SILAS HAD SPENT the last few days holed up in his room. His only contact with the outside world had been when he had gone down to the boarding house’s bath house for a bath and a shave, sent his clothes and coat out to be cleaned, and ordered food sent up to his room. Whatever hostility the Mundys and their employees might have felt towards him for being a wizard gave way before the money he was spending. The rest of the time, he had slept, and thought about what to do with Lainie, and re-read the creased, ragged pamphlet he had kept with him for nearly twenty years.
Dozens of copies of On the Natural Equality of Man, by the foreign philosopher Pirs Abenar, had been smuggled into his school when he was fourteen or fifteen. The boy who had brought them in had been caught and Stripped, but the authorities had failed to confiscate all the copies. The pamphlet had put things Silas had secretly thought and felt for several years into firm, clear words and principles and had helped him decide what the purpose of his life would be. Even after all these years, it still served to remind him of what he was doing and why.
But it didn’t tell him what to do about Lainie.
A letter of credit good for twenty-five gildings – less than a tenth of what he’d been hoping for – had arrived in his Mage Council message box this morning, along with a note saying that while the Council certainly appreciated his efforts, Carden didn’t appear to have posed a serious threat to their authority. Like their authority was the only thing that mattered, Silas had thought bitterly, and not the danger Carden had posed to the people of the Wildings. He did have to wonder what part of planned to use the power of the ore to take over the Wildings and raise an army they had been unable to understand. The only explanation he could think of was that the mysterious “A” had considerable influence with the Mage Council. A mess in the Mage Council’s own house was something he did not want to get mixed up in, so there was nothing else to be done about it but move on to the next bounty and wait to see if the Hidden Council had anything to say on the subject.
Lying on his bed, trying to decide what to do next, he had drifted into a light doze when a commotion down in the street startled him awake. Another argument? With Carden gone, the mining trouble should have ended. Or had the people of Bitterbush Springs found something else to fight about? The sound of a woman’s cries rising above all the shouting caught his ear. He knew that voice…
In a shot, he was at the window. Up the street past Minton’s store, a mob of two dozen or more men and a handful of women was headed for the north end of town. The gallows stood some fifty measures beyond the edge of town, stark and empty against the grasslands and hills. The mob was being led by a big-bellied, bushy-bearded man carrying a long, coiled-up rope, and, screaming and kicking and thrashing in the middle of the crowd –
“Shit!” Silas jammed his feet into his boots, slammed his hat onto his head, and grabbed his gunbelt, buckling it on and making sure his revolver was fully loaded as he flew down the stairs and out the door. His mage ring was already in place on his hand; ever since that night at the Rusty Widow there had been no point in hiding it. He ran up the street after the hanging mob. “Lainie!”
Three men turned, drawing their guns. Silas shot the first one before he could fire. A bullet whizzed past his head and another grazed his right shirtsleeve. He fired again and again, and those two men fell.
Four more turned back to take their place. Silas threw a shield as shots rang out. The bullets, slowed by the barrier, dropped harmlessly to the ground. Still shielded, Silas ducked into a narrow space between the leather goods store and Minton’s and reloaded his gun. The four men ran towards his hiding place; using the corner of the building as cover, he took down all four of them in four shots, at the cost of a scratch to his left arm. Then he ducked back and reloaded again.
As he stepped out from between the buildings, a shot from the mob barely missed him. He ducked back into his hiding place and fired. At the same instant, a second shot from down the street hit someone else at the edge of the crowd. Mooden, the big, nervous miner, came running heavily up the street, firing a small revolver that Silas thought might be Lainie’s. Silas ran out from his hiding place, also shooting as more men returned fire. “Thanks!” he shouted to Mooden as the two of them raced towards the mob.
By the time the hanging mob reached the gallows, Silas and Mooden, who was a surprisingly good shot, had eliminated a good number of the remaining men. At the gallows, three men held Lainie, who was still struggling and crying, in place under the crossarm. Gobby tossed the rope over the crossarm and lowered the noose over Lainie’s head.
Terror like Silas had never felt before surged inside him, along with a newfound clarity – a world without Lainie Banfrey in it wasn’t a world he wanted to live in. An idea that had teased at his mind, illegal, impossible, became certainty. “Lainie!” he roared. As the miner and two other men started pulling on the rope to string Lainie up, he fed magic and intent into his gun, aimed, and fired.
A beam of blue shot out from his gun and cut through the rope. The loose ends dropped down among the crowd. Gobby glanced over at Silas, then grabbed Lainie in a chokehold and held his gun to her head.
Silas was out of bullets with no chance to reload, so he kept the magic flowing into his gun, making it glow bright blue. More men in the crowd drew, but hesitated at the sight of the glowing gun. Of course the sheriff was nowhere in sight; there was nothing in the few written and many unwritten laws of the Wildings that made it a crime to hang a wizard. At least the sheriff wasn’t actually part of the hanging mob.
Silas came to a stop in front of the crowd and aimed into the middle of it. “Out of the way,” he ordered.
