Vengeance of the Hunter (14 page)

Smiling benevolently, Erasmus leaned back in their seat and slipped a possessive arm around her shoulders. “Indeed. I’m told this city manages a proper symphony and theater, despite its barbaric locale. We must see if the rumors are correct. I’ll fetch us tickets for something tonight, once our business is concluded, if you’d care to choose.”

“I’m sure I’ll enjoy either option, sir.”

She’d made the correct response; as long as she played the part of the dutiful wife, Erasmus was the soul of magnanimity. It made no real difference which option she chose, or whether she chose at all. Acquiescence was all he required of her, and as long as she remembered that, she was safe.

Never mind that she’d have given her right arm to be able to leap out of the carriage and lose herself in the crowd around the jugglers. To clap and sing with the same joyful abandon, or better still, to join in on the complicated interplay of ball and knife and torch that the fair-haired young man in the center of the square was orchestrating with every willing volunteer in sight.

It took a second glance for her to spot the fair-haired man’s companion.

He was tall and lean, with hair as black as a raven’s wing, and even from a distance her heart gave a painful lurch at the sight of him.
Oh gods
,
oh goddesses
,
could it be
—

Surely not, for whoever he was, this man was catching and throwing with two hands, not one. The face he turned in all directions, calling to and answering those around him, seemed unmarred. But then he turned in just the right direction for her to see the broad, devilish grin he unleashed on those nearest to him in the throng, and when she saw that, the bottom fell out of Dulcinea’s world. Sweet Mother and blessed Daughter, she knew that grin. It had never stopped haunting her dreams.

“Are you quite all right?”

Displeasure shaded Erasmus’s voice, the beginning tendrils of smoke that warned of conflagration to come if not swiftly checked—for she took her attention from her husband at her peril. Plastering what she prayed was an innocuous smile across her face, Dulcinea turned back to face him. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

His brown eyes narrowed, studying her with a keenness that sent a warning skittering along her nerves. “You turned rather pale just now. Has something alarmed you?”

“Certainly not.” When he would have shifted to look past her out the carriage window, she feigned slumping back a bit in the seat, and made a point of opening the delicate silk-and-lace fan she was carrying against the heat of the Jomhas afternoon. “There are simply far too many people on the streets, and it’s hot. Can’t we continue on our way? I’ll feel much better with something cool to drink. Perhaps a sorbet.”

Erasmus raised his brows, but she must have looked convincing, for he finally inclined his head. “Of course. Driver! Can you get us through?”

In response to his raised voice, the driver called back, “Looks like the jugglers just finished up, m’lord! Just another moment or two and I’ll get us going again.”

“Good man,” Erasmus answered, pounding light acknowledgement on the carriage’s roof. More softly, he added to Dulcinea, “Well then. We’ll take care of our contracts with the solicitor, and then, I think, dinner and the symphony. It’ll do us well to be seen as long as we’re in town, and we must pay our respects to House Kilmerredes even if we’ve missed the Duke of Shalridan’s funeral.”

He kept talking even as the driver finally got them moving again, but by then, Dulcinea knew the crisis had passed. She paid enough attention to her husband to offer him the sounds of affirmation that were all she was expected to contribute to their conversation, and so that she could intelligently navigate the rest of the hours before her. But through it all, her mind raced. She had a new imperative now, above and beyond simple daily survival of her marriage to Erasmus Nemeides. She had to find out if she’d seen the man she’d thought she had.

Which should have been impossible, for the man in the crowd had been catching and throwing with two clearly living hands. But every detail of him had been correct, from his height to his tousled dark hair, and the eyes—
two
of them—that even from a distance had sparked a vivid twilight blue.

And if her own eyes hadn’t deceived her, if the gods had sent impossibility incarnate across her path, her next goal would be to discover how to keep her husband from finding out that his brother Julian was alive.

Chapter Twelve

Dolmerrath
,
Kilmerry Province
,
Jomhas
29,
AC 1876

Two nights after Julian’s leaving, while she slept fretfully without his warmth beside her in her bed, the fire-mage Tembriel came in the middle of the night to wake Faanshi from her slumber.

