Wolf Justice

by Doranna Durgin

  Kalena lifted one shoulder in an uncaring shrug. “What reason would they have to lie?”

  “To make the Knife look bad,” Reandn said, beginning to think again. “To turn sympathetic support to your father.”

  “They said they had no intention of hurting you,” Rethia told her.

  “And you believed them?” Kalena said, throwing Rethia a dramatically skeptical look.

  Rethia didn’t answer. It was Vaklar who said, “They had arrows, meira. They easily could have aimed the first one at you instead of Damen.”

  “Vaklar! You talk like you plan to go along with this... this absurd trade!”

  For a long, quiet moment, he just looked at her. When he spoke, it was with a reproach of quiet words and formal dignity that made her blush. “You mistake me, Meira.”

  “And you mistake me,” Rethia said, a touch of proud reproach in her voice. “I don’t know you. I’m not asking for your help. I’m here to see Dan.”

  “Whoever these people are,” Teya said to Kalena, “the more we understand them, the better prepared we’ll be to counter them. That’s part of what we’re trying to do here — understand them. I think you’ll know a decision when you hear it.”

  Kalena glared at her and said, “I’ll know it, because I’ll be making it.”

  “Not likely,” Reandn said, compounding the insult with his distracted bearing. As the influence of the unicorns faded, and as he grew used to Rethia’s presence, he’d become aware of another subtle tug, hitting him deep — hitting him in the same way that had made him so certain of Rethia’s approach. “Vaklar and I will make the decisions until we turn you over to an official Keep escort — which, I promise you, will be large.”

  “Vaklar said it himself,” Kalena retorted, “we’ve hurt them as much as they’ve hurt us. I can get home just as safely as I can go on to the Keep — maybe more so, if stopping the ambassadorial relations is what these people want.”

  Silence greeted her words, until Vaklar said, “It’s naya happening, Meira.”

  She drew herself up, and turned her face away from them all. Reandn was sure he heard a sniffle, but the greater part of his attention remained elsewhere. No one else said anything; indeed, they didn’t seem to know what to say.

  Rethia asked him quietly, “What is it, Dan?”

  It took him a moment to understand; of course she’d perceived his distraction. Rethia, made whole with the return of the unicorns and their magic, was often harder to fathom than when she’d wandered around in her own private fog.

  “I’m not sure,” he told her. “There’s some part of me that believes you’re still out there,” he waved a hand at the general direction she’d come from. “ And what I feel of you here in the barn... doesn’t seem enough.”

  “What are you talking about?” Elstan said, shoving his hair out of his face with some impatience.

  Rethia’s small frown told Reandn that she hadn’t quite understood it, either. But it didn’t take long for her face to clear. “Has it always been the same, Dan? What you feel of me?”

  He frowned back at her. “It’s changed over time. But that’s because of the magic... isn’t it?”

  She ducked her head; she might have been hiding a smile. “Danny,” she said, “people feel those who mean the most to them — if they’re lucky. You’ve always felt me, because I... had reason to be different. I know you’ve said you’ve never felt anyone but me, but... haven’t you noticed, that when you visit, that Kacey and I aren’t usually far apart?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest to stare at her.

  “I haven’t changed,” Rethia said, making the point for him. “You have. You’re picking up on Kacey. Strong feelings, Danny.”

  He looked at her without comprehension. When her words abruptly coalesced into understanding, he shook his head — a quick denial. A panic.

  Just that fast, he drew on the safe and familiar walls of anger. No longer did he fight the need to pace, the urge to run outside and do something now. Behind those walls, he was Wolf incarnate. Dangerous. Lurking, waiting for the just the right moment, grey eyes brooding under dark brows.

  Elstan only helped, repeating himself with annoyance. “What are you talking about?”

  Teya straightened suddenly. “Auras, they’re talking auras.”

  “Danny,” Rethia whispered, making his name a plea, trying to get back the part of him she’d just lost.

  Reandn didn’t look at her. “Then I might be able to find her,” he said, as if she hadn’t just laid him bare to himself.