The folks in the mob shuffled uncertainly. Silas cocked the gun and let the glow of his power intensify. At that, the crowd scattered, except for Gobby. Mooden, who had lagged behind Silas, now stopped beside him, aiming Lainie’s revolver at Gobby, even though Silas was sure it was empty by now.
“Mooden, you idiot, you’re on our side!” Gobby shouted.
Mooden swallowed, but he didn’t lower his gun. “I don’t hold with hanging a woman, wizard or no. An’ you know Carden was crazy, an’ that ore he was having us dig up was bad stuff.”
Silas kept his gun aimed steadily at Gobby as well. “Let her go, Gobby, and then no one else has to get hurt.”
Gobby cocked his own gun. Lainie was shaking, her face flushed and wet with tears, but she looked at least as mad as scared. “I was gonna be rich,” Gobby snarled, “and you an’ this birdie ruined everything. You make one move, I’ll blow her head off. Hanging, shooting, don’t matter, long as gods-damned wizards are dead!”
Silas didn’t waver. “Let. Her. Go.”
Gobby laughed.
Silas saw an opening for the attack he was going to use. He formed the spell with his mind and power and sent it into his gun, but if he attacked now, he risked startling Gobby into pulling the trigger and shooting Lainie. He lowered his gun, though he kept it at the ready. “If it’s money you want, I got a bounty from the Mage Council in Granadaia for killing Carden.”
Greed lit up Gobby’s face. Distracted by the mention of money, he let his aim slip just enough…
Silas fired.
A blue beam pierced Gobby’s foot. “Hey!” he shouted, jerking back as the bolt entered his body. His gun fired; the bullet hit the crossbeam of the gallows. He dropped to the ground, writhing in pain. Freed from his grip, Lainie stumbled over to Silas. He caught her with his right arm and pulled her against his chest, his arm circled tightly around her. She clung to him, sobbing.
On the ground, Gobby’s body, unable to contain the large amount of magical power that had been fired into it, began to glow blue. Cracks appeared in his flesh, revealing streaks of brilliant light underneath. Pain and terror showed in his eyes.
“Twenty-five gods-damned gildings,” Silas said to him. “That’s what I got for Carden.”
Gobby’s body dissolved into a blinding flash of bluish-white light. When it cleared, nothing remained of him but a smear of gray dust on the ground.
Gasps and shouts of horror came from the members of the mob who still lingered near the gallows. Silas trained his gun on each of them in turn. “There’ll be no more hanging wizards in this town. And you won’t take your hatred of wizards out on Banfrey, or on Mooden here, either. Carden was your real enemy.”
They stood as though frozen. Silas holstered his gun, then loosened the noose and lifted it over Lainie’s head. Raw, red marks showed on the delicate skin of her throat and under her jaw; he wanted to kiss them, to soothe and comfort her. Instead, he settled for lightly touching the rope burns, sending a bit of a healing spell into them to ease the sting. “Let’s go,” he said to her and Mooden.
The three of them turned to walk back into town. No one disturbed them or tried to stop them as they went.
When they reached the boarding house, Mooden held out Lainie’s gun, and she took it. “Thank you,” she said, her voice worn thin and ragged.
“That was mighty brave of you,” Silas added.
Mooden shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed. “I may be a coward, but at least I ain’t a coward who mistreats women. I couldn’t have looked myself in the eye if I let them hang her. An’ I believe you about Carden.”
“I hope nothin’ bad comes of this for you,” Lainie said. “If you want, you can come on out to the ranch. Might be my Pa can make a place for you there.”
“I’d surely appreciate that, Miss Banfrey. Ain’t got nowhere else to go, anyhow.”
“Meet us back here,” Silas said to Mooden. Leading a confused Lainie by the hand – he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight again – he went into the boarding house. Ignoring the landlady’s shouted reminder that it was ten extra drinas a day to have a birdie in his room, he took Lainie upstairs, stuffed his belongings into his knapsack, and pulled on his duster. They went back down to the stable and fetched Abenar, then got Lainie’s brown mare from where she was hitched in front of Minton’s.
“I can make my way from here, Mr. Vendine,” Lainie said as he helped her into the saddle. Her voice was still shaky but she was making an obvious effort to sound like she was all right now. “Thank you for coming to rescue me again. I didn’t know you were still around. I guess you’ll be on your way now?” She gestured at his knapsack.
“I’m coming with you,” he said. “I thought of another way.”
“Another –?”
“I’ll explain once we’ve got you safely home.”
With Mooden following them on a dun gelding that had seen better days, they rode down the street then turned west at the crossroads to head out to the Banfrey place. About a league out of town, a group of men on horseback came into view riding towards them. “Miss Lainie!” one of them called. “Your Pa ’bout went through the roof when no one could find you!” They rode up to meet Silas, Lainie, and Mooden. “He would have come himself,” the hand said, “but he’s in no shape and Dobay stopped him. Everything okay?” He looked from Silas to Mooden.
“Everything’s fine,” Lainie said.
“She ran into a little trouble involving a mob and a rope, but Mooden here and I fixed things,” Silas said. “As it happens, Mooden could use a place to stay away from town.”
Anxiously demanding to know more, the hands surrounded the three of them and escorted them back to the ranch while Mooden told the story. When the group came around the windbreak in front of the Banfrey house, Lainie kneed her horse into a gallop. “Pa!” she cried out.
