Trading Close To Light

by C. M. Simpson

  “Claudette Bisset, you get your tail over here right now. And you, Ninetta. And you, Pierre. Do not make me come out there and get you.”

  She jumped as Gustav’s voice bellowed out after hers.

  “Do not make any of us come out there to get you. We’ve had to come far enough as it is.”

  They waited, listening to the cavern’s silence while the mules snorted and moved restlessly at their tethers.

  Mordan’s growl was all the notice they had that the big kat had moved.

  “No,” Claudette said. “No, I won’t.”

  Pierre gave a frightened shriek, and Mordan bounded back to Marsh and dropped the child at her feet before leaping back out into the cavern.

  Moments later, they heard Claudette again.

  “But…”

  Mordan snarled, and Marsh kept a grip on the boy in front of her. Part of his shirt was damp from where the big kat had picked him up, but the rest of him was fine. He didn’t move, just stared out into the cavern. It didn’t take long for Mordan to guide the girls back to them.

  The big kat stalked into sight, with the troublesome pair taking one step back for every step the feline took forward. They stopped and turned when Mordan looked past them to where Gustav was waiting, his hands on his hips.

  “I don’t suppose you two young ladies would care to tell me what you were doing over a cup of kaffee?” he asked.

  The two girls hung their heads, their hands joining as they looked up at him.

  “We were just…”

  “We needed…”

  “Uh-uh. You can speak to me when we’re back inside. You’ve scared the mules quite enough. The Deeps know just how long it’s going to take the calm the beasts down again. I swear trouble is a female!”

  “Hey!” Marsh protested.

  She didn’t need to hear Zeb’s response.

  “If the boot fits, shadow mage. If. The boot. Fits.”

  Marsh resisted the urge to tell him what to do with his boot and led Pierre back into the cave after them instead. Felicity was waiting, and so were the wolves. Once everyone was inside, they filled the space between the fire and the crevice and sat down.

  Marsh saw Claudette eye the big creatures with dismay and then take her place by the fire. She also felt Pierre’s small hand tighten around hers and wondered what it was that kids seemed to see in her, because she was the last person she’d have thought was any good with them.

  Don’t bet on it, Roeglin told her, and Marsh felt the warmth of Felicity’s agreement.

  Realizing there were now two mind mages inside her head didn’t make her any happier than she had been moments before, but she said nothing. She supposed she couldn’t blame Felicity for wanting to take a peek.

  “Now,” Gustav said, turning to the children when everyone was settled, “exactly where did the three of you think you were going?”

  Three sets of eyes returned his look with silent reproach but the Protector captain was silent, letting the quiet increase the pressure until one of them cracked. In the end, Claudette gave a loud sigh and rolled her eyes.

  “We don’t want to go back to the farm,” she said. “It’s not safe for Netti or Pierre. They’ll only be hurt.”

  Gustav pretended puzzlement even though Mordan gave a grumbling sound of worry and the nearest wolf sat up, ears pricked with concern. Marsh had to wonder if Claudette had some form of nature magic, the way the animals were responding to her voice.

  If she does, she doesn’t know it yet, Roeglin muttered. Let’s keep it that way for a bit, shall we?

  Marsh had to agree. The thought of an animal-speaking Claudette was a bit of a worry, given the stunt she’d just tried to pull. Later, perhaps, when she’d calmed down a bit, or maybe discovered it for herself, but certainly not now.

  “But they’re your parents,” Gustav continued. “Why would they hurt you?”

  Claudette tossed an apologetic look toward Felicity and answered, “Mine won’t hurt me, but theirs don’t like magic, do they?” She looked at the other two, and Pierre gave a wide-eyed shake of his head. Ninetta just stared, her brown eyes dark with distress and her face pale in the light of the fire.

  Gustav turned to her, his face gentle.

  “I’ve met your father,” he said. “Is what Claudie says true?”

  It took Ninetta a moment to answer, and when she did, her voice was quiet.

  “He did this the first time.” She turned and lifted the back of her tunic.

