Aveline (13 page)

“I will die to protect you,” Warner vowed,
assuming Arthur’s troubled silence was for his own life.

Arthur’s gaze flickered to his friend. “I
would not let you. Besides, I am not concerned for myself but for
my sister. If anything happened to me, she would be alone.”

“I will take care of her as well,” Warner
said without hesitation.

“I know, and I am grateful to have you in my
life and by my side,” Arthur said with a quick smile. “Do you know
the name of this bounty hunter?” he asked Leaping Deer.

“No one does. He is called many names. Black
Leg is one. Black Wolf. Black Bear,” Leaping Deer shrugged. “The
names are never the same but the magic leg is.”

“Then he will be easy to identify, if I pay
for a bounty of my own,” Arthur responded confidently. “I will have
him killed before he reaches the city.”

“If you can find him. He is known for his
stealth.”

My sister has suffered
enough,
Arthur answered
silently.

They sat in quiet for a long moment, each of
them deep in thought.

“Go and rest,” Arthur said finally. “We have
a long day ahead of us tomorrow. We need to reach the other end of
the forest and the herds before the snow starts again.”

Leaping Deer nodded and rose. His steps
crunched across the snow as he strode towards his tent.

Arthur stood more slowly, and he and Warner
struck off towards the tent they shared. The men were paired up for
safety reasons, and it was easy for Arthur and Warner to share a
tent when Warner was Arthur’s official guardian.

When they were outside the firelight, Warner
slid his hand into Arthur’s. Arthur squeezed his in return, but he
was unable to take his mind off the dreams surely awaiting him this
night, or the coldness at his core no amount of furs and flames
could warm.

His visions, while powerful, remained
frustrating glimpses in time, often with no way for him to know
when or how the events he foresaw would unfold. The strange
abilities he and Tiana both possessed were beyond rational
explanation. Since such sorcery was also forbidden within the city,
he rarely had a chance to speak to anyone about it. None of the
books in his father’s expansive library addressed the odd
abilities, and nowhere in his family history was there any record
of deformities or special abilities. Whatever secrets his family
kept were so tightly controlled, no trace remained.

Once, he found a sentence in the records
kept by his forefathers, not pertaining to the family itself but
detailing what happened during the first few decades after the Old
World collapsed, when many strange events were recorded during the
Age of Darkness, when the world existed in permanent stage of night
for a century. Along with the waking of the Ghouls – human
predators from a bygone age – during this period, the book had
referenced a second awakening.

The hands of men shattered the world, but it
was also the hands of men that coaxed magic from the land and began
to repair all that had been broken.

Arthur had been puzzling
over the sentence every day since the bounty hunter began
interfering in his dreams. Were his abilities and Tiana’s
telekinesis considered
magic
? Or was this description
figurative in nature? How would tracking game and seeing the
future, or Tiana’s diverse mix of abilities, heal the
world?

There was no one to ask, and
even if there were, no one would dare answer the son of the Hanover
leader known to burn men and women at the stake for merely uttering
the word
magic
. At
a loss to explain his and his sister’s deformities, Arthur was
resigned to quietly finding alternate methods to protect his
sister. If he did not find a way to stop the bounty hunter, or his
father, or any others attempting to murder Tiana, by her birthday,
all he cared about in the world was lost.

“Do you hear them?” Warner’s whisper was
terse.

Except for my sweet
Warner,
Arthur added with a glance at
Warner. Their forbidden romance, which could earn them both being
burnt at the stake, was as troubling as how Arthur was going to
keep Tiana alive.

He lifted the flap from one of his ears. In
the distance, on the side of the forest opposite the direction he
had traveled from the city, wailing screams had begun to fill the
night. No human or any other kind of animal made a sound so
horrible.

“Ghouls,” he murmured dismissively. “Our
force is too large, and our fires too many, for them to attack.”
His eyes were trained to the north. “In the Free Lands, we would
all be safe.”

“If they exist,” Warner said.

“They
must
.”