Moving stiffly, Banfrey hurried out of the house. Lainie jumped down from her horse, ran to her father, and threw her arms around him. “Oh, Pa!” The two big cattlehounds ran up to her, jumping and barking and sniffing.
Banfrey hugged his daughter. “What happened, Lainie-girl?”
“They tried to hang me!”
Banfrey pulled back and looked at the red marks the noose had left on Lainie’s neck. “Don’t know what else you expected, baby girl. Running off alone into town like that, when everyone knows you’re a wizard.”
“But I’ve lived here all my life! They know me! They know I’ve never done harm to anyone. I’ve got a right to go about in my own hometown, don’t I?”
The sorrow in Lainie’s voice and on Banfrey’s face cut Silas deeply. He rode up to them and dismounted from Abenar. “I stopped it in time, and the man who was leading the hanging won’t be trying it again.”
“Who was it?” Banfrey looked ready to murder someone right then and there.
“Gobby,” Silas answered. “I should have killed the sheepknocking son of a bitch when I had the chance, down there in the tunnel.”
“You teach that bastard a lesson?”
“He’s dead. And I think I put a good scare in the rest of them.”
“I’m grateful,” Banfrey said. “You’ll never know how much. And now maybe she’ll listen to me. You hear me, baby girl? You don’t know what I went through when I found you missing! You don’t go into town without at least three men with you, or better yet, not at all.”
“But I don’t want it to be that way! It shouldn’t be that way!”
“No arguing with me, girl.”
Thunder cracked overhead, and the first few fat raindrops of the storm came down. “Let’s go inside,” Silas said. “I need to talk to the both of you.”
Mooden followed the hands to the stable while Silas, Lainie, and Banfrey went into the house. They sat at the dining room table, Lainie next to her Pa, Silas across from them. In a corner, Dobay leaned against the wall, unobtrusive but still there, watching over the family he had worked for for so many years.
“Here’s how it is,” Silas said, gathering his words and his resolve. What he had decided to do wasn’t going to be easy for Banfrey to hear, but there were no easy answers to what was best for Lainie. “Miss Lainie isn’t safe here. And mage law requires that everyone with power either be trained at one of the schools of magic in Granadaia or Stripped of their power.”
“I’m not going –” Lainie said.
“I won’t let my daughter be turned into one of them,” Banfrey added at the same time.
“Hear me out,” Silas said. “Under the law, I’m required to do one or the other of those. But school in Granadaia would destroy her, one way or another, and even if she chooses to be Stripped, I won’t do it. If I leave her here and another mage finds her, we’ll both be punished for failing to obey the law. Prison, Stripped, even executed. And she’s a danger to herself and others if she remains untrained. So –” he took a deep breath “– I thought of another way.” He had to be out of his mind, thinking what he was thinking, but instead he felt a bone-deep certainty, as though this was the sanest decision he had ever made. Illegal, yes, and it would complicate their lives far more than he cared to think about, but he knew, utterly and absolutely, it was the right thing to do. “I’ll take her with me and teach her myself.”
Silence met this, then Lainie said, “Is – is that allowed?”
“No. All training of mages must be done at one of the schools that operate under the authority of the Mage Council. It’s strictly forbidden for individual mages to start their own schools or take on their own students.”
“Then, that would mean… You’d be a rogue mage. An outlaw. Like the ones you hunt.”
“That’s right.” Oh well; it wasn’t like he wasn’t already half-renegade, anyway, because of his sympathy for Plains and his alliance with the Hidden Council. “It’s true, I’m sworn to uphold the laws of the Mage Council. But, more importantly, I vowed to myself and the gods a long time ago that I would always work for what was right, no matter what the law says. Stripping you or forcing you to go to school in Granadaia would be wrong, but I can’t leave you untrained. And you’re in danger if you stay here – I stopped them today, but I don’t doubt they’d try to hang you again if they got the chance. And, frankly, your Pa’s in danger as well, for sheltering a wizard.”
Her gaze shifted away, downward, and she looked uncomfortable. “I know. I’m sorry, Pa. I had no right to put you in danger.”
Her father put his hand over hers and squeezed it. “You know I’d die for you, baby girl,” he said.
“I don’t want you to die, Pa,” she answered in a small voice.
“So,” Silas went on, “the best thing is for you to come with me, so I can protect you and give you the training you need.”
Before Lainie could respond, Banfrey said, “Well, now, Vendine, I surely do appreciate that you’re willing to take a risk to help my daughter. But my little girl, becoming a wizard, it’s hard for me to think on –”
Knowing about Banfrey’s mother, Silas could understand his concerns. “There’s good mages and bad mages. I’ll teach her to be a good one, to use her power without turning into something you wouldn’t want her to be. She’s powerful – I can’t begin to guess what she might be capable of – and I want to help her learn to use the talents the gods have given her, to do good with them. And I want to keep her safe.”
Banfrey was silent for a long moment. “Well,” he finally said. “You seem a decent sort, for a wizard, and I believe you mean what you say. But here’s the other thing. I can’t let my daughter go off with a fella that she’s not married to.”
