Read Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses) Online

Authors: Sharon Shinn

Mystic and Rider (Twelve Houses) (15 page)

“Mine ran,” she said to Tayse, panting a little. “Should we send Donnal after him?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation, but just then, a blood-freezing cry split the night, coming from the direction that the man had fled.
“Kirra,” Senneth said with a slight smile. “He appears to be taken care of.”
Tayse nodded at the ground before him, where her assailant had dropped his sword. “What did you do to make him let go of his weapon?”
“Turned the hilt hot in his hand.”
He gave her an unreadable look. “You didn’t think I needed such aid?”
She smiled. “I was afraid you would be angry with me for not letting you prove your skill. But if it had looked like the fight was not going your way, I would have intervened and let you rail at me all you liked later.”
“Good to know,” was all he said, then he stepped to the other side of camp to confer with Justin.
Senneth brought the fire up even higher to give them more light. Donnal lifted his white wolf ’s face and seemed to grin at her over his fallen attacker. She saluted him with the tip of her bloody blade, then knelt down beside one of Tayse’s victims.
In a moment, Tayse was beside her, kneeling on the man’s other side. They did a quick check for anything that might identify him—livery, jewelry, clothing, money—but they turned up very little. He wore no insignia and carried no cash. His weapons were plain but extremely well-maintained. He had a thin silver chain around his neck, but no pendant hung from it with a housemark stamped into the metal. He didn’t even wear any jewels that were affiliated with one of the Twelve Houses.
“Not much here,” Tayse commented and turned to the other corpse.
Before they were finished, Justin came to crouch beside them. “Nothing,” he said. “What did you find?”
“Nothing,” Tayse replied.
“I wonder if—” Senneth began, but her attention was caught by a figure moving toward them from the undergrowth. Tayse and Justin were both ahead of her, on their feet with weapons in hand, but it was only Kirra. Whatever shape she had taken to hunt down tonight’s prey, she had resumed her familiar body now. Donnal came up to nuzzle her hand, and she petted him absently while she glanced at the others.
“I caught one escaping,” she said. “What’s the story here?”
“The rest are dead,” Tayse said briefly. “We’ve been trying to find any clues as to who they might be.”
“The one I killed was wearing plain clothing and no jewelry,” Kirra said.
Senneth looked at her.
The one I killed . . .
As if it was an easy thing to have done. As if she had done it every day of her life since she turned eighteen and took up a life of combat. Senneth could not be positive unless she asked, but she was almost certain this was the first life Kirra had ever taken.
She shivered a little. She was so sure this was just the beginning of blood spilled, lives lost, the most desperate gambles taken. She was sure there was much worse to come.
“So what do you think?” Justin was asking. “Were they just mercenaries? Spotted us on the road and came after us by night?”
“Coren Bauler said something about bandits,” Kirra said. “I thought he was just making it up, but maybe—”
“They’re not bandits. They’re not mercenaries,” Tayse said. “They’re witch hunters. They were looking for us. For you, actually.”
They all stared at him. “Why do you think that?” Senneth asked.
“Quality of their clothes. Good leather boots. Condition of their muscles and their skin. Every mercenary I’ve ever met possessed fine weaponry, so you can’t judge by that, but these aren’t men who’ve been camping out in near starvation, waiting for the next victim to pass. These men are funded. And as far as I can tell, what’s being funded in the southern regions right now are patrols that can bring down mystics.”
Kirra gave a little kick to the dead man lying closest to her. “So maybe these are some of the same ones who killed that family we saw a few days ago.”
“Maybe,” Tayse said. “Or maybe there are a lot of patrols like this out roaming the countryside.”
“Not the same,” Senneth said in a muffled voice. “The others were wearing Gisseltess colors.”
Tayse glanced at her, seeming to read some of the chaos in her thoughts. “But I’m ready to wager their hands were not clean,” he said softly. “Anyone who approaches a night camp by stealth, in such numbers and bearing such arms, has not come to parley. They were intending a slaughter.”
“They got one,” Justin said.
Kirra looked around. “So what do we do with the bodies? Can we leave them here? I have to say, it’ll make it hard to sleep tonight, guarded by corpses.”
“We ought to hide them,” Tayse said. “Strip anything we might want from the bodies and then bury them.”
Kirra was looking at Senneth. “Or burn them.”
Now they all turned to gaze at her. “The less evidence left behind, the better,” Tayse said, his voice unwontedly gentle. Odd that he, and not Kirra, seemed to be so aware of her distress. “A grave could be found by anyone who’s looking.”
She nodded. “Let me know when you’re done with them,” she said and went to sit beside Cammon before the fire.
The other four worked over the bodies for the next hour or so, murmuring among themselves as they came across a particularly fine knife or a leather belt that they liked. Even Donnal had resumed human shape to help check the bodies and drag them away from the fire.
Cammon was quiet at first, but she could sense his presence beside her, curiously calming. “If it helps,” he said, “they really were intending to kill us. I have absolutely no doubt about that.”
She smiled tightly without looking at him. Cammon she would have expected to pick up on her thoughts; Tayse, no. “I’ve killed men before,” she said. “There was a time I thought I was good at it. There was a time I could think of a lot more men I wanted to see dead. I couldn’t do it tonight, though. That will be a liability as we continue on this journey, I think.”
“It’s because you’re afraid of how much death there is going to be,” he said softly.
Now she turned her eyes toward him. He still looked so much the innocent youth, his ragged hair even more disreputable after days on the road, his clothes a sorry collection of rags.
We have to buy something better for him to wear. Very next town we come to,
she thought, letting her mind take refuge, just for a moment, in that unimportant detail. “Oh, yes,” she said. “We are setting out on a long road of blood.”
“Turn away now, then,” he said.
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“The part you play is too important.”
She smiled a little. “So now you’re a forecaster as well as a reader? You can see my future as well as my heart?”
“Only your heart—what little glimpses of it you ever bother to show.
You’re
the one who sees some role you’ve been cast in.”
She sighed. “And I could be wrong. This all may be—” She flicked the fingers of both hands, as if dispersing troubles. “Posturing and playing and no death dealt. It may be nothing. But I think—” She shook her head and drew nearer to the fire. She was not sure even her own considerable body heat would be enough to warm her tonight. “I think we are heading into some kind of conflagration.”
He gave her a little smile. “Lucky for us, then, you are so good with fire.”
 
