The Silvered

Chapter Thirteen

DANIKA HAD ASSUMED she was being taken from her cell for either another unnecessary session with the midwife—clearly designed to teach them they were livestock with no self-determination—or to another conversation with Leopald. When she saw Jesine already standing next to the examination table, she hid a smile.

Leopald had taken the bait sooner than she’d anticipated. He was clearly used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it. She couldn’t influence him to do something he didn’t already want to do, so she should’ve assumed that once the idea of combining mage-craft and technology took hold, he’d immediately act on it. His questions had identified Jesine as a Healer-mage, the only craft with no aggressive potential, which made her the safest of the five were he to remove one of the nets.

In order to escape, they needed to know how to get the nets off safely.

Leopald was about to show them.

Jesine held out her hands, and Danika walked into her embrace.

The wall was already open, the emperor smiling down at them, apparently pleased to see them together, his foot still propped on the pelt of a father, brother, son. When Danika prayed to the Lord and Lady, and she prayed more frequently here than she ever had at home, she prayed for a few moments alone with Leopald as they left the palace. Just long enough to move the air from his lungs.

“It has recently occurred to me that I’ve no need to wait until you’ve whelped before I begin doing simple tests.” Eyes gleaming, he leaned forward. His lips were dark enough that Danika wondered, not for the first time, if he stained them. “You…” He pointed at Jesine. “…will be freed from the suppression artifact and then you’ll be given an opportunity to use your mage-craft to heal a wound. Not a major wound, of course, but a wound serious enough that I’ll gain some idea of your ability. A baseline, as it were, that I can use to create further tests. You…” His pointing finger moved from Jesine to Danika. “…are here for two reasons. One, as the leader of this small Pack, it’s useful to me that you know what’s happening. That way, you’ll be able to explain my position in the face of uninformed reactions from the others and maintain the calm that’s so essential to your comfort. Two, it occurred to me that I needed a way to control the healing. To know that the maximum effort was being applied.”

How would her presence control…

Adeline closed one hand around her upper arm and reached across with the other, slashing the edge of a narrow blade across Danika’s chest just above the neckline of the dress. Danika had realized what was about to happen the moment Adeline’s fingers had dug in—not in time to move, or to try and defend herself, but in time to grit her teeth and refuse to scream.

The edge must have been very sharp. For a moment nothing happened and all three of them stood frozen in place, staring at the path of the blade. Then the flesh separated and blood welled up and the pain hit.

“Get her on the table.” Jesine’s voice had lost all languid and ladylike overtones. “And remove the net at once!”

It hurt. It hurt. It hurt.

The room spun. Then the fingers digging into her arm grounded her with a blunter pain and Danika managed to help lift herself up onto the table. Lying down hurt in a whole new way and the blood shifted, pouring back over her throat rather than down over her breasts. She felt careful hands opening the dress and moving it away and forced herself to focus. Leopald wanted a demonstration. The net would be coming off now.

Adeline pulled something from her apron pocket, something small. She poked it into the mass of Jesine’s copper curls, and twisted. Jesine sucked back a pained cry. Danika kept her eyes locked on Adeline’s hand. When Adeline tugged and the first bit of net cleared Jesine’s hair, Danika could see pinched between the midwife’s fingers…

Wood?

A strand of the gold net was tangled around and between a double prong made of wood.

Jesine spread her hands over the wound. The heat radiating from them was almost enough to burn. “Shh, it’s all right. It’ll be all right. Just a little pain and then it’ll be all over, you’ll see. I promise.”

Adeline had shuffled to the left—Danika assumed to get a better look at what Jesine was doing, bringing the hand holding the artifact closer. Danika let her head drop to the side. This close, the new artifact looked like a small fork. She had forks at home with ivory handles that looked much the same. Adeline had no mage-craft so mage-craft wasn’t necessary to remove the net. Only the wooden fork…

…snatched from her line of sight so quickly Danika thought Adeline might have realized she was staring. As a distraction, she screamed.

Not only as a distraction.

“That was fascinating, wasn’t it, Captain?” The emperor started down the stairs without waiting for an answer. “You can read about mage-craft until your eyes bleed, but there’s nothing like seeing it work to remind you that science can’t explain everything. Well, not yet, anyway. Hard to believe I’d planned on waiting until they gave birth before I began testing. The healer can work right up until the whelp drops. Of course, the problem with Healer-mages, as I’m sure you’ve seen, is that at the level we were just shown there’s not a lot of gain to be made in combining their craft with technology. Now, if they can heal sickness as well as injuries, then that’s a different matter. As diagnostics improve and we learn more about diseases, then, with practice, Healer-mages alone could keep people alive indefinitely.”

Practice. Reiter thought of blood pouring from a gaping wound in pale skin and wondered how the emperor would have the Healer-mage practice on disease.

“My physician told me that going to a Healer-mage is equivalent to drinking one of the those vile herbal teas old women force on you. I believed him, of course, because he’s a man of science, but I now begin to think that’s just because he’s never seen an actual Healer-mage in action. I’d bring him in to see mine, but he’d most likely die of professional jealousy, unimaginative old coot.” He giggled and Reiter was glad to be behind the emperor’s shoulder because he really hated grown men who giggled and he doubted he’d survive the emperor seeing his expression. “What we need to do now is determine parameters…and I’m an idiot! I should have timed the healing! I don’t suppose you checked your watch as it began and ended?”

Reiter schooled his expression as the emperor turned. “Sorry, Majesty, but no.”

“I forgot, so I’m not surprised you did. Perhaps Adeline Curtin noted the time. She used to be the matron in Darkbin.”

“The women’s prison?”

“Yes, that’s the place. Horrible in there, they tell me, but then it’s a prison, so horrible is rather the point, I expect. The more relevant point is that she doesn’t want to go back which is good because it’s surprisingly difficult to find an Aydori-speaking midwife whose loyalty you can count on. Although, between you and me, I find her mildly disquieting.”

She’d taken a scalpel and cut a woman under her care. Reiter found the idea of her as a midwife in a women’s prison more than mildly disquieting.

