“Apparently,” she snapped, “neither do you.” Yanking her stocking tight around the end of the bedroll, she slung it over her shoulder and stood. “I’ve come too far to quit now, so I am going to free the Mage-pack. As you’re no longer bleeding to death by the side of the road, and therefore no longer need my assistance, you may accompany me or not as you see fit.” The pivot on one heel would have worked better had she been wearing her boots and not winced at the movement, but she stepped out onto the road with her head up.
One step.
Of all the arrogant…
Two steps.
You’re welcome. Next time, you can remove the silver yourself.
Three steps.
It’s not like I didn’t kill someone to keep him from shooting you.
Four steps and Tomas stood in front of her, growling softly.
Mirian kept walking. “You’re not going to attack me and I’m certainly not frightened of you, so I don’t know what you think you’re trying to prove.”
As she brushed by him, he grabbed her skirt in his teeth and yanked.
“Really?” she said, as she stumbled. “Really?” She grabbed for the bedroll with one hand as it slid off her shoulder and reached out with the other, pressing the first two fingers down into the fur between his eyes. “Sleep.”
Tomas woke lying in the middle of the road, one front leg tucked under his head, the other stretched out, shoulder throbbing. It took a moment to figure out where and why—he’d been shot, again, there’d been pain and darkness and then a voice…Mirian! He scrambled onto to his feet and shook, trying to throw off the lingering effect of the mage-craft.
How dare she!
And, more importantly, how long had he been asleep?
The night smelled young; the hunters and hunted who roamed at dusk and dawn still out and about. In the west, the evening star lingered on the horizon. He’d been asleep for minutes then, not hours. Turning to face east, the direction the coaches had been traveling, he saw, no more than half a mile down the road, a single figure walking away. Downwind, so he couldn’t catch a scent, but there could be little question of who it was.
Mirian Maylin, walking to Karis to free the Mage-pack.
She had no idea of what she was walking into.
She had no mage marks in her eyes.
She couldn’t fight.
She’d barely been able to cover the distance between the cave where they’d spent the night and the track where the Mage-pack and their captors had emerged from Aydori. He’d have been there on time if not for her.
He’d have been dead if not for her.
She smelled like power. And home. And…
Of course, she smelled so good, he supposed legs weren’t actually necessary.
…and something more he was not going to think about right now. Or like that, at least.
Clearly, she wouldn’t turn back no matter what he said or did, and she’d proven that, while he couldn’t stop her, she could stop him.
He was either going to help her free the Mage-pack, or he wasn’t.
He sat and scratched for a moment, putting off the inevitable, then he sighed and stood. Even in a small pack, pack members needed to know their place; it kept the world from degenerating into chaos and confusion.
She didn’t look down when he caught up. He limped along beside her for a few steps, but every time his left forefoot hit the ground it sent a shock of pain up into his shoulder, so he changed and, cradling his left arm against his chest, matched her pace on two.
When it became obvious she wasn’t going to speak first, Tomas cleared his throat. “Thank you for saving my life. It was rude of me to not mention that before.”
He heard her snort although he suspected he wasn’t intended to. “You’re welcome. I would have done it for anyone.”
Polite, but still angry. “I apologize for not respecting your decision to carry on. I have no right to dictate your actions and…” Frowning he tried to work out just what it was she wanted to hear. “…and you have certainly proven yourself capable. I mean, you got captured by Imperials, but that wasn’t your fault.”
“Thank you.”
Her tone dropped the temperature, already almost too cold to be out in skin, another few degrees. He didn’t know what he’d said wrong and had no idea of what to say to fix things between them. A memory of her fingers stroking his shoulder suggested a better way than words. He changed and butted his head against her hip.
When she ignored him, he did it again, putting enough weight behind it that she staggered. When she turned to glare at him, he hit her with what Harry’d called the puppy eyes of doom.
“You can take down a doe on your own, snap her neck between those monster jaws, and cover yourself in blood and guts, but you give me that look and all I want to do is bury my hands in your fur and tell you what a good boy you are. So stop giving me that look, you walking carpet, it creeps me out.”
Mirian laughed, as though she hadn’t intended to, and finally said, “All right. You’re forgiven. We’re in this together.” She reached out to stroke his head, then snatched her hand back, embarrassed. “I’m so sorry. I know better, it’s just…”
Tomas shoved his head up under her hand. It was the two of them against the empire. They could both use the comfort of touch. It didn’t have to mean anything more, not if she didn’t want it to. No matter how good she smelled.
A few moments later, he reluctantly pulled away from her hand and changed. “It’s almost fifteen miles to Herdon. If I stay in fur, I’ll be on three legs when I get there.”
“Before Herdon…”
“A few small farms, but Herdon’s the first town. It’s where the sawmill is. Where they take the logs,” he amended. She’d said her father was a banker. Two days ago, her life had been shopping and card parties and dances; why would she know what a sawmill was. “The logs they cut in the forest,” he added, just in case.
“I know where logs come from.” But he heard her smile, so that meant she wasn’t angry. “Why wouldn’t they build the sawmill closer to the trees?”
“They did. A hundred years ago.”
“But these trees…” She waved a hand at the woods surrounding them.
“Softwoods. They cut them, too, but they’re what grew up when the hardwoods were gone, so every year, if they want the good stuff, they have to cut farther away from the mill.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Herdon’s the biggest town in the borderlands. You can’t protect the border unless you know why people are there. And, the duke’s been after Ryder to send some Aydori timber to Herdon. Says it would open up new sections of our woods for cutting if we could send floats down the Vern directly to Herdon and the mill pond rather than having to feed everything into the Nairn and down to our mill at Bercarit. Trouble is, the Vern’s not exactly deep in places, but the duke even offered to deepen the pool under the falls on our side of the border because Herdon lives or dies with the mill, and he doesn’t intend for it to die. Ryder said that’s an admirable thought, but if we gave the old weasel access, he’d strip the mountain bare in a decade. I had to go to the meetings as his aide. The most boring four days of my life.” Suddenly realizing he’d just repeated the highlights of the most boring four days of his life, he flushed, thankful it was too dark for Mirian to see his face. “But more importantly,” he added hurriedly, “is that fifteen miles is a long walk. I need to stay off my front leg for a while, but the night’s getting colder. Too cold for skin. Trouble is we need to reach Herdon before dawn if we’re going to find out what happened when the coaches went through. I’m trained to get in and out of town with no one knowing, but it works better in the dark. I’m a little obvious in the daylight.”