LAINIE AND SILAS followed the road north out of town to the BC Crown Ranch. A wooden sign on a gate opening onto the property told Lainie they were in the right place. They rode up to the big white-painted, single-story ranch house, just visible from the road among a stand of pine trees. In the front yard, Brin Coltor was talking with his foreman, Mr. Nikalsdon. Lainie hung back, working up the courage to approach Mr. Coltor and waiting for a chance to speak when she wouldn’t be interrupting his discussion with his foreman.
A stable hand led three horses out of the nearby stables, and Abenar whickered nervously at the sight of the strange animals. At the sound, Mr. Coltor and Mr. Nikalsdon both turned. “Vendine!” Coltor exclaimed. He strode towards Silas and Lainie, followed by Mr. Nikalsdon. “And Mrs. Vendine! What brings you –” He stopped, looking at Silas. “What’s wrong?”
“We need a place to lay low for a while, if it’s no trouble,” Lainie said. “Silas is hurt bad, and really sick, and we’ve likely got every mage hunter in the Wildings after us.”
Mr. Coltor came over closer. Silas flinched away, sidling Abenar over towards Lainie. He started rocking back and forth again, making that scared noise down in his throat. “It’s okay, baby,” Lainie told him. How she hated for Mr. Coltor to see him like this. “Mr. Coltor’s our friend.”
“What happened to him?” Coltor asked. His eyes widened. “He hasn’t been –” He cut off his words before he could say Stripped and glanced at Nikalsdon. Lainie guessed the foreman didn’t know his boss was a mage; Coltor kept his power a closely-held secret. “Come on in the house and get settled. I owe you folks a lot, and if you need help, I’m happy to give it.”
Relief sank down on Lainie again, almost more than she could bear. At most, she had dared hope for permission to use an empty shed or spare couple of bunks in the ranch hands’ bunkhouse. Quickly, she pushed more tears from her eyes; she tried to speak, but the aching knot in her throat choked off her words. Fighting to get hold of herself, she dismounted from Mala and helped Silas down from Abenar.
Mr. Nikalsdon came over and took the horses’ reins. “It’s good to see you again, Vendine, Mrs. Vendine, even under difficult circumstances. I’ll see to your horses myself.”
“Thank you kindly,” Lainie managed to say. The poor horses had had as bad a time of it as she and Silas, and were desperately in need of rest, grooming, some good feed, and new shoes.
As Mr. Nikalsdon guided Abenar and Mala towards the stables, Mr. Coltor led Lainie and Silas into the house. Lainie looked around, impressed. The house was spacious, with several rooms and hallways opening off the front hall. The walls were covered with creamy-white plaster, and the wood trim and floors shone with a deep polish.
Mr. Coltor closed the front door, then asked in a hushed voice, “He hasn’t been Stripped, has he?”
“Something like that,” Lainie said, likewise keeping her voice down even as the words came tumbling out. “The people who did it said it can be undone. But I don’t know what they did. We’ve come all the way from Sandostra, running from mage hunters and the Mage Council, and I never had a chance to figure out what’s wrong and I don’t even know if I can fix it, and he’s been shot and I don’t think that was ever treated proper, and –” Exhaustion stole the rest of her words. “It’s a long story and I’m awful tired.”
“Let’s get him settled. You can tell me the rest later.”
Leading Silas by the hand, Lainie followed Coltor down a hallway and into a bedroom with a big bed made up with fluffy pillows and quilts. “Will this do?” Coltor asked.
At the sight of the bed, all Lainie could think of was how good it would feel to sink down into it and let her exhaustion and worry and hunger drop away into sleep. But she couldn’t yet; first, she had to see to Silas. “It’s fine,” she said. “More than fine.”
“If you need anything else, just ask.” Coltor left the room, closing the door behind him.
Lainie started undressing Silas. He watched as though buttons and buckles were something he had never seen before. He was absolutely filthy; she was going to have to bathe him, and his clothes were fit only to be burned.
When she pulled his shirt off, she stared at him, shocked. She hadn’t seen him without his shirt since she rescued him. Where once he had been lean and muscular, strong and vigorous, now he was nothing but skin and bones. He sat hunched over like an old man, shivering with the constant chill that had taken hold of him. Her heart ached at the sight. “Oh, honey,” she whispered, blinking back more tears. “What did they do to you?”
His shivering was getting worse as he stood there with no shirt on. Quickly, she pulled off his boots, undid his belt and his pants, and finished undressing him. Then she settled him in the bed and covered him up. She was probably going to have to burn the bedding as well as his clothes after he slept in it in this state. “You rest now, baby,” she told him.
