The Silvered

by Tanya Huff

  “Sergeant Black…”

  “Will go with you.” Thus ensuring they’d actually make it out of Aydori.

  Geurin nodded, although at what, precisely, Reiter wasn’t sure. “We were sent to this place on the road because all six mages were Seen here. She can’t be far.”

  The tangles were surprisingly heavy given how little substance they had, and the last tangle seemed to weigh as much as all six had combined. As Reiter slid it into his pocket, he wondered if that was because it carried the weight of the Soothsayers’ prophecy or the weight that would come down on his ass if he returned without the sixth mage.

  * * *

  The pain had faded, no longer knives driven in through her temples but a dull, unpleasant, albeit bearable, throbbing. Fresh knives stabbed in if she attempted to use her power. A lesser but constant pain if she remained quiescent. Danika gritted her teeth and squared her shoulders. Her power was not all she was. If these creatures who had slaughtered Lady Berin and Marinka thought she would crumble and beg, they could think again. She was the Alpha Female of the Aydori Pack and would not show her throat to the enemy.

  Moving only her eyes, she checked on the captured Mage-pack.

  Annalyse still had her head down, shoulders shaking as she wept—probably for Lady Berin, possibly for them all. Jesine, Sirlin’s wife, was sitting up, weight back on her heels, eyes closed, chest rising and falling as she breathed deeply. The highest level Healer-mage in the Mage-pack, it was possible she could control the pain caused by the net. Beside her, Stina Menkyczk, wife to one of the senior officers of the Hunt Pack—widow now if Tomas was right and the entire Hunt Pack had been destroyed—dug her hands into the dirt of the road and whimpered. Danika didn’t know if her pain came from fighting the net or because her niece lay dead and her niece’s baby daughter continued to wail, not understanding that her mama could not rise and change and go to her. Kirstin Yervick stared wide-eyed around her, met Danika’s gaze and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood. She’d left twin ten-year-old sons with their grandparents in Trouge to travel with her husband to Bercarit. Danika was actually impressed that Kirstin was holding her tongue. It wasn’t something the other Air-mage was known for. Sarcasm, yes. Silence, no.

  Danika couldn’t turn far enough to check the servants, but now that they’d stopped fighting to get past the soldiers, they seemed safe enough. She could hear Natali, Lady Berin’s maid, murmuring a string of complex curses and could only hope none of the enemy spoke more than the very basic Aydori the lieutenant had attempted.

  The golden net wrapped around Danika’s head stopped her from raising the winds and throwing these men back across the border like ragdolls, but voices were only air given form and texture and the breeze blew past the two officers talking quietly behind the carriage.

  “When wild and mage together come, one in six or six in one. Empires rise or empires fall, the unborn child begins it all.”

  Her hand moved unbidden to her belly. Soothsayers who lived far enough in the future to give voice to “prophecy” were so insane every word could have a dozen different meanings. Danika had heard rumors that Emperor Leopald kept Soothsayers at the Imperial Court, but she’d had no idea he was actually mad enough to use them to determine policy.

  As the lieutenant explained why they weren’t to be murdered, the sound of retching pulled Danika’s attention back to the road in time to see one of the soldiers send Jesine sprawling as she tried to move toward Annalyse, now bent double, spewing her half-digested breakfast onto the dirt.

  Time to stop pretending she didn’t speak Imperial.

  “Sergeant Black!” He started and turned, drawn by the command in her voice. “That woman is a Healer.” Danika nodded toward Jesine, who drew herself up onto her knees, gold-flecked eyes narrowed, teeth bared. “And that woman…” A nod to Annalyse, a line of saliva stretching between her mouth and the stain on the road. “…requires her services.”

  “She can’t do a healing with the tangle on,” the sergeant pointed out, one hand raised to hold the surrounding men silent and in place, his eyes locked on Danika’s face.

  “Healing isn’t only about mage-craft, Sergeant.”

