Wolf Justice

by Doranna Durgin

  Reandn closed the scant distance between them, crouching to put himself closer yet. “When Vaklar and I want the Keep to know something, we’ll tell you. And if we should ever decide to send a signal letting the Knife wizard know just where we are, we’ll tell you that, too!”

  Elstan shook his head in protest. “I’ve no death wish, you oaf. The whole area is still awash in the currents the unicorns created. The Knife wizard might feel my spell, but no one could follow it.”

  “He’s right enough about that.” Teya, too, kept her voice low, and moved in close behind Reandn, the blanket settled about her shoulders. “About the interference the unicorns have set up, anyway. But there’s no excuse for taking that spell upon himself.” She looked down at Elstan. “If you try another spell without protecting Reandn or warning me so I can protect him, you’re going to discover the difference between a court wizard and a patrol wizard.”

  “You looked tired. I didn’t want to wake you.”

  Reandn put his hand on Elstan’s chest for a short, sharp nudge of emphasis. “Do it, next time. And no spells unless you clear it with both Vaklar and me. You got that?”

  “You’re mistaken.” Elstan glared at him, but it was less than convincing. “I’m under no obligation to take orders from you.”

  Reandn straightened, shrugging. “Then we’ll leave you behind.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Elstan retorted, but uncertainty bloomed behind his eyes.

  “He would,” Teya said, and yawned. “He definitely would.”

  Reandn watched the wizard another moment, trying to understand that subtle change in attitude... failing. Finally he shook his head and turned away.

  Teya followed him back to the forge. “He is right. No one will trace that spell back here. I’m right here, and it doesn’t quite feel right to me. Not like a spell aimed at the official Keep receiver.” She shrugged. “Something didn’t feel quite right about you, either, when I shielded you. The unicorns really stirred things up.”

  Reandn found himself wondering if those currents would affect his ability to find Kacey. Rethia had found him with no trouble... but then, she was used to using auras.

  “He’s something,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at Elstan. “I can’t believe how he tramples etiquette!”

  Reandn lifted an eyebrow at her, and she explained, “Wizardly etiquette. They pound it into us — don’t inflict magic on those who don’t want it, don’t flaunt our skills... . It’s part of the effort to minimize conflict over having magic again.”

  Reandn leaned back against the thick support post and regarded her; she returned his gaze comfortably. No signs of her usual unease, the way she’d flick her eyes away, the little signs that let him know she disagreed with him — that she wasn’t entirely happy under his command. She looked worn and stiff, and she had that spell-working expression, a tiny bit of a frown in her forehead, a barely discernible narrowing to her eyes... .

  “You must have woken up out of a sound sleep to work that shielding,” he said.

  “You don’t know how many times I did that very thing at the school out of reflex when I felt spell-working.” Teya gave her head a rueful shake. “I became very good at catching the students who were working magic out of the shielded laboratories.”

  “Why are you here, then? Not there?”

  “Why am I — what?” Teya’s spell-working frown turned into the real thing.

  “You’ve no doubt put yourself in a lot of trouble — not just the school, but the Wolves. It couldn’t have been easy to get here. So why did you do it?”

  She seemed nonplussed; he was used to that. It flustered her if she felt unexpectedly pressured, made it hard for her to come back with a quick reply. Swamplanders. They needed space — but once they’d done their thinking, the answers were solid.

  “I guess I found out some things,” she said slowly. “About the patrol, and the Wolves... and maybe about me.” She shook her head, but not at him. “Really, it just comes down to loyalty. Like you said — the right kind of loyalty. I guess I felt I owed it to you.”

  He responded without thinking. “You don’t owe —”

  “No!” She put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you dare take the heart out of what I did! Don’t you make it worthless!”

  After a moment’s surprise, he grinned at her. “Believe me, come tomorrow, I’ll take every advantage of having you here.”

  She resettled the blanket on her shoulders and pushed the loose hairs of her braid from her face. It was a crooked braid, canted off to one side as a testament that her shoulder still hindered her. “What’s your plan?”

