The Silvered

Chapter Five

TOMAS WAS DREAMING of Harry. He knew it was a dream because he knew Harry was dead, had died with his legs blown off and his life pouring out of the stumps. Dream Harry was laughing, the mage marks in his eyes glittering nearly the same shade of red as the wine in the glass he held up to the firelight.

“So let me get this straight; sex is connected to your nose?”

They’d had that conversation, Tomas remembered, but not in uniform. They’d been thirteen, the first year they’d spent together at school. “It has to smell right,” he said, realizing too late he was in fur. Fur had many advantages, but words weren’t one of them.

It didn’t seem to matter as Harry laughed again and said, “What smells right, then?”

Tomas looked down at Mirian Maylin, lying on the floor of Harry’s study in a gray wool traveling suit and black ankle boots. Her hair was a tangled mess, her hands were filthy, and a purple bruise covered the lower half of her face. He didn’t remember the bruise being that bad. She was attractive enough, he supposed, average to tall, brown hair, gray eyes, maybe a little on the sturdy side…

“Tomi!” Harry was still laughing. “What smells right?”

“If it’s not Pack, power.”

“And if it is Pack?”

He could feel himself blushing, which was weird because he was still in fur. “None of your business.”

“I have power.” The mage marks gleamed.

“Yeah, but you’re dead, Harry.”

Harry’s legs were gone, and the floor was covered in blood. Mirian Maylin lay in a puddle of it, her skirt darkening as the fabric soaked it up. He couldn’t see her boots anymore. The skirt just…ended. Tomas was sure she’d had legs when they went to sleep. Of course, she smelled so good, he supposed legs weren’t actually necessary.

He was still half asleep as he pushed himself out of the cave in skin, her scent in his nose and Harry’s laughter ringing in his ears. He changed to fur as he emerged, gouges the rock had taken as payment for his panicked exit, healing. Tail clamped between his legs, he sucked in a deep breath, forcing the dream and his reaction to it away.

It took a moment for him to realize he was an idiot.

And a lucky one.

It was barely dawn. The light hadn’t quite made it under the trees, but his shadow stretched across the small clearing in front of the rock. He flattened into it, slowly, and froze, nose turned into the breeze. The faint scent of the Imperials was old. Last night, not this morning.

If they weren’t moving now, they would be soon. The last watch would wake them at dawn, and if they ate at all, they’d eat what cold food they had as they broke camp. They’d assume their captive would head back toward the border and, because they knew she was a mage, they’d assume…what?

If Miss Maylin was to be believed, they’d already survived an encounter with Danika and those of the Mage-pack traveling with her. They’d have faith that this last artifact would do its job as well as the others had.

As he’d been stupid enough to leave it behind, the net was there for them to use.

With the net, the Imperials would be overconfident, unaware of what the Mage-pack could do. They had the artifact. They had silver bullets.

But he had Mirian Maylin.

Lying alone in the dark, Mirian took inventory of aches and pains and decided first, that she’d live, and second, that she desperately wanted a drink of water. No, she desperately wanted tea, and toast with honey, and maybe a boiled egg, but she’d settle for water.

Right after she emptied her bladder. Unfortunately, caves didn’t come with water closets. Still, if Tomas had left—and he had—it must be safe to go outside. Unless he’d left more than the cave. He could have left her entirely. Gone to kill the soldiers, gone back to the army, gone after Lady Hagen—it didn’t matter, the point was he’d gone without…

The soft scrape of skin against stone and a quiet, almost inaudible grunt stopped the thought. That could be him returning, but there was no way to guarantee it. The soldiers could have killed him. Tracked him back to the cave. He’d be able to smell the difference between friend or foe, but she wasn’t Pack.

Shuffling around until she was as far from the sound as possible, she removed her right boot and held it ready by the toe. The stacked wooden heel was only an inch high, but it was the closest thing to a weapon she had. In the world of Onnesmina, women carried a discreet dagger in their bodices; her world having gotten slightly operatic of late, that seemed like an excellent idea to Mirian.

“Good, you’re awake.” From the sound of his voice, Tomas’ upper body had cleared the entrance. “You’re right. We need to work together. You deal with the silver. I’ll take out the Imperials.”

“What?”

“You deal with the silver,” he repeated. She could almost hear his eyes narrowing. “Leave the Imperials to me. Let’s move. They’ll be up and after us soon, and we left a trail a blind, one-legged priest could follow.”

“How do I deal with the silver?” Leaning back against the rock, Mirian concentrated on putting her boot back on. It was more difficult than she expected. She knew where her foot was, she shouldn’t have to see it.

“You’re a mage.” Don’t be so stupid, added his tone. “Melt it out of the air or turn it to lead or whatever a Metals-mage does. I don’t care.”

Fingers through the side loops, she shoved her heel down. “I’m not a Metals-mage.”

“What?”

Mirian sighed and crossed her legs, the childish position hidden by the darkness and her skirt. “After a year at the university, I had first levels in every discipline but metal-craft.”

“But you removed the shot.”

“Yes, I did. It seems I’ve finally completed the set. But I have no second levels.”

“You said the sleep thing was second level. So you’re a Healer-mage?

“No. I’m not an anything mage.” In memory, silver ran warm and liquid over her finger. Not only identified, but called. Two second levels. Still, that didn’t change anything. How could it? “I suspect any advance in ability arose in reaction to an extreme situation.” She tried to sound surer than she felt. “There’s no guarantee I could do it again.”

He did nothing but breathe for a moment, then he growled, “So if you’re a nothing mage, why did they want you?”

That shouldn’t have hurt, but it did. “I told you, they wanted a mage, not me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Lord Hagen…” Rolling up onto her knees, she reached out, touched his shoulder, and used his position to find the slightly less dark line of the cave’s exit. He flinched away from her touch, or maybe the title, but that only made it easier to get by him. When halfway out and slightly stuck, she kicked and her foot impacted with something solid but not hard enough to be rock; she half hoped she’d hit him hard enough to raise a bruise.

Eyes squinted nearly shut against the gray dawn light, she crossed the small clearing and went into the underbrush, trying not to leave a trail a blind, one-legged priest could follow. Although, given that there were no blind, one-legged priests around and there was an annoyingly bloodthirsty, junior member of the Hunt Pack, most of her attention went to listening for his approach.

It wasn’t until she was returning to the clearing that she realized she should have been listening for the Imperial soldiers, not for Tomas Hagen.

