For the Wildings Read online

  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 th
at 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.

  Chapter 3

  WHEN LAINIE AWOKE, sunlight was streaming in the window at about the same angle as when she lay down. Either she had only slept for a few minutes, or she had been asleep for a full day. Judging by her headache and how thirsty she was and how bad she had to pee, she put it at a full day. She sat up and pulled her boots back on, found the necessary – an indoor water closet down the hall – and took care of business, then made her way to the kitchen for a glass of water and something to eat.

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Murrison looked up from the dough she was rolling out. “Your husband came wandering out here a little while ago. I gave him a sandwich and some milk and showed him the water closet, then I helped him back to bed. Pardon me for asking, but is he simple in the mind?”

  Lainie hated it that anyone should think Silas was simple-minded, but Mrs. Murrison didn’t know any different. “No, he’s just been real sick.”

  “I see. I hope he gets feeling better soon. He’s a fine-looking man, for all that he’s a wizard and all, and I know Mr. Coltor thinks the world of him.”

  “Thank you,” Lainie said. Mrs. Murrison meant well, she reminded herself. She drank her water and ate a slice of bread and butter, then asked, “Is there a bathtub I can use?”

  “The bathing room is off the end of the north hallway. It has the newest hot-water boiler; once you light a fire in it, you’ll have plenty of nice hot water quick as a wink.”

  Lainie thanked her once more, then found her way to the bathing room, just behind the house and reached by a short covered walkway. The boiler was already filled with water and wood was laid beneath it. Lainie lit a fire, making a note to herself to lay more wood and refill the tank when she was done.

  While the water heated, she went to Silas’s room. As usual, he was moving restlessly in his sleep and moaning, his breathing jerky and rapid as though he was troubled by bad dreams. Lainie sat down beside him and waited for him to quiet a bit, then shook his shoulder gently. His eyes snapped wide open and he took in a sharp gasp. Then his eyes focused on her and the fear cleared from his face.

  “Come on,” Lainie said. “Let’s get you cleaned up. You’ll feel better, and I can get a good look at you.”

  She couldn’t tell if he understood her, but he let her help him out of bed and into clean drawers, shirt, and socks. Leading him by the hand, she took him through the house and out to the bathing room. The water was already hot; she opened the spigot to fill the big tub, ladled in some cold water from a nearby bucket to temper the hot water, then helped Silas out of his clothes and into the bath.

  He hesitated at first, his movements stiff and unsteady, but once he was all the way in the water, he relaxed. The warm water had to feel good as it soothed his battered body and washed away the filth of the past months. Soap, washcloths, and a couple of glass bottles of what proved to be scented oils sat on a table near the tub. Lainie sniffed at one of the bottles, and a thought came unbidden to her mind of sitting in that big bathtub with Silas while he rubbed the nice-smelling oils into her skin.

  She pushed the stopper back in the bottle and the thought right out of her mind. It was no good thinking about such things now, not until he was himself again.

  She took a cake of soap and a washcloth and scrubbed him from head to toe and then back again twice over, and washed his hair three times before judging it acceptably clean. There was also a good, sharp razor and a pair of scissors on the table, so she shaved off the three months’ worth of beard that had overrun his face and trimmed his hair to the length he favored, just below his shoulders.

  Now that he was clean, she could get a better look at his gunshot wounds. The scars were thick and knotted, but there was no redness or swelling or dead-looking flesh around them. She prodded at them with her fingers, trying to feel the bullets, and he flinched away, making that awful noise in his throat like a scared, hurt animal.

  Pain stabbed at her that she had caused him pain. “I’m sorry, baby. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.” Anyhow, she had already decided that dealing with the bullets was a job for the doctor. Her job was to figure out what her grandmother had done to his mind and power and find a way to fix it.

  At the Hidden Council headquarters, when she had reached into Silas with her mage senses to see what was wrong with him and found his power missing, she had been too shocked by the discovery to go any deeper. Then, after she rescued him, she had had neither time nor safety nor the power to investigate more thoroughly. But now, in the safe shelter of Mr. Coltor’s house, with her power mostly regenerated, she could do a proper job of this. She sent her mage senses into him, past the startling blankness where his power should be, then deeper.

