Dallin had no doubt. That was what worried him, even more than being recognized.
“Trust me.” Wil met Dallin’s eyes squarely, as close to calm as Dallin had seen him since Calder flung himself into the basement earlier.
Dallin sighed. “You’d damn well better know what you’re doing.” He shifted his gaze to Calder, hardened it. “The man says we need the horses. Take us to them.”
Surprisingly, Calder didn’t argue, but he didn’t look happy about it. His mouth pinched tight, and he glared between the two of them before wheeling about and leading on without another word. Dallin gave Wil a dour smile, shrugged, and gestured him ahead.
Instead Wil leaned up and dropped a quick, chaste kiss to Dallin’s mouth. “Thank you.”
Dallin thought perhaps Wil should have saved it until they could make sure Dallin hadn’t just gotten them all caught or killed. But he took it anyway.
Backtracking at first, then twists and turns into streets and alleys Dallin hadn’t seen before. It was only a few minutes before he caught a whiff of the very distinct mingled scents of horse and hay, sweat and manure.
Calder halted at the mouth of a lane that opened out onto what looked like a moderately busy thoroughfare.
“We’re in the southwest corner of the city. The gates are that way”—he pointed north—“and our exit is that way”—to the west this time. “If we get separated, head down the way we came and keep on until you hit the wall. Follow it west until you see a great wooden building, used to be a milliner’s. There’s a thick growth of trees behind it, and a midden heap. Behind that, there’s an opening. A man named Rylan fancies himself the gatekeeper, and he’ll want at least ten gilders, but don’t give him more than four—tell him you were sent by the Exile.” Calder shook his head. “I don’t know if you’ll fit the horses through.”
“If we get that far,” Dallin told him, “we’ll worry about it then.”
“I’ll take him in.” Calder nodded toward Wil, his eyes still on Dallin. “You stay here. No sense in risking both of you.”
Wil frowned at Dallin through a tiny flare of panic, but Dallin narrowed his eyes. Why did everything Calder said have a vaguely sinister ring to it?
So if he dies, you already have your Guardian ready to go find your new Aisling for you? I don’t think so.
Dallin didn’t bother trying to keep the suspicion from his tone. “No. You keep watch, I’m going with him.” He ignored the protests, just turned to Wil and nodded across the street. “Come on. Head down.”
No one marked them as they crossed, just went about their business, whatever it was, and only slipped uninterested glances toward them then moved along. Weapons had been forbidden on the day they’d arrived here, so Dallin hadn’t realized that almost everyone seemed to go armed as a matter of daily course. He cautiously approved. The city’s guards and the constabulary might have a somewhat lackadaisical attitude toward defense, from the little Dallin had been able to observe, but apparently the citizens didn’t. On the other hand, perhaps they were simply a particularly vicious, cutthroat lot. Dallin hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.
Wil took the lead as they crossed the dusty yard, heading without hesitation toward the double doors of the massive building that housed the city’s stables. It was a fairly busy place, workers coming and going, leading horses in from the paddock or out to be exercised. Several young girls were at work currying by the fence that separated the stables from the yard, sharing buckets and brushes between them, laughing and chattering as they worked, and calling out teasing advice to another as she trotted a horse past the paddock’s fence. The girl merely smirked and flipped them a vulgar salute as she crouched in the saddle, the others shrieking good-naturedly before once again minding their own work.
Dallin tapped Wil’s shoulder to get his attention. “D’you know where our horses are?”
Wil was smiling, watching the girls. He turned to Dallin. “I do, but we can’t just go and get them. They have the tack locked up. We’ll have to get someone to get it for us.” His gaze shifted from right to left, looking for a likely mark, Dallin suspected. Wil smiled again when his eye settled on a towheaded lad leaning against an empty stall, staring at the girls and absently sharing bits of his apple with a docile little roan.
“Is that—”
“Miri.” Wil was nearly grinning now. “She must’ve just had a bath. I told the lad to take care of them, told him they were pretty keen on apples.” He looked back at Dallin, delighted. “I think he listened.”
I don’t think he had much of a choice, Dallin didn’t say. He only jerked his chin toward the lad. “What d’you have to do?”
