by Eileen Wilks
Or something like that. At the sound of the last words, the ones the charm didn't translate, the blackened corpse on the floor reached out and grabbed Cullen's ankle.
He yelped, seized the enormous sword dropped by one of the monsters, and swung it. Steve shot at someone outside the window.
Obviously this dude had a charm, too. Or else he'd learned English. He'd clearly understood Cullen. "What do you want?" Cynna called.
"You," the charm said, "if you are Cynna Weaver. We want you alive. We are willing to spare the others if you surrender now. I make this offer so you may choose life for them, if you wish."
Where were the others? The five remaining guard Tash, Gan, Bilbo, Wen—all dead? Her father? God, she'd just gotten him, please… please.
She heard fighting downstairs. But several of their party had been here, on this floor. Daniel Weaver had been here, where all was so very quiet… "Tell your men to stop advancing, and we'll talk."
Her charm translated the bass gibberish as "Why should I do that?"
"Because you don't want them to die unnecessarily. Just as I would rather my people didn't die without reason. If they keep coming before we have a deal, we'll keep killing them."
There was a pause, then he bellowed something that translated simply as "Hold!" and added in what passed for a normal voice, "You are in charge? The others will do as you say?"
"Well, the councilor thinks he is, but yes. I am." Cullen kept telling her that, anyway. She'd find out if he meant it.
"The gnome is dead."
Her breath caught. She looked at Cullen. What now? Without the gnome to take custody of the medallion, what was even possible? They could kill some of the Ahk, but not all. They were too few, and there was no cavalry riding to their rescue.
Cynna shivered, and blamed it on the cold. "Then I am in charge. Except that Tash worked for the gnome, and I don't know who she—"
"The one you call Tash is also dead. She fought with great honor for those to whom her bond was given."
Dead? Tash was dead? The shock of it sent clammy fingers over Cynna, opening up a numb, empty place like an unexpected wound. She hadn't thought of Tash as a friend, exactly, but…
"Others are still alive. One of the humans is unconscious but not badly hurt. I believe he is kin to you. This little ugly one is also alive. I am unsure what she is, but perhaps you want her to live. Speak, little one."
"Cynna Weaver?" Gan's voice, even higher and squeakier than usual, came from the hall. "I don't want to be dead. Maybe I don't have enough of a soul yet to still be if my body's dead, and besides, I like being alive. I really like it. You said you'd be sad if I got killed. Do what he says, okay? So I won't get killed."
Her breath whooshed out. Her eyes stung as she met Cullen's eyes. He shook his head once, but she didn't know what that meant. Don't let them kill Gan? Don't trust them? Don't bargain away all their lives?
"Do you surrender?" the charm whispered.
She hunted for her choices amid this ruin. The Ahk were warriors. Did they have a warrior's code of honor—their word was their bond and all that? Cynna had the impression they were brutal but honest. But so much depended on her choice…
Cullen held up something. A gem?
Not just any gem. The one the elf-woman gave him. The call-me. Cynna swallowed and concentrated on not hyperventilating. Calling that bitch might be a mistake, but if anyone could take on the ahk, it was the sidhe.
She nodded at Cullen and spoke loudly. "I have your word that everyone alive now will be spared if they stop fighting? No retribution?"
The rumble, and the charm: "Ahk do not take vengeance on those who fight with honor. Your people have fought honorably. You have my word."
"And you're in charge. The others will do as you say."
"They will."
She gave up.
Cullen disappeared.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Gan had been scared before. Lots of times. She'd seen lots of bodies, and while she didn't much like eating dead things, they held no horror for her. But as they walked past these bodies, she felt awful. Even the body of Bilbo, killed where he slept in the big bed, made her feel bad.
First Councilor had told her that might happen. Well, not specifically how Thirteenth Councilor would get killed die, but that there was a good chance he would be. So Gan had known this was possible, and she didn't even like Bilbo—and yet the sight of his slit throat made her own throat tight and unhappy.
