I didn’t mind the long walk home. There were enough thoughts swirling around in my head that the quiet of the forest was preferable to the raucous bustle of downtown Drusiel. Drunks singing, whores hollering, dogs barking, carriages rattling, and fights breaking out on a semi-regular basis… it was a wonder I could think at all in that town.
Lysander, however, couldn’t stop moaning about this extended encounter with nature.
“If that woodpecker doesn’t knock it off, I’m going to climb up there and choke him to death.” He glared up into the branches, his hands already making strangling motions.
“I would love to see you climb a tree,” I said.
He shifted his glare to me for a moment, then picked up his pace, muttering to himself.
And later: “What the hell is up with all these bugs?” He swatted a mosquito on his neck. “Are there bug keepers who live out here?”
“Bug keepers?”
“Well, where do they all come from, then? And why the hell do they keep biting me?”
“It’s because you’re so sweet, Lye.”
“Go fuck yourself, Roz.”
“You don’t get out of town much, do you?” I asked.
“I never get out of town. Mostly because I don’t want to.”
“I used to travel a lot as a kid. Merchant parents and all that. Seems like back then, we were always going one place or another.” My parents were too old to go very far now. And my father… well, I didn’t like to think about that too much.
We walked for a while in a silence only broken when Lysander slapped at a bug and cursed to himself. I thought back to all those memories of traveling and realized that I missed it a little. The world used to feel so big. And maybe it was, or maybe my own personal world had just gotten smaller. I had buried myself deep in the endless maneuvering for power and prestige of Drusiel, and I had to ask myself why. I didn’t want those things any longer. I already had more power than I knew what to do with, and I’d long ago settled for infamy over prestige. So what was keeping me there? I could pretend that Lysander needed me, but he had Portia now. Hell, she’d probably throw me a party if I decided to leave Drusiel.
Maybe a fresh start was exactly what I needed. Once we finished this job, I’d have enough money to set myself up somewhere else. Keriel, maybe, or Monaxa. Maybe I’d even move to Lapisi. I’d have to learn another language, but how hard could that be? I didn’t know what kind of mages they had down there, but they couldn’t be any worse than the ones in Penador.
I had my head so far up my ass dreaming of a new life far from guild politics and bad reputations that I didn’t notice our attackers until they were nearly on top of us.
“Roz,” Lysander growled. But it was the steely hiss of his sword leaving its sheath that really snapped me out of my reverie.
We’d reached the narrow bridge with the adorable, if completely fanciful, carvings of spirits. Six men had risen up out of the creek bed, their cloaks almost perfectly matching the brownish gray of the bank. Clearly this was a regular spot for them.
They spread out and circled us, brandishing the usual assortment of short swords and knives. Small, easy to conceal weapons that relied more on speed than force. They moved with a smooth, silent confidence that suggested they did this a lot. These were professionals, not drunk dockworkers looking for trouble. If Lysander hadn’t caught sight of them, we’d already be dead or dying from multiple stab wounds by now.
“Okay, boys.” Lysander took a few warm-up swings with his sword. “I’ll try to keep this simple, but I’ve got a lot of pent-up frustration right now from walking through these goddamn woods, so no promises.”
They had us completely surrounded and were slowly constricting the circle. Lysander and I went back-to-back as I yanked off my gloves and stuffed them into my coat pockets.
The bandits paused when my hands lit up with fire. They probably hadn’t counted on magic, especially since I wasn’t dressed like a mage. The fire didn’t hurt me, of course, but like always, the sigils in my palms throbbed with a dull ache. After fifteen years of practice, I had about as much control over it as I was probably ever going to get. So long as the flame still touched my skin, I could manipulate it any way I wanted. I could change the size, shape, or intensity. Unfortunately, the moment I lost physical contact with the flame, it became… erratic. And usually catastrophic. So while it was tempting to just start hurling fireballs at our enemies, I really didn’t want to burn down half the forest if I didn’t have to.
Besides, unlike most magic users, I didn’t mind close fighting.
“You ready?” Lysander held his sword in both hands, the tip low to the ground.
“You’re not the only one who needs to let out a little frustration.”
I heard someone lunge toward Lysander, followed by the clang of steel on steel, and then the wet thwack of steel cutting into meat. Lysander could move fast for a big guy, and I was pretty sure he was the one doing the cutting. But I didn’t have time to check because the ones in front of me closed in.
Two of them attacked simultaneously. I ducked underneath their thrusts, then grabbed their extended wrists and lit them up like torches.
As the two human-shaped infernos stumbled around, no doubt suffering the last few moments of their lives in mind-numbing anguish, the third guy came at me. I was in an awkward crouched position, so I had to roll to the side to avoid the blow. He kept on me, not giving me a chance to get back to my feet or allowing me to grab him.
