Barb Hendee - Traitor to the Blood

Guilt stifled Magiere long enough for Leesil to cut her off.

"We need to find out who we are," he went on. "Why the Fay chose to bring together a dhampir and a half-elven assassin. That artifact is safe until we're ready to go after it, and we won't be until we have all our own answers… or at least more than we have now. That leaves my father, and there is only one place to learn what happened to him."

Magiere rose up, backing away until her shoulder hit the post of two stacked bunks. Fear for Leesil smothered whatever sense was in his words.

"I shouldn't have brought you here," Leesil said, as if talking only to himself. "I didn't think this through. Perhaps we should've sent Wynn home-and you as well. If I'd done this on my own, you might have been safe for a while until I returned."

Magiere's hand closed tight upon the bunk's post, until its corner edge bit into her palm.

"You think I'd let you?" she snapped. "And sit halfway across the continent waiting to hear how you died? I was right about Wynn. She let that monster Chane follow us. Without telling either of us! We can deal with your mother's people without that little sage's language skills."

"Enough." Leesil sighed. "I won't argue this anymore. Wynn is here, and she's suffered enough for her mistake."

"You've played nursemaid to her once too often."

The edge returned to Leesil's voice. "You don't have to remind me how wrong she was. But you saw her collapse over Chane's body. She was broken inside. Can you imagine what that feels like?"

Yes, she could. Magiere saw Leesil alone in the Warlands, dead at the hands of Darmouth. She shook her head slowly as she backed down the path between the bunks.

"I promised to help you seek your answers, as you did for me. That's our way… you and I. But how much harder are you going to make it for me keep you safe?"

She turned away, heading for the wooden archway at the room's far end.

Leesil's voice rose behind her.

"Make some kind of peace with Wynn," he called. "She's been through enough, no matter what her mistakes. And neither of us is pure enough to sit judgment on her… as you have."

Magiere's pace increased as she grew desperate to be out and away. She hurried through the adjoining room of stacked bunks, ignoring soldiers settled there or talking among themselves. Before anyone spoke to her, Magiere rushed out the next archway and into the barrack's common room.

The two men whom Stasi had asked to leave were there, but most of the few small tables and stools were taken up by refugees and the priests tending to them. The room was so packed that Magiere had to slow to keep from making contact with anyone. The girl she'd saved huddled on the floor before the back wall hearth. Her companion crouched behind her with his arms wrapped about her shoulders as both stared into the fire.

Wynn sat at the hearth's far side. She faced into the room, not seeming to notice the adolescent couple nearby. Instead, she looked toward a shimmer of silver blue-gray beneath a table where a woman priest cradled an infant in a blanket. Magiere was desperate to be alone, but for an instant she wondered why Wynn sat such a distance from Chap.

The dog lay silently out of everyone's way, likely not wishing to be stepped on with so many people stuffed into the small room. He didn't notice Wynn's peculiar study of him and looked up at Magiere with perked ears.

It seemed odd to Magiere that Chap was still filthy. His muzzle was stained from the fight. The young sage always fussed over the dog, grooming him with a scolding at every stop they made on the journey north. Not that it mattered to Chap. He would be no better for it after his next day of wandering the underbrush along their way.

But Wynn now sat before the hearth, far from Chap.

Magiere couldn't face any more puzzles this night. She jerked the barrack's door open too hard, and it slammed into one rickety table. Gasps and exclamations arose, but she was outside and heading blindly up the road without noticing whom she'd startled.

"Magiere?"

The soft, high voice made her stop. Wynn stood in the open doorway, clinging to her blanket against the cold.

"The captain should be back with our things soon," Wynn said. "Where are you going?"

"None of your-" Magiere started in a threatening tone.

She caught herself as Leesil's words ate into her. In the half-light spilling through the open door, Wynn's expression clouded with resentment. Magiere began again, forcing herself to speak calmly.

"Please ask one of the priests to look at Leesil's arm when they're done with the others. I'll return in a while."

She whirled about with a shuddering breath.

"But… you are without even a cloak," Wynn called after her.

Magiere traveled half the barrack's length before she heard the door close.

A thrashing sound in the dark made her sidestep away from the building, instinctively reaching for her falchion. She realized she'd left the weapon behind with her cloak. Her dhampir senses expanded, and she glimpsed a startled bird fluttering away into the night.

Magiere looked about and saw the foreign city around her settling itself into winter slumber. She wanted to be alone, and though the dark wouldn't trouble her, she couldn't risk becoming lost until morning in this faraway place. She slipped around the barrack's corner. Leaning against the rough stone foundation, she slid down to her haunches.

She'd been alone most of her life, despite the occasional company of others, and had preferred it that way. Perhaps even in the early days with Leesil, along the back ways of the wilderness cheating superstitious peasants. Here on the edge of his past, his first life, the more she fought with him, the more he retreated inside himself to a place she couldn't reach.

Yet the foolish, unexplained choices he now made could kill him- take him from her in a way she couldn't overcome.

It made her feel lonely, abandoned. And that wasn't the same as being alone.

Magiere shivered in the night air but remained stiff and still, leaning against the barrack's cold stone foundation. No one passed by to be frightened by the white mask of her face with full black-irised eyes. If they had, they'd have fled, never noticing the rising steam from tear tracks on her pale cheeks.

Chane lost contact with his familiar the instant the robin fled in panic at Magiere's passing. It didn't matter, as the bird would return on its own. He'd barely heard what transpired after Leesil spoke his harsh admonishment to Magiere for what had happened in the murky forest near Apudalsat.

Obsession, hatred, and even fear had muddied Chane's thoughts for so many nights-but all toward Magiere. He'd not contemplated what Wynn had endured. She had watched him die and collapsed upon his twice-dead corpse.

Did she weep… for him?

Chane's eyes were still closed. He was so poised and still that his companion didn't realize the reconnaissance was finished until the robin lighted upon the saddle horn of Chane's mount.

"Well?" Welstiel asked with irritation creeping into his deep voice. "What have you learned?"

Chane did not answer. He tightened his grip on the horse's mane tangled between his fingers.

"Chane!" Welstiel snapped. "What did you hear?"

In the early days of their travels, Welstiel never lost his composure. That too had changed.

Chane willed himself to calm, not allowing any thought beyond this moment. This was how he pushed himself forward, how he kept waking every night and climbing back onto his horse.

"Venjetz," he rasped. "They go in search of Leesil's father, and then head on to elven territory for his mother."

Welstiel's face went blank with his lips barely parted, and then his voice erupted. "Venjetz? What nonsense is that half-blood dragging Magiere into now?"