  Vaklar shifted uneasily. “You’ve responsibility here, don’t be forgetting that.”

  “But if being a Wolf means anything to you... I mean, this assignment is your chance —” Teya started, stopping short at Reandn’s sudden and piercing look. As if he had to be reminded of any of it.

  “No one questions Wolf loyalty,” he told Teya. “But if a Wolf can’t be loyal to the people who matter to him — to someone whose own honor brought her in the first place — then Wolf loyalty means nothing. Being a Wolf means nothing.”

  Rethia closed her eyes in relief. Teya chewed her lip, fidgety, and Reandn told her, “Being a Wolf does mean something to me, Teya. It means everything. I’d rather lose that now and preserve the integrity of what I had than turn away from true justice now and live out a charade.”

  “Dan,” Vaklar said, his wide jaw setting in determination, “Don’t —”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Reandn told him, “I’m going looking for Kacey. I’ll do it alone if I have to, but I’m not leaving her with the Knife.”

  “I’m with you,” Teya said, a slow nod that amounted to instant decision in her deliberate world.

  Rethia said nothing. She didn’t have to.

  “I thought you had promises to keep,” Elstan said, his voice acid. “To those Hounds.”

  Reandn spared him only a glance, watching Vaklar instead. The guard rubbed a hand across his bristly chin, considering Reandn with anger in his eyes... but not on his face. “Naya, I can see ’tis a waste of breath. But I stay true to my own loyalties, Dan.”

  “Elstan is right,” Reandn told Vaklar. “I made promises — and I’ll keep them if you’ll let me. You can hole up in the woods half a day from here as easily as you can hole up here, and just as safely. Wait for me. Give me a day.”

  “You’ll get this woman back in a day, then? Cocky Wolf,” Vaklar said, and meant it.

  Reandn shook his head. “If I can’t, it’ll be because things went badly and I’m not coming at all.”

  “And you have some plan already, aya?”

  Reandn gave him a wry grin. “None at all. But I guarantee you this — whether I succeed or no, there’ll be fewer of the Knife on your trail.”

  Vaklar snorted. “We’ll wait,” he said, and added pointedly, “For a day.”

  Rethia stood, silencing the rest of them with the unexpectedness of the act, and crossed the circle to Reandn — coming right up to him, putting her arms around him and resting her face along his shoulder.

  Only then did he discover how she trembled. “All right,” he told her, and ran a soothing hand down her back. “It’s all right. We’ll get her back.”

  Kalena let out a hmmph. “Can’t we at least talk to Madehy? Maybe we can stay here for another day. At least it’s a roof —”

  Vaklar and Reandn simultaneously shook their heads, even as the door flung open. Madehy stood just outside it, and she snapped, “Haven’t you done enough to my life? If you’re not gone in the morning, I’ll — I’ll —”

  “We’ll go,” Elstan said hastily, no doubt thinking of the hunter’s threats.

  Rethia turned around to see Madehy for the first time, and stiffened. She moved with a dream-like quality, as if inexorably drawn to Madehy... and Madehy stood her ground. Until they were standing all but face to face, when Rethia reached out and touched Madehy’s hair, touched her cheek, tilted her chin up so she could see those marbled eyes.

>   “I’ve wondered about you,” Rethia said. “I didn’t think I was the only one.”

  Madehy shivered, and whispered, “I’m not alone.” Tears spilled out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks; hesitantly, she touched Rethia’s arm, lifted her hand, and deliberately replaced it. “You don’t shout at me — I can —” She shook her head helplessly. “I’m not alone!”

  “No,” Rethia said, taking her hand. “You’re not.” She looked at Reandn, a message of trust. “We need to talk,” she told him, and then led Madehy out of the barn.

  “That,” said Elstan, “is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Stranger than unicorns crowded around a cocky Wolf?” Kalena asked.

  Teya said, “Stranger than the Shining Knife arming themselves with magic?”

