The Rancher's Daughter

by Kyra Halland

  “Don’t worry about it. Just bandage everything up. I’ll keep till we get back to town and see a doctor.”

  But that would take almost two days, or even longer in the shape he was in. Too long; the wounds would start to fester, and that broken arm would start to mend all wrong. She would just have to do the best she could with the ordinary doctoring she had picked up back home on the ranch.

  It occurred to Lainie that she hadn’t seen the horses since she was captured the day before. She looked around for Abenar and Mala, and spotted them standing just beyond the edge of the village, in a different place from where they had been tethered before. At least, like the good horses they were, they had had the sense to stay away from the fight but not run off. She stood up to go get the medical supplies from her and Silas’s bags.

  The fallen Ta’ayatan were starting to recover; many were sitting up, and a few had even made it to their feet. “You were supposed to help us!” a Ta’ayatan man called out.

  Lainie spun around, drawing breath to tell whoever it was exactly what she thought of that. Aktam – not the man who had spoken – started walking towards her and Silas. She snatched up Silas’s gun from the ground and swung it around to aim at him. It felt heavy and deadly in her hand. “Leave him alone!”

  Aktam stopped where he was and held his open, empty hands out to the side. “I’m sorry. We thought you would become a powerful weapon and help us defeat our enemies. We didn’t know it meant you would die. My grandfather didn’t tell us that – I don’t know if he even knew. All he told us was that if we offered those beings – those gods, he said they were – a servant, they would fill her with their power and she would lead us to victory.”

  “They weren’t gods,” Lainie said, anger and resentment bitter in her mouth. “Your wiseman was a fool. Those beings wouldn’t have helped you. They only care about themselves. They wanted a body they could take for themselves, so they could destroy everyone who lives on the surface of the world.”

  “The wiseman said he could command them!” the first man who had spoken said.

  “No one can command them! If they told him that, they lied.”

  “But our wiseman promised us that the time had come when we would take back our land from the ones who stole it from us!” a third man said.

  “Who stole your lands?” Lainie demanded. “When did that happen?”

  “Twenty-three generations of wisemen ago,” Aktam said.

  “That was a long time ago. How do you even know it really happened that way?”

  “But we were here first!” the third man said.

  “So? It seems to me you have plenty of land. And anyhow, even if they were gods, and even if you did have a good reason to start a war against the other clans, you should have had the stones to fight your battle yourselves instead of dragging someone else into it who doesn’t have anything to do with it.” She stalked past the scattered Ta’ayatan and over to the horses. While those idiots were trying to excuse what they had done, her husband was dying on the cold, muddy ground.

  Kesta hurried over and fell into step beside her. “I know some healing,” she said. “Let me help; it’s the least I can do for you.”

  Lainie’s reply stuck in her throat. She didn’t think she could bring herself to accept, not after Kesta had stood aside and let this happen.

  “I’m sorry,” Kesta went on. “Aktam and I, we didn’t know it would kill you, but we still knew it was wrong to force you into this. But we were afraid to speak up. My husband… He’s the wiseman’s heir, and he’ll be a better wiseman than his grandfather. He’ll help the clan prosper instead of stirring up trouble over things that happened generations ago that don’t matter any more. But he knew that if he disobeyed, his grandfather would choose another heir, one who wouldn’t be as good for the clan. As for me, Grandfather-in-law could have made my life very difficult if I defied him. Still, we should have had more courage. Please forgive us, and please let me make up for it.”

  Lainie stopped walking and looked at Kesta. Distress lined the A’ayimat woman’s plump, pleasant face. Then she looked back at Silas. He needed more help than she could give him, and though her hurt and anger were justified, they weren’t doing him any good. She let out a long breath, letting go of her pride along with it. “I’d be much obliged.”

  Kesta headed to her house, just beyond the destroyed part of the village, while Lainie fetched the medical supplies from the horses’ saddlebags. There was a knapsack hanging off of Mala’s saddle that Lainie didn’t recognize. Mr. Oferdon’s? she wondered. How had it gotten there, and how had Oferdon found them? Why had he come after them? She never would have guessed he was a mage.

