WITH SILAS KEEPING a sharp eye on Fazar, they started off again, following the renegade’s instructions to make their way farther north into the watershed. Even with Fazar’s mage ring and weapons safely stowed away in the pocket of magical space in his knapsack, Silas still didn’t trust the fellow. Fazar was desperate and not very smart, and the combination of desperation and stupidity made a man dangerously unpredictable. Silas hadn’t yet sundered the connection between Fazar’s ring and his power – a little trick every mage hunter knew that hopefully the Mage Council didn’t – because he could very well need Fazar to help him fight the killer. Any man who could single-handedly take down Verl Bissom and Garis Horden, both of whom had been large, strong, powerful, and skilled, was more than he wanted to handle alone. And if there was any choice in the matter at all, he didn’t want Lainie to be involved in the confrontation. But the renegade had a long way to go to prove his trustworthiness, especially after the way he had treated Lainie, if he was going to get his ring back.
After another half a league, they found a place where they could lead the horses across the wash. The storm up in the hills was sending a shallow flow of water down the wash, so they stopped and waited for the danger of flooding to pass. While they waited, they refilled their canteens and the horses’ waterskins in the flowing creek and let the horses drink, all while keeping a close eye on the water level. Eventually the rain in the hills ended and the water in the creek receded, and they made the crossing safely.
Beyond sending some cooler breezes down into the lowlands, the rain in the hills had done little to relieve the day’s heat. The sun, just past three-quarters of the way across the sky, glared down as hot and strong as ever, and by the time they reached the next wash, the bottom was already nearly dry. This wash was formed by the confluence of three smaller washes a short distance upstream. To avoid that tangle and find a good place to cross, they had to go another league or so downstream.
The next wash beyond that was a good couple of leagues away across a rocky and difficult stretch of ground. Fazar sighted along the distant line of vegetation and squinted up towards the hills. “Yep, that’s the one. His place is up that next canyon there.”
To get to that next wash, rather than risk the horses’ legs and shoes on the rough terrain ahead, Silas decided it would be better to follow the wash they had just crossed downstream to its confluence with that creek, just visible some three leagues distant, and then head back upstream along that second wash towards the hills. He and Lainie mounted up, to give themselves a break from walking, and rode at a pace that Fazar could match on foot.
As the renegade trudged alongside them, he regaled them with tales of blueskins he’d killed, women he’d bedded, and card players he’d cheated, all using magic. The stories were dubious; in all likelihood, a Granadaian who killed a blueskin would have started an all-out war and wouldn’t have lived long enough to brag about it. Neither did anyone who made a habit of cheating at cards in the Wildings live very long, and only a fool would use magic to cheat. Being discovered as a mage was bad enough; being discovered as a mage who cheated at cards would only get you shot as well as hanged. Fazar might be that stupid, but the fact that he was still alive put the lie to his stories. As for the women, those tales went from unbelievable to outright offensive. From the sound of it, the less willing the women were and the harder they fought, the better Fazar liked it.
Silas gritted his teeth and tried to decide whether to impose his authority right away and make Fazar shut up or save his battles for things that really mattered, while Lainie stared down at her reins, her face flushed in embarrassment and anger. Finally, when Fazar launched into a highly-detailed description of yet another sexual exploit, highly unfit for Lainie’s – or anyone else’s – ears, Silas’s forbearance snapped. “Quiet,” he ordered, cutting Fazar off mid-word. “I’m letting you live so you can show me where the killer is and help me get rid of him. Not to provide entertainment.”
“But I was just getting to the good part!” Fazar whined.
Silas drew his revolver and aimed it at Fazar’s head. “Shut up.”
Sulking, Fazar fell silent. The rest of the long afternoon, he only spoke to ask for a drink of water – his own water flasks were empty and he had neglected to refill them in the flowing creek earlier – and when they were going to stop for the night.
