Барб Хенди - First and Last Sorcerer

“He must carry her alone, so I am free to act as needed.”

This third voice—deep and tainted with an odd accent—came from her left. She didn’t have a chance to look as someone else rushed toward her.

Magiere’s eyes opened a little wider at pain from her left arm being raised again. When it came down, it settled on smaller shoulders much lower than those of whoever had helped carry her before. She swallowed the pain as she looked over into ...

Large, wide, round eyes of deep brown peering up at her out of an olive-toned face hidden inside an oversized cloak’s hood.

“Wynn?” Magiere whispered.

With only a brief half smile, Wynn nodded and then twisted her head to look up the street. It took effort for Magiere to follow that gaze.

There was Chap, and Wayfarer leaned on his shoulders with one hand as the two looked back at her. Despite relief on the girl’s haggard face, there was lost panic in her forest green eyes.

Wynn suddenly stiffened. “No! That’s not it,” she half voiced, her eyes fixed on Chap. “Three more intersections ... then a right and two more.”

Chap must have babbled into Wynn’s head again.

“We need to go!” that foreign male voice ordered, now somewhere behind. “I will watch at the rear.”

Chap turned off up the dark street, forcing Wayfarer to follow.

“Can you go on?” Wynn asked.

“Yes ... yes,” Magiere answered, looking to her lost husband. That was where she had always drawn strength when she thought she had no more.

“I’ll make this up to you.” He breathed into her face. “I swear.”

What did he have to make up for? He was the one who’d saved her.

No ... you are alone ... forever ...

At that last echo of whispers weakly scratching at Magiere’s skull, her hate came back.

Hate gave her strength. Someone had done all of this, someone in that shimmering robe, and someone would die for what had been done to her and those she loved.

Brot’ân’duivé wove swiftly and silently through shadows in the alleys, cutways, and streets as he tracked Dänvârfij. He kept enough distance that even she would never hear him, though she would not have seen him if she looked back.

“Wynn, wait!”

As Dänvârfij halted at the alley’s mouth, so did Brot’ân’duivé near its other end. He had so intently focused on the hunt that the voice from far ahead caught him off guard.

Léshil should not have betrayed the others’ position so carelessly. By his voice, they were no more than another city block away. Perhaps they were even down the street beyond Dänvârfij. It took only the span of a breath to reassess the situation.

Imperial guards would be sweeping the city, though as yet he had not seen or heard any nearby. When they appeared, and they would eventually, they would not give attention to any nearby altercation as they sought to recapture prisoners. And his own prey might use that complication.

Brot’ân’duivé abandoned the need for the proper place and time. He backed out of the alley and charged up the last side street to round the corner for the street onto which the alley emptied. He stopped at the corner amid the cloying stench of a spice shop, but he did not see either Dänvârfij or the others along the open, empty street. That alone was the only fortune as he crept toward the alley’s mouth.

Dänvârfij went still upon hearing Léshil’s voice—followed by other voices too soft to hear clearly. Her first impulse was to scale to the rooftops, get ahead of her quarry, and only then drop to the street when she could take either Léshil or his monster of a mate. The others would not dare challenge her for fear she might kill a hostage.

She quickly rejected this notion.

Her task was to track and scout wherever their quarry would hide. Soon enough, imperial guards would flood the streets in a wide search. Attempting to take one of her targets now might prove a wasted opportunity if she had to escape capture herself.

Rhysís was to report to Fréthfâre, and then Dänvârfij was to follow with more information. They were spread thin in number, and it was essential to adhere to set plans. With the pending search of the guards, Léshil and Magiere would not dare move from wherever they next hid.

To know that place was all that mattered. And upon the rooftops, she might be delayed or cut off by any street too wide to leap across.

Dänvârfij cleared her thoughts with regained purpose and stepped out of the alley.

A shadow filled the corner of her sight, and she instantly spun toward it.

There was no mistaking who stood there, even without the garb of his caste. In a catch of breath she thought of all those of her team who had died since leaving their homeland.

Dänvârfij knew she stood no chance against a greimasg’äh, a “shadow-gripper,” a master of her caste’s ways. Once, she had revered him, lived in awe of him.

Sadness, mournful and infuriating, flooded her.

No anmaglâhk feared death. They feared only failure.

“Traitor!” she called him.

To her dull surprise, his answer was soft, perhaps sad.

“That would be you—and Most Aged Father—to our people.”

Hkuan’duv, her own jeóin and teacher, had been a greimasg’äh long before he died while killing Osha’s jeóin, the revered Sgäilsheilleache. By Hkuan’duv teachings and her love for him, Dänvârfij would not allow the traitor to walk away unmarked.

Brot’ân’duivé saw Dänvârfij’s expression drain of all emotion. It would have been better for her to hesitate, perhaps flee, and die more quickly that way. When she rushed him, he did not move at first.

Her first strike never landed.

The blade passed a whole hand’s thickness from his chest as he twisted and dropped into a crouch. He slammed one palm up into the elbow of her outstretched arm. The other slapped the inside of her forward knee.

Both of her legs buckled willfully instead of just the one. As she came down, her extended arm folded and her elbow slipped off his palm before his strike was completed. She slashed down with her blade as she dropped into a crouch to match his own.

Brot’ân’duivé twisted his striking hand, and her blade slid off his palm as he threw himself into the near building’s sidewall. He folded his outer leg before his weight overcame inertia and pulled him down the wall, and he thrust out with a foot.

To his surprise, she intercepted the heel coming toward her head by raising her shoulder. The kick still knocked her back to roll across the street stones. She was on her feet again as he rose up.

He did not close but stood his ground, waiting as she poised for another rush.

He half expected her to charge past him at a tangent, seek the wall to step up, and come down upon him from above. Or perhaps she would finally turn and run.

Brot’ân’duivé had calculated every option available when Dänvârfij came again.

In a flash, her lunging foot slid forward along the ground. It was too predictable, though that was his mistake as much as hers.

He barely sidestepped, twisted, and spun the blade in his other hand, still held hidden beneath his wrist. He drove it toward her right eye as she hit the ground in a hurdler’s straddle.

She collapsed forward over her outstretched leg, ducked her head under his thrust, and her right hand struck for his forward knee. He shifted weight to his other leg, taking the blow as she pushed off her rear-cocked leg, shot upward, and thrust her blade for his abdomen.

Brot’ân’duivé speared both hands downward as he dropped his own blade.

One hand turned her blade aside as his other thrust down along the far side of her head. He let his weight drop with a sudden crouch as his deflecting hand swung up under her blade arm. His other snaked in and folded around her neck.