“Mouse, you’re needed. Come quickly!”

Faanshi hadn’t yet lost the habit of sleeping in her clothes, for so she’d quickly learned to do on the road, all the way to Arlitham Abbey and back again. And so she sprang out of bed, not even bothering to put on her boots. She’d seen Tembriel only a time or two since her coming to Dolmerrath, and in truth had shied back from approaching the she-elf. Between Tembriel’s ability to summon flame and the scowl she always wore, Faanshi had scarcely known how to address her. Yet as she hurried after Tembriel out into the caves there was no question of what to say, not now. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

“Another Hawk patrol,” Tembriel spat. “Got too close to my brother and his scouts. Alarrah’s with them but she can’t do it all by herself. Mother of Stars, can’t you move any faster?”

She might have argued, might have challenged the she-elf’s ire, but it seemed useless in the face of the frantic worry brimming just behind Tembriel’s hard, bright eyes. And before they even reached the cavern where the horses were kept, a raw blast of pain roared across her senses.

Hearth
, she thought, the only word she had room for in her mind before the presence of three injured scouts in the cavern made it imperative for her to reinforce the shields Kirinil and Alarrah had taught her to build around her magic. It surged inside her nonetheless, discontent at being confined to the hearth she’d built for it in her mind’s eye, and she couldn’t keep her hands from glowing gold as she pulled ahead of Tembriel in their headlong dash into the cavern.

“Almighty Djashtet! Alarrah, I’m here, guide me!”

She caught sight of her sister kneeling in the midst of the scouting party, and Alarrah’s gaze snapped up just long enough to note her arrival. Then she threw out a hand glowing almost as brightly as Faanshi’s own. Without conscious volition Faanshi seized it, and between the two of them, they bathed the scouts in light.

To the young healer’s profound relief, it wasn’t like healing Kestar, much less Julian. Jannyn and his two compatriots, one male, one she-elf, were all badly hurt—Jannyn and the she-elf with bullet wounds, and the second male had been run through with a sword. It was on him Alarrah had focused, while half a dozen other elves pulled the scouts’ exhausted horses out of the way, and his pain screamed the loudest to Faanshi’s power. But she had little to do but put her hands where her
enorrè
bade her, and with Alarrah’s direction, not a single glimmer of another’s mind breached her inner hearth. Pain, weariness and blood surrounded her, but in the midst of it all, her mind remained clear. She remained
Faanshi.

Still, it was more control than she’d ever had to exert over a healing before, and she was panting and drenched in sweat by the time Alarrah finally pulled her back from the last injured scout. Tembriel anxiously inspected her brother for any remaining signs of damage, while other elves helped the scouts to their feet.

Faanshi didn’t have to ask if they’d be all right; they’d both just seen to that. “How did it happen?” she asked instead.

Though his face was quite ashen, Jannyn waved off Tembriel’s inspection and made it upright, albeit cautiously, under his own power. “As it always does,” he said, turning a dour expression upon her. Blood still stained his leathern jacket and the linen of the shirt beneath, dark rust against the green and brown, and more of it streaked his face. “Only this time there were more of them. We were faster. But they had guns.”

Tembriel scowled. “And no matter how fast our horses are, none of them can outrun a bullet. We need better arms.”

“Gerren will want to know how many,” Alarrah said.

“Seven,” Jannyn replied, though his gaze was still on Faanshi. To her he added, “Healer, thank you for your help. And don’t mistake me—I praise the Mother of Stars that we’ve got you. But you need to think very, very hard about whether you want that Hawk of yours here or not, because his compatriots nearly killed us.”

He whirled and stalked off without another word, and Tembriel fell into step beside him, leaving the two healers to their own devices. The others in the cavern had finally settled the horses, but someone Faanshi didn’t know brought them both mugs of something hot and steaming, and Alarrah made her drink hers before they moved a step. “It’s got
òrennel
in it,” she advised wearily. “The herb’s good for easing pain without dulling the thoughts too much. But it also soothes when you’ve exercised your magic, and we’ve each just used a lot of ours. We’re going to need it to sleep.”