He was leaning against the rock face, arms folded. Mirian locked her eyes on his face, and waited.

After a moment, his nostrils flared, he drew in a deep breath, and sighed it out again. “Can you light fires?” he asked quietly.

It wasn’t an apology but, in fairness, he’d only stated the truth. In truth, she wasn’t much of a mage. “Small ones,” she told him, matching her volume to his. They wouldn’t be hard to find if the soldiers could hear them talking. “Candle fires.”

“A fire in an ammo pouch would throw off their accuracy. There’d be no explosion without the constriction of a barrel, but the gunpowder would ignite,” he added when she frowned.

Apparently, he believed a lack of mage-craft meant a lack of functional intellect. Mirian folded her arms as well. “What about Lady Hagen?”

“After we deal with…”

Mirian cut him off. “They’re taking her, all of them, to the emperor. You don’t think they’re going to walk all the way to Karis, do you? They’ll have coaches waiting on the other side of the border, fast ones.” She frowned, thinking of maps and of what she’d read in the newspapers. “If he wants them badly enough to send soldiers into Aydori with ancient artifacts, he’ll have sent mail coaches. They’ll be able to stop and change horses at every posting house and get from the border, the old border, to the capital, in four days. You can add an extra two days to cross the conquered duchies, but if the soldiers reach those coaches with Lady Hagen, we’ll never catch them.”

“You’ve thought about this.” He sounded suspicious. Like she’d been privy to the emperor’s plan all along.

“I may not be much of a mage,” she snorted, “but I’m not stupid. And you have to decide, which is more important: revenge or rescue?”

He stiffened. “They’re Imperials. It’s not revenge, it’s war.”

“There’s at least a dozen soldiers with Lady Hagen and the others. If you want to make war, make war with them.” She didn’t know them. Not their names, not the dumb jokes they told each other, not what they believed about the Pack.

Tomas’ eyes were very dark and his skin very pale, as though he only went out into the sun in fur, giving it no chance to darken. After a long moment, he unfolded his arms and pointed. “The Imperial camp is there. The quickest way to the border is that way, due south. We were moving toward it last night before I left you to find shelter, following the trail the five of you made yesterday. Hopefully, they won’t notice where we left it, and they’ll think you’re still heading home. It’s the sensible thing to do.”

“Are you a Soothsayer?”

“No, I’m sensible.”

“That way…” He turned and pointed past the rock. “…to the northeast, the way your Imperials were taking you, a Pyrahn logging trail goes nearly all the way to the border.”

About to ask how he knew, Mirian bit the question off. He was Hunt Pack. Hunt Pack patrolled the borders. And they weren’t her Imperials.

“The Teryn Valley juts out of Aydori into Pyrahn. It’s one of the few places there’s no natural demarcation. The entire valley used to be part of Aydori, but about a hundred years ago when they straightened the border in return for building up the road into Bercarit, well, Ryder says…said…” He stopped. Swallowed. Continued. “You could get a coach down the trail if you needed to. It has to be where they’re taking the Mage-pack. We’ll stop them there.”

“Just like that?”

“Or we could argue some more until your Imperials show up and shoot us both,” he said, and changed.

She could finally stop looking at his face. “They’re not my Imperials.”

“She’s definitely heading back toward the border, Cap.” Chard pointed down the trail the girl had left the night before; crushed undergrowth, broken branches, the occasional bootprint, all obvious in the dim gray light of dawn. “She’s heading right back the way we came. How could she find that in the dark?”

Reiter glanced past Chard to Armin, yawning but finally awake. One hand holding the net, the other his musket, he didn’t have a hand to spare to close around the lock of hair in his pocket. “She’s a mage.”

“Can she see in the dark, Cap? Because if she can…” Chard shrugged. “If she kept moving all night, we’ll never catch her.”

“She was exhausted,” Reiter reminded him. “She wasn’t faking that.”

“And me and the captain heard her crashing through the brush,” Best added. “Then we didn’t. She went to ground.” He stopped and waved a hand.

If she hadn’t been a mage, if they’d had more than one tangle or any other guaranteed way to subdue her, he’d have already sent Best on ahead with it, full speed along the back trail to the border while the rest of them spread out and searched more slowly. But she was a mage, and they had only one tangle.

And it was broken. Reiter had no idea if it was functional. Or if it ever was. He did, however, have a very good idea of what would happen if they just let her walk away.

They were soldiers. The Imperial army had trained them to shoot and march and follow orders and give orders and kill and die, but it hadn’t trained them to track a single woman through the empty lands buffering the border between Pyrahn and Aydori. They’d been lucky finding her yesterday and they’d only managed it because they’d known if she was heading for the border, the river limited the possibilities.

She had to be going back to the border today.

Back home.

Back to safety.

If they didn’t find her asleep behind a fallen tree or hiding in a hollow, they’d catch her at the border. Her mother had told them the mage was looking for her beastman. If the black creature was a beastman, he wasn’t hers or they’d all be dead—their lives the best argument he hadn’t been a beastman at all. She had to still be looking for hers, heading back across the border and toward the battle.

Where else could she go?

Best to his left, Armin, then Chard to his right; he thought they’d covered the ground he and Best had covered last night, but nothing looked the same as it had in the darkness and the four pairs of boots—five pairs, he amended silently—had made enough of a mess he couldn’t tell for certain if the girl had gone back over it in the other direction.

“Cap, if we see the dog…”

“Best, if you see the dog, shoot it.”

“Yes, sir.” Best didn’t sound happy as much as justified.

“But, Cap…”

“Shut up, Chard.”

The emperor expected six mages. Reiter had his orders.

He wished he’d asked her for her name.

“The emperor knew you’d be returning with women.” Six women. Six pregnant women given the Soothsayer’s rhyme, but Danika had no intention of letting Lieutenant Geurin know she’d overheard that. “The emperor is married, I’m sure he knows that women take longer to perform certain tasks than men. Especially if their hands are tied. And they have an audience.”

The lieutenant leaned toward her and smiled. “I don’t care if you piss yourselves. My orders are to get you to Karis alive; they say nothing about how you’re to smell.” He pulled out a pocket watch and made a show of snapping open the ornate case. “You have three minutes. I suggest you stop wasting time.”

Danika had never wanted to throw up on someone so badly in her entire life, but, this morning, her stomach had settled.

