Shadow's Edge nat-2 Read online

  Tevor drew back the section of roof to let the cloudy morning sunlight in. Drissa touched the wood already stacked in the hearth and it began blazing. They took up positions on either side of Logan and the air above him shimmered.

  Kylar brought the ka’kari up within him to his eyes. It was like putting spectacles on a man nearly blind. The weaves over Logan that had been just barely visible to him were suddenly clear.

  “Do you know herbs?” Drissa asked Kylar. At his nod, she said, “In the great room, get Tuntun leaf, grubel ointment, silverleaf, ragweed, and the white poultice on the top shelf.”

  Kylar came back a minute later with the ingredients, plus a few others he thought would be helpful. Tevor looked at them and nodded, but didn’t seem capable of speech.

  “Good, good,” Drissa said.

  Kylar began applying the herbs and poultices while Drissa and Tevor worked the weaves of magic. Over and over, he saw them dipping a weave as thick as a tapestry into Logan, adjusting it to fit his body, raising it above him, repairing it, and dipping it into his body again. What surprised him, though, was the way some of the herbs responded.

  He’d never considered that normal plants might react to magic, but they obviously did. The silverleaf that Kylar had packed into the stab wound on Logan’s back turned black in seconds—something he’d never seen it do.

  For Kylar, it was like watching a dance. Tevor and Drissa worked together in perfect harmony, but Tevor was tiring. Within five minutes, Tevor was flagging. His parts of the weaves were getting shaky and thin. His face was pale and sweaty. He kept blinking and pushing his spectacles back up his long nose. Kylar could see the mage’s exhaustion, but could do nothing about it. Critiquing a dancer was different from being able to step in and do better. That was what he wished he could do. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but it seemed that Drissa was attempting smaller and smaller changes in Logan each time, and he still had some things terribly wrong in him. Looking at him through the healing weave, his entire body seemed to be the wrong color. Kylar touched him, and he felt hot.

  Kylar felt impotent. He had Talent here. Talent to spare, even after everything, he still had Talent. He willed the ka’kari back, willed himself to be unshielded, tried to will all that magic into Logan. Nothing happened.

  Take it, damn you. Get better!

  Logan didn’t stir. Kylar couldn’t use the magic; he didn’t know how to form any weave, much less one as complex as what the Niles were doing.

  Tevor looked at Kylar apologetically. He patted Kylar’s hand.

  At the contact, light blazed through the entire room. It burned beyond the magical spectrum into the visual, throwing their shadows on the walls. The weaves over Logan, which had been flagging, dimming, fading into nothing just a moment before, now burned incandescent. Heat flashed through Kylar’s hand.

  Tevor gaped like a fish.

  “Tevor!” Drissa said. “Use it!”

  As Kylar felt the Talent flood out of him, he felt his magic all the way through Tevor being pulled down into Logan’s body. It was out of his control. Tevor was directing Kylar’s Talent completely. Kylar realized that Tevor could turn that magic to kill him, and having submitted like this, Kylar wouldn’t be able to stop him.

  Sweat broke out on Drissa’s face and Kylar could feel the two mages working feverishly. They ran magic through Logan’s body like a comb through tangled hair. They touched the glowing scar on his arm—still glowing, hours later—but there was strangely nothing wrong. It wasn’t something they could fix. The healing magic moved right past it.

  Finally Drissa breathed and let the weave dissipate. Logan would live, in fact, he was probably healthier than when he’d gone into the Maw.

  But Tevor didn’t let go of Kylar. He turned and stared at him, eyes wide.

  “Tevor,” Drissa said, warning.

  “What are you? Are you a Vürdmeister?” Tevor asked.

  Kylar tried to draw the ka’kari up to sever the connection, but he couldn’t. He tried to ready his muscles with Talent strength, but he couldn’t.

  “Tevor,” Drissa said.

  “Did you see? Do you see this? I’ve never—”

  “Tevor, release him.”

  “Honey, he could incinerate us both with this much Talent. He—”

  “So you’d use a man’s own magic against him after he submitted it to you? How do the Brothers look on that? Is that the kind of man I married?”

  Tevor dropped his head and his hold on Kylar’s Talent simultaneously. “I’m sorry.”