  Freezing blackness slammed into Lainie’s mind. Shocked, she flinched back. Then she braced herself and resumed her investigation. Dark, icy pain flowed through Silas’s blood and bones, muscles and nerves; voices shrieking in agony and fury filled his mind.

  Lainie knew that darkness, that cold, that pain, those raging voices. She experienced them every time she drew on the power of the Sh’kimech. But what were they doing inside Silas? Where had they come from? He had been shot, had fallen to the ground; had the Sh’kimech entered into him then? But how could they have done so, unsummoned, from deep underground? And why hadn’t they taken full possession of him in his weakened condition?

  She thought back to when Carden had bound Sh’kimech ore to her hand, forcing her mind into contact with them. Had the hunters done the same thing to Silas? She knew now that Carden had been collecting the ore for her grandmother. But that day at the headquarters, and ever since rescuing Silas, she hadn’t seen or sensed any of the ore. If the ore had been bound to him, it must have been removed before then. But if that was the case, how could the effects have lasted this long?

  She steeled herself against the cold and pain and the voices, as she had learned to do when drawing on the Sh’kimech and using their power, then went deeper still, tracing their flow through Silas’s body to where they centered on three points in his right upper back…

  The bullets, she realized. A cold, sick feeling squeezed her stomach and heart. Silas had been shot with bullets forged from Sh’kimech ore.

  No wonder Silas’s mind was nearly destroyed; he had been living with that pain and those screaming, furious voices for nearly three months, with no way to get away from them. Fury swelled up inside Lainie to match that of the Sh’kimech trapped and tortured into the shape of bullets, and a need to scream, to destroy things –

  A sound of protest cut into her thoughts. She opened her eyes and saw that her fingernails were digging into Silas’s shoulder. Quickly, she released her grip. “Oh, baby, I’m sorry.” She had to be more careful, she scolded herself. For his sake, she had to stay calm and in control.

  One thing was certain. Those bullets had to come out.

  Carefully hiding all signs of her outrage so as not to upset Silas any further, Lainie pulled the drain plug, helped him out of the tub and back into his clothes, then led him back to his bedroom. There, she found that the bed had been made up with fresh bedding. She had meant to do it herself; she cringed with embarrassment that Mrs. Murrison had had to deal with the unpleasant task. Still, she was grateful for the kindness as she tucked Silas into the clean, smooth sheets and covered him with the
quilt. He curled up, shivering, and closed his eyes.

  As Lainie looked at what Elspetya Lorentius had reduced him to, a terrified child in an old man’s body, stripped of sanity, reason, strength, and dignity, sorrow swelled inside her until she thought she would burst from it. And now she was going to have to put him through a painful, dangerous operation to remove the bullets. He could die. Better that, though, than living on in this agony and madness until his body finally couldn’t endure it any longer.

  She couldn’t bear it any more. Abruptly, she turned away from Silas, fumbled for some clean clothes from her knapsack, and went back out to the bathing room. Her hands shook as she turned the tap on the boiler. Leaving the tub to refill, she ran out into the yard, putting a safe distance between herself and the house. She stopped there, shaking, her fists clenched, her breaths coming hard and fast. “Damn you, Elspetya Lorentius,” she screamed, as though she could force the words clear through the Gap and all the way to Sandostra and her grandmother’s ears. “Damn you! The gods damn you to all eight hells! How dare you do that to him!”

  She stood outside in the cold, weeping and shaking, until the painful pressure of grief and anger eased. Then she returned to the bathing room. The tub was almost full to the brim; she shut off the flow of water and undressed. As she lowered herself into the tub, the heat seemed to melt away her aches and weariness. She let out a long breath, at the same time letting go of her fierce emotions. With a washcloth and a cake of flower-scented soap, she scrubbed herself pink, then washed her hair. She ducked under the water, rinsing away dirt, soap, and sorrow, then arose from the bath, feeling much cleaner and calmer.

  What was done was done, she thought as she dressed. All her wishing and anger couldn’t make it not happen. All she could do was do her best to fix the damage and make sure Elspetya Lorentius and her gang faced justice for all the harm they had caused and never hurt anyone else ever again.