“How will we ever know for certain?”

Arthur fell silent. Unless he went north, he
would never know. Such a journey would never be approved by his
father. Even if it were, he dared not leave his sister alone for
the amount of time it would take to explore the far north. If the
trials standing between the city and Free Lands existed, he was not
likely to make it there alive. He estimated he had two months until
his vision came true. His sister’s immediate chances of survival
were far more pressing than leaving her to find the Free Lands.

Except … the Free Lands might hold the key
to saving her.

There was no right answer.

“Let us sleep, assuming we can,” he said and
turned towards their tent, frustrated again by the problems for
which he had no solutions.

“Rest. I am on the night watch this
evening,” Warner replied.

Arthur faced him. He started to reach for
his friend and lover and then stopped, clearing his throat. Warner
smiled, his blue eyes dancing with amusement and dark hair hidden
beneath his hat. Cautious about being too open in their displays of
affection, unless one of the ambitious Shield members dared to
approach his father, Arthur also resented his inability to openly
express how he felt and live the life he wanted.

I need to know if the Free
Lands are real for me as well as for Tiana.
This time, the thought was tinged with anger.

“Be well and safe,” he said awkwardly.

“You, too, Arthur.” Warner turned and walked
away, towards the corral where the horses were kept on the prairie
side of the encampment.

Arthur stepped into his tent, warmed by a
fire at its center. The earth at its base had been cleared of snow
and was covered in furs. The satchels and rolls containing his and
Warner’s possessions were neatly stacked in one corner.

Arthur stripped out of his weaponry and
placed it beside the pallet making up his bed. He tossed his boots
and outer coverings, except the scarf he kept with him at all
times, and stretched out on the pallet.

Every night for the past few weeks, he had
fought sleep, and every night, he had fallen into slumber despite
his best efforts to remain awake. He dwelled on his discussion with
Leaping Deer. Before learning the man chasing him in his dream
really existed, Arthur had often debated whether the dream was
literal, or if he were being warned of general danger towards his
sister.

His fear grew when he found Aveline, a woman
from his dreams he had never met before. Yet he felt more
confident, not less, after speaking to Leaping Deer. It was a
relief to know the threat to Tiana had a face and identity. He
would send a team of assassins after the bounty hunter before he
reached Lost Vegas. If everyone knew about this native possessing
dark spirits, then he would be easier to find.

“I’m coming for you, Black Leg,” Arthur said
firmly to the dream waiting for him. “If I fail to catch you by
spring, I will take Tiana to the Free Lands. Either way, you will
never be near enough to harm her.”

Arthur’s eyes drifted closed and his body
relaxed.

Moonlight reflected off his hair, rendering
it silver, while the brush of grass against his legs tickled.
Arthur, in the body of his sister, ran hard through the
prairieland, against the strong wind. He knew without looking over
his shoulder that the skinwalker pursued, and he ran faster. He had
tried many times to lift his eyes from the grasses before him to
the horizon in the hope of determining where exactly he was. The
city of Lost Vegas was surrounded by the prairie, which ended at
the forests and then picked up on the other side of the woods. Was
he running close to Lost Vegas? On the other side of the
forest?

Or … somewhere else completely? The plains
stretched for at least a thousand miles, if not more. He could not
imagine where his sister could have gone. She had no sense of
direction, no knowledge about the geography of what lay beyond the
city, aside from what he occasionally taught her of the world.

He was able to look behind him and at his
feet and nowhere else, so he focused instead on his clothing. At
first, he had assumed he wore the sleeping gown he always saw Tiana
in. It was hard to focus in the dream, especially when he was
trying to run away from a bounty hunter sent to kill him. He
managed to tune in to his clothing and realized it was a pale blue
dress, thicker than a sleeping gown but far simpler in design than
any Tiana had worn for official events. Soft, leather moccasins
were on her feet. Her hair was down, as it often was, and her soft
blonde curls bounced with each step.