“Ah, well, if we didn’t record a time today, we have to make sure we record one the next time. And I’ve just now thought of a way we can use your background to our advantage. Write up a list for me, Captain, of all the various injuries you’ve seen on a battlefield.” At the tapestry, he waited for Reiter to lift the fabric, and murmured as he passed, “I wonder what would happen if we cut a finger off? Would a Healer-mage be able to regrow it?”

“Majesty, a page brought this from the north wing.” Outside in the larger corridor, Tavert offered the emperor the fork. The emperor redirected it to Reiter.

“See that gets put away safely, Captain.”

“Yes, Majesty.” As he walked away, he heard Tavert reminding the emperor of a tailor’s appointment. Apparently Her Imperial Majesty wanted him in a new jacket for the upcoming public festival.

It was funny how everything inside the palace was connected to everything else. Until today, Reiter had never realized that fresh blood soaking into blue fabric created Imperial purple.

Curled on the floor, pressed tight to the crack under her door, Danika rubbed at the thin scar on her chest and took long, careful breaths. Inhaled slowly. Exhaled slowly. Fought the urge to pant. To whine. To keep screaming. She knew she’d lived a fairly sheltered life. Everyone she knew had lived a fairly sheltered life. Before Aydori was attacked, even the soldiers in her family or among her extended acquaintance were more about showing off their uniforms for pretty girls than they were about danger and pain. Her brother had fallen off the roof when he was ten and broken his arm, and the more dominant members of the Pack had scars, but she’d gone from being a slightly bored schoolgirl, to excelling at the university, to a loving marriage without ever being hurt badly enough for her to remember it now.

Kirstin had heard her scream. Her words on the air had not only been frantic but forceful enough to reach all of the others, and the net had clamped down. She was probably in more pain now than Danika, who had only the memory of pain.

Murmuring comfort to the others, Danika made plans. They had to find out if Adeline Curtin was the keeper of the second artifact and, if not, where it was kept. Stina had to finish freeing the hinges on her door. And they had to escape before Leopald took his testing to its logical conclusion and injured one of them—injured her—in a way Jesine couldn’t heal.

“Well, you’ll never fucking fit in his, but I might be able to help.”

Mirian stopped trying to lay words onto the breeze—she’d been practicing all day, and couldn’t figure out how Lady Hagen had made it seem so effortless—and waited to see if Jake would speak again. Gryham and Tomas had gone out hunting, disdaining the downpour that had held them at the cottage for a second day, and she’d been told to remember anything Jake said.

“What did you See?” she asked when he picked another potato out of the basket she’d matured and began to peel it.

He raised his head, gaze unfocused, and Mirian realized he still stared into the future. “Hurry.”

The knife slipped and he swore, back in the present as blood dripped on the floor.

“So, Captain Reiter, is it true there’s captured Aydori mages in the north wing?”

Reiter turned, surprising the woman seated next to him, who’d been leaning in, her breath warm and wine-scented against his cheek.

Her name was Onnyle Cobb. Her family was minor nobility. She did something at the treasury and wanted to do something more important. He had no idea who most of the people sitting down every evening at the formal dinner were, but over the last few days, he’d managed a reasonably thorough threat assessment of those he ate with.

Ate beside.

Over the last four meals, there’d been a bare exchange of common civility—he still wore his old dress uniform, making him the only one in the room except the guard not in court dress—but it seemed he’d been assessed in turn.

Cobb waited for him to answer, still pressed a little too close, her eyes lying about how interesting she found him. Reiter found himself suddenly thinking of pale gray eyes, narrowed in scorn, and how he preferred their honesty.

He turned his attention back to his chicken. He’d never been told not to speak of the mages, but, given that he alone accompanied the emperor to his observation booth, it didn’t take a genius to realize that the Aydori mages weren’t common knowledge. In order for a thing to remain uncommon knowledge, those who knew of it had to keep their mouths shut.

“Is it true, Captain?”

Ignoring her didn’t seem to be an option. “I can’t say.”

A warm hand closed around his arm. “Ah, but rumor says you accompany His Imperial Majesty when he goes to visit them.”

Most of the men who’d been sent into Aydori had been reassigned to the other divisions. No surprise that one of them had bragged about a successful mission before he’d left Karis. Less surprise if it had been Lieutenant Lord Geurin; that ass would brag about taking a successful shit.

“People talk about you, you know. You were Seen by the Soothsayers. That’s impressive. Important. And now, because of the Soothsayers, you have the ear of the emperor.”

Reiter considered telling her that the emperor had his ear, that the emperor talked and he listened, but that would only extend the conversation, so he cut to the chase. “What do you want?”

She started but recovered quickly, allowing the flirtation to become business. “I’m wasted where I am. I have ideas that could revolutionize tax collecting. I want you to put a word in the Imperial ear.”

“No.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again. Reiter had sent soldiers to kill and he’d sent them to die and he knew how to draw a line in the sand. When Cobb turned her attention back to her meal, so did he.

“Head for the cleft…” Gryham put a hand on her shoulder and turned her slightly to the left. “…and that’ll take you to the Tardford Bridge.”

“Karis is this way.” Mirian turned herself back, squinting into the morning sun.

“And if you go that way, you’ll have to cross at the Vone at Chamon. Small town, everyone knows everyone, and they’re all suspicious as shit of strangers. No, you want to cross at Tardford. Second largest city in the old empire, shitload of people, and it’s easier to hide in a crowd. Lots of people wander into big cities looking for work. No one goes to a small town unless they got friends or relatives there. You go to Tardford, you avoid the kind what think a uniform or a piece of paper gives them power they’ve no right to…”

“Bureaucrats, soldiers, priests,” Jake put in from Gryham’s other side.

“…and you’ll be fine. You move your ass,” Gryham continued, wrapping an arm around Jake’s shoulder and pulling him in close, “you get to Tardford tomorrow. You take Old Capital Street right through town, then strike off straight for Karis. The road follows the river, but you don’t have to. It’ll take a day off your run.”

“We could get a ride.”

“Could you?” Gryham snickered. “You’re going to put a wolf in a wagon behind a horse?”

“We went from Abyek to the border in a wagon.”

“Flat on your back and sweating out drugs. You get into a wagon now and you better be sure you stay downwind of anything pulling it.”

