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“There are some folks hurt in the outer camp,” I said. Probably some in Little ’Crat City, too, but I wasn’t worried about them. They’d march right up to the farmhouse and demand healing if they needed it. “They might need some looking after.”
Lanelle nodded. “I’ll head over when Tussen comes in.”
“Make sure you take some guards.”
“Always do.” She put the pynvium brick back into its cabinet and relocked it. “You hear about Geveg?”
She couldn’t mean the Gov-Gen. Jeatar hadn’t confirmed that, and even if he had, I doubt he’d tell Lanelle about it. “Hear what?”
“They’re chasing out the Baseeri.” She shrugged. “At least, that’s what I heard.”
“From who?” Danello asked. He sounded suspicious.
“People in the camps. They do talk to me, you know.”
“There’s a lot of talk in the camps,” I said, “but you can’t believe half of it.” Still, if Gevegians really were chasing the Baseeri out, maybe the Gov-Gen rumour was true.
Lanelle huffed. “All I know is that there’s a lot of homeless Baseeri around, and not all of them are from Baseer. They want to go home as badly as we do.”
Strange to hear Lanelle say she wanted to go home.
“Anyway,” she said, rubbing her eyes. I hadn’t noticed the circles under them before. “I’ll take care of the people in the camps.”
“Thanks.” We left Lanelle alone in a room of cots. I shivered, picturing the last room she’d overseen. The cots there had all been occupied. A room filled with suffering.
I sighed. “When did everything go so wrong?”
Danello paused. “The day you helped me.”
“What?” Did he blame me?
“No! I didn’t mean it like that,” he said quickly. “It wasn’t you, it was just that day. The ferry accident. All those people hurt. That’s when it started.”
I exhaled, but my heart was still racing. “OK. That’s when we found out about the Duke’s experiments, but you know, I think it started before that.” I looked at him, and understanding flickered in his eyes. Sadness, too.
“Five years.”
I nodded. “Five years.”
When the Duke took over and invaded our homes. And until he was gone, nothing would ever be right again.
“Nya,” Aylin whispered sometime in the hours before dawn. “You awake?”
“Yes.” The wind had woken me a while back, gusting against the farmhouse like waves on rocks. No forests or mountains to stop it, I guess. Just open farmland.
I missed waves. And water. The caw of lake gulls riding the wind.
Aylin shook me. “Are you listening?”
“I’m sorry. What?”
She blew out a sigh. “I asked how long you were going to look for Tali.”
“Until I find her.”
“What if you don’t?”
I didn’t want to think about that. Or talk about it. Silence stretched in the darkness.
“I’m not trying to be heartless or anything,” she continued, “but if the rumours are true, if Geveg belongs to Gevegians again, well, going home would be a good thing, wouldn’t it?”
I swallowed, but my mouth was dry. “Yes.”
“And I know Danello wants to, though he’d never tell you that. He worries about his father. So do Halima and the twins. They really miss him.”
“Maybe you should go without me.” It hurt to say, but how could I keep them all here, knowing they wanted to go home?
She snorted and thumped me on the arm. “I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, maybe you should start thinking of ways to find Tali that don’t involve putting yourself in danger all the time.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Hire a tracker? I hear Vyand is good.”
I swatted her with my pillow. “Aylin! How could you even suggest—”
Something thunked against the outside wall, harder than just wind. Aylin popped up.
“What was that?” she whispered.
I slipped out of bed, careful not to rustle the covers or squeak the frame. Jeatar had good furniture, so it rarely made a sound. I was equally quiet on the carpet as I made my way to the balcony doors.
Another thunk, then scraping like metal on wood.
I tugged back the curtains just enough to peek out. Moonlight lit the balcony, reflecting off… a grappling hook?
A hand slapped the railing, then a leg. I turned to Aylin.
“Someone’s there,” I said. “Get out of—”
Glass shattered behind me, then hot pain pierced my back.
Chapter Four (#ulink_a04f3a38-8a5a-5017-a4d0-3b6d59f70107)
I yelped and dived forward, away from whatever had clawed me. I hit the floor, but something else landed beside me. Small, and it moved, skittering back towards the doors. It snagged on the doorframe but broke through and caught on the balcony rail.
A second grappling hook.
“Aylin, get out of here!” I scrambled back to my feet as the first intruder kicked open the doors. More glass cracked, and a piece grazed my arm. It didn’t sting nearly as much as my back.
“Leave her alone!” Something flew past me. Was that a chair? Wood cracked against flesh and a man grunted. Aylin leaped from the bed, the blankets in her hands. She tackled the man and tangled him in the cloth, knocking him down.
The second man charged in and kicked her. Aylin cried out and flew back with an oomph. She slammed into the mirror, and glass shattered. I lunged at him, hands out, looking for flesh. I grabbed sleeves instead.
Skin, skin, I needed skin.
We struggled, my back stinging. He twisted and his arm slid back, down, then – skin.
Got you.
I pushed, the pain surging up through my shoulder and out my hands. He sucked in a pained breath and staggered back, tripping over his partner and sending them both back to the floor.
Light brightened the room, and I squinted, turning away. “Aylin?”