Tomas could move faster without her. Why hadn’t he said that? Without her, the odds of him reaching the border before they piled Danika and the others onto coaches were considerably higher. He could avoid people—not that there’d ever been many people in the borderlands—and even if he were seen, any Pyrahnian who lived this close to Aydori knew better than to take potshots at something that could be Pack. Or their neighbor’s dog. He’d never been able to decide if the big dogs they preferred in this part of the duchy were intended as flattery or protection, nor had he ever much cared.

Harry, who’d actually taken the time to read Mind and Matter, a book by a popular Traiton doctor making the rounds of Aydori drawing rooms and lending libraries, said it was a subconscious way of dealing with the Pack. See, we leash things that look like you here. Tomas had almost believed Harry’d taken that bullshit seriously, then he’d burst into laughter and…

Died. Harry had died.

He wanted to run full out. Away from the place where Harry and Ryder and so many others had been killed. Run to a place where he could make a difference. The odds of anyone shooting him while he ran were slim to unlikely and it was less unlikely the Imperials searching for Mirian Maylin…Mirian. “A little respect, Tomas.” His mother’s voice in memory. “You do not refer to an unmarried woman you are not related to by her first name without her permission.” It was unlikely the Imperials searching for Miss Maylin were following. Anyone with half a functioning brain would assume she’d head back to the border instead of heading off to help rescue five people she didn’t know with only first level mage-craft to call on. Of course they didn’t know she had only first level mage-craft. They thought she was one of the mages they’d been sent to capture, thought she was Mage-pack, which was a stupid case of mistaken identity since they couldn’t catch her scent in a bucket.

Maybe the artifact had chosen her.

Behind him, she made a frustrated noise, almost a Pack noise, and he turned to see her trudging around the root fan of a downed cedar he’d jumped without thinking. He looped back beside her, then almost immediately pulled out in front again. She wasn’t talking, he’d give her that, saving her breath for the scramble through low scrub and around the occasional weed tree.

Crap cover for someone on two legs. There was, after all, no guarantee the Imperials had half a functioning brain between them.

Why hadn’t he told her he could move faster without her?

Tomas had no idea.

The breeze shifted, and he fought the urge to turn and twine between her legs.

When they reached a small, fast moving creek, he bent his head to drink, stomach growling. The bits of dried meat he’d been fed at the Imperials’ camp had been all he’d eaten since before they left Bercarit and it hadn’t been nearly enough. He was always hungry these days, even when he was home and eating regularly. When the Hunt Pack was out with the 1st, he’d haunted the field kitchen.

Harry laughed about it.

Used to laugh about it.

His stomach growled again.

No, not his stomach.

He turned to see Miss Maylin kneeling by the creek, scooping water in her cupped hands but breathing too heavily to drink. Stepping away from the shore, he changed. “We can’t stop for food.”

She glanced up at him with those strange, pale eyes, face shiny with sweat. “I didn’t ask to.”

He’d never spent much time with non-mages. It was weird to look at her and see a total lack of mage marks. She’d said her father was a banker. That meant money, didn’t it? Had she ever sweated before? Had she ever been hungry? “I just…I heard…” Three long strides moved him upwind and he breathed easier, not having to constantly try and suppress his physical reaction. “When we get there, to where Danika and the others are, I’ll still be facing Imperials armed with silver.”

Hair falling in a tangled mess over her face, she managed to suck up two handfuls of water before answering. “I know.”

“It’s just that’s why you didn’t want to kill the four who’d taken you, because of the silver and how you couldn’t get away without me…” He couldn’t seem to stop talking. “…but now, I’ll be facing even more Imperials armed with silver, and you still won’t be able to get away without me.”

She shrugged. “Now, the risk is worth it.”

Two could play that game. He shrugged as well, then realized she couldn’t see him. “Long odds,” he growled, annoyed at her disinterest.

Sitting up on her heels, she wiped her hands on her skirt and dropped her head, looking over at him from under the tangle of her hair. “Not if we work together. You draw the attention of the soldiers while I get the net off even one of the Mage-pack. Even odds.”

“They’re Mage-pack.” Tomas showed teeth. He could see she knew it wasn’t a smile. She knew that much at least. “Better than even odds.” Because she didn’t tell him how to draw the attention of the soldiers, he didn’t ask how she intended to get the net off one of the Mage-pack. He’d pulled hers off easily enough and the Mage-pack had a lot less hair. “Can you run?”

Pushing herself up onto her feet, she squared her shoulders. “For a while, I think. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

“Yes.” If he kept the pull of the border on his right and headed northeast, they had to cross the logging trail.

He thought she might demand an explanation, but she only nodded and said, “All right, lead.”

He waited until she got across the creek before he began to run. Run slowly. Jog really. Still, it was faster than they’d been moving.

He’d be able to move a lot faster without her, but she was right. The two of them together raised the odds. Her scent had nothing to do with it.

Her feet hurt. Her legs hurt. The cold water had eased her throat but made her stomach hurt. She ran, she walked, she ran again, swallowing the taste of iron.

Tired and hungry and just as pigheaded as her mother had called her, Mirian was not going to quit.

Together, they had a chance.

On his own, Tomas Hagen would be one more body sprawled on the road.

“I heard that mages can talk to animals. And make trees walk.” Although he spoke quietly, Chard sounded excited by the thought of talking animals and walking trees.

“Why?” Armin sounded confused.

“Why what?”

“Why would they make trees walk?”

“I don’t know about every mage, but our mage, if she could make them walk, she could make them walk out of her way. Make the path easier for her. Or she could move them to hide her tracks as she left the path and headed to a secret mage hideout!”

That, Reiter admitted silently, would be a useful skill. Chard’s secret mage hideout was a figment of the soldier’s overactive imagination, but they hadn’t found their mage beside the trail and they hadn’t caught up on the way back to the border. He stood by the river, by the discarded wagons the Imperial army had emptied of gravel to stabilize the ford, and stared into Aydori.

“Where to now, Captain? Do we rejoin the lieutenant?”

“No.” He spoke without thinking and then had to find words beyond his belief that the lieutenant was an officious little shit. “You heard her mother…”

“She gone to Jaspyr Hagen! He come rip you throat!”

“…she’s looking for her beastman. He’ll be in the battle.”

“With luck, he’s dead.” Best spat to one side. “One less abomination.”

