“Too dangerous” didn’t really seem to be the point.
Wil said nothing, merely sucked in a long breath, blew it out slowly, and nodded. He peered around at all the faces of those closest, watching and waiting, and all the faces of those farther away, also watching but not knowing why.
He dropped his pack to the ground, unslung the rifle, and shoved it at Wisena with a cold little half smile. “Hold this, please.” Wil squared his shoulders and stepped away toward the river.
“Wil!” Dallin called and started after him. “Wil, you don’t have to do this.”
“Yes, I do.” Wil looked over his shoulder as Dallin caught him up. “And you know why.”
Dallin actually growled, clearly perturbed. “All right, then.” He took hold of Wil’s elbow, pulled him to a halt, and turned him to face him. “I don’t want you to this. I’m asking you not to.”
“You need him.” Wil swept his arm to encompass the camp. “They need him. And this is the only way he’ll do what you need him to do.”
“Then I’ll find another way. This isn’t—”
“This is exactly the way, and you know it.”
Dallin glowered darkly. “You don’t know what could happen. What if—?”
“What if what I choose to do or not do right this second is the difference between peace for your country or another decade of war? I asked you once what would happen if you were given a choice between me and Cynewísan. This is it, Dallin, we’re standing dead-center in the middle of that choice, and I’ve just decided it was wholly unfair of me to put it to you. It isn’t even your choice.”
“Strange, because it seems to me I’ve made it several times over already.” Dallin was furious, frightened, and furious because he was frightened. “Damn it! All of what came at you this morning, it’s still here, waiting for you and straining against its traces, and what you’re proposing is tantamount to calling it down on yourself. I watched you bleed from your eyes, Wil. I watched you vomit blood into the dirt until I thought your guts were going to spill out into the mud.”
Wil stared into the depth of pleading in Dallin’s dark eyes, looked squarely at what was behind it all, and didn’t allow himself to look away this time. He slipped his hand to Dallin’s nape, pulled him down, and kissed him, hard and with more meaning inside it than Wil could ever speak. And then he pulled back, stepped away, and lifted his hand. He opened it, palm up.
“I have to.”
He called the lightning.
Thunder boomed above their heads, but it didn’t even come close to the thunder in Dallin’s gaze, heavy and filled with wrath as he stared at Wil through the sizzling pop and too-bright flashes that danced over Wil’s palm as lightning reached down from the sky in jagged teeth of dazzling light and then sputtered harmlessly as it splayed over his fingers. Wil could feel it all, what Dallin had warned him about—ramming against the boundaries of Wil’s Self, looking for cracks in his defenses, trying to squeeze its way through—but by the set of Dallin’s jaw, the tension in his face, and the pain lines beginning to etch themselves at the corners of his mouth, Wil knew Dallin was… what had he called it? Channeling. Setting himself beneath it. Shoring Wil up, because it was what Dallin did—he couldn’t help himself, because things like this… this was what you did for people you cared about.
“This is why you frighten me,” Dallin said through his teeth. “These chances you take—” The spatter of light over his face made him look fierce and dangerous. “This is why I’m afraid to tell you what you want to know.”
Even though they both knew he would.
Who is submitting to whom? Dallin wasn’t saying it, but his eyes were.
Wil only shook his head, stepped in close, and kissed him again. Lightning spat all around them, a living column of raw power stretching from the sky to Wil’s hand, through him, and into Dallin, tethering warp to weft and enclosing them inside itself. Ozone was sharp in the air, currents flaring between them and sharpening every touch, every breath, every reaction, until the need to have more was nearly unbearable.
Blatant intimacy for all eyes to see, and Wil truly didn’t care. Let them look—they should see what their Shaman meant to their Aisling.
Slowly Wil drew away, said, “I’m pretty sure I love you,” pleased by the way it gained depth with the power that bound them, pleased that it wasn’t at all as difficult to say out loud as he’d imagined, pleased by the way Dallin’s voice wavered and his eyes filled and his jaw clenched to stop it as he said it back. Words Wil had never expected to say, never expected to have said to him, and spoken through the blinding weave of everything that trussed them one to the other. “Warp and weft.” Wil smiled at Dallin, said, “I’m sorry,” because he knew Dallin would forgive him, then took a long breath, braced himself.
