Wolf Justice

by Doranna Durgin

  “All this time,” Madehy said, and it was an oddly pleading whisper. “I thought I was the only one —”

  He shook his head. “We’ve met before, the unicorns and I. A different herd... but maybe it doesn’t matter.”

  Teya cut right to the heart of it. “Because he was there when the magic came back, that’s why.”

  Madehy whirled on her, for one instant pinning her with that shocking marbled gaze — but her voice trembled. “What do you mean, he was there?” she said. “You mean he brought the magic back?”

  Reandn laughed, short and sharp; Teya could only begin to imagine what he was thinking. Madehy didn’t need to know the details, she thought. Not here, not now. Not while her patrol leader was standing amidst clumpy spring grasses, surrounded by this odd collection of companions and yet somehow looking entirely and devastatingly alone.

  With a flash of understanding, Teya realized she’d seen that look before. More subtle, more private — an expression that had washed across his features and moved on again before she or anyone else in the patrol could put a name to it.

  She told Madehy, “No. But he was there.”

  Vaklar’s deep voice broke into their conversation. “I’ve heard...” but he hesitated, meeting Reandn’s sudden sharp glare with an even, direct gaze of his own. “I’ve heard things I’ll have to think about, then.”

  Beside him, Elstann’s tight face and tense body shouted resentment — and Teya saw something else as well.

  Fear.

  For a fleeting moment, she wondered what Elstan knew that the rest of them didn’t.

  Madehy looked away from them all. “I thought I was the only one they’d touch,” she said brokenly. “I thought... they were the only ones who could touch me.” And she ran from them, her fleet legs looking somehow heavy and burdened. Teya met Reandn’s eye; he looked away.