“Do they only have one?” Chard wondered, reaching between the buttons on his tunic to scratch. “Because my Nan has three little yappy things and I heard Lieutenant Geurin say he had a pack of hunting dogs, so maybe the women in Aydori have whole packs of beasts to service them.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Reiter growled, his tone reminding them that he was a captain and they weren’t, so they’d better not ask him how he knew because all he could tell them was she hadn’t seemed like the kind of girl who had a pack of beasts to service her. And he couldn’t tell them that.

“If I had a pack of girl beasts…”

“Chard.”

Proving he wasn’t entirely stupid, Chard shut up.

There’d be a command post at the bridge. Staff officers. Swords, not Shields. Who’d ask what he was doing there if he was under orders and if he believed the girl those orders told him to capture had headed for the battle. The leadership of the Imperial army was, among other things, predictable.

He pulled his boots from the mud churned up by hundreds of similar boots, felt them slipping off his heels as the mud pulled back, and stepped into the river. “Come on.”

“What if we got in front of her, Captain? Passed her without seeing her?” Unlike Chard’s casual idiocy or Best’s religious fundamentalism, Armin asked questions weighted only by the facts as he knew them. “What if she’s just not here yet?”

“Yeah, but if we’re in front of her,” Chard snorted, “why isn’t she using her magic to pick us off, one by one?”

“Because she’s a lady?”

“She lies down with beasts!” Best snarled.

“Well, yeah, but…”

Reiter reached the other bank and turned in time to see Armin’s frown. Well, yeah, but indeed. They could only act on the information they had, and the mages of Aydori lay with beasts. They didn’t even deny it. “What if she changed into a bird and flew away?” he muttered.

Chard smiled up at him. “It’d have to be an owl, Cap. It was dark. Or a nightingale. Oh, or she could have waited until morning and slipped into that flock of starlings.”

“Can they do that?” Armin wondered, stepping up out of the river onto a rock and avoiding the mud.

“No.” Best seemed positive.

“But they’re mages,” Chard protested.

“Mages can’t change shape.”

“The beastmen change shape.”

“Mages aren’t beastmen.”

“But they lie down with beasts? Right? Maybe they catch the changing thing from them.”

Reiter ignored the rest of the argument. If she was heading for the battle, they’d head for the battle. If they found her searching for her beastman among the bodies, good. If the tangle still worked, it would take her down again. If she’d broken it, he had no way to capture a mage and there’d be ranking officers on the battlefield who understood a soldier couldn’t put his faith in ancient artifacts. He’d happily dump the whole mess in their laps and walk away from the problem entirely.

Danika couldn’t feel the border like Ryder could, like their baby would be able to if it was Pack, but she knew exactly where she was when she saw the wound cut into the forest, the stumps radiating out from the logging trail. Straightening the border between the Duchy of Pyrahn and Aydori had given the duke access to the timber of the Teryn Valley. The empire had a need for timber, and the duke had been happy to supply it at a price. She bit back a laugh that threatened to tumble over into hysteria. It seemed like the empire would be getting its own timber from here on.

Kirstin made a noise at the sight of the three mail coaches, a choked-off cry that brought a laugh from one of the men beside her.

“Well, that’s it for your beastmen, then,” Murphy smirked. “Thank fuck they can’t cross the border. Everyone knows that,” he added when Danika turned toward him. “It is true, right? They can’t cross the border?”

“Why would she tell you?” Tagget muttered as the lieutenant strutted forward to meet the drivers and Sergeant Black corralled them in a lose semicircle of soldiers.

The horses were larger than the mountain ponies used in Aydori, but still sturdier looking than Danika had expected given that the speed of the mail coaches crossing the ever-expanding Kresentian Empire held the conquered pieces together as much as the army did. The newspapers Ryder had brought into Aydori in monthly bundles praised the growing network of roads and posting houses that delivered news and laws and letters from sons and daughters who’d been drafted into supporting the empire’s massive infrastructure. Of course, that same network had taken those sons and daughters away in the first place, but even allowing for Imperial propaganda, the citizenry seemed to approve of being connected.

“Leopald may be a dangerous egomaniac,” Ryder had declared, “but he’s not stupid. He has a lot of disparate peoples to govern and conformity will wipe out rebellion faster than force.” Dropping the folded paper onto a lopsided pile, he’d snorted and added, “Not that he isn’t willing to apply force.”

Ryder should have caught up to them by now. Gripping a fold of her filthy skirt between her bound hands, Danika told herself he was needed at the battle, needed to drive the Imperial army away from Aydori, needed to organize counterattacks and needed to be there where Aydori soldiers could see him and know that with their Pack Leader in the battle, they couldn’t lose. However much he might have wanted to race after her, he couldn’t do it without delegating at least some of his responsibilities. But he’d be here soon.

He couldn’t cross the border, but he wouldn’t have come alone.

Danika could see the same thought on the faces of the women around her. Their husbands could leave Aydori even if Ryder couldn’t.

They were standing upwind of the horses, but after a day and a half, the scent of the Pack had apparently faded past the point where it could panic prey. Pity. Standing as he was between the first and second coach, Lieutenant Geurin would have been crushed beneath the wheels had the horses bolted. The horses continued to stand frustratingly still.

“Sergeant Black!” The lieutenant smiled as he turned. It looked as though both men and officers had relaxed upon crossing the border, no doubt believing as Murphy did that none of the beastmen could cross. Danika’s hands began to cramp, and she forced herself to loosen her grip. Lieutenant Geurin’s smile was triumphant, as though moving his captives a quarter mile out of Aydori meant he’d won.

“They hold four passengers inside,” he told the sergeant, waving toward the track as if the sergeant had never seen a mail coach before. “I want two women, two soldiers in each. Let the fat one ride on her own so her enormous ass…” He smirked at Stina and cupped the air with both hands. “…doesn’t slow the coach.”

“Your father was a syphilitic weasel,” Stina growled, recognizing the gesture if not the words. She grunted as Carlsan poked her in the ribs with the muzzle of his musket, but it didn’t sound like pain. Danika suspected Carlsan had reacted for form’s sake only, responding to an obvious insult rather than draw the lieutenant’s ire toward him. Danika hadn’t yet been able to make use of the soldier’s dislike of the lieutenant, but she promised herself she would.

“One man sitting up with the driver,” Lieutenant Geurin continued. “One man on top facing back the way we came, on guard.”

Danika did the math and frowned. If there were two soldiers riding inside with Stina, that accounted for only fourteen of the seventeen Imperials.

“Hodges.”