Pulled it back.
It wasn’t nearly as wrenching as he’d been expecting. A moment of pain and overwhelming heat, and his ears popped, but Wil didn’t do much more than stagger, blinking into the darkness, the ropy shapes of the lightning still spiking his vision. A little dizzy, perhaps, but he hadn’t swooned, as he’d almost been expecting to. His mouth tasted foul, full of copper, and he spat, noting without surprise the streak of red. He dragged his sleeve under his nose, again not at all surprised when Dallin shoved a handkerchief at him. Wil took it and blotted the blood dripping down over his lip, then obediently tipped his head back and allowed Dallin to guide him to sit in the grass. It was only another moment before Dallin settled beside Wil, draped his arm around Wil’s shoulders, and pulled him in.
“You’re a bloody idiot,” Dallin growled, but there was no real anger inside it.
“Oh, I know.” Wil dabbed at the blood seeping from his nose. “It’s why you put up with me.” He smirked around the handkerchief when Dallin gave him a bemused frown. “Because I make you look good. I mean, what good is a Guardian if he never has to rescue anyone?”
Dallin shook his head, exasperated but fond. “I only hope I live to see the day when you put me out of a job.” He squeezed Wil in closer and roughly kissed the crown of his head.
“Captain Brayden.” Wisena stood before them, holding Wil’s rifle at parade rest, mien somber but more deferential than he’d been before. “Um. Guardian.” He dipped a low nod to Wil, then turned his glance back on Dallin and lifted his chin. “I believe you have a strategy you would like to discuss.”
Dallin’s mouth pinched up tight as he stared at Wisena. He turned to Wil, noted the satisfied smirk beneath the handkerchief, and gave him a glare. “You’re still an idiot.”
WIL DIDN’T participate in the discussion with Wisena. He didn’t need to. Dallin would fill him in later. But Wil made sure Hunter was included in the party as they retired into the guardhouse for privacy. The problem of a bodyguard—Hunter’s problem more than Dallin’s—was solved by Wil commandeering Corliss. Hunter was clearly torn. Wil had to smirk at the jealous glances Hunter shot Corliss, but the Shaman was where Hunter’s real loyalties lay, and he was obedient to a fault. So when Wil insisted, Hunter less than graciously ceded the charge of him.
Corliss certainly didn’t mind. She seemed to know her way around quite well, and Wil hadn’t forgotten that she knew where all the good food was. Anyway, despite the fact that Wil couldn’t quite get past the gun to Dallin’s head, Corliss was very personable and provided a comfortable buffer between Wil and the people who’d stood in line to touch him before and now gave him more room than necessary. The adoring looks of before had modulated into something quite a bit more chary, but it didn’t seem like it was enough to put them off, just enough that they gave Wil some distance—which was what he preferred.
“That was a hell of a show you put on.” Corliss said it casually as they sat in the grass, trenchers overflowing with slabs of beef, blackened potatoes, and more green vegetables than Wil had a name for.
He pulled apart the still smoldering potato jacket to expose the tender, steaming mounds of white pulp inside. “Yow, ow.”
He sucked on his fingers. “Seemed the best way to dispel all the doubts at once.”
“I’ve no doubt it did that. Damn, I forgot beer.” Corliss turned her head, scanning. “Ah. Ryne, dear, would you be a love and fetch us two beers? There’s a good girl.”
Amused despite himself, Wil watched the girl—Ryne, apparently—scamper off.
“You seem to know a lot of people here.” He took a healthy bite of something that looked like a tiny cabbage and immediately regretted it—it was bitter and foul, and he leaned to the side and spat it into the grass.
Corliss watched it all with a smirk. “Try the beets. They’ve got a different way of pickling here, and they’re quite good.” She paused. “That’s the red.”
“I know what beets are.”
Corliss only shrugged. “You didn’t know what the sprouts were, that’s all.”
“Well, I know what beets are.” Wil couldn’t help the way it curled defensive. “And I know what meat is, and I know what green beans are, and I know what—” Shit. He slumped, cheeks warming. “All right, I don’t know what this other green thing is.”