The lamp on the desk next to her was turned up full, all the shutters open. “I’m OK,” she said, but she didn’t sound OK. She also had one arm pressed against her side.
The door to our room burst open. Aylin screamed and I pivoted, readying myself to dive at whoever was attacking us now.
Danello stood in the door wearing nothing more than sleeping britches and his rapier. He moved in fast, putting himself between us and the two men who were now back on their feet and holding weapons of their own. A knife for one, a short sword for the other.
Sword-man attacked, thrusting the blade at Danello. He parried it, the scratchy ziinng! of metal against metal raising the hair on my arms. Knife-man hung back, his face tight with pain. He had to be the one I had shifted into.
“Go find Jeatar,” I said to Aylin, nudging her towards the door.
She ignored me and grabbed a statue of a prancing horse off the desk. She threw it at Knife-man. He gasped and dodged sideways. Agile, but not as surefooted as Danello. Nor as graceful as Aylin. Who in Saea’s name were these men?
Both had dark hair, but they didn’t look like Baseeri soldiers. Well-made clothes, good boots. Clean-shaven, so not refugees. Trackers? Aristocrat guards?
Danello fought Sword-man while Aylin kept throwing whatever she could grab at the other. I scurried past Danello to the other side of the room, where there was more to throw. I flung a water pitcher. It glanced off his head and dented the wall.
Danello lunged forward, piercing Sword-man’s leg. He screamed and went down on one knee. Danello stabbed at the other leg, and he collapsed.
Fast steps thudded in the hall outside our room, many feet racing up stairs. Guards in brown uniforms stormed in, swords drawn. Sword-man rolled over and held out both hands, fury on his face. Knife-man ran back towards the balcony. Danello and the guards followed, but he was over the side and sliding to the ground before they could grab him.
“You got this one?” one of the guards asked Danello, tilting his head towards Sword-man on the floor.
“Yeah.”
The guards turned and ran out of the room. Danello stood over Sword-man, the tip of the rapier hovering above his throat.
“Don’t even think about moving,” he said. “Why did you break in here?”
Sword-man just glared.
“Are you OK?” Danello asked me without looking away.
“I’m fine.” My heart felt like it was about to thump out of my chest, and I wasn’t sure my knees were going to keep me standing, but both would pass.
“Aylin? Are you all right?”
“I think so.” She was still holding her side.
“I think not.” I hurried over, took her hand, and felt my way in. “Two broken ribs.”
She grimaced. “No wonder it hurt so much to throw those things.”
I drew, mending her ribs. Mine started aching.
“You’re really handy to have around, you know that?”
“Nya?” Jeatar slid to a stop outside the door, two steps ahead of Onderaan. Men with armour and swords were right behind them. Two came in and hauled Sword-man to his feet, then out the door. I don’t think his boots even touched the ground. Jeatar didn’t say where they were taking him but the scowl on Jeatar’s face said I really didn’t want to know.
Jeatar looked us over, his scowl turning to worry as he took in my ripped nightshirt and the blood smeared on my arm. “Who’s hurt?”
“I was, but not any more,” Aylin said. “But there’s a man with a knife out there who’s probably not happy.”
“We’ll find him, don’t worry.” Jeatar looked like he hadn’t been to bed yet, but Onderaan kept rubbing his eyes, his hair sticking out on one side. He came over and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back, pretending he was Papa.
Jeatar stayed by the door. I’d never seen him look so scared before. Or so mad. Hopefully the mad part wasn’t at me.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
“Someone tried to kill Nya!” Aylin described the whole thing, yelling and waving her arms. She was scared too.
“We’ll post guards outside,” Onderaan said softly, patting my hand. “No unauthorised visits to the house.”
“OK. Thank you.”
I took a deep breath and looked at the broken mirror. Dozens of my own face stared back at me from the jagged glass. I turned and checked my back. A new scar ran along my shoulders, worse than the ones on my legs and chest.
Shifting was different from healing. I had time to think about the wound when I healed, and make sure it closed properly. With shifting, I didn’t think about it, I just did it. I’d shifted into so many. The prison guard. The foundry soldiers. The Undying.
And every shift had left its scar.
Jeatar moved us to a room with no windows at the centre of the farmhouse, and we had to go through two other doors just to get to it. There hadn’t been any guards when we got there, but they were posted now. Lanelle had complained about them hassling her when she’d come to take the broken ribs I’d healed. Aylin ignored her the whole time, making a show out of talking with Danello.
“Who do you think they were?” I asked after no one else had shown up for a while. The guards had orders not to let me out of the room until they had the perimeter locked down. Which seemed to be taking an awfully long time.
“The Duke’s men?’ said Aylin.
Danello shook his head. “More likely sent by that aristocrat from Little ’Crat City. The Duke’s men wouldn’t have been so sloppy.”
I shivered. Never thought I’d be grateful for amateur assassins. “Think they caught him yet?”
“He had a decent head start,” said Danello. “It might take them a while.”
“Does that mean I’m stuck here until they do?”
“You should be happy about that.” Aylin shuddered, wrapping both arms around herself. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I mean, I know people have tried to hurt you before, but not like this. Those were always fights, it wasn’t – personal.”