  After a long moment he nodded, hand moving so his thumb could stroke the thick scar along his jaw. “No, it ain’t. All right, then. Tell her she can do her healin’, but if her hands touch the tangle, Hare’ll shoot her.” As Sergeant Black spoke his name, a soldier slightly older than the others, his dark hair streaked with gray, lifted his weapon to his shoulder. “And just so you know, m’Lady, Hare’s got one of the new rifled muskets and he never misses.”

  “Thank you for the warning, Sergeant. You can go to her, Jes,” she continued in Aydori. “Don’t touch the gold net.”

  “Or what?” Jesine muttered, crawling to where Annalyse was now dry heaving. “They’ll shoot me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Not really.”

  “This doesn’t mean you lot can start talkin’.” Sergeant Black cut Stina off before she managed more than an indeterminate sound. Understanding the tone, if not the words, Stina shut her mouth with a snap and glared up at him. If looks alone could kill, the sergeant wouldn’t have survived the encounter.

  “You speak Imperial very well.”

  Although her heart slammed against her ribs, Danika kept herself from visibly reacting to the sudden presence behind her. The younger Pack members were always playing stalk and pounce; those who reacted, soon became a favorite target. “Thank you, Captain Reiter.” His voice was deeper than the younger officer’s.

  “And how well do the others speak Imperial?”

  “Everyone speaks a little Imperial, Captain.” Stina spoke a very little, but Danika had no idea how much she understood. Jesine could manage if everyone involved spoke slowly. Kirstin was as fluent as Danika was—there was no way she’d allow her rival the advantage. Danika wasn’t certain about Annalyse as she’d known the younger woman for barely a week. “The language, like the empire, is…pervasive.”

  “True. Stand up.”

  “You don’t give me orders, Captain.”

  “And I don’t have time for this.”

  His hand around her upper arm was more competent than cruel, but intent mattered very little given the sudden flare of pain when he hauled her to her feet. When he released her, she staggered forward, stumbled, and flung out her arms to stop herself from falling. The sudden movement added yet more pain, and it raged through her body like a storm before dissipating through the soles of her feet. She sagged with the relief of its going, then straightened her back, slowly lifted her head, and turned to face the captain.

  Reiter was younger than Danika expected; tall but lean with pale eyes, a beak of a nose, hair that indeterminate color between blond and brown, and reddish-brown stubble over a pointed chin. He might have been attractive if not for Lady Berin’s blood still smeared over his face. The competence in his touch extended to his expression. He had the look of a professional soldier, a man who would get the job done no matter how distasteful he personally found it.

  “Good, they can walk.” He spoke Imperial with the careful diction of a man promoted from the ranks and thrown in among the sons of aristocracy. “Tie their hands behind them.”

  “They can’t remove the tangles, Captain.” The lieutenant, whose name Danika hadn’t yet heard, was clearly one of those privileged sons. His uniform had not merely been tailored, but made-to-measure, and his accent had the supercilious sound of the Court about it. “Removal requires another artifact.”

  “Does it? Tie their hands anyway,” the captain continued, “as I doubt they’ll take your word for it and I don’t want them damaged beyond their ability to walk.”

  “So kind,” Danika murmured, carefully inclining her head toward him.

  His cheeks under the patina of blood flushed slightly, but that was the only sign he’d heard. “One man in each squad keeps them upright and moving. You go back the w
ay we came in.”

  Was he not going with them? Danika wondered. The lieutenant’s youth might make him easier to manipulate, but he looked like the type who felt he had to keep proving his power.

  Before the lieutenant could acknowledge the captain’s order, Natali’s cursing grew louder as, finished with the soldiers themselves, she began to wish nightmares and diseases on their descendants. Danika heard Kirstin giggle and then bite the sound off before it slid into hysteria.

  The next sequence of sound began with a musket butt slamming against bone, the impact of a body with the ground, a slight scuffle, and a sudden uneasy silence broken by the baby’s hiccup.

  Captain Reiter turned just far enough Danika could see past him to where Natali lay crumpled on the ground. The others stood glaring but still, and Marinka’s maid—Danika hated that she couldn’t remember the girl’s name—cuddled little Talia, her cheek pressed against the baby’s golden hair. When the captain turned back, his gesture took in all five of the captured mages. “Is one of you the mother?”