“Mustard greens.” Corliss pointed a bright smile over Wil’s shoulder. “Ah, Ryne, lovie, you’re a wonderful girl.” She held out her hand. “Here we are, then.”
Ryne came forward, lanky and tall, though she couldn’t have been more than twelve or so. She smiled shyly at Corliss as she handed over a wooden flagon, amber beer slopping over the side, then more nervously at Wil.
Dropping the mustard greens back onto his plate and licking the buttery juice off his fingers, Wil smiled as unalarmingly as he could and held out his hand for the other mug.
“I won’t bite, I promise.”
Biting was probably not what she was worried about.
“He won’t shoot you with lightning either,” Corliss put in bluntly.
For all its lack of tact, it seemed the right thing to say, because Ryne snorted as though the idea had never even occurred to her and took a step toward Wil. She held the beer out to him and didn’t even flinch when he took it from her.
Wil gave her a broad smile. “Thank you, Ryne.”
“You’re very welcome….” She faltered, eyes widening in dismay.
“You may call me Wil, if you like.”
She had quite a lovely smile. “You’re very welcome, Wil.”
She blushed prettily, shot a glance at Corliss, and then escaped with several backward grins as a small horde of her peers immediately closed around her, apparently wanting every detail. Wil watched them as they bolted off, shaking his head. He took a sip from the cup, eyebrows rising. The beer was hearty and full-bodied and so concentrated Wil could taste the rich, warm flavor of the hops.
Corliss smirked out the side of her mouth as she gnawed at a hunk of beef. “You can be quite charming when you want to be.”
“I might say the same of you.”
She washed down her mouthful with a sip of beer. “So tell me, Wil-the-Aisling—how does a man get to be—” She peered at him closely. “—I’m going to guess twenty-five.” Her head cocked slightly to the side. “How does a man get to be your age and not know what a cabbage sprout is?”
Wil frowned. “Didn’t Dallin tell you?”
“We didn’t have time for much but the necessities.” She picked up a beet, gave it a pensive look, then turned her gaze on Wil. “The only things I know about you are what was in that little book he made me read and what I saw and heard in Chester.” She took a bite of the beet, by all appearances merely making casual small talk. “And how he feels about you.”
Ah, so that was it—protecting her friend, or trying to.
Somehow it didn’t tweak Wil as he would’ve thought. He merely took a bite of his own beef—oh holy fuck, that was good—and chewed it slowly, both to savor it and to think about how he wanted to answer. In the end he decided she’d appreciate bluntness, so he gave it to her.
“I was kept prisoner by Síofra my whole life until a little over three years ago. Most of that time, I was drugged, and if I ever had a cabbage sprout during that time, I wouldn’t remember it.”
Strange. Something so big—huge—that had overpowered his entire life, and just speaking it straight out like that seemed to take away at least some of its power. Maybe if Wil went through the whole camp and told every one of them one at a time, the last of the sting would fade by the time he got to the end of the line.
Corliss was staring at him. “Not your whole life, surely?”
Wil made her wait until he’d had another bite of the fabulous, tender, juicy, amazing-bloody-delicious beef, then shrugged and took a slurp of beer. “As I understand it, I was taken by him from my mother’s womb and directly to the Guild. So, yes, my whole life.”
“That’s—he—” Corliss was next to speechless. It should have embarrassed Wil, but it was so genuine he couldn’t find it in him. “I knew he was a piece of work, but… the bloody bastard, the—the ruthless, spineless fuck!”
Motherly indignation—had to be. Wil was absurdly warmed.
“If you didn’t know,” he ventured, genuinely curious, “why have you done what you’ve done?” Corliss peered at Wil with a frown. Wil gestured around them. “You disobeyed orders from your constabulary, and from what I understand, you’ve been doing everything but actual backflips to get these people to listen to you, despite obvious resistance from the Old Ones.”