“I could…” Mirian began, chin up, glaring at Gryham, but Jake cut her off.

“Ignore him. He’s missing the point. Horses are fine if you’re carrying shit or if you need to cover a short distance fast. You…” He nodded at Tomas. “…can run for longer than any horse. Not as fast, but longer. Can probably run longer than Master Musclebound here…ow! You…” He turned his slightly manic grin on Mirian. “…are rebuilding yourself to keep up to him. Why the fuck would you slow yourselves down by bouncing along behind a horse?”

Tomas stared out toward the cleft—although Mirian couldn’t see anything cleftlike, it was possible he could—and kicked at a clump of dead grass. “Tardford, Chamon; why don’t we just avoid people entirely?”

“And walk across the Vone?” Jake snorted. “They put towns where bridges are.”

“Mirian could part it.”

“You sure?”

“No,” Mirian answered before Tomas could. “I’m all about bridges!”

“You need to be around people or you’ll be screwed in Karis,” Gryham told them. Mirian didn’t appreciate the whole you’re idiots subtext, but he wasn’t wrong. “You’ve gone wild last few days. Can’t say I blame you, but the capital’s not going to empty out when you walk in, is it? You need to practice being civilized.”

Tomas kicked at another clump of grass, looked down at his foot, then up at Gryham in triumph. “We need shoes to go into a town.”

“Well, you’ll never fucking fit in his,” Jake pointed out, smacking Gryham on the chest, “but I might be able to help.”

Mirian leaned around Gryham. “You said that…Saw that yesterday.”

“Did I? Well, now we know what I meant. Fucking yay. Stay here. Gryham…”

Gryham rolled his eyes, but allowed the smaller man to pull him back to the cottage. As they disappeared inside, Mirian untied the bedroll and pulled out the telescope. Aim for the cleft was all very well, but she couldn’t even see the cleft. She pointed herself at Karis, then moved as much as she thought Gryham had moved her, shut one eye, and held the telescope up to the other. The brass eye-piece warmed quickly.

“It’s right there.” Tomas moved in and shifted the telescope a little farther. “Can’t you see it?”

Without the telescope, the triangular cut in the distant hills blended into the landscape. With the telescope, she could just make it out, although the edges were fuzzy. “You’ve got good eyes.”

“It’s right there!”

“I can see it now.” More or less. “It’s hazy by the river.”

“No, it isn’t. Mirian…”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Because if they talked about it, she’d have to acknowledge what was happening. That wasn’t sensible, but she didn’t care. Mirian lowered the telescope as Gryham and Jake returned, and slid it away as Jake dumped the carpetbag he carried out onto the ground. “Why do you have so many pairs of old shoes?”

“I live in the middle of nowhere. I don’t get rid of shit.” He tossed a pair of work boots, tied by their laces, at Tomas who ducked. “Try these. They’re big on me and you lot have small feet for your size. I think it’s a paw thing.”

Mirian had never noticed Tomas’ feet.

“Now these…” Jack handed Mirian a pair of leather house shoes. “…are soft enough the laces might pull them tight enough to fit you. You’re not what I’d call delicate.”

“Thank you.”

He grinned. “Any time.”

The shoes fit well enough, as much too big on her as the boots were too small on Tomas. They wouldn’t be comfortable, but if they had to rejoin civilization, they needed shoes.

“I never thought I’d say this,” Tomas murmured as Mirian packed them into the bedroll, “but I miss those wooden clogs.”

“Definitely easier to get out of,” Mirian agreed. “And not…”

“Just keep to the right, you’ll be…Your right, you idiot, not their right! Good night!”

They turned to see Jake staring toward the east, one hand holding a slipper, Gryham a step away.

“And now,” Gryham grinned. “…you know what to do tomorrow.” He reached for Jake’s free hand, but Jake snatched it away and stiffened.

“Hurry!”

Mirian felt as though someone had just stroked a cold finger down the center of her back. “Gryham. He Saw that yesterday, too.”

“About keeping to the right?”

“No. He said, ‘Hurry.’”

“Did he?” Graham wrapped his arms around the smaller man and pulled him close. “Then you’d better be getting a move on.”

Reiter stared at the jacket Linnit had laid out on his bed, at the gold braid on the epaulets, the double strands of gold cord hanging down under his left arm, and the gold frogging across the front and around the cuffs. “Tell me this is a joke.”

“It’s court dress, sir.”

He knew it was court dress. He saw officers in court dress every day. But, like many things, it looked a lot worse when it was applied to him personally. The only thing that made it even remotely acceptable was that the gold was a color only and at that he’d be paying for the color out of his next half dozen pay packets—real gold would take the rest of his flaming life.

Linnit approached, fabric draped over his hands. “The sash has to go on before the jacket.”

The sash had fringe. Reiter felt like an idiot. He took what comfort he could in the plainness of the black trousers and that his dress boots had been deemed suitable. Wearing this mockery of a military uniform, he’d be less noticeable within the court but unable to hide should he want to step to the side.

One of the officers whistled as he entered the guards’ mess. He hadn’t made any friends, he wasn’t around enough for that, but they’d ignored him the way they’d have ignored any new man posted to the unit. That easy neutrality was gone. He wasn’t just another military man doing a job; court dress in that room was about equal to bragging that he’d been mentioned by the Soothsayers and he had the emperor’s ear.

Except he didn’t have the emperor’s ear. Not today. The emperor was closeted with policy makers, Tavert informed him, and had left no instructions, so he had the morning to himself.

All that braid pulled him into an inane conversation with the Imperial cousin and one of the other hangers-on, neither of whom had spoken a word to him before. Reiter declined an invitation to a race meeting and was less polite when they expressed a stupidly uninformed opinion about how the Swords were fighting in Aydori. They’d no need to be as extreme in their advance as Onnyle Cobb—they had the ear of the emperor as well—they just wanted him on their side. Another voice lobbing their desires at the emperor’s defenses.

He finally freed himself, feeling grimier than he did after months of campaigning, and went to find the balloon he’d seen from his window. Got lost twice, surrendered, and asked a page.