The dress was not the only difference he
noticed this time; a bracelet wound around Tiana’s wrist,
consisting of colorful beads accentuating a central, flat stone. He
squinted to make out the marking on the stone. Not words, but a
picture etched in stone …

From behind, someone grabbed his shoulder.
He was yanked out of the dream.

Arthur lurched awake, his instincts blaring
and his senses alert. The soothing crackle of the fire was the only
sound in his tent. He trusted his otherworldly instincts, as
unnatural as they were. At the moment, they warned him of danger.
He lay still without being able to pinpoint what threat lurked in
his tent.

“Do not move,” Warner whispered from
somewhere behind him. “Do not even blink.”

Arthur stared at the ceiling, trusting his
friend. Warner was silent in whatever he did. From his peripheral,
Arthur spotted another of the trusted members of his inner circle,
a man his age named Henri. Henri was creeping forward stealthily,
his eyes pinned to something near Arthur’s leg he was unable to
see.

“One. Two. Three.” Warner counted.

Three of Arthur’s friends pounced when
Warner uttered the last number. Arthur held his breath.
Simultaneously, the three of them stabbed downwards with knives
into the ground around Arthur’s body: Warner near Arthur’s head,
Henri beside his left leg and Sayed beside his right arm. Arthur
glimpsed the writhing of snake bodies in response to the strikes
and remained in place. His friends lifted their targets one by
one.

“Rattlers,” Henri said, holding the snake
run through by the blade of his knife.

Arthur sat up. Each of his grim friends had
killed one of the snakes. He looked around, but his unusual
instincts whispered that the danger was gone.

“Sayed saw Marshall Cruise leaving your
tent,” Warner said and flung the snake out the door of the
tent.

Better Marshall than Black
Leg.
Arthur thought with wry
amusement.

“Not completely unexpected,” he said and
climbed to his feet. “Matilda’s family has long sought to usurp
mine. I am only surprised he did not wait until we were farther
from the city. He did not strike me as dumb before this night.” As
he spoke, his thoughts went to his sister. Did Marshall act alone
or with the permission of his family? Was this the first step in a
coup or an isolated incident? “Warner, Henri, Sayed,” he said to
his friends. “I owe you all a life debt.” He smiled warmly at
them.

“You would have done the same for any of
us,” Henri replied. “We can teach Marshall a lesson for you, if you
wish it.”

I want him dead.
Arthur was quiet. With the dream of the skinwalker
chasing him fresh, and his adrenaline lit by the danger, he knew
better than to speak the words forefront in his thoughts. For all
he knew, Marshall was the one who would hire – or had hired – the
skinwalker to kill Tiana.

Murdering the brother of his stepmother
without a trial and his father’s permission would cause his father
a political headache. Matilda and Marshall’s father was the
wealthiest man in Lost Vegas from an ambitious family; it was
foolish to believe they had no support or allies among the
elite.

A hunting accident, however, was completely
explainable. Arthur’s father would not object either way to the
death of someone threatening his heir, but it was easier for others
to accept a hunting accident than vengeance. It was expected only
half Arthur’s men would return, and he could invent a tale that
made it sound like Marshall had died with honor rather than being
poisoned or killed in a duel, as Arthur planned.

“I will handle it,” he said quietly. “Henri,
leave before dawn. Return to the city and warn my father to be
wary.”

Henri nodded. “I will leave
immediately.”

“Sayed, skin and cook the snakes. Make sure
Marshall receives more than his fair share at breakfast,” Arthur
said with a smile. “Do not look so grim, my friends! I am alive and
our hunt is just beginning! It promises to be an eventful few
weeks.”

Warner shook his head. “Have you no fear,
Arthur?”

“None,” Arthur
replied.
At least, not when it comes to my
own life.
His sister’s was an entirely
different matter.

He listened to his friends banter for a
moment, his thoughts on the dream. With some satisfaction, he
realized he had not seen Aveline in his dreams this night. When he
sent bounty hunters after Black Leg, would the native, too,
disappear when no longer a threat?