“Feh.” Corliss waved a green bean in front of her nose, dismissive. “The Old Ones are just that—old—and too set in their ways. The good thing about them is they expect obedience, even from ‘outlanders’”—she said the word with a roll of her eyes—“so when they ‘requested’ I keep my mouth shut, they obviously thought I would listen.” Her chuckle was low and a little bit evil. “Anyway, I have Woodrow with me, and all you have to do is set that one loose and not rein in his tongue. A bigger bloody gossip you’ve never seen, but in this case, it’s been more than useful.”
“But why did you do it? I mean, if you didn’t know.”
Corliss shrugged. “Because Brayden knew.”
Blind belief. Wil muffled a snort. Dallin would be so pleased.
“And he told me I didn’t owe him anything.” Corliss’s smile was tight, somewhat rueful, and discomfited. “So, naturally, I had to repay him.”
Wil grinned. He might like this woman after all.
HE WAS enjoying himself. After dragooning a small group of boys into taking supper to the men conferring in the guardhouse, Corliss chivvied Wil into making a circuit of the camp, stopping to greet those she’d met and introduce Wil in a less overwhelming way than had been done earlier. This time he met eyes and marked faces, though he doubted he’d remember names—there were so many of them. All of them friendly but quiet at first, until they—like Ryne before—were assured by Corliss in various humorous ways that the light show was finished and there was no danger of it starting up again.
The Old Ones watched it all, and Wil watched them back, wondering, until eventually—between one glance over his shoulder and the next—they had gone. No one seemed to mark their absence but him.
Wil and Corliss were invited by families to share their fires, their food, their drinks, and were graciously welcomed to Lind by almost every person they met. By some unspoken consensus, musicians drifted from various parts of the camp toward a clearing backed by the river, where they spread out and started to play. The fire nearest them was built up to blazing, and everyone who wasn’t standing a watch or doing something else necessary gathered ’round it.
Songs first, in the First Tongue. Wil only understood the language in dreams, but the accentuated chanting rhythms still pierced him, almost wrapping around him like a warm, soft blanket. Dancing next, graceful gamboling and fluid shifts of bodies and limbs, like watching music itself come to life in the primal-but-elegant steps and dips reflected beneath the flickering light of torch and fire. It was nearly hypnotic.
Wil wasn’t sorry when Hunter came to c
ollect him, but there was a touch of regret as he hauled himself up from the grass and left the warmth of the fire, the beauty of the music, and the dancing. Several called out to him as he walked the green, and though he couldn’t make out faces, Wil lifted his hand each time and smiled more genuinely than he had earlier. To Wil’s amusement, Hunter escorted him to the door of the guardhouse then took up a post outside, looking serious and as intense as his young face could manage as Wil entered. Wil thought about telling Hunter he might be taking all this a little too seriously, but… well, that Wil would happily leave up to Dallin. Hunter was bound to get on Dallin’s nerves eventually, and he would learn to keep a more discreet distance then.
Wil found Dallin hunched over the room’s single table, scrutinizing a large leather map beneath the light of several smoking oil lamps and tracing routes intently with a stick of charcoal. The ruins of several suppers were stacked over to the side. Rough maps on stained, crumpled paper were scattered everywhere, and Dallin irritably shoved several out of the way as he worked on the larger one. A small pot of a woodstove squatted in the middle of the room, grate open, with several more half-charred maps leaking from its belly. Quite a sparse little barracks, this. A bed, a table, a few chairs, two shelves each on two of the walls, and the stove. Likely meant for the… Weardger-whateverthefuck—the commander of the Weardas—when they were on drills by the Bounds.
Strange, how natural Dallin looked here, poring over maps and plans, with an entire camp waiting on his orders. He didn’t look up until Wil shut the door behind him. With a tired smile, Dallin leaned back in his chair and stretched.
“Well, we’ve reached an accord and agreed on tactics.” Dallin yawned, absently rubbing the smudges from his fingertips. “Wisena agreed to leave his men under my command. He’ll take Shaw and strike out in the morning to try to intercept Wheeler. I don’t put much faith in talking reason to the man, but it might buy us some time, at least.”
Wil dropped his pack on the floor, propping the rifle in the corner by the door. “That’s good. Congratulations.” He ambled over to the table, slipped around in front of Dallin, and leaned back. “Time for what?”
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