“People used to be all around it all the time, back when it first went up. His Imperial Majesty, he went up in it every day. Well, maybe not every day, but every other day for sure. And the prince, too. But His Majesty doesn’t go to it much anymore, so nobody really does. Until his Majesty tells them to take it down, though, they’ve got to keep it ready in case His Majesty wants to go up.”

Even the pages were talking to the braid. They’d been as disdainful of his old uniform in the way only boys who knew they were essential to the running of an Imperial palace could be. What did they care for the guard? The guard was like furniture that just happened to move on its own.

“This is as far as you can go behind things.” The shortcut ended in a false wall a foot in from the ubiquitous tapestry. “From here,” the page pointed as they stepped out into a broad corridor in what was clearly a high traffic part of the palace, “you go straight to the Sun Gallery and turn left. There’s doors out into the courtyard.” He smiled up at Reiter expectantly.

In his old uniform, the pages hadn’t expected “gifts” for doing their flaming jobs.

The Sun Gallery had a wall of glass facing east. The other walls were a deep gold, and from the way they were glittering, Reiter guessed there was real gold in the square tiles. He thought of the times men had died because the artillery had fired everything it had and it hadn’t been enough and wondered how many shells one of those tiles could buy. The room was warm and bright and there was a priest murmuring prayers to a small group at the far end by a golden sunburst. The priest’s robes glittered as well.

Although, in fairness, Reiter had to admit the tiles and the robe were the first overt signs of wasted wealth he’d seen. The emperor wasn’t the type to have golden statues of himself scattered around the place. He had five pregnant mages hidden away in private rooms instead. And each mage had two guards with drawn guns. And their “midwife” had a knife she was willing to use.

Reiter would have preferred golden statues.

The balloon in the courtyard was also gold—a huge, egg-shaped bubble of silk, tied by silk cords to an Imperial purple basket heavily adorned with the Imperial crest. Even the sandbags were stamped with the Imperial crest. A ridiculous number of tassels dripped from the whole thing—balloon, basket, bags. It didn’t look anything like the efficient one-man balloons the army used for recon.

“It represents the Sun taking His Imperial Majesty up into the sky,” one of the young women told him as he frowned at the unexpected gaudiness. The six in charge of the balloon, young men and women both, dressed in uniforms of high-laced boots, leather breeches, leather vests—“Our flight jackets are stored in the balloon.”—were bored and happy to have someone to talk to. Reiter spent a surprisingly enjoyable morning—once he got them to ignore his personal gaudiness, learning about balloons.

The men who rode the recon balloons were never willing to answer questions.

Although all the seats at the table were full, Onnyle Cobb wasn’t at lunch.

“But you’re sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine, Annalyse.” It took almost everything Danika had left to force her fingers away from the scar. They’d replaced the dress while she was in the water room, so the pale line she could just see with her chin tucked in as far as it would go, was the only evidence of the wound.

The younger woman met her gaze for a long moment, then nodded and turned to Jesine. “And are you all right?”

“For the first time in my life,” Jesine ground out through clenched teeth, “I want to harm someone.”

“That’s right…” Danika stirred a spoonful of honey into her tea. “…you have no younger brothers.”

Annalyse laughed and clapped a hand over her mouth as though the sound had surprised her.

Jesine smiled and shook her head. “Please, only children have problems, too. I never had anyone to blame.” She picked up a biscuit and ripped it in half. “At least it’s over. He’s seen what I can do.”

It wasn’t over. Danika had suggested Leopald scientifically test the parameters of mage-craft and, as her professors used to say, one test did not establish a parameter. Leopald would keep going until he caused an injury Jesine couldn’t heal. Kirstin, immersed as she was in politics, would have realized exactly where these tests were headed. Stina would have been suspicious. But neither Kirstin nor Stina were at breakfast, no doubt being punished for rudeness to the emperor and Danika couldn’t tell Jesine she was wrong. Not when the shadows under the Healer-mage’s eyes said she hadn’t slept. Not when Annalyse already believed laughter forbidden.

Danika drank her tea, and dropped her other hand to curl into her lap so they couldn’t see her fingers tremble.

“Speak to me alone.”

She’d influenced Leopald once, and as much as she might personally wish it had gone differently, they now knew what they needed in order to get the nets off. He had no idea of what any of them were capable of. Of what she was capable of. While Stina continued to destabilize the wood of her door, the first step of the more conventional escape, Danika would try and convince His Imperial Majesty to take the net off her.

Healers might not be able to cause damage; she could.

“It was fascinating to observe how unaffected she is, wasn’t it, Captain? It certainly seems to indicate that the lesser orders can shrug off pain that would flatten the rest of us.”

Even with very little time granted him at the spyhole, Reiter had recognized faking it for an audience. Not only for the emperor—and he’d bet his pretty new uniform the blonde knew the emperor was watching—but for the other two women at the table. “Have you considered speaking to her about it, Majesty?” He had no idea where that had come from, but it wasn’t a bad idea. If he were talking to her, the emperor wouldn’t be ordering her cut. Probably.

“Yes, I have.” The blue eyes actually twinkled as the emperor smiled up at him from the lower step. “I’ll speak to her alone after our evening meal. You’re anticipating me now, Captain. Well done. I like that in my staff.”

Danika’s skin crawled as Adeline examined her, pressing a brass bell gently against her belly, a nipple on the hose attached to the narrow end of the bell tucked into the midwife’s ear.

“No bleeding?”

“Other than the obvious?” Danika smiled at Adeline’s scowl. “No.”

“Where fork?” In a just world, Adeline would be keeping the artifact in her apron pocket. Who wouldn’t want to brag about that?

“No pain?”

“You were there for the pain.”

“No other pain?”

“No.”

“Where fork?”

“Don’t start thinking you can lift the wooden thing from my pocket. It’s back in the emperor’s hands.”

And Leopald was unlikely to just hand it over, no matter how often or how loudly Danika asked.

Onnyle Cobb wasn’t at dinner either.

When Reiter asked about her, the young priest who’d sat at her other side for all the meals Reiter had taken in the formal dining room patted at the ludicrous golden sunburst ruff he wore around his skinny neck and frowned in exaggerated confusion. “Who?”

“The young woman from the treasury who’s been sitting between us.”

