back to back. There was the slight, tingling sensation of crossing the Gate's threshold. The jab of discomfort as her gut adjusted to the switch in gravity. The dizzying glimpse of the somersaulting sky. She let reflex take over, compensating for her forward tumble.
Chag's shout was the first warning. Something slammed into her chest, just below her breasts, and the wind went out of her. She was lifted by the impact, flipped over again, and dropped. The gritty dirt of the path struck her hard enough to make spots burst across her vision. For a moment, she was conscious only of the grunting as Chag struggled with someone.
Whoever had attacked her wasted no time grabbing her by the armpits and hauling her upright. With her chest still tight, she was powerless to resist as her arms were twisted around behind her. Her vision cleared to reveal Chag standing perhaps ten feet away, held in a bear hug from behind by a slender young man with the peeled-back-eyelid look of a Clearseer. Horvin.
Which meant that in all likelihood, it was Ilbertin's Sheriff who had hold of her. If she fought, Chag's Witnessing would have to show her resisting arrest, and there would be no evidence that a Gifted had attacked her in the course of doing her duty. Why hadn't they thought of this possibility? She gritted her teeth. So much for going home as heroes.
From behind her, a thick, throaty voice said, "Chag Van Raighan, I arrest you for Grand Theft and abetting Wildren." The same words that Sheriff Pollack had said to him back in Federas, at his first arrest. Ilbertin's Sheriff, though, had more to say. "Pevan Atcar, I arrest you for abetting Wildren."
A stone settled in her stomach. She could almost feel the adrenaline draining out of her. Hissing through clenched teeth, still struggling for breath, she managed, "I could say the same to you."
"You're the one charging into our town with Van Raighan." Horvin's voice was steady, almost patronising, despite the obvious effort he was putting into holding Chag still. Rel hadn't understated the boy's abilities.
"You're holding a Gift-Giver in direct breach of the Treaty." She found some force to put behind the words. Her breath was starting to come back, despite the fiery feeling at the bottom of her lungs.
"Well, that's the rub, isn't it?" Horvin straightened up, somehow, his head rising fully clear of Chag's shoulder. The Clearseer was smooth-faced, quite handsome for all that his eyes were stretched almost comically wide. Despite the sun being on his face, he didn't even squint, and his irises were so pale blue as to seem almost white. He finished, "Does the Treaty of Peace constitute an act in breach of itself, based as it is on a fundamental deception?"
"Does it matter?" Chag growled. He jerked his head downward, his hands coming up as he tried to shake Horvin off. A futile gesture-
She almost missed the flicker of sign language that he directed at her. Gate me clear. Had she imagined it? Not from the way his eyes found hers again, darkly intense. The way Horvin held him, Chag's head was right next to the Clearseer's face. All Chag needed to do was shake his head and his hair would flick out, forcing Horvin to blink. Holding his gaze and concentrating, the town's Warding weighing on the back of her mind like a twelve-stone pillow, she spun a Gate. It didn't need to go far. Just far enough to delay Horvin's return.
Chag said, "I love you."
"Come back to me." She put all the heat she could muster into the words.
Chag gave another sharp jerk of his neck, and Horvin squawked in alarm. Pevan let the Gate snap into place, and the two men vanished from view. She closed it again as soon as they were gone, kicked backwards as hard as she could, aiming for the Sheriff's knee with the hard heel of her boot. He grunted, but she was already making another Gate, even as movement exploded around her.
Her Gate opened, the ground beneath her feet blinking out of existence. They were falling, but the Sheriff somehow jerked them so that they caught the side of the Gate. It was enough. Pevan caught the lip and heaved against the Sheriff’s grip. He grunted, pinning her tighter, but she was twisting sideways, slipping out under his elbow.
She had to wrench her neck to free her chin, but there was no time to nurse the abused tendons. Directing another wild kick roughly at the Sheriff – her toe hit something hard, but she couldn't tell what – she crawled clear. Only a flash of gut-churning insight stopped her closing the Gate. To do so would cut the Sheriff in half, and there would be no making amends for that.
Would the man realise? She scrambled to her feet and broke into a run, twisting her head to look backwards. The Sheriff was pulling himself out of the Gateway, but sluggishly, and with one hand pressed to his head. Maybe she shouldn’t have kicked him so hard. She could, just at the threshold of sensitivity, feel his presence in the Gate, a tickle on the inside of her skull, just to the right of her crown.