  Felicity gasped and Marsh drew a sharp breath, her eyes stinging with the threat of tears. Ninetta lowered her tunic and sat back down.

  “Don’t take me back,” she begged, and then looked at the boy, “and don’t take Pierre back, either. His dad is just as bad.”

  Marsh saw Gustav swallow as though moistening his throat. When he spoke next, his voice rasped with suppressed emotion.

  “What about your mothers?”

  Yes, Marsh thought. What about your mothers?

  It was a good question, and she waited, feeling Felicity tense beside her.

  Across the fire, Ninetta bit her lip and twisted her hands in her lap. Her reply was almost impossible to hear, but it was there.

  “She helped.”

  There was a world of betrayal in those two words, and Felicity was around the fire’s edge and pulling the girl into her arms before any of the rest of them had worked out how to respond. She looked across at Marsh, her chin tucked over Ninetta’s head as the child cried against her, and her eyes pleaded for Marsh to do something.

  Marsh lifted Pierre from the ground and walked around to sit next to Felicity. She nestled the boy in her lap and laid a hand on Ninetta’s arm, her heart aching when the child flinched at her touch. Not saying a word, she reached into the ground beneath her, seeking for the energy that ran through the soil and the stone, drawing on the slow flow of it and guiding it into the girl.

  She pictured the crisscross of welts on Ninetta’s back and sent the energy over them, imagining the skin whole and smooth again before letting the excess subside back into the ground. When she was done, she lifted her hand away and looked into the girl’s eyes.

  “How’s that feel?”

  Ninetta wriggled carefully, lifting first one shoulder and then the other before twisting slowly from side to side. When she was done, she settled back into Felicity’s arms, staring at Marsh in wide-eyed amazement.

  “I didn’t know the shadows could do that!”

  Marsh shook her head.

  “That was different.”

  “Show me how?”

  “Later, when we’ve worked out what we’re going to do next, okay?”

  “Okay.” The girl sounded happy enough that Marsh figured she might stick around a bit longer.

  Claudette didn’t look pleased, but she didn’t say anything. Gustav studied them through the flames and then he spoke.

  “We need to go back to the farm and see if they are willing to have you return,” he began and raised his hand when they drew breath to protest. “I promise, we will not leave you with them—and they will not want us to, given that we will be leaving you on the condition that we can leave a shadow mage with each of you to teach you how to control your abilities and to teach anyone else who has magical ability. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Ninetta said, and Marsh heard the smile in the girl’s voice.

  As plans went, it was solid. If Davide’s attitude had been anything to go by, the surviving farm hands would never agree to a shadow mage staying to tutor any budding magicians. All she could hope was that that the mothers could be convinced to leave the farm, instead.

  When Gustav asked Pierre if he was okay with that idea, the boy just gave him a wide-eyed stare and nodded. They broke camp shortly after, loading up the mules and riding back to the farm. This time Gustav didn’t ask Marsh to scout ahead; he had Mordan and the wolves scout instead.

  When they returned with the news that the farm was deserted, the moutons still in their ba
rn and no humans in sight, a feeling of déjà vu settled over Marsh. Gustav gave her a worried look and they rode carefully forward, stopping just out of sight of the main house before the captain looked at her and Roeglin.

  “Go in,” he said. “Tell me what you find.”

  They weren’t gone long. The farm was like all the other deserted properties they’d ever visited. Food on the table—the evening meal, from what Marsh could tell—with dessert long burned on a stove left to go out on its own.

  Valuables had been left in their drawers, and supplies left in crates and boxes.

  “We need to bring the moutons back,” Marsh said, and Ninetta nodded.

  “All the animals,” the girl added. “They won’t survive without someone to look after them.”

  Gustav gave them both a look that said they were trying his patience, and in the end, they compromised agreeing to take the moutons the donkeys and the mules and release the rest. Nikolas’s help was invaluable, as was Felicity’s and the children’s, as they went to work getting the animals together. By the end of the morning, they were ready to move out again.