But Wil was apparently already doing it. “Shh” was all he said as he fixed his eyes on the lad. “Come on, then.”
As though he’d heard, the boy’s head came up, eyes gone vacant but with a bit of that hunger beneath his gaze Dallin had seen in the man in Dudley. Muted somehow, not nearly so feral, but still unsettling. The boy stared at Wil, mouth quirking up in a smile that was both thrilled and famished. Slowly, as if there was fishing line strung between them, the boy led the horse over to Wil and stopped in front of him, eyes for Wil and Wil alone.
Miri puffed out a happy snort and dove her nose straight at Wil’s neck. Wil mostly ignored her, only shrugging at her, but he kept his gaze locked with the boy’s. The boy stepped in closer, like he wanted to throw his arms around Wil, but he merely tipped in, almost but not quite touching. He closed his eyes and slipped a quiet sigh into Wil’s cheek.
“I thought I dreamed you.”
A tiny bit of a shudder moved through Wil, but he kept his smile as he laid a hand to the boy’s arm. “Good lad.” He pried the reins from out the boy’s sweaty grip. “I need the other horse now. You remember?” The boy nodded, still smiling, standing there with his eyes closed like he was breathing Wil in. “Good. I need them saddled, all right? Will you help us?”
Dallin hadn’t noticed until now that the place had gone eerily quiet. The girls had stopped their chatter, working silently now, eyes every now and then angling toward them, then scudding right over them as though they weren’t there. The bustle of the place hadn’t wound down, but it had… quieted. The shouts from the men tossing bales had receded to occasional grunts of effort and monosyllabic instructions. Even those working the horses had slowed them to lazy trots. It was like…. Dallin didn’t know what it was like. It was like nothing he’d ever seen. Not like the inn at Dudley, but not terribly unlike either.
He looked back at Wil. His breath caught.
The boy was still standing there, eyes closed, swaying with each word Wil murmured into his ear. Strange enough, all things considered, with the calm communion between the two uncanny and almost carnal in its mockery of some dark benediction… but Wil’s face was what made all Dallin’s instincts come up short and stagger back a pace.
Wil’s eyes were half-lidded and pulsing out something that nearly hummed with calm purpose—glowing, they were fucking glowing, almost giving off their own eldritch light, unbelievable and yet right bloody there, undeniable, as much as Dallin would have liked to deny it. Like in the dreams, but stronger. Like in Dudley, but Dallin could actually see the power this time. It wasn’t real, he knew; there was nothing physical about what he saw—it was simply as close as his mind could come to explaining what his eyes were telling him. Dallin had the oddest surety that if he asked Payton what he’d seen that night in the interrogation room, Payton would have said Wil’s eyes were perfectly normal.
Only this time there was no fear behind Wil’s serene gaze, no disquiet. Only a cool intent that made itself all too plain when Wil leaned in, brushed his lips over the lad’s, and patted his arm.
“Go on, then.”
The boy turned, looking right through Dallin. Dallin had to take a step back so he wouldn’t get trampled when the boy led Miri down toward the stalls. Dallin gave his head a sharp shake.
“What are you doing?” It was as qu
iet and calm as Dallin could make it.
Wil’s eyes were closed now, his head tilted to the side. “Pushing.”
“Well, yes, but….” Dallin laid his hand on Wil’s arm, almost shook him, but didn’t know if that would queer it all, break Wil’s concentration, make him start gushing blood, or make the stable’s staff all turn on each other with teeth bared. “All of them?”
“Mostly the boy. But yes, all of them.” Wil’s eyebrows drew down, and he shook his head. “Don’t talk. I have to focus.”
Dallin let go of Wil’s arm and couldn’t help but step away just a little. Just looking at them all, going about their business as though their minds were elsewhere, it gave Dallin an uneasy chill, and a queasy little pit opened up in his stomach. In Dudley it had been as though someone had taken a cudgel to the minds of those people at the inn. With this it was a sharp, precise scalpel. So very different from the blunt force assault in that cell, where Wil had stumbled away from it bleeding, nearly hadn’t stumbled away from it at all, and the other man had come away from it… well, for all Dallin knew, he was still catatonic. This was so much more… sophisticated. And in only what amounted to—he counted back—ten days, maybe?