Silas took advantage of being able to hear himself think to consider the situation. Fazar was the Granadaian mage Lainie had sensed; that much was clear. Which meant that the Wildings-born mage must be the killer. Now, in the face of the evidence, he had to agree with Lainie that a Wildings-born mage might very well be willing to do the Mage Council’s dirty work, if he’d been mistreated and afraid for his life out here. He also had to admit that the Mage Council might indeed trust a Wildings-born mage with this highly sensitive assignment, if he had been twisted and molded in the Granadaian schools to become loyal to the Mage Council and the established order of things in Granadaia. And it did make sense that the Mage Council would choose a Wildings-born mage, with his unique powers, for the advantage he would have over the Granadaian mages he was sent out to kill.
Which led to the uncomfortable fact that if the killer was indeed Wildings-born, Fazar’s help might not be enough and Lainie would have to get involved, after all. He was going to have to give some hard thought to that possibility, and try to figure out a way around it.
Just before sunset, they reached the place where the wash they were following and the one they were aiming for met. The point of land there proved to be a good place to camp, sheltered by thick-growing brush and relatively smooth and level. Silas and Lainie tended the horses, then sat down to eat a supper of jerky, flatbread, and dried fruit from their provisions. Fazar hunkered down near them, staring longingly at them as they ate.
“What?” Silas growled. “Don’t you have your own food? That you stole from the old hermit?”
“I already ate it all. I was using a lot of power, hiding from that killer.”
“Well, don’t look at us. We’ve barely got enough for ourselves.”
“Okay.” Fazar stood up and disappeared down into the wash, where Silas could hear him thrashing around. He didn’t like letting Fazar out of his view, but as long as he could hear him, he supposed the little bastard couldn’t be getting into too much trouble.
“If he’s the Granadaian mage I found,” Lainie said quietly under the cover of Fazar’s noisy absence, “then the Wildings-born mage must be the killer.”
“Sure looks that way.”
“In that case, you’ll need me to help you fight him.”
“If he was just Wildings-born, I’d let you. But there’s also no doubt he’s been trained in Granadaia. The Mage Council wouldn’t have hired him, otherwise. I’ve been giving this some thought. When we find him, if there’s something I want you to do I’ll tell you exactly what it is. Otherwise, I want you to stay out of it.”
She drew breath, looking like she was about to argue, then a rustling of brush announced Fazar’s emergence from the wash. He was holding three decent-sized ground squirrels by the tail and grinning. “Here’s supper.”
Silas couldn’t help but be impressed. Ground squirrels were quick and hard to trap. It looked like Fazar might be good for more than just helping him find the killer. While the renegade skinned and cleaned the critters, Silas built a fire; a small campfire in the lingering light of sunset probably wouldn’t give their position away. They spitted the ground squirrels on sticks and roasted them, then ate them down to the bones. The sparse meat was gamey and stringy, but the hot, fresh food was a welcome change from the dried provisions they’d been living on since they left Ripgap.
“Thanks,” Silas said to Fazar when they were done eating.
The renegade grinned again. “Least I could do, in exchange for you bein’ a decent sort and letting me tag along with you.”
“I’m not that decent,” Silas replied. “So don’t push your luck.”
“I’ll be good, honest. Here, I’ll take the first watch. You get yourself some sleep.”
Silas wasn’t about to sleep while the renegade kept watch. He fully expected that as soon as he wasn’t looking, Fazar, with no horse or provisions of his own, would try to make off with theirs, killer or no killer. But he also didn’t want Fazar to know that Lainie would be keeping watch alone later on. He had no illusions that his threat of severe bodily harm would keep Fazar away from Lainie if he thought he could get away with something. In truth, he didn’t want to let her watch at all, but he had to sleep sometime if he was going to be of any use.
“Sounds good to me,” Silas said. “Wake me at midnight, and I’ll finish out the night.”
Lainie looked at him, eyebrows raised in silent question. No doubt she was wondering if he really intended to not have her take a turn on watch, but she didn’t say anything, and he could explain later. While Silas put out the campfire, Lainie spread out their blankets a safe distance from where Fazar was settling in for the watch. She bedded down in the blankets and Silas stretched out beside her – on top of the blankets, not in them with her; he didn’t want to give Fazar’s filthy mind anything more to think about.
