Hunter and Fox (32 page)

So it had been a cruel joke all along. The Caisah had broken their Pact and played with her all this time. This was not the answer to the Harrowing! It was all a sham.

Talyn had placed her trust in oaths and pacts and magic; standing right in front of her was the proof that such things could be cruelly false. With a howl of primal despair she lashed out at the Golden Puzzle. Kicking and screaming, she broke it apart in a whirlwind of frustration that washed over her and consumed all thought.

The feeling eventually drained away, leaving a panting Talyn looking down at the shattered and scattered pieces—bits of her past she could never put back together.

So engrossed was she in what she'd done that she didn't notice the doors swing open. For an instant the Caisah and his Hunter stared at each other in mutual shock. Out of the corner of her eye Talyn realized that her new friend had faded back into nothingness.

The tyrant was the first to recover. She saw the flicker of his expression change, as if he'd been about to say something and then changed his mind. As always, his thoughts flew faster than hers.

Smoothly shutting the door behind him, he took in the shattered remains of the puzzle. Then stepping over them, he spoke softly, “So, where is your prey, my Hunter?”

It was ridiculous. He could see what she'd done, so he must have known she'd discovered his trick, yet here he was calmly asking for her side of the bargain.

Ignoring his question, she glared at him. “You are a liar and an oath breaker of the highest order!”

He raised his eyebrows as if it was trifling matter. “On the contrary, I fully intended to give you the answer you wanted. It seems it is you who is the oath breaker.”

Talyn was lost to all reason. Dipping into the before-time, she drew her pistol and shot at her tyrant's forehead. If only it could have been that easy.

The Caisah flinched out of the way, though how he could have seen it coming was incomprehensible. Throwing aside the weapon he'd given her with a scream of frustration, Talyn drew her mother's sword and dashed across the room. Three hundred years of desperate hatred and loss had built up and now spilled over the edge of her control.

The tyrant, seeing all this, withdrew his own sword. He blocked her first wild swings easily. Talyn managed to rein in her anger, instead slipping into the before-time. He was there, as impossible as that was, parrying her blows, riposting so swiftly that she found herself forced back; at least he was having to defend himself.

Now as coolness stole over her rage, she wondered how this was going to end. In all the time the Caisah had been in power there had been many attempts on his life; some covert, some as blatant as this.

Knowing all this, Talyn understood she had only one chance. Throwing caution to the wind, she abandoned all conventions of swordplay and stopped thinking about what she was going to do. Instead she just let her body do it. It was a desperate measure to fool the before-time.

Instead of parrying his downward strike, Talyn stepped into the stroke. The blade smashed into her collarbone with all the power of his arm behind it. The pain was blinding as muscle and bone were sliced and pierced by the sword.

She had a momentary impression of his eyebrows shooting up in shock. His blade was caught in her flesh, which was struggling to manage the sudden flow of blood and repair what she'd allowed to be injured. Ignoring the agony by blind determination, she used her undamaged shoulder and her forward momentum to thrust him back on the wall.

Talyn had managed to surprise the Caisah—an unusual experience for him. Hearing the air get knocked out of his lungs, she didn't take the time to revel in it. Arching back against him like a lover in the throes of passion, she thrust forward with her mother's curved blade as hard as she could. The sword carved through the Caisah's shoulder and was buried in the wall behind him. The vibration of it piercing stone went through Talyn's injured collarbone so that she cried out with him.

It must have been a while since the Caisah had experienced real pain. She was more used to it than he was. So that made two surprises for him in a very short space of time. She'd have to take satisfaction from that, at least.

While he was coming to terms with this new reality, she yanked her narrow knife free and nailed him through the other shoulder in a similar fashion. She could have tried to slit his throat, or sever his head, but she knew the stories, knew it wouldn't work.

He screamed again, but it was a sound he was having fun with. When he looked up, Talyn saw that he was actually laughing.

Shaking and realizing with horror that she was crying, she asked him the one question that had consumed her. “Who are you?”

They were closer than they ever had been—even while dancing at the masque.

“You want an answer, my hawk? You spend so much time looking for answers. I am afraid it is almost pathetic.”

She didn't care about her pride now. “I need to know,” Talyn pleaded, as if he could be reached with desperation.

He looked down at her hands clenched on his jacket, and sighed. “I am the leader that never should have been—the broken bird.”

She followed his gaze over her shoulder to where the large golden eagle statue spread its wings over the window. Strange how she'd never noticed before that under the eagle's claws was a rough edge, as though something had been broken off. More riddles and lies.

Turning back to him, she howled in frustration once again. It didn't matter; she was going to rip his head off just to see if the stories were true.

That was when the Caisah flexed his power. The air gathered around her and the Hunter was flung backwards against the wall. Trailing blood from her collarbone, she heard her ribs snap when she smashed into the unforgiving stone.

So they were both pinned on opposite walls: one by steel, one by magic. However, she was sobbing in anger. He was laughing.

Finally the Caisah's true face was revealed. It wasn't the calm one she'd always seen; instead it was one of complete madness.

The Hunter could feel the Caisah's Pact dissolving around her. It was as though her skin was being stripped from her and she howled at the unfairness of it.

At that moment, the woman walked out of the air to stand at her side. The Caisah, where he was pinned to the wall, didn't even take any notice; perhaps he couldn't see her at all.

“You cannot kill him,” the woman whispered, wiping the blood from Talyn's eyes, “not yet, that is.”

The Hunter grasped her with her one good hand. “Tell me you can help me! Tell me you can stop him!”

“You know in your heart of hearts that we can. Let us show you the right path; there is still hope for our kind. Come with us.” The Caisah's power was subsiding about her.

None of what she'd believed in mattered. She was an empty vessel, worth nothing to anyone—least of all herself. Beyond words, she took the hand offered to her. The woman was Vaerli, the closest thing to kin she would ever know now. Perhaps they were more her family than her own had been for centuries.

The woman guided her away from the Puzzle Room, the still-laughing Caisah, and the past she had wasted on him.

Let the Caisah rage, Syris mourn, and the Vaerli search in vain for her, she would not come to V'nae Rae again. Talyn's last thought before she left was bitter indeed.

So many gifts…and I wasted all of them.

P
HILIPPA BALLANTINE is the coauthor of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series with Tee Morris. Ballantine also wrote the Books of the Order series:
Geist
,
Spectyr
, and the forthcoming
Wrayth
and
Harbinger
. Her works have won both a Sir Julius Vogel Award and an Airship Award. Although she was a citizen of New Zealand, love brought her to Virginia, where she currently resides with her family, including five cats. Naturally, because she is a trained librarian, she's addicted to the smell of old books.

http://www.pjballantine.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pjballantine
@PhilippaJane