The tea smelled foul and tasted worse, but Faanshi drank it anyway, gulping it down with long, deep breaths between each sip. Yet the herb helped, relaxing tiny muscles in her hands and larger ones where she’d inadvertently tensed in reaction to the wounds they’d healed. Only then did Alarrah let them make their own retreat, and on the way out of the cavern Faanshi ventured, “Jannyn and the others. What were they doing when the Hawks found them?”

Possibilities jabbed through her mind in small, quick points of fear—that perhaps the messenger birds were dead, and Jannyn’s scouts had had to retrieve them. Or that for all that she was no longer an active threat to Dolmerrath with a Hawk’s awareness behind her eyes, the Order had found her anyway. Or even worse, that they’d found Rab when he’d left. And Julian.

Alarrah voiced none of these things, but what she had to say instead offered little consolation. “Seven Hawks in one patrol is more than any of us have seen in years. And from what I gathered when the scouts came in, these had come dangerously close to the Wards. Just like the ones who chased us when we came in.”

“But the Wards will drive them away,” Faanshi protested. “Won’t they? Because of the magic, and the fear it makes.”

“
Enorrè
, I know the life you led at your master’s hands, and so you’re not yet in a position to know. I am. Trust me when I tell you that armed Hawks are bad enough—but armed Hawks out of their minds with fear are even worse.”

They hadn’t reached the bedchambers when the
òrennel
stole more strongly across the younger healer’s awareness, underscoring how tired she’d suddenly become. It didn’t make her sleepy, not yet. If anything, it gave shape and clarity to the realization already blooming in her thoughts. “We’re running out of time,” she murmured, and Alarrah gave her an unhappy nod.

“If the Hawks are getting this close to us, then yes. Pray to your Djashtet that we can find Julian and Kestar again quickly, because if not, we’ll have to take our chances with your okinya’s vision without them. Gerren will have us leave this place, by sea if we have to, before he’ll put us to war with the Hawks again. We barely survived the last one.”

And that was no comfort at all.

* * *

It took another day before a bird came back from the rag-and-bone man, bearing a terse message in a square, blocky hand.
Not here.
Don’t know where.
Tell girlie hello.
There was no room for anything else on the scrap of paper, and what few words were there were badly printed. That Aenghis Peddersen had thought of her, and written what little he could in the space allowed, bolstered Faanshi’s heart.

But not enough, for neither of the other two birds they’d sent returned to Dolmerrath, and no reply came to the messages they’d borne.

There was nothing else to be done then, so far as Faanshi could tell. She was going to have to try to reach Kestar herself. And so with Alarrah and Kirinil to watch over her, she laid herself out on her new bed and let her sister’s magic lull her into dreaming.

In her mind’s eye the hearth where she kept her magic was sturdier now. Faanshi could see its every detail, each brick, each carved symbol, and each and every log upon the grate. Her magic burned in an unceasing fire within that hearth, this secret place at the core of her. Sometimes it showed itself to her inner sight like a true fire would, crackling and snapping. At other times it glowed like purest sunlight, without any shape she could discern.

This time she saw it as low-burning embers, dark reddish-gold behind the hearth’s wrought-iron screen. And it was that screen that drew Faanshi’s attention, for it had taken shape in her mind bearing the symbol of a hawk worked into the iron.

It didn’t seem right to try to change what she’d built within herself under Kirinil’s instruction, and moreover, she didn’t
want
to. Her mind was no longer in danger of being overrun by Kestar Vaarsen’s, but she almost missed the uncanny rapport they’d shared. Before the abbey, she’d had but to think a thing for Kestar to know it too.

Now she feared she wouldn’t be able to reach him at all.

Lady of Time
,
grant me this.

Faanshi lifted a mental hand to curl her fingers around the hawk-shape in the iron—and with the other, she opened the screen so she could reach directly into her magic’s flame.