Silas feigned sleep while keeping his eyes slitted open and his ears pricked, watching and listening for any signs of trouble. Fazar sat singing bawdy songs to himself in a reedy, off-tune voice and idly scratching in the dirt with a stick. At one point he started looking towards the horses in a manner that was a little too interested for Silas’s liking. Silas made a show of being startled awake, and sat up. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Fazar looked around nervously. “Is something there?”
Silas pretended to listen for a moment. “No, I think I imagined it.”
“Good. It gives me the creeps, knowing that murdering sheepknocker’s out there somewhere.” Fazar returned his attention to his drawing in the dirt, and Silas lay down again.
A short while later, well before midnight, Fazar shook Silas’s shoulder. “Your turn,” he said. From his knapsack he took a ratty blanket, so filthy Silas could smell it from two measures away, then lay down in the spot where he’d been sitting. Within moments, he was snoring loudly.
Silas’s watch passed quietly. From time to time, Fazar would mumble unintelligibly to himself, then roll over and fall silent, and then the snores would start up again. Silas still didn’t like the idea of leaving Lainie awake by herself with the renegade around, but, a few hours before dawn, he finally couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. He checked to make sure Fazar was still sleeping soundly, then woke Lainie up to finish out the night. She sat up yawning and stretching, but looked well-rested enough. “Why –?”
He laid a finger over her lips. “Quiet,” he whispered. “I don’t want him to know you’re on watch by yourself.”
“Has there been any trouble?” she asked, her voice barely sounding above Fazar’s snores.
“No killers,” Silas said, “and Fazar’s behaving himself. But I still don’t trust him more than half as far as I can throw him.”
Lainie glanced at the scrawny figure snoring in his tattered blanket, then gave Silas an assessing look. “I think you could throw him pretty far. I’d say, don’t trust him no more than a quarter as far as you could throw him.”
Silas chuckled under his breath and kissed her, then lay down and pulled the blankets around him. They were still warm from Lainie’s body, and smelled like her. She settled herself sitting cross-legged next to him, her knee just brushing his shoulder. “Keep your gun handy,” he said, “and wake me if you see or hear anything at all or if there’s any trouble.”
“Okay.” Then she went on, looking down at the ground, away from him. “Is it true what he said? That everyone knows you like women better filled-out than me?”
Damn Fazar, anyway. Silas thought he had already settled Lainie’s worries on that score. “I don’t know what everyone knows. What I do know is that you’re the bravest, strongest, and prettiest woman I’ve ever met.”
The little crease of worry between her eyebrows eased, and she leaned over and kissed his mouth. “You sleep, now.”
* * *
THE NEXT DAY, they started following the new wash, the one Fazar said would take them to the killer’s hideout, back towards the hills. The going the first few leagues was easy; the day was still reasonably cool, they didn’t have to cross any other washes, and Fazar was quiet. Lainie didn’t trust Fazar any more than Silas did, but the way he was leading them seemed to match up with where she’d felt the Wildings-born mage’s power. She wanted to try looking for the killer again, just to be sure, but she didn’t need Silas to tell her it was too dangerous for her to use any magic at all around another mage.
At length, they came to the meeting of the creek bed they were following, on their left, and a feeder wash from the right. Fazar said they should bear left and stay with the same wash they had been following. To do that, they detoured upstream a good half league along the wrong wash until they found a good place to take the horses across, coaxed the reluctant horses down the bank through the gap in the prickly brush and back up the other side, then backtracked to the main wash. Over the next several leagues, more smaller washes fed into the one they were following, which meant at least five or six more crossings through the afternoon. Lainie lost count around the fourth or fifth.
The day got hotter, and though the air was humid and a few clouds built up over the hills, no storm broke. The buzzing of insects, the sticky, gritty feeling of sweat and dirt on her face, and her worries about Fazar and the killer all wore on Lainie’s nerves. The thorns of the low trees growing along the washes had something on them that made the sticks and scratches from them itch worse than a dozen biter-bug bites, and Lainie thought she was either going to scratch her arms to shreds or lose her mind.