Lainie’s face flamed, and she stared down at the table. Silas wondered if Banfrey knew or guessed what had happened in that mountain meadow. In the Wildings, if a fellow bedded a respectable young lady, he was expected to marry her, and that was all there was to it. Even if Banfrey didn’t suspect anything, it was also true that respectable young ladies did not go off traveling with men they were neither related nor married to.
Having an unauthorized wife as well as an illegal student would make the matter doubly complicated, but, knowing the way of things in the Wildings, Silas had been expecting this and was prepared for it. And, even with all the drawbacks and difficulties, after nearly losing her today he knew now that the one thing he wanted most in the world was to always have her with him, to have her face be the last thing he saw every night and the first thing he saw every morning. “Of course,” he said. “I understand completely. Assuming there aren’t any prior claims to Miss Lainie’s hand –” He and Banfrey both looked over at Dobay.
Dobay waved them off. “I told you how I feel about that.”
“Then I would be honored to marry her. If she’ll have me.”
Lainie looked up at him sharply, her mouth open in surprise. He held his breath, afraid she was still too mad at him, afraid she would turn him down, afraid his plan would fall apart and he would have to figure out how to do what had to be done and go on without her.
“Well, Lainie-girl?” her father said. “What do you say?”
“I – I – Yes.” She sounded stunned. “I will.”
Silas let out a long breath, relieved even as his future took on a new and complicated shape. At least it would have her in it. He couldn’t have held back the smile that broke out on his face if he wanted to. No matter; let Banfrey and Lainie know she was marrying a man who wanted her.
“There’s one other thing,” Banfrey said. “Lainie’s my only living kin. She’ll inherit the ranch when I die. If she ain’t here to claim it, I’m afraid it’ll fall into another family’s hands.”
Knowing Banfrey’s history, Silas could also understand the importance to Banfrey of keeping the ranch in the family. “Then you’ll just have to stay alive until it’s safe for us to come back,” he said with a grin.
Banfrey chuckled a little. “I suppose I will.”
“An’ even if I can’t stay around after I claim it,” Lainie said, “I’ll trust Mr. Dobay or whoever you choose with the running of it.”
“Well, then,” Banfrey said, “I guess it’s settled. I suppose we’d better take care of things right away.”
“That would be best,” Silas answered. “Don’t you think so?” he asked Lainie. It was her marriage; she should have some say in it.
“I – Yes, I suppose you’re right.” She still sounded a bit flustered.
“Dobay, go out an’ ask one of the boys to come in an’ be the third witness,” Banfrey said.
Dobay slipped out the back door and returned a moment later with Wik, the hand who had been at the Rusty Widow the night Lainie was kidnapped. They all went into the front parlor to stand in front of the household shrine. There, in view of the gods and in the presence of three witnesses, in the name of the Joiner, Silas took Lainie’s hand and pledged himself to her, body, heart, mind, and soul, and she likewise pledged herself to him. The words said, he kissed her, and the witnesses pronounced themselves satisfied that the marriage was true and valid.
* * *
LAINIE’S PA INSISTED that she and Silas at least stay for a good meal before leaving. He offered to cook, but Lainie refused to let him. So much had happened, so suddenly, she still wasn’t sure it was real or what it all meant, and she needed a few moments to herself in the kitchen. She cooked up a mess of bacon and eggs and pan biscuits, and dished up some canned applesauce, thinking all the while that this would be the last meal she would cook in this house for – how long? Ever? That couldn’t be. Sooner or later she’d be able to come back and see her Pa again. Eventually she would return to claim ownership of the ranch. The day would come when the Plain folk in the valley would forget how much they hated mages and just remember that they had known her growing up and that she had helped them instead of doing them harm.
She took the food out to the dining room, and Silas dug in. It pleased her, how much he liked her cooking. From spending plenty of nights out on the range, she knew campfire cooking, so she should be able to cook for him as they traveled. He had gotten himself stuck with her, trying to do what was best for her; the least she could do was make sure he was well-fed.
She herself was in too much of a tizzy inside from everything that had happened to be able to eat much. She had nearly died, and then Mr. Vendine – Silas – had come for her again, had fought for her and saved her. She was alive, and married to the nicest, handsomest, bravest, best, most interesting man she had ever known. His wife. Mrs. Lainie Vendine. The thought made her head spin, and she put her fork down. “I’ll go get my things together.”
Behind her, as she walked down the hall to her room, she heard Silas telling her Pa and the other men about how he had rescued her from being hanged. Not wanting to relive it, she closed the door to her room. She moved around the room, going through her few possessions, trying to decide what to take with. There was only room in her knapsack for the essentials – some changes of clothing, a couple of light blankets, water bottles, hair brush and tooth cleaner, and a few other necessities, plus some provisions from the pantry. She touched the wooden toy horse that Blake had carved for her, her framed certificate from the Bitterbush Springs Town School, that proudly proclaimed her completion of all six years of instruction and passing of the comprehensive examinations, the rag doll she’d had since she was a baby.