  Kylar shivered, drained, empty, weak. It was almost as disconcerting to get control of his Talent back as it was to give it away. He felt like he’d gone two days without sleeping. He barely had the energy to be excited that Logan was going to make it.

  “I think we’d better see to you and your simple friend. Your wounds can use more mundane treatments,” Drissa said. She lowered her voice, “The, ahem, king should wake this evening. Why don’t you come with me to another room?”

  She opened the door and Kylar stepped into the waiting area. Gnasher had curled up in a corner and was sleeping. But directly in front of Kylar was a beautiful, shapely woman with long red hair. Vi. She was staring at him down the length of a bare sword. Its tip touched his throat.

  Kylar reached for his Talent, but it slipped through his fingers. He was too tired. It was gone. There was nothing he could do to stop her.

  Vi’s eyes were red and puffy like she’d just gone through a wringer, though how or why Kylar had no idea.

  She stared down the length of steel for a moment that seemed to stretch and stretch. He couldn’t read the look in those green eyes, but it was something wild.

  Vi stepped back three measured and balanced steps, Valdé Docci, the Swordsman Withdraws. She knelt in the center of the room, bowed her head, pulled her ponytail to one side, and laid the bare sword across her hands. She raised the sword in offering.

  “My life is yours, Kylar. I surrender to your judgment.”

  55

  Seven of the eleven rent girls had left the safe house to see if they had families they could go back to. Six had come back, weeping. Some were now widows. Others were simply rejected by fathers and boyfriends and husbands who could see only whores and disgrace.

  Kaldrosa’s courage failed her; she never left the safe house. For some reason, she’d been able to face death. She’d emasculated Burl Laghar and watched him bleed to death, tied to her bed, screaming into a gag. Then she’d moved the body, put fresh sheets on the bed and welcomed in another Khalidoran soldier. He was a young man who’d always had sex first and afterward was half-hearted in the beatings and the invocation. He always seemed disgusted with himself. She asked, “Why do you do it? You don’t like hurting me. I know you don’t.”

  He couldn’t look her in the eye. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he said. “They have spies everywhere. Your own family will turn you in if you make the wrong joke. He knows.”

  “But why beat up whores?”

  “It’s not just whores. It’s everyone. It’s the suffering we need. For the Strangers.”

  “What do you mean? What strangers?”

  But he wouldn’t say any more. A moment later, he stared at the bed sheets. Blood in the mattress was soaking through the fresh sheet. Kaldrosa stabbed him in the eye. The whole time, even when he came after her, bleeding, roaring, furious, she’d never been afraid.

  Facing Tomman, though, that was too much. They’d fought bitterly before she left for Momma K’s. He would have forcibly restrained her except that he’d been beaten so severely he couldn’t get out of bed. Tomman had always been jealous. No, Kaldrosa couldn’t face him. She’d leave with the others and go to the rebel camp. She didn’t know what she’d do there. They were inland and nowhere near a river, so jobs as a captain would likely be scarce. In fact, if she couldn’t obtain clothes that covered her up more, honest labor of any kind would be scarce. Still, after Khalidorans, being a rent girl for Cenar
ians might not be too bad.

  There was a knock on the door and all the girls tensed. It wasn’t the signal knock. No one moved. Daydra picked up a poker from the fireplace.

  The knock sounded again. “Please,” a man’s voice said. “I mean no harm. I’m unarmed. Please, let me in.”

  Kaldrosa’s heart leapt into her throat. She went to the door in a fog.

  “What are you doing?” Daydra whispered.

  Kaldrosa opened the peep window, and there he was. Tomman saw her and his face lit up. “You’re alive! Oh gods, Kaldrosa, I thought you might be dead. What’s wrong? Let me in.”

  The latch seemed to lift itself. Kaldrosa was helpless. The door burst open and Tomman swept her into his arms.

  “Oh, Kally,” he said, still delirious with joy. Tomman had always been a little slow. “I didn’t know if—”

  He only noticed the other women gathered around the room then, their expressions either joy or jealousy. Though he was hugging her and she couldn’t see his face, Kaldrosa knew that he must be blinking stupidly at the sight of so many beautiful, exotic women all at the same time, and all of them scarcely wearing anything. Even Daydra’s virginal dress breathed sensuality. His hug was slowly stiffening, and Kaldrosa was limp in his arms.

