"You bastard!" He lurched forward, landing with one hand on the slope, the other grasping at Jassion's neck. "You brought Mellorin into this? Does your own godsdamn family mean nothing to you?"
Jassion's own hands closed on Corvis's wrist, holding the choking fingers just inches from his throat. He snarled a response, but the words were lost in the steady drizzle and the heavy gasping of two enraged foes.
This close, and with the worst of the blood washed away by the weather, Corvis saw that the injury he'd inflicted to Jassion's face wasn't quite so bad as he'd thought. Only a small chunk of the nose had actually been ripped away. What remained would always be mangled, clearly disfigured, but with proper attention and a skilled healer, the baron would be able to breathe properly, smell the scents of the world around him, speak without impediment.
Except that Corvis didn't plan to give him the time to heal. Or, for that matter, to breathe.
There they remained, locked together by flesh and hatred-for mere seconds, for untold centuries. Until a gleaming length of steel appeared between them, a serpent's tongue flickering between their faces.
"That's enough! Both of you, back off." Startled, Corvis loosened his grip and stepped away, even as Jassion stood upright.
It took Corvis a moment to recognize the voice. Much time had passed since he'd heard Irrial speak as a baroness, but she did so now, her back and her blade held straight, her expression and her voice harder than the surrounding rock. Even battered and bedraggled in the falling rain, Corvis thought she'd never looked so imperial.
And the part of him that could still push some amount of coherent thought through the residue in his soul and the fury burning in his blood believed, without doubt, that she would use that blade if they did not heed her command.
"Irrial, what-?"
"No. You first, Rebaine. That-that thing. That was the demon you spoke of? That was Khanda?"
"It was," he said, casting a bitter glare at Jassion.
It was nearly invisible, so rigid did the baron hold himself, but his face wilted just a little. "I didn't know. I couldn't know."
"Couldn't you?" Corvis demanded. "I don't-"
Again, Irrial cut him off. "Shut it!" She shook her head, sending water spraying in all directions. Then, after a moment, "Baron Jassion?"
"My lady?" he answered reflexively.
"Why did you help us?"
Fingers curled and uncurled, a jaw shifted as teeth ground together. Jassion seemed to wrestle with his emotions more fiercely than he had with Corvis himself.
"Because…" He took a deep breath, spat the words as though they burned him. "Because I will not be responsible for setting this Khanda loose upon Imphallion. Because some things"-and his voice dropped in amazement at his own admission-"are more important even than this." His glare left no doubt as to who "this" meant.
"Good. Then you two can damn well put this aside until we've dealt with the bloody demon! Afterward, I don't care. Slaughter each other, drown in each other's blood, carve each other into fish bait-I don't care. But so help me gods, you'll do it afterward, not now!"
Corvis knew that the look he cast at Jassion was petulant, petty-as petulant and petty as the one he received in exchange. But Irrial was right, and no matter how he wanted to deny it, to feel the baron's bones break under his fists, to drive Sunder through that despised face, he knew she was right.
It was, for that matter, no more than he'd asked of her, from the instant he'd told her his real name.
Lacking the energy even to grumble under his breath, Corvis stalked away to the far side of the tiny vale.
It was only after he'd slumped down, shifted a few times trying (and failing) to find a position where the rocks didn't bite into his aching back, that he noticed the shivering hound beside him. The smell of wet dog was a slap across the face, but he figured it wiser not to comment.
"Yes?" he asked in a coarse rasp.
"You're not just going to leave it like this!" Seilloah demanded.
He would, at least, do her the courtesy of not pretending to ask what she was talking about. "Only for a time, Seilloah. Only until-"
"You said you'd kill him!"
"I will, damn it! But not now. Irrial's right. We need him. Mellorin needs him! He knows too much about what's going on for us to just throw that-"
"Corvis, he murdered me!"
He reached out to take her snout in his hand, but she jerked aside. "And if there's any way for me to make him pay for that, I will," he swore. "But Seilloah, this has to come first! This-"
"Of course it does," she spat at him. "Your concerns always come first, don't they?"
The witch was gone, limping as fast as three working legs could manage, before Corvis could draw breath to reply. NIGHTMARES BESIEGED CORVIS'S SLUMBER. Happy memories bubbled like burned stew through his brain, painful and foul. In the shadows of every image, every dream, he saw Khanda, laughing, and from his gnarled, inhuman fingers hung a limp body whose face Corvis didn't dare allow himself to see.
They slept later than they meant to the following morning, bone-deep exhaustion proving more than a match for their need to keep moving. Most of their aches and pains and wounds weren't much improved. Seilloah hadn't returned, and Corvis's own spells of healing were meager, little better than mundane poultices and herbs. But he'd found that, so long as he didn't dwell on anything in particular, the mere act of remembering didn't seem quite so agonizing as it had the previous night. He dared hope that the residue of Khanda's violation would fade with time.
Even once they'd awakened, they found themselves unable to get started immediately. The low-hanging sky was thick and grey as dirty cotton, the breeze brushed shivering skin with a thin autumn chill, and the ground had become slick mud, but at least it wasn't raining just then. Hollow stomachs demanded breakfast, fearful minds puzzled over why Khanda had not tracked them down during the night, and Corvis couldn't shake the gnawing feeling in his gut that Seilloah might never be coming back.
It was, blended with his worry for Mellorin, a bitter draught to swallow.
"Perhaps," Jassion proposed as he poked at the remnants of the dried meats that had been breakfast, "we injured him worse than we thought?" His voice, through the bandage that now ran across his face like a scarf, was wretchedly nasal. "Maybe he couldn't even find us."
"How did you find us the first time?" Irrial asked.
The baron glanced at Corvis across the charred wood that had recently been a small fire, tensing. "Mellorin."
Corvis could see Irrial and Jassion both holding their breath, and forced himself to remain motionless until he could bring his emotions back under control. "Tell me."
"For what it's worth, Rebaine, she followed us, and it was Kaleb-that is, Khanda-who decided she would come along. I thought… I believed I could protect her.
"In any event," he bulled ahead before Corvis could reply, "Khanda used her as a focus of his spells to find you."
Corvis frowned, then nodded. "Blood relation. My spells wouldn't have been strong enough to prevent that."
"No, but they interfered well enough. We had to be pretty close to pinpoint you. I don't think we've gotten far enough in one night to escape its range, but maybe, if Khanda's wounded badly enough…" He shrugged.
"So, what? You just happened to be near enough for the spell to work? When we were staying in the middle of nowhere, in a village roughly the size of a pinecone?"
"Kal-Khanda said he tracked you via the spells you'd cast on the ogre, Davro."
"Wh-Davro? Did you kill him, too?"
"No." Jassion shook his head. "Mellorin wouldn't allow it, and Khanda went along with her." It was the baron's turn to scowl. "You'd better know, Rebaine. Her relationship with 'Kaleb' has gotten, uh, complicated. As in, teenage-girl-complicated."