  She did not look at Marinka’s golden-furred body, not wanting to bring the contempt these men had for the Pack down on her child. Hands curled into fists, she could feel her fingernails cutting into her palms. “No.” She didn’t trust her voice with more than the single word.

  “Good.” The captain also did not look, a muscle jumping in his jaw as he stopped himself from turning his head. “Tie the servants. Make sure the girl can tend the baby.” When no one obeyed immediately, his lips drew back off his teeth. “Move!”

  Ryder couldn’t have done it better.

  The thought brought a different kind of pain. Danika whispered her husband’s name, allowing the breeze to take it. It would find him.

  She missed the captain’s instructions to the lieutenant, but heard the younger man ask, “Where will you search?”

  Search? And then she remembered. The prophecy had sent these Imperial soldiers into Aydori to capture six mages, not five. Six. One in six or six in one.

  “She can’t be far.” He glanced back along the long curve of the road toward the city. “I see no carriages heading up from Bercarit, so I’ll take the boys up the road; take a look at what’s around that corner. Move as fast as you can. Don’t wait if you get to the wagons before we catch up.”

  Danika got the impression that the last bit of the captain’s order was more for Sergeant Black than the lieutenant. It seemed that the captain believed the lieutenant less than capable in the woods. That could work in their favor, slowing them enough to allow Ryder to find them before they reached the border.

  As for the sixth mage, Danika had no idea who the Soothsayers could have meant. Only eight of the Mage-pack had been in Bercarit and the three men had gone to stop the advance of the Imperial army. While it was more likely that the Soothsayers’ crazed babbling had been misinterpreted, it was possible that one of the others had been alerted by the refugees arriving in Trouge and was even now heading back toward Bercarit to help.

  Barely parting her lips, she breathed out a warning. Unrestrained, any one of the Mage-pack could send these Imperials across the border, tails between their legs.

  * * *

  They retrieved their packs before moving into the woods, both to cut off the corner and maintain the element of surprise. Reiter could hear raised voices even before they regained the road.

  At his left shoulder, Chard snickered. “Someone’s gettin’ an earful, Cap.”

  “Captain.”

  “Sergeant Black calls you…”

  “You’re not Sergeant Black. You haven’t earned the right.” Without Black, Chard would push. But Reiter had been a sergeant once himself; he could handle young men with delusions of experience.

  The carriage, pulled as close to the far side of the road as it could go without putting the far wheels in the ditch, was a little smaller than the three they’d stopped. Reiter knew squat about carriages, but it seemed of similar quality—shiny reddish-brown paint, tarted up with unnecessary brass. No wolf’s-head crest, so it was unlikely it belonged to the mage they sought. Still, the Soothsayers had said six, six at this place in the road and it was the only carriage in sight.

  The upper-class woman leaning out the open door, one hand clutching the overcoat of the equally upper-class man standing on the road, was clearly demanding he get back in. Some situations needed no translation.

  The man was neither one of the beastmen nor a soldier.

  The old servant at the pony’s head—gray hair, neat black clothes—was equally no threat. The coachman had a musket, but, in spite of their situation, hadn’t pulled it from the scabbard. If he was smart, that lack of foresight could save his life. Civilians died in wars, but Reiter avoided adding to their numbers when he could. He assumed there’d be a maid of some kind inside the carriage. Unless Aydori maids were combat trained, he doubted she’d give them much trouble.

  He sent Best to the front of the carriage, Armin to the rear, and kept Chard with him.

  The coachman, as expected, saw them first. He froze and remained frozen, hands lifted well away from his musket when he realized Chard could drop him where he sat. By the time the woman’s eyes widened and she fell silent, Best and Armin were in place. She jerked the sleeve she held until the man wearing it turned.

  Reiter ignored them both and pulled the tangle from his pocket. The coach was already stopped; he could have flung the artifact from the trees had he thought of it. Not that it mattered. It hung limp from the end of his finger.

  “Maybe it’s broke,” Chard muttered.

  Possible. Unfortunately, Reiter had no way of checking without a mage. One not already wearing a tangle, he corrected silently.