As the miserable day dragged on, Fazar got more talkative, telling his revolting stories about women he had raped and blueskins he had killed. Silas finally managed to shut those up, by threatening to bury him up to his neck and leave him for the killer, so Fazar switched to boasting about card games he’d won by cheating with magic. Lainie would have laid money that he’d never won a game of Dragon’s Threes in his life.
By the time they stopped for the night, they had covered only a third of the distance back towards the hills. At least two more days in Fazar’s company, Lainie thought wearily as she dropped to the ground, exhausted and aching. And then they would have to face the killer. She just wanted this whole ordeal to be over with, to have Silas safe and be rid of Fazar. She couldn’t wait to go back to Ripgap, which after the last few days seemed like a very haven of comfort and civilization. Fazar caught and roasted some more ground squirrels for supper, and while the hot supper was an improvement over cold, dry rations, as Lainie chewed on the stringy, strong-tasting squirrel meat she thought longingly of the delicious meals they had eaten at the Dusty Demon. And what she wouldn’t give for a bath about now… When this was over, if she never saw Orl Fazar or the Bads again for the rest of her life it wouldn’t be nearly long enough.
As he had the night before, Silas let Fazar take the first watch. Lainie fell asleep as soon as she hit the blankets, even before Silas stretched out beside her, and when he woke her a few hours before dawn for her watch, it seemed like she had hardly slept at all. She was still so tired and sore and stiff she could barely move, but, even in the faint light of the stars, Silas’s face looked bruised and drawn with weariness, so she forced herself up and out of the blankets.
“Got your gun?” Silas asked as he settled into the blankets next to where she was sitting.
“Yeah. And it’s loaded.”
“Wake me if you see or hear anything.”
“I will.” She kissed him. “Get some sleep.”
The night was quiet except for the snores coming from Fazar, a couple of measures away on the other side of the camp, and the soft rustling and chirps of night animals down in the wash. The young moon had set much earlier in the evening; by the light of the stars, Lainie watched for any hint of movement while she listened for the slightest changes in the normal sounds of the night. She kept herself alert by scanning the length of the wash from one side to the other, then turning to survey the open desert behind her. And she glanced frequently at Fazar to make sure he was still asleep.
All at once, the sounds down in the wash fell still. Into the silence came a different, louder rustling noise. It was probably only a larger animal, Lainie told herself, maybe a coyote or a wild pig, hunting in the wash or just passing through. Surely not a grovik; they only lived in the mountains.
Still, she’d better make sure it really was only an animal.
She looked down at Silas; he was sound asleep. She doubted he’d slept at all during Fazar’s watch. It seemed a shame to wake him up, especially if it might be for nothing. She would go take a quick look for herself, she decided, and then wake him if there was any sign it was more than just an animal.
Fazar let out a loud snore, startling her, then subsided into mumbling and fell quiet again. Once she was sure he was asleep, she stood, gun in hand, and made her way silently over to the edge of the wash. Holding her breath, lest even that slight sound alert whatever was down there to her presence, she peered into the darkness, looking for any movement or variation in the patterns of starlight and shadow in the bottom of the wash.
Nothing moved. A moment later, the normal sounds of the night began to return. Lainie let out a long, slow breath. Whatever it was had passed on by. She started to turn back to the camp.
Without warning, arms seized her from behind and a rank, sour odor hit her nose. Fazar. She drew breath to shout, and his hand clamped over her mouth. With his other hand, he wrenched her gun out of her grasp and tossed it aside. In a surge of panic, she struggled, kicking and twisting around to try to free herself, but his arms held her like steel bands. High, mad laughter sounded in her ear; his breath was foul on her face. “I’ve put up a shield. He can’t hear or see us. Now, let’s have some fun.”