  Tomman stepped back and looked at her. His hands flopped off of her shoulders like a fish onto the deck, spastically.

  It really was a beautiful costume. Kaldrosa had always hated her skinny figure; she thought she looked like a boy. Wearing this, she didn’t feel scrawny or boyish; she felt trim, nubile. The open-fronted shirt not only showed that she was tanned to the waist, but also conspired to give her cleavage and expose half of each breast. The scandalous trousers fit like a glove.

  In short, it was exactly the kind of thing Tomman would have loved to see Kaldrosa wearing in their home—for the brief interludes that extended between when she surprised him with it and when he caught her after chasing her around the house.

  But this wasn’t their home, and these clothes weren’t for Tomman. His eyes filled with grief. He looked away.

  The girls went very quiet.

  After an aching moment, he said, “You’re beautiful.” He choked and tears cascaded down his face.

  “Tomman …” She was crying too, trying to cover herself with her arms. It was a bitter irony. She was trying to cover herself from her husband’s eyes, when she had flaunted herself for strangers she despised.

  “How many men have you been with?” he asked, his voice cracking.

  “They would have killed you—”

  “So now I’m not man enough?” he snapped. He wasn’t crying now. He’d always been brave, fierce. It was one of the things she loved about him. He would have died to save her from this. He’d never realized he would have died and then she’d have had to do this anyway.

  “They hurt me,” she said.

  “How many?” His voice was hard, brittle.

  “I don’t know.” Part of her knew that he was like a dog crazed with pain, snapping at its master. But the disgust on his face was too much. She was disgusting. She surrendered to the deadness and despair. “A lot. Nine or ten a day.”

  His face twisted and he turned away.

  “Tomman, don’t leave me. Please.”

  He stopped, but he didn’t turn. Then he walked out.

  As the door swung gently shut, she began keening. The other girls went to her, their hearts broken anew as her grief mirrored theirs. Knowing she would not be comforted, they went to her because she had no one else who would, and neither did they.

  56

  Momma K stepped into the physickers’ shop as Kylar swept the sword up into his hand, but she was too late to stop him.

  Vi didn’t move. She knelt motionless, her shiny red hair pulled out of the sword’s path to her neck. The sword descended—and bounced off. The shock of the collision rang the sword like a bell. The sword whisked out of Kylar’s nerveless grip.

  “You will not do murder in my shop,” Drissa Nile said. Her voice carried such power, and her eyes such fire, that her diminutive frame might as well have been a giant’s. Even though Kylar had to look down to meet her eyes, he was intimidated. “We’ve accomplished an excellent piece of healing with this woman, and I’ll not have you spoil it,” Drissa said.

  “You healed her?” Kylar asked.

  Vi still hadn’t moved. She faced the floor.

  “From compulsion,” Momma K said. “Am I right?”

  “How did you know that?” Tevor asked.

  “If it happens in my city, I know,” Momma K said. She turned to Kylar. “The Godking bound her with a magic that forced her to obey direct orders.”

  “How convenient,” Kylar said. His face contorted as he crushed the tears that were rising. “I don’t care. She killed Jarl. I mopped up his blood. I buried him.”

  Momma K touched Kylar’s arm. “Kylar, Vi and Jarl practically grew up together. Jarl protected her. They were friends, Kylar. The kind of friends that never forget. I don’t believe anything less than magic could have compelled her to hurt him. Isn’t that right, Vi?” Momma K put her hand under Vi’s chin and brought her face up.

  Tears streamed down Vi’s face in mute testimony.

  “What did Durzo teach you, Kylar?” Momma K asked. “A wetboy is a knife. Is the guilt the knife’s or the hand’s?”

  “Both, and damn Durzo for his lies.”

  There was a knife on Kylar’s belt, but he’d already tested its edge. Sister Drissa had blunted it, as he had guessed she might. But she didn’t know about the blades up his sleeves. Nor could she stop the weapons that were his hands.

