The Silvered

Chapter Seven

DANIKA STARED OUT the tiny window at the sun rising over the Kresentian Empire and remembered how Ryder used to come back into the house after his morning run, how she’d hear his toenails against the oak floor in the hall and then the pad of his bare feet as he crossed the bedroom. It always woke her although she often pretended it didn’t just so she could shriek in indignation as he dove into the bed and wrapped his body around hers, his skin damp and cool. Every morning since she’d told him about the baby, he’d paused by the bed to stand and stare and she’d stopped pretending sleep so she could open her eyes and see his expression. See how much he loved her and his child to be.

If he was alive, he’d be going crazy, unable to leave Aydori and come after them.

If he was dead…

She pressed her bound wrists against the slight curve of her belly. If he was dead, she’d mourn him once she got their child safely home.

Once in the empire, the smoothness of the roads had finally allowed the sleep insisted on by exhaustion, both friend and foe closing their eyes and surrendering. Danika had forced herself to stay awake until she could whisper the suggestion that they were better men than this into Tagget and Carlsan’s dreams. She sent what comfort she could to Kirstin although the other woman gave no indication she’d heard, even though she was nearly as strong in air as Danika herself, the bright blue mage flecks brilliantly obvious against her dark brown eyes.

They changed the horses just after dawn at an actual posting inn designed for moving Imperial mail coaches in and out again as quickly as possible. Danika had the sudden image of an anthill stirred with a stick as the horn sounded. There were no soldiers standing around the yard, watching and guarding, just terribly efficient grooms hustling the spent horses away and slipping fresh horses between the shafts. Yawning kitchen staff handed out bowls of porridge as though they started every morning serving Imperial prisoners. For all Danika knew, they did.

Their soldiers relaxed again now they were not only out of Aydori but out of the duchies. Everyone from Lieutenant Geurin down to Private Kretien—young enough his five days of beard made a barely visible shadow edging plump cheeks—was less tense on this side of the Imperial border.

The old Imperial border, Danika corrected herself. The border was now at the edge of Aydori and trying to extend further.

Only Sergeant Black continued to split his attention a dozen different ways, but, as Danika understood it, that was part of being a sergeant. Even he had relaxed, however, no longer keeping his prisoners from talking in the line for the privy.

“The emperor’s spending a fortune on this,” Stina muttered, scraping the bottom of her porridge bowl. “Three sets of posting horses at each stage, arming his soldiers with silver shot…Do you think his Soothsayers came from conquered nations and they’re trying to bankrupt the empire?”

Annalyse giggled and, although there were dried tear tracks on her cheeks, the sound contained more amusement than hysteria, Danika noted gratefully. She caught Jesine’s eye over Kirstin’s shoulder as the two of them came out of the privy. The Healer shook her head and, as Stina pulled Kirstin into the circle of her warmth and began gently chivying her to eat, Danika moved to join Jesine at the water barrel.

“As long as I have this net on, I’m limited to a visual diagnosis,” Jesine growled. “I can’t tell if attempting to remove the net injured her, or if she’s suffering emotionally more than the rest of us.”

“She has to be thinking of her twins.”

“Granted. But Stina has three in Trouge, and thinking of them hasn’t shut her off from the rest of the Pack.”

“Have you met Stina’s children?”

Jesine grinned. Stina’s eldest had once disemboweled a rabbit under her dining room table, ruining an expensive rug. “Good point.” Then she sobered. “It could also be the new pregnancy, but I couldn’t get her to talk to me about how she’s feeling.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know she’s carrying. You told me that you only suspected you were and you’re a Healer.”

“That’s possible.” Jesine took a long drink and sighed. “I’m so tired of my head aching and afraid I’m getting used to the feeling. They won’t remove the nets when we get to Karis, will they?”

Danika showed teeth. “Not if they’re smart.”

In novels, the heroine would wake, not know where she was, and enjoy a moment of blissful ignorance before facing the day. Mirian knew where she was the moment she opened her eyes; burrowed into a pile of old straw in the corner of a three-sided shed. Having nearly drowned then been captured by Imperial soldiers, she was on her way to Karis to rescue the Mage-pack and faced another day of sore feet, aching legs, needing a bath, and not having enough to eat.

Up by the rough boards of the roof, a fly struggled to free itself from a tattered spiderweb.

Mirian snorted. The Lady could be less than subtle, but she didn’t actually need Her reminder. Sore feet, aching legs, hunger, unpleasant odors…they all beat attending card parties with her mother, listening to monologues about unmarried and available members of the Pack, and ignoring the Imperial advance.

“Good. You’re awake.”

Tomas no longer radiated warmth beside her. Mirian blinked and pushed herself up on her elbows, peering around until she found him sitting in a patch of sunlight spilling through the open side of the goat shed. All she knew about goats came from a childhood misunderstanding about her late grandfather’s gout attack, so she’d taken Tomas’ word for the identity of the shed’s intended occupants.

He had clothes on. Tomas, not her grandfather. Her grandfather had always been impeccably dressed, wearing the stiff brocades of his youth until the day he died. Tomas, on the other hand, wore brown wool trousers, a shirt of unbleached linen, and a frayed tweed jacket that looked like he’d grown out of it and hadn’t been able to afford to replace it. His feet were bare and dirty, but then so were hers.

“Where did you…? Never mind.” She emerged from the straw, using both hands to brush bits off the front of her clothes. “I suspect I’ll be happier not knowing. You’re going to stay on two legs?”

“It’ll be less frustrating than running circles around you on four.” He reached into the jacket’s pocket. “But I also got this.”

This was a thick collar with a brass buckle. Mirian took it from his outstretched hand and squinted down at the brass nameplate attached to the leather. “Duke?”

Tomas shrugged. “Not everyone likes their landlord.”

“Or they really liked dogs and considered it a compliment.” The collar looked huge dangling from her finger, but it wouldn’t have been overly large on the guard dogs they’d seen last night. “Does it fit?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to put it on and change in case it was too tight.”

“Should we…” Mirian suddenly found herself at a loss for words. The Pack didn’t wear collars; they weren’t dogs. When she thought of buckling the heavy leather around Tomas’ throat, her cheeks grew almost painfully hot. “Not now,” she said, answering the question she hadn’t quite asked and silently handed it back.

