Daughter of Dusk (40 page)

“She just saved our city,” said Tristam. “And we leave her now to the enemy?”

A spasm of irritation crossed Rollan’s face. “You forget your place, soldier.”

Tristam suppressed the urge to pull Rollan off his horse. Not three months ago, he’d have been commanding troops alongside him. But it was clear that Rollan would not have his authority
challenged. In the distance, Pashla roared, and the Edlan horses danced apart. Was she limping?

That was when Tristam noticed that the knight next to Rollan was not on his horse. Tristam wasn’t sure why the man had dismounted, but an idea came to him.
Well, I suppose there are
more important things than regaining my knighthood.

Tristam pushed his way toward the steed before he could change his mind. The horse’s rider stood nearby, still holding his lance. Tristam grabbed the weapon and knocked the man aside.
Before anyone realized what was happening, Tristam had pulled himself into the horse’s saddle and urged the creature forward with a kick. Over the pounding of his horse’s hooves, he
heard Rollan yelling after him. He looked over his shoulder to see several Forge cavalrymen giving chase. Were they coming to help him or knock him off his horse? He wasn’t about to wait and
find out.

The Edlan troops had seen the Forge soldiers coming by now, and five of them turned their horses to face them. Tristam could see Pashla beyond them, definitely limping as she charged her
enemies. She roared once, and the sound quickened his blood.

Tristam leveled his spear, shouted a war cry, and braced for impact.

The felbeast Kyra rode had a smoother stride than a horse, but every leap it took still sent agony shooting through her limbs. She gritted her teeth and tried to convince
herself it didn’t hurt. As they ran farther away from the troops, she started to feel light-headed, as if she had lost a lot of blood. But she wasn’t bleeding, was she? Not on the
outside at least. Her awareness started to leave her. She began listing to the side, but Flick tightened his arms around her and kept her from falling. She was aware of other demon cats around her,
also fleeing, but as time passed, she no longer had the energy to think about them or anything else.

She wasn’t sure how long they rode. By the time they slowed, she was drifting in and out of consciousness. She felt a breeze at her back and realized that Flick was no longer behind her.
Strong arms lifted her off her steed. Flick? No. It was Leyus who looked down at her, his expression grave. And then she drifted again.

The next thing she knew, she lay on a fur spread over the ground. New hands and voices tended to her. Someone was cutting the clothes from her body. A man spoke. Not Leyus this time, but she
couldn’t place the voice. “Kyra, change into your fur.”

She tried to ignore him at first. Change now? She could hardly lift her head. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but someone shook her. She realized she was shivering without her
clothes.

“Change into your fur, Kyra,” said the voice again, more commanding this time. “Then you can rest.”

Kyra obeyed just so that he would leave her alone. The spark of her other form was hard to find by now, and everything around her seemed dim. But finally she grabbed on and coaxed it stronger.
Welcome warmth spread through her body. And then it was too much for her, and she slept.

Kyra awoke disoriented. She was in her fur, but not in her cave. There was no strength in her limbs. Pain still radiated from her hip, although it was not nearly as bad as it
had been before. Kyra shook the fog out of her mind and climbed slowly to her feet.

She was in the forest, and the angle of the light suggested it was afternoon. Some demon cats lay a stone’s throw away, tended by their kin. A few other Makvani stood nearby in human form.
Their voices carried easily over the snow, but Kyra couldn’t understand the words.

It was too painful to put weight on her back leg, so she hobbled awkwardly forward on three. She’d only made it a few paces when someone approached her. It took her a moment to recognize
Havel, the leader of the new clan. He greeted her with a friendly tone and held out a tunic. Kyra understood that he wanted her to change into her skin.

She obeyed. Her weight shifted as she changed, and the resulting pressure on her injured leg would have made her lose her balance if Havel hadn’t steadied her shoulder. When Kyra
stabilized, he handed her the tunic, and she pulled her arms through, too disoriented to be concerned about modesty.