The youngest looking of the soldiers stiffened to attention, surprised at being directly addressed, high cheekbones flushing red beneath tan and dirt.

“They say you’re fast. Is it true?”

Hodges swallowed, angles shifting in a skinny throat—Danika lowered his age to his mid-teens—and said, “I run fast, sir.”

Lieutenant Geurin waved off the reply. “I have less than no interest in what else you may do at speed. Once the coaches are loaded,” he continued, ignoring the sniggering from two or three of the men, “run for the battle. Leave a message with the ranking officers reminding Captain Reiter…” The lieutenant’s lip curled, not bothering to hide how much he resented the other man’s rank. “…that his orders are to return immediately to Karis with the sixth mage.”

Even Danika could see that Hodges had questions. The lieutenant ignored them.

“Cooper and Mylls, you two will stay here. Shoot anything that comes across the border after us. Hare, you’re riding guard on the last coach. Anything that gets past these two, you put down.”

Hare nodded. If he believed he could hit moving Pack from the top of a moving coach, he was indeed a crack shot. Or, Danika hoped, delusional about his skill level.

“Well?” Looking more petulant than commanding, Lieutenant Geurin spread both hands. “Let’s go, Sergeant!”

Danika watched a muscle jump in the sergeant’s jaw as he ordered the men to move her and Kirstin into the first coach, Jesine and Annalyse into the second, and Stina into the third.

Hungry and tired, her head throbbing, Danika didn’t have a lot of fight left in her, but they had to delay. The farther they were moved from the border…She sank to the ground and heard the others follow her lead.

Eyes narrowed, the lieutenant closed the distance between them. “Get into the coach!”

Danika bared her teeth.

She’d expected the blow, but it still rocked her back and she let it carry her to the ground as she fought to catch her breath, the pain chasing it from her chest. His knuckles had caught her cheekbone and she could feel it already beginning to swell.

“One way or another…” He stepped forward to stand over her. “…you will get in the coach!”

Blinking away tears, Danika stared up at him and said, “Another.” Heard Jesine and Annalyse echo it. Didn’t hear Kirstin at all. Grinned as Stina muttered, “Have fun, skinny boys, carrying my fat ass up those tiny steps.”

In the end, they were dragged and groped and bruised for very little delay, but every little delay had to count for something. Swearing under his breath, Tagget dumped her onto the narrow seat and dropped into place beside her. Opposite, a Corporal Berger sat beside Kirstin who slumped against the seat back, eyes closed. The center well barely had room for all four sets of legs and the women’s skirts filled the remaining space.

The inside of the coach was utilitarian, as well as less than spacious; the walls, floors, thin cushion on the seat, all black. Like a hearse, Danika realized and was a little surprised to find herself pleased that while most of the exterior was also black, the doors were Imperial purple stenciled with the gold Imperial crest. A large horn of polished brass curved up beside the driver’s seat, the mechanism that sounded it in a polished purple box. Not like a hearse. They weren’t dead yet.

She glanced over at Kirstin who’d whispered, “Someone had to.” in a voice torn from screaming and then not spoken again. This wasn’t the Kirstin she knew. This wasn’t the Kirstin she’d argued with and competed with since university. The Kirstin she knew would have found a way to blame Danika for getting them captured and then declared she supposed she’d have to see about freeing them. The Kirstin Danika knew was irritating, but familiar. This Kirstin worried her. Perhaps believing they were safe from the Pack would make the soldiers less rigorous about conversation.

She looked out the window in time to see Sergeant Black speaking to Hodges. The younger soldier held a map and a compass and nodded so enthusiastically Danika couldn’t help thinking of pigeons. It seemed they weren’t turning him loose to find the battlefield on his own. As she watched, Hodges took off running and the sergeant moved to speak to Cooper and Mylls, probably giving the orders on how long to wait and what to do afterward that the lieutenant hadn’t bothered with. When Cooper and Mylls moved off, she could just barely hear him yelling at Kyne, moving the soldier out of the coach with Stina and up onto the seat by the driver. She had no doubt that locked away from the more honorable men, Kyne would have gotten his own back at Stina for the black eyes, but Danika trusted the sergeant to keep his hands—and the hands of whoever else was in the coach—to himself.

A sudden flurry of shouting made it apparent that the lieutenant had forgotten to assign himself a seat. Boots on the lacquered wood overhead tracked Murphy’s movement from his seat by the driver, over the stowed packs, to join whichever of the men sat at the rear. The coach rocked with the force of the lieutenant taking his seat.

Tagget snorted and Corporal Berger shot him a look of complete agreement.

“Is it…” Danika began.

“No talking.” The corporal shifted slightly and his boot pressed Danika’s leg back against the seat.

“The lieutenant didn’t…”

“Shut the fuck up, lady. Do not make this shithole smaller than it is.” When Berger shifted again, the movement looked more like nerves than anger.

“You don’t like it in here, ride outside,” Tagget told him.

“Yeah, I’ll just tell the sarge you miss Murphy and need him snuggled up with you.”

“Ass.”

“That’s Corporal Ass, you dick.”

“Like ass outranks dick,” Tagget muttered settling back into the corner. He looked as though he were sulking, but he also looked fully capable of stopping either her or Kirstin or both of them from trying to escape.

It wasn’t the musket. A musket would be almost impossible to aim in such cramped quarters. It was the man himself. Both of the men. Neither she nor Kirstin were particularly large—Kirstin had often been referred to as delicate by those who didn’t know her—and they had the babies to consider—which ruled out throwing themselves from a moving coach in the first town they reached, assuming the newly conquered locals would hate the empire enough to hide them. Of course, pregnancy should have also ruled out trying to rip the net off. Danika desperately wanted to talk to Kirstin about what she’d done and why, but it didn’t seem like she’d get a chance anytime soon.

As the coach pulled away from the border, she sagged back against the seat and closed her eyes. She’d gather her strength, consider her options, and she would come up with a way to escape and return her small Pack back to Aydori.

Where Ryder would be waiting.

Had to be waiting.

There had to be a hundred reasons why he hadn’t made it to the border in time.

The logging road wasn’t so much a road as two tracks cut ankle-deep into the forest floor, packed hard with the weight of wagons carrying away—well, if the stumps were any indication, carrying away everything of any size. Had it been a wet spring, they’d have been filled with so much muddy runoff they’d be impassable. Then again, the little Mirian knew about waging war suggested the dry spring had been part of the Imperial timetable. Feet screaming in pain, chest burning, she collapsed onto one of the larger stumps and rubbed the sweat off her face with a fold of her skirt as Tomas raced forward.