“It’s a better disguise than a frayed rope.” Tomas shoved it back into his jacket pocket like it meant nothing at all and held out a small, round loaf of bread. “I got this, too,” he said, and offered her half.

It was chewier than she was used to, and her stomach growled as she struggled to swallow the last mouthful.

“You’re still hungry. I had a couple of mourning doves, but…”

Mirian waved off the thought of raw mourning dove for breakfast and turned to deal with the blanket. Folded around the hole she’d cut for Tomas’ head, it was still the best way to carry everything. By the time she finished packing up, Tomas had gone outside, so she followed him, squinting up at the sun. “It’s late. You let me sleep.”

He shrugged, pulling at a loose thread on his cuff. “I had to get clothes. And some food.” As the thread came free, he looked up at her from under the fall of dark fur that nearly reached his eyes. He had the longest fur in skin she could remember seeing on any of the Pack. It completely covered the points of his ears. “Getting to Karis isn’t going to be easy.”

He was watching for her reaction, Mirian realized, not even trying to hide that he was waiting to see if she’d changed her mind. She shrugged and enjoyed the absence of her mother’s objection to the gesture. “We’ll have to tell the emperor we object to his scheduling. If it were fall, we could forage for apples and nuts and…”

“Snow.”

“You forage for snow?”

The points of his teeth just barely showed as he grinned and said, “Snow falls in the fall. And there’s apple trees in that fence bottom.”

“But no apples.” Mirian frowned at the tangled branches, only just leafed out. “How can you identify an apple tree with no apples?”

“You said you had first level earth.”

“Which has surprisingly little to do with botany.”

“Apple wood has a distinctive scent. Here, I’ll prove it.”

“You don’t…” But he was already gone. She had no idea why Tomas Hagen needed her to know he knew apple wood, but, since he seemed to, she followed.

As she reached the fence bottom, he bent a branch down toward her. “See that bud with the pink? That’s an apple blossom. My grandfather is an Earth-mage. I used to spend time with him in the orchards outside Trouge.”

Mirian stared at the bud and remembered the honeysuckle in Bercarit. She’d always thought forcing flowers to bloom was a silly parlor trick that allowed equally silly girls to be tested for earth-craft without getting their hands dirty, but that was before half of a small loaf of bread had become her entire breakfast. Reaching past Tomas, she wrapped her hand around the branch beside his.

Felt the life inside the tree.

Nudged it.

Delicate pink-and-white blossoms released their scent into the morning air.

Logically, if she could speed the blossoming then she should be able to speed the entire process. It was, after all, only a difference of degree.

One more nudge.

“Mirian?”

Her stomach growled, and she shoved.

Petals fluttered to the ground, covering her nearer foot. The base of each blossom swelled and kept swelling until the branch sagged under the weight of a dozen dark red apples the size of Mirian’s fist. Sagged until it cracked and broke. Tomas caught it before it hit the ground.

He looked at the apples, rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand, then looked at Mirian. “My grandfather says you can’t force a tree to bear fruit, that the best orchards have mixed varieties because each blossom has to be pollinated from another tree.”

“I didn’t know that,” Mirian admitted, picking an apple and taking a bite. The flesh was white with a few pink streaks. It was crisp and sweet and juicy and the most delicious apple she’d ever eaten. “It doesn’t seem to matter.”

“It should.”

Mirian rolled her eyes and waved the apple at him. “But it doesn’t.”

Tomas ate one of the apples because Mirian looked at him like he was an idiot when he didn’t want to. He didn’t enjoy it. It smelled more like Mirian than like an apple and while that wasn’t exactly a hardship, it was strange. His grandfather helped keep Trouge fed, went out into the fields and orchards with the other Earth-mages in the Mage-pack and got his hands dirty because that’s what Earth-mages did.

His gray eyes were nearly brown with mage marks.

“Maybe because he’s not at first level, it never occurred to him to try.”

He turned as Mirian closed the pouch over the last of the apples. “Him?”

“Maybe it never occurred to your grandfather to try,” she explained, then added, “you were obviously still thinking about it.”

“It’s weird.”

She made a face but didn’t object when he took the blanket roll from her and hung it from his good shoulder. He followed as she crossed to the pond where she wrapped the bulk of her skirt up onto the front of her legs before she crouched and filled the canteen.

“That’s mostly frog shi…waste,” he amended at the last minute. Long-legged shadows dove for the depths around clumps of greenish-black translucent eggs.

“First level water purifies.” She took a drink then offered it to him.

“Why?” The water in the canteen definitely smelled better than the water in the pond.

Her brows drew in deep enough to make a little vee over her nose. “Why?”

“I’m no mage, but it seems a strange place to start.”

“Strange like the apples?”

“Strange like complicated.”

“Oh. They say it’s because convincing water to be nothing but water is easy.”

That didn’t sound easy, but as the water tasted like it had come from a spring and not the next thing to a cesspit in a goat pasture, he was impressed.

“The next level involves parting water,” she continued, almost absently as he handed back the canteen. “The university built an artificial stream in back of the Water Hall. To move into second level, you had to cross it without getting your feet wet. It seemed a bit precious to me because parting water means moving water, so if you could get across the stream with dry feet, you should be able to move any water anywhere.” Canteen refilled, she straightened and swirled one foot then the other in the pond. At first Tomas thought she was making a point, her mouth pressed into a thin line of disapproval at the university. Then he realized she was washing off the dirt and blood, the cold water painful against blisters on her heels. He hoped first level healing—or whatever level she was at—would be up to the contents of the pond. Hunt Pack learned not to wash a wound with dirty water. It seemed Mage-pack didn’t care.

When her feet were as clean as they were likely to get, she took a long careful step back onto new grass instead of mud and said, “My mother could keep her feet dry, as she informed me every time we passed a puddle even though she hadn’t tested high enough to attend the university.”

Until she mentioned her mother and started to smell angry, he’d thought she was talking to distract him from the apples.

“When you get right down to it,” she added, heading toward the road, “it’s a fairly useless skill. If there’s a puddle in your way, go around. If there’s a river, build a bridge. By third level, you can convince rain not to fall on you. Or you could carry an umbrella.”