Mother save them all—what would Wil be able to do with it when he really knew what he was doing?
I can turn myself invisible, Wil had joked once, tweaking at Dallin’s reticence because he knew he could, and it had been mildly amusing at the time. Now Dallin thought it might not be too far off the mark. Perhaps Wil couldn’t really make himself disappear, but he might be able to make others think he had.
Dallin wanted to look away, nail his gaze to the floor and not lift it until this unsettling business was done. Instead he kept his eyes on the lad as he unlocked what was apparently a storage cabinet, dragged out first Wil’s saddle and then Dallin’s, then went back for a third. Dallin should stay close, should be right where he was, in case Wil needed him—for what, Dallin was afraid to guess—but if nothing else, standing here and watching that lad saddle three horses was a waste of time they didn’t have.
Dallin approached the boy warily, grabbing for his own tack, but he kept his hands away from Wil’s things. That man back in Dudley had lunged at Dallin just for laying a hand to Wil’s shoulder. Dallin didn’t know if this was the same or not, if the imagined proprietorship reached to Wil’s possessions, or if the lad even knew which were Wil’s possessions in the first place, but Dallin thought it safest to let the lad take care of Wil’s horse. By the way the boy was muttering to himself in a quiet little singsong, Dallin thought it best to just try to stay out of his line of sight.
He saddled his own horse quickly, cinched it all tight, the lad moving slower than was likely his usual wont, so Dallin saddled the one that had apparently been confiscated for Calder as well. Another roan, a little on the elderly side but with big hoofs and a big arse, barrel and flanks well-muscled, so he would do well enough for Calder. If Calder could even ride, which they’d neglected to address.
Another thing they’d neglected to address—Dallin was right now in the process of stealing a horse. Brilliant. He was already wanted—for desertion certainly, treason likely, possibly murder for that fiasco in the alley, and now probably for horse thieving as well. Of them all, horse thieving hurt the least.
Growling lightly, Dallin finished and straightened his back. Wil was still right where Dallin had left him, straight and tall. His eyes were open now, tracking everything, doing that oddly beautiful thing they did, eldritch and unfettered. As before in the alley, Dallin was struck by the wild allure of him. Dallin hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said Wil was like a minor god—when Wil looked like this, Dallin would swear he breathed in air and exhaled strength, winding it around himself in tensile threads of invincibility.
“The heart of the world,” the lad murmured in that unnerving little harmonic buzz he’d been doing since he’d left Wil’s side. “Blood to blood.” His hands were opening and closing spasmodically around the reins of Wil’s horse.
“They want what’s in me, even if they don’t know what it is. Some would open my chest and dig out my heart looking for it and still not realize they didn’t know what they were looking for.”
For the first time, looking at the blankly hungry look in the eyes of this otherwise handsome and most likely honest young man, Dallin thought he had some idea what Wil might have meant. The worship on the boy’s face was almost predatory, as if he loved Wil enough to rip him apart.
And, all right, Dallin had had just about enough. Too much, in fact. He took up the reins of his horse and Calder’s and tugged them over toward Wil, dismayed to see Wil was sweating now, somewhat pale, and a light tremor ran through his body. No nosebleed, but Dallin didn’t like the way Wil’s brow was twisting and his jaw kept clenching and unclenching in a too-obvious effort at maintaining control.
“We’ve got what we need.” Dallin kept his voice low and smooth so as not to startle Wil out of whatever focus he was applying. “C’mon, let’s get out of here.”
Wil nodded slowly, waving the lad back over, then sliding his fingers up to his temple. “One more thing.” He rubbed. “The crossbow,” he said to the lad. “Get it, please.”
“No.”
Dallin made the protest even as the boy allowed Wil to take the reins from his hand and turned back toward the tack cabinet. Some part of Dallin was absently amused when the mare lipped at Wil’s hair—the greater part of him wanted to kick Wil’s arse. Hard. In fact, he’d forgotten all about the crossbow; it had been strapped to the saddle when Dallin had left the horses at the post by the gates when they’d arrived, and he hadn’t even thought about it since.