She looked at the bird-in-a-cage quilt her mother had finished only a few months before dying of a fever when Lainie was six. It was soft and warm, and the prettiest thing she owned, and all she had of her mother. It would be a fine thing to sleep with Silas under that quilt. At the thought, her cheeks grew warm and a delicious shiver went up her back. But it was too bulky to fit in her knapsack, even if she didn’t take anything else.
As she smoothed the quilt, feeling her mother’s tiny, perfect stitches beneath her fingers, she thought of her own dreams of children. From what Silas had told her, they would have to go before the Mage Council to get the block on his fertility removed. What with them being outlaw, that might be a problem. One day, though, they would find a way. Silas was a good man, and a good mage. The Mage Council had to understand that, and see that they weren’t really outlaws or renegades; they were just two good people who’d found a different way of doing the right thing.
Would she rather not be married to him, she wondered, but to someone she didn’t like as much, someone she didn’t feel so right about being with, who could give her children right away? She paused a moment, weighing the choices, and knew that even if it meant she had to wait a while to be able to have children, she would rather have them with the right man. And Silas was that man.
They would have children, one day. And they would come back here one day and sleep under that quilt. One day, mages in the Wildings who only wanted to live in peace would be able to walk fearlessly in the open and not be hanged or driven from their homes. She would do whatever she could to help that day come, she promised herself.
The door to her room opened and closed. Lainie turned around quickly, half-expecting to see Silas. Instead, her Pa stood there. “So,” he said. “My little girl’s married now.”
“Yeah.” It still didn’t seem real. She looked down at her hands. Maybe sometime later they would be able to get some wedding rings. Would Silas give her a mage ring when she was good enough at magic?
“Didn’t quite happen the way we thought it would.”
“No.” She wondered what Dobay had meant when he told Pa and Silas that they already knew how he felt about marrying her.
“I want you to tell me the truth about something, Lainie-girl.”
“Yes, Pa?”
“Did he force you?”
It took her a moment to realize what he meant, then she felt her face burn. She looked away. “What makes you ask that, Pa?”
“I know my little girl. I know something happened between you two. Did he force you?”
What would her Pa think if he knew she had not only been willing but had practically thrown herself at Silas? Would he be disappointed and angry, and order her to leave and never come back? She couldn’t bear it if he did that. But she also couldn’t lie, not to her Pa and not about Silas. She looked her father in the eye. “No, Pa. He didn’t.”
“You’re telling me the truth? You ain’t lying to protect him?”
“No, I ain’t lying. He ain’t the kind of man who would want a woman to lie to protect him.” Although she knew so little about Silas, she knew this with absolute certainty. “In truth, he’d probably want me to lie an’ say he did, so that you wouldn’t think badly of me. He’s a good man, Pa.”
“I see.” Burrett was silent a moment. “So you want to be with him, then. You ain’t going into this against your will.”
“No, Pa. Him an’ me… he knows what it’s like, having power. He’ll teach me to use it, help me… become what I can be, without turning into a monster with no heart and no soul. Like him – he’s a powerful mage, but he’s also got a powerful good heart. And…” She felt herself blush again, but in a good way this time. “It’s hard to put words to, but we fit. We belong together.” At least, she thought they did. She hoped Silas felt the same way, that he didn’t feel like he was being forced into this against his will.
“Good.” Burrett hesitated, then patted her on the shoulder. “Well, get on then, and finish packing. Your husband’s waiting for you.”
She smiled. “Yes, Pa. Tell him I’ll be right out.”
* * *
A FEW MOMENTS after Banfrey returned from his “few words with his daughter,” Lainie came into the dining room carrying a stuffed-full knapsack. She looked at Silas and gave him a shy smile that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. “I’m ready.”
Silas took his hat and coat from the hook in the front hall and made sure Lainie had her hat and gunbelt. Outside, the storm had moved on south and east down the valley, leaving the air fresh and cool. The fat orange-striped, one-eared cat followed them out of the house, and the dogs came around again, barking and jumping in the mud and puddles. Lainie knelt down and hugged and petted the animals. “You all be good,” she said, her voice breaking.
Wik brought Abenar and Lainie’s mare around from the stables. Though Lainie was perfectly capable of mounting a horse on her own, this time it seemed only fitting that Silas should help his bride into the saddle, so he gave her a hand up. As he turned to mount Abenar, Banfrey stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“She’s all I got, Vendine. You take good care of her.”
“I will, Banfrey.” He looked at Lainie on her mare, and remembered the terrible feeling that had torn through him when he saw Gobby putting the noose around her neck. He would never let her come so close to harm again, he vowed. “I will. She’s all I got, too.”
They shook hands, then Silas swung up into the saddle. With a nod at Lainie, he started Abenar at a walk, and Lainie rode beside him, looking back several times to wave at her Pa.
“Don’t be strangers!” Banfrey called out. “You stop by when you can!”
“We will, Pa!” Lainie shouted back.
When they had passed the windbreak and were out of sight of the house but still a distance from the road, Silas reined Abenar to a stop and climbed down. “Lainie, darlin’.”
Looking puzzled, she also dismounted. “What?”