Tomas frowned at the pond, decided he wasn’t hungry enough for frog, then hurried to catch up. “Are you sure that’s how it works?”

“The university may have been confused by my breadth of mediocrity, but they did let me in.”

The Mage-pack had no first level mages. Harry was no more than second, but Harry was a soldier and his friend, not a mage, and while he’d been upset about not qualifying for the artillery, he’d only really cared when it came to his stupid crush on Geneviene. He did, however, always make sure the soldiers under his command had hot food and coffee. Had been. Made sure. When he finally remembered to always refer to Harry in the past tense, would it be real? “Maybe they start with purifying because it’s useful.”

She shot him a glance that made him think his voice hadn’t been entirely steady. When the brittle edges were absent from her reply, he was sure of it. “Maybe, but it’s still a matter of degree. If you’re only powerful enough for first level, there’s a limit to how much water you can purify. First level Water-mages usually find work in high-end restaurants. First level Fire-mages are thrilled about the new gaslights because they have to be lit every evening and first level Earth-mages work with florists—which is almost respectable. First level Air-mages can blow out a chandelier, one candle at a time, without getting a ladder, so there’s always domestic service for employers with low expectations. A couple of girls had suggestions I’m not going to repeat about uses for maintaining your own body temperature.”

Wait…“Girls had suggestions?”

Her laugh felt like fingers rubbing behind his ears. He smiled freely for the first time in days as they reached the road and he took his position upwind of her right shoulder.

“You’d be surprised at what women talk about when there’s no men around. The point is,” Mirian sighed, the exhalation exaggerated, “with five first levels and only five first levels, my classmates made any number of useful suggestions. Oh, wait, I can do first level metal now, so there’s always a future of finding coins in sofa cushions.”

“It’s just…” He hadn’t forgotten the two second levels, but they seemed incidental. The apples had been more worrying. “…you don’t smell like a first level mage.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Now she sounded sad. Lord and Lady, was it him or was she always that confusing?

Mirian had a feeling that every time she let an opportunity to mention Jaspyr Hagen pass, the memory of what they’d shared, already ephemeral, was shredded a little more. But she refused have her mage-craft defined by the interest of a man. That would make her no better than the silly girls who wafted their scent toward the Pack, as though that and that alone would validate their existence.

“We could move faster if we’d stolen a horse in Herdon.”

She counted ten strides before Tomas caught up to the change of subject.

“Horses and the Pack don’t exactly get along. Not unless they’re raised together. My cousin Jared unseated half the Traitonian cavalry.”

“Weren’t they on our side?”

“You’d think. Their general was a bigot, and Jared was…”

Dead. She could feel his dead pile up in the pause, so she reached out and squeezed his hand. Words like I’m sorry were so inadequate they’d be insulting. After a moment, he squeezed back and, when she released him, cleared his throat and said, “Can you ride?”

“No.”

“Then why did you think we should have stolen a horse?”

“Because you could run on four legs, too, and it would be faster.”

“How would you falling off a horse be faster?”

“I wouldn’t necessarily fall off. Besides…” She turned far enough to wave at the smoke rising from the chimneys of Herdon, still not very far behind them. “…it has to be faster than walking.”

“It really doesn’t. We’ll walk for fifty paces, run for fifty paces. It’s what the volunteers do…” More dead in the pause. “…when they have to cover ground. Can you run?”

She followed his line of sight down to her feet, dust from the road already sticking to damp skin. At least the dried blood was gone. “Who walks to a rescue? I can manage fifty paces.”

It wasn’t just her feet that hurt. Ankles, knees, hips, calves, thighs…she felt like one of the labeled anatomy posters at the front of the Healer Hall. Personally, she’d have called the first fifty paces of running limping quickly. Eyes on the road to avoid the occasional loose stone on the packed clay, Mirian was peripherally aware of Tomas running easily beside her, and a quick glance showed none of the resentment that had hovered around his four-legged form yesterday like a particularly acrid smoke.

By the third set, her muscles had loosened up and running came easier.

By the tenth, fifty paces walking wasn’t enough for her to catch her breath.

Tomas, who’d started to run on fifty, circled back beside her when she didn’t. “It’s all right. We’ll walk a while longer.”

Mirian found enough breath to mutter, “Told you. Should’ve stolen a horse.”

He had dimples when he grinned. She hadn’t noticed that before.

They passed a set of cart tracks that led east to a small farm, the stubble of last year’s crops still filling the field nearest the road. They passed a trail leading west, and Tomas pointed out the tracks of the deer that had made it.

Then they ran.

Forty-nine. Fifty.

And stopped.

“Do you know where this road goes?”

“Does it matter? I know the Mage-pack is at the end of it.”

“It can’t be one road from Herdon to Karis. We’re the width of two conquered duchies away from the old Imperial border.” When Tomas lowered heavy brows, Mirian sighed. “Too sensible?”

“A little.”

And they ran again.

Forty-nine. Fifty.

Shrugging out of the too-small jacket, Tomas twitched inside the confines of his remaining clothes.

“What’s wrong?”

“The trousers are itchy.”

Mirian managed to keep from laughing but only just. “I think they’re made to have small clothes under them.”

“Why not make them so they don’t itch?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

An enormous ox patty, still damp enough to suggest war hadn’t stopped lumber from the mill heading toward buyers, blocked her path and she jumped it rather than go around. The sun was shining, birds were singing, and, while she didn’t have much breath to spare and they were heading to a fight with the emperor himself, walking along a country road with Tomas Hagen was almost pleasant. Her mother would be…

…appalled. Mirian fought the urge to talk about the weather and ask Tomas his opinion on the new higher collars for evening jackets.

They were running when they passed tracks leading to a farm tucked into a hollow not far from the road. One of the farm’s outbuildings had recently burned down, a pair of charred timbers rising out of the ruin like blackened bones, the smell of damp ash heavy on the air. A girl out in the garden froze, hoe half raised, and watched them pass. The distance was too great to see her expression, but from the way she stood, curled in on herself, it looked like she was afraid. A pig in a pen by the garden watched warily as well.

