The Whitefire Crossing (40 page)

“Least I could do, seeing how I was the cause.” Her hand stayed on my neck, rubbing tight muscles. I tilted forward to rest my forehead against her shoulder.

“I meant what I said, in your room.” The words spilled out of me, released by the lazy circles of her hand. “I won’t ever abandon you again, the way I did at the convoy.”

She trailed a thumb along my jawline, lifting my face. “I know,” she said softly, and kissed me. A slow, tender kiss that sent fire tingling down every nerve, and spread the
hekavi
’s warmth to far lower locations than my stomach. The heat in my blood had me trembling by the time she broke off.

Gods, I wanted nothing more than to taste her again. To unlace her shirt, lay her down, and—I clenched my hands on the silky roll of a marten fur. This was Cara, not Jylla. I couldn’t assume she wanted more. I strove to keep my tone light. “What—what was that? Another lapse in judgment?”

“Not this time.” Her mouth sought mine. I yielded, gladly, and let my hands slip under her shirt to wander over the smooth, strong muscles of her sides. Far different than Jylla’s soft curves, but my desire burned just as hot.

One last shred of reason remained. I nipped Cara’s ear, and whispered, “Your rule...”

“Dev...” Her fingers drifted lower, moved in a way that made me gasp. “Shut up.”

Reason flamed to ash. I drew her down on the furs, and lost myself in a dance glorious as any I’d done on sunlit stone.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

(Kiran)

T
he door creaked. Kiran didn’t bother to get off the bed. The wards hadn’t flared; his visitor would only be sour-faced Iannis, who’d thump down another bland meal on the table and shuffle out without acknowledging his existence.

Pello eased around the door, a bowl of porridge in his hands. Kiran’s heart jolted. He leapt up. “You’ve thought on my offer?”

Pello only fixed Kiran with a cold, grim gaze. “No delays with this meal. Eat, or you’ll feel Simon’s touch.” He thrust the bowl at Kiran. Unlike the usual bland fare Iannis brought, the porridge reeked of cinnamon and nutmeg.

Kiran’s heart raced faster yet. Surely the food was drugged, and Simon intended a border crossing. The tiny garnet shoved deep against the seam of his trouser pocket felt large as a millstone. But the lack of mockery in Pello’s face, and the hardness of his voice when he’d spoken Simon’s name...

“Simon’s used the lock-binding on you, hasn’t he? I’ll tell you how to thwart it, if only you help me.”

“I have another proposal.” Pello’s words were as cold as his eyes. “Tell me how to break the binding, and I’ll not tell Simon about that gemstone hidden in your pocket.”

Kiran went rigid. Simon’s wards contained no element of scrying; he’d checked. Pello must have spied on him somehow through unmagical means, and either seen him with the stone or noticed the minuscule hole in the bedpost.

“Tell me now, or I summon Simon.” Pello put a hand on the door, began to open it.

“Wait!” The gemstone was his last hope. He couldn’t let Pello reveal it. “Distance will thwart him—to avoid triggering the Alathian detection spells, Simon must be in sight of you to kill with a lock-binding. And if he crosses the border while you remain behind, the border wards will block the link. If you freed me—”

Pello overrode him. “What if both Simon and I are outside Alathia?”

“Nothing will save you, then. Unless a second mage breaks the binding. I would do that, if you—”

“Enough,” Pello snapped. “Eat. Now.” He glanced at the door.

Simon must be coming. Reluctantly, Kiran took the porridge.

“If you tell Simon about the stone—or take it from me yourself—I’ll tell him you seek to escape his binding.” So long as the garnet remained in place, he still had a chance.

Pello made an impatient, disgusted gesture. “I said, eat.”

Kiran took a tentative bite. Underneath the cinnamon lurked the rancid oiliness of hennanwort. Kiran nearly spat out the mouthful, but Pello was watching him with narrowed, intent eyes. Refusing to eat would only delay the inevitable. Still, his hand trembled when he took the next spoonful. He’d expected Simon to drug him before the crossing, but it didn’t reduce his dread of the disorienting void hennanwort left in place of his inner senses. Only the thought of Simon reactivating the chill taint of his binding allowed him to finish the meal.

Even as he pushed the bowl away, a maddening prickling crept through his mind, his awareness of Simon’s wards fading. The sensation wasn’t quite as terrifying as it had been in the forest with Dev, perhaps because his magic was already bound, or simply because he knew what to expect.

