The Rancher's Daughter

by Kyra Halland

  Lainie struggled to think through the aches and sickness. She must have taken a blow to her head, and that was making it hard for her to use her mage senses. If she couldn’t locate Silas that way, she would just have to free herself and go searching for him. Calling to mind all the various spells and uses of magic Silas had taught her, she focused on the bindings around her wrists. Again, as she tried to use her power, the pain, cramps, and sickness swept over her, and, instead of loosening, the ropes got tighter.

  A sick realization nearly made her mind go blank. Had the old priest Stripped her? Frantically, Lainie sought the warm, rose-colored presence of her power inside her. It was still there, but it felt muffled and dull, as though an invisible barrier separated her from it. She tried to push through the barrier; yet another spasm of nausea and cramping pain repulsed her efforts.

  The old priest must have put a spell on her to keep her from using her power. What did he want with her? What had he wanted with Shayla? Lainie lay shivering on the ground, trying to will away the aches and pains and work out what she and Shayla had in common that the wiseman would be so interested in.

  For starters, they were both the daughters of ranchers, one much richer than the other. If it was ransom the Ta’ayatan wanted, Lainie wouldn’t bring nearly as much as Shayla. They were both female, and both young, though Lainie was a woman grown and Shayla was just a child. Shayla was the daughter of a Granadaian mage and an A’ayimat woman who was also gifted with magic. Lainie was Granadaian by blood, but Wildings born and bred. Both she and Shayla possessed a potent mix of Granadaian and native Wildings power.

  Now the answer seemed clear. What else could the wiseman would want with a young female of mixed powers, but to breed a powerful new line of hybrid mages?

  But Shayla was six, far too young to bear children. And, though it was hard to tell the A’ayimats’ ages, Lainie didn’t reckon that the wiseman would live long enough to see Shayla reach maturity. So he couldn’t have meant to take Shayla as his own mate. Did he have a son or grandson who would be the father of the new breed of mages?

  Her muscles tensed in instinctive resistance. Whether it was the old man or someone else, she vowed, she wouldn’t let them do it. Orl Fazar had thought to use her that way, and she had killed him. She would kill these people too, or make them kill her, before she let them force her to lie with a man who wasn’t Silas, before she let them breed her like a prize horse.

  Footsteps approached behind her, the soft sound pounding like a hammer in her aching head. A pair of callused, filthy, dark blue feet and bare, bandy legs walked into her field of vision, then stopped in front of her. Lainie turned her head very carefully, just enough to look up at the wiseman gazing down at her.

  He smiled, showing straggly brown teeth. “I beg your pardon for using such forceful means to gain your cooperation,” he said. “It was necessary in order to avoid further damage to the village and to the clan.”

  “Where’s my husband?” Lainie demanded.

  The wiseman shrugged. “The Grana wizard is not my concern, except to make sure he doesn’t cause any trouble. My only interest is you. You will make a most acceptable offering.” He walked away.

  Offering. That didn’t sound like they meant to breed her, but she had the feeling this wasn’t any better. “Hey, wait!” she shouted.

  He didn’t answer.

  * * *

  THE DARKNESS FADED. Silas remembered an explosion of light and noise, as if lightning had struck right in front of him. It couldn’t have been lightning, though. Lightning probably would have killed him, and judging by the fact that his head felt like it was being cracked open with a mallet and wedge, he must still be alive. Unless one of the hells involved brain-splitting headaches.

  Cautiously, he opened his eyes to see a fading, cloudy sky above him and two steep mountain slopes to either side. Even the little light left in the sky burned into his eyes. Dampness seeped through his clothing. He tried to sit up, but pain exploded in his skull and he sank back onto the cold, rough ground. Something was missing… He felt around and found his hat. He put it over his face to shield his eyes, then lay as he was until the headache started to subside and he could think again.

  He was in a canyon. He had been in the Ta’ayatan village, which was not in a canyon but in a shallow valley. He must have been moved while he was unconscious. But why? What had happened, and where was he now?

