I continued on through the dark woods, but the simple presence of water added a large, messy complication to the trip. The night had been cool but bearable before my stop at the stream, but the presence of sopping wet clothes and hair changed cool and bearable to cold and shiver-making. The riding dress clung to me all over, the cape weighed an ice cold ton, and my feet squished in the boots that had once protected them from the damp. Just to make things even better, the breeze had stiffened enough to be noticeable, pulling at the wet strands of my hair with cold, invisible fingers. It took almost no time before I was shuddering violently, having trouble with even so simple a thing as holding onto the reins. The vair snorted and danced, wondering what was going on, and I tried talking myself into taking the wet clothes off, knowing I’d dry out quicker without them, but I couldn’t do it. I was already so cold that I couldn’t stand the thought of being bare in that wind, having nothing to keep its full breath from me. I shivered and shook, and wished to hell that I had even a thin green shawl that was dry and warm.
After a long time the shivering subsided, but I almost didn’t notice that it had stopped. My entire body had begun to ache, I was having trouble sitting straight in the saddle, and my face felt as though it were burning up. I saw the moon again and remembered all the inoculations I’d been given up there, wondered why the hell they had bothered, then gave up on wondering. I had a bad fever, probably an infection to go along with it, and I didn’t even know where it had come from.
Not long after that, the moonlight took to rippling. It danced all around me, making the dark ripple with it, and my head pounded with thunder that had come out of nowhere. I was riding something, going somewhere, but I couldn’t remember what or where. There seemed to be trees all around, waving tall and dark through the night, getting in my way, stopping me, making me turn back. A faint, faraway voice screamed through the thunder, but I couldn’t make out what it was saying, and didn’t really care. A heavy weight hung at my waist and I almost took it off and threw it away, but my left arm wasn’t moving well and I couldn’t fumble the buckle open.
Then I was riding through a cleared area between the trees, an area the trees had left clear, a broad, dirt and stone emptiness that I could ride on. It went on for a long while, the moonlight rippling, the thunder pounding, and then the moonlight fell from the sky and stuck to the dark in front of me, lighting up part of it in funny-looking squares. I peered at the squares as whatever I rode moved closer, and finally decided that the odd-looking squares were the windows of a house, a three-story house. I leaned heavily on my mount’s neck and stared at the house, and after a while realized that it wasn’t getting any closer. My mount had stopped almost directly in front of the house, and maybe the house was where I had been going. I slid off its back, nearly going all the way down to the ground, but my feet stayed under me and my knees firmed up a little, so I left whatever I’d been riding and made for a lopsided door. The door swayed back and forth, shimmering the way the dark had shimmered, but I grabbed for the doorknob to hold it still and it finally settled down enough so I could open it.
Inside was nothing I knew, nothing that had been expecting me. My eyes slitted against the bright lamp-light as I moved forward, looking at strangers seated at long tables whose conversation didn’t quite penetrate the thunder in my head. I suddenly realized how warm it was in the room with heat pouring out of the fireplace, and fought with the catch that held my cape closed until it clicked open and let the cape fall to the floor behind me. Some of the strangers in the wavering room had been staring at me, but once the cape was gone one of them suddenly appeared in front of me. He wasn’t very tall, but he was very fat, and his fat face frowned as his piggy eyes looked me up and down.
“Who are you, wench?” he demanded, his words and accent strange and harsh against the pounding in my ears. “How dare you enter my house so covered with wet and filth, and how dare you wear a man’s weapon?”
It took a minute before I understood what he was saying, and then I started getting mad. Nobody talks to a Special Agent like that unless they’re tired of living. Ringer would be mad as hell if I killed the jerk and caused an Incident, but Ringer wasn’t there just then and I couldn’t even remember what my assignment was. Getting mad had made my head hurt worse, and that stupid fat man was to blame. If I killed him, maybe Ringer would never know. I moved my hand to the back of my neck, looking for the knife that was usually sheathed there, but it was gone. I didn’t remember taking it off, and the fat man was shouting at me again, and my left hand brushed up against the weight hanging at my left side. I reached for it right-handed and found a sword in my grip, noticing the dry, red-brown stains with disapproval. You never leave blood on a weapon you’ve used, not unless you expect to use it again very soon. I looked up from the blood to the shouting fat man, and felt the disapproval vanish. I’d used the weapon and bloodied it, and now was about to use it again.