Mirian slowed to a walk, then she stopped and turned up the track.

“Where are you going?”

“To trade apples for…not apples. Stay there, I’ll be quick.” She pulled two from the pouch as she walked. They looked so red against her hand she felt like she was in a fairy story. The girl looked at the apples, looked at Mirian, and finally limped to the edge of the garden.

It wasn’t the fruit that had convinced her to approach, Mirian realized. It was the bruising on her face that matched the bruising on the girl’s. When the girl glanced at Tomas, Mirian shook her head. “No, it wasn’t him.”

She took two apples with trembling fingers, then two more. “How?”

Even Mirian knew apples didn’t look like that after having been stored all winter, not without help. “Earth-mage.”

Still holding the apples, the girl jerked back, searching for mage marks. Mirian opened her eyes wider. After an extended search, the girl’s shoulders sagged, and Mirian was just as glad she didn’t have to tell her she had no time to help.

A glance down at the apples. “Trade? We got sausage they didn’t find.” Pyrahn wasn’t that different a language from Aydori, although accent dragged the girl’s words sideways.

The pig watched her as the girl ran to the cottage. Mirian wondered if there’d recently been a second. The cottage door hung crookedly from the frame, inexpertly repaired, and through the gap she heard voices but not words. Saw a pale face at the front window, features too distorted through the tiny panes of thick green glass for her to tell if it was a man or a woman. Then girl returned with a length of cooked sausage as big around as two of Mirian’s fingers. She handed it over silently.

“Thank you.”

Mirian had gone three steps back toward the road when she heard, “Where you going?”

Right now? Eventually? “To get back something the Imperials took from us.”

Arms wrapped around her torso, the girl’s mouth twisted. The war had paused here on its way to Herdon and the sawmill. “In them carriages?”

The road had been empty all morning. Three coaches careening past this farm at full speed would be noted, day or night. “Yes.”

“You won’t catch ’em.”

“Not today. But we will.”

After a long moment, the girl nodded. “All right then.”

It sounded like a benediction. Mirian nodded in turn and joined Tomas on the road. “We can do this,” she said as she handed him half the sausage. “We can run and walk and find food and…” To her surprise, he held the piece of sausage to his nose and took a deep breath.

“You were upwind,” he told her, eyes watering. “And these trousers are itchy enough.”

Concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, Mirian bounced off Tomas’ arm, grabbed it, stopped. “What?”

“There’s a horse coming.”

“With a rider?” She was too tired to be embarrassed by his expression. “Right. Of course.” After a moment, she realized she still held his arm and released it. The fields on both sides of the road were dead grass and small cedars and a low evergreen Mirian didn’t know the name of. Not relevant, she told herself and then aloud: “Should we hide?”

Tomas moved around to put himself between her and the approaching rider. “No time. If you see an enemy run, you can’t stop yourself from giving chase.”

“You’re going to chase the horse?”

“What?” He threw a confused glance back over his shoulder. “No. If we run now, the rider will chase us. Because we’re running.”

Not entirely certain that applied to those without the option of having four legs, Mirian was about to protest when the horse appeared around a curve, disappeared into a dip in the road, and suddenly reappeared impossibly close. Quickly buttoning her jacket, she tried to look as though she’d been displaced by war rather than like an active enemy of the empire. She watched the road in front of her feet, concentrated on the swing of her skirt against her legs, and looked up at the last minute, unable to help herself.

The rider wore a familiar uniform, Imperial purple jacket over black trousers and boots, bicorn crammed down on his head. Tomas had said the empire would have taken over the mill. The destruction at the farm was proof soldiers had gone to Herdon, so, on this road, the mill was the only logical destination. Horse and rider had nothing to do with the two of them.

If the soldiers who’d taken the Mage-pack were worried Tomas had survived, they’d set up an ambush. Captain Reiter and his men hadn’t had time to get far enough in front of them to send a courier back. All very logical, but Mirian’s palms were wet, and her heart pounded in time with the horse’s hooves anyway.

As the rider passed, he looked up, saw her, slid his gaze down to Tomas, frowned, began to straighten in the saddle, pulling back on the reins…

Tomas snarled.

Without breaking stride, the horse moved to the far side of the road. Mirian had no idea horses could move sideways like that. The rider swore, grabbed a double handful of mane, and hung in midair for a moment, one foot in the stirrup the other hooked on the far edge of the saddle, trying desperately to keep from falling. Bit in its teeth, the horse ignored both words and reins, equally desperate to put as much distance as possible between itself and the predator. By the time the courier got himself seated again, he’d gone far enough past that he kept going.

Mirian released a breath she couldn’t remember holding. “I wonder what he thought he saw.”

“Pack,” Tomas grunted as he moved back to her right.

The horse certainly had, but the rider? Unlike some Pack, unlike Jaspyr, Tomas on two legs wasn’t obvious. He was young enough to have no facial scarring and his fur not only covered the points of his ears but was a solid black that passed for hair. Even in Aydori, it might take a second look from non Pack. Armin hadn’t realized and Tomas had been naked; usually a dead giveaway. “But the courier was Imperial.”

“There’s Pack in the empire.”

Surprised, she had to take three quick steps to catch up. Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Almost time to run again. “I didn’t know that.”

“We don’t talk about it much. Sometimes people can’t find their place in the Pack they’re born into and they wander. Sometimes they go higher up into the mountains, to Orin or to Ural where it’s nearly all Pack.” He snorted. “Rough wood, raw meat, and hearty beer.”

“You’ve been?”

“Not likely, but sometimes people wander out. And sometimes the wanderers end up in the empire. Or somewhere that then becomes the empire,” he growled.

And neither said, like Aydori although Mirian knew they were both thinking it. “Will they help us?”

“They might, if we can find them. But interactions between small isolated Packs without direct family ties can be…” His hand cut the air in a gesture that suggested violent or bloody. “…difficult.”

Between Packs? Mirian wondered as they started to run. Are we a Pack? But she didn’t know how to ask without seeming stupid or arrogant or both.

