“I don’t know how to take care of you,” she said, words muffled by her arms. She hadn’t meant to say it, but out it came. “You’re eleven. I don’t know what to do with you.”
Silence greeted this statement, until she had to straighten up and turn around to look at them.
Lehant looked startled. From the girl’s expression, Mirei could only think that she’d managed to prove to her that, yes, even Silverfires were human. Crone only knew what kinds of stories Thornblood trainees were fed about them. Probably similar to the ones Silverfire trainees got about Thornbloods.
Amas had gone white, and her lips were pressed together. Her eyes were large in her face, light blue and lost; Mirei couldn’t break away from her gaze.
The three of them stared at each other, and Mirei’s gelding whickered and stamped one hoof.
Then Amas pulled herself up, squaring her thin shoulders in abrupt determination. “We’re not children. We’re Hunter trainees.”
She said this as if it was supposed to solve all of the problems. Mirei couldn’t see how. “And?”
“So don’t think you have to treat us like children. Think—think like you’re running a Hunter school. Your own school. With two trainees. And it’s a different kind of school, because instead of having a compound, you’re teaching us on the road. Like apprentices. We’ll learn the trade by working with you.”
“Being a Hunter isn’t a
trade
,” Mirei said; it was a silly objection, but it was easier to put into words than her other ones.
“Still,” Amas insisted. “A two-trainee Hunter school—three, once we get Indera back—and you’re the Grandmaster. And you’ll teach us tracking, while we chase Indera, and how to find someone who’s gone missing. That’s work Hunters do. Jaguar told you to teach us.”
He’d told her to teach them, not to have some kind of delusion about setting up her own school. The last time anybody had tried to create a new school had been over a hundred years ago, and Snowspears were still considered second-rate alternatives to Wildmoons, the school they had splintered off from.
Snowspears weren’t doppelgangers, though.
Neither would these girls be, in the long run—but they would for a while.
Mirei wrenched her thoughts back from the road they were headed down. She wasn’t
actually
setting up a school. It was just a way for her to deal with her growing—well, currently shrinking—pack of girls. A way for them all to relate to each other. They’d go back to their schools eventually, assuming Starfall let them go.
Don’t follow that thought too far.
Then she remembered what training had been like, the way she’d gone through it. Mirei wasn’t a teacher; the only way she knew how to teach was the way she herself had been taught. It had been brutal. “I’d be too hard on you,” she said.
Lehant gave a short bark of laughter. “You’ve never been at Thornblood.”
“
Be
hard,” Amas said. “That’s fine. You told us we’re born for this. The teaching they give us at Silverfire—it isn’t enough of a challenge anyway, because our year-mates would get flattened. You don’t have to worry about normal people, though. Just us. We can take hard.”
It was only true on some counts; training was hard in a lot of ways, not all of which were ways doppelgangers were gifted. But she was right that they could learn much more quickly than others could.
And they weren’t starting late, like she had.
The more time she spent debating Amas’s suggestion, the farther away Indera was getting.
“We do this,” Mirei said, “and there’s no more questioning. Understand? I tell you to do something, you do it, no arguing. Whether it’s Hunter stuff or witch stuff. Most Hunter schools may have problems with witches, but for however long it lasts,
this
school is different. You’re going to have to deal with it eventually; better start now. Got it?”
Both of them nodded.
“Fine,” Mirei said. “Saddle the horses. You two ride double. We leave in five minutes.”
They rode north, because in Amas’s opinion, Indera would have gone back to Angrim.
“Why Angrim?” Mirei asked her as they led the horses toward the road.
“Because it’s the only landmark she knows around here. And Silverfire is north.”
“How sure are you?”
Amas thought it over. “Mostly.”
She had to accept “mostly,” because she had no better lead to follow. And, as Amas pointed out awhile later, Angrim was a large city, the capital of Abern; it offered more opportunity for Indera to lose herself in the crowds.
It wouldn’t have done her any good against Mirei’s spells if she hadn’t been a doppelganger, and Indera didn’t know that protected her—but she also didn’t know much about how magic worked in general. Silverfire would have taught them eventually, because they needed to know how to deal with it, but that came much later.
Mirei gave them a lesson on it as they rode. Whenever they were walking or trotting the horses, she kept the gelding close to the trainees riding double, and told them how magic worked. Not just the side of it Hunters usually heard; she knew the witch side, and could tell them
why
things worked the way they did. With witches after them, they needed to know as much as possible. She didn’t stint the practical aspects, though. Against a witch, their best defense would be to hit the woman in the throat.
They arrived in Angrim just before sunset, but the trio that rode through the gates was not a Hunter with two trainees. It was an aging mercenary with his two teenaged sons.
Mirei had cast it when they stopped for a breather during the afternoon; illusions were far too finicky and slow to be cast from the back of a moving horse. She had to define in close detail the appearances she wanted, constructing the images in the language of magic, and work through foci to channel the power. The trainees, to their credit, shut their mouths and accepted the spell. It seemed a good way to start breaking them of being nervous around magic, and anyone looking for them would not be looking for men.
“They haven’t taught you about the agents yet, right?” she asked Amas quietly as they passed under the arch of Angrim’s southern gate and into the city’s narrow, crowded streets.
Amas, disguised as a thickset fifteen-year-old with shaggy brown hair, shook her head. “We know they exist, because people have said, but we don’t know who they are or how to find them.”
Of course not. That information was held back until the last two years, when the trainees who were going to fail out had done so. Hunters did not want information about their agents leaking out into the rest of the world.
That would be one of the disadvantages to trying to set up a new school
, Mirei thought, turning her horse down a cross street and moving to the side to avoid a wagon of beer kegs.