  The anguished look on her face was only a reflection of that which she’d seen in his eyes moments before.

  ~~~~~

  Kacey sat apart from the rest of the camp, her hands tied... her sister gone. They hadn’t bothered to secure her to a tree. Probably, she thought with burning mortification, they figured they could out-crawl her.

  There was little enough cover to crawl to, in these strange rocky woods of sparse underbrush and moss and bare-trunked pines littering their needles everywhere. The scant smattering of hardwoods — beech, some flint-oak, a few small ironwoods — grew mostly on the slopes, and beneath those grew the mountain glories, clusters of thick-leaved bushes just starting to bloom.

  But mostly there was rock and pine.

  Her ankle was a swollen mess in her short boots, throbbing against the leather confines and screaming pain when she shifted; her jaw ached from gritting her teeth, and she tried not to think about how she’d feel if she saw a chance to get away and then had to sit there and watch it pass by.

  Only two people watched her — an equally motley man and woman, neither of whom paid her any mind except to loiter at this end of the camp and glance at her now and then.

  Kacey had been here long enough to become quite friendly with this beech tree, and to find the best roots between which to sit. She’d watched Rethia stumble away, her face full of determination and her eyes full of promise to Kacey, and she’d been here long enough to cry about that, and to choke on the anger that grew out of her tears.

  Now she just wanted to understand what she’d gotten tangled in.

  For the first time, Kacey understood Reandn’s capacity for cold-hearted justice, even his desire for revenge. She felt it herself — licking at her heart, growing each time the woman raked her with those scornful eyes, each time she had to endure the indignity of escort to her less than private toilet area, each time her foot throbbed anew. She understood, now, she definitely understood.

  How strongly would she feel, she wondered, if they’d gone so far as to kill Rethia, or further manhandle them both? Too strong to live with, probably.

  She wondered how Reandn managed.

  The male guard, at least... Kacey wouldn’t go so far as to describe him as compassionate, but his manner lacked the enmity of his partner’s. So she waited, and the next time he came to her — offering a tin plate of fried beans with an unfamiliar flour paste — she simply asked him.

  From where she sat at the fringes of the camp and ate her own meal, his partner spoke through a full mouth. “Don’t have to tell her nothin’, Wectir.”

  That seemed to make his mind up. “An’ don’t have reason not to, aya?”

  She shrugged and turned her back to them, a too-thin woman with short dirty hair and not quite enough clothes to keep her warm in the settling chill.

  “Look at you,” Kacey said, keeping her voice low. “Look at all of you. You don’t have enough supplies to stay here long. You’ve got wounded dying on you. Why are you doing this? What do you really want? Why have you sent my sister to find Reandn? Who are you?”

  “You are pushy,” he said, in a perfectly normal tone of voice. “No need to whisper. There’s no secrets about who we are or what we want. The more that know, the better.”

  When he didn’t go on, Kacey looked up from her struggle with the spoon and plate and food, and found him looking toward the single tent they had, the one that held the wounded.

  As soon as he realized she was watching, he looked away from it, his face expressionless. He said, “You’ve heard of the Shining Knife, aya?”

  Kacey used the very ropes that bound her to wipe away the food she’d just managed to smear across her chin. “Well,” she said, not quite sure if this would offend or amuse him, “I have... but only a little. I just got here yesterday, and I live out past Solace. So all I know is that you don’t want the Resiores to renew allegiance to Keland.”

  Passion lit his eyes then, bright enough to see even in the deepening twilight. “Solace,” he said, and then made a gesture that was completely unfamiliar to her, lacing his fingers and then turning his hands so those fingers were perpendicular to one another — some sort of superstitious warning. “And their magic.” He spat in the dirt, but he was careful enough to bend aside as he did it.

  Kacey spoke without thinking. “But you’ve got a wizard here!”

  “Not like them others!” he said sharply, coming down from his crouch to one knee — too close to her. Kacey squirmed against the tree, suddenly wondering if she might not have been better off to stay ignorant and quiet, hoping for a rescue.

  If nothing else, his breath ruined what little appetite she had for this strange paste concoction. He hadn’t shaved for weeks, and beneath the new growth of beard his dirty face held traces of dried blood. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said, surprised to find her voice stuck at just above a whisper.

  He sat back on his heel as suddenly as he’d leaned in on her. “Naya, I suppose not.” But he breathed heavily, his nostrils flared, his mouth tight with distaste. “None of us like it. But we have to protect ourselves, aya? That’s all any of our people ever do, is try to keep Keland magics away.”

  Kacey didn’t feel the least temptation to voice her doubts.

  He must have seen them anyway. “‘Tis a great sacrifice for a Knife to use magic,” he said, aiming those earnest words at her as if it was the most important thing in the world that she believe them. “But we got to protect our own.” He let her consider those words, and the relaxed. “Right now, that means stopping this ambassador. We’ll trade you for her, an’ that seems right enough to me.”

  “But...” Kacey said tentatively, waiting for him to nod before she finished, “what will you do to her once you have her?”

  He shrugged. “Use her against her father, o’ course. Grezhir is the power behind those who want chain us to Keland. But when he sees his precious Kalennie in the hands of the Knife, he’ll think twice. You can keep your magic here, and we’ll be safer with Geltria than ever with you and your magic.”

  “It’s not my magic,” Kacey muttered, thinking how lucky t
hey were that the Knife hadn’t learned of Rethia’s role in its presence here. “I can’t feel it even when it’s been spelled right in front of my face.” She got down another mouthful of the food and discovered him watching her, an appraising look that made her flush. “What are you going to do with... Kalennie... if her father doesn’t change his ways?”

  “He’ll change,” Wectir said confidently. “All of the Resiores knows how he’s spoiled and pampered her. He’ll do anything to see her safe, aya.”

  Just as she’d done what she needed to see Reandn safe.

  But Reandn would never acquiesce to the demands of the Knife; she knew that with an abrupt certainty that left her drowning in unexpected fear — it gathered to clog her breath and her thoughts. She turned away from Wectir, who watched her with an uncomprehending frown, and couldn’t ask him what she really wanted to.

  Not about would happen to this Kalena once the Knife got their hands on her. But... what would happen to Kacey if they didn’t?