By late afternoon, they began passing more farms and, without discussion, stopped running even the short distances Mirian could manage. She didn’t know Tomas’ reasons, but she found herself hobbled by the knowledge that young ladies did not run regardless of how little the rules for young ladies applied to the present situation. It was one thing to run unseen out in the country and another entirely to do it approaching civilization. It helped a little when she reminded herself it would be a very bad idea to attract too much attention.

The road made a long sloping curve to the left, past fields with herds of black-and-white cows, and disappeared under a sprawl of red roofs that rapidly became larger buildings packed close, haze obscuring details in the distance.

“Is it smoke from the war?”

Tomas lifted his head, nostrils flared. “The war was over in Pyrahn the minute the duke rabbited for the border, and Imperials don’t burn down the emperor’s property.”

“A rebellion?” They couldn’t be the only people in Pyrahn fighting back.

“I think it’s factories.”

“Factories?” Mirian squinted, trying to get a better look. “Then this has to be Abyek.” The road they’d been following, the road the coaches had taken the Mage-pack down must have turned almost due north and brought them out to the Aydori Road. Schoolhouse geography taught that Abyek was the largest city in Pyrahn, larger than the Duke’s Seat. The current duke’s great grandmother had built it to take advantage of new trade with Aydori. The Pack Leader at the time had insisted it be built a full day’s travel from the border so that the Pack would never have to deal with the stink of manufacturing should there ever be a shift in the prevailing winds. Most of Bercarit had been built of Abyek bricks fired with Aydori coal and other industry had soon joined the brickworks. “I’m fairly certain Mother bought my sister a set of dishes from Abyek.”

“They must’ve changed horses here.”

It took Mirian a moment to separate the horses from the dishes. “Are we going in?”

Tomas nodded toward their shadows, stretching out to the right. “It’s too late to figure out how to go around. It’ll be nearly dark by the time we get there, and I bet this road will take us right…”

“Looky, looky, looky.”

Attention on Abyek, Mirian hadn’t noticed the five farm workers coming down a lane toward the road until the largest spoke, and by then they were nearly on top of them. She didn’t know if Tomas hadn’t seen them or merely believed they were beneath his attention as Pack. Or believed they wouldn’t be stupid enough to approach Pack.

In Aydori, they wouldn’t have been. Before she could remind Tomas that not only were they not in Aydori but no one knew him as Pack, they were blocked by a belligerent half circle of men in dirty smocks with dirtier scarves tied round their necks.

“Ignore them,” the memory of her mother said. “We do not acknowledge the existence of ruffians.”

Clearly her mother’s advice worked better when applied to bricklayers in the city.

“I’m guessin’ you two don’t know there’s a toll on this road. Bin a war, you know. We all gotta pay.” Not much of the largest man’s breadth was fat and he was easily a head taller than Tomas. Mirian had never understood the phrase fists like hams before. She did now.

Tomas let the bedroll with his jacket slung over it slide off his shoulder as he stepped forward. Mirian caught it before it hit the ground. “Move aside.”

“Move aside?” His beefy face flushed red when he laughed and the other four laughed as well, a beat behind the leader. “You look like the gutter all barefoot and rags, but you talk like you think your shit don’t stink. Get thrown out of your fancy house on your fancy ass when the Imperials come through, did you? Well, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you were, there’s a toll on this road for the likes of what you are now. And since I doubt you got coin to pay it, I’ll take a little time with your girl.” There were two teeth missing on the right side of his mouth when he smiled, and he looked at her the way Best had, like she was a thing not a person; only without Best’s minimal excuse of being the enemy.

Experience had definitively proven she didn’t need mage marks to set his trousers on fire.

The memory of cooking meat and blisters rising up under where a ginger eyebrow had been stopped her.

“One more chance…” Tomas bit each word off in a way that should have been a warning. “…to move aside.”

“You filthy…”

Tomas stripped with the efficiency of long practice. Aydori fashions would have made it easier, but he was still impressively fast. As his trousers hit the road, Mirian found herself surprised by the difference between seeing him take off his clothes and seeing him without them. The latter meant he was Pack, just changed, the former that he was…well, undressing. It was a subtle distinction she really wished she could talk over with her sister.

And one she shouldn’t be thinking of now.

Astonishment held the farm workers in place as Tomas folded forward, enormous front paws slamming down on the road. Then his hackles rose, and he snarled. In the firelight, he’d passed as a very large dog. These men weren’t given the choice of mistaking what he was.

Four of the five men turned and ran back up the lane. One left a tumbled pair of wooden clogs behind.

Their leader paled but held his ground. Or froze in place, too terrified to move; Mirian wasn’t sure.

Tomas stepped forward, stiff-legged, and snarled again.

A dark stain spread on the front of homespun trousers. He turned, fell, scrambled to his feet, and ran after his friends, keening in fear.

“If you see an enemy run, you can’t stop yourself from giving chase.”

Mirian grabbed a handful of Tomas’ fur, imagined a candle on the end of his nose, imagined blowing it out with air warmed by her body and hoped that would be enough to direct her scent over Tomas’ face. A handful of fur wouldn’t stop him. “Tomas! He’s not worth the delay.”

He jerked free of her grip, took two steps, and changed. “My clothes,” he said, reaching back without turning. His voice sounded rough. Given the snarling, Mirian wasn’t surprised.

She scooped his shirt and trousers off the ground and pressed them into his hand. He had a scar just under his left shoulder blade, enough muscle that his spine was in a shallow valley of pale flesh, and dimples…She jerked her gaze back up to the scar. “Why aren’t they in the Pyrahnian army? They seem like they’d enjoy shooting people.”

“If they were in the army, they’d have retreated to Aydori.”

“You’re right. We don’t want them there.” She twitched her jacket into place, smoothed her skirt with both hands, checked that the bedroll was still, well, rolled, patted at her hair…

“Mirian?”

He’d turned without her noticing and was staring at her, one hand clutching the hem of his shirt. There was a dusting of fine black hair on the back of his knuckles. She hadn’t noticed that before. “What?”

“Are you all right?”

“Of course.” She let the bedroll slide off her shoulder, hitched it back up, and smoothed her skirt.