  He lifted one shoulder in a loose shrug. “Get there, scout it out. Make something up.”

  She sat cross-legged on the floor, back to the waist-high forge coal pit. “I might be able to help.”

  “I’m counting on it,” he said, quirking his brows together, puzzled. “Didn’t we just have this conversation?”

  She smiled. “No, I mean, now. I might be able to get you a look at the camp, now.”

  He hunkered down in front of her, putting himself on eye level. “Can you do that?”

  He must have been too intense, for she drew back slightly. So did he, and she gave him a wry look. “I said it, didn’t I? With this connection you have to your friend, I might be able to scry her out. As long as we get it done before the unicorn currents fade.”

  “Then do it.”

  “You’ll have to be part of it,” she said in warning. “I can protect you from most of the magic, but not all of it.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “Then sit.” She pointed at the floor with a preemptory finger. “I just refined this spell at the school.”

  He sat, pretending he wasn’t uneasy — knowing she knew better. “Do you have everything you need?”

  “You,” she said. “That’ll do it.”

  He checked his hands to discover them clenched and ready to strike out. Deliberately, he relaxed, sitting cross-legged to match Teya’s posture. “All right,” he said. “What do I do?”

  She sighed. “It’s not going to be that bad, Reandn. I can protect you from the start of the spell. You’ll know when I reach out to you — I can’t keep all the magic from you at that point, so you’ll feel it. Just think about that feeling you get from Kacey’s presence.” In the lantern light, her expression changed into something he couldn’t decipher — maybe even something wistful. “Rethia was right, you know. Even wizards have trouble finding auras unless someone’s truly close to them.”

  Reandn cleared his throat. “The spell.”

  She looked away, abashed. “Once I find her, I can open scope to see the camp — you’ll see it all in your mind, like a dream. Take a good look as fast as you can — if we are detected, I’ll have to close up without warning you.” She waited to see if he understood, and then closed her eyes.

  He did the same — aware that Teya had drawn magic for the spell, bracing himself for the moment when she dropped the shield.

  It sneaked up on him — she’d done it carefully — but then he found himself in the middle of it, and unable to stop the anger that rose so quickly with the feel of dizzying, thrumming magic. He fought himself, and floundered, and clutched for control —

  The magic snapped away. He sat paled, breathing fast; Teya’s hand settled gently on his upper arm. “That won’t work,” she said, her voice in close to his ear. “You’re... well, I’m not sure what you’re doing, but I can barely keep hold of the spell, never mind continue with it.” She took a deep breath; he felt her release it. “You’ve got to work with me.”

  Her hand fell away and when he opened his eyes, she sat apart from him again.

  Elstan leaned against the cart, watching them. “He always did that to me, too. He’ll deny it, though.”

  Teya’s eyes widened slightly; she glanced at Reandn, who shrugged. “I don’t know what he’s talking about, I’ll say that much.”

  She shook her h
ead. “No matter. You’ve got to trust me, or we’ll go into that camp blind.”

  Trust her. He did trust her. Or he wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.

  As if sensing she’d get no more from him, Teya nodded. “Let’s try again, then.”

  He closed his eyes, this time wary and tense, finding it an effort to center his attention on the quiet tug from Kacey. As before, Teya’s magic crept in gently — and he went rigid when he felt it, fighting not to struggle against the swoop of sensations it brought with it, fighting the anger —

  “That,” Teya said, her voice low but emphatic. “Stop it.”

  The instant his concentration broke, the magic flooded through him, knocking him away from his sense of self and triggering his struggles, his anger, anew.

  “Stop,” Teya hissed.

  I can’t — I CAN’T — Without his anger, without his defiance, all he had left was —

  Fear.

  Pure animal terror.

  All he wanted to do was run from it — to strike out, make it go away, stop it —

  But this was for Kacey. She’d come for him and now she was in terrible danger and think about Kacey think about Kacey...

  The magic trickled away into an unpleasant hum. Reandn drew a huge ragged breath. The initial casting, he thought, a dim recognition in some working corner of his mind, must be over.