He focused on the patterns in the rug at his feet in an attempt to keep panic at bay. A difficult task, when every instinct screamed at him to fight the thick, choking numbness that drowned him. But if he remained calm, Simon might not bother to send him unconscious. Though Kiran’s hidden gemstone would react to the border wards regardless of his mental state, unconsciousness would remove any hope of escaping during the resulting uproar.

A hand caught his chin and tilted his face up to the light. Simon’s face wavered in his sight, glaring yellow halos blurring his features. Kiran hadn’t even heard him come in.

Simon leaned in closer, studying Kiran’s eyes. The halos crawling over him brightened with satisfaction. “Behave yourself, Kiran, and I won’t be forced to take any further steps.” His words echoed and danced in the air.

Simon laid his hands over the silver on Kiran’s forearms. His gaze grew distant and withdrawn. A sharp stinging pierced Kiran’s numbness. Kiran looked down at his arms, which seemed to lie a great distance away. White flames danced over them, fading even as he watched.

Delicate metal filaments retracted until all that remained on Kiran’s wrists were two thin, plain bands. Simon lifted his hands away, and the bands opened with a soft click, their magic gone inert. Simon slipped them into a pocket.

“Put him in the carriage.”

Hands dragged Kiran to his feet. He tried to walk, but the floor kept jumping away from him. Everything swung sideways, wood-paneled walls jouncing past his head, and then he was in a place where all the air seemed stained with gray. He didn’t like it, and started to struggle, but in a small, distant part of his mind, a cold voice said
Wait. Wait.
He relaxed, and let the flickering people put him somewhere dark, where at least the gray was all shut out.

***

(Dev)

I bolted off the park stairs three terraces below Simon’s house, my heart pounding. I’d climbed down from the drain hole so fast I’d nearly ripped the skin from my fingers.

Cara jumped up from the low stone wall bordering the street. Two sturdy gray horses stood tethered to a nearby post, their saddlebags packed as if for a hunting trip.

“We’re on?” Cara’s face showed the same excited determination I’d seen her display before a difficult climb.

“Yeah.” I swung up on my horse. “They left in a carriage not ten minutes gone. Simon doesn’t look to have taken any drugs yet—but Kiran’s with them, Pello’s wearing the gear you marked, and the find-me charm’s working.”

Cara vaulted into her saddle and patted the bulky outline of the crossbow in her saddlebag. “Soon as they stop, just tell me where you want me.” Her fierce grin kindled a confusing mix of warmth and worry in my gut. Gods, it felt good to have her partnering me in this—but at the same time, I wished she’d stayed safely clear.

And since our night together in the attic, every time I looked at her, desire sparked within. Cara had approached bedplay with the same wholehearted, forthright passion she devoted to climbing. A new experience for me after Jylla’s mind-twisting games, and one I longed to repeat.

No chance of that, so far. When not on vigil in the drain tunnel, I’d been busy hiding my money in multiple blind accounts in the largest Alathian banking houses. For her part, Cara had sought out Jerik to pump him for mage war stories, in hopes of gaining information on Simon’s capabilities that might add to what I’d learned from Kiran. If all went well with our plan, Simon’s magic wouldn’t be a factor, but I knew better than to count on everything running smooth.

I allowed myself one appreciative glance at Cara’s lean, supple form, then locked away the memories of our night on the furs and focused on the find-me. If my years with Jylla had taught me anything, it was how to shut out distractions.

As we worked our way down the terraces toward the riverside quarter, the streets grew increasingly crowded with carts, carriages, and people. Good cover, but thank Khalmet we hadn’t tried to track Simon’s carriage by sight. In Ninavel, highsiders and tradesmen alike took pains to embellish their carriages in distinctive ways. Alathians seemed determined to blend into one undistinguished mass. Every carriage we passed was identical to Simon’s, painted in unrelieved black with no markings.

When we came to the main riverside road, I stopped my horse, frowning.

“What is it?” Cara drew her horse alongside mine.

“They’re going the wrong way.” I’d expected them to turn north into the riverside district, heading toward the gate. I’d figured they’d pull into some deserted yard or alley down riverside to hide Simon and Kiran away. Simon would take his hennanwort, and we’d strike.