“I’m sure I don’t know who you’re talking about.” The frown turned into an equally exaggerated smile. “More bread?”

Reiter had told no one that Cobb had asked him about the captured mages.

It seemed he hadn’t needed to.

Ask about the captured mages…disappear.

It seemed people disappeared from court often enough that those who sat at the lowest ranking table weren’t surprised.

Gryham had been right about them disappearing into the crowd. They’d entered Tardford at dawn with the wagons arriving from the country. The crates of squealing piglets squealed louder when they caught Tomas’ scent, but as it was only a matter of degree, Mirian doubted anyone else noticed. When their country escorts turned left toward their waiting buyers, they stayed on Old Capital Street as instructed, keeping to the right when given the choice.

They walked like they knew where they were going, quickly, purposefully, her hand in the crook of his elbow, with their heads slightly down so as not to give offense to their betters.

“Our betters?” Tomas asked after Mirian explained it. “Where are you getting this stuff?”

“It’s how Joy Miller, an innocent country girl, walked through town unseen on her way to confront her real father. It’s a novel,” she added impatiently when Tomas’ brows went up. “It’s not like either of us have real world experience in walking around unseen.”

“I was a scout in the Hunt Pack.”

“On four legs. And we’re dressed like country people…”

“In stolen clothes.”

“Fine, we’re not innocent.”

“Or in a novel.”

Mirian stopped, grabbed the front of his jacket and dragged him around to face her. “Don’t make eye contact,” she growled. “The way you do it, people will think it’s a challenge and we can’t attract attention. Clear?”

He held up both hands. “Clear.”

“They will skin you!”

“I know.”

“Fine.” As she let him go and they started walking again, an elderly woman smoking a pipe and leaning on the sill of a second-floor window across the street, gave her an approving thumbs up.

Most of Tardford was north of Old Capital Street and the street itself remained working class enough they never felt terribly out of place. Mirian kept up a constant murmur of don’t notice us, don’t notice us although she had no idea—and no confidence—it was doing any good. The practicing she’d done at Gryham and Jake’s had been inconclusive. Pack could hear her no matter how quietly she spoke and Jake was so used to hearing what no one else could he paid no attention. Outside of town, just before they reached the road, she’d rubbed dirt into Tomas’ hair, making it look less like fur and adding enough weight only a stiff gust of wind would knock it askew, exposing his ears, but she still kept part of her attention on his head. She didn’t really care what the people around them thought as long as they didn’t think abomination.

At midday, she rummaged in the bedroll hanging off Tomas’ shoulder and finally opened the purse she’d stolen from Captain Reiter, using his money to buy them four skewers of grilled meat off a street cart on the right side of the street. Tomas assured her that he could only smell pork. She was a little surprised by how many bills were in with the coin. Aydori had only recently—and reluctantly—changed to paper money. The empire had used it for decades. Did army captains usually carry that much cash? Did they have to buy their own bullets? Pay their own men? Her parents had been fairly generous with her pin money, but if she’d correctly converted the value from Imperial to Aydori, this was more money than she’d seen in one place outside her father’s bank.

“It’s not that much,” Tomas told her, licking grease off his fingers.

“It is.”

“Bills were sent to your parents, right? You never carried more than a few coins. The captain’s pay packet probably caught up to him in Abyek. He could have a month or more back pay in there.”

“He snuck into Aydori and captured the Mage-pack!”

Tomas snickered and started on his third skewer. “I’m not saying he deserved to get paid for that, I’m saying he was doing his job. First time Harry and me got paid, we…” He flushed. “Never mind.”

She supposed it made sense that a country couple heading to Karis to seek their fortune would have their life savings with them. So, logically, it made sense for thieves to look for couples heading to Karis to seek their fortune in order to rob them. She put a little more emphasis on her don’t notice us, then had to stop when Tomas pointed out the eddies chasing after them against the prevailing wind.

By midafternoon they’d only the East Gate Market and a few cross streets of increasingly rural houses to get through before Old Capital Street joined up with the new Capital Street and started following the curves of the Vone River to Karis.

“The East Gate Market marks the place where the old east gate used to be when there was a city wall.” When Tomas turned to glare, Mirian pointed at the wall. “There’s a plaque.”

“And we’ve got so much time to stop and read.”

“Because charging right through town doesn’t look suspicious at all!” Mirian snapped. Watching out for an entire city as well as Tomas’ ears left her feeling as though she were being pulled to pieces. “Forgive me for needing a moment to collect myself.”

“These boots are too tight and my feet are killing me. Why are you such a…Never mind. Not important.” He went to run a hand up through his hair, caught himself when her eyes widened, and muttered something she didn’t catch. Pivoting on one heel, he headed away from the building. “Come on.”

Mirian grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. “The last time we tried crossing a market, it didn’t work out so well. You almost died.” I killed someone.

She still hadn’t told him how Harn the farm worker had burned. Didn’t want him to think differently of her. Had no idea of what he saw on her face, but his expression gentled.

“That won’t happen this time.” He adjusted her grip, tucking her hand into the bend of his elbow, and tugging her forward. “We’ll stay to the right just like Jake told us to.”

By midafternoon the market should have been emptying out, but banners had been strung across the small square, there was a distinct scent of toffee in the air, and a stage was being set up near an inn called…

“The Cock and Bottle,” Tomas told her. “If you keep squinting like that, you’ll have lines.”

She elbowed him in the side. She’d always been nearsighted, but this wasn’t a tiny cleft in a set of foggy hills off in the distance. She should have been able to read the sign. Rubbing her eyes didn’t help. If she were being sensible about it, she’d admit her vision had been getting worse since she’d left Aydori, but—all things considered—denial seemed the better option.

She studied the market as though she could still see into the corners.

It was warm enough that men and women drank at tables set up outside. Young children and dogs chased each other around the small square—although the dogs stayed away from Tomas—and older children lingered in groups. There weren’t a lot of men between fifteen and thirty.

“The empire went to war this winter, and the army always recruits heavily from the working class.” Tomas shrugged when Mirian looked up at him. “I’m Hunt Pack, but Harry was an officer in the 1st. He liked to share what he’d learned even if I didn’t give a rat’s…if I didn’t care.”