He forced her to the ground and onto her back. She kicked and thrashed with all her might, but, scrawny as he was, he was still much stronger than her. And much more powerful, if he could put up a fully concealing shield even without his mage ring. Grinning madly, he straddled her, his feet hooked back over her legs to force them apart. He pinned her right shoulder against the ground with one hand and started wrestling with the buttons on her shirt. She swung her left fist up to his face, but he jerked back and she missed. He laughed again. “That’s it, girl. You know the harder you fight, the better I like it.”
She did know, from his horrible tales about raping women. But she also knew better than to think that if she stopped resisting he’d leave her alone. She struck out at his face again, and this time she hit him.
He grabbed her arm in a painfully tight grip and scowled down at her. “Come on, now, baby girl, have some pity. I ain’t had a woman in months.”
The sound of his voice saying her Pa’s name for her made her sick with fury. She twisted and bucked even harder, trying to throw him off of her, but his weight on her didn’t budge. With a growl, he gave the arm he was holding a hard yank.
Pain ripped through her shoulder and she cried out. Fazar let her arm drop to the ground. She tried to raise it, to hit him again, but it hurt too much to move. Still holding her other shoulder down, Fazar ripped her shirt open with his other hand in a single impatient movement. He pushed her camisole up and leered down at her with a feral grin spread wide across his face. “Look at that. You should be glad any man wants you at all. Scrawny, plain little thing like you, hardly any tits to speak of.” He pawed at her, his hand rough and grabby. Lainie shrank from his touch, but there was nowhere to go to get away from it. She bit back the sobs that were trying to force their way out; she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing how scared and humiliated and helpless she felt.
“Take it from me,” Fazar went on, “Vendine’ll throw you over as soon as a real woman crosses his path. And then you’ll be begging me for what you’re missing.”
He started on the buttons of her pants. Panicked desperation shot through Lainie’s mind and her control over her power frayed. Her mage senses slipped loose; she could feel the power he was using to maintain the shield around them. With everything she had, she threw her own power against his, trying to shake it, to force him to let the shield go. Beneath the force of her sudden attack, his power gave way and she pushed it even harder, all the way back inside him –
Fazar’s head jerked up. “What –?”
She wrestled one leg free and drove her knee up into his crotch.
Fazar let loose with an agonized howl and toppled over sideways onto the ground, doubled over and moaning in a high, thin voice. A few heartbeats later, Lainie heard the click of a gun being cocked. She craned her head back to see Silas standing over her, his revolver aimed at Fazar.
Silas. She was safe. Hastily, she sat up, tugging her camisole back into place, and wrapped her arms around his leg, clinging to him as though he was the only place of safety in the whole world.
“You ain’t really going to shoot me, are you?” Fazar whined from where he lay curled up on the ground, writhing in pain.
“Are you crazy and horny?” Silas demanded. “Or just stupid and horny? I told you what would happen if you even looked at the girl wrong. I should just put you out of your misery.”
“No!” Fazar wailed.
Silas fired. The bullet hit the ground with an explosion of dirt right in front of where Fazar’s knees were drawn up in front of his crotch. Fazar let out another shriek, then seemed to realize he hadn’t been hit. “So you ain’t going to shoot me after all?”
“That was a warning,” Silas said. “If I shoot you now, you’ll bleed to death before I’m finished with you. And anyhow, I reckon Miss Lainie didn’t leave me much of anything to shoot.” He gestured with his gun towards Fazar’s blanket. “Get over there. Now.”
Fazar stood up, bent over in pain, and hobbled over to his blanket. Silas gently pulled himself away from Lainie and followed him, keeping his gun trained on him. “Take off your belt and lay belly-down.”
“Hey, wait!” Fazar protested even as he hurried to obey. “You ain’t gonna use me ill, are you?”
“Like you tried to do to Miss Lainie? You can only wish. I don’t go that way, and especially not for a sorry fleabitten piece of meat like you.” Silas knelt straddling Fazar’s legs. He yanked the renegade’s arms back and bound them with Fazar’s own belt, his left hand glowing blue as he pulled the belt tight. “You help me find this killer and get rid of him, with no more funny business, and maybe then I’ll take that belt off –”
“Hey!”
“And if you really behave yourself, I might even let you keep your stones.”