No network of informants in place
. Some agents were ordinary people paid to pass along information; others were Hunters too old or injured to actively continue their line of work. The latter would take time to build up, and the former, well, it was hard to find trustworthy people.
I could make use of witches, though.
“Then she won’t go to them,” Mirei said out loud, avoiding Indera’s name. Too many listening ears. “But we can find out if any of them have seen her.”
There were a variety of convoluted protocols for contacting an Angrim agent, because of the number of spies; Mirei had to choose one where the fact that she looked like a complete stranger would not be observed. The agent she’d chosen was savvy enough not to come if the one contacting her was described as unfamiliar.
Mirei waited for her that night in the cellar of the Horse-head, a raucous alehouse in the western quarter, while the two doppelgangers sat upstairs, losing miserably at dice.
A shadow appeared in the light from above, and a short figure moved into the cellar.
“Please hear me out, Wisp.”
The knife-faced woman instantly went on guard. A hint of provocation, and she would attack or vanish up the stairs. Mirei was careful not to give her cause for either. She came forward slowly from her hiding spot among the cider kegs, pausing between each step, with her gnarled mercenary’s hands held out wide. No way was she dropping the illusion, not without an opportunity to rebuild it later.
Wisp stared at her false face in the dim light and scowled. “You’re none of ours.”
“Actually, I am,” Mirei said, halting where she was. “Not too long ago, you told me that just because you were once young and stupid didn’t mean I had to follow in your footsteps. And I said that you had become old and wise.” She came forward two more slow, careful strides. “It’s an illusion. I’m Mirage.”
Wisp’s eyes narrowed and took in the entirety of Mirei’s appearance, from her scuffed leather boots to what was left of her graying hair. Survey done, she said, “No disguise is that good.”
“It is if it’s magic.”
Her words took the old Hunter visibly aback. “Who put that on you?”
“A witch,” Mirei said dryly. “It
is
me, Wisp.”
“What was the last thing you contacted me for?” the woman asked, still suspicious.
Mirei opened her mouth to say “refuge,” and caught herself just in time. There had been another contact after that one, when she had gotten Wisp to send a bird to Silverfire, with a message for Eclipse.
The reminder of her missing year-mate sent a pang through her heart. In all her Angrim trouble, she hadn’t thought about him for some time.
Concentrate on the moment
, she reminded herself, seeing Wisp’s suspicion grow with every passing second. “I asked you to send a message for me,” she said. “To Silver-fire. And that time I obeyed the protocols, because I knew you’d kill me if I bypassed them again, the way I did when I asked for refuge.”
Wisp relaxed at last, as much as she ever did. Retired she might be, but the old Hunter had not gone soft. “Great.”
Mirei had just enough time to wince before Wisp launched into her diatribe.
“What in the
Void
has been going on with you? You show up in town, send a bird to Silverfire, get jumped by a pack of Thornbloods, then leave town without so much as a word of explanation. Week or so later, you’re back here again, demanding refuge for you and some other woman you won’t name for me or even show me her face. Oh, and you drop the little tidbit that the Primes are on your tail, all five of them. Then you vanish
again
, this time out of a bloody
cloister
, and you don’t even take your sword with you, you’re gone for a couple more weeks, and next thing I hear you’re dashing around the north end of town and some witch shows up dead. Now you’re at my door again. With Eclipse’s sword on your hip, when nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him in weeks.” Wisp glared at her. “Talk.”
Mirei tried for a light tone. “Reminds me. Could I get my sword back? I hope you rescued it from the temple.”
A knife sprouted from the keg behind her head. A thin stream of cider began to leak out and drip to the floor.
So much for humor
. “Wisp, ask Jaguar for information. He knows what’s going on, and he can decide how much is safe to spread. I didn’t contact you because I wanted to see your pretty face again, or because I wanted to be your target for knife practice; I did it because one of ours is in trouble, and I may not have much time to get her out of it.”
“ ‘Her.’ So not Eclipse.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Mirei said, not bothering to hide how much that upset her. “And I haven’t had a chance to search because I’ve been riding herd on eleven-year-olds. I have two Silverfire trainees—well, I had two; now I’ve got one. The other one came back here, to Angrim, we think. I need to catch her before anybody else does. The Primes aren’t trying to kill me anymore, but some other witches are, and they’re after Indera, too.”
Wisp took this in, then opened her mouth again. “Why—”
“Ask Jaguar,” Mirei said, before she could even get the question out. “I’m serious. Wisp, that dead witch was one of the ones I’m running from, and she may have friends in town who are looking for Indera right now.” She hesitated, debating whether or not to add the rest.
Ah, Void, go for it. She may already know
. “And they have another one. Not ours. A Windblade named Naspeth.”
She could practically see the pieces click into place in Wisp’s head. “These are the special ones. Aren’t they. The ones who are like you.”
“
Ask Jaguar
,” Mirei said for the third time. Wisp would keep her here all night with questions, otherwise; collecting information was the woman’s job. That, and lending assistance to Silverfires who needed help.
The sound of grinding teeth was nearly audible, but Wisp was good at her job, and that meant swallowing her curiosity when bigger issues were at hand. “Tell me the details.”
“Eleven years old. Red-brown hair. Was wearing Askavyan clothes as a disguise, but she may have tried to change those for something else. Riding, unless she ditched the horse. Would have been coming from the south. We’re not certain she came here at all, though.”
Wisp nodded. “It’s enough to go on. We’ll start looking.”
But the next morning, Wisp delivered the news that there had been no sign of Indera.