  “Strange enough,” Vaklar said decisively. Stiffly, he rose and closed the door, but not without giving Reandn a speculative look along the way. “About that friend of yours. I’m thinking on some things I’ve heard, aya —”

  “Don’t.” Reandn cut him off with no apology in his voice. “Don’t even think it. Not with the Knife so close. They’d brave the loneliest Hells to kill her.”

  Startled, Vaklar yet understood. “Aya, ladaboy. That they would.”

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 14

  Madehy stared numbly at the first person to enter her home in... forever. “How can you touch me? Why are we... like we are? Do you know?”

  Rethia eyed the herb collection in the rafters and murmured, “Interesting that we’re both healers.”

  Madehy wiped the last of her tears off her cheeks. “We don’t have much time. Not nearly enough for what I have to know.”

  “And you think I have the answers?” Rethia ran a finger along the edge of the tiny wood table in the corner, and helped herself to the chair beside it.

  There wasn’t another; why would Madehy need two chairs? She sat by the fireplace of the tiny room, beside the cookstove she used only for brewing up cow- and horse-sized batches of draughts and effusions and poultices. The house had been bigger, once — before fire razed her family home and she’d built more modestly to replace it. The other side of the stove held a small sleeping alcove, barely big enough for a narrow bed — though that was her one luxury, a feather bed she’d earned when she’d gotten several shepherds through a difficult lambing season.

  The walls held nothing but shelves, filled with crockery and more herbs and three precious volumes of stock care and management, books she could barely read but often perused. Beyond the bed was a half-size door leading to an overhang against the back of the house. She kept the wild ones there, the occasional fox or raptor or even wolf — though inevitably there was a raccoon in residence, and for most of the year before, she’d had an infestation of chameleon shrews.

  Humble. That word described this house as well as could be done. Just barely big enough for herself and Kendall — who currently sat on Rethia’s foot, leaning against her leg to tilt his head straight back and doing his best to look as if he might die if his ears weren’t scratched.

  Madehy regarded this stranger, this woman who’d instantly known her better than anyone ever had. “If you don’t have the answers, no one does.”

  Kendall gave a little bass hum of pleasure as Rethia’s fingers found the right spot behind his left ear. “I don’t have all of them,” Rethia said, “and I imagine you have more than you think.”

  “Things weren’t so bad until the magic came back.” Madehy rocked back and brought her legs up, wrapping her arms around them — hugging herself. “I just had to be careful before then. Even when my family died in the fire —”

  No. That had been too horrible, a harbinger of what her life was to become. She had felt their terror so clearly, out in the barn where she’d been working. Had gone from hearing it to feeling it, until suddenly she had been crazed with it — and instead of running to help, she’d bolted away from the barn, out of her mind and out of control.

  When it stopped, when she finally crept home, only then did she realize what had happened. Only then did she understand that her mother and two younger sisters had been dying under the wicked flare of the thatched roof.

  Madehy lived under shingles now, as difficult and expensive as they had been to obtain.

  “They ought to have known.” Rethia withdrew her hand from the dog’s head and folded them tightly in her lap. In the lantern light her pale hair glowed gold. Her eyes were a little too large for her face and her nose was a little too straight and long, and right now her face looked thin and tight. “They really should have known.”

  “Who?”

  “It wasn’t so bad for me. I knew there was something missing, something wrong. I just couldn’t... sometimes I...” She looked down at her hands. “I always felt like something was calling me.”

  “Who should have known better?”

  Rethia flashed a glance at her from under her heavy bangs. “You see? It still has a hold on me. I suppose it always will.”

  Madehy tightened her arms around her legs.

  Rethia’s eyes went vague. “Who? Why, who left us this way? Who came back with the magic?”

  Unicorns?

  Rethia nodded as though she’d heard the astonished thought. “When they left, Madehy, they left a home they loved, even if they didn’t love humankind half as much. They wanted to make sure they could come back. But in a world that no longer had magic, who would open their way?”