With the power to fuel her, and with the same ferocity of concentration that had let her build her inner hearth, Faanshi gathered together all that she knew of Kestar Vaarsen in her thoughts. It had been days, no more, since she’d healed him. His echoes still resounded through her memory, easily summoned, easily assembled into all that she knew of the man who’d defied his own Church to help her. Beyond that she had to guess at what to do, for no one left in Dolmerrath had the gift of talking with another from afar.

All she could think of was the messenger birds they’d tried to send. And so Faanshi imagined one now, a tiny fluttering form she pulled forth out of the hearth, shining upon her palm. With her other hand still pressed against the hawk in the screen, she threw the miniature firebird up and out from her to give it the lift it needed to escape the boundaries of her mind.

Kestar!
Kestar
,
can you hear me?

It didn’t work, at least not at first, and in a rush of aggravation she called the Hawk’s name even louder, again and again. How long it took, she had no way of knowing; in her dreaming state, she had no sense of time.

At last a bolt of wordless surprise shot across her awareness—and her heart leaped, for that reaction hadn’t been hers.

Kestar
,
if you can hear me
,
come to the elves!

Galvanized, Faanshi shouted with all her mental strength. But her head quickly began to ache with the effort of thinking that cry so fiercely she might as well have been shouting. And so she slipped into wordlessness, praying with all her heart that she had indeed touched his mind again. That she hadn’t cast herself so deeply into dreaming that she was imagining it all.

Faanshi
,
I
can’t!

Relief at a second contact swiftly changed to alarm as Kestar’s anger and frustration struck her like a spear. What little she could sense of his thoughts splintered right along with her own, and for a few dizzying instants, she was buffeted between
The Hawks have us
and
They won’t let us go
.

Then everything jolted, and without warning, she was aware once more of lying in her bed in the elves’ stronghold. Alarrah was beside her, one leg on the bed and one off, and her hands were pressed to Faanshi’s head. Her expression changed as soon as Faanshi met her eyes, but before she could speak, Faanshi sat up hard. Only her sister’s hands, moving quickly to her shoulders, kept her from leaping to her feet.

“Great Lady of Time!”

“It worked, then,” Alarrah guessed. Her brow furrowed. “
Enorrè
, what is it? What’s wrong?”

In truth though Faanshi scarcely known she’d spoken. She wriggled out of Alarrah’s grasp, waving away a further touch probably meant to soothe her abruptly aching head. There was no time for that—and at any rate, her own magic would banish the ache soon enough. She scrambled off the bed, and spared just enough time for one swift terrified glance at Alarrah before she bolted off into the caverns in search of Gerren and Kirinil.

“The Church found Kestar,” she cried. “The Hawks came for him and Celoren. They’ve been arrested.”

* * *

“If the Order of the Hawk has taken him,” Gerren informed Faanshi when they’d gathered again in his study, “then most likely they’ll take him to Shalridan. The biggest cathedral in the province is there, and nothing less would suit the tribunal of one of their own.”

His voice, his eyes and his entire bearing were grim. So too were the faces of everyone else in the room, enough that Faanshi had to fight down tremors of panic that threatened to overwhelm her at the merest slip of her will. “Does this mean he’s beyond our aid?”

No one answered her, at least at first. Tembriel and Jannyn, present this time when Gerren had not allowed them before, didn’t even meet her eyes. It was Alarrah who finally sighed and said, “
Enorrè
, you must understand the problem before us. This won’t be like what we did before. The abbey was in the countryside. Shalridan is the largest city in the western provinces. Have you ever seen it?”

Faanshi had to shake her head, for of course she hadn’t. The town at the foot of the duke’s mountain had been daunting enough, and she could scarcely conceive of a place many times greater in size, much less how many living souls must fill it. “I’d never even seen Camden before Father Enverly took me to his church. But you’ve been to the city?”

“We had to go there to hire the Rook and his partner, yes. It’s possible for any of us to slip into the city, if we’re quick, and quiet, and very,
very
careful.”

“Staying more than a few hours, on the other hand,” Kirinil said, “is tantamount to suicide. We already know the Hawks are gathering. Even if we use no magic whatsoever, their amulets can sense us. And if we
do
use magic, that’ll be an open invitation to a Cleansing, if not being shot on sight.”