He turned his back on Fazar’s howl of protest and came back to where Lainie was still crouched near the edge of the wash. “That should take care of him for the moment,” he said as he squatted down next to her.
“What if he undoes the belt?” Her voice shook so bad she could barely speak.
“He can’t. I spelled it so that anything he does to try to get it off will just make it tighter.”
He picked Lainie up and carried her back to the camp, then set her down on the blankets and knelt beside her. “Did he hurt you?”
The whole thing seemed unreal, like a bad dream. But her battered body and residual panic told her it was all too real. “My shoulder hurts.” She rubbed at it. “I think he popped it out.”
“Let me see.” He eased her shirt back off of her left shoulder and gently probed at it. “It isn’t dislocated, just sprained, I think. I can help that.” He pressed his left hand against her shoulder. Warmth flowed into the joint, and the sharp, throbbing pain eased somewhat. Then he took a spare shirt from his knapsack and fashioned a sling. “Better now?” he asked when her arm was secure in the sling.
“Yeah.” A long shudder rippled through Lainie. Suddenly she couldn’t stop shaking. Silas wrapped his arms around her. “It’s all right now, darlin’,” he said in a low voice against her hair. “You’re safe now.”
In the warmth and safety of his arms, the dam that had held back the full measure of her terror and humiliation finally dissolved. “He called me baby girl,” she wept against his shoulder. “My Pa calls me that, and he ruined it. I don’t never want to hear those words again.”
He held her as she cried. “No more of this,” he said. “I’ll take you back to Ripgap and leave you there. You’ll be safe there.”
She clutched at him, terrified to let him go. “Don’t leave me!” she sobbed. “He said you would leave me soon as a real woman came along!”
“He did, did he?” He carefully moved her aside, then walked over to Fazar. The renegade whimpered and cringed away. Lainie felt a hot jab of satisfaction at seeing him so afraid. Silas jerked him up by his bound arms. “You don’t touch the girl, you don’t look at her, you don’t so much as say a single word to her. Understand?”
Fazar nodded frantically. “I understand!”
Silas dropped him and came back over to Lainie. “You lie down now, darlin’,” he said. “I’ll take the rest of the watch.”
Though it still hurt to move, she lay down. “Stay here,” she begged. “Don’t let him come near me.” Even if she had pushed back Fazar’s shield, she was no match for him, but Silas was. He had to be.
“I won’t. I’m sorry I let this happen – I don’t know why I didn’t hear anything sooner –”
“He had a shield up.”
He was silent for a few heartbeats. “He made a shield that strong without his mage ring? Damn.”
“I know.”
“But he wasn’t able to maintain it very long.”
“No. I pushed it back inside him.” She had done it, she thought all at once. A faint warmth came to life inside of her and began to push away the fear and humiliation. She had fought back against Fazar and won.
“What did you say you did?” Silas asked after a moment.
“I pushed his power back inside him.”
This time the silence dragged on longer. It wasn’t quite the reaction Lainie had expected. “Did I do something wrong?” she finally asked.
“It isn’t possible. What you did.”
“Oh.” Wasn’t possible? She found that hard to believe; it had seemed natural, instinctive. Easy. “Maybe it’s a Wildings thing, like how I’m able to suppress my power.”
“That could be. In any case, it’s also against the law to do anything to another mage’s power, unless you’ve been authorized to Strip him.”
Impossible. And illegal. Lainie looked at Fazar again, and Silas followed her gaze. “He knows,” she whispered. “About me. And what I can do.” She hadn’t even thought about the danger of using magic against him when she was fighting him off.
“Then we’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t tell anyone,” Silas said. Even though he also spoke in a bare whisper, the hardness in his voice sent a chill through Lainie, and she was glad it wasn’t meant for her. Whether Silas intended to kill Fazar, or Strip him, or do something else to make sure he stayed silent, Lainie couldn’t guess. Whatever Silas had in mind for the renegade, she knew it wouldn’t be good. But, she found, she couldn’t bring herself to feel any pity for Fazar at all.