  Madehy, open-mouthed, suddenly saw her mother’s face, looking down on her with gentle affection. My mother. She’d had no memories of her family since the fire — not because they hadn’t been there, but because they’d been crushed beneath the weight of terror and death.

  “You were all of two seasons old,” she would say, her voice taking on the lilt of a story well-known and oft-told. “I put down your basket on the edge of our farthest field, and went to pick trillium for dinner. I’d gone no more than a dozen paces when something made me look to you — and there they were! Unicorns, Maddy! A splashy big stallion and his mares, and you in the midst of them. How my heart wailed! Them so big, and you just a nub of nothing in your little basket.”

  They had nudged her and snuffled her and given her mother a terrible fright while she’d gurgled happily. And then the great splashy unicorn had lowered his head, his sturdy horn aimed right at her soft little self.

  At which point her mother had fainted, and Madehy had no idea what had happened then — except that when her mother had stirred, the unicorns were gone and Madehy’s eyes had changed.

  “I was six when they found me,” Rethia said. “I was the last. I saw them all go, all but the biggest. It was he who touched me.” She gave Madehy a sad sort of smile. “I don’t remember that part, though. I guess I never will.”

  “But...” Madehy tried to remember what she’d seen of Rethia, found herself thinking of the way she had gone to Dan for comfort. “You can touch people. You can be with them. I can’t — touching Dan once, by accident, was more than I ever want to do!”

  “He can be hard... what he carries,” Rethia admitted. “But he’s the one who understands. The others may pretend, but he knows.”

  “Because he knows you.”

  Rethia nodded. “And because of what he’s been through. But we all have our own stories, don’t we?”

  “Maybe,” Madehy said. She thought of the people in her barn, all wrenched around by circumstances so that their oddities shone through the loudest. “I don’t suppose I want to know that wizard’s story, though. That Elstan.”

  Rethia laughed. “He’s just frightened — more scared than all of them, and he doesn’t dare let it show. He’s not up to this task. He never was.”

  Madehy looked at her, suddenly breathless. “You can do that? You can be with them, and let that much in, and yet keep it from overtaking you?”

  Rethia nodded. “I had more of myself when I was touched by them.”

  “Then... then
—” Madehy abruptly took that breath she had needed so badly and blurted, “Teach me!”

  Rethia said gently, “I have a sister. Her name is Kacey, and she’s everything to me. She needs me.”

  Blunt disappointment hit Madehy right in the stomach. Of course. Why was the woman here, after all? “Then stay here tonight — and tomorrow — the others can hide here tomorrow. That’s what they want, isn’t it? Can’t you show me, before you leave?”

  Rethia reached out to Kendall, who hadn’t moved his bony rump from her foot. “I can show you,” she said. “That doesn’t mean you’ll understand.”

  ~~~~~

  Reandn sat beside the darkened forge, his back to a thick barn support post and his wrists resting on his upraised knees. The others slept around nearby... or pretended to.

  In a Wolf patrol, there’d yet be plenty of activity. Someone singing, usually — or trying to — and the scrape of knife against whetstone, the curse of someone trying to fletch by firelight even when they knew better... and laughter. There was always laughter.

  The two Hounds had been full of such things as well. It suddenly seemed much longer than a day and a half since their deaths.

  Magic. Elstan.

  Reandn lifted his head sharply. What the hells — Elstan would lead the Knife straight to them!

  He was halfway to his feet when Teya said sleepily, “I have it, Dan.” The feel of the magic retreated from him, leaving him free to stalk into the low lantern light.

  He found the wizard sitting in the cart’s shadow, his legs crossed and his eyes closed, his face composed and trance-like. For the sake of those who were sleeping, he kept his voice down. “What,” Reandn said in a harsh whisper, “do you think you were doing? Sending out an invitation to the Knife?”

  Elstan startled wildly, his eyes flying open in fear. “Don’t speak of what you don’t know,” he sputtered, pressed back against the cart. “We’re safe enough. And the Keep should know what we’re up against. They’re sending help.”