  Gesturing with his musket, he moved the man away from the door and glanced past the woman. The plump, middle-aged redhead pressed against the far door, glaring daggers at him, was clearly the maid.

  “She not here!”

  The maid looked as astonished as Reiter felt. He stepped back and they both stared at the woman who continued in fractured, accented, but understandable Imperial.

  “She gone to Jaspyr Hagen!” Reiter took another step back as a slender finger jabbed toward him. “He come rip you throat!”

  The beastmen had names.

  “Lirraka!”

  This close, he could see the few flecks of green in her eyes. Mage eyes. But the tangle hadn’t taken her. The tangle needed a younger woman. A stronger mage. A woman with the strength to run for the beast she controlled.

  Up on the carriage step, Reiter ignored the fluent Imperial directed at him by the man—who was either bragging about the money he had or offering a bribe—and the continuing death threats by the woman. Glaring the coachman’s ass back down onto the seat, Reiter grabbed his weapon and jumped back down to the road. “Let’s go.”

  “We’re just leaving them, Captain?” Chard asked, falling in beside him.

  “They’re harmless. We have a line on the sixth mage,” he added when all four of them were back across the ditch and under the trees. “She’s headed for the fighting, to warn the beastmen.”

  Not even Chard needed him to point out they had to stop her. If the beastmen got their scent from the road, and if even half the stories were true, none of them would reach the border.

  “Why doesn’t she just use mage-craft to tell them?” Best asked as they began to move back down the hill.

  “Could be she’s a Fire-mage,” Chard pointed out. “He’s not going to be sitting around a campfire scratching his fleas and waiting for her to pop out of the flames, now, is he? Not with our bloody army attacking.”

  From the road behind them, they could hear the argument their presence had stopped start up again.

  “Sounds like my mum having a go at my dad,” Armin muttered. “I thought they’d be more different, laying down with beasts and all.”

  In all honesty, so had Reiter.

  Chapter Three

  “BEWARE THE NET FROM ABOVE.”

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nbsp; The underbrush grabbed at Mirian’s skirt. She caught her foot in a tangle of fallen branches and stumbled through a spiderweb. Resolutely not thinking of spiders in her hair or down her collar or climbing into her ears, she flailed at the strands hanging off her face as she ran.

  Did Lady Hagen’s warning of a net refer to the gold glitter Mirian had seen hanging off the officer’s fingertips? It was hard to think of what else that glitter could be. Her father had spoken approvingly of the empire’s advances in technology—was this one of them? Had someone created a technology to neutralize mage-craft?

  One foot dropped into a hole masked by ground cover and she fell, biting back a startled cry. The impact drove her hands wrist-deep into the leaf litter. As she pushed up, something cracked then compacted under her right palm. Soft and moist and horribly warm, it left a dark smear on her skin. Back up on her feet, she swiped her hand against her skirt and kept running.

  The Mage-pack had been holding their heads in pain, unable to fight back.

  The net from above, probably the gold glitter, neutralized mage-craft by wrapping around the head. Logically, the net had to do something more than merely wrap, but how it did what it did wasn’t as important right now as what it did.

  Mirian ducked under a branch and wondered if the net would’ve worked on the Mage-pack had they been wearing hats. Last season, the style in Aydori had been for little knots of flowers and lace perched precariously on shell combs that dropped off during the change to fur. Would the Imperial army have taken fashion into account?

  She jerked to one side as the pocket on her skirt caught then tore, bounced off a tree trunk, and through another web.

  “Beware the net from above.”

  The soldiers wouldn’t want her regardless of what the net was or where it came from. She wasn’t Mage-pack. Her professors had made it clear they considered her barely a mage. Still, Jaspyr Hagen had said she smelled amazing and Lady Hagen had sent a warning….

  An evergreen branch slapped her cheek. She gasped, inhaled a bug, and had to stop to cough. As soon as she could breathe, she ripped tender new tips off the branch and tangled them in her hair until she wore a sticky green circlet. She’d probably have to shave her head to get it free. In Aydori, only the women of the Mage-pack cut their hair short to match the Pack who didn’t have hair but caps of fur.