Hostages, Pen thought unwillingly, eyeing the barging balls of fluff. It seemed he’d taken hostages. It didn’t make him feel as clever as it should have.
You’re feeling guilty about lying to a fox? Des asked, amused. Only you, Pen.
Or, perhaps, to a demon. Or both. It would depend on how events played out.
Ah. Yes. Periodically, I am reminded why I like you. A hint of smug possessiveness.
He had nothing to say to that, though he was vaguely warmed.
The floundering cubs were starting to whine their displeasure at the trek, and Pen’s lips twitched as he imagined them nagging, Aren’t we there yet, Mother? The peculiar procession scrambled out at last to more level ground, heading for the main path. Less than a mile to go to the manor.
The arrow came out of nowhere, too fast for Pen to respond, almost too fast for Des. She was barely able to flip it so that it hit the side of the fox flat-on instead of point-first. The animal yelped and spun. By the time the next arrow was in flight, Des, unasked, had speeded Pen’s perceptions to match her own. He splintered the second shaft and sent the iron point tumbling, even as he whirled just like the fox, seeking the source.
From his point of view, when Des deployed this defense, the world around him slowed. Lunet was turning, Inglis raising his hand, Nath lifting his head, all with the languor of a bead dropping through honey. The cubs, at their mother’s cry, were either crouching or scattering. Pen’s gaze sought frantically through the woods for the bowman—there, in the cover of those upended tree roots. Pen had just the presence of mind to snap the bowstring before he started running toward the assassin, so that the third shaft was not aimed at him, but flew wide as the broken ends whipped into the bowman’s face, drawing blood.
He jumped over a fallen log, feeling the strain of too much power forced through his legs too fast. Behind him, Inglis yelled, “Look after the foxes!” and pelted in his wake.
And then he was upon his target. Dizzied—he felt as if he’d left his wits blown back along his track. He grabbed the man by his leather jerkin, hoisted him to his feet, and slammed him against the nearest upright tree trunk. The bow clattered to the ground.
It was Treuch, he realized at last, as Des let the world fall back to normal speed and his lungs labored for breath—this unnatural bodily debt did have to be repaid, oh aye, and no extensions. Treuch did not cooperate with his sudden arrest; he punched his clenched hands up through Penric’s grip and broke the hold, shoving Pen back. Pen stumbled and came around again.
I could snap his tendons as easily as his bowstring, Des offered. Not quite the theologically forbidden act of murder by magic, but too close for Pen’s comfort, too irreversible. The reminder abruptly cooled Pen’s heated head just as Inglis, thankfully, arrived.
“You two!” wheezed Treuch. He reached for the hunting knife at his belt and whipped it out before him.
Pen turned the blade to rust, bursting off in a spray of orange flecks as Treuch slashed. Inglis bellowed, “Stop!” and the hilt, passing a bare inch from Pen’s belly, dropped from nerveless fingers. The forester’s mouth fell open in astonishment, and then, as his eyes rose to meet Pen’s, fear. “What—!”
The three men fell into a stiff triangle, fists clenched, chests heaving. Pen seized the teetering moment to try to shift the encounter from ill-considered actions to words. Where he, at least, would be on safer ground. Because shooting at a fox, as Thala might remark, was not normally a capital crime.
Oh, I’d see you safe regardless of your ground, Des purred. But she settled in disappointment as the chance for more chaos died away.
Pen yanked his triple-looped braids from his inner vest pocket and brandished them at the forester. “I am Learned Penric of Martensbridge, Temple sorcerer,” he declared, then drew a breath he wasn’t quite sure what next to do with.
If he’d thrust a live adder in the man’s face, Treuch couldn’t have recoiled more sharply.
“I am detaining you…” In the name of what? Legally, Pen only held higher authority over the demon in this jurisdiction, and that bestowed by Hamo. He skipped over that conundrum and went on, “in suspicion of complicity in a murder.”
Treuch pushed away, hovering between fighting and running, although Pen thought the fates of his bow and knife should have taught him better than to try the first again. Inglis growled, “Surrender.”
The man did not so much surrender as seize up, caught between the conflicting demands of terror and shamanic compulsion. “I didn’t shoot her!” he all but squealed.
Pen blinked, going still. “I didn’t say who was murdered. Or how.”
Treuch froze in a different sort of horror, gaping fish-fashion.
“Oswyl will want this,” said Inglis.
“I want this,” said Pen, his stare at Treuch intensifying. Inglis regarded Pen warily.
They were interrupted by the low growl of a fox. The vixen stalked up to them stiff-legged, the ridge of fur standing up on her spine, ears flattened backward. Her copper eyes were bent on Treuch. For all her vicious air she had not the size to be a lethal-seeming threat, as predators went, but no, it wasn’t the fox that was the true danger here.
“It seems you are accused,” said Inglis dryly. Treuch’s terror slumped in a rush sheer bewilderment.
The panic transferred to Pen. He stepped hastily in front of the fox, between her and the forester, and cried, “No, you cannot!”
The animal—no, the demon—crouched away from Des’s roiling density, the bolt of damaging chaos gathering to pitch at the man dying away again. Bastard be praised. Pen wasn’t sure if such a blast of unformed magic could have killed Treuch outright, but he was very sure of the unwanted consequences if it did.
“I don’t know yet if I can save you, but I do know I can’t if you do this!”
Did either demon or fox understand him? Even if more-than-vulpine comprehension flashed in those copper eyes, that didn’t make it human.
A bow-shot away, the frightened yips of the cubs being forcibly gathered up distracted the vixen part of this unintended creature. She turned once, turned back, halfway to frenzy from all the conflicting demands.
“We have to get these two separated,” gasped Pen to Inglis, gesturing blindly at Treuch who now seemed the least of his troubles. He raised his voice. “Nath! Get over here!”
Nath lumbered across the deadfall, his arms full of protesting fox cubs, and said, “Yes, Learned?”
“You and Inglis take Treuch ahead of us to the manor,” Pen said. “Lunet and I will bring the foxes.” And the demon, he did not say aloud. Did Treuch have the least notion of how much danger he’d just skirted?
If he’d had his way, that first knife-slash would have disemboweled you, Pen, Des noted dryly. And then nothing would have saved him.
And Pen didn’t think she meant from the fox-demon. He chose to ignore both this and the belated trembling in his belly. His sweating hand still clenched his Temple braids, he discovered, and he shoved them back into his vest pocket. It was a continuing wonder to him how much less, rather than more, freedom that acquiring a responsible authority gave to one. Not at all how he’d pictured his elders, so seeming-powerful, as a child. As Nath bent to release the cubs, who ran to their distrait mother, Pen also decided it must be a more universal condition than he’d ever imagined.