Either the coaches were still on the way and the Mage-pack hadn’t yet been dragged across the border, or they’d been and gone and the Mage-pack was on its way to Karis.

Tomas lifted his head and snarled, hair lifting along his spine, and Mirian bet on the latter. He certainly didn’t seem hap…

The sudden crack of a musket jerked her back off the stump, the sound a physical blow. She could see Tomas pivoting left, then right, then left again as another shot rang out. Closely followed by a third, and fourth. Two shooters. He couldn’t attack one without the other taking him down.

Heart pounding, Mirian dragged herself up onto the stump, on her knees first, then up onto her feet. So far, the shooters had ignored her. She was supposed to take care of the silver. With the underbrush not fully leafed, she could see a purple sleeve. Traced it back to a shoulder. Down to a belt. Along the belt to a pouch. How was she supposed to know if it was an ammo pouch?

She could light a candle. Create fire where no fire had been. Logically, then, she didn’t need the candle; she only needed to create the fire. Easier to do if the world wasn’t swaying…

No, wait, she was swaying.

Fortunately, swaying didn’t affect the fire.

Gunpowder burned. She hadn’t needed Tomas to tell her that.

The screaming from the soldier she’d found brought the second out of cover. Before she could find her focus again, Tomas was on him.

She had to blow the candle out now, but the screaming made it hard to concentrate.

Blow it out…

Blow!

Trailing smoke, but no longer wrapped in flame, the soldier flew back about twenty feet, slammed into one of the few standing trees, and slid silently down it to the ground. When he didn’t move, she turned her attention to Tomas. It took her a moment to find him. She hadn’t expected him to be on the track, running away from the border, toward the empire, as though he hadn’t been running all morning. His head was up, but she supposed he didn’t really need a scent to follow given coaches had to stay on the track.

When she stepped off the stump, her knees gave out, her legs folded, and she continued descending all the way to the ground. That was okay, the ground was soft. And from the ground, she couldn’t see the soldier she’d set on fire.

“So,” she said, brushing an insect away from her face, “what now?”

She could follow the trail the soldiers and the Mage-pack had left back to the border, back into Aydori, back all the way to the Trouge Road and Lady Berin’s body.

It took her a while to push her left boot off her swollen foot, but her right came off immediately, pulling most of the bleeding blister on her heel off with it. When the blood stopped spreading, she peeled off her stockings, tossed them aside, frowned, and nearly toppled over retrieving them. They were unwearable now, but she might need them later. Besides, she could tie them around her shoes and hang them over her shoulder. That would leave her hands free.

Because the soldiers probably had canteens. And maybe food. And they’d killed Lady Berin and captured the Mage-pack and they were the enemy and it was entirely possible that the man she’d burned wasn’t dead.

She couldn’t hear him moving. She couldn’t hear anything but a few birds and the pounding of her heart.

But she could smell burned wool. And cooked meat.

After a long moment, she stood. Picking her way carefully over brown grass and tiny yellow wildflowers, the pain of bare feet different at least than the pain while wearing her boots, she kept her eyes locked on the tree. When she bumped up against something yielding and cloth covered, she stopped walking and counted to ten, breathing shallowly through her teeth. Then she unlocked her gaze from the broken branch and looked down…

…backed up two hurried steps, turned, fell to her knees and doubled over with dry heaves as her empty stomach tried to turn inside out. His right side had been a mass of char, uniform merged with flesh. It looked like the fire had just reached his face when she’d blown it out. His hair had been singed and there were blisters climbing past a swollen eye to where half his eyebrow had been burned off. The thick piece of the broken branch protruded from just under his right ear, the thin end was just barely visible inside the left curve of his tunic’s collar, his skin stained red, the fabric not so much a darker purple as black. He might have been alive when he hit the tree, but he was dead when he hit the ground.

Burned so badly, dead was better than alive. And not just for the soldier, Mirian was honest enough to admit. If he’d still been breathing, she’d have had to…

“I’d have had to sit beside you and wait for you to die. Maybe read to you, to take your mind off the pain. I couldn’t kill someone.” She could feel hysterical giggles rising and forced them back. “Except I killed you, didn’t I? But you’re a soldier and we’re at war, so you must’ve expected to die, right?”

It was said, although not in polite company, that high-level Healer-mages could talk to the dead. Didn’t seem so hard to Mirian. Hysteria rose again, and again she forced it back. It wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t even make her feel better, so what was the point. Reaching out, her hand dirty but steady, she touched the charred fabric of his trousers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Standing, even slowly and carefully, she had to steady herself against the tree. She’d be okay as soon as she got to where she could breathe deeply again. At school she’d learned that they burned their dead in the empire. In Aydori, they exposed the bodies and, in time, gathered the bones and returned them to the earth.

“Six of one, half a dozen of the other,” she said softly, not looking down.

Back where he’d been hiding, facing toward the border, guarding against whatever came after the Mage-pack, the grass around his pack hadn’t even been scorched.

“Sensible,” Mirian reminded herself, easing back down to her knees.

She pulled a pouch about a third full of dried meat and hard biscuit from his pack, slipped a cheap compass into one jacket pocket, a worn coin purse into the other. He had a folding knife, a fire-starter, and a telescope worth more than everything else in the pack combined. The shaft was rosewood bound in brass—ornamented brass—and there were extra lenses under the heavy cap. It looked nearly new. Mirian stroked the polished wood and thought about leaving it with him. It had the kind of worth that felt like stealing rather than the slightly less reprehensible scavenging.

After a moment, she laid it carefully on the small pile with the rest.

Not taking it seemed like disrespecting the man she’d killed. Which wasn’t exactly sensible, but it had been a long day.

He didn’t have a watch.

The pack itself was too obviously Imperial army for her to carry, but the blanket was gray wool, indistinguishable from a hundred others. Mirian dropped her finds and boots into it, rolled it up and tied off the ends with her stockings, leaving out only the half-full canteen and one biscuit. Her stomach protested at the thought of anything more and, besides, she had no idea of how long the food would have to last.

The other man would have more food and coin and maybe something else she could use.

She could see the line of his back. Tomas had killed him. Ripped out his throat…

Making her way to the track, she sighed at the feel of the smooth, cool dirt under her feet, gave thanks that the open blisters were up on the backs of her heels, and began walking toward Karis.

