, more than ever, that she had meant it. She would not make him into less than the man he was just for the sake of his own safety and her wishes. If she agreed to help her grandmother, if she betrayed the people of the Wildings and her and Silas’s ideals in order to save him and gain her own desires, their shame would destroy any chance of finding peace and happiness, and, in the end, it would destroy them, as well.
Quickly, she gauged their chances of getting away if they made a run for it now. Not good at all, she decided. With two dozen enemy mages in the room and Silas sick, hurt, and in chains, they’d never make it. She could falsely agree, then find a way to disentangle herself from her grandmother’s plots once Silas was put to rights again. But could she really trust someone as wicked as Madam Lorentius to keep her part of the bargain? In fact, now that Lainie thought about it, she would lay money that if she agreed to the bargain, her grandmother wouldn’t heal Silas but would keep him the way he was to continue forcing Lainie to do what she wanted.
The only other option was to leave Silas here, then come back later and rescue him. She didn’t know how she would do it, but she would find a way. She had vowed with Wildings earth and his blood that she would save him, and such a vow could not be broken.
“You can see how he is suffering,” Madam Lorentius said. “It is in your power to put an end to that suffering.”
Though the thought of leaving him here, chained, sick, scared, and hurting, tore her heart right in half, Lainie hardened herself to what she had to do, what she had to believe he would want her to do. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Silas. I’ll come back for you, baby. I swear it.
She stood and faced her grandmother. “Yes, I can see. But you’ve made one big mistake.”
“Oh?” Madam Lorentius raised one dark, arched eyebrow in question.
“You assumed that I can’t be just as cold and heartless as you.” She turned on her heel and strode towards the door.
“Stop her!” Madam Lorentius cried out.
Lainie felt the swell of power in the room as the mages there called up their attacks. She summoned up her own power and, with a sharp sweep of her arms, slammed the other mages’ power back into them.
And then she ran.
Chapter 8
LAINIE DIDN’T MAKE it very far before she heard shouts and footfalls coming after her. She looked back over her shoulder; seven or eight men were about half a block behind her. She had used a good portion of her own power in suppressing the attacks of the two dozen mages in the building, but she still had plenty left. She summoned up a burst of power and, still running, twisted around to slam it into the ground just in front of the mages who were chasing her. The explosion was followed by cries of confusion, anger, and pain; without looking to see the results of her attack, she pushed herself to run faster.
She ducked down one alley between warehouses, then turned right when she came out the other side. She ran through another narrow gap between buildings, then turned left, then through another alley, then right, zigzagging through the streets and among the warehouses as the sound of pursuit fell further behind her. Then, as she ran down a narrow street, three men appeared at the next intersection ahead, blocking her way. Power in glowing colors came to their hands, and they began shaping a battery of attacks.
Shielding herself or attacking again would take more power than Lainie wanted to use when she didn’t know how much fighting still lay ahead. She flung out a strand of power and grabbed hold of one mage’s attack. He cried out in shock as she tore the attack and a large additional portion of his power from him. She reeled in the stolen power, careful not to take it into herself. Quickly as thought, she shaped it into a dense ball and threw it at the three mages as she ran towards them. The other two launched their own attacks at the same instant; the attacks collided in front of the mages with a burst of power that sent all three of them staggering back. Immediately, one of the mages righted himself and started shaping another attack. Lainie drew her gun and fired at him as she ran past and turned the corner. A shout of pain told her she’d hit her target.
As Lainie ran, she kept her eye out for another opening between buildings. Soon, shouts and the sounds of running feet closed in behind her again. She rounded another corner, then ducked into a narrow crack between two buildings on her right. The opening was just barely wide enough for her to squeeze into; she pressed herself as far back into the shadows as she could and suppressed her power good and tight.
A moment later, four men raced past the gap she was hiding in. “Where’d she go?” one of them called out.
“Must have already gone around that corner,” another man replied, gasping for breath.
Lainie peeked out from her hiding place to see them run down the street to the next intersection. They hesitated, then turned left around the corner. Still keeping her power drawn in, she slipped out from between the buildings and ran back the way she had come.
