“Out! Move it.”
Hands grabbed her skirt and pulled and Danika found herself outside the coach blinking in the sudden sunlight, unable to stop herself from looking back along the road at the bloody, misshapen lump that had been a man. Alive, then dead. So easy.
“Corral them,” Sergeant Black pushed her toward the others. “Keep them from talking.”
“He went nuts, Sarge. I mean we all fucked around with him about hating small spaces, but he just…”
“Shut it, Tagget.”
Danika ignored them, stumbling forward under the concerned gazes of her Mage-pack until she could rest her head on Jesine’s shoulder. They thought she was reacting to seeing a man die. They didn’t know she’d killed him. She didn’t know yet if she’d tell them. She didn’t think she could stand it if they were pleased about it. So easy to say I’ll kill them. So different to actually do it.
When rough hands pulled her away, she didn’t fight them. Took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, raised her head, and looked past Murphy at Lieutenant Geurin.
“I think,” the lieutenant said, smiling, “that it will take us over three days to reach the capital and those three days will be frequently punctuated by stops in order to change the horses, this might be the time to inform you of what will happen should one of you actually succeed at an escape attempt. Should that happen, I will punish those left behind, making the escapee directly responsible for their pain. My orders are to deliver you alive to the emperor, but that still leaves me a great deal of leeway. It would be foolish, therefore, to believe you can take advantage of the distractions offered to my men by either the common business of the road or such unexpected happenstances as the corporal’s misfortune.”
“And doesn’t he love the sound of his own voice,” Stina muttered as Danika stepped forward.
She wiped her nose on her sleeve. “The corporal’s misfortune?” She spoke loudly enough to be heard over the drivers calming their horses. “A man under your command has been killed and you call it a misfortune?”
His lip curled. “Shut up.” He wasn’t as stupid as he looked.
Danika ignored him and raised her voice. “Sergeant Black, if our Healer-mage can…”
“I said shut up!” His knuckles hit the same place he’d hit her before. As her swollen cheek dimpled under the blow, she cried out and crumpled to the ground. They were still captive, but the lieutenant’s men saw him disdainful of the death of one of their own, and she had the pain to help ease her guilt.
They rolled Berger’s body up in his blanket and tied it to the roof of the last coach.
“We’ll give him to the new garrison at Abyek for the rites,” the sergeant said as they passed the body up and Kyne secured it. No one seemed to care that the blanket had already darkened in places and that they’d be traveling for miles with a corpse. No, they cared, Danika amended, they didn’t mind. To be a soldier was to grow used to death.
Although perhaps not this manner of death…
“Are you all right?” she asked as Tagget latched the door.
“Why wouldn’t I be?” he growled. “He threw himself out. It’s not I like pushed him.”
“Of course not.” No one knew that better than she did.
“Who’d have thought Berger would go like that?” Murphy muttered, having been ordered to the second place inside. “Coach, horses, coach, horses, coach. Fuck.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying…”
“And I’m just saying shut the fuck up!” Tagget slammed the butt of his musket down into the floor with enough force Danika felt the impact through the soles of her boots.
Murphy stared at him for a long moment then said, “Lyone says both his ladies puked riding backward. You didn’t notice the stink?”
Danika hadn’t, although both Jesine and Annalyse’s skirts had to be stained. She had to stop thinking about Berger, about how she’d killed him, and concentrate on getting her Mage-pack free.
Tagget stood, shoved Kirstin into the place he’d vacated, and dropped onto the seat beside Murphy. “Happy?”
“I only want one thing more.” Murphy made a rude gesture, but when Danika ignored him and Kirstin continued to stare into the middle distance, he snorted and slumped back into the corner. “Fine, I’m happy.”
Tagget wasn’t. Danika could see the memories playing behind his eyes, over and over and over. He saw his hand on Berger’s shoulder. Then he saw Berger disappear out the door. She wished it had been one of the others, one of the men who saw them as things not people. Kyne, or even Murphy rather than Tagget, but she’d work with what she had.
The coach lurched forward. Murphy’s musket cracked against her knee, and he stroked her leg as he retrieved it, grinning broadly when she refused to react. When both men finally closed their eyes, Kirstin reached over and took Danika’s hand.
With the other woman’s fingers warm around hers, Danika breathed in. Breathed out.
It was all your fault.
Tagget shuddered.
As she inhaled, Murphy opened his eyes, glanced down at the joining of their hands, and leered. Danika exhaled without words.
By the time they stopped to change the horses, she’d been able to prod Tagget only twice more, unable to trust Murphy to keep his eyes closed for any length of time. Her lips barely moved, but if he saw her, if they realized she’d killed Berger…
Truth be told, her greatest reaction to Murphy’s casual lechery was relief. Manipulating Berger had been an experiment. Knowing the result, manipulating Tagget made her feel unclean.
The Duchy of Pyrahn hadn’t been a conquered territory of the Kresentian Empire long enough for the network of posting houses to have been extended out from the old borders. But, as they thundered up to the village of Herdon, their driver sounded the mechanical horn as though expecting grooms to be ready and waiting with new horses. Herdon had grown up around the lumber mill at the point of the valley, and Danika assumed it had a public house, perhaps even two, but it couldn’t possibly be prepared for the sudden arrival of three coaches demanding twelve fresh horses.
Except it was.
The coach rocked to a stop abrupt enough to throw both women forward out of their seats then back again. At the sergeant’s command, the men inside the carriage switched with those riding outside—Danika doubted that included Hare, the sharpshooter, and hoped it didn’t include Sergeant Black—and during the exchange, as Tagget and Murphy were replaced by Corporal Selven and the lieutenant, Danika saw a team of sleek bays being led past the open door. With narrow heads and long legs under muscular withers and haunches, these were horses intended for speed, not for hauling loaded coaches over rutted forest tracks. These were the horses Danika had envisioned when she thought of post horses.
She’d just never thought of them this far into Pyrahn.
Lieutenant Geurin had no intention of riding backward, so Danika faced him while Kirstin sat across from the corporal. She stared out the window and Corporal Selven stared at his musket, leaving her and the lieutenant to focus on each other. As they left the village and picked up speed, the horses proving their pedigree, the ride went from uncomfortable to unpleasant.
Danika watched the lieutenant’s face and waited. He was, as Stina had noted, too fond of his own voice to stay silent for long.
“In the empire,” he snarled, shouting above the noise, “we know how to build roads.”
We? Danika would have wagered a year’s pin money that the lieutenant had never built anything in his life.
“You should thank us for pulling your pitiful little country out of the darkness and into the illumination of science and development.”