“What?”
“With child?”
“No!”
Of course she wasn’t. She’d never attempted to protect a child. Women did that, didn’t they? And if she wasn’t with child then she wasn’t the sixth mage of the prophecy. She couldn’t be. Unless she’d been with child and wasn’t now…
“Were you?”
“With child? I’ve never…” The lantern, hung on a convenient branch stub, threw shadows over her face, but he got the impression she’d have slapped him had her hands been free.
So she couldn’t have been and not known. And the boy…Tomas wasn’t the father. Reiter tossed his musket aside. Let the evidence show he had it with him, but didn’t have time to get a shot off. Heart pounding as though he were going into battle, he stepped closer and began to untie her hands. Eyes wide, she tried to back away. He tugged her close again. After a moment, she stopped struggling and he returned to fighting with the knots.
She asked a question. Remembered. Asked it again in Imperial. “What are you doing?”
“Being overwhelmed by an escaping mage.”
“I can’t go without…”
“I don’t expect you to.”
He could almost hear her trying to choose her next question. No surprise she cut straight to the point. “Why?”
“I’m a soldier.” The light was bad and the coarse fibers of the rope made it difficult to feel how the pattern had twisted. “I have been since I was fifteen. I’ve fought in pitched battles and skirmishes. I’ve waited in ambush; been caught in one. Although I’ve done what I could to adjust the consequences of bad orders, I’ve still followed them. I honestly don’t know how many people I’ve killed.” Threading the dangling length of rope back through a loop unraveled the knot. “But there’s a difference between killing and murdering.” He unwound the rope, stroked a thumb over the unmarked skin on her inner wrist just once, then backed away. “If you cross the border with me, you don’t have a chance. Tomas has less of one.” Major Halyss had called him “the boy,” and when he’d flatly said the emperor might be making rugs, he’d meant the emperor might be making rugs. Not a metaphor. Tomas couldn’t be left at the Abyek garrison, and Reiter’d been warned what would happen to him if he was taken to Karis. When the mage stared at him, confused, he sighed. “Look, it’s never just one thing that changes a man’s mind. It’s a hundred small things adding up. I know you have no reason to think good of me, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t kill me when you take me out.”
“When I what?”
“If I just let you go, I’m a dead man. Too many people know I have you. Too many people know what my orders were. You have to escape.”
She glanced down at her hands, then up. “I have to make it look like I…we escaped. How?”
Was he going to have to knock himself out, Reiter wondered. “You’re the mage.”
“Not much of one.”
“Not much…The scene in the market says different.” He frowned as she frowned, clearly not understanding what he referred to. “You don’t know about what happened in the market?” He’d wondered at the time if she’d known what she was doing; it hadn’t occurred to him she had no memory of it.
“That farm worker was going to skin Tomas. I took hold of a man in a leather vest, and he threw me back. He kicked me. I think…” She pressed a hand against her side. “I thought he broke my ribs. And then I woke up in the garrison next to Tomas, and that woman drugged us. I thought the solders had come because of all the shouting.” Her pale eyes widened. “You came. That’s why Tomas isn’t dead. Isn’t skinned.”
“You think I wouldn’t have allowed that to happen?”
She spread her hands and looked at him like he was a little slow. “You didn’t.”
No, he didn’t. Hadn’t.
Chard would wonder soon what was taking them so long, so Reiter told her quickly what he’d seen when he entered the market. Her face showed horror when he briefly described the burning man, but not regret. As he sketched out the rest, she looked confused, listened without asking questions, then twisted her foot into the light and stared down at the back of her heel. “He had a knife. I wasn’t thinking…”
“You have to start.”
“Funny.” Her smile held no humor. “Usually people tell me I think too much.”
Reiter wanted to see her smile, her actual smile. He knew he never would, but he wanted it so much it sat like a rock in his chest. “Chard doesn’t know about this…escape. He can’t lie for shit. Try not to hurt him. He runs on at the mouth, but he’s a good kid.” Chard still hadn’t called out to ask if there was a problem. What the fuck did he think they were doing out here? “A fire of any size,” he added, “will draw attention from the border. And you want as much of a head start as you can get.”
“We’ll be…”
“Don’t tell me! I’m a very good liar,” he explained. “But they won’t ask nicely.”
She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. In spite of shadows, he could actually see her thinking of what she was going to do. There was still a chance she could kill both him and Chard. He’d gambled she didn’t have it in her. If he got in her way, yes, but not coldly and deliberately after he’d released her and armed her with what she was capable of. She’d slept Armin and walked away when she had less reason to think kindly of him.
He could tell the moment she came to a decision. It hadn’t taken her long and there’d only be one way to find out if that worked in his favor.
She squared her shoulders, paused as though something had just occurred to her, and said, “You asked earlier; my name is Mirian.”
“Sleep.” The captain’s forehead felt warm and dry under her fingers and Mirian watched him crumple to the ground, feeling confused as much as anything. Her ribs were whole, her heels unbloodied, and, when it came down to it, Captain Reiter had no reason to lie about what he’d seen in the market. She had tested very high, multiple times, so perhaps that meant low levels at very high power. But in every craft? She’d never heard of that happening.
Still, whatever it meant, it didn’t matter now. What mattered now was making the most of this opportunity. Somehow. Perhaps she should have used the captain’s experience in strategy and tactics rather than put him to sleep, but she couldn’t think while he was watching her.
First, she had to deal with Chard.
Leaving the lantern where the captain had hung it, she picked her way carefully through the underbrush. The firelight showed Chard sitting on the side of the wagon box. From the angle of the musket, he had it pointed up under Tomas’ chin. He was staring at Tomas, not watching for them to come out of the woods, and he didn’t look happy.
If she emerged alone, he’d shoot Tomas. If she called to him, he’d shoot Tomas. He might not want to and he’d likely feel guilty about it, but he’d do it. Bottom line, that was all that mattered.
Captain Reiter was right. She had to start thinking like a mage.
Raising a hand into the breeze, she sent a puff of it toward the wagon, into the wagon box, over Tomas, and out to where the horse grazed on the end of a rope tied to a wagon wheel. In the end, it was nothing more than blowing out a long, curving line of candles….
Military horses might be the most phlegmatic known—and given that this horse had been transporting one of the Pack for two days suggested might wasn’t entirely accurate—but Mirian suspected that the fresh, immediate scent of predator had to be entirely different than a faint scent woven into the other scents of the road.