Барб Хенди - First and Last Sorcerer

Magiere looked up and across the room as her hand slipped down Chap’s neck and around his shoulders, as if she might grab hold to pull him close. He went silent as he buried his face in her neck.

“I take it you have a plan?” she asked, looking first to Wynn and then directly at Ghassan. “And that would be a trap ... with me as the bait.”

Ghassan wondered how long she had been listening.

“No!” Leesil snarled.

He lunged one step toward her, stopped suddenly and turned, and then charged the table straight at Ghassan. Wynn grabbed at him, barely achieving a grip, and Shade came snarling out of the room’s back corner. Osha took two fast steps closer and stalled, visibly panicked and confused about what to do.

Magiere kept her eyes locked on Ghassan.

Yes, he mouthed at her.

She looked to Leesil. “We don’t have a choice.”

He thrashed out of Wynn’s grip and turned to her. “Yes, we do! We don’t have to do—”

“Leesil!” Magiere cut in.

Chap pulled his head out of her neck to look as well.

Leesil’s eyes shifted everywhere as he panted in fury or panic. For one instant, he might have wanted to collapse. Then he turned slowly, and there was cold hate in his eyes as he looked at Ghassan.

“If we can’t be located in here, by any means, then we aren’t doing a thing until she’s recovered. Understand?”

Ghassan nodded. “Of course.” Satisfied that he had succeeded, he rose and grabbed his cloak. “I will find out how far the prisoner recovery efforts have progressed,” he said. “And how many guards are searching the city—and where. The scale of their efforts may help us estimate the rank or placement of Khalidah’s current host.”

Brot’an stood up, and then his entire body went still.

Osha glanced at Leesil in alarm, as if questioning whether he should act to stop Ghassan from leaving the sanctuary.

Ghassan paused, waiting. Since the night before, they had treated him as a prisoner to be watched. He had indulged them, but this had to stop. If any of them tried to stop him now, it would be time to show them exactly what he was capable of.

“Let him go,” Magiere ordered quietly, and looked at Brot’an. “I mean it. Everything has changed now. And again ... he’s right.”

Leesil shook his head in anger—and perhaps defeat. “What if you’re spotted?”

Starting for the door again, Ghassan did not dignify the question with an answer.

As soon as Ghassan left the sanctuary, all talk of impending hunts ceased and Wynn turned her attention to making her rescued friends more comfortable. First she found a bucket and several large empty urns stored in various places about the sanctuary. She also gathered the urns she’d purchased at the market. Then she and Osha went downstairs, outside, and walked one block to the west to use a communal well. They filled their vessels.

Though somewhat heavily burdened, they made their way back to the top floor of the tenement in good time.

Rather than using her pebble, Wynn decided to try something else, just to see if it would work. Stopping at the false window, she set down her bucket to free up one hand, then knocked softly.

“It’s me,” she whispered.

The door opened from the other side and Leesil peered out.

Good. That meant that so long as at least one of them was inside, anyone else could come and go as necessary.

After bustling in, with Osha behind her, Wynn heard Leesil close the door, and she assumed full charge of the situation.

“Osha, please take two of the urns and this bucket into the bedroom. Then try to hang a sheet in the doorway.”

He nodded and went to work.

Piles of blankets, sheets, and any other light pieces of cloth were soon gathered, along with the new clothing she’d purchased, both bars of soap, small pots of medicinal salve, and bandages. She also dug a wooden comb out of her own pack. Wynn then divided up these items. Leaving some of them on the table, she hefted an armload of others.

“Magiere, Wayfarer ... come with me,” she said, heading off for the bedchamber.

By that point, Osha had strung a sheet across the bedchamber’s entrance for privacy. Wynn pushed the sheet aside and stepped in. Several large urns of water, along with the bucket, were now set between the beds. As Magiere and Wayfarer followed, Wynn set down her armload of blankets, sheets, and a bar of soap, and she went to check that the sheet curtain was securely in place. Leesil could remain with the other men and take his bath in the outer room, where she’d left him two urns of water, soap, blankets, and clothing.

Shade’s nose then poked around one side of the hanging sheet.

Wynn should have thought of the other “woman” in the group, and Shade pushed through to join them. At that moment, Wynn wished Shade might have stayed out in the main room with Chap. A daughter would do well to soften a little toward her father, but this was no time to worry about such things.

Wynn found herself relieved by Wayfarer’s quick compliance, for this morning and last night the girl had been standoffish, almost cold. Most of that had been directed toward Osha, though strangely—or not—some of this had spilled over toward Wynn. As to the story behind another change of name for the quarter-blood girl, that could wait as well. Magiere and Leesil, and even Chap, now called her Wayfarer, and that was enough.

Wynn’s attention turned to more immediate matters as Wayfarer and Magiere began to disrobe.

Wayfarer looked bone thin and her wrists were badly bruised, but Magiere was now almost unmarked.

Wynn was well aware of how quickly Magiere healed. Aside from being more pallid than before, and malnourished, there wasn’t a single wound on her. Even her torn wrists showed almost no sign that she’d been manacled. Disturbing at the least.

Wayfarer stood frozen, naked to the waist as she stared down at her soiled pants. Wynn had expected bashfulness, but the girl looked as if she was in physical discomfort. Wynn peered closer and realized it wasn’t a matter of modesty. The fabric of those pants had adhered to Wayfarer’s legs in several places after a moon of fear-sweats, grime, and bodily filth without bathing.

“Getting them off might hurt ... a little,” Wynn said.

Wayfarer nodded, and as Wynn helped peel off the pants, the girl winced several times, though she never made a sound. When it was done, Wayfarer sat down on the floor and leaned against the nearer bed’s side. Wynn was about to toss the ruined pants into the corner and get the salve when she heard a slowly growing hiss resembling an angered cat.

Magiere stared down at the girl’s marred, reddened legs. For an instant Wynn thought Magiere’s irises began to expand; under fury, those irises would swallow any color with pure black.

“No! Do not lose yourself,” Wayfarer warned, nearly frantic. She looked down at her own legs. “And please do not tell the others.”

Wynn eyed Magiere sidelong. She waited tensely for anything that might go wrong and force her to shout for Leesil or Chap.

With a shudder, Magiere dropped into a crouch before the girl. She reached for a sheet atop the pile of cloth and tore it, shredding it as if it were gauze. Dunking one piece into a water urn, she wrung it out and was about to place it over one of the girl’s legs.

Magiere hesitated, her voice strained as if speaking were difficult. “Just ... let it ... soak for a ... short while.”

At the girl’s nod, Magiere carefully draped the dripping cloth over Wayfarer’s leg.

Wayfarer winced, and Magiere paused before placing another soaked rag over the girl’s other leg. By that point Wayfarer was shaking from the pain. Magiere reached out, took Wayfarer’s face gently in both hands, rose a little on her knees, and leaned in to touch her forehead to the girl’s.