  But he was. With a cold twist in her stomach, Lainie realized that, whether renegade or mage hunter or otherwise, he knew that she could take another mage’s power and use it. She had the feeling that was something the Mage Council definitely would not approve of. And he had gotten away. They couldn’t go after him now, not with Silas hurt as bad as he was, and her so worn out. She would just have to hope they could catch up with him before it was too late or that Oferdon would come back for his belongings and she could finish him off then. Or maybe she could get some help…

  She returned to Silas with the medical supplies, some blankets, and a spare set of clothes. He was shivering; not just from the cold, she was afraid, but also from blood loss and the shock of his injuries. She didn’t feel so good herself, weak and shaky, with the emptiness of her magical depletion gnawing at her even though she didn’t feel the usual hunger. No doubt having her spirit pushed most of the way out of her body also had something to do with how bad she felt. As she covered Silas with the blankets, a sudden wave of nausea and muscle cramps passed over her, and she shivered as well.

  “You okay, darlin’?” Silas asked.

  “Yeah. That fight really wore me out.” She started easing his clothes off of him. “So what’s the story with Oferdon?”

  “He’s a mage hunter,” Silas answered.

  “I never would have guessed, when we saw him back in town.”

  “He’d been watching Coltor for months for evidence he’d gone rogue. Never found anything. He didn’t even know about Coltor’s daughter. Then I crossed his path, and he decided to go for the big, easy payoff. Did you know there’s an eight hundred gilding bounty out on me?”

  “Eight hundred?” Lainie exclaimed. From what Silas had told her, that was a good two years’ or more worth of bounties. But it didn’t make sense. She opened the flask of homebrewed rotgut from the Dusty Demon in Ripgap, that Silas swore would kill any infestation, and poured some on the needle-nose pliers from the medical kit and on Silas’s wounds. “What about the assassination order?”

  Silas sucked in a hard breath. “Ouch, damn, that hurts. Oferdon said he confirmed the bounty right before he came after me, and the Mage Council didn’t say anything about an assassination order. The bounty terms were dead or alive.”

  “So it must not be the Mage Council that sent Fazar after you,” Lainie said as she worked the arrow out of his right arm, hoping the conversation would take his mind off what she was doing.

  “Or not the Council as a whole.” Silas’s voice was tight with pain. “A small faction, more likely. And it seems they’re working without the knowledge of the full Council. Unless the bounty is a ploy to keep the assassinations a secret.”

  Lainie’s head spun. Plots within plots… Ranching was much simpler.

  Kesta knelt beside Lainie, holding a small clay jar. When Lainie finished cleaning the injuries on Silas’s front, the A’ayimat woman smeared whitish ointment from the jar over them. “So they don’t fester,” she said. She set her right hand on each injury for a few heartbeats. “I have enough power left to give his body a little help to start the healing. Just a little; if you force the healing all at once, it’ll take too much of his strength.”

  Lainie nodded her understanding. She was glad Kesta didn’t say anything about why she only had a lit
tle power left; she wasn’t ready to discuss that with Silas, especially not with anyone else around. And she was relieved to know that she hadn’t Stripped Kesta and the other Ta’ayatan by taking their power.

  When Kesta was done, Lainie cleaned the open wound on Silas’s broken arm and did her best to push the bones back into place as he let out a rolling, rumbling string of Island curses. Kesta used a little magic to finish setting the arm and dressed it with ointment, then Lainie bandaged and splinted it.

  They rolled Silas over so they could tend the injuries on his back and behind his right knee, and Lainie picked up the conversation again to distract him from the pain. “How did Oferdon catch up with us so fast? He must have been right behind us the whole time, and we never knew it.”

  “When the old man captured you, that attack threw me and the horses clear back to the canyon where we started.”

  “He was that strong?” She couldn’t even imagine that much power, or the strength to carry out a feat like that. No wonder the wiseman had thought he could control the Old Ones.