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m fine. If we were staying around here, I’d be worried. Big-and-ugly doesn’t strike me as the sort who takes embarrassment well.” Her laugh sounded a little stretched, even to her. “And that’s all that happened. You scared him. He ran. They all ran. Fortunately, we’re just passing through. But he had a point. Well, not really a point.” Words slipped from her mouth like beads sliding off a string; unstoppable now they’d started to fall. All she seemed to be able to do was send other words after them. She followed the bedroll to the ground. “People judge you if you’re barefoot, don’t they? Shoes seem to be the dividing line between worthwhile and wretched.” One boot already out and in her hand, she looked up. Tomas had moved closer. “Not if you’re Pack, at least not in Aydori. If you see a well-dressed person without shoes in Aydori, you know they’re Pack. And even in shoes, Pack wouldn’t wear these.” She waved the boots. “Too slow to get on and off. But we’re not in Aydori, are we? They saw your feet and didn’t know you were Pack. This will keep happening.” The leather had dried and stiffened, but she sat back, skirt billowing around her, and worked the boot open, one foot stretched out, ready to receive it.

“Mirian?” Tomas’ hand closed around her wrist. She needed to pay more attention; she hadn’t seen him drop to one knee. Then his other hand gently cupped the unbruised side of her jaw. “Tell me what to do to make it better.”

“You don’t…It isn’t…” Mirian pressed into his touch, chasing the warmth, then pulled away and watched his hand fall slowly back to rest on his knee. She clenched her teeth against the spill of words, breathing through her nose while she forced herself to recognize that nothing had happened. Nothing they couldn’t deal with. After a moment, she swallowed, took a deep breath, and met Tomas’ worried gaze. “It didn’t occur to me that we couldn’t just rescue the Mage-pack. That we’d have to deal with all sorts of other people on our way to defeating the Imperial army. Stupid, right?”

Tomas thought about it for a moment, then shrugged. “How would you know? We’ve never done it before.”

To his surprise, she started to laugh. He’d said the only comforting thing he could think of. He didn’t think it was funny.

“We’ve never done it before?”

Maybe it was a little funny.

“You have a place on a wagon heading out tomorrow afternoon, Captain Reiter. It will take you to the garrison at Lyonne where these orders will procure a seat on the first available mail couch. If all goes well, you’ll be in Karis in a week.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Reiter accepted the paperwork, nodded, and left the office. He’d learned not to argue with military bureaucracy years ago. A ride on a nearly empty supply wagon had taken him from the battlefield to Abyek—a dawn-to-dark trip that suggested even the old Duke of Pyrahn hadn’t wanted his cities too close to the Aydori border and the beastmen who were his allies. He then cooled his heels for twelve hours while his orders were processed. Reminding the most officious major he’d ever met that they came directly from his Imperial Highness the Emperor Leopald by way of General Loreau had no effect. The major had merely sniffed and pointed out in return that this was the Imperial army and all their orders came from the emperor.

There were days, Reiter thought, when hurry up and wait should be made the army’s official motto. Not that he was in a hurry to get back to Karis. While his loss of the sixth mage was a direct result of the artifact malfunctioning, facts often were ignored when it came time to place blame. And Lieutenant Lord Geurin would have placed plenty of it before Reiter caught up.

His time was his own for another twenty-four hours, so he settled his bicorn as he stepped out of the only permanent building the garrison yet boasted and crossed between the geometrically precise lines of tents, past the garrison work detail toiling at the perimeter wall. Men, women, and children of Abyek and the surrounding countryside hauled bricks and mixed mortar under the command of an Imperial mason and a guard made up of those not quite functional enough to return to the front lines but not so broken they could be discharged. After a hundred years of expansion, it was an easy position to fill.

The prisoners wore hobbles, their time on the work detail determined by the severity of their crime against the empire. He’d been uneasy the first time he ever saw children hobbled, but after he saw a soldier’s head crushed by a piece of masonry pushed from the roof of a building by a pair of ten year olds, days after the actual battle was over, he learned to just walk by.

Today, he walked by and across the Aydori Road and into Abyek.

Shadows had started to gather by the time they reached the outskirts of the city. Tomas chafed at their pace—Mirian’s insistence on wearing her boots, on needing the social standing they provided, had slowed them considerably. She still limped as they passed between a double line of houses spreading out from the city to meet the farms, but at least she limped faster, the heat and pressure of her feet having softened the leather.

She had also taken the time to retrieve the farm worker’s abandoned clogs, and Tomas had finally, reluctantly, put them on when his own feet had started attracting attention from men and women hurrying home from work at the end of the day. Not the attention he was used to as Pack, but sideways glances that lifted the hair off the back of his neck and kept a low growl rumbling intermittently in his throat.

“They don’t look frightened, exactly,” Mirian murmured, moving close enough they could speak without being overheard. “More like they’re not comfortable in their own skin.”

He’d almost gotten used to his world having been divided into the scent of Mirian and the scent of everything else. Under scents layered on by work and time, the sweat of the people passing by them smelled sharp. Strained. “There’ll be Imperials here. This is the new edge of the empire, so they’ll be building a garrison. I guess it takes a while to get used to being conquered.”

The road split and split again, the houses built closer together until they became long rows of two-story brick built tight to the road. The people on these streets kept their eyes to themselves. Scent crowded on top of scent and Tomas breathed shallowly through his mouth to keep from being overwhelmed. It was no more crowded than parts of Bercarit or even the old, non-Pack parts of Trouge, so he knew he’d eventually be able to push most of what flooded his nose to the background. It didn’t help that the scent of the coaches had been buried, and he couldn’t stop himself from casting about for them even though he knew—at least his head had known—he wouldn’t be able to track them all the way to Karis.

As the road they followed came out from between two five-story tenements and into a market square, four Imperials entered from the opposite direction. They were the first he’d seen since the bullet had shattered his shoulder. The blind rage he thought he’d overcome pulled his lips back off his teeth and one arm out of his jacket…

“Stop it.” Mirian stepped between him and the soldiers, both hands trying to tug his jacket back up onto his shoulder. “You can kill those four, but what about the twenty after them?”

“They won’t have silver.” His fingers sank into her upper arms, but instead of shoving her out of his way, he hung on.