I’d clean it right as soon as I was through using it.
Walking was hard on the tilted wooden floor of the house, but I had to walk on it to reach the fat man. He saw me coming and his face paled as his hands rose protectively in front of him, but that wouldn’t do him any good. He’d find out what it meant to challenge a Special Agent, but the knowledge wouldn’t do him much good either.
Cold-blooded killers, some people called us, and saviors of the Federation, said others, and the hell of it was they were all right and all wrong.
I moved another step closer to the quivering fat man, the blade in my hand ready to do its work, and then my hand began trembling, unequal to lifting the full weight of the blade. My point fell to the floor, and my breath came faster as I tried to lift the sword, tried to replace my guard. I had fought the point up a foot or two when a steel-hard hand grabbed my arm, and then the sword was gone from my fist.
“No,” a deep voice came, and I swung my eyes around to see a face I knew. The face had a name, Fallan, and I knew he was no friend.
“I’ll kill you,” I whispered, not knowing whether any sound came along with the words. He held my sword and I reached for it, but his hand refused to let go of my arm. He looked mad as hell, his once-bright shirt dirtied and ringed here and there with sweat, and he wouldn’t let me take my sword back.
“Sh-she would have attacked me!” the fat man quavered, sweat running down his bloated face and ridged neck. “Who is she, and what does she do here?”
“She is in my charge,” Fallan said hoarsely, his eyes hard as he kept me from my weapon. “We were at-tacked by bandits and after my men and I had driven them off I discovered that she had taken a weapon and fled. She must surely be deranged from fear.”
“Remove her at once!” the fat man squeaked, one trembling hand pointing behind us while I fought to keep him in focus.
“She and I are both weary,” Fallan began, closing his hand tighter as I tried to pull loose. “I – would have a room so…”
“Remove her!” the fat man repeated in a scream, his face going redder than before. “I will not have her sort my house! Away with her, and yourself as well!”
Fallan looked ready to argue the point, but when two armed men appeared from the kitchen area he reswallowed the words without saying anything further. He nodded curtly, a gesture which wasn’t as reassuring to the fat man as it should have been, then he turned to me. The entire room was spinning slowly around me, only a small distraction from the pain in my side, and Fallan’s face blurred even as I looked at it. I knew he was no friend, knew I couldn’t trust him, but it happened too fast. One minute he was hazily before me, and the next he was bent forward and reaching, lifting me to his shoulder without the least effort. I cried out hoarsely and struggled, fighting to loosen his arm around my legs, but that was the wrong thing to do. The pain in my side screamed louder as the room whirled faster, and then the light and I spun away together.
I woke up slowly, with a great deal of effort, fighting my way up out of the mists. There was daylight pouring through the window into the room I lay in, hut I was too busy sorting out the dreams I’d been having to pay much attention to it.
I remembered the fight with Clero, remembered getting wounded, remembered being dumped in a stream, but after that, things got hazy.
I vaguely recalled riding through the woods and stopping at what must have been an inn, but nothing that happened was at all clear and then I remembered how I’d gotten to the room I was in. Fallan. Go old Captain Fallan, leader of mercenaries and royal pain in the backside.