“How do you feel?” Havel asked.

There was warmth in his voice, and Kyra recognized it as the one who had commanded her to change shape the night before. “Was it you who cared for me last night?”

Havel inclined his head. “I served as a healer for your father long ago. He still asks me for help, in cases that are important to him.” He met Kyra’s eyes as he said the last
part, and the meaning was not lost on her. Nor had she forgotten the worry in Leyus’s brow as he’d lifted her off the demon cat last night.

“Is Leyus still here?” asked Kyra.

“No, not at the moment.”

Perhaps that was just as well. She’d wished for some sign that her father cared for her, but the thought of facing him and having this new knowledge shaken was too frightening.

Now that she was in her skin, worries came crowding back. Where was she? What was the outcome of the battle last night? And—a new urgency hit her—who had been hurt?

“Flick and Adele, are they safe?”

“Flick is unharmed,” said Havel. Maybe it was something about Makvani healers, but Kyra felt at ease with Havel. The edge of aggression carried by most of his kin seemed softened in
him. “Adele lost a good deal of blood, but she will live. Flick has been either at her side or yours all day.”

Kyra closed her eyes, relieved. “And Pashla? Did she convey Willem to Forge?”

Here, Havel’s countenance darkened. “We have no news of Pashla. Our scouts have been watching the Edlan troops, and they say the Defense Minster Malikel met with the Edlan leader
this morning. Edlan troops are packing up their camp, so we can only guess that Pashla succeeded. But we do not know where she is.”

Kyra thought back to the determination in Pashla’s face when she’d changed shape to convey Willem to the city. She would have done her utmost to get him there. A chill went through
Kyra, and she looked into the trees, wishing she could somehow see through them to the city.

“How is your leg?” Havel asked.

Kyra realized she’d been silent for a long time. “It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it did last night,” she said. “But I can’t put weight on it.”

“Lord Alvred is a strong man. The blow crushed the bones of your hip and caused you to bleed in your abdomen. We had you change shape so the bone fragments would go back to their proper
place, but it does not always work, especially in someone who does not share all our blood. We’ll have someone cut you a staff to use while you recover. In the early days, you might find it
easier to move around in your fur.”

Someone shouted in the distance just then. It didn’t sound like an alarm, more like a sentry’s report. Havel looked toward the sound. “We may have more news now.”

There was someone coming through the trees—someone tall, who walked like a soldier. He carried a long, rolled blanket across his arms, and a horse trailed behind him. Kyra squinted. Was
that…

“Tristam!” Kyra shouted. Only at the last minute did she remember that she couldn’t run to him. His eyes fixed on her, and his entire body sagged with relief.

It was awkward, standing and waiting for him to get to her. She found herself leaning forward, impatient to talk to him. Tristam couldn’t walk very quickly because of what he carried, and
as he came closer, Kyra felt a rising dread. Tristam’s steps were heavy, and his eyes did not signal good news. Kyra turned to Havel, only to realize that the man had slipped away.

Tristam came to a stop in front of Kyra and laid his burden on the ground in front of her. For a long moment, they stared at each other. She longed to throw her arms around him, but it was too
strange, with all the Makvani around.

“I heard you were injured,” he said.

“Alvred’s got a deadly mace arm,” she said. “But Flick got me out alive.” She gestured weakly toward herself. “I…can’t walk very well at the
moment.”

“I’m glad you’re alive,” said Tristam. He started to reach for her but curled his hand into a fist and lowered it to his side as he stared down at the ground in front of
him. When he spoke again, the words came out deliberately, as if he had to push them out before his resolve failed. “We had a unit waiting outside the gate for your arrival.” he said,
his voice low and even. His eyes were clouded with anguish. “Pashla made it to us with Willem on her back. But when she tried to return to the forest, she ran across a group of Edlan
horsemen.”