  ~~~~~

  Reandn led Sky out of the barn and into the front barnyard, tossing the lead rope only loosely over Madehy’s hitching rail. Once he started grooming, it didn’t matter; in the deepening twilight, the horse half-closed his eyes and stuck out his lower lip and dozed.

  Teya and Vaklar were in the barn working on Teya’s horse — grooming out the sweat-stiffened winter hair, going easy over bones that had come too close to the surface and letting the animal nibble undisturbed on a small pile of hay. Varina sat by the wounded, while Elstan hovered at the forge room at the far end of the barn, proving once more that he was the best cook among them.

  Kalena slept, surfacing only occasionally. Reandn’s initial resentment at this — she was, along with Elstan, the only one of them not injured in the fight — eased when he’d realized it was likely the best help she could given them. He couldn’t see her grooming the horses or puttering around the forge fire with Elstan. It’d been astonishing enough to find her rinsing out bandages with Varina that morning.

  If she was well-rested, it would be easier to get her through the next day. Maybe.

  So here he was, trying to prepare himself. The magical currents still bumped gently around him, nearly obscuring the unique feel of Madehy’s immediate presence and constantly reminding him of...

  Everything.

  The unicorns. Adela’s final good-bye, lurking raw and hard. Teya’s astonishing arrival, explained only by her indistinct mutters about Wolf loyalty and justice.

  Damn Elstan. If he hadn’t lost his head, Reandn would have been able to talk to Teya instead of spending the afternoon in an aching fog. That would’ve left one less set of questions bouncing around in his head — and then maybe there would have been room to think about what the unicorns had been telling him.

  For he was sure they’d been telling him something, in their own twisted way. They weren’t benevolent creatures, and had a justifiably jaded impression of humankind; that they’d made the effort to say anything to him at all meant something.

  He just had to figure out what it was.

  And lurking throughout it all, for some absurd reason, he kept lifting his head with the impulse to look for Rethia — even though he hadn’t triggered the amulet, and even though his thoughts were plenty full enough already.

  He wouldn’t be glad to see her if he did. Not considering what she was walking into.

  Yesterday he’d have thought differently. Yesterday he’d been too sick to be of any good, and only Rethia could have helped him — he’d thought. But now he felt well and strong — as well as before magic had reinvaded his world. He reached under Sky’s belly to brush out big tufts of soft winter hair, full of dark amusement that he and the Knife had something in common, after all. And he wondered, briefly, if he traveled through the Resiores and northward into Geltria, would he reach a place where the unicorns ran so thin their magic no longer bothered him at all?

  He crouched to reach Sky’s inside thigh, brushing gently against that tender skin, when Sky suddenly came awake, lifting his head high to snort inquiry. “Stand!” Reandn told him sharply, ducking away as Sky shifted his quarters around. “Those unicorns just trampled anything that might want to eat you.”

  Sky’s belly quivered as the horse drew air in small little huffs — and then nickered an unexpected greeting.

  To what?

  Slowly, in an evening that had faded to starlight over a clear sky, Reandn stood. Out of the darkness, over light footsteps just now audible, Rethia’s voice said, “Dan? Danny, is that you?”

  “Goddess damn,” he breathed, not believing what his ears told him, though the rest of him had already known. “Rethia... ?”

  She quickened her step; Reandn ducked under the lead rope and met her in the middle of the road, seeing nothing more than a glimpse of her face before she caught him up in a hug so sudden and fierce it literally knocked an oomph out of him.

  He held her back — but only for a moment, before he took her by the shoulders and set her back a few steps. “What are you doing here? Why are you alone?”

  She didn’t answer any of those things, but what she said was infinitely more important.