“And the hundred after them? You said there was a garrison here. Enough damage will kill you even without silver. Then how do I free the Mage-pack? Tomas, stop reacting and think!”

“They killed…”

“I know. If not these men, then others like them.”

Muscles knotted across his back with the effort it took to keep from charging across the square. Mirian had moved so close—or he’d pulled her so close, he wasn’t sure which—that the only air for him to breathe in was air she’d already breathed out. He closed his eyes and matched his breathing to hers; as hers slowed, his slowed. After a moment he nodded. “You’re right.” When he released her arms, she made a small pained noise and his eyes snapped open. “I hurt you.”

“Small price to pay to keep you alive.” She smiled, mouth a shallow arc, lips pressed together. If it was supposed to make him feel better, it didn’t. “I know how strong you are, and I still stepped in front of you. I’m fully capable of taking responsibility for my own actions. Besides…” This smile actually did make him feel a little better. “…it was the first time for miles I haven’t been thinking about my feet.”

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling back. “I guess I’m happy to have been a distraction. But I’m still sorry I hurt you.”

“I know.”

It wasn’t exactly forgiveness. When she stepped away and he dragged his jacket up into place, he realized the whole thing had happened in a matter of minutes; the four Imperials had only just reached the center of the square.

It had been a market day although only one stall remained open, the owner hurrying to finish a final sale, splitting his attention between the soldiers and his customer and the sky. While three of the Imperials stood scanning the doors and windows facing into the square, muskets cradled loosely across their left arms, right hands purposefully cupping the trigger guards, the fourth pushed past a small group of older children waiting to use the well—young enough to still be at home, but old enough to be helpful—and stepped up onto the housing.

He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders and bellowed, “This is to remind the citizens of Abyek that curfew is in place from dark until dawn. Anyone appre…appre…”

One of the children giggled and the soldier flushed.

“Anyone breaking curfew will be added to the garrison work detail. No exceptions.” Brows drawn in, he stepped off the housing directly into the group of children. When they scrambled to get out of his way, he shoved the slowest hard enough to knock her down, stepped over her legs, and joined his waiting squad. As the children hauled their fallen companion up onto her feet, the body language of every one of them was as much anger as fear. Sooner or later one of them would challenge Imperial authority and probably get shot.

“We can’t get through the city before dark,” Mirian said softly.

Tomas glanced at the sky. “We might not be able to get out of this square before dark.” The square was empty of everyone but them and the children, waiting for one last bucket to fill. The stall owner had disappeared down an alley, pushing his barrow before him, and the soldiers were heading out of the square to the north. “It’s all right, though. Once everyone’s off the streets, I can keep us away from the patrols.”

“We have to eat and sleep.”

Because that was the sensible thing to do. “As the coaches get farther away.”

“And Karis stays right where it is.”

He’d pretty much decided that her certainty was equal parts reassuring and irritating.

“The children have noticed us.”

He turned in time to see a whispered conversation, hidden more by accent than by volume. As the others scattered with their water, their ambassador clomped across the cobblestones toward them. Only her scent gave away gender. Her hair cropped short like Mage-pack hair, she was dressed in faded brown trousers, a fraying sweater, and the same type of wooden clogs he wore. Hers were also a little too large and she nearly kicked out of them with every step. A split lip, almost healed, and scabs across her knuckles only just visible under too long sleeves marked her as a fighter. If she were Pack, she’d grow up with scars and try for the Alpha three or four times before she was actually ready.

“If you don’t got nowhere to go,” she said, glancing toward where the Imperials had disappeared, “the Sisters of Starlight, they got a place that way.” A grubby finger pointed east. “Two streets. They painted it white.” Her eye roll reminded Tomas of Mirian. “I hear they feed you, too, but you gotta listen to them talk.”

“And what are the Sisters of Starlight?” Mirian asked.

“Dunno.” The shrug was dismissive. “They come along behind the army. My da says it’s some stupid Imperial religion.”

“Thank you.”

She swept a shrewd gaze over Mirian from boots to hair and snorted a nonverbal you don’t belong here before she glanced up at the sky. “Better hurry,” then she spun around and ran, the clogs ringing out her progress until she disappeared into one of the buildings across the square.

Lights were already showing in a couple of upper windows.

Tomas slipped his feet out of the clogs, no point announcing their position to Imperial patrols. “If it’s the Sisters of Starlight, we’ll have to run to beat curfew.”

It was the Sisters or the street.

Mirian took a deep breath. “We run.”

Running the edges would attract less attention; right across the middle of the square would be faster. When Mirian stumbled halfway, Tomas tucked both clogs under his right arm and grabbed her hand in time to keep her on her feet. To his surprise, she hung on, fingers wrapped tightly around his.

A white house in a row of dirty brick was easy to find even as dusk turned to dark.

The door was still open a crack when they reached it, Tomas nearly dragging Mirian the last few feet. A middle-aged woman dressed all in white who he assumed had to be one of the Sisters opened it the rest of the way, peering out into the street. “I saw you come. Hurry, hurry.” Her accent was different yet again, and she smelled strongly of lavender. Tomas shoved Mirian over the threshold and followed. As the door closed emphatically behind them, he checked her forward motion and slid past her. If it was too dangerous to stay, he needed to know before they were any farther in. Before the door was locked.

There were eleven other people in the room. Seven men and four women who all looked older than they smelled. Ten of them looked down quickly rather than meet his gaze, the eleventh looked hopeful for a moment, then sighed and closed his eyes. There were two obvious couples and a woman who sat alone, as far from the others as she could get and still be in the same room. She wore trousers and one sleeve of her heavy workman’s jacket had recently been soaked in gin. There was no furniture, nothing anyone could use as a weapon, only what looked like layers of worn rugs. The glass in the single window in the front wall had been painted black. Besides the gin, the room smelled of old blood and urine and stale sweat.

And lavender.

Behind him, a steel bolt slid home. Bolts were easy enough to open from the inside. He could do it in fur if he had to.

“Is safe. Is safe.” The Sister pushed by him. Tomas’ eyes watered a little as the scent of lavender grew momentarily stronger. “No soldiers get in. No abominations get in.”

Mirian wrapped her hand around his and pushed up against his side. “Abominations?”