He moved over close to her and took her face gently between his hands, smoothing back the loose hair. So much to say, and none of it was anything he was much practiced at saying. “I think… I think I’ve loved you since the first time I saw you,” he said, feeling his way through the words as he went along. “But I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do anything about it. When Carden took you, and when I saw them trying to hang you, I thought I would die if anything bad happened to you. So…” He paused, fumbling for words. “I guess what I’m trying to say, darlin’, is, it did mean something.”
She caught her breath. “Me too,” she said.
He bent down and kissed her mouth, long and soft, and she pressed herself into the kiss, clutching the shoulders of his duster. He trailed his mouth down her jaw to her neck, gently kissing the injuries left behind by the noose. Never again, he vowed. He would guard her life and safety and happiness even more closely than his own.
She gasped and leaned into him, her body melting against his, and he pulled away before he disgraced himself and her right there within sight of the road. “Let’s go,” he said.
“Where?” she asked.
“I was heading west and south when I came this way. It’s too crowded in the east. Too many mage hunters; they’ve chased away all the good bounties. And, anyhow, things being what they are, I’d just as soon avoid running into any other hunters.”
“Sounds good to me.”
They mounted up and rode on at an angle that would bypass the town and take them south out of the Bitterbush Valley. As they rode, Silas couldn’t tear his eyes away from Lainie. She was facing the uncertain way ahead with determination and just a trace of wistfulness on her face, but no fear. She caught him looking at her, and blushed and glanced away, her mouth curving in that shy smile.
Silas smiled as well. He hadn’t ridden into Bitterbush Springs expecting to leave it a renegade himself, with an illegal student and unauthorized wife. But, he decided, if it meant having Lainie with him, he wouldn’t change a thing.
The End
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Beneath the Canyons
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Money and Measurements:
copper bits = 3 per penny
pennies = 3 bits
drinas = 10 pennies
gildings = 100 drinas
Week: nineday. 8 gods/one day per god, All-Gods day
Month: three ninedays plus a Darknight
armlength = 26"
measure = man’s arms spread out, from fingertips on one hand to fingertips on the other hand (72"/ 6 ft)
league = 1000 measures (1.13 miles)
The Gods:
The Provider – giver of what's needful, provider of good crops and herds
The Maker – creation, childbirth, creativity, growth of seeds, increase in herds
The Joiner – bringing separate things together, marriage
The Sunderer – violent death, separations, breaking apart
The Defender – defends, protects
The Gatherer – death, return to origins, harvest
The Avenger – attacks, avenges
The Mender – brings together things that were formerly together then separated, reconciliation, restoration. honesty, integrity, wholeness.
The Dragon's Threes Deck and rules:
7 suits/point multipliers: Sun (4x), Moon (3x), Stars (2x), Earth (1x), Water (2x), Air (3x), Fire (4x)
ranks/points: Dragon (15pts), Mage (14), King (13), Queen (12), Priest (11), Demon (10), Warrior (9), Crone (8), Merchant (7), Hunter (6), Farmer (5), Harlot (4), Begger (3), Joker (2), Death (1)
Straight: pts x 3 (3 cards in a row from same suit)
Level: (3 cards of same rank) pts x 2
Ranking points: number of players -1 x 10. e.g. 7 players: best combo gets 60 points, next best gets 50, etc. Worst combo gets 0 ranking points.
The cards are dealt out evenly, extras are taken out of play and placed face-down in the center of table.
Players lay down combinations of three cards. All chosen combos for the round are placed face down before combos are revealed.
Points earned depend on combos, how good they are compared to other combos. Points may be kept with colored pebbles.
Bets change during play.
Up to 10 players can play at once.
Rules of courtesy:
No smoking at the card table if any of the players object to it.
Onlookers may not discuss the cards in players’ hands (this is a shooting offense).
For maps, character interviews, previews of the other books in the Daughter of the Wildings series, and more book extras and information, visit http://www.kyrahalland.com/daughter-of-the-wildings.html
Book 2 of Daughter of the Wildings!
The Bads. The lowest, hottest, driest part of the Wildings. After six days of traveling through the badlands, the only explanation Silas could think of for their existence was that the Maker had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed the day He made them.
This part of the Bads was known as Onetree, because it was within sight of the only full-size tree known to grow in the Bads. From this distance, the tree looked like nothing more than a thick trunk splitting off into several crooked, bare branches. The dusty track Silas and Lainie were following stretched southwest past the tree and on endlessly into the distance through bare, rocky dirt, sparse scrubgrass, and low-growing cactuses. Eventually it would lead them to the town of Ripgap, where, according to the message the Mage Council had sent, Garis Horden would meet them. The track showed no signs that anyone had passed this way in days, if not months.
The midafternoon sun beat down mercilessly. The sky was empty of all but the thinnest wisps of clouds, even above the distant, scattered clusters of jagged hills, where clouds would have formed first if they were going to appear at all. Rain would have been welcome for the relief from the heat and for the water to refill their canteens, which were running low. At least the absence of clouds meant there was no chance of the giant dust storms that blew up when powerful downdrafts from summer thunderstorms swept down from the hills. Such dust storms might not be as deadly as heat or thirst, but they were pretty damned unpleasant. Silas and Lainie had already endured one storm, huddled with the horses behind a shield to keep the blowing dirt and sand from stinging their eyes, scouring their skin, and clogging their noses and lungs. Rumors said that the heaviest storms could bury a man, or even a house, two measures deep. According to Silas's sketchy map of the Wildings, Ripgap was only two more days away, and Silas had never looked forward to reaching civilization, or what passed for it out here, so badly.