Shouldn't she be feeling good? She'd survived. She wasn't hurt. Cynna Weaver had decided not to feel sad about Gan getting killed, so she'd surrendered like the big Ahk wanted. So she ought to be okay.
Nothing was okay.
They started down the stairs, her and Cynna Weaver and Steve Timms, surrounded by a bunch of Ahk. One of the Ahk was carrying Daniel Weaver, who wasn't dead. He'd been hit on the head and was unconscious.
There, sprawled on the stairs, was the guard who'd played poker with Gan and Steve Timms sometimes on the barge. He had laughed a lot, even when he lost. He wasn't dead yet, but with a wound that big in his belly, he probably would be. A demon could heal that kind of damage. She didn't think people with souls could.
He was making an awful, groaning noise. He probably hurt really bad. Maybe he was scared about dying, too. Cynna Weaver asked the big Ahk if her people could tend their wounded. He was mad, though. He thought she'd tricked him because Cullen Seabourne had translocated someplace. Cynna Weaver had said she didn't know he was going to do that. She said Cullen Seabourne hadn't known he would do it, either, because some sidhe had tricked him, but the Ahk leader didn't believe her.
Gan stopped on the stairs, the awful feeling getting bigger and bigger until she thought she'd choke on it. "I want to help him! I want to help him, and I don't know how!" Why had she never learned how to do stuff like that? She was so stupid!
The Ahk behind her shoved her, but she set her feet and didn't move. She was still demon enough to be much more dense than she looked. "This is wrong," she said. "It's wrong."
"Gan." That was Cynna Weaver, her voice tired and achy. "The sooner we leave, the sooner those still alive can help the wounded. The only thing we can do to help them is leave."
At the foot of the stairs, in the big common room, were more bodies. Some were dead, some weren't. Two of the Ahk were trying up the injured guard with some rope. Only two of the dead were people Gan knew—had known—but one of them was Tash. Seeing her all bloody and still made the bad feeling swell up again until Gan thought it was going to swallow her, like being eaten from the inside.
There was a lot of blood. The innkeeper stood against one wall, wringing his hands. "I couldn't do anything," he said to Cynna Weaver. "I can't fight them. They're my neighbors. I couldn't do anything."
Cynna Weaver looked at him the way a full demon, maybe a Claw or one of the other big-deal fighters, looks at an imp or a bug. Like she might step on him, only he wasn't worth the trouble. "You told your neighbors we were here, didn't you? You call that doing nothing?"
"You have picked the wrong one for your betrayer," the Ahk leader said. "Wen of Ekiba told us where to find you. He told us a great many things."
Her eyes widened. She and Steve Timms exchanged a look. They kept walking, though. Maybe they wanted to get out of the place where all the bodies were, and all the blood.
Gan felt so weird. Not long ago she had really liked blood. Human blood, anyway. Demons got very silly and happy when they drank human blood, and she remembered how good that felt. But it was different when it was the blood of people you knew, and they were dead. She didn't like looking at their blood all over the place.
Was this what happened when you grew a soul? You could hurt, hurt a lot, even when you weren't hurt?
It was so confusing.
In front of the inn more Ahk waited. They'd brought the horses from the stable, but not the little pony Gan had ridden before. The Ahk leader said the pony would slow them down, and Gan wo
uld have to ride in front of one of his warriors.
Wen of Ekiba waited there, too.
"Tash is dead," Cynna Weaver told him. "Bilbo is dead. My father is injured. Two of the guard are dead, another is dying, and every bloody one of them is injured. You happy about all that?"
He just turned away. He didn't answer her at all.
It took several minutes to get everyone and everything loaded on horses. The Ahk wouldn't leave their dead behind, so those bodies had to be strapped onto their horses. Their healer worked on the two Ahk who were injured badly enough to need it. A third was deemed too far gone; the Ahk leader chanted over her, then slit her throat.
While all that was going on, others brought down all of their captives' belongings, including Cynna Weaver's bag with the chocolate kisses. Gan thought she might feel better when she saw that, but she didn't.