  Vi saw the look in his eyes. She was a wetboy. She knew. He could get a knife out and across her throat in the time it took Drissa to blink. Let the healer try to cure death. Vi’s eyes were black with guilt, a mishmash of dark images he couldn’t comprehend. A short rush of black figures passed through his mind’s eye. Her victims?

  ~She’s murdered fewer people than you have.~

  The thought hit him like a shot in the solar plexus. Some guilt. Some judge.

  And the look on her face was all readiness above the tears. There was no self-pity, no avoidance of responsibility. Her eyes spoke for her: I killed Jarl; I deserve to die. If you kill me, I won’t blame you.

  “Before you decide, you have to know there’s more,” Vi said. “You were a secondary target. After…. After Jarl, I couldn’t do it—”

  “Well, that’s commendable,” Momma K said.

  “—so I kidnapped Uly, to make sure you’d follow me.”

  “You what?” Kylar said.

  “I figured you’d follow me back to Cenaria. The Godking wants you alive. But Sister Ariel captured me and Uly. When we found you, I thought you were dead. I thought I was free, so I escaped Sister Ariel and came here.”

  “Where’s Uly?”

  “On her way to the Chantry. Uly’s Talented. She’s going to be a maja.”

  It was horrifying and yet perfect.

  Uly would be a Sister. She’d be taken care of, educated. Kylar had imposed Uly on Elene. Elene hadn’t chosen to have a daughter who was more the age of a little sister. It wasn’t a burden that had been fair for Kylar to ask her to assume. This way, and with the fortune that Kylar had left her, Elene would be free to have her own life again. It was all logical.

  He had a niggling doubt that he wasn’t thinking the way Elene would think, he could do nothing about that. Finding out that the damage had been minimized—hadn’t it?—eased his mind.

  A sudden fire lit in Momma K’s eyes at the thought of her daughter being taken to the Chantry, but Kylar couldn’t tell whether she was upset that her daughter had been taken or pleased that her daughter would certainly become a woman of consequence. Either way, Momma K quickly smothered it. She wasn’t about to let strangers know Uly was her daughter.

  If he got through this, Kylar would go to the Chantry and see Uly. He wasn’t angry that they’d taken her from Vi.
If anything, he owed them. And for a girl who was Talented, going to the Chantry wasn’t really optional. It was supposed to be dangerous for a child to learn on her own. But if Uly didn’t want to stay and they tried to keep her, Kylar would tear down the White Seraph around the Sisters’ ears.

  But just thinking about Uly made him think about Elene, and thinking about Elene threw his emotions into turmoil, so Kylar asked, “Why are you so eager to save Vi?” Momma K never worked on just one level.

  “Because,” Momma K said, “if you’re going to kill the Godking, you’ll need Vi’s help.”

  Say one thing for Curoch: the mages are wrong. It wasn’t in the form of a sword for purely symbolic reasons. The son of a bitch could cut.

  It was a good thing, too. The sa’ceurai were implacable. They were called sa’ceurai, Old Jaeran for “sword lords,” for good reason.

  Nonetheless, Feir was a Blade Master of the Second Echelon. The first clash left three of the Ceuran warriors dead and gave Feir a short, tough pony.

  Soon, Feir’s height and weight proved a liability again. The pony tired and slowed. In the darkness, Feir let it go. Unfortunately, the little warhorse was trained too well. It stopped and waited for its rider the moment it was released. Feir solved that problem tying a small weave of magic under its saddle that randomly prickled. It would keep the beast running for hours. If he were lucky, the sa’ceurai would lose his trail and follow the horse.

  He was lucky. It bought him a number of hours—hours on foot. It brought him to the crest of the mountain. He had cut a sapling before he’d hiked above the tree line, and now he was working on the wood with Curoch. The sword had an edge like he couldn’t believe, but it wasn’t a plane, or a chisel. Right now, he needed both and a few other tools besides.

  Dorian once told him about a sport the more suicidal highland tribes practiced. They called it schluss. It consisted of strapping small sleds to one’s feet and going downhill at incredible speeds. Standing. Dorian contended that they could steer, but Feir hadn’t figured out how. All he knew was that he had to go faster than the Ceurans pursuing him, and there was no way he could build a full sled in the time he had.