Warrior and Witch (39 page)

“Doesn’t happen often. Witches going at each other with spells—not common. We discussed it, though, me and the others, before we guessed the Primes were hiring Hunters to kill us. If you can’t back off and let it dissipate, aiming it’s about the best you can do.” Ashin touched the reddened skin of her face and hissed in pain.

Mirei tried to evaluate her condition, through the snow and char. “How badly are you hurt?”

“Nothing that’ll stop me, once—” Ashin caught her breath sharply as she tried to get up. “Once I heal this. Couldn’t you have left a horse or two alive, though?”

Glancing around at the wreckage, Mirei felt herself go suddenly cold, and not from the temperature. “Wait.”

“I’m hardly going anywhere fast,” the Key said with some asperity.

Mirei chopped one hand through the air, cutting her levity off. “These women. Two witches, two Cousins, all of them disguised, riding this way with a purpose. Why? What’s up in these mountains that they’d be interested in?”

Ashin shrugged, winced, and switched to a verbal response. “Just passing through? On their way somewhere else?”

“But there
isn’t
anywhere else. Villages up the slopes, then nothing. There’s no pass. You can’t get through to the other side.” Mirei rose to her feet, scanning the remains of the bodies in the snow. Only one answer made sense, and it chilled her deeply. “They were looking for us.”

After an ugly silence, Ashin said, “But who knew we were coming? Kekkai told us to come to Tungral, not Lyonakh. The only people—” Her breath caught again; then she scrambled upright, fear overriding the pain of her scorched skin. “The only people who knew we’d be on this road were Onomita and the Primes.”

It was a sickening thought. A traitor that highly placed—how many plans had been leaked?

Then one blessed memory returned to Mirei, not exactly soothing, but at least less frightening than the alternative. “No. You said it in the room. Remember? When we were testing the spell. You said we were going from Lyonakh to Tungral. There were other witches present.”

Ashin thought it over, swaying on her feet, then nodded slowly. “Yes. I did. But we don’t have any proof it was one of them.”

“They’re more likely suspects,” Mirei said. “It
isn’t
Satomi, and I don’t believe it’s Koika, either. Rana—”

“Has been very quiet lately,” Ashin said grimly. “Could be she’s rethinking her allegiance. And then there’s Onomita.”

“Who didn’t leave when Arinei and her fellow Keys did.”

“Maybe they left her behind on purpose. As a plant.”

Mirei pressed one hand to her shoulder against the pain there, mind racing over the possible permutations. “If it’s one of the theory witches, then I don’t
think
they know anything more. Just that we were going to Lyonakh for some reason, and from there to Tungral. Enough to point at a location where we could be found. And we’re targets worth hitting.”

“
You
are,” Ashin said. “In that equation, I don’t even matter.”

“You matter to a zealot, and Shimi fits that description. But that’s not the point. I’m thinking risk. If it was one of Hyoka’s people, then they know where we’re going, but not what we’re doing there. If it’s Rana or Onomita—”

“Then they know
exactly
what we’re doing,” Ashin finished for her, voice bleak. “They know the inn, the timing, who we’re looking for. And they know to look for
her
, too.”

“And to stop her from ever getting there.”

“Unless it was a setup to begin with.”

Mirei shook her head. “I don’t think so. Why ambush us on the road, sloppily, if they could have a nice, well-planned ambush in Tungral?”

Ashin cocked her head to the side as a replacement for a shrug. “Fewer bystanders?”

“Could be.” Mirei went hunting for their pack. Ashin took out the battered feather and placed a healing spell on her blistered skin. By the time Mirei found the bundle and returned to her, the damage had faded to a manageable level; the rest would have to heal over time, sped along by the energy Ashin had fed into it.

“So,” Mirei said, when Ashin was done placing a spell on the knife wound in her shoulder. “If the traitor’s one of Hyoka’s people, we’ve put ourselves in mild danger by going to Tungral. If it’s Onomita or a Prime, we’re walking into a death trap. Do we press on, or go home?”

“You’re asking
me
?” Ashin said.

Mirei smiled wryly. “You do outrank me, remember?”

“Right, and I care
so
much about that, in a situation like this.” Ashin glanced around at the bodies as if they could provide some hint of what lay ahead. “Here’s my opinion. We go on—as long as you make me one promise first.”

