Mercedes Lackey: Changes

All wearing his face.

Now pick a target t’kill, ye bastards.

Corwin’s cousin, the illusion-making Herald, was out here somewhere. When Mags had asked, “If we’re dressed alike, kin ye make some’un look like me?” the cousin had snorted and asked “How many?”

Because there would have been the chance that, when they realized they were trapped, Ice and Stone would go for a kill. But not if they couldn’t tell which of their captors was the one they’d been told to capture.

The shock froze them long enough for the Heralds and Guards who had rescued Amily—all but Nikolas and Sedric—to close their escape route behind them.

Their street-level escape-route—

Mags saw what was coming in the tensing of their muscles and the sudden flick of their eyes to the right.

Then they moved impossibly fast. They had dashed across the square and were halfway up a building before anyone had a chance to move.

But Gennie screamed out the signal. “Mags! Pip!”

Because he’d planned for this too. These men were no good to them dead, and since those shields prevented Mind-magic from striking them unconscious, there was only one nonlethal way to take them down. His hand was already on the Kirball stick as the Fetcher-boosted-and guided ball came screaming at him from the side.

Now he let out every bit of his fury at these bastards and stood up in the stirrups and smacked the ball with every bit of strength he had.

Pip’s ball wasn’t going quite as fast, so Mag’s ball—still being guided by one of the Fetchers from the other teams—hit Stone in the back hard enough to momentarily paralyze him. He dropped off the building like the stone Mags had named him for, with Ice falling a moment later.

They hit the ground and were swarmed by Heralds and Guardsmen.

Mags jumped off Dallen’s back and ran for them. By the time he got there, they were trussed hand and foot with so many separate bindings that you could scarcely see their clothing.

It was over. It was finally over. Now he would have his answers. Now they would all have their answers.

He pushed his way in to stand next to Stone, who glared up at him, the black eyes still opaque, still unreadable.

“We know who sent ye,” he said, with quiet menace in his voice. “An’ we know why. What we don’t know—what I don’t know—is why me? Why’d ye come after me? I ain’t anythin’ but good at a game.”

Stone stared at him, face impassive. And then, suddenly, his expression changed—from impassive to resigned.

What?

Mags sensed the shields stir; sensed them—poise to strike! Dallen threw his strength between the shields and Mags, but Mags knew that he wasn’t the target—

He had no time to do anything but fling himself on Stone, frantically tearing at the man’s garments in a futile effort to find that talisman before—

—Stone’s eyes rolled up into his head as the shield contracted suddenly, viciously, around his mind, like a hand crushing a grape—

—it was too late.

Stone just... snuffed out, heart and breathing stopping immediately as his mind vanished. Ice followed a heartbeat later.

—And they were left with two rapidly cooling bodies, far too many questions, and no answers for any of them.

“Heyla,” Mags said softly, as Amily’s eyelids fluttered, and she finally woke up.

She smiled up at him. “Heyla,” she said. “Is it good news or not so good news?”

“ ’Tis all good,” he said, sitting down at her bedside and taking her hand in his. “Ever’thin’ went jest like Bear wanted. ’E says not t’worry thet ye cain’t feel nothin’. One’a th’ others figgered out how t’shut some pain stuff off fer a liddle so’s ye kin git some sleep. He says ’tis better nor givin’ ye Bear’s nasty drinks.”

She just smiled sleepily, then her eyelids drifted shut.

Mags continued to hold her hand, savoring the momentary peace. Nikolas had already looked in on his daughter, and been satisfied, and everyone else seemed to have agreed to leave Mags alone with her for a while.

And Mags was not particularly eager to leave.

Outside this room, there was more activity going on than the Palace had seen in quite some time. Mags knew about only part of it, and not a huge part, either.

Marchand was already on his way to a permanent assignment as the Bard and Chronicler for a Guard Headquarters at the Iftel Border. He was never to be allowed to leave—under house arrest for the rest of his life. Lita had wanted to burn his Gift out and send him to real imprisonment, but Truth Spell wielded ruthlessly could not prove him to be anything worse than foolish and greedy. Cuburn was on his way to a similar fate, as the permanent Healer-in-residence to prisoners at Greyscarp Prison. He was never to be allowed to leave either, and the only difference between him and the prisoners he cared for would be that there were no bars on his windows.

Security at the Palace and Collegia—well, it was not going to be anything like the same. Someone had sent down to the Ambassador to the Shin’a’in to try to find out if they had ever heard of anyone who was at all like Ice and Stone. If the little hints that Mags had picked up were even remotely true, there were sleeper-agents of their own on the Karsite side who were going to be activated with the sole purpose of discovering how the Karsites had found these men, and perhaps where they came from.

The bodies had been carefully preserved and were going to be delivered to a Karsite border post—a very unsubtle message that the best that Karse could send was no match for the people of Valdemar.

Sedric had been assigned to study the stone, because no one had ever guessed it was semialive. That was fine with Mags; if he never had to “talk” to it again, it would be too soon.

Working on the assumption that it was only a matter of time before more of these mysterious assassins turned up in Haven, pretty much everyone had decided that getting Amily ambulatory and trained to defend herself should be a priority right along with reinforcing Palace security. So Bear and his team had gone into intense and detailed practice—so much so that the actual work on her leg turned out to be anticlimactic. Everything had gone well; the result was everything anyone could have wanted.

Outside this room, the Hill buzzed with so much activity that it looked like a hive preparing for winter.

In here... in here was momentary peace.

It would not last past the moment he crossed the threshold, but for now, at least, peace held Mags and his love in the shelter of its hands.

And for right now, this moment, that was enough.