Lainie sat slumped in her saddle, looking worn down. The Bads were much hotter and dryer than the Bitterbush Valley where she had been born and lived all her life. Even beneath the shelter of her hat, her face was flushed from heat and sunburn, and her lips were dry and chapped.
"Hey, darlin'," Silas said.
"Yeah?"
"We'll be in Ripgap in a few more days. There must be a well there, otherwise there wouldn't be a town, so we can get plenty to drink, and maybe sleep under a roof for a few nights. Think you'll make it?"
She gave him a weary smile. "I'm fine." No matter the heat, no matter how hungry and thirsty and tired and dirty she got, she never complained. She was one strong woman, he thought admiringly, as he did so often, though she herself would have just put it down to stubborn practicality. No point complaining when there was nothing to be done about it, she would say.
They approached the Onetree, following the track as it made a slight curve around the tree. As they came around the bend, Silas saw something about the size and shape of a man dangling from one of the limbs on the far side of the tree --
"Hold on," he said, but Lainie's sharp gasp told him it was too late. She stared at the body hanging from the tree, her eyes wide with shock and sudden fear. Her hand moved to her throat, as though feeling for the noose that the hanging mob in Bitterbush Springs had put around her neck. Silas knew what she was thinking -- it could have been her, hanging dead by the neck at the end of a rope like that. If he hadn't stayed around Bitterbush Springs those extra days, trying to decide what to do with her, if he hadn't heard the commotion down on the street as the townsfolk ganged up on her and dragged her to the gallows, it would have been her.
He reached for her hand and lowered it away from her neck. "Don't look at it. Wait here." She turned her head abruptly towards him as though startled out of the horrifying memory, then nodded.
Silas kneed Abenar to turn towards the tree, but the big gray flattened his ears and tensed up, not wanting to go any closer to the corpse. To spare the horse's nerves, Silas climbed down from the saddle and left him with Lainie while he walked over to the tree. They had seen no other sign of human life the whole time they'd been in the Bads; the question of who the hanged man was and how he had ended up like this made an unpleasant tickle come up on the back of Silas's neck.
He got close enough to the body to take a good look at it, and the world seemed to shift around him. In spite of the ravages of death, Silas recognized the dead man's face. It was Verl Bissom, a mage hunter he knew. They had crossed paths on a difficult hunt several years ago and teamed up briefly. While he couldn't say he and Verl had been friends, they had developed a solid respect for each other. Verl was a big man and an experienced fighter, not a man who was easy to kill. But here he was, hanging dead from the Onetree in the middle of the Bads.
It could be a coincidence that another mage hunter was hanging dead from a tree along the road Silas had been traveling down on an unusual errand. Bissom could have been coming through this way on business of his own, and had run afoul of a group of Plain travelers who had taken advantage of the only tree in nearly two hundred leagues to solve their wizard problem. It would have to have been a pretty large and determined group of Plains to get the better of Bissom, though, and a party that large would have left plenty of tracks. The signs of their passage could have been erased by a dust storm, but the lack of an accumulation of dirt and sand in the folds of Verl's clothes told Silas there hadn't been any storms since Verl was killed.
It could have been a rogue mage. Or, more likely, two or three. Rogue mages seldom teamed up, and when they did they were more likely to turn on each other than to successfully carry out any cooperative ventures. But it wasn't unheard of, and the presence of a team of renegades working out here would explain Garis Horden's call for assistance.
Silas's back prickled, right between his shoulder blades. All at once, two days to Ripgap seemed far too long. He reached out with his mage senses, checking for signs of power or power-concealing shields, and found none. After Carden, though, he knew better than to assume there really were no other mages around.
Lainie walked up behind him. "Well?"
He didn't dare turn around and let her see his own shock and consternation. If she found out the dead man was another mage hunter, someone he knew, that might scare her more than she could bear. She had enough to deal with as it was; he didn't want to burden her with this as well. "Could be a cattle rustler," he said, trying to sound unconcerned. That was a hanging offense no matter where you were in the Wildings.
"Maybe," she said, but it was clear from her voice that she wasn't buying his explanation for a copper bit. She looked around at the vast, empty desert surrounding them. "I don't reckon there's enough cattle in all the Bads to be worth rustling, or hanging a rustler over."
"Or a horse thief." Another crime worthy of death, especially in a place like this, where a man's life could depend on his horse.
"Don't lie to me, Vendine." Already he had learned that when she called him by just his last name, that meant she was dead serious. "I haven't seen no signs of cattle or horses or people for days now."
He sighed. She was right. He shouldn't lie, not even to spare her feelings, and, for her own safety, he had to let her know what they were dealing with. "All right. It's someone I know. Verl Bissom. Another mage hunter."
She sucked in a sharp breath and clutched at the back of his duster. "Damn."