Danika’s scent had been strong on the ground, and the coach they’d locked her into wouldn’t be able to move quickly on the rough track. He could catch them. Hamstring the horses. Kill the guards. Save Danika. Save Danika and Ryder’s unborn child. And the others…He’d save the others, too.

He followed the scent off the track, onto what passed for a country road. The horses’ stride had lengthened, so they were moving faster. Let them. He could catch them. There was a town, no more than five or six miles from the end of the track. He had to catch them before they reached the town and potential reinforcements.

He heard them before he saw them. The pound of hooves against packed earth. The long whips cracking above the horses’ backs. He rounded a curve and saw the back of the last coach. There wasn’t enough dust raised to give him cover, but he didn’t care. They’d die. They’d all die. Every last one of…

The first shot slapped dirt up into his face.

He didn’t even break stride. They couldn’t hit him.

His front legs stretched out, rear legs bunched up under his belly driving him forward. He was close enough to see the differences in the barrel bands that said this man had one of the new rifled muskets. Close enough to see his face as he finally finished reloading. The Imperial army required four shots a minute, skilled infantry could fire five, but no one could hit a moving target from a moving coach. No one.

Pain exploded out from his shoulder as silver shot plowed through flesh and shattered bone. Flung up and back, Tomas hit the ground, rolled…

“…and we followed her back to the battlefield but were unable to find her.” Report finished, Reiter stared over General Lord Denieu’s right shoulder at the billowing wall of the command tent. The army was in control of Aydori from the border to the outskirts of Bercarit while remnants of the Aydori army used the city as cover. And occasionally as a weapon.

The general refused to march his soldiers down streets that had become shooting galleries. “He’s waiting for more artillery and more ammunition for the guns we have,” Major Gagnon said cheerfully, leading Reiter to the tent. “He’ll bomb it flat, then we’ll march over the rubble.”

Reiter waited as the general’s valet poured a glass of wine and the general took a long swallow. “There’s beastmen in the south continent, too,” he said, thoughtfully, turning the glass so the wine gleamed ruby red in the light. “I hear they’re different than our lot, slighter, but, still, I always thought they were purely a northern problem. Turns out there’s vermin all over the flaming place. Now then, Captain…” He picked up a pen and poked at the tangle, lying like a glimmer of gold across his desk. “…I think I can answer one of your questions at least. Gagnon!”

“Sir!” The major stuck his head back into the tent.

“Is that captured mage still alive?”

“He was last time I looked, sir.”

“Get him in here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know, it’s funny…” Denieu took another swallow of wine. “…we spent so much time figuring out how to kill the beastmen, raising taxes, gathering silver, we forgot about the mages. They blew up the rocket station. The one by the bridge. Reports say there was a fireball.” Another swallow and then he had to raise his voice slightly over the sound of approaching soldiers. “They can throw them now. Well, not throw them exactly, it’s that they blow them our way, but the effect is the same. So much for the common…” He threw a bitter emphasis onto the word. “…belief that mage-craft has dwindled to parlor tricks and creature comforts; killing the beastmen seems to have motivated them. And I always thought it was the female mages that…”

The open flap cut off the general’s thought as Major Gagnon led two soldiers—one of them a woman, Reiter noticed, evidence of the new draft—dragging a bound and half-naked, middle-aged man, his torso marked with bruises, into the tent. They dropped him and stepped back by the canvas.

“He’s still breathing, sir.”

“Good.” Denieu gestured with his glass. “Captain Reiter, test the artifact.”

“Yes, sir.” The women in the carriages had been farther from the tangle than this captured mage. If the tangle were still working, it would have done its job by now. Reiter hooked a finger through a strand of the net, carried it to the captive mage and draped it over his head. It slipped down over one swollen ear and remained entirely visible on top of the blood-streaked hair.

“Is that it?”

“No, sir.” The tangle had worked on the girl through more hair and more debris, pulling from his hand and fitting itself against her skull. “Looks like the damage she did when she removed it is enough to keep it from working.”

Denieu grunted. “Or it never worked.”

Or this mage is too close to dead. Reiter kept the thought to himself. He didn’t want the tangle to work. He didn’t want to continue hunting the girl.

“Get him out of here, Major. I’d love to know,” the general continued as Reiter retrieved the artifact and the major beckoned the two soldiers forward, “what courtier with his head up his ass convinced the emperor to put his faith in the leftovers of ancient magic.”

As the lengthening pause seemed to indicate there was a response required, Reiter said, “Most likely the Soothsayers, sir.”

“Of course. You said they were involved. Inmates running the asylum. You want to put your faith in anything that isn’t a Morrisville smooth bore musket at three volleys a minute, you put your faith in science, Captain. That’s the future of the empire; science. Even Korshan’s rockets have a place if he could just get the flaming things to move in a straight line. They certainly performed as advertised against the beastmen.” Denieu drained his glass and held it out to be refilled. “The question now before me, Captain Reiter, is what do I do with you? I’ve got holes you’re more than qualified to fill, so…”

“General Denieu?” Major Gagnon stuck his head into the tent. “There’s a messenger out here from General Ormond. She says it concerns Captain Reiter.”

Ormond was staff, his position back at the bridge the one Reiter had decided to skip.

“You know what this is about, Captain.”

“No, sir.”

“Then send her in, Major. Her,” he added under his breath, “still not used to that.”

As far as Reiter could see, the messenger, red-faced and breathing heavily from her ride, looked like half the boys he’d had under his command. Eager and far too young.

She came to attention in front of the desk.

“Let’s have it, Corporal.”

“Sir. General Ormond’s regards. He says that if Captain Reiter makes himself known to you, he’s to be reminded his orders are from the emperor and he’s to return immediately to Karis with the mage.”

“And the general knows this how?”

“Runner from Lieutenant Geurin, sir.”

Hodges, Reiter figured. The boy was fast.

“Does the general want a response?”

“No, sir.”

“All right. Check with the major before you head back. I’m sure he’s got something you can take as long as you’re going.”

“Yes, sir!” The messenger snapped off a perfect salute, spun on one heel, and left the tent.

“She must be good on a horse,” the general said as the flap closed. “Even a scent of a beastman drives the big dumb brutes wild, and we can’t be sure we got all of them. I suspect there’s a few slinking around between Bercarit and the border.”

Was the girl’s beast one of them? He wasn’t sure how he felt about her finding him.