Dallin tilted Wil’s chin up until that throbbing green gaze slid into his. “I don’t need it. It’s done nothing but get in the way. Just put a stop to this now—we have to go, and you don’t look well.”
Wil smiled at him, loose and too far away. “All the ammunition we can get.” He reached out and latched on to Dallin’s cloak. “There’s so much of it.” His face twisted in vague bewilderment. “I could wander forever.”
Dallin didn’t really understand what Wil was talking about, but that last statement woke him to it like a hammer to the thumb. He gripped Wil’s hand.
“What are you doing? Pushing?”
“Tending.” Wil sighed and closed his eyes. He swayed. “Dreaming awake. It’s… really quite lovely.” A small laugh, and he shook his head. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“Doesn’t hurt, that’s good, Wil.” Dallin made himself squelch rising panic. “I need you to stop it, all right?” The boy was coming back with the crossbow, quickening his steps when he saw how close Dallin had got to Wil, face darkening with possessive rage. Dallin leaned down to growl into Wil’s ear. “Wil, the lad is coming back, and now he’s armed. I’m going to get shot with my own bow if you don’t stop this.”
“Amazing. So much to see….”
Without even pulling away or opening his eyes, Wil held up a hand, flicked it. The lad stopped so quickly the mop of bright flax on his head flew back from his brow and then into his eyes as though he’d hit an invisible brick wall.
Dallin clenched his teeth, eyes flicking back and forth between the thwarted devotion of the boy and the beatific abstraction of Wil.
“All right, very nice, but stop it now. We have to go.”
Finally Wil opened his eyes. Dallin almost wished he hadn’t.
Dazzling muted sage flecked and eddied with churning malachite and twisted into Dallin’s chest with a sadness and regret that was near physical, sliding from Wil’s heart and into Dallin’s. Deep and old, years of pain and betrayal, sorrow and abandonment, and all of it winding over them like a rime of misted rain.
“It doesn’t hurt in here,” Wil whispered.
All that pain, all that anger, burbling up from a well the depth of which Dallin didn’t want to fathom—and there, inside wherever Wil was wandering now, it was gone. Inside with his patterns and his
threads and his pushing, Wil was, probably for the first time in his life, free.
Dallin almost pulled away, but he didn’t.
This was a connection he’d never wanted. If he’d known this was coming, back in that sooty, smoke-bitter cellar room, he would have backed away, shut himself down before it could cut him with the knowing. It’s all full of knives…. Dallin could feel them. And what was he supposed to do? Pluck one of them up? Plunge it into Wil’s heart?
Three chirps of the lark scattered through the stillness, the faint snicker of a squirrel.
Dallin blinked. His heart lumped up tight in his chest.
Circumstances long forgotten or put away down deep in his consciousness where he wouldn’t have to look at them, but the signal itself blared in Dallin’s head like a claxon. It took too long for it to wend into his awareness, took too long for his memory to kick in and chitter the meaning to his instincts.
A young boy, gold hair long and swaying over shoulders already widening, loping through the fields of his country with a careless smile, pushing and shoving at his mates and laughing—
Three chirps of the lark, the faint snicker of a squirrel.
Danger—take cover.
Calder was still outside keeping watch, chirping the code Dallin only remembered through a strange, vague twist of fright and nostalgia. And then the warning stopped, cut off between one trill and the next—a sharp cry, then the sound of bootheels clocking hard on the dry, packed dirt of the yard.
Dallin threw his glance to the open doors, hands clutching spasmodically on Wil, squeezing so hard Wil gasped. Dallin barely heard it, his heart thudding the hammer to the anvil in his head as the blue-clad figure pulled up abruptly in the doorway. Dallin loosened his grip.
“Corliss?”
“Brayden.” Corliss shook her auburn head and closed her eyes. “Oh shit.”
Limned in thin sunlight, her solid figure wavered just the smallest bit. Dallin didn’t know if she actually swayed or if his own senses had hiccupped. Her blue and brown, always worn so proudly, was muddy and rumpled, and her hair, almost always in a tight knot at the back of her head, fell in long, wavy wisps around her face. She looked exhausted, face pale, dark circles beneath her tired eyes.
Dream Page 25
