Barb Hendee - Thief of Lives

And how far back in her life did Welstiel's meddling reach? There were possibilities in that she did not want to think upon.

Leesil leaned close to her. "There's actually something more I haven't told you."

Magiere's dampened anger flared at the thought that he'd once more left something until after the fact.

"Back on the ship that brought us here," he continued, "I spoke with the thug locked in the cargo hold. Master Poyesk hired those men to stop you from returning with the bankdraft. Karlin has to be warned how far Poyesk will go to prevent the new warehouse from being built."

Magiere's wounds started to ache as if the numbing salve had worn off, and the pain merely added to her ire.

"Damn you, Leesil."

"You had too much to deal with already," he snapped back at her. "And some of it you wouldn't even face."

He dropped his eyes, head down, and Magiere's anger waned. He looked tired and sad. There was more to his reaction than the tangle of deceptions they'd unraveled since leaving Miiska. Part of his exasperation had more to do with her.

"Not to worry," Wynn said matter-of-factly. "You can tell me exactly what to say or you can write a letter. I promise that Karlin will be made aware of all."

Magiere longed only for home, but the sages' words plagued her. She-and Leesil and Chap-weren't finished. She wanted answers for her past, her future, and why she was here.

With Leesil close but ignoring her, she felt suddenly tired of talk. All she wanted now was to be out of this crowded room and to be alone with him.

"We don't have that bankdraft yet," she said. "We can't decide anything until that's settled."

The two sages said their good-nights and quietly left. Leesil lifted Magiere's good arm over his shoulders, winced once as it settled around his neck, and led her toward their barracks room. Chap ambled along behind them, sore and stiff, but otherwise well enough.

As Leesil settled Magiere upon the lower bunk, he still appeared lost inside himself.

"I'm sorry," Magiere said. "I've been weighed down by all that's happened since before we even left home."

"Yes…" he whispered. "But leave that for the moment. There's something else you need to know. Something that happened tonight in the sewers."

Magiere held her breath, unsure if she could take anything more.

"My mother…" he whispered, somehow afraid to speak it aloud, "may be alive."

Magiere grabbed his arm and pulled him down to crouch in front her. Before she could ask the first urgent question, he told her of his encounter with the elf-the anmaglahk -who called himself Sgaile. Nagging suspicion grew when she heard how the elf cowered back as Chap intimidated him into partially answering Leesil's questions.

"Maybe they imprisoned her for what she taught me," Leesil finished. "Though from watching Sgaile, she didn't have time to teach me everything of their ways, or she chose not to. I think she may have gotten away from Darmouth, and if I'm right, the elves don't kill their own-even a traitor, so-called."

Chap watched them both with keen attention. Magiere thought she saw the hound wrinkle his jowls at the mention of the elven assassin.

"She was the one who gave me Chap," Leesil reminded her.

A new sorrow settled upon Magiere. Leesil's guilt over his parents, so long hidden, had been tossed back in his face with the uncertainty of his mother's fate.

"If she's alive, we'll find her," she promised. "We'll find out why all of this has happened to us."

As quickly as this journey had started, the day the council letter arrived in Miiska, the days to come settled in her mind. Home would have to wait.

"Us," Leesil answered, with a soft laugh that made Magiere uncomfortable. "That is another puzzle entirely. And I know the crux of it, now."

He looked at her with sorrow, as if she'd betrayed him with some secret he'd uncovered. Magiere tensed, frightened.

Leesil held out his left wrist, the scars of her teeth plain to see. She shoved his arm away and shrank back.

"All the distance you placed between us," he said accusingly. "This is why."

"Leesil, not now," she warned him.

"I told you before," he said. "I'm not that easy to kill."

Magiere's stomach lurched as memory rushed at her upon his words. She felt his flesh between her teeth the night he burned the warehouse. She tasted his blood in her mouth as she swallowed it down, the only thing she desired in that moment. Not anyone's-only his.

"Yes, you are," she shouted. "You can't make this so simple!"

Leesil hung back, confused. "What do you mean…?"

"Neither of us really knows what I am," Magiere answered. "You're here with me now, and I wouldn't wish it any other way. But each time you try to make it more than that, it becomes dangerous, unnatural, and you-"

"What?" Leesil snapped at her. "I'm not the one holding secrets now. You tell me what's so-"

"Because I can kill you," Magiere said through her teeth, and her anger added vicious bite to her words. "And worst of all, you'd let me!"

She wanted to slap him, shake him from this foolish blindness that had almost cost him his life. It was better to finally have done with it, once and for all, and she spit out every word.

"The night you saved me from the warehouse, you just slit yourself open and fed me without a thought. If Brenden hadn't been there to pull you away, you would have stayed there and died in my teeth. I'd have awoken with you dead in my arms. Not once did you think of it-don't even try to deny it, because you didn't. That's how easy it is to kill you, Leesil. And you'd let me be the one to do it."

Magiere could no longer look at him. Between the memory of his blood in her mouth and the heated rage in her flesh came the pain of final loss.

Leesil dropped to one knee, leaning toward her.

"Neither of us knew what was happening that night," he said. "You no less than me. How could we, how could I? But we're beyond that, and we're not those same people anymore."

He put one hand to her cheek, and as much as Magiere felt the urge to pull aside, she couldn't bring herself to harm him any more man she just had.

"I've lived three lives," he said. "As a child in the War-lands, knowing only deceit and death. Then roaming the countryside alone but for Chap. Finally, the game with you, from the night we met… with Chap's meddling. I'm looking at a fourth life now. Any life begins by simply living it. And I say again-I won't die on you."

Before she could stop him, Leesil placed both hands upon her cheeks, and pressed his mouth against hers.

Magiere stiffened in revulsion as the touch mixed with the lingering memory of the night he fed her. But the blood faded from her taste.

His mouth was warm and soft for that brief moment, and beneath the swirl of fear and sorrow, she felt another loss when he pulled away.

"I will never leave you," he whispered. "But I can't stay adrift between lives. You will have to decide-for both of us, it seems-since you already think you know what I can and can't do."

Without another word, Leesil crawled tiredly up into the top bunk and out of sight.

It was a long while before Magiere lay back upon her bed, numbed with a maelstrom of emotions in the room's silence. Chap lay quietly on the floor, now and again lifting his head to look at her.

Sometime during the night, Magiere drifted off, but only after she could hear the comforting sound of Leesil's slumbering breaths from above.

Leesil rose in the morning with his stomach churning. Only severe fatigue had brought sleep in the night, as his thoughts tumbled into dreams-or nightmares. Not of death or the repulsive lessons of his childhood, but of his mother, locked away for years somewhere unknown, and of Magiere's sadly confused eyes as he left her sitting upon her bed. So it came as only a minor shock when Magiere announced there was more to be done before they were finished with the undead of Bela.