So Mirei told them about the domain of Starfall, which had been her home for fifteen years. With fond detail, she described the orchards on these slopes, the farms on the coastal plateaus, worked mainly by Cousins, with assistance from Earth witches who kept the weather in balance. The main settlement lay in the mountains proper, and she told them what to expect when they came there. She sang the sentry spells into quiet, and explained about their presence; she mentioned that there would be guards when they reached the Starfall settlement, but did not bring up the patrols in the area. If Indera was hoping to escape again, no sense giving her extra information.
They arrived in the settlement after dusk, when hardly anything could be seen of the place but the dark bulks of the various buildings and the lofty, glowing windows of Star Hall. No reconstruction had yet been done on the shattered crossing; jagged edges of stone still outlined themselves against the stars. That was a story she still hadn’t told them.
It would have to wait. Mirei hadn’t even dismounted yet in the front courtyard when a Cousin was at her stirrup. “The Void Prime commands your presence.”
“I’ll bet she does,” Mirei murmured under her breath, too quiet for the woman to hear, then raised her voice to the rest of the group. “They have rooms for you. I’ll come find you tonight if I get a chance. If not, then be out here at dawn.”
“Dawn?” Lehant said, clearly startled.
Mirei grinned. “Training doesn’t stop just because we’re here. Meet me in this courtyard. Now that you’re not riding every day, I can
really
start to work with you.”
Assuming Satomi leaves me alive
, she added inwardly, and followed the Cousin.
The Void Prime’s anger had cooled to solid ice during the long days of Mirei’s ride south with the doppelgangers. She regarded Mirei now over the expanse of her desk with hard, unforgiving eyes, and Mirei reflected with only a weak shadow of humor that this was probably not one of the times she could take liberties and sit down.
“Your behavior,” Satomi said, enunciating each word as if it were a weapon, “is unacceptable.”
Mirei chose her own words carefully. “With all due respect, Aken, the doppelgangers are very nervous. I didn’t feel I could in good conscience leave them alone on the journey down here.”
“That’s not the
point
!” Satomi shot back, and one hand slapped the surface of her desk. Mirei jumped at the sound. “The
point
is that I did not hear from you for
days
. A message after you left Silverfire: you had the two, and your friend was missing. Then
nothing
. Nine days without a single
word
from you.”
“Aken, when I sent that first message I told you I would write once I had something new to report. There was nothing to say, on the ride to Angrim, and then once I got there I was so busy—”
“So busy that in all those days, you couldn’t find a spare moment to notify us of your progress?”
“It took us a long time to reach Angrim,” Mirei said, feeling defensive. “Longer than I expected. And I didn’t want to use magic in front of the girls—”
It was a mistake, but she realized that too late. Satomi’s expression grew poisonous. “You
what
?”
Now how in the Void do I explain this without making her even more angry
? “Amas and Indera knew of me as Mirage,” she said, trying to keep her tone placatory. “The easiest way to get their cooperation was to keep that image up. I wanted to tell all the doppelgangers at once, too; it’s a complicated thing to explain, and I didn’t want to have to do it over and over again. So I let them think I was still Mirage. And when they learned the truth—well, Indera ran off. I had to find her before she got too far away.”
Satomi stood, but did not move out from behind her desk. She placed both hands on the polished wood and leaned forward to glare at Mirei. The woman was truly furious; Mirei had never seen her in this state.
“You are
not
Mirage,” the Void Prime spat. “You are
not
a Hunter, a free blade wandering where you please, without answering to anyone else. You are a part of something much larger, now, and it is
unacceptable
for you to assume that you may put off informing others of your actions. While you were riding around Abern, a newborn doppelganger died. While you were concerned for the tender sensibilities of those few girls, a second Prime left Star-fall, and took a great many witches with her. We are splintering apart, and you seem to think that you are still an independent agent.
You are not
. We must act together—all of us who hope to change our traditions—if we are to have any hope of surviving this strife.”
By the end of it, Mirei couldn’t meet her gaze. She looked down at her own hands, fingers twisted around each other. Mirage’s hands, with their calluses, hard knuckles, tendons standing out against the skin.
But she was not Mirage. And she
had
forgotten that. There were moments when she could have written to Satomi, given updates on her progress, and she hadn’t That was a mistake.
Satomi was halfway right. The Void Prime was too quick to forget her Hunter loyalties, and that was an error—but these past days, it was true, Mirei had been too quick to forget her loyalties to Starfall.
How in the Goddess’s many names am I supposed to balance the two out?
She didn’t know. But she could—she
must
—begin by apologizing to Satomi. “You’re right,” Mirei said, still not looking up. “And I’m sorry. I’m used to assuming that I’m the only one I can rely on in a crisis. The work I was doing—it was Mirage’s kind of work. It made me forget what other resources I have. And what responsibilities.”
A long silence followed that, during which she could not quite work up the nerve to meet the Void Prime’s eyes. She had seen Jaguar like this a handful of times. She hadn’t realized Satomi was capable of the same withering fury.
“You are right about the responsibilities,” Satomi said at last. Her voice was quieter, but still unforgiving. “And I’m afraid you will find them heavy indeed. I must have your promise that you will not forget them again.”
“I promise,” Mirei murmured, not allowing herself to hesitate.
“Good.” There was a scrape of a chair across the tiled floor as Satomi sat again. “Then sit down, and let me tell you what you have missed.”
Arinei’s departure Mirei had heard about, but Satomi filled her in on the details. They made Mirei cringe. One dissident Prime had been enough of an issue, but two was far worse, especially with Arinei’s political influence.
