“What put the soldier to sleep?”
“Second level healing.” She blinked again. Second level. Sleep gives our bodies and minds time to restore and renew. Sometimes the greatest gift a Healer-mage can grant a patient is the gift of sleep. Mirian had known what to do, she’d just never been able to do it. Perhaps all she’d needed was the possibility of having a Pack member shot with silver and herself recaptured by Imperial enemies—although, should she be given the chance, she didn’t think she’d mention that to the Healer-master.
“Your eyes have no gold.”
“Trust me, I’m aware of that.”
She heard him yawn. Yawned in response. She’d slept tied to a tree; she could sleep here.
“You smell amazing.” He sounded as though sleep had come on him suddenly and he hadn’t yet realized he was falling.
“Tomas…”
“What’s your name?” Another yawn. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Mirian Maylan.”
“I mean, really amazing.” He shifted, pushed back against her, and began to turn over.
Mirian closed the hand around his shoulder, hard enough she felt flesh dimple under her fingers. “Tomas. No.” She kept her voice gentle because it was comfort he wanted as much as anything and a part of her wanted it, too. Wanted to lose herself in something just long enough to forget. But he wasn’t a something, and it wouldn’t be right.
He stopped moving, made a noise she couldn’t identify, then pulled his shoulder from her grip and changed.
She could put her arm around him in fur, rest her cheek on his head, and if that wasn’t enough comfort to forget—for either of them—it was at least enough to grant them sleep.
It wasn’t the distance they’d traveled that had left them so exhausted, but the constant fight to retain balance with their hands tied behind their backs.
“It’s to keep you from using magic,” Hare, the marksman, had reminded her as he waited yet again for Murphy and Tagget to haul her back up onto her feet.
“I thought the net on our heads was doing that.” She’d layered her words onto a passing breeze, leaving a trail of information for those with the ability to hear.
Hare had merely shrugged, but Tagget had sighed and said, “It’s old. Captain, don’t trust it.”
“The captain isn’t here and I notice the lieutenant, who keeps nagging about how much time this is taking, doesn’t have to lift one of us back onto our feet when we fall.”
Murphy had snorted. “Catch an officer do something like work.”
Now the five of them sat awkwardly on the ground in a half circle, too far apart for private conversation, but close enough that even in the fading light Danika could see that Annalyse still looked too pale, Stina, who had a purple bruise on her forehead, still looked angry—Danika envied her energy—Kirstin looked as though she’d folded in on herself, and Jesine looked worried about Kirstin specifically, barely taking her eyes off her face and inching as close as she could.
Each of them had an Imperial soldier standing over them, musket ready. The other soldiers were setting up camp—reusing two of the three old fire pits. Danika wasted a moment wishing that Allyse had been with them in Bercarit. Not that she wished this captivity on yet another friend, but if the nets allowed first level mage-work, then a first level Fire-mage could light a candle. Or a sleeve. Or a pant cuff. Or a series of ammunition pouches.
On the other side of the camp, by the fast-moving stream where Kyne and Tagget were filling canteens, Sergeant Black and Lieutenant Geurin were talking.
Danika tipped her head so the breeze brushed over her right ear.
“We need to make better time tomorrow, Sergeant.”
“Private Murphy has a point, sir. If we tie their hands in front of them, they won’t fall as often.”
“And Private Murphy is giving the orders now?”
As pleased as she was that Murphy had done as she wanted, Danika thought Lieutenant Geurin sounded like her sister’s five year old, and a five year old with the power of life and death was a terrifying thought.
Smart enough not to answer what was so clearly a rhetorical question, the sergeant remained silent.
“Fine.” The lieutenant started across the camp, the sergeant falling into step behind him. When he stood in the center of their half circle, he smiled and said, “Call the squads back around them.”
Sergeant Black frowned, but obeyed the order.
With Murphy on her left, Tagget on her right, and Hare behind her, Danika tucked her chin in to her chest and watched Lieutenant Geurin through her lashes. He would think it made her look weak, afraid of him. She knew it masked expressions she might not be able to hide.
“Tie their hands in front of them. Do not,” he added before the men began to move, “allow them at any point to get a hand free.”
The dull ache in her shoulders turned into fiery pain as her arms moved in ways they hadn’t been able to all day. Annalyse cried out, and one of the men who held her arms made soft clucking sounds. Through her own pain, Danika made note of that sympathy for later use.
When they had all been retied, the lieutenant stepped forward, pinched Danika’s chin between thumb and forefinger and lifted her head. She gave serious thought to seeing if she could bite the end of his finger off, but, in the end, merely met his gaze.
“Translate this,” he said.
“Drop dead,” she said pleasantly in Aydori.
He nodded, not imagining for a moment a bound captive would argue and stepped away.
“You’ll notice your hands are now bound in front of you,” he said, and paused.
“The lieutenant thinks we’re so stupid we have to be told our hands are in front of us now,” Danika translated.
Jesine coughed.
Danika did not look over at Sergeant Black.
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you can now remove the tangle and use your mage-craft against us. Well, you can’t.”
That, she translated as spoken.
“Attempting removal without a second artifact will cause extreme pain.”
And that.
“I realize you have no reason to believe me, so I’m going to prove it to you.”
Prove it? Danika shifted so she was not staring up at him at quite so acute an angle. “How?”
“By attempting to remove one of the artifacts of course. Now, translate.”
“Sir, I don’t think…”
“No one asked you to think, Sergeant. Translate, or it’ll be you for sure instead of a one-in-five chance.”
Danika showed teeth. “Then it’ll be me.”
“As you wish.”
She swept her gaze across the others and while none of them looked happy, she was Alpha and they’d abide by her decision.
But before the lieutenant could either step forward or order the net removed, Kirstin, who’d sat limp and unresisting while her bindings were changed, met Danika’s eyes and gave a nod so tiny Danika wasn’t positive she hadn’t imagined it. A heartbeat later, she dug the fingers of both hands into her hair, hooked them around the barely visible net, and screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
Sergeant Black grabbed her bound wrists and yanked her hands free.
Kirstin collapsed as though she were a puppet in a winter pantomime and her strings had been cut.
“You!” The sergeant moved men aside so Jesine had a clear path. “Do what you can.”
Jesine was already moving.
The lieutenant opened his mouth, but before he could speak, before he could make a smarmy pronouncement on what Kirstin had done, before he could claim her pain as his, Danika said softly, “They have very good hearing, our beasts.”