  Lainie’s terrified face came into his memory. He recalled the Ta’ayatan crowding around her, separating her from him. She lunged for his outstretched hand, the wiseman’s magical rope caught her and pulled her back, she screamed for him and then everything exploded –

  “Lainie!” He sat up abruptly, and his head blew itself to pieces. He held still, breathing hard and fighting back nausea, until the worst of the headache retreated again. His hat had fallen off; he pushed it back onto his head and looked around. Abenar and Mala stood nearby, grazing on some grass sticking through the thin blanket of snow. There was no sign of Lainie.

  He struggled to put the pieces together with his aching, dazed brain. She had been captured by the A’ayimat wiseman, taken in exchange for Shayla. Whatever the old priest had wanted the child for, it was something the mother had been desperate to avoid.

  Fear constricted his chest. “Lainie!” he shouted, then again, more urgently, “Lainie!”

  In response, he heard only the fading echoes of his own voice.

  He had to get back to the village. He tried to stand up but his weak, battered body refused to obey him. He crawled over to Abenar and hung on to the stirrups and saddle as he dragged himself to his feet. Once he was upright, he stood leaning against the big gray for support and looked around. Now he recognized the lower reaches of the canyon he and Lainie had followed up into the Blueclouds. The A’ayimat markers were no more than three measures further down.

  His foggy mind grappled with this. How in all the hells had he ended up all the way back here, more than a day and a half’s travel from the Ta’ayatan settlement? And how much time had gone by since Lainie was captured?

  There was no time to stand around thinking about it. By the time he made it all the way back to the village, he might be too late to save her – if he wasn’t already too late. He tried to haul himself up into Abenar’s saddle, but his arms and legs gave way and he sank down to the ground again.

  He crouched there, holding his pounding head in his hands, hating his weakness. Some protector he was. He’d let Carden get hold of Lainie, and then Fazar – twice – and now this. Burrett Banfrey would have his hide, and rightfully so. “Damn,” he muttered. “Gods-damned sheepknocking blueskin sons of bitches…” There had to be something he could do besides sit there and swear, but his head hurt so bad he couldn’t think of anything.

  The cold, round muzzle of a gun pressed against his right temple. A click sounded in his ear as the gun was cocked, then a strangely familiar voice said, “Silas Vendine. Or, should I say, Siyavas Venedias?”

  “Oh, hells,” Silas grumbled. He forced himself to hold still; with the trigger cocked, it would take only a twitch of the man’s finger to blow Silas’s brains out. Much as his head hurt, he still didn’t relish that idea.

  “I knew somehow you wouldn’t be as happy to see me as I am to see you.”

  Where had he heard that voice before? “Who the hell are you?”

  Keeping the muzzle pressed against Silas’s head, the man switched his gun from his right hand to his left as he moved into Silas’s line of vision. For a brief moment, Silas was sure the explosion had done more damage to his head than he had thought. “Oferdon? Miss Tennir’s bookkeeper beau?”

  Oferdon grinned and held up his right hand. The forefinger bore a wide band of silver set with a brownish-yellow stone.

  It couldn’t be. “You’re a mage hunter?” Oferdon sure as all eight hells didn’t look the part, not with his natty, if slightly rumpled, striped suit and soft, sedentary appearance. His spectacles were gone; Silas wond
ered if they’d been fakes, for disguise only, since such products of foreign science were mostly banned in Granadaia.

  “I am, indeed.” Oferdon’s grin under his little mustache grew wider.

  Of all the blasted luck. He couldn’t believe it. He had checked Miss Tennir for power, and found no more than a faint trace suggesting a single mage ancestor generations back, but he hadn’t thought to check Oferdon. As far as he had been concerned, Oferdon was just the bookkeeper from across the hall, called into the lawyer’s office for half a minute to witness the contract. It figured that his one lapse in checking for power would come back to bite him at the worst possible time.

  “I’d been watching Coltor for the last eight months,” Oferdon went on. “I knew he was a mage under cover, but I couldn’t pin him down for anything that would actually make him rogue. And then look who falls right into my lap. Silas Vendine, the most-wanted renegade mage of all. The rumors about you would curl your hair. Do you have any idea what the bounty is on you?”