  This time, the wolves kept the moutons together until they reached the Kerrenin’s Ledge’s gates. The woolly troublemakers stayed crammed tightly on the path, running between the mules without complaint and showing no interest in straying. It was past dusk and the gates firmly were closed, but that didn’t stop Gustav, Roeglin, and Marsh.

  They marched up to the gates, Gustav drawing his sword so he could hammer on them with its pommel.

  “Halt!”

  The cry came from the top of the wall as they approached and they stopped, Gustav sheathing his sword as they did so. This time the gates creaked inward, and the waiting guards were arrayed to form a corridor into the city proper. Captain Brodeur came to join them, mounted and riding beside Councilor Ines.

  “I saw you coming from the walls,” she told Gustav, “and ordered him into the saddle.”

  She looked over at where the captain had ridden so that he could reach across and embrace his sister and smiled.

  “That is a sight worth waiting for. Tell me, how did you find the Outlet?”

  “We didn’t reach the Outlet,” Gustav told her, and Marsh let their words flow around her as they discussed the path of their journey and what they’d found at both the Bisset farmlet and the larger steading farther on.

  “And you say it’s now abandoned?” Ines sounded disappointed.

  “We did not reach it in time to stop it from happening,” Gustav said, and Marsh noticed he didn’t say they’d had no way of knowing the raiders would strike so fast.

  The councilor turned to Marsh.

  “This Idris…did you know him?”

  “No,” Marsh said. “He was new to me.”

  “Would you know him again if you saw him?”

  Marsh frowned, wondering if the councilor was truly listening to anything she said.

  “He’s dead, but if I saw him again, I would kill him just the same.”

  Ines smiled.

  “Good.”

  Marsh’s frown deepened.

  “May I ask why?”

  “I may know the family,” Ines replied. “They run to multiples.”

  Now, that was something Marsh hadn’t wanted to know, although she was glad she did.

  “How do you know of them?” Gustav asked, but the councilor didn’t answer straight away.

  Marsh was thinking she might need a nudge when Ines sighed.

  “Let’s just say I’ve run into them before,” she said, and there was a finality in her tone that made it clear that the subject was closed.

  “Uh huh,” Gustav replied, making it equally clear he wasn’t done but he’d let it lie for a little longer as he pursued another subject. “How are Master Greta and her son?”

  Ines gave a short bark of laughter.

  “Took you long enough.”

  24

  Redefining Pack

  Marsh slept late the next day, but she slept in her own bed and managed to banish Mordan to the rug on the floor…or so she thought. She awoke with the big kat stretched out alongside her. Not knowing what had woken her, she struggled to untangle herself from Mordan’s paws, becoming aware of the figure in the doorway as she did so.

  “That’s going to get awkward when you want to share your bed,” Roeglin told her as she slipped free.

  “You try telling her that,” Marsh grumbled as the kat yawned, stretched, and settled herself in the center of the bed.

  “So it’s a good thing the tailor wants to see you,” Roeglin said, eyeing Mordan.

  Marsh followed his gaze.

  “Well, it’s not like I could go back to bed.”

  “Gustav says you’ve got—”

  “Leclerc! Get your ass down here!”

  Marsh cocked an eyebrow at the shadow mage.

  “You were saying?”

  “Leclerc!”

  Marsh looked down at her tunic.

  “Do you think he’d give me enough time to—”

  “Marchant! Marie! Lec—”

  “Oh, crap.”

  Marsh hit the stairs at a run, reaching the bottom to find Gustav glaring at the stairwell and her uncle standing at his shoulder looking both anxious and amused. The captain’s expression relaxed the moment she appeared.

  “Oh, good, you’re here.” His brows beetled downward, and he added in a roar, “Now, go and explain to your wolves that the moutons were not brought for their convenience!”

  Marsh went, painfully aware of her bare feet and state of undress as she headed for the door. She saw what the problem was the minute she stepped out onto the porch.