There was a knock at the door. She opened it to see Mr. Coltor standing there with a warm bowl of bread and milk. “Thought Vendine looked like he could use some nourishment,” he said.
Lainie took the bowl. “You didn’t have to go to all that trouble –”
“It’s no trouble at all. You folks found my daughter and saved my herd. There’s nothing that’s too much trouble, in exchange for that.”
“I’m much obliged.” It seemed that his kindness and gratitude were as great as his temper, and at the moment Lainie wasn’t inclined to question them.
Mr. Coltor left, and Lainie sat on the bed and helped Silas eat the bread and milk. In truth, she fed him, though it made her feel better to think of it as helping him feed himself. When the bowl was empty, he closed his eyes and fell asleep almost immediately.
Now, at last, she was able to examine his bullet wounds. There was a new scar on the right side of his chest, and four more scars on the right side of his back. One of the bullets must have gone clear through; the other three bullets were probably still in him.
How had he not died? Lainie wondered, looking at the locations of the wounds. The hunters must have used healing magic on him as soon as they could after they took him, since their aim had been to keep him alive for Madam Lorentius. Still, bullets in the chest were bad, very bad, whether you left them in or took them out. It would be best to have a doctor look at Silas and decide what to do about them.
But that would have to wait. Right now, she couldn’t do one more thing. You can’t draw water from an empty well, her Pa always said, and her well was bone-dry. Exhaustion wore her bones down to dust, and an aching cramp of magical hunger shuddered through her whole body. At least it was a good, clean hunger, with no taint of demonsalts craving. Denying the addiction the drug it craved, in that town in Granadaia where she had sensed demonsalts nearby, and having her power depleted for so long must have destroyed the drug’s hold on her once and for all. Or so she hoped.
She took the empty bowl and walked up the hall in search of the kitchen. A spacious sitting parlor opened off the front hall, furnished with chairs and sofa of dark, polished wood, upholstered in white wool woven in fancy designs. But she couldn’t see the kitchen. She had come through so much, but now, feeling lost in this big house was almost too much for her, and she stood helpless, blinking back tears. She could cry now – Silas wouldn’t see her and get upset – but she’d been holding back the tears for so long it seemed like she’d forgotten how to let them fall.
Mr. Coltor appeared next to her. “How is he?”
“Sleeping.”
“Good. And how about you?”
“I’m awful tired and hungry.”
He winked at her. “I’m married, Mrs. Vendine.”
A brief flush of mortification went through her, but the wink and his friendly smile and tone let her know he didn’t really think that was what she’d been hinting at. In spite of everything, she laughed a little. “So am I, Mr. Coltor.”
“Kitchen’s that way.” He pointed down another hallway, that ran behind the parlor. “Tell Mrs. Murrison I said you’re to help yourself to whatever you want.”
The kitchen was just as big and shiny and beautiful as the front parlor. The first thing Lainie’s eyes alighted on was a pie – apple, by the smell of it – set out to cool on the counter. Compelled by the delicious scent and her gnawing hunger, she headed for it, wondering if Mr. Coltor was rich enough that he could afford to hire someone just to bake pies and cakes and cookies for him, like the people who read that Ladies’ Fashion Monthly she had seen at the hotel in Sandostra. She hoped so, because that pie wasn’t long for this world.
Lainie hunted down a fork, then took the pie to the big table in the center of the kitchen. A little girl, about seven years old, sat at the table, carefully copying words from a book onto a piece of paper. She had the white hair and dusky blue-toned skin of an A’ayimat, but instead of braids her hair was done in long ringlets tied with ribbons, and she wore a ruffled dress of green calico printed with pink and yellow flowers. She looked up at Lainie with eyes that were dark like Coltor’s instead of A’ayimat gold.
“Hi, Shayla,” Lainie said. She sat down with the pie and dug in. “Do you remember me?” she asked through the first big, sweet, juicy bite.
“You’re the lady that stupid wiseman tried to kill,” the child replied. “You made the bad spirits go away. The stupid man wanted to feed me to the spirits, but you saved me.”
“That’s right,” Lainie said around another mouthful of warm, spicy apples and crust. She went on inhaling the pie one delicious bite after another, picking up the crumbs of crust that fell on the table and eating them as well. She didn’t think she had ever tasted anything as wonderful as that pie.
Shayla laughed, showing a gap in her front teeth where a tooth was missing. “You’re awful hungry. Murry’s gonna be mad.”
Lainie couldn’t help smiling back. Laughter and pie; it felt good. With one finger, she wiped the rest of the crust crumbs and drips of sticky filling out of the empty pie plate, then sucked her finger clean. “I’ll clean up after myself. And your Pa said I can eat as much as I want.”