“I wish I’d met him.”

After a moment, Tomas smiled. “He’d have liked you.”

With Tomas’ arm warm under her hand and his shoulder bumping hers as they walked, it felt like they’d crossed a line. Just for a moment, they might have been walking out in Bercarit. They might have met each other the usual way. Her mother would be having joyful hysterics in the background. Then one of the children shrieked and a heated argument started up as they passed a cheese shop, and the moment ended. They weren’t those people anymore.

Those people would never have bought cheese for later and, next door, the last round loaf of dark rye bread over Tomas’ protest.

“It’s solid,” Mirian sighed, stuffing the purse back in the bedroll. “It won’t get crushed.”

“Rocks are solid,” Tomas muttered.

Those people, the people they’d been, they had people who bought food for them. Bought it. Prepared it. Served it to them. As much as Mirian didn’t really want to be those people anymore, it certainly wasn’t all bad. Most of it—like food and clothes and beds and privilege and a total lack of terror—was wonderful.

“Tomas…”

There were four young men, more noticeable because of the lack of young men, watching them from across the square. Mirian’s mother would have called them toughs and, secure in her social standing, loudly wondered why they were permitted to linger in the same places as their betters. They were unshaven, in jackets heavier than the weather required. Jackets heavy enough to hide things in and under. Stolen things and things used to steal things.

“I see them. Remember what Jake said. We stay to the right.” Tomas caught her hand and pulled her back beside him. “That’s not your right.”

“What is it about men in groups?” Something squished under her foot. She flinched and kept walking. “Individually, they may be perfectly tolerable, but get a group of men together and they become insufferable. Give them guns and they’re an army.” One of the toughs blew her a kiss.

“Stop looking at them. They’ll wait until we’re out of the market to attack. There’s too many witnesses here. We’ll lead them somewhere isolated, and I’ll take care of it.”

“Somewhere isolated enough no one will scream abomination.”

“Absolutely.”

“If they’re just going to rob us, don’t kill them.”

“Mirian…”

“I know. Try not to kill them.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Smiling, laughing, the toughs changed the angle of their approach.

“Tomas…”

He stiffened. “Okay, I was wrong. They’re not going to wait until we’re in a dark alley to attack, they’re going to make their move right here. Jostle around us, intimidate us. Rob us without a fight. Probably threaten you, to make me give in.”

“What if we yell for help?”

“I can take them. I’m not going to…Ow.” He glared at her. “You pinched me!”

“You can’t take them here. You’ll give yourself away!”

“I’m going to have to because there’s no point in yelling for help. The way people are deliberately ignoring them, they’ve been terrorizing this neighborhood for years.”

They were at the far right of the market already and couldn’t go any farther right. Soothsayers were useless! Still, they could always go back…

“For this to work, there has to be more of them, probably two more behind us.”

“Would that be the sensible thing to do?” Tomas muttered.

Mirian only barely resisted the urge to pinch him again. “For them.”

They could let themselves get robbed. After all, she’d stolen the money in the first place.

But the chances were too high that a gang of young men looking for trouble would discover what Tomas was. They weren’t expecting him, they wouldn’t be carrying silver, but his changing and their dying in the middle of the afternoon during some kind of festival with people drinking beer and watching like they were at the theater would set a hunt after them. And the hunters would have silver.

If she waited until they got close enough and put one of the toughs to sleep, what would the others do? Stupid question. They’d fight. Just looking at them, Mirian could see that would be their reaction. And fighting brought them back around to Tomas being found out. She’d have to sleep them all at the same time. But she needed to touch them to sleep them and there was no way she could touch them all at the same time.

No. Technically, the mage-craft needed to touch them.

She had to stop them while they were still far enough away no one would know what had happened and who’d been responsible.

A breeze lifted her hair.

Air-mages laid words on breezes all the time.

Words had power.

She’d moved scent on a breeze that first night in the cave.

She’d slept that soldier without even thinking. It was second level healer-craft.

All she had to do was lay the power on the air and deliver it to the toughs the same way she’d made the leaves dance.

Logically, she could do this.

The breeze swept around her, small whirlwinds gathering up debris. She had seconds before someone noticed.

“Sleep!”

Tomas got Mirian out of the square and down one of the side streets with no direct line of sight to the market, hoping he’d bought them enough time. They didn’t run, but he kept them moving as fast as wouldn’t attract attention. Not only Pack chased when prey ran. Mirian’s hand was tucked back in the angle of his elbow, his hand clamped over it, and it felt like ice with fingers. She stumbled as she walked, pressed up against his side.

He turned them down a lane between two silent houses, saw a cat asleep in the sun…

“How far did it spread?”

“What?” She twisted and stared up at him, squinting like she couldn’t see his face even though he wasn’t that much taller than she was. Just for a moment, it looked as though her eyes had gone to pieces, bits of the gray floating around over her pupils. Then she blinked and the moment passed. “Tomas?”

He’d probably been brushed by the mage-craft and it had affected his vision. He blinked his own eyes and said, “It’s starting to look like you put the whole city to sleep.”

The four jackasses who’d planned to rob them had fallen first. They’d crumpled to the ground as the breeze whipped past, then men, women, children, dogs, even pigeons, everyone in the market went to sleep. Everyone but Tomas and Mirian. Given her lack of control, he’d been thankful for that at the time, but now he wondered if they were the only two standing in all of Tardford.

And if Healer-mages could do this, why weren’t they standing on the front line? A sleeping army wouldn’t have killed Harry. And if this was something Mirian had made up, because she’d never been taught the rules Gryham said mages had made for themselves, then the rules needed to be changed.

A dog, out of sight behind a garden wall began to bark and a voice yelled at it to shut up.

“Okay, it didn’t go this far. That’s good to know.” He steadied her as she tripped, but kept them moving. “Are you all right?”

Mirian dug the heel of her free hand into her eyes. “I didn’t mean for everyone…”

“I know.” He twisted one ear back the way they’d come, that silence suddenly shattered by a single raised voice although he couldn’t make out the words. Time was running out. “Come on.”