  Teya whispered, “Show me Kacey.”

  For a panicky instant, Reandn thought he wouldn’t be able to feel the sense of her through the dizzying magic, but there — a little tug, a familiar and welcome feel that disappeared if he thought too hard about it. He’d look out of the corner of his inner eye, then, just as if he was making out details in the dark.

  The image came to him with the same eerie clarity he’d had during that in-between state, when the darkness hadn’t seemed to matter and even the distant details were sharp and clear. He went cold inside, stiffening in outrage.

  Kacey clutched a crooked, makeshift staff with jagged ends, and limped profoundly, barely able to touch her foot to the ground as she returned from the woods to the camp, trailed by a man who must be her keeper. Tears of pain ran down her face, sliding over bruises on the way. As she neared one of the trees, she reached out to it with desperation and sank to the ground at its distant roots; the man grunted something at her and she crawled up to the trunk, her chin quivering in a way Reandn had never before seen.

  There she curled up on her side, and hid her face in her hands.

  Teya tried to move the scrying elsewhere, but he couldn’t take his eyes away from Kacey — Kacey who he’d never seen like this, defeated and helpless, bereft of the strength that carried her through life and kept her kicking back at it with determination and that quick tongue. Bold Kacey, who laughed with him and sang songs to her mare when she thought no one was listening, and who occasionally made as though she might push him down the well if he didn’t mind his manners.

  The contrast made the cold, hard knot in his stomach swell into pain. “Kacey.”

  Someone from the Knife camp lobbed a rock in her general direction; it bounced off the tree above her head. “Shut up!” the rock-flinger yelled, although she’d been making very little noise.

  She froze, peering over her hands with startled alarm. When no more rocks came her way, she pillowed her face in her arms, hiding the only way she could. He thought she had stopped crying, then, until her back quivered and she released a muffled snatch of a sob and froze again, anticipating another rock.

  That cold hard knot rose right up into his throat and burst, breaking through his hard, safe walls and bringing a flood of emotion he thought he’d never feel again. “Kacey,” he said fiercely, “I’m here. I’m coming for you.”

  And Teya jerked on him, hard. “I can’t keep this up forever,” she said into his ear. “They’re going to figure it out. Now look around!”

  Look around. Away from Kacey. Look around.

  He did, taking in the disrupted state of the camp, the walking wounded, the sentry placement. And he catalogued the minute details before him, collecting the information they’d need, still...