Distracted by the contact, Tomas managed to pull himself together enough to wonder why she bothered asking. Who knew and who cared what Imperial Starry Sisters thought were abomination.

The Sister turned back to face them, hands tucked under the loose fall of cloth that made up the top layer of her costume. “The new Prelate of the Church of the Sun,” she said, as though that was enough to make everything she was about to say the absolute truth, “has declared the beastmen abomination.”

“What does that mean?” Mirian asked pushing closer to him. He could feel himself sinking into softer parts.

“That they are not been cleansed by the fire.”

Mirian’s grip on his hand tightened enough it started to hurt. “But what does that mean?”

The Sister looked confused for a moment, then her face cleared and she smiled. “Oh, for the abominations. That they are not given the protections of the law and in their death, they will not be reborn in the fire. Now go, take your young man to sit. There will be food.”

It took Tomas a moment to realize what the beastmen meant. Took him a moment to realize it meant him.

The Sister had started through a door in the back wall before he put it together. He had been declared an abomination by someone who’d never met him and knew nothing about him. How could a church declare a whole people abomination? It didn’t make sense. He’d begun to form a protest when Mirian used her entire body to shift him to an open bit of carpet against the wall no more than three feet from the front door. He snapped his mouth closed and tried to pull away, but was too afraid of hurting her again to use the effort necessary.

She smelled better than everything else in the room combined, but he really was afraid of hurting her. When she tried to maneuver him down to the floor, he locked his knees.

“We can’t stay.” He breathed the words into the curve of her neck and tried not to inhale.

Mirian curled one arm up over his shoulder, stroking her fingers through his hair. He started to jerk away until he realized the sudden familiarity was to cover his ears. “If we’re caught after curfew, the soldiers will find out.” The words were warm against his cheek.

“They won’t catch me. Not in the dark. Not on four legs. I’ll go. You stay.”

“I can’t walk another step, and you will not leave me with these people! They smell terrible and they’re filthy.”

Tomas pulled back. There were dark circles under her eyes and a crazy gleam in them. Nothing about the way she held onto him said seduction. She clutched at him the way a much younger Mirian would have clutched at a rag doll. “We’re filthy.”

“Not the point!”

A hand clutched at his trouser leg and he looked down into a hopeful dark-eyed gaze. “You got a drink?”

“No.”

“I need a drink.”

Mirian leaned past his shoulder and showed teeth. “He said no.”

They suddenly had a larger area of open carpet around them.

“Sit, sit, new people. There is food.”

There were three Sisters now. One carried a large pot, the other two bowls and spoons.

“Sit,” Mirian repeated. So he sat. And put the clogs back on.

The food was nominally stew, although it was mostly potatoes and smelled a little like lavender.

The Sister who’d let them in spoke as they ate of how science had found that the stars were also suns, were also life-givers, and as there were a thousand small suns in the sky so there would one day be a thousand Sisters ministering to those abused by war.

Leaning sideways, he breathed, “A thousand? I think her math is off.”

Mirian snickered, turned it into a cough, but he felt like he’d accomplished something.

After the food, there was an opportunity to use the privy at the end of the tiny back garden then, when everyone had reclaimed their bits of carpet, the Sisters intoned a long blessing in Imperial, mostly about the burning away of sins. Two of the men, half propped against the wall and half against each other were obviously asleep before they finished.

When the Sisters took the lamps away into the kitchen and closed the door, Tomas noticed that bits of the black paint on the window had been scratched away to make star patterns. As his eyes grew more accustomed to the dark, he could make out what he thought were supposed to be the Stag and the River, both only barely visible in the minimal spill of light in from the street.

“At least they’re consistently crazy,” Mirian muttered against his ear. Sat up. Rummaged in the bedroll and pulled out the telescope—he recognized the whisper of its chain as she tucked it under her jacket—then pushed the bedroll back toward him. “You should sleep on this so no one tries to take it.”

“Sleep on it?”

“Use it as a pillow.”

“Why don’t you use it as a pillow?”

“They can’t sneak up on you.”

Tomas wasn’t sure who they were, but since no one could sneak up on him—at least no one in the shelter with them—he tucked it up against the wall. Without the hard ridge of the telescope, it wasn’t entirely uncomfortable.

“I think there’s bugs in the carpet.”

“There were bugs in the straw.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Risking the curfew’s looking better, isn’t it?”

She shot him a look of such exaggerated disdain that he snickered. The Sisters were a little crazy, but it could be worse. They had food and shelter. They were a day closer to Karis and while he could have played hide and seek with the Imperials all night, Mirian couldn’t.

People were muttering and shuffling into different positions all over the room. Someone growled a profanity. Someone answered with a louder one. The air was fresher than he’d expected by the floor, less stagnant, and he wondered if Mirian had anything to do with that. Did she think about blowing out a circle of candles?

Mirian was…

Still sitting. And not looking as though she were about to lie down any time soon. Tomas pushed himself up on his elbows. “What?”

“I’m not putting my head on that carpet.”

How was he supposed to sleep if she sat there looking disgusted all night? He couldn’t change, so there seemed to be only one solution. Lying down again, Tomas patted his right shoulder.

Her brows went up.

She’d had no difficulty sleeping next to him in fur. Even though he was exactly the same person, she’d been willing to trade society’s opinion for warmth and comfort. If it came to it, he’d rather be in fur. In fur, he was content with physical contact. In skin he could only hope the surrounding scents would prevent any embarrassing reactions.

Of course that wouldn’t matter if Mirian kept acting like she’d been out shopping with her mother when they were introduced instead of tied to a tree. Wait…was it because there were people around them tonight? First, how could the opinion of these people matter? And second, given Mirian’s earlier behavior, they’d no doubt already assumed the worst.

Tomas suspected neither point would provide a winning argument. He had to be…

…sensible.

Pushing himself back up again, he leaned in and whispered, “If you don’t get enough sleep, you’ll slow us down tomorrow.”

She looked annoyed, probably because he was right, but a moment after he lay down, she settled her head on his shoulder, one hand gripping the edge of his jacket. Her sigh had a certain sound of surrender to it.

He wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from pressing his lips against the top of her head had her hair not been so disgusting.