  “No, I don’t, but I’m sure you won’t mind telling me.”

  “Eight. Hundred. Gildings. Dead or alive.”

  Silas’s mind reeled. Eight hundred gildings. More than twice what he used to collect in a good year of hunting. “That’s all? I’m disappointed.” Then the rest of what Oferdon had said hit him. “Wait, wait, wait. You said dead or alive? Not just dead?”

  “That’s right. Dead or alive. You might be easier to deal with dead, but I like the idea of leading the bad boy of the Venedias family back into Sandostra at the end of a rope.”

  “Are you sure that’s the deal?”

  “Absolutely. The bounty was put out on you late in the summer, and when I realized who had walked in right under my nose, I sent the Mage Council a message to see if the bounty was still being offered, and that’s what they told me. Eight hundred gildings, dead or alive.”

  Why would the Mage Council offer the considerable sum of eight hundred gildings to have him possibly brought in alive when they wanted him dead? “That’s strange. Last I knew, last summer, they’d put out an assassination order on me.”

  Oferdon shrugged. Silas winced as the muzzle of the cocked revolver twitched up and down against the side of his head. “I don’t know anything about any assassination order,” Oferdon said. “Now, are we going to do this the easy way or are you going to make it hard on yourself?”

  Silas doubted Oferdon really posed a threat to him – except for the gun pointed at his head. Still, this was going to be a pain in the ass to deal with. He didn’t want Oferdon getting in the way while he was trying to rescue Lainie; nor did he want Oferdon to report back to the Mage Council that he’d found him. “Look,” he said, “if you’re not ready to fire that thing yet, would you mind taking it away from my head and pointing it somewhere else?” Like at yourself. “I’m in no condition to make any trouble at the moment, and I want to talk.”

  “What? Oh, of course.” Oferdon lowered the revolver and uncocked it. “So, Vendine, what do you want to talk about? Make it quick; I’d like to get on with the business of apprehending you and collecting that bounty.”

  “You say you don’t know anything about an assassination order?”

  “Indeed I do not.”

  So, either it was a faction of the Mage Council working without the knowledge of the Council as a whole who had ordered his, Horden’s, and Bissom’s deaths, or it was the Mage Council and the bounty was a ploy to keep the assassinations a secret. That would make sense if the Mage Council wanted to make sure as few people as possible found out about the Hidden Council’s organized opposition to them. The assassination orders had to be connected to the Hidden Council; he couldn’t think of anything else that he, Bissom, and Horden had had in common that would make them “inconvenient,” as Fazar had put it, to anyone. And he still hadn’t had a response to the messages he had sent the Hidden Council last summer, which lent further credence to his guess that the Hidden Council had been discovered and its members and allies purged.

  But none of this was any of Oferdon’s business. “Never mind. I suppose I heard wrong. So, tell me, does your lady lawyer know about you?”

  Oferdon laughed. “Her? Of course not. I’m not so big a fool as to seriously involve myself with a Wildings woman, much less tell her any secrets. She’s Coltor’s attorney and used to be his whore; I thought that by getting in cozy with her I’d be able to dig up some information about him.”

  “She really loves you, you know. The gods alone know why, but she does.”

  The bookkeeper shrugged. “So it seems. That’s too bad. I’ve got a real wife back in Granadaia.”

  Silas gritted his teeth. Oferdon’s words were all too typical of the smug, unthinking superiority that permeated Granadaian mage society, that he had turned his back on in disgust years ago. “You don’t care if you hurt her?”

  “She’s Plain,” Oferdon said, as if that explained everything. “Now, this has been a pleasant little chat, but I’m getting tired of waiting. Are you going to cooperate and let me take you in, or do I have to shoot you and send them your mage ring?” He toyed with the revolver in his hand.

  Silas let out a sigh that was more of a growl, and his own shooting hand twitched for his gun. He should just shoot the fool, but it hardly seemed like fair play, and he didn’t want to have to tell Miss Tennir that he had killed her fiancé. But neither did he want Oferdon running around on the loose to cause the gods knew what sort of trouble. A plan was taking shape in his mind; he just needed to be patient, and work to turn Oferdon’s greed to his own advantage.