“And what’s that?”

“If it
is
a trap—or even if it isn’t, but we run into serious trouble anyway—then you get out of there
immediately
. No hesitation. No waiting for me.”

Mirei stared at her. “You mean leave you
there
.”

Ashin met her gaze without flinching. “Yes.”

“I’m not leaving you to die.”

A tight grin answered that. “Don’t you have any confidence in me? The point is, I’m replaceable. You’re not. Not for another ten or fifteen years. Satomi made me promise before I left that I would give up my own life to get you out alive. I would have done it even without her telling me. If we get in trouble, then you jump clear and don’t wait to grab me. Make that promise, or we don’t go anywhere.”

The demand raised a mutinous feeling in Mirei.
I’m sick of being treated like I’m irreplaceable. And I’m doubly sick of abandoning friends to death
. Because Ashin
had
become a friend, though not as close as Eclipse.

“I’ve got my own tricks,” Ashin said. “Don’t assume that leaving me means I’m going to die. I’ve been at this game longer than you have. Not to mention that I knew when I started helping Tari that I was putting my life at risk. To see you succeed—to see you find the answer we’d all been looking for—and then to turn around and have my own
Prime
undermine that before it even gets started…” The Key shook her head; there was surprising heat in her dark eyes. “I’m still fighting for that cause. I never stopped. If there’s danger, then I’ll deal with it. But I don’t need you to protect me.”

She’s a grown woman
, Mirei thought, looking Ashin over. Scorched, exhausted, the witch still held herself with a determined air.
Not some child you need to look after
.

“All right,” she said at last. “I promise.”

There was nothing else for them there on the road, and they needed to get away from the disaster, fast. But more important than that, they needed to at least
try
to hide some of what had happened there.

“Let’s deal with this,” Mirei said, flicking a finger at the remains because nodding her head made her shoulder hurt. Cremation was one of three appropriate treatments for the dead, and the one witches preferred. The air was clear, so she could create fire without fear. “Then we move on and find a place to set up camp for the night. I have an idea that may keep us safer in Tungral, though.”

“Oh?”Ashin said.

Mirei smiled mirthlessly. “It requires trusting Satomi. But if she’s not on our side, we’re dead anyway.”

Chapter Seventeen

“Please, allow us to demonstrate our talents for you,” Mirei said to the pockmarked man, who was giving her a suspicious look.

Had she had an option, she wouldn’t have chosen the Bear’s Claw as the place to carry out this charade. Packed with benches under its low ceiling, the common room of the inn was a place for raucous drinking, not other kinds of entertainment. But Kekkai had chosen to meet here, and she had to work around that. Fortunately, it happened that Ashin knew quite a collection of vulgar drinking songs.

Mirei’s calculations had been simple. If the traitor was Rana or Onomita—or, she supposed, Koika, though she seriously doubted the Earth Prime would betray them—then any ambushers would be looking for Kalistyin vagrants. Also, she and Ashin needed a more discreet way of checking for illusions and other spells. Both problems could be solved by changing their disguise.

Mirei told Satomi precisely where they were and Satomi sent them extra supplies. Soon the Kalistyin vagrants became a much more flamboyant pair of Askavyan entertainers. Neither Mirei nor Ashin had the blindest clue how to play an instrument, unfortunately, but a drum was simple enough. Ashin would be the singer, since Mirei couldn’t drop her voice low enough to fake a man’s singing. Instead, she would beat out an accompaniment to the tunes the Key had picked up in her wanderings as an Air Hand.

After an extended scrutiny, the innkeeper nodded at last. Flexing her stiff shoulder—spells made the natural healing process go faster, but her knife wound was taking longer to mend than Ashin’s skin—she tucked the drum under her arm and nodded to her companion.

With a four-beat intro, the Key began to sing in a rough, energetic voice that startled Mirei. It was completely unlike the mellifluous tones of a witch, while still being excellently on key. Ashin probably couldn’t sing off-key if she tried, and it would defeat the purpose anyway. But the performance was everything Mirei could hope for.

The innkeeper seemed less impressed. When Ashin finished the song, he stared at them for a moment; for all Mirei could read from his expression, he could be considering the tune, preparing to throw them out, or doing the season’s accounts in his head.