He stopped then, and Kyra felt something cold grip her chest. She looked down at the rolled blanket on the ground. She’d known what it was. But still she’d hoped…

“I’m sorry, Kyra,” Tristam said. “I tried to help her, and several of our knights as well. But we were too late.” He kneeled then and pulled up one edge of the
blanket to reveal Pashla’s face.

Pashla’s eyes were closed, her skin pale and bloodless, and Kyra found she couldn’t breathe. She started to kneel down beside Pashla but stopped when pain shot through her hip.
Tristam reached out to steady her, and slowly, she eased herself onto the snow.

The battle at the enemy camp played over and over in Kyra’s mind. The arrow in Adele’s back. Lord Alvred’s mace coming down on Kyra’s hip. The chaos that had led to
Pashla taking her place.

“It should have been me,” Kyra said. There was a lump in her throat that didn’t move when she swallowed.

“The tides of battle cannot be predicted by any of us,” said Tristam. “Don’t blame yourself for the hand of fate.”

He spoke the words as if he knew the grief they addressed. And Kyra supposed he did. His fellow knights had probably told him the same thing when Jack and Martin had died.

Kyra reached out to adjust the blanket around Pashla. Her fingers brushed against Pashla’s cheek. The flesh was cold, as icy as the snow around them, and Kyra snatched her hand back with a
gasp. The difference between that frozen shell and Pashla’s warm, gentle touch was so stark that it felt like a cruel joke.

And that was when it sank in. This body was all that was left of the woman who had saved Kyra’s life and nursed her back from near death. The woman who had fought for her, taught her the
secrets of her Makvani blood, and forgiven Kyra when she returned to the humans. Kyra felt a burning beneath her eyelids. She fought it for a while, but when Tristam came and placed an arm around
her shoulders, Kyra buried her face in his chest and let the tears come. He held her wordlessly through the sobs, occasionally rubbing her back, until finally she wiped her eyes and pulled
away.

“Pashla and I,” said Tristam, “we had our differences. But it was not my wish to see her fall.”

“Did you speak to her before she died?” Kyra asked.

Tristam’s nod was so slight that she almost didn’t see it. “She asked me to take her body back to the clan.”

Kyra stared down at Pashla’s face, stern and beautiful, mysterious even in death.
What are you thinking, Pashla?
“She thought it an honor to die in battle for a cause she
believed in. I hope she found this fight worthwhile.”

“I think she did,” said Tristam. “I know she did.”

Kyra closed her eyes and breathed a silent thank-you and good-bye. Then she once again covered Pashla with the blanket and let her sleep.

The clan burned Pashla’s body, with each member contributing a branch for the fire. In addition to Pashla, they mourned the deaths of two others who had been in
Kyra’s band of twelve. Those two had perished in the enemy camp, and there was no way to recover their remains.

Over the next few days, Tristam came often with news from Forge. The morning after Willem’s capture, messengers had been dispatched to the Edlan troops with orders from the captive Willem
to call off the siege. While some of Edlan’s commanders might have been tempted to continue their attack even without their original ally, Willem had enough relatives in Edlan, including the
Duke himself, who did not wish to see him harmed. The Edlan troops began their long march back a few days later. Malikel dispatched scouts to make sure they had gone, and after a few days, it was
declared that the Edlan invaders had returned to their own city. Willem himself would be tried in front of the Council for treason.

“The Council voted to keep Malikel in his position as Head Councilman,” said Tristam. “In part, he has Willem to thank for it. When your most vocal enemy turns out to be a
traitor to the city, it tends to boost your credibility.” Tristam paused. “Malikel requests that you return to Forge to speak with him, and he promises you safe passage into the Palace,
should you take his request.”

The promise of safe passage was important because Kyra was in no condition for any daring escapes at the moment. Her leg had healed to the point where she could walk with a crutch. It was a
relief to be able to get around at all, but rooftop running was going to be out of her repertoire for a while.