  Silas went on, telling her in broken sentences how Oferdon had ambushed him in the canyon and how Silas had made a deal to split Coltor’s fee with him if he helped rescue her and get Shayla.

  “But we weren’t going to take Shayla back to Coltor,” Lainie said.

  “No, but Oferdon didn’t need to know that. I shook him up a little, helped him see that he was in way over his head with this mage hunting business, and figured once I got you back I’d give him most of our money and send him scurrying back to Granadaia glad to get out of here alive. Turns out I figured wrong. He decided he’d kill me and send in my mage ring for the eight hundred gildings, and take Coltor’s daughter and collect the whole payment himself. So he shot me in the back while I was standing there thinking you were dead.”

  “That traitorous, sneaking, lying, back-stabbing coward.” In her indignation, Lainie pulled the bandage she was wrapping around Silas’s right leg a little too tight.

  “Easy there, darlin’.”

  “Sorry.” She loosened the bandage a little, tied it off, then sat back and looked at her handiwork. It wasn’t the most skilled doctoring, but with any luck it would hold him until they got back to town and could see a real doctor.

  She dressed Silas in his spare clothing, helped him to sit up leaning against the altar, then fashioned a bandana into a sling for his arm. Already he didn’t look nearly as bad as he had before. His hat lay nearby; she placed it carefully on his head.

  Another spasm of sickness passed through her. She wished this sick, shaky, nervous feeling, as though she’d drunk too much chickroot brew, would go away. In some ways, it was even worse than the normal magical hunger. At least with that she knew what she wanted and what to expect; this sickness was making her want something that she couldn’t begin to guess what it was, and she had no idea what to do about it.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Silas asked.

  “Yeah. Just tired and drained.” She looked for Aktam; he was standing near Kesta, holding the baby. “Aktam.”

  “Yes?” Aktam answered.

  If he was really as sorry as he had tried to convince her he was, now was his chance to prove it. “There’s something I want you to do for us.”

  “What is it?”

  “The man who shot my husband and got away. I want you to take some men and look for him.” The snow was starting up again; it would cover up Oferdon’s tracks if it was too heavy and went on too long. “Go as soon as you can.”

  “I’ll do that,” Aktam replied. “What should we do with him if we find him?”

  She didn’t know how much Silas knew about what she had done with Oferdon’s power and how dangerous it would be if he managed to let the Mage Council know, but she was sure he had his own reasons to not want to let Oferdon get away. She wondered if Miss Tennir had any idea that Oferdon was a mage. It made her sad to think of that nice lady lawyer having her heart broken, but, really, she was better off without that lying, cowardly snake. She and Silas looked at each other, and she knew he was thinking the same thing she was. “Kill him,” they both said.

  Aktam nodded. “We will.”

  Lainie left Silas to rest while she returned the medical supplies to their bags. Activity stirred around her as more clansfolk recovered and started tending to the injured and cleaning up the damage from her attacks. She was relieved to see that no more than a few of the men who’d tried to attack Silas appeared to be seriously injured or dead, though the sight of a woman with three young children at her side weeping over one man’s body stabbed at her heart. It wasn’t guilt or remorse she felt; after all, the man had been trying to kill her own husband. Rather, she felt sad and angry that the old wiseman’s ambitions had brought matters to this terrible pass. She cursed him and hoped he was in whatever hells existed for the A’ayimat.

  Not far from the altar, Aleet was kneeling beside Mikat, talking to him. Shayla stood at her back, clinging to her. Lainie supposed she should be glad for Aleet’s sake that Mikat was alive, even though she would have laid money now that it had been Mikat’s idea to substitute her as the offering. Still, better her than Shayla; the child would have been helpless against the Old Ones. And, again, none of this would have happened in the first place if it hadn’t been for the wiseman’s greed, and the clan’s.

  Kesta followed Lainie over to the horses. “Take this.” She handed Lainie the pot of ointment. “Use it five times every day to keep the wounds from festering.”