They left the city on a footpath, north of where Old Capital Street joined the broader, newer Capital Street. Tomas could smell horses and oxen and see a cloud of dust rising behind a carriage down near the river, but this section of the road was empty. He got them across it and immediately down another lane. The low building to the right was a dairy; in spite of lunch, the smell of cow was almost overwhelming.

“When we’re past and we’re upwind, you’ll have to keep my scent from reaching the cattle, or they’ll panic and lead anyone following right to us. Can you do that?”

“Of course I can.”

“Of course you can? You blew a bunch of trees down and passed out for two days. There’s no ‘of course’ about it.”

She shifted so less of her weight was hanging off his arm. “I did it that first night in the cave. I can do it.”

And she did.

At least he assumed she did. Nothing blew down or over or away, but the cattle didn’t panic, and that was all Tomas cared about. If the two women whitewashing one of the outbuildings, or the man with the manure fork noticed them, well, it stood to reason that strangers had to walk out of cities as often as they walked in.

They began to pass farm lanes, then fields, and as the sun began to set the lane they followed ended at a pond where geese hissed a warning from the opposite shore. To the south, the land sloped down toward the river.

“Karis is that way.” Mirian pointed to the northeast, then knelt and began tugging at the laces of Jake’s old shoes. “We have enough light to run for a while.”

Tomas heard I need to run and began to undress.

His feet stopped hurting after he changed, but he still sat down to spend a minute or two chewing his pads.

“Come on.” Mirian was standing now, her own feet bare. She took a step and he saw the grass part, opening a path in front of her. When she ran, she ran with her whole body. He almost didn’t recognize the girl he’d resented, who’d stumbled and limped and winced her way to the forest road that first day. This Mirian ran like…

…like she was trying to outrun something.

Her scent was too strong for him to run behind her, so he ran beside her until it grew dark, then he lengthened his stride and cut her off.

She slammed into his side, caught herself with two handfuls of fur, and laughed. “My feet know where they’re going.”

There was something hiding behind that laugh. He changed so quickly, she still had one hand on his shoulder, and he stepped back before he could close the distance. “Your feet need to sleep.”

“My feet,” she began, yawned, and surrendered.

They tucked in under the low branches of an evergreen. Mirian pulled the branches closer to the ground on one side and rooted them, creating a living cave. They shared the food and then, when Tomas would have normally changed to sleep he stayed in skin and poked at the dirt with a piece of stick. “If you need to talk…”

Girls needed to talk. He’d heard Danika yell it at Ryder. We have to talk about it! You never want to talk about it!

He thought Mirian wasn’t going to answer, was about to thank the Lord and Lady for small mercies, when he heard her shift and take a deep breath.

“I think…” Her voice had a quaver he’d never heard in it before. He didn’t like it. “I think I’m going blind.”

“It’s dark.”

“Not right now!” So much for the quaver. “My eyes have been getting worse ever since this started.”

“This?”

“Since the Mage-pack was taken. This last time, when I…”

“Put half of Tardford to sleep?” The stick broke. He found another.

“You’re exaggerating, it wasn’t even close to half. That aside, yes, when you were getting us out of the market, I could barely see at all and then it got cloudy and by the time we reached the pond it was mostly better, but the ducks were fuzzy…”

“Feathery,” he said without thinking. “Sorry. And they were geese.”

She poked his shoulder. “I started thinking about when I’d noticed it before and the only logical conclusion is that it’s the mage-craft.”

“Is hurting your eyes?” Tomas knew a Fire-mage in the artillery who wore spectacles, and his grandfather also wore them…but his grandfather was old.

“Maybe it’s because I have no mage marks. Maybe mage marks protect a mage’s eyes from damage. So without them, every time I do something—and according to Gryham I’m doing something all the time—my vision gets worse.”

Tomas thought about telling her what he’d seen in Tardford and didn’t because she already sounded so upset. “Did Gryham tell you anything about mage marks?”

“No.”

“So you could be wrong. It might be lack of sleep or lack of vegetables.” He knew non-Pack needed more vegetables than Pack and they’d been mostly living on rabbit. “Or the air is different here.”

“I’m not wrong. I went over and over and over it while we ran. Using mage-craft is blinding me. It’s the only logical conclusion.”

“So what do we do?” He couldn’t make out her expression, but then he already knew what it was. He knew her shoulders had squared and her chin had gone up.

“We’ll do what we set out to do. Save the Mage-pack.”

“But if you can’t use mage-craft…” He paused, suddenly aware of the breeze clearing her scent from their shelter so he could function. She was using mage-craft even while she talked about it blinding her.

“I didn’t say I couldn’t use it. Or that I wouldn’t.”

“But if it’s…” He stopped when he felt her hand close around his.

“We’ve come too far. And when you weigh squinting and tripping against saving Lady Hagen and the rest…it’s not even worth considering.”

Shifted his grip, Tomas ran his thumb up the inside of her wrist. He could feel her pulse racing under the thin layer of soft skin. “Unfortunately, you’re right.”

The way she sighed, he realized at least part of her had wanted him to disagree. “Stay in skin.”

“What?”

“Don’t change tonight.”

The only time since this started that he hadn’t slept beside her in fur, there’d been a roomful of very fragrant people to help his control. “I don’t think…”

“So don’t think. I don’t want to hold you,” she continued. “I need you to hold me.”

She was asking for comfort. Tomas had to breathe for a moment, the air smelling of sap and earth and Mirian—in spite of her breeze—before he could trust his voice. “I need to put my trousers on, then.”

“You don’t need to.”

The emperor was scheduled to spend the morning being briefed on the results of several recent international trade agreements and, as Reiter was not on the list of staff he wanted to attend him, he had another morning off. This time, he stripped off his court uniform, regained his anonymity as just another Shield officer, and left the palace. He had money enough to visit a barber or a coffee shop but not both, so he chose the barber. After, as he hadn’t been in Karis with the Shields long enough to make friends, he walked for a while, enjoying the noise and the smells and the complete lack of manners. He reflected on how unfortunate it was no one went to a whorehouse before noon, and reminded himself it didn’t matter as Mirian had taken his purse.

When he returned to the palace to dress for the midday meal, he felt almost normal and more like himself than he had since he walked into that Imperial debriefing. The emperor’s attention was intoxicating, but he’d been in the army long enough to know what followed extended intoxication.