  The wolves had arrayed themselves across the front of the two entrances into the courtyard, their growls echoing through the enclosed space as they faced off with Daniel and two of the kitchen hands on the kitchen side and the tailor on the other.

  Cries of “Marsh!” and “Miss Leclerc!” greeted her the second she stepped into view, and neither Daniel nor Dominique sounded happy.

  The wolves, for their part, didn’t let her arrival distract them, and Marsh winced at the thought of taking her unarmored feet down into the yard with its horde of milling hooves, but she did, avoiding the moutons by heading straight for the wolves. She moved without doubt or hesitation and knelt before the pack leader.

  At first, it ignored her, even when her action drew sounds of alarm from both Daniel and the tailor. Marsh knew exactly how to deal with her cousin—she flipped him the finger—but the tailor she ignored. Looking into the pack leader’s eyes, she demanded its attention.

  The leader snarled, but it let her make the connection.

  The moutons were its to protect. That one—and it meant her cousin, in uncomplimentary terms—had come to prey on the herd. Marsh glanced back at where Daniel was watching her with a mixture of alarm and admiration. The man was holding a rope, the knife he used for slaughter dangling from his belt.

  “He means to feed the pack,” Marsh explained. “He is the…”

  She stumbled over what term to use. Wolves did not cook. In the end, she tried, “He prepares meat for all.”

  The wolf cocked its ears, and a sense of hunger crossed the bridge between them.

  Us too?

  “Yes, of course, you,” she said.

  Daniel made a sound that might have been denial, but Marsh turned her head and glared at him.

  “All the pack,” she repeated. “Understood?”

  She didn’t look away until he nodded.

  The lead wolf relaxed, then looked over at the gates—and Marsh sighed.

  “They are guests of the pack. Please let them in.”

  It was hard to find the right pictures and impressions to send, but she must have succeeded. The wolf gave a yip and lunged at her face, dabbing her cheeks and nose with its tongue and nipping the side of her neck before bounding into the herd of moutons. As if on some unspoken signal, the pack joined it, separating one of the wooll
y creatures from the herd and driving it to Daniel’s feet before tearing out its throat. Marsh watched as they backed away to give Daniel and the kitchen hands room before sitting in a semi-circle, their backs to the restless herd. Across the courtyard, Dominique and his people moved to stand just inside the doorway.

  “Is it safe to come across now?”

  Marsh waved him over, staring at the herd until her eyes were caught by movement at the far end of the yard.

  “We need them in the barn, Leclerc,” Gustav said from the safety of the verandah behind her.

  Marsh rolled her eyes.

  Of course, he needed the damn moutons in the Deeps-damned barn. She’d told him as much the night before and had him tell her the task could wait for morning. She watched as the barn doors slid open, and the moutons crowded between them and Dominique, trying to avoid the tailor and his party while staying as far as they could from the gaping cavern that had appeared in their prison.

  “To the Deeps with this!”

  Marsh stood, wiping her hands on her tunic as she stared at the restless herd. She could think of only one way to get them moving in the direction she needed; she just needed to catch one’s eyes. There were enough of them that it didn’t take long, and the woolly beast paused long enough for Marsh to send it an impression of safety and food and water lying beyond the open doors.

  It bleated at her and she repeated the promise, then noticed that the creature’s query had drawn the attention of the others. She moved fast, sweeping her gaze across the herd and emphasizing the idea of safety and food beyond the barn doors. It was like touching a hundred minds at once and trying to impose her will on all of them…and it seemed to take forever.

  She nearly melted with relief when the herd turned and trotted to the barn. The lead moutons hesitated briefly when they reached the doors and Marsh sent another broadcast of safety. It might not have been enough if one of the wolves hadn’t lifted its voice in a sorrowful howl. Marsh didn’t know what the sound meant, but it sent a shiver through her and raised gooseflesh on her arms.

  The moutons responded as one, racing into the shelter of the barn and not coming out as two of Per’s stablehands closed the doors behind them. As soon as the herd was out of sight, the connection between them ended and Marsh became aware that she was the center of attention.