  “They have Kacey,” she said breathlessly. “The Knife has Kacey.”

  ~~~~~

  Madehy stood outside the barn. The night air, chilly under a clear sky, wrapped itself around her and went for her bones, but there she stayed, looking through the narrow opening they’d left for fresh air.

  These people were stretched to breaking. As little as she knew about them, she knew that. As little as she knew about people, she knew that.

  The big man and Dan, they could work together. And the new wizard and Dan, too. Through him, she thought, all three of them might do all right. And if the three of them held together, the other two might fall in line. But Dan was the keystone, and Dan was —

  Madehy cut the thought short, not willing to chance inadvertent connection with him and his pain and all he carried with him.

  He stood by himself in front of her stock and horse supply cabinets, on the periphery of the conversation when he should have been in the middle. As she watched, he raked his hands through his hair and exploded into movement, nothing so regular as pacing but not the swift violence that lurked so near the surface, either. His turmoil and fury leaked through to her no matter how hard she tried to close it out.

  Another time, she would have fled it, unwilling to put up with even the slightest taint of another. But this time, she had reason to stay.

  That reason — very blond, very slender — had her back to Madehy, and hadn’t said much since explaining who she was and why she’d come to the area — and then why she’d come here.

  Her sister. The Knife. Kalena.

  Madehy didn’t listen to the details. No, she lingered by this door for entirely selfish reasons, drawn by the way this woman felt.

  Unlike the others, with their perfectly normal personal stamp on the magic, Rethia created an aura that felt of unicorns, tinged by something calm and light.

  Madehy crouched down and put her arm over Kendall’s warm bulk, and she stayed out in the starlight while her hearth slowly cooled and her supper along with it; she kept her eyes on Rethia, waiting for understanding.

  When the answer came, she wasn’t near ready for it.

  ~~~~~

  “Just how many of your friends followed you here, anyway?” Elstan asked Reandn. “Didn’t anyone mention to you that this assignment was supposed to be kept under silence? Did you at least whisper when you discussed it?”

  “Ladaboy, that’s no help to us.” But Vaklar spoke with resignation; no one really thought they’d have any effect on Elstan’s manners.

  Reandn didn’t care about Elstan’s manners. He wasn’t even truly listening to Rethia. What he cared about — what he needed — was to find Kacey, to get Kalena safely to Pasdon, to avoid trouble with Madehy’s hunter friend and his cohorts, to —

  He needed to hit something.


  “It helps me,” Elstan said to Vaklar. “It helps me greatly to point out how badly our wrangler has hindered us here. He hasn’t been much good for his friends, either — this Kacey woman wouldn’t even be anywhere near the Knife if he hadn’t tried to handle an assignment beyond him!”

  Reandn fastened his gaze on Elstan. The wizard needed hitting, he thought, driven so far past the point of fury that he felt almost detached from it.

  “D’ye think pointin’ yer finger Dan’s way and talking loud at the other end of it will take our eyes from yer own failures?” Vaklar’s deep voice came out thick with anger and his Resioran inflections, and he was about to stand up when Rethia beat him to it.

  “Please,” she said, her hands turned into two white-knuckled balls just peeking out the ends of her sleeves, held stiffly by her side. “Stop it. All of you.”

  And they did, shamed by her quiet voice and the strain that ran through it. Vaklar subsided and Elstan closed his mouth, if only for the moment. There was silence then, except for Varina’s whisper of reassurance to Yuliyana.

  They sat in a rough circle around the dinner Elstan had cooked — more flat bread, on which he’d heaped cooked oats and a layer of freshly picked cress. Varina sat on the wheel of the cart, for Kiryl had taken a turn for the worse. Reandn stalked the space in front of Madehy’s supplies, unable to force himself to sit still, full of energy from the unicorns and closer to breaking than any tightly strung bow.

  Rethia, too, had received greetings from the unicorn herd. She had too much strength for a woman who looked so bedraggled, and who’d already faced a band of anti-magic zealots and then rushed through the woods looking for help. Now, she caught Reandn’s eye in the lantern light, her gaze wise. “Kacey makes her own decisions, Danny. She wasn’t supposed to be here, and she came anyway.”

  Somehow that didn’t help.

  Kalena broke her long-held silence with astonishingly level-headed words. “At least we now know it’s the Shining Knife. That helps. We know how they think and we know what they want.”

  “Aya, and from Rethia’s description, we know we’ve hurt them almost as badly as they hurt us,” Vaklar said. “Though I’ve my doubts it’s truly the Knife. Not with a wizard.”