“I know Geurin’s father.” From the general’s tone, his opinion of the father was close to Reiter’s of the son. “It’s his uncle you have to watch, though. Smarmy bastard got himself a place at court. Looks like you’re returning immediately to Karis, Captain.”

“I don’t have the mage, sir.” The tangle hung limp from his fingertip.

“I’d lend you one of mine, but they’re all men.”

“It has to be a woman, sir.”

General Denieu took a long swallow of wine. “Then I guess you’ll have some explaining to do when you get to the capital.”

Mirian had no idea how long she’d been walking. Staggering. Stumbling. The best she could say about her pace was that she continued to move forward and time was passing.

Walking in the city, she’d never had to worry about the time. The clock on the Pack Hall and the clocks on the larger of the guild buildings rang every quarter hour. At home, there was the standing clock in the hall, the carriage clock in the parlor, the old mantel clock in the kitchen, and, if he was in the house, her father’s pocket watch. She’d asked for a watch of her own for the Lady’s Gift at Summer Solstice although it seemed unlikely she’d receive one; her mother considered women who carried watches overly masculine.

“But why do you need to know what time it is, Mirian?”

She hadn’t really had an answer for that. She still didn’t. Knowing how long she’d been walking wouldn’t get her to Karis any faster.

It took her a moment to realize that the track had ended, that she’d stepped out onto a rough road, traveled enough that only a narrow ridge of grass remained down the center line. She stopped and frowned and tried to remember what direction she’d been traveling and what direction she needed to travel in now. Her head ached almost as much as her feet and legs, and trying to pull up a coherent thought was a little like trying to pull matching ribbons from a sale bin.

Eventually, she worked out that turning left would take her back to the Aydori Road, the somewhat obvious name the Duke of Pyrahn had given the road that led to the bridge over the river. She didn’t want to go back to Aydori. Not yet. Didn’t think she could, even if she wanted to.

“Sometimes, you can only go on,” she announced to a pair of sparrows as she turned right. Yesterday morning, she’d been a different person. Today, she was walking to Karis.

It seemed to be taking a very long time.

Squinting up at the sky, she wondered what time it was. Afternoon, certainly, but how much past noon? The pocket watch she wanted had a beautifully enameled case—leaves piled one on the other, a hundred shades of green lying in a circle smaller than her palm. The pocket watch she’d likely get, if her father could overrule her mother, would be less beautiful and more practical. She was practical. She admitted it. Sensible, as she’d told Tomas Hagen.

Something on the ground stuck to her foot. Pulling her skirt in against her legs and looking down, she saw the something was black. When she lifted her foot, her sole was red. Although her broken blister had started bleeding again, it wasn’t her blood.

She found Tomas just off the road, a pile of damp, black fur, barely breathing.

His left shoulder looked like raw meat. On the one hand, he’d been lucky; the bone had stopped the silver from reaching any internal organs. On the other hand, she could see shards lying like ivory inlay about to be decoratively set into the exposed muscle.

Laying her bundle on the ground, Mirian sat, and gently lifted Tomas’ head into her lap. The Pack were very hard to kill; everyone knew that. Silver killed them because silver kept them from healing. There were professors at the university, Healer- and Metal-mages, working together studying why this was so, but as they couldn’t ask the Pack to injure themselves for science, the common belief was they weren’t making much progress. Tomas wasn’t healing so, once again, he must have silver in the wound.

Calling the metal to her was second level metals. Second. Until last night, she hadn’t even had first. But she’d cleared the metal out last night; therefore, she could do it again. She had to do it again, or Tomas Hagen would die. If duress was required, that would have to be duress enough.

Spreading her hand a hairsbreadth above the wound, she tried to think of silver but was so exhausted her mind kept wandering.

A tremor ran the length of Tomas’ body.

“Oh, Lord and Lady, Mirian, at least you’re not tied to a tree!” She bit her lip. Hard. The pain cleared her head enough for her to grab the litany of silver and hold it tight. Deadly and beautiful. Beautiful and deadly. Deadly and…“Enough! I want that shot out!” The silver slapped up into her palm, warm and no longer entirely solid. She tossed it aside and stared down at the wound. Was less bone visible than there’d been only a moment ago, or did she imagine what she wanted to see so badly?

First level healing maintained body temperature. Healer-mages neither sweated nor shivered. As society frowned on ladies sweating, Mirian’s mother had been thrilled when she’d passed the level. Mirian had never been able to master second level, a healing sleep, until she’d used it to stop Armin and, in all honesty, she hadn’t been thinking of healing when she’d touched the Imperial soldier. At third level, the professors began teaching the healing of light wounds, the students learning on pinpricks and small cuts sliced into the back of their hands. They spent weeks healing themselves before finally moving on to healing equally small wounds on each other.

Tomas’ wound was not small, and Mirian had never healed as much as a hangnail on herself.

She spread her hand just above the wound again and thought of flesh and bone and skin all growing back together. Thought of Tomas up and running. Thought and thought and never managed to find the place where she knew.

When she moved her hand, nothing had changed.

Tomas had certainly healed quickly from his more minor wound. Although, he’d changed almost immediately…

Did the change, and its reworking of flesh and bone see the wound as a flaw and correct it?

If he healed as he was, taking the time that kind of a wound required, he’d never use the leg again.

But if the injury was corrected…

“Tomas! You have to change.” She didn’t know if he could even hear her. “Tomas!”

Another tremor, more powerful than the first. Was he trying to change?

“Look, you think I smell amazing, so pay attention to me! You have to change!” Bending forward, she exhaled over his muzzle, unsure of how much more of her scent she could get to him given that his head was in her lap. “Tomas!” Another exhale. “Change!”

The tremor became a shudder, arms and legs lengthened, grew pale, he turned his face into her skirt and screamed. His shoulder looked better, not healed completely but, as far as Mirian could tell, the bone was whole and the flesh beginning to knit.

“Hurts.” She could feel the word against her skin.

“I know.” His skin glistened with sweat. “I have water.”

“I…have to…to change…again…”

“Drink first.”

“No. Won’t have…the courage if I…wait.”

The second change resulted in an oval scar, shiny and smooth. No fur grew on it or in the swollen flesh around it. Tomas lay with his mouth slightly open, panting rapidly, eyes wide.

Mirian settled them both into a more comfortable position, stroked her thumb over the soft black fur between his eyes and said softly, “Sleep.”

Karis wasn’t going anywhere.