But he was scared of the fire, I could tell. A lot of people were. Often the fear was even more useful than the ability itself. While I continued to dodge and roll around awkwardly on the ground, I let my hands crackle impressively. His eyes were so drawn to them that, for a moment, he stopped paying attention to the rest of me. That’s when I caught his ankle with a scissor kick and brought him down next to me hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Then I slammed my hand into his chest and ignited him before he had a chance to recover. He went up fast, and I got quickly to my feet before the flames could burn off whatever hair I’d managed to grow back.
The two I’d lit up before were now just smoking mounds of ash. I stared at them for a moment, bothered by something I couldn’t quite articulate. Then I turned and saw Lysander about to cut the last bandit in half. The guy was already pretty beaten up. His eye was swollen, and he had a gash on his leg that had soaked through the lower half of his pant leg. He was barely standing, and as he stared up at Lysander, his mouth was open in a silent scream.
Silent.
That’s what was bothering me. If there was one truly unpleasant aspect of fire magic, it was listening to people screech as they burned to death. But none of the guys I’d just killed had made a sound.
“Lysander! Wait!”
Lysander was already in mid-swing, so the best he could do was tilt his blade so that the flat part hit his opponent’s arm, sending him spinning to the ground.
I hurried over and grabbed the guy by his tunic. “Can you speak?” I shouted in his face. “Make one sound, and I swear I’ll let you live!”
He tried. Oh, how he tried. His eyes looked desperate as he stared up at me and worked his mouth. But nothing came out. Finally, he reached up weakly with the arm that Lysander hadn’t shattered and yanked his collar down, exposing the sigil carved into the base of his neck.
“Shit,” I said, and let him drop to the ground. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“What is it, Roz?” asked Lysander as he wiped the blood off his sword.
“This wasn’t a random robbery. These guys were after us specifically, and someone carved silence sigils in their necks so we wouldn’t be able to find out who hired them.”
“Mage, then? Somebody from the Alath Guild, or whoever was behind the kidnapping?”
“Probably. I might have expected a shakedown like this once we’d nosed around in Drusiel a little. But we haven’t even gotten back into town, so how did they know we’d been hired?”
“Maybe they’d been following Quince, and when they saw us leave with him, they just assumed we’d take the job and sent these jesters along to deal with us before we even started digging.”
“Maybe,” I conceded. It sounded about as reasonable as anything else, but it didn’t quite set right in my head. Too many “maybes” strung together made for a weak chain.
“Hey, can you seal me up? One of them got lucky.” Lysander lifted up his leather jerkin to show me a wide, seeping gash along his side.
I leaned in for a closer look. It was a pretty clean cut and not that deep. “You know, stitches would hurt less, and leave less of a scar.”
“You got a needle and thread on you?”
I shook my head.
“Well then? Besides, Portia doesn’t mind the scars. Kind of gets her hot, actually.”
“Glad I can contribute to your love life.”
I’d done this enough times now to know exactly how much heat was needed to cauterize the wound without causing any more pain and scarring than necessary. Weirdly, it was one of the abilities I was most proud of. As I passed my hand across the wound, Lysander stiffened and grunted through his clenched teeth while his skin smoked. The stench of burning flesh was already in the air, so it didn’t really add much in that respect.
“You better wash it in the creek, just to be safe.”
When I turned toward the water, I saw what was left of the bridge. The actual footbridge was still intact, but the railings were only charred stumps, and the carvings were gone completely.
“Fucking hell,” I said. “And I was trying so hard to be careful.”
“One of your human torches bumped into it when they were running around.” Lysander sauntered over to the creek bank and lifted up his jerkin. He winced as he splashed cold water on his wound. “At least we can still get across it.”
“Yeah. At least.”
He looked thoughtfully at me for a moment as he pulled his jerkin back down. “Forest is still here too. Wasn’t sure that would be the case.”
I gave him a tired smile. “I guess so. Much to your disappointment.”
He grinned. “Hey, I may not want to be in the forest, but I defend its right to exist.”
“That’s what I love about you, Lye. So magnanimous. Come on. Let’s go home.”
“Speaking of magnanimous, should we let this guy live?” Lysander nodded toward the now unconscious bandit.
“Yeah, I guess so.” It was strange. I hadn’t felt any pity for the bandits until after I realized that they were hired assassins. I think it was the sigils in their necks that made me a little sad for them. Had they been told they’d eventually be able to speak again? Maybe they would, but chances weren’t high. Often when you bound an air spirit to someone like that, they didn’t want to leave, even after the sigil faded away to a faint scar. Usually they would continue to eat your words for the rest of your life.
One bit of good news was that even though I hadn’t recognized the sigil work, I was certain it wasn’t Simon Crowley’s. As far as I was concerned, I still didn’t have any conclusive proof that the guy who told Lord Edmund his name was Simon Crowley was truly my old mentor back from the dead. And that doubt was something I planned to hold on to as long as I could.