The patch of valley-side she’d Gated to offered uncertain footing, the ground clumpy and uneven, and falling away sharply to the right. She was about to turn and head up-hill, to where Rel should still be fighting the Separatist, when a tall, thin figure rose out of a Gateway straight ahead of her. Chaiya.
The Gatemaker planted her feet square where her Gate had been, waiting for Pevan. Pevan forced herself to jump, just as a Gate opened where she’d been about to tread. Chaiya was showing off; the Gate was probably as big as she could make it. Pevan’s leap barely carried her, and she had to push off sideways when her foot did just barely reach the far rim.
She landed in a shoulder-roll downhill and had to flatten herself out against the grass to keep from tumbling all the way down into Ilbertin. Her neck ached, and so did her ribs. She was still struggling to breathe. The ground opened up and swallowed her.
There was an instant’s view of an oval of sky, and then she landed, hard, on what felt like a reed mattress. Tightness in her chest made her curl up, rolling onto her side and almost off the bed. It brought her face-to-face with a row of iron bars. The room was walled in stone and candle-lit. A jail cell, just like the one under the Warding Hall in Federas. A sharp-faced man stood peering into the cell, the belt around his slender waist fastened by a symbolic Four Knot.
Pevan closed her eyes. Was the Sheriff still stuck in her Gate? She didn’t think so, but she’d lost track of the tingling in all the confusion, and her vision seemed blurry, unfocussed. Panic, she told herself, and hoped that would be enough to collect her wits. It really didn’t feel like her Gate was occupied.
The Four Knot started to say something, but Pevan spun herself a new Gate and threw herself at it, at the precious patch of sky and woodland beyond. This close to the Stable Rods, it was like trying to stab a spoon through hard cheese, but that just made it more satisfying when she got through and was able to let it go.
This time, there was no grass or mattress to cushion her landing. She landed sideways, some protruding root or rock under her elbow. She shouted in pain as the impact jarred all the bones in the joint against each other. For a moment, though, she didn’t even have the wits to roll off the injury.
She was in the woodland just above the valley, a place she’d picked out as her emergency fall-back. Scattered clumps of bluebells dotted the brown forest floor. Right in front of her face, a bug crawled across a fallen leaf, antennae waving. As her breathing steadied, she made out the rustle of wind in the upper branches.
So much for clever plans. Their approach had been a disaster. Rel was probably okay. Fighting Wildren was his preferred state of being anyway. There was no telling if Atla’s arrival in the town had been predicted as easily as hers and Chag’s. Hopefully the lad would have had the sense to avoid an ambush, but it was a forlorn hope.
Chag. If he could keep Horvin from using his Gift, then in a one-on-one fight... the Clearseer would still be fitter, better-fed, better-trained for fighting. More confident, too. But he’d have no reason to kill Chag, and she’d Gated them a good couple of miles away from the town. She had to leave them be for now. If Chag complained later, she could tell him she trusted him to look after himself. He would have to.
Atla would be hard to find, but anyway it wa
s Rel who most needed backup. Rubbing her forehead, Pevan closed her eyes and pulled the hillside where he hopefully was still fighting out of her memory. The Separatist would feel the incoming Gate, but she’d just have to trust that Rel had its full attention.
She spun the Gateway without getting up, laid it out alongside herself. It meant she could roll through without lifting her body above ankle-height. A token gesture to safety, unless there were other Gifted from Ilbertin watching the fight, waiting for her. Just how much had the town been able to prepare for them?
Paranoid thinking. At some point she had to draw the line. She clambered carefully through the Gate, into a wind that, even low to the ground, had long, cold fingers that plucked and picked at her blouse. She let the Gate go before lifting her head out of the grass. Even then, it was a moment before she dared look up.
At the top of the hill, Rel stepped around the Separatist. The motion turned into a lazy pirouette, with his makeshift spear held out directly in front of him. For a moment, Pevan could clearly see the boundary of Ilbertin’s Warding as the Wilder was forced against it. The silver wheel rippled and bent out of shape, then burst into ghostly grey flames.
Rel hit it again, releasing a gout of sparkling smoke. The creature
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