Leesil was torn between bolting and facing an ugly confrontation, but Magiere made the decision for them. She halted, turned, and set herself. When her hand dropped to the falchion’s hilt, Leesil’s tension increased. He and Chap could hold off a few locals with no harm done, but he didn’t want this going that far, not with Magiere in the middle of a public street.
With little choice, Leesil turned to face what was coming. Three men from the card table led four others, and none of them looked fully sober. A few carried cudgels, and the one in front gripped a poorly made shortsword.
“You!” the lead man shouted. “You cheated Merina!”
Words rose in Leesil’s mind.
—Do not—get—us—arrested—
“I wasn’t planning on it,” he whispered through gritted teeth.
But inside Leesil wrestled for a way out of this without a fight. Magiere hadn’t seemed to even hear him and focused only on the leader.
“He cheated no one,” she said, lowly and breathily, as the lead one stopped just beyond sword’s reach.
Leesil didn’t like the edge in her voice. The leader, broad shouldered and a few days unshaven, was probably used to relying on weight and size in place of any skill.
“He cheated on the last hand!” the man bellowed, inching in as the others spread out. “I’m taking Merina’s money back. Hand over the pouch now!”
Leesil didn’t move. The fat drunkard reached out and grabbed him by his hauberk’s collar. Leesil should’ve known what else that might cause, but he just shifted one foot back at the ready. A snarl broke his focus, and then Magiere lashed out.
“Don’t touch him!” she shouted.
Hardened fingernails raked the fat man’s face.
Leesil didn’t turn in time, and Magiere slammed the man with both hands. Two other men scrambled out of the way as the bulky one flopped backward and rolled across the cobble. One spindly youth cried out in fright as the leader stopping rolling and lay prone. Half the man’s right cheek was shredded.
In the dark, Leesil thought he saw exposed bone amid the blood. When Magiere snarled and hissed, he went cold as he saw her.
The whites of her eyes were almost gone under her expanding irises, and she rushed at the next closest man.
—Stop—her!—
Leesil was already in motion. He threw his arms around Magiere from behind and twisted with all of his weight. They both went spinning down onto the cobblestones. As he tried to pin Magiere, he heard Chap harrying the mob. That wasn’t going to work for long.
Magiere tried to pitch Leesil off, and he almost lost his hold.
“Stop! It’s me!” he shouted at her.
Several men pulled away in horror, but one stayed his ground, dropping into a half crouch and raising a cudgel. If Chap couldn’t break them up, Leesil feared he’d have to release Magiere to defend both of them.
—Roll—to—your—right—
Leesil did, and when he came up atop Magiere again, he slammed his knees down on her shoulders.
“Enough!” he ordered.
Then he felt Chap’s muzzle rooting around under the back of his hauberk toward his belt. Before he looked back again, he heard the clink of coins.
Chap stood beyond Magiere’s feet and faced the gang of men; the pouch was in his teeth. Swinging his head, he tossed the pouch, and it landed on the cobble before the small mob.
“Take it! Go!” Leesil yelled at them. “Or pay in more blood.”
After an instant of being startled by what a mere dog had done, one man snatched up the pouch as others grabbed the leader and had to drag him. They went scrambling toward the side street.
Magiere bucked again, but not with all her strength. When Leesil looked down at her, he grew sick inside. She stared up at him with fully black eyes.
She wasn’t getting any better.
The only reason she hadn’t given way to that other self in recent days was because nothing had threatened them ... threatened him or Chap. And now she’d maimed a man over a few coins that he’d cheated to gain.
Leesil bent down and pressed his forehead against hers until she started to calm, and then he slid his face in until they were cheek to cheek.
“Quiet ... Be still.”
When she finally did, panting and shaking, he looked up to find Chap watching them both. She wasn’t ready.... He wasn’t ready to take her anywhere near the annex. Chap spun, hurrying off across the way.
—Over here—
Chap stood waiting before a cutway’s mouth between two darkened shops. They needed time, and he could do little more than scout a close place out of sight.
“Come on,” Leesil whispered, half pulling, half dragging Magiere.
Chap shifted aside as Leesil steered Magiere into the deeper darkness and pinned her up against the sidewall. He held her there as Chap lingered near the cutway’s mouth, watching for any returning pursuit.
“It’s all right,” Leesil whispered.
It was not, and all Chap could do was what he always did. He turned only his head, looking to Magiere, and tried to calm her mind with the quietest memories he could find in her.
This was a slow-burning catastrophe in the making. He and Leesil had been dealing with it for more than half a year. It kept erupting more quickly each time without warning.
On their journey into the Wastes, Chap had let himself believe that Magiere’s slaughter of Qahhar had been an aberration. Something that had to be done, brought on by close proximity to an ancient undead. Even then it was obvious that the more undead that she faced and the more potent they were, the more that inner side of her swelled to match them.
Chap had thought that was all there was to it, for in earlier times she had always come back to herself. He had been so very wrong, and his thoughts slipped back ... back to the aftermath....
Wounded, Chap lay curled against an unconscious Leesil in the sled. After the first lurch, he’d wondered how Magiere could pull it. The more he thought on this, the more often he wriggled his head out from under the tarp to watch, and the more what he saw disturbed him.
It overwhelmed any fragile hope that they might survive.
In the wind-whipped snow beyond the sled, Magiere was partially obscured from sight. She half ran, half stumbled, lunging against the sled’s weight, but she never stopped as she hauled it blindly over the white plain. There was only one way she could be doing this out there alone—willfully calling upon her dhampir half.
Or was she even Magiere anymore?
He had never seen her so utterly changed, nor had he seen her maintain the change for so long. He was too broken to try to stop her, and even if he could, that would leave them all to die out here.
Chap couldn’t watch anymore and ducked back under the tarp against Leesil. He must have fallen unconscious, for the next time he came aware, it was dark and cold, though he felt no wind now. Something moved nearby, as if on all fours.
He found himself on a pile of furs and covered in even more of them, and realized he was inside the shelter they’d used along the journey. Leesil breathed behind him under the furs, but that movement, that crawling scrape, came from the other direction. It stopped, and he caught the sound of ragged breaths.
All he could think was that somehow Magiere had managed to erect the shelter and then drag all of them inside. At least she had to have come back to herself for that, but it was fully dark. The oil lantern was not lit.
Chap huffed once to get Magiere’s attention. No answer came, and so he huffed again.
A long, guttural hiss, as if grating out of an animal’s throat, answered him. Then silence.
It was a long, cold night as he listened for any hint of Magiere’s movements. He heard nothing more. Sometime before dawn, fatigue must have driven him down into a fearful sleep. He awoke to dim light leaking into the shelter.