Before long, she heard more footfalls behind her. Damn; she’d thought she had shaken them off. She glanced back; this time there were five of them, closing in fast. The man in the lead was preparing an attack that, even with her mage senses drawn in, she could tell was going to be massive. She drew her gun again and, still running, fired off five shots behind her in rapid succession. She hit her targets; all five men staggered and fell, but the mage who was shaping the attack still managed to throw it as he hit the ground. Lainie veered aside, but the attack was too big. The tremendous force of magic slammed into
her and sent her flying.
She landed hard on the stone-paved street, rolling and skidding a couple of measures along. The impact of the magic and the road had jarred her to her bones. Her head hurt, her teeth hurt, her lungs fought to take in the air that had been knocked from them, but nothing seemed to be sprained or broken. She forced herself back on her feet. All five men were down – Silas would be proud of her; the hours of quick-draw training and running target practice he’d put her through had paid off – but their writhing and moans of pain showed they weren’t dead, and there was no telling how soon they would recover and resume the chase.
She set out again at a slower jog, reloading her gun as she caught her breath and recovered from the hard landing. Again she thought gratefully of the physical strength and endurance her hard magical training and the months of working on the drive had given her. Recalling the map she had studied and the carriage ride here, she thought about how to get back to the hotel. Her pursuers probably expected her to try to retrace the convoluted route the carriage had followed to the Hidden Council headquarters. But if her sense of direction and her memory of the landmarks and the map were right, she should be able to take a more direct west-southwesterly route. Gauging her direction by the hilltop palace and the top of the Mage Council tower in the distance, she chose a street and turned down it, picking up speed again and keeping her ears open for sounds of pursuit.
That street let out onto a wider, busier street, which marked the boundary between the warehouse district and an area of various business establishments. The bustling streets here gave her a distinct advantage; she might not blend in very well, but it was easier for just one person to slip through the crowds than it would be for a group of three or four or five men. And she doubted the Hidden Council mages would try to attack her openly in the street with so many people around and risk drawing attention to the group’s illegal activities.
Now that there was less danger of being attacked, and likewise not wanting to attract attention, Lainie slowed to a brisk walk and holstered her gun. A few people on the streets and sidewalks stared at her, but most looked away, trying to act as though they hadn’t seen her and wanted no part of whatever she was involved in.
She had been keeping an eye out for black-clad Mage Council enforcers, and, so far, hadn’t seen any. But now she did spot a pair of men up the street wearing black pants, green uniform jackets, and square green caps, with wooden clubs dangling from their belts. Constables, she supposed. Plain or mage, it didn’t matter; it would be best to avoid them.
She checked her position against the landmarks again, and figured it was probably still a couple more leagues to the hotel. She wasn’t all that tired, but her side ached from a stitch and a hunger far out of proportion to the power she’d used had started gnawing at her. Up ahead, a number of black-and-gold carriages stood in a row, gold flags out. She walked quickly to the one at the front of the line and climbed into the back seat. “Bayview Hotel,” she said, handing the driver a ten-gilding piece.
He looked at the coin, then at her, his eyes going to the mage ring on her right hand. “Yes, madam.” He flicked the horse’s reins and the carriage started rolling. It had a hood that was collapsed flat behind the passenger seat; Lainie pulled the hood up to conceal herself from view. At intervals along the way to the hotel, she peered out from inside the carriage, but didn’t see anyone else coming after her. Either she had finally managed to lose them, or the gunshots had convinced them not to mess with her. Still, she didn’t stop watching for trouble until she was safely back inside the hotel.
She stopped at the front desk and set another hundred-gilding piece down on the counter. “If anyone comes around asking for me, I’m not here. Tell them I checked out and left.” She didn’t know what the Hidden Council would try next, if they would make another attempt to persuade her or if they would capture her and try to force her to do what they wanted, but she needed time to think before she had to deal with them again.
The clerk looked at her with eyebrows raised, then put the coin in the cash box under the counter. “Yes, madam,” he said.
Lainie headed into the dining room and ordered what seemed like half the menu. The waiter didn’t say anything; they must have been used to feeding hungry mages there. She devoured the three full plates of food, thinking only of filling the emptiness of drained power and physical hunger while trying to keep the huge, bottled-up press of emotion that she wasn’t ready to face at bay.