With the pie finished off, Lainie went to the cold box – a real icebox, with ice that would have been brought at great expense down from the mountains by ice-cutters who had a special arrangement with the A’ayimat. In it, she found half a roasted chicken, a crock of baked beans, a big bowl of applesauce, and a small dish of butter, which was just the thing to go with the loaf of bread sitting on the counter next to where the pie had been. There was also a pitcher of what looked like fresh apple cider in the icebox, and another pitcher of milk; Lainie found a couple of tall glasses and poured herself some of each, then took her bounty to the table.
“Are you glad to be home?” she asked Shayla as she began working her way through the food.
Shayla nodded. “The mountains are okay. But I like my dresses and my dolls and my storybooks. Pa used to read them to me, but now I can read them myself,” she said proudly. “And Murry cooks better than Mama Aleet does. Mama Aleet and Uncle Mikat are getting a baby, so they didn’t pay much mind to me. But I liked playing in the forest with the other kids. I even saw a grovik once, but we were too noisy and it ran away.”
Lainie had seen a grovik once, too, far too close for her liking. She shuddered at the thought of one of those beasts coming near the child. “You stay away from those groviks, you hear me? They’ll eat you right up.”
Shayla laughed again. “I know that. Don’t go into the forest alone, and don’t go out of sight of the tents. That’s the rules.” She picked up her pencil. “I have to finish my lesson now.” She went back to her copying, eyes narrowed in concentration, the tip of her tongue poking out between her teeth.
Lainie returned her attention to her meal. Her body seemed to burn through the food even as she ate it. While she was eating, a sturdy woman with a crown of gray braids came in. “Mr. Coltor said you’d be hungry,” the woman said, surveying the spread of food on the table, “but bless me if I know where a little thing like you is putting all that food. You ain’t breeding, are you?”
Lainie shook her head and swallowed half a slice of thickly buttered bread all at once. She was so hungry the question didn’t bother her like it normally would have. “No, ma’am. We was on the trail for a long time, and haven’t had much to eat in a good long while.”
“Ah,” the woman said. Then she went on, hesitantly. “Normally, you understand, I wouldn’t have a wizard in my kitchen, but Mr. Coltor is right grateful to you for finding Shayla and for saving his herd. So if Mr. Coltor has no problem with you, I suppose I don’t either. But it is strange, to have a wizard right here in my kitchen.”
For a discouraging instant, Lainie’s heart had sunk as she waited for the woman – Mrs. Murrison, she guessed – to kick her out of the kitchen. But the housekeeper’s reluctant acceptance lifted her spirits again. However grudging, it was still acceptance. “It’s right kind of you to have me,” Lainie said earnestly. “I’m grateful for the food. And I’ll clean up when I’m done.”
“No, no. You’re Mr. Coltor’s guest; there’s no need for you to trouble yourself. I’ll see to it.” Mrs. Murrison went to Shayla and looked over the girl’s shoulder at her copywork. “That’s very good, Shayla. Your hand is becoming very neat and fine.”
Shayla grinned up at her. “Thank you, Mur – Mrs. Murrison.” She went on with her copying, and Mrs. Murrison began moving around the kitchen, taking out knives and pots and sacks of vegetables.
Finally, Lainie couldn’t take another bite. Her stomach felt pleasantly full, and the small, warm glow of her power flickering back to life had started to drive away the demanding hunger. Now, after a good night or three of sleep, she should be almost as good as new.
“Is there a spare blanket I could borrow, ma’am?” she asked Mrs. Murrison, who was chopping onions and carrots and throwing them into a pot.
“You ain’t going to bed down with your man?” the housekeeper asked, setting the knife down and wiping her hands on her enormous white apron.
“He’s too sick. I wouldn’t be able to sleep for worrying about him, and I got to get some rest. And anyhow, he don’t smell too good right now.” Neither did she, she realized, chagrined.
Mrs. Murrison chuckled. “There’s a spare room where you can sleep.”
“Are you and the man that killed the stupid man going to live here with Pa and Mama Brinna and me?” Shayla asked.
“We’ll stay for a while, until Mr. Vendine is feeling better.” And then, after that? She didn’t know. Time enough to worry about that later.
Mrs. Murrison led Lainie out of the kitchen to a smaller bedroom than the one Silas was in, where she took a folded-up blanket out of a chest. Lainie rolled up in the blanket on top of the narrow bed, feeling like she was melting into the mattress with exhaustion. Silas was in need of washing and doctoring and tending, but he had made it this long; he would last another day or two while she got some rest.
And with the next breath, warm, comforting darkness closed in on her.