It was warm enough that men and women drank at tables set up outside. Young children and dogs chased each other around the small square—although the dogs stayed away from Tomas—and older children lingered in groups. There weren’t a lot of men between fifteen and thirty.
“The empire went to war this winter, and the army always recruits heavily from the working class.” Tomas shrugged when Mirian looked up at him. “I’m Hunt Pack, but Harry was an officer in the 1st. He liked to share what he’d learned even if I didn’t give a rat’s…if I didn’t care.”
“I wish I’d met him.”
After a moment, Tomas smiled. “He’d have liked you.”
With Tomas’ arm warm under her hand and his shoulder bumping hers as they walked, it felt like they’d crossed a line. Just for a moment, they might have been walking out in Bercarit. They might have met each other the usual way. Her mother would be having joyful hysterics in the background. Then one of the children shrieked and a heated argument started up as they passed a cheese shop, and the moment ended. They weren’t those people anymore.
Those people would never have bought cheese for later and, next door, the last round loaf of dark rye bread over Tomas’ protest.
“It’s solid,” Mirian sighed, stuffing the purse back in the bedroll. “It won’t get crushed.”
“Rocks are solid,” Tomas muttered.
Those people, the people they’d been, they had people who bought food for them. Bought it. Prepared it. Served it to them. As much as Mirian didn’t really want to be those people anymore, it certainly wasn’t all bad. Most of it—like food and clothes and beds and privilege and a total lack of terror—was wonderful.
“Tomas…”
There were four young men, more noticeable because of the lack of young men, watching them from across the square. Mirian’s mother would have called them toughs and, secure in her social standing, loudly wondered why they were permitted to linger in the same places as their betters. They were unshaven, in jackets heavier than the weather required. Jackets heavy enough to hide things in and under. Stolen things and things used to steal things.
“I see them. Remember what Jake said. We stay to the right.” Tomas caught her hand and pulled her back beside him. “That’s not your right.”
“What is it about men in groups?” Something squished under her foot. She flinched and kept walking. “Individually, they may be perfectly tolerable, but get a group of men together and they become insufferable. Give them guns and they’re an army.” One of the toughs blew her a kiss.
“Stop looking at them. They’ll wait until we’re out of the market to attack. There’s too many witnesses here. We’ll lead them somewhere isolated, and I’ll take care of it.”
“Somewhere isolated enough no one will scream abomination.”
“Absolutely.”
“If they’re just going to rob us, don’t kill them.”
“Mirian…”
“I know. Try not to kill them.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Smiling, laughing, the toughs changed the angle of their approach.
“Tomas…”
He stiffened. “Okay, I was wrong. They’re not going to wait until we’re in a dark alley to attack, they’re going to make their move right here. Jostle around us, intimidate us. Rob us without a fight. Probably threaten you, to make me give in.”
“What if we yell for help?”
“I can take them. I’m not going to…Ow.” He glared at her. “You pinched me!”
“You can’t take them here. You’ll give yourself away!”
“I’m going to have to because there’s no point in yelling for help. The way people are deliberately ignoring them, they’ve been terrorizing this neighborhood for years.”
They were at the far right of the market already and couldn’t go any farther right. Soothsayers were useless! Still, they could always go back…
“For this to work, there has to be more of them, probably two more behind us.”
“Would that be the sensible thing to do?” Tomas muttered.
Mirian only barely resisted the urge to pinch him again. “For them.”
They could let themselves get robbed. After all, she’d stolen the money in the first place.
But the chances were too high that a gang of young men looking for trouble would discover what Tomas was. They weren’t expecting him, they wouldn’t be carrying silver, but his changing and their dying in the middle of the afternoon during some kind of festival with people drinking beer and watching like they were at the theater would set a hunt after them. And the hunters would have silver.
If she waited until they got close enough and put one of the toughs to sleep, what would the others do? Stupid question. They’d fight. Just looking at them, Mirian could see that would be their reaction. And fighting brought them back around to Tomas being found out. She’d have to sleep them all at the same time. But she needed to touch them to sleep them and there was no way she could touch them all at the same time.
No. Technically, the mage-craft needed to touch them.
She had to stop them while they were still far enough away no one would know what had happened and who’d been responsible.
A breeze lifted her hair.
Air-mages laid words on breezes all the time.
Words had power.
She’d moved scent on a breeze that first night in the cave.
She’d slept that soldier without even thinking. It was second level healer-craft.
All she had to do was lay the power on the air and deliver it to the toughs the same way she’d made the leaves dance.
Logically, she could do this.
The breeze swept around her, small whirlwinds gathering up debris. She had seconds before someone noticed.
“Sleep!”
Tomas got Mirian out of the square and down one of the side streets with no direct line of sight to the market, hoping he’d bought them enough time. They didn’t run, but he kept them moving as fast as wouldn’t attract attention. Not only Pack chased when prey ran. Mirian’s hand was tucked back in the angle of his elbow, his hand clamped over it, and it felt like ice with fingers. She stumbled as she walked, pressed up against his side.
He turned them down a lane between two silent houses, saw a cat asleep in the sun…
“How far did it spread?”
“What?” She twisted and stared up at him, squinting like she couldn’t see his face even though he wasn’t that much taller than she was. Just for a moment, it looked as though her eyes had gone to pieces, bits of the gray floating around over her pupils. Then she blinked and the moment passed. “Tomas?”
He’d probably been brushed by the mage-craft and it had affected his vision. He blinked his own eyes and said, “It’s starting to look like you put the whole city to sleep.”
The four jackasses who’d planned to rob them had fallen first. They’d crumpled to the ground as the breeze whipped past, then men, women, children, dogs, even pigeons, everyone in the market went to sleep. Everyone but Tomas and Mirian. Given her lack of control, he’d been thankful for that at the time, but now he wondered if they were the only two standing in all of Tardford.
And if Healer-mages could do this, why weren’t they standing on the front line? A sleeping army wouldn’t have killed Harry. And if this was something Mirian had made up, because she’d never been taught the rules Gryham said mages had made for themselves, then the rules needed to be changed.
A dog, out of sight behind a garden wall began to bark and a voice yelled at it to shut up.
“Okay, it didn’t go this far. That’s good to know.” He steadied her as she tripped, but kept them moving. “Are you all right?”