When she was finished eating, she went up to her room. The bed had been made and Silas’s hat placed back on the pillow where she had left it. At the sight of his hat, she finally couldn’t hold back any longer the full impact of what had happened that awful morning. Silas’s battered face, his terrified, pain-filled eyes, his obsessive rocking back and forth, and that frightened animal sound he had been making filled her mind. He was being held captive by the corrupted Hidden Council, with her own grandmother at the center of it all, like a black widow spider, spinning her web of evil plots and ambitions. His mind was shattered, his body beaten and abused, he was alone, hurt, and scared – and he didn’t even have his hat.
The last few shreds of her endurance gave way. Lainie collapsed onto the bed and clutched his hat to her breast, and sobbed with all her pain and sorrow and anger until a sleep of utter physical and emotional exhaustion sank down dark and heavy upon her.
* * *
THE REST OF that day and all the next, Lainie lay in bed, aching in heart and body, drained of strength, weighed down by sorrow and hopelessness. She didn’t know what to do. The Hidden Council, the people Silas had believed in, had turned out to be a lie, and worse than a lie. She didn’t even know how to understand a world where this had happened, or how she could face something so immense and terrible by herself. She couldn’t go to the Mage Council for help; that would be just the same as handing Silas over to them, and, anyhow, with one of Elspetya Lorentius’s people on the Council, Silas was just as likely to end up in the Hidden Council’s clutches again. Whether he was in the Mage Council’s hands or the Hidden Council’s, it was the same; he would be stripped of his freedom, his dignity, his power, even his life. And in all this vast city, she didn’t know anyone who might care what happened to Silas, whom she could turn to for help. She was entirely alone.
The second morning, she awoke feeling a little more clear-headed. It was time to stop lying around feeling sorry for herself and get on with figuring out a way to rescue Silas. The Hidden Council’s warehouse was no doubt guarded all the time; she had no idea how she was going to get in, free Silas, and get away without getting caught by the Hidden Council or the Mage Council, but she had sworn she would find a way, and, somehow, she would. In the meantime, at least, she could be pretty certain that Madam Lorentius wouldn’t have Silas killed. He was her only hold over Lainie; she couldn’t afford to lose that advantage and make an even worse enemy out of Lainie.
Hold on, baby, she thought at Silas’s hat. I’m workin’ on it. I’ll get you out of there.
Her stomach growled, finally empty again after the huge meal she’d eaten two days ago. She got up and took a quick bath to wash away the dust and sweat of the chase the other day, then put on clean clothes and went down to the dining room. There, she helped herself to a little of everything on the serving table.
After she ate, she returned to her room to work on a plan to rescue Silas, but found herself pacing, too restless to settle down and think. So she went back downstairs to the reading lounge and picked up the Ladies’ Fashion Monthly she’d been reading before. Maybe reading would help to calm her mind and settle her thoughts. Maybe the fashion monthly had an article on how to make bread rolls shaped like bows. Or on how to rescue husbands from wicked old women.
She didn’t find either of those, but she did find an article on how to hire an excellent pastry cook. She was wondering how anyone could be rich enough to hire someone whose only job was to bake pies and cakes for them when a voice next to her said, �
�Mrs. Vendine.”
Like that other time, her heart just about pounded out of her chest. The room had been empty a moment ago, but now a small, neat-looking man in a finely-tailored gray suit was sitting in the chair beside hers. “Who are you?” she hissed, as angry at herself for letting someone sneak up on her as she was at him for sneaking up and startling her. That hotel clerk better not have told him where she was, not after she had given him a hundred gildings not to tell. Unexpected meetings with strangers were something she could do with less of, not more.
The man picked up a book and opened it. As he looked down at the pages, he murmured, “You needn’t fear being overheard; I’ve put a discreet sound-concealing shield around us.” Still, he constantly glanced around the room, and one leg jittered nervously.
Lainie tensed, remembering the last time a man had put up a shield around her and himself without asking her first. And there were too many people in this city who were out to get her for her to feel easy about being alone with anyone. But this fellow looked fairly mild-mannered, despite his nervousness. If nothing else, she could take him with a quick suppression of his power and a knee between the legs. It had worked well enough on Orl Fazar. “Who are you, and what do you want?” It was rude, but she didn’t care.
“Considering what you’ve been through, Mrs. Vendine, I can’t blame you for being suspicious. It’s very wise on your part. For your protection and my own, I’d rather not give you my name, but I’m the one who sent the messages to your husband this past spring and summer. I assume he told you about them.”