Daniel Weaver was a problem, being unconscious, and Cynna Weaver tried to persuade the Ahk leader to leave the man here. He wouldn't do it, though. He thought she'd cheated him out of the sorcerer and wanted everyone else for hostages so Cynna Weaver would do what he told her to do. Find the medallion.
Everybody wanted the stupid medallion. Gan hated it. It made people kill her friends before she'd even known they were friends. It made someone she'd thought was nice betray the rest of them.
Cynna Weaver stood very still and silent while they passed her father to one of the mounted Ahk, who would hold onto him while they rode.
"Cynna Weaver?" Gan said in a small voice. "Do you feel really awful, too?"
"Yes, I do. Thoroughly damned awful."
"Would we feel better if we killed Wen of Ekiba?"
Cynna Weaver looked at Gan, her expression all sad and strange. Then she did something surprising. She got down on one knee like she had when Gan said she didn't have any friends here. Only this time she hugged Gan. Gan knew it was a hug because she'd seen humans do that. She knew hugging wasn't always because they wanted to do sex, and she was pretty sure Cynna Weaver didn't want sex now because that would be stupid, but she didn't know what to do, so she just stood there.
After a few seconds of hugging, Cynna Weaver said, "I don't know. I kind of want to, but the—the wise people I know would say that killing him was wrong, and doing wrong things won't make us feel better."
"I don't understand."
The Ahk leader barked out an order. They had to go now.
Cynna Weaver sighed and stood. "Sometimes I don't, either."
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The gut-wounded guard had woken, and was moaning. Kai tried not to listen. At least her own patient was quiet, though the way she stared at Kai with those big, dark eyes… Kai raised her hand to brush the hair from her face, noticed the blood on her fingers, and didn't.
"His name is Harry," the woman she was sewing up said. "He's Harry. He doesn't have much of a chance, does he? He's just human. Humans don't heal well, and they got him in the gut."
"I don't know," Kai said. "I don't know what's possible here."
"You're a Theilo?"
"Sort of." Theilo meant a slider, one of the many who'd accidentally slid into Edge from elsewhere over the centuries.
"You speak Common Tongue well."
"Thank you." Kai knew the language for the same reason she knew what Thielo meant: Nathan. He'd given her the tongue one night soon after they arrived.
She finished her sewing, tied off the thread, and reached for the peroxide. The woman flinched when the liquid bubbled over her wound, but held as still as she had throughout. Kai appreciated a patient like this. The wound in her shoulder was shallow, no stitches needed, but the one in her thigh had gone to the bone. Yet she'd sat motionless the whole time Kai stitched her.
She was a pretty thing, rather feline looking, with a jaw that hinted at a muzzle and pointed ears. Then there was the fur—soft, short, and subtly striped like an orange tabby cat. Kai had had to shave it around the wounds, but it should grow back.
Kai carefully put the needle and thread back in her little sewing kit. Nathan planned well, but the carnage that had greeted them when they reached the inn at Shuva needed so much more than their little medical kit. Not that the villagers hadn't been trying to help the wounded, but their only medical person was an herbalist who doubled as dentist since he owned a pair of pliers. A real scary pair of pliers.
They needed more than a physical therapist—or former physical therapist. What was Kai's profession now? Wanderer? "Does your species heal well? Are you susceptible to infection?"
The woman shrugged one shoulder. "I'll heal. That's a beautiful cat you have. Well-trained."
All eight feet of Dell were stretched out as near the hearth as she could get without interfering with the two patients also laid out there. Her dappled coat was winter-thick, so she didn't really need the fire's heat, but like most cats she enjoyed it. "She is lovely, isn't she? She's not exactly my cat, though. She's my familiar."
The woman's eyes widened. "You're a mage?"
"No. Do people here have to be mages before they can take a familiar?"
"Huh… yes. I always thought so, anyway. Where are you from? You're human, but he isn't." She nodded at Nathan, who was with the moaning guard. "He looks human, but his scent… I've never smelled anything like him."
Kai just smiled and stood. Her back twinged and she twisted, stretching it out.
"Not going to tell me, huh?"