“Now that you’re back,” Satomi said when she was done, “we have work for you. There is a very valid concern among many of the witches that we don’t know enough of how your magic works, and what repercussions it may have. You’ll be working with a group we’ve put together, who will put you through various tests.”
Not a problem in and of itself, but Mirei had been contemplating other plans. “Aken, we’re still missing Naspeth—”
“And others as well.” The Void Prime cut her off coolly, before she could even make her argument. “We’ll be following up on that, and questioning the witch you brought to us. But other women will work on that matter. No one else has your magic; therefore you are needed here.”
“I made a promise to the Grandmaster of Windblade,” Mirei said in a low voice. “I feel personally responsible for getting her back.”
Satomi’s mouth thinned, perhaps at the allusion to her Hunter loyalties. “She
will
be retrieved. But at the moment, that is not your concern.”
Mirei should have left it at that, but there was one more issue she couldn’t brush off. “And what about Eclipse? Am I forbidden to search for him, too?”
The Void Prime’s reaction startled her. Satomi closed her eyes, looking pained, and did not answer.
“What is it?” Mirei said, her stomach twisting into a knot.
Satomi rose again and went to the window. Mirei was beginning to recognize that as a mark of uneasiness, an action the woman took to calm herself when distressed. Seeing her do it now was not reassuring.
“Your year-mate has been found,” the Void Prime said.
Mirei gathered her emotions under tight control. “Is he dead?”
“No.”
Relief washed over her like cool rain. “Then what’s the problem?” Because clearly there
was
one.
Satomi placed her hands on the edges of the window, her slender fingers pale against the stone. “He has not been able to tell anyone the details of his absence, but we can fill them in. Before your rejoining, when we had Miryo in captivity, we made plans to capture Mirage, as well. We could not search for you directly then—not with a spell—but we had gained enough information on Eclipse to find
him.
Assuming you would be with him, we sent a very large detachment of Cousins to capture you.”
But Mirage had left Eclipse, sending him to Silverfire with information for Jaguar, while she herself went after Miryo. A stupid plan that had also, apparently, been very well-timed.
Then anger boiled up inside her as she mapped out the timing in her head. “And you didn’t bother to call them
off
?”
“I did,” Satomi snapped, and turned to face her. “I am neither a fool nor a tyrant.” The annoyance drained out of her with visible speed. “But Shimi was the one responsible for coordinating that group.”
It wasn’t hard to fill in. “She never told them to stop.”
“Apparently not.” Satomi looked tired. “They captured him, and kept him prisoner, and she did not tell us.”
Mirei took a deep breath, forcing her anger down. If Shimi had still been there at Starfall… but she wasn’t, and so there was no one to vent her fury on. “You said he’s been found,” she said once she was calmer. “Where?”
“He reappeared at Silverfire,” Satomi replied. “Your Grandmaster sent us a message. And I am told he is not physically harmed.”
Mirei’s eyes shot to her. “Not
physically
.”
Satomi put her hands on the windowsill behind her, as if she were too weary to stand without support. “Your Grandmaster has been forced to piece this together from what Eclipse has
not
said, as it seems he’s been placed under some magical compulsion not to speak. But it appears he did not escape; he was released. And there was a condition of that release.”
Her mouth was dry with fear. “Which is?”
“We believe he has sworn a blood-oath to kill you.”
The chair skidded on the tiles and fell over backward as Mirei shot to her feet. “That’s not possible.”
“Mirei—”
“He’s my
year-mate
. He’s a
friend
.” The words would hardly come out; her jaw was stiff with shock and disbelief. “He isn’t—He would never—”
“He wasn’t given a
choice
,” Satomi said, over her continued stuttering protests. “He can’t tell the details, but we are sure of that much.”
“So what, he
was forced
to swear the oath?” Mirei realized she was shouting, and realized she didn’t care. “How can the Warrior accept it, if the person doesn’t mean the Void-damned words they’re
saying
—”
Satomi came forward with quick strides and tried to take her by the shoulders; Mirei slapped her hands away. The Void Prime’s face hardened. “Control yourself,” she snapped. “You will not help him by attacking me.”
Mirei wrenched herself back a few steps, out of the range where she would be tempted to use her fists on the other woman.
“The blood-oath is a spell,” Satomi said grimly. “As we have been painfully reminded of late, though spells are created by acts of faith, they continue to function even if that faith is misguided. Even if it is gone. How many of the women here truly feel personal devotion to the Goddess, the way Misetsu did? We began that way, but we have not continued in that path. If you know the words, know the pitches, have the power to fuel them, then the spell works. Eclipse, as far as I’m aware, has not cared to test whether the oath truly binds him, and that is wise of him. I’m sure it’s effective. The spell holds you to the words you have spoken—not what is in your heart.”
“That’s a
shitty
system,” Mirei muttered, and knew the protest was childish even as she said it.
Satomi, kindly, did not point that out. “He’s safe for now. Be grateful for that. But you must not go anywhere near him.”
Mirei wanted to rebel against the order, but it wasn’t for her own good; it was for Eclipse’s. The farther he stayed away from her, the less risk that the spell would consider his oath broken. She wouldn’t risk his life by pushing that. “I understand,” she said, and meant it, even though the words came out through clenched teeth. “I’ll just have to work at a distance.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She bent and righted the chair she’d knocked over, but did not sit again. “Is there any way to undo a blood-oath?”
A painful pause, and then Satomi’s quiet answer. “No.”
Mirei smiled, with no humor in it. “Just like there’s no way to cancel a spell outright. Or to translocate a living creature. Unless, of course, you’re me. Void magic has proved its ability to do things we thought were impossible. It’ll just have to do so again.”