 
WHEN they were done with the bodies, Tayse called her over. They had piled the four men like so much cordwood on the side of the road. “The less trace we leave,” Tayse said again, “the better it will be.”
“What about the one Kirra left on the road?” Justin asked.
Kirra shrugged. “Mauled by a wild animal. Who will be able to tell differently?”
“Good enough,” Tayse said.
Senneth concentrated on the bodies, the basic materials of cloth and skin that would be most susceptible to fire. Gone the internal living flame, the raw blaze of creation; what remained now resembled nothing so much as the charred coals left behind after a bonfire sighed out. This fuel would catch fire, but it would never truly burn again.
She spoke a quiet word, and the four bodies were torched to a yellow so bright that those watching stepped hurriedly back. The flames were quick and hungry and very well-behaved. Within minutes they had burned through the stack of bodies and then subsided. When Tayse bent to touch the ground where they had been, he rubbed his fingers together and looked at her over his shoulder.
“A little black ash that will blow away by morning,” he said. “The ground isn’t even singed.”
“Good,” she said, and turned back to the fire. She knew, they all knew, they should move on from this place right now, but they were all too weary to pack up and go.
“I’ll watch,” Justin said.
“I’ll help,” Donnal replied, and resumed his wolf shape.
“We’ll leave early in the morning,” Tayse said. “And try to find someplace indoors to rest for a night or two. I think we could all do with a night of unbroken sleep.”
Senneth nodded without answering, though it seemed she was the one he spoke to. She hunkered down in the blankets, closer to the fire. Still not warm, so she murmured to the fire itself. Hotter, stronger, higher flames. Cammon and Kirra drew back, but Senneth stayed as close as the threat of danger would allow.
CHAPTER 9
 
T
HE morning was cold, even for Senneth, and no one looked particularly rested. It was almost a relief to pack up and get back on the road, leaving this undesirable location behind. Senneth glanced around once, but they had left no overt signs of a fight behind them. Some blood in the grass, scuff marks in the dirt. A good tracker could probably read that story, but it would not be definitive. There would be proof of nothing. She turned her horse’s head and followed Tayse’s lead out of the camp.
A few days ago, they had left the main road that served the southern Houses, but they were still following pretty well-traveled routes that connected the smaller towns to each other. The land around them was mostly open, with occasional valleys of wild grass and brambles, and occasional stands of fairly dense woods. They only passed a few other travelers, a mix of farmers and peddlers and gentry, and rarely exchanged more than a few courteous words with any of them. None of them looked like mercenaries, even civil guards disguised as mercenaries. Neither Cammon nor Donnal showed alarm when any of them approached, and Senneth took her cues from them.
A few hours after lunch they came to a small town in unaligned territory between Fortunalt and Rappengrass lands. It seemed to be something of a local crossroads, for it boasted two inns and a number of taverns, and the stables at the far edge of town appeared large enough to hold a fair number of horses.
“Forge down that way,” Tayse noted, jerking his head.
“Looks like a market town,” Senneth said.
“We could stand to replenish supplies,” Tayse said.
“And find something for Cammon to wear,” Kirra added with a laugh.
“Who are we this time?” Justin wanted to know.
Kirra shook her head. “I don’t think I should be the fine lady again, not so close to Forten City. Not even a lady from the Thirteenth House.”
“But we might be some agents carrying out transactions for Malcolm Danalustrous,” Senneth said. “That seems harmless enough.”
“My father will be—interested—to hear how much business he and his vassals have been conducting in the southern regions lately,” Kirra said.
Senneth glanced at her. “A bad idea, then, you think?”
Kirra laughed. “Well, if he doesn’t like it, he can tell us so once he finds out.”
“But I think we should not volunteer much information, and perhaps no one will think to ask,” Senneth said. “Travelers must pass this way all the time and not share details of their journeys.”
Cammon spoke for the first time. “It’s a strange place, though,” he said.
They all looked at him. “Strange how?” Tayse asked.

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