"Not saying his death had anything to do with him being a mage hunter. There's any number of things that could have happened. So don't worry yourself over it. I'll bury him, then we'll be on our way.
Silas walked back to the horses and coaxed them over to the meager shade of the tree's bare branches. They snorted and fidgeted at being so close to the body, but Lainie set about watering them from the skins and giving them something to eat, and they soon settled down. Silas took his hunting knife from his saddlebags and cut the rope. Verl's body fell in a crumpled heap at his feet. "This might take a while, darlin'," Silas said as he dug into the magically expanded space in his saddlebags for his collapsible shovel. "You sit in the shade and rest."
The horses cared for, Lainie sat down, leaning against the tree trunk on the side away from the sun and Verl's body. Silas shrugged off his duster and started digging the grave. The dirt was hard-packed, baked solid by the sun, so he used a little magic to help break up the ground. He didn't want to signal his presence to any rogue mages who might be in the area, but he also didn't want to spend the rest of the day and possibly a good part of the night in this spot. Even without magic, digging a grave big enough for Verl Bissom was going to take a while.
"Do you think this has anything to do with what that other hunter wanted help with?" Lainie asked after a while.
Silas took off his hat and wiped away sweat from his face. Had Bissom also been coming to help Horden? Or had Horden received a call for help from Bissom? He would have to ask Horden when he saw him, and tell him what had happened to Bissom. "Maybe. Could be rogue mages at work. Or it could just be that he came across some settlers on the move and they found out he was a wizard."
"Huh." She didn't sound any more convinced of that than he was.
The sun had gone a considerable way down the western sky by the time Silas finished digging the grave. He rolled Verl's body into it and arranged him properly. Bissom's mage ring wasn't on his hand, but that didn't mean anything. Plain folk could have stolen as easily as a mage once he was dead. Silas covered the grave with dirt, then recited the proper prayers to the Sunderer and the Gatherer and the Avenger to appease Bissom's murdered soul, torn from his body by violence, and guide him safely to the Afterworld. He was no priest -- far from it -- but as part of the requirements for being authorized as a mage hunter, he had learned the proper burying of the dead. You kill them, you bury them, was the rule.
His duty to the dead man carried out, Silas sat down in the shade next to Lainie to rest. A light breeze blew up, drying the sweat on his face and body, bringing a brief moment of blessed coolness. They drank sparingly from their water flasks and ate a little jerky and flatbread, then Silas got out his message kit and sent the Mage Council a message informing them of Bissom's death.
The whole time, that prickling sensation kept running up and down his spine. He couldn't shake the feeling that they were being watched. But there was nothing anywhere in the area, no big rocks, no other trees or tall brush, that would give cover to someone watching them. He checked again for shields, this time looking for the heavier shields that would hide or camouflage a person's physical presence.
Nothing.
A sudden creaking sound came from the branches above them. He glanced sharply upwards. "Look!" Lainie gasped.
A knapsack dangled from an upper branch of the Onetree, swinging gently even though the breeze had died away. Silas could have sworn the knapsack hadn't been there before. Had he just missed it, or was he dealing with another mage whose shields he was unable to detect, who was able to come and go unheard and unseen? He didn't like being caught unawares like this. "Wonder if it's Bissom's," he said, trying not to show how much the knapsack's appearance had unsettled him. For Lainie's sake, he had to at least appear calm no matter how he felt inside.
"I'd lay money on it," Lainie said.
Silas climbed the rough-barked tree to where the knapsack hung. He reached for it, then stopped. It was too convenient... Thoroughly and carefully, he probed for any magical traps that might have been set on the pack, and found none. Gingerly, in case he had missed anything, he unhooked the pack from the branch and climbed down. He wanted to go through it right, to see if he could find any more clues to what had happened to Bissom or information about how to contact Bissom's family. It was an unwritten rule among mage hunters that, if at all possible, no man's family would be left wondering why they never heard from him again. But Silas didn't want to spend one more moment out here in the open than he had to. Someone had put that knapsack in the tree, and that someone had to still be close by even though Silas couldn't find him. The contents of Bissom's knapsack could wait until he and Lainie had the safety of walls around them.
He strapped the knapsack behind Abenar's saddle. Then, with a silent nod to each other -- neither of them seemed to want to speak out loud -- he and Lainie mounted up and rode on southwest along the endless, empty trail towards the slowly-sinking sun.
Bad Hunting
Daughter of the Wildings Book 2
Now Available
Book 1: Beneath the Canyons
Book 2: Bad Hunting
Book 3: The Rancher’s Daughter
Book 4: To the Gap
Book 5: City of Mages
Book 6: For the Wildings
For more information on the Daughter of the Wildings series, visit http://www.kyrahalland.com/daughter-of-the-wildings.html
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For complete catalog and availability,
please visit http://www.kyrahalland.com/books.html
Many thanks to my wonderful test readers, for helping to make this a better book: Steph, Jill, Jeremy, Kellie, Elizabeth, and Amy.
Also thanks to Mominur Rahman, for bringing Silas and Lainie to life on the cover.
And, most of all, many many thanks to my husband for his patience and support.