I moved one arm out from under the old blanket I was covered with, feeling the annoyance at Fallan rise up all over again. That he had somehow found me at the inn was obvious, as obvious as the fact that I had left there with him. I remembered coming to just as he was carrying me into a small wooden house. We passed a dingy lamp lit room with a fireplace and ended up in a smaller room with a bed, where Fallan deposited me, not too gently, on the bed and left me just long enough to light a second lamp. He was back immediately and bending over me with a frown, his big hands going to the wound in my left side, and I hadn’t had the strength to fight him the way I’d wanted to. He’d muttered something under his breath, almost in a snarl, and then I was being stripped of the wet, filthy clothes and soggy boots. The swordbelt was gone, a faint memory saying that it had been taken back at the inn, with the sword, so it wasn’t long before Fallan had an unobstructed view of the results of my brush with Clero. His jaw tightened as he examined the wound more closely, then he strode out of the room altogether. I lay still, my head pounding and all of me burning up with the roaring fire inside me, and then Fallan was back, depositing an armload of things on a small wooden table standing next to the bed. The first thing he did was smear a jelly like substance on the gash in my ribs, and then he went on to bandaging. The bandage was wide and much too hot, but Fallan refused to let me pull it off. He knocked my hands away as he reached for a large, metal cup, and then the cup was at my lips and Fallan was forcing its contents down my throat. I’d choked and struggled, more than ready to throw up from the taste of the stuff, but Fallan hadn’t leaned back till the cup was empty. I didn’t know what the cup contained, but before I knew it everything had gone black.
I moved my free arm to my face, but I really didn’t have to bother.
The fever wasn’t raging as high as it had been, but it was still there, something I could feel all over my body. I ached as though I’d exercised for hours after not having bothered for a year, and even moving my head around on what passed there for a pillow was an effort. I dropped my arm back onto the bed, not having the strength to hold it up any longer, then cursed under my breath with a lot of feeling. I hadn’t noticed it sooner, but someone – probably Fallar – had put me into an oversized nightshirt of sorts, and I felt as though I were tied tight under the blanket. I squirmed around, trying to loosen the nightshirt’s hold, and my resentment against Fallan grew stronger with each useless movement. I knew the man thought he was protecting my modesty, but I’d really had more of him than I’d ever been interested in.
“So you have awakened,” a voice came, and I turned my head a little to see Fallan standing in the doorway to my room. He’d changed his shirt again from the bright red of a mercenary back to the anonymous dark green, but he still wore the same black pants and boots. He looked at me with as neutral an expression as he’d ever managed, but that didn’t go very far toward endearing him to me. Inside my head, the presence I’d forgotten about again came to life, stirring in eagerness at Fallan’s nearness. She wanted him more than ever now, but it was her tough luck I was in no shape to accommodate either of them. If I’d tried, it probably would have killed me.
Fallan was holding a cheap, earthenware pitcher in his hand, and he left the doorway to bring it over to the small wooden table next to the bed. Once he’d put it down he turned toward me to put his hand on my forehead, and I, annoyed, reached up and knocked it away without thinking. The mercenary grabbed my wrist and held it above my head.
“Though your body has been injured, the sweetness of your nature remains intact, I see,” he drawled, keeping his eyes directly on me.
“It causes me great suffering to refuse your ladylike wishes, and yet the state of your health demands that I accept the painful burden.
You will remain abed and under my care till you have recovered, Missy, else shall there be harsh words between us.”
He let go of my wrist and put his hand hack on my forehead, and all I wanted to do was cut that hand off at the shoulder. I’d thought I was all through with Fallan, finished with having to let him push me around, but he’d barged into my life again. I was in no shape to do anything about it then, but I tend to heal faster than most and the job I’d had was over.
Fallan kept his hand on my forehead a good deal longer than was necessary, then took it away with an almost-pleased nod. He walked away from the bed toward the window, and when he came back he was carrying an old but beautifully carved straight-backed chair which he deposited in the spot where he’s been standing. Once this was done he sat down as though he were really tired, and stuck his legs out straight in front of him with a sigh.
“Now,” he pronounced, bringing his eyes to my face. “You have a disturbing yet hopefully not serious wound, and a high, though lessened fever. I believe I know how you received the wound, yet the fever remains unaccounted for. I would know how you came to acquire it.”
His tone was too dry and superior for my liking, but I was glad to see he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion about the wound: he thought I’d gotten it at the slave market. It would have been too much trouble to correct him, so I pushed the neck of the nightshirt down to get it out of my way and returned the calm, dark gaze I was getting.