  Lainie took the ointment. “Thanks.”

  Kesta leaned closer to speak in a low voice. “I hope you don’t mind if I say that your husband is very handsome. For a Grana man.”

  That took Lainie by surprise. The A’ayimat were so different-looking, she wouldn’t have thought a blueskin woman would find a Granadaian man handsome, even one as handsome as Silas. “Thank you,” she replied, falling back on common good manners. “I think so too. So is yours.” She wasn’t sure if Aktam was or not, but it seemed the polite thing to say.

  “Yes, he is.” Kesta lowered her voice even more. “I wanted to ask you, do all Grana men have hair on their chests? That’s a strange place for hair to grow.”

  Of all the things she could be talking about in the aftermath of what had happened, with a member of the clan that had tried to kill her and Silas, this was the last thing Lainie would have expected. Fortunately, she had seen more than her fair share of shirtless ranch hands back on her father’s ranch, and was able to come up with an answer. “Most of them do. Some more, some less.”

  “How does it feel? Do you like it? Doesn’t it tickle?”

  Lainie’s face grew warm at the very personal questions. “I, well, I never really thought about it. I suppose it does. I don’t mind, though. It feels nice to touch.”

  “Aleet said that Coltor is hairy all over like a bear.”

  Lainie wasn’t sure that was something she wanted to know. A vision of a naked, furry Coltor came into her mind; quickly, she banished it.

  “I don’t think I would like that,” Kesta went on. “But Aleet said she did.”

  “Oh,” Lainie said. “Well –”

  And then the significance of what Kesta had said struck her. She supposed she couldn’t speak for everyone, but going by her own feelings on the matter, she couldn’t imagine that any woman who had been raped would say she liked anything about her attacker’s body or looks. Fazar came into her memory, and she shuddered. He had groped her when he first came across her and Silas, and had tried to rape her. Even though he hadn’t completed the deed, the very thought of him made her sick. Not that there had been anything not to loathe in the first place. “Isn’t it funny how different people like different things?” she finally managed to say.

  “It is.” Kesta smiled. “Aktam is waving at me – I have to go now. Don’t forget, use that ointment five times a day.”

  She walked away, back to her husband and baby, while Lainie stood thunderstruck by what she had ju
st learned. Had Kesta intended to let her know the truth about Aleet and Coltor, or had it just been some friendly girl-to-girl gossip, an attempt to smooth things over? Either way, it looked like Coltor wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been completely honest with her and Silas. They were going to have to have another talk with Aleet very soon.

  Lainie tucked the box of ointment into the saddlebags with the other medical supplies, then took some food and a water bottle back over to Silas.

  “What were you two talking about over there?” he asked when she crouched down beside him. His voice was still rough and weak, but his color was better and the lines of pain on his face had relaxed.

  What Kesta had said was also better left for when they could speak in private. And the memory of the more personal parts of the conversation made her cheeks burn again. “Women stuff.”

  “I probably don’t want to know, then.” He drank some water and chewed some jerky. “Were you talking about me?”

  She glanced sideways at him and smiled. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “On the other hand, maybe I don’t.”

  Chapter 13

  SILAS FINISHED HIS jerky. “It’s cold out here, and my butt’s freezing. Let’s go set up the tent.”

  Lainie shivered again. “Yeah, I’m cold too.”

  Leaning heavily on Lainie, Silas got to his feet. He didn’t really need help; a handful of flesh wounds, some cuts and burns, a broken arm, and a knot on his head didn’t make him an invalid. And he was already feeling considerably better; the young A’ayimat woman who had helped Lainie tend to him was a skilled healer. But he accepted Lainie’s assistance anyway, just to be able to hold her close. After those awful moments when he had thought she was dead, when it felt like his heart had been torn from his body, it was all he could do to convince himself that she really was alive. In truth, she looked far worse than he felt, and by the time they made it over to the horses, she was hanging on to him for support as much as he was leaning on her.