  He shifted a bit, discreetly positioning himself to be ready to move when the time was right. He was surprised to find that he was feeling a little better, but he tried to hide his improved condition. Let Oferdon go on thinking he had the advantage a little longer. With an exaggerated groan, he fidgeted a little more as though trying to get comfortable. “You said you never found anything on Coltor.”

  “No,” Oferdon said sulkily. “Not one broken law, not a single irregularity.”

  “You haven’t been paying attention, then. Coltor has a half-A’ayimat daughter.”

  “What?” Oferdon burst out. “But that’s impossible! The blueskins aren’t even human! I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s the truth. About seven years ago, Coltor kidnapped an A’ayimat woman and forced her to bear him a child.”

  “I never saw a daughter!”

  “She was living out on his ranch. You mean you never went out there while you were investigating him?”

  “I most certainly did! Though I didn’t look around very much, I mostly checked for magic being used.”

  Silas snorted. Amateur. He had seen at least half a dozen of this type in the eastern part of the Wildings the last few years, which in large part was why he had decided to head out farther west and ended up in Bitterbush Springs. Their heads stuffed full of stories of treasure and exciting adventures, they mostly got in the way of the real hunters and even, from time to time, got themselves or someone else killed. He would be doing Oferdon a favor by scaring a little sense into him.

  Oferdon’s face flushed. “You know what? I don’t believe you. You’re making this up to distract me.” He raised his gun again. “I’ve had enough talk. Are you going to cooperate now, or do I have to shoot you?”

  “I haven’t come to the point yet,” Silas said in a leisurely manner.

  Oferdon’s face went even redder. “Then would you very kindly get to the point!”

  “Fine. Though I hate to ruin a good story by rushing it. Anyhow, Coltor has a half-A’ayimat daughter. A little over a nineday ago, the daughter was taken from his ranch house by blueskins. Coltor values the child and wants her back. He’d heard that I’m available for odd jobs that require my unique set of skills, so he hired me and my wife to find the girl. You didn’t even read that document you witnessed, did you?”

  “I didn’t need to. Once I saw your signature at the bottom, I didn’t care ab
out Coltor any more. And I figured I’d better get out of there before you caught on to me.”

  “That document was the contract of hire, in which Coltor agreed to pay us two thousand gildings for bringing his daughter back.”

  The number had the effect he had hoped it would have. Oferdon’s eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “Two thousand gildings,” he breathed.

  “We found her,” Silas said, “but we ran into some trouble. The A’ayimat captured my wife and ejected me from their lands. If you’ll come with me and help me get Lainie and the little girl, I’ll split Coltor’s fee with you. A thousand gildings for each of us.” Of course, he had no intention of actually taking Shayla back to Coltor, but there was no need to mention that now. He could deal with that later, buy Oferdon off with a good chunk of what he and Lainie had left of the advance payment and send him scuttling back to Granadaia with a healthy fear of the avenging wrath of Silas Vendine and Brin Coltor, grateful to get out of the Wildings with some money and his life.

  Oferdon licked his lips, clearly tempted. “I’d be taking a considerable risk, teaming up with a known renegade. I think my share should be more than half.”

  “Twelve hundred for you, eight hundred for me?” Silas suggested. Not that it mattered.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of sixteen hundred for me, four hundred for you. After all, I assume you’d also want me to let you go.”

  Silas made his move. In a heartbeat, he pulled Oferdon into a chokehold and put his revolver to the bookkeeper’s head. “Damn right you’d let me go. Listen to me, greenfoot. I’m doing you a favor telling you this. You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into out here. If Coltor or a real renegade had caught onto you, you’d be stone cold dead now. You’re lucky you ran into me when I’m in a good mood and that I don’t want to have to tell that nice lady lawyer I shot your sorry ass. Even if she is better off without you. You’ll help me get my wife and the little girl, and then you’ll take your gods-damned thousand gildings or whatever I feel like giving you and go back to Granadaia like a good boy. And if you ever say anything to anyone about me or my wife or Brin Coltor, we’ll find out and we’ll hunt you down like a rabid coyote. Got it?”