Instead, the charm signaled they’d turned south. That way lay the city’s border, a scant half mile off at the end of the river delta, and beyond, nothing but acres of cinnabar forest. The next border gate was down in Loras, a hundred miles distant.

Cara shrugged. “Maybe they decided the forest’s a safer spot to make their final preparations. Less chance of prying eyes, and no city guardsmen to call.”

“Yeah, but that’d put them an awfully long ride from the gate. Hennanwort lasts a while, but the herbalist told me the effects are strongest within the first few hours after the dose.”

“You think Pello knows we marked him? That he’s riding off separately, to draw us away?”

“Maybe, but we have to keep following the charm’s lead. We’ll never find Simon in time if he’s split off from Pello. We ought to know if Pello’s still with the carriage once we get outside the city. The guardsman loaded ten trunks of luggage onto the damn thing—it’ll leave serious tracks.” If we’d lost Kiran, as a last resort I’d send Cara to warn the Alathians a blood mage meant to pass their gate.

“Suliyya grant he didn’t mark us.” Cara tilted her head back to the sky, and sighed. “At least it’s a nice day for a southward ride.”

I’d been so intent on the charm I hadn’t even noticed, but she was right, the day was beautiful. The last traces of fog had burned off, and we’d passed far enough out of central Kost for the ever present woodsmoke haze to clear, leaving the sky a fresh, pale blue. Below the outlying storage yards, the Elenn River glittered green in the sunlight. Straight ahead, the dark cliffs of the gorge reared skyward, closing back in around the river as it rushed southward toward Loras.

The traffic thinned to almost nothing by the time we reached the Deeplink bridge and crossed off the river delta. A pair of deep wheelmarks showed plain as day in the loamy dirt beyond the bridge. My worry didn’t lessen. Had Pello set some kind of trap?

I held us back until the pulse of the find-me charm had almost faded. With so little traffic on the road, we’d be far too easy to spot if we stuck close. Maybe that was Pello’s aim. A short diversion down the southward road, to see if anyone followed. Thinking of that, I directed us just off the road into the shadows of the trees. As the gorge closed in, riding parallel to the road got harder, flowering kamma bushes filling in the space between cinnabar pines. The road had become little more than a glorified cart track, striped with roots and dotted with rocks. That carriage of Simon’s wasn’t meant for rough travel, yet the tracks continued along the dirt. My nerves ratcheted higher.

The charm’s warmth stabilized, then increased when we continued. Pello had stopped at last. On the road, the wheel marks took a sudden left turn onto an overgrown side track. Cara turned her horse to follow, but I motioned her back.

“We go on foot from here. Horses make too much noise, and we don’t know how close they are.” I spoke a whisper, peering warily over the undergrowth. I didn’t see any sign of Pello or the carriage, but they couldn’t be far. The river was maybe a mile away, and the border less than that. We led the horses into the woods on the other side of the cart track and tethered them behind a screening group of trees.

Cara nocked her crossbow. I put a hand on her arm. “Don’t try and shoot Simon, not even if he’s taken hennanwort. Even if he can’t cast actively, Khalmet only knows what defensive wardings a blood mage wears. This far out from the city, the detection spells are a lot weaker. He won’t have to worry so much about the Council.”

Cara strapped the bow onto her back, her face tight. “What if it’s just Pello?”

“Then we shoot the bastard, straight off,” I muttered. Gods, if he’d played me for a fool again...my jaw clenched. No choice but to play this out and see.

We worked our way through the trees in a wide arc, heading in the direction the track had taken. Cara took the lead as the more experienced hunter. Sethan had taught me how to sneak through forest, but I thought hunting a slow, annoying pain in the ass. Much easier to bring my own provisions.

Cara stopped dead and tugged me to her side. Through the kamma bushes, I glimpsed the dark bulk of a carriage. A faint jingling drifted through the air, as of someone adjusting tack. No voices. I nudged Cara and tilted my head toward the cinnabar tree on our left. The fissured red bark was easy to climb, and the stout branches high over our heads were thick with concealing needles. When skulking around on a scout, nothing beats a high perch. People rarely remember to look up.

I eased my way up the tree, testing each hold to make sure the bark wouldn’t break off and patter to the ground. Thirty feet up, I found a pair of branches thick enough to hold our weight, with a bristling wall of smaller branches for cover. I motioned for Cara to join me, and cautiously rearranged branches to allow us a view down into the fern-filled clearing where the black carriage stood.