That the emperor clearly intended to enslave—burn it, had enslaved—the Aydori mages made Reiter feel sick. He wondered what the emperor would say if he told him how he felt. It wouldn’t change the mages’ situation, whatever it was, although it would undoubtedly change his and not for the better.

And that young priest would have another dinner companion to forget.

Assembling after the meal with the rest of those who followed the emperor in case he needed facts about the noble families, opinions on what his courtiers were wearing, his mood lifted, or to hold a conversation about something no one else was permitted to talk about, Reiter stepped aside as a running page approached. Breathing heavily, the girl handed a folded piece of paper to Tavert who checked the seal and handed it immediately to the emperor.

“From the north wing, Majesty.”

“Really? Lord Hyde, what time is it?”

The young man next to Reiter started and pulled out a pocket watch. “Half one, Majesty.”

“That’s early.”

There was a murmur from those around him agreeing it was indeed early.

The emperor ignored them with what Reiter assumed had to be the ease of long practice and cracked the seal, flipping the single sheet open. It wasn’t good news; that much was obvious.

“Tell me when it is two, Lord Hyde.” The emperor usually made requests to his little pack of hangers-on. That was a command. His boot heels slammed against the floor as he turned and Reiter got the impression he wasn’t hurrying to the foundry because he wanted to be there but because he wanted it done with.

The last time Reiter had seen the emperor dealing with new technology, he’d been enthusiastic. This time he was agitated and kept brushing the foreman off, giving only a cursory glance at the machinery he’d come to see.

As the clock on the foundry wall began to chime two, a miniature brass canon firing twice, Lord Hyde stepped forward. Redundant or not, he’d been given an order. “Majesty, it’s two.”

“Tavert! Cancel the rest of my afternoon.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

“Captain Reiter!”

“Sir!” It was a hard habit to break.

“You’re with me.”

Stina thought she was five or six days from being able to push her door off the bits of metal that held it in place. That meant Danika had five or six days to figure out what to do if Leopald had a guard stationed in the corridor outside their cells at night. No, not guard, guards, they were always in pairs. And always the same twelve although they shuffled the pairings around. Unless there were specific night guards, that suggested their guards slept when they did. They already believed their captives harmless, merely going through the motions of guarding them into and out of the large communal room, but that would change if they saw one of the cell doors slammed out into the corridor. Or even falling to pieces.

“Kirstin, what’s wrong?”

Danika stopped her hand from rising to touch her scar, as Jesine’s voice pulled her attention across the table. Kirstin didn’t look good. There were dark circles under her eyes and her skin, always pale, looked clammy. She wasn’t eating.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s clearly something.” When Kirstin ignored her, Jesine drew herself up, but before she could speak, Danika stepped on her foot.

“Stina.”

Stina was the most stable of the lot of them at this point, probably because she was the only one able to actively work toward their escape. “I hate to think what my lot have been up to since I’ve been gone. Their father lets them run wild…”

As Stina launched into an involved story about her three children and the day they tied up the nursery maid with strips of torn sheet, Danika lifted her foot.

Jesine reached out, fingers closing around Kirstin’s wrist. “Let me help. Is it the baby?”

Lips drawn back, Kirstin snatched her hand away. “There is no baby!”

‘But the prophecy…?”

“Soothsayers are insane. Everyone but His Imperial Majesty seems to know that.”

“Are you sure?”

“That Soothsayers are insane?” Kirstin’s laugh lifted the hair on the back of Danika’s neck. There was no way anyone listening would think she was laughing at Stina’s story no matter that Annalyse tried to laugh with her. “Pretty sure, yes.”

“Kirstin…”

“My blood came last night.”

Jesine shook her head. “There could be many reasons for blood. You could be…”

“Miscarrying? Had three. I know what a miscarriage is like. I know because I had one just before the Imperial army decided to destroy our lives.”

“Yes, but…”

“Jesine.” Danika cut the Healer-mage off. “She’s known all along there was no baby. She was still mourning her last miscarriage when we were taken.” That explained…well, everything. “That’s why she dared try to remove the net.” Kirstin’s expression suggested she was an idiot for taking so long to figure it out. Maybe she was. “They go into our cells when we’re in the water room and they go in while we’re here. Will they find anything?”

“Like blood?” Kirstin snorted. “What difference does it make? Like the golden girl says, there could be many reasons for blood.”

She was terrified and trying to hide it. Danika could see fear in every brittle movement and hear it on the edge of her tongue. There’d been enough blood then that no one could mistake it. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I heard the prophecy when you did, Alpha…”

Kirstin made the title an insult. Danika let it pass.

“…and Leopald needs six mages expecting children. There were already only five of us. What were their orders if they came up short? Would they kill us all and start again if they found out?”

“You’re talking about your unfortunate stains on the bed, aren’t you?”

Danika snapped her gaze up to Leopald’s little rathole so fast she felt the movement in her neck. She’d been so intent on Kirstin, she hadn’t noticed it open.

“I admit, I was angry at first.” Leopald frowned in an overly false and concerned way. “But then I realized I should consider the misrepresentation of your condition as an opportunity.”

“An opportunity?” Danika repeated, switching to Imperial. Eyes locked on Leopald’s face, she got slowly to her feet, hearing the others do the same.

“Exactly. An opportunity I thought I wouldn’t get for some months now.” He leaned forward, hands on his knees, eyes shining as though he was about to share wonderful news. “I’m not going to kill your little friend, I’m going to start building the future of the empire now. I’m going to breed her.”

Danika actually felt her mouth fall open. He’d mentioned breeding before, but she hadn’t…because he couldn’t…

Straightening, he beckoned to the guards. “Take the small dark one to the door into the research wing.”

“You’re insane!” Danika moved around to Kirstin’s side as Mole-under-ear and Poked-chin came away from the wall. She shoved Mole-under-the-ear back, her attention on Leopald, peripherally aware that both the other women and the other guards were also moving. “You are certifiably insane!”

“And you are abomination,” Leopald snapped. “Which puts you in no position to judge.” The guards’ hands closed around Danika’s upper arms as he added, “Take her, too.”