  All he could see was Kacey.

  ~~~~~

  “I have an idea.” Teya crouched beside Reandn in the pre-dawn darkness, chewing the dried meat and stale trail bread of their cold breakfast. Their horses were saddled and waiting; the others slept, or pretended to.

  Teya, too, was pretending — pretending she hadn’t been spell-tied to this man during his powerful experience of the night, and that she hadn’t felt his anguish.

  Thank the goddess she’d come out of the spell trance more quickly than he, and had composed herself before he saw her. Not that he’d have noticed — the state he was in, and the speed with which he’d bolted from the barn — but Teya knew with absolute certainty that he must never even suspect how intimately she’d perceived his experience.

  Then you’ll have to be more careful. She flushed as she realized that he was certainly watching her now, and as astutely as he’d ever done. She cleared her throat. “I have an idea.”

  “So you said.”

  Best to distract him quickly. “It’s Kalena they want. Let’s give her to them.”

  “Don’t say that where Vaklar can hear,” Reandn responded dryly. But he took a gulp of well-watered wine and eyed her, waiting.

  “Make the Knife think we’re giving them Kalena. It’ll be me.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t you think at least one of them is going to know what she looks like?”

  “I can use a glamour.” Teya shifted forward to her knees, forgetting breakfast, intent on convincing that frown right out of those grey eyes. “Look. Varina puts my hair in one of those fancy braids. I borrow Kalena’s jacket. And I use a glamour. I won’t even be that close to them. But if I distract them, it’ll give you a better chance to move in.”

  “Just put a glamour on the both of us, Teya. Standard patrol practice, just enough to slide their eyes over us. We’re Wolves, after all. Wolves in the spring woods on a morning with a heavy dew. You don’t think we can sneak up on a motley Knife camp?”

  Teya didn’t answer right away, feeling the instant frustration that always came of working with Reandn’s reticence to try new magic. On the other side of the cart, someone started a muttered conversation. The others, too, had a mission for the day — to leave Madehy’s barn and her yard, and keep Kalena safe until Teya and Reandn returned.

  She didn’t want to argue in front of an audience. But the words that hovered on her tongue — I can do it — begged to be spoken.

  He saw it in her, she realized suddenly. He was just as aware as she of the old patterns between them, the old frustrations; he met her eyes with a steady, neutral gaze, the same as ever — aside from that thin new white scar through his brow, the one she hadn’t gotten used to yet, as she was to the coarser scar along his jaw.

  She looked away, suddenly abashed. That old scar had always made her think of how far he was willing to push himself to get the job done; it had been a close thing, the mark of a knife sliding up his throat. That he’d lived through it was evidence of his experience.

  She had no scars, only a stiff shoulder. Half a year of experience as opposed to his... she wasn’t even sure; she knew he’d started early. Fifteen?

  Maybe his resistance to magic didn’t always come from the magic itself. Maybe it sometimes meant the idea behind the magic wasn’t as sound as it should be. Hadn’t she learned that lesson already? Teya met Reandn’s eye for the briefest instant. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  A noise by the cart interrupted them; Teya discovered Kalena there, leaning against it in a most deliberately casual fashion.

  “It really was a bad idea.” She rested her elbow on the cart and her chin in her hand, raising an eyebrow in a supercilious manner that made Teya bristle instantly. “Everyone knows I’m not stupid enough to put myself in that kind of danger.”

  “Pity,” Reandn said dryly. �
�You can’t inspire your people to great things unless you aspire to them yourself.”

  She straightened, stung. “As if you’d know anything about it.”

  Vaklar came up behind her, and said dryly, “Think about it, meira.” She frowned, trying to follow him, and he turned his attention to Reandn. “I’m coming with you, then.”

  “What?” Kalena cried.

  Reandn got to his feet. “You had good reason for your decision.”

  “Aya, and I’ve reasons to change it, too.” Under Reandn’s gaze the guard ducked his head and muttered, “I had dreams, I did.”

  Kalena turned on him, just shy of accusation. “You did?” she demanded, and then bit her lip. “I mean... so did I. Horrible ones. About some woman I’ve never seen before.”

  Varina’s voice was drowsy; she still sat on the other side of the cart. “So did I. And such... vivid dreams, too.” After a moment, she came around to join them, her hair mussed and her eyes still filled with sleep.

  Teya tried to make herself small and quiet. Reandn looked sharply at her anyway — though, thank the Bright Goddess, he said nothing. There was no reason that scrying spell should have touched any of the others, sleeping or no.

  Then again, she’d never worked magic in the direct currents of a unicorn herd.

  Vaklar strode over to their breakfast spot and helped himself to a strip of dried meat, shoving his first bite over to the side of his mouth so he could talk. “Aya — they were uncommonly real dreams.”

  “I imagine they were,” Reandn said dryly.

  “Ask Madehy again about staying another day.” Vaklar looked in the direction of the house. “She does want to talk to your Rethia.”

  At least he no longer speculated out loud about Rethia’s nature... her role in the restoring magic. If the Knife so much as suspected it, nothing would stop them from killing her.

  “I’ll ask,” Reandn said. “Saddle yourself a horse. I want to be on the move by the time we hit dawn.”

  ~~~~~

  Madehy sat in the yard.

  She sat in the yard with other people.

  The thought of it still dazed her.

  Kalena sat against the wood fence, sunning herself and lost in some troublesome thought. Rethia sat beside Madehy on the edge of the well, with Kendall ensconced between them. His eyelid slitted closed in the early morning sun, his head drooping into a doze — if only until some little noise reminded him that he was awake and desiring petting. Then he’d jerk his head back into some semblance of alert posture and wait for Madehy to notice.