"No." She looked at the others in the room. Most of the villagers had cleared out when they arrived, taking the dead with them to the ice house to await burial, but the one they called the sheriff remained. He was the tall, bearded man sitting at one of the two intact tables, nursing a mug of ale and keeping an eye on them. He'd answered their questions honestly, if tersely. The man sitting with him was the innkeeper, who hadn't answered honestly—until he realized Kai knew it when he lied. Since then, he'd been more afraid of her than of Nathan.
Foolish man. She looked across the room at Nathan.
He sat on the floor between Dell and the gut-wounded guard, whom they'd laid close to the fire's warmth. He'd done what he could for the man—and that was rather a lot. The wound was neatly closed now, and when he laid his hands on the man's head, the moaning stopped.
Kai's anxiety shot up—but the man's colors were still there. Subdued now, with the pain colors fading. She started toward them.
Nathan met her partway. "I don't think he'll make it," he said softly. "I've done what I can with the wound, but he's lost a great deal of blood, and infection is likely. I put him back in sleep. It won't last. His pain will rouse him again in a few hours, but he will rest deeply until then."
Kai nodded, brushed her hair back from her face—then remembered the blood on her hand. She grimaced. "If only we hadn't been delayed in that last village! To miss them by only hours—"
"Couldn't be helped. And it may be just as well. Dell and I are very good, but I am not sure we could have killed fifty Ahk warriors."
"The sorcerer would have burned some of them." And maybe she could have changed their minds. Or maybe she would just have made them crazy. Fifty insane Ahk warriors would likely be even worse than the regular sort.
Kai chewed on her lip. "Nathan, I can't do this the way the queen wants me to. People are dying."
He was silent a beat too long, his expression stilling. "What do you mean?"
"She doesn't want us to reveal ourselves or let anyone know she sent us, but—"
"If the gnomes knew Winter was meddling in this realm, the power balance here and in other realms would be disrupted. More deaths, Kai. Possibly many more."
"There aren't any gnomes with the party from Earth. Not anymore."
He considered that. After a moment he nodded. "It's your quest. If you believe the time is right… we have to catch up to them first, of course."
She sighed. "I suppose we'd better eat before we set out."
Nathan laughed softly. "Kai, Kai. We will eat, yes, and also sleep. Even if
you were able to go on without rest, the horses can't."
This was one of those times when their senses of humor didn't mesh. She knew Nathan wasn't heartless, but at the moment, laughter was very far away for her. She turned her head, swallowing the hard words she knew she'd regret later.
"Kai." He put his hand beneath her chin, stroking her there as if she were Dell. "I have lived long enough to know that I do not help others by taking on their grief. We are doing what we must. These people will do as they must, also."
"I guess I—"
"Hsst!" That came from the innkeeper's wife, who was tending the other patient laid out near the hearth. "She's waking up," the woman said. "You said to let you know if she did."
They crossed to see. Nathan had spent most of his time working on the guard because this woman, while she'd looked dead, had been unconscious from a blow to the head. The deep, bloody wound in her chest from a sword thrust had miraculously missed anything vital, and Nathan had said that the woman's own healing ability was sufficient. Since Kai could see from her colors that she had a minor healing Gift in addition to whatever natural healing ability she possessed, she hadn't argued.
She was not as pretty as the feline woman. Though Kai had yet to see an Ahk, she'd been told what they looked like. This woman's skin and short tusks proclaimed her kinship to them, though she'd fought on the side of the party from Earth.
"Who are you?" the woman demanded weakly when Kai knelt beside her.
"I'm Kai, and this is Nathan. What is your name?"
"I'm…" Her eyes widened when she looked at Nathan. "You! You're a—"
"Eh!" he said hastily. "I'd rather you didn't say it. You're the first to recognize me, and I'm wondering how."
"Then it's true?" She looked shocked. "I didn't know you could—"
"As I said, I don't wish it spoken of." He spoke with authority this time, a subtle shift that was probably not simply a matter of voice. He looked at the innkeeper's wife, who was staring, her colors turned fearful. "You may go now."