Breath of Winter, A (18 page)

Careful to keep ahead of the staggering riser, I eked past the corner and began easing down the next row. Halfway to the center, I paused to listen.

The stables were in an uproar. It was impossible to pinpoint the riser’s location now.

Opposite me, a stall door exploded outward. I covered my head as splinters pelted my arms.

An ursus walked out on its hind legs, roaring and swiping the air. I kept one arm up while I grasped my dagger. When its foul breath heated my face, I forced my eyes to meet its black ones.

“Farrow.” Relief spun giddy through my chest.

She snorted at me, stomping the ground and mock charging me. I don’t think she was as happy to see me as I was to see her.

Down the line, other doors cracked and burst as more ursus poured into the aisle. This ursus might have just saved my life. I tamped down the adrenaline choking all sense of reason and held a palm out for Farrow to sniff. The other ursus scattered, leaving her and me alone on the row. So much for distraction. The riser, wherever it had gone, would still peg me as the easiest pickings if I was sitting here when it remembered me. Forcing Farrow to aid me might cost me a hand, but it was that or my life. I made the only choice I had, grasping for her ruff while I dodged the snap of her sharp teeth and her bellowed roars.

“Easy girl. It’s me. Zuri.” I snatched my hand from the danger zone while she growled. “It’s all right. Come on. Get closer. That’s a good girl.” I reached for her ruff again. This time I snagged what passed for a simple leather halter covering her great head. Though she snarled at me, she allowed me to pull her alongside my chair. “This isn’t going to be fun for either of us, girl. Here we go.”

Grinding my teeth against the pain, I tucked the dagger under my arm and swung my leg free of the brace. When I stood, it
hurt
. Pain shot down my leg, stinging in my ankle until tears formed in my eyes. I took a step. Farrow shied from the cast, which meant another step, until I was close enough to fist her fur. She was so tall, grasping for her meant raising my arm. The dagger clattered to the floor as I tugged myself onto her back. Her steady rumbling cursed me for pulling out fistfuls of her hair, but by the gods, I had never been more grateful for an animal’s kindness. Digging my heels into her sides, I gave up on achieving balance. I had never been an accomplished bareback rider, but fear lent me skill.

Without reins to guide her, I was forced to go along for the ride. She cantered after the ursus fleeing their stalls, breaking into a full run as we hit the main aisle. Several ursus had climbed the ramp to claw and rage against the closed door. Farrow dismissed that idea with a snort when she saw they were wasting effort. While she hemmed and hawed, I searched frantically for the riser.

It was nowhere in sight.

Stomach roiling, I grasped desperately for any plan to get Farrow up the opposite ramp and into the cramped confines of the tunnel. As I clung onto her back, desperate for inspiration, it found me.

A frantic, ursine scream stunned the stable into silence. In that eerie moment, I spied the riser.

It clung to the side of a large boar, gnawing at the arch of its throat. Farrow rocked back on her heels, the only warning she gave before standing on her hind legs to issue a fierce challenge.

Oblivious to her bellow of rage, the riser chewed on its victim, trying to rip out its throat.

“Mercy be.” I circled my arms around her neck, wishing for all I was worth I was still armed.

When she dropped to all fours, she charged, snarling and snapping as she ran.

By the time we reached the ursus, it was too late. Blood slicked its fur, and I was in no shape to tend it. If I slid from Farrow’s back, I doubted fate—or the sow—would grant me a second chance.

With its victim thrashing in its death throes, the riser’s sole focus became its next meal.

Farrow was not to be deterred. Once in range, she swiped with her massive paw and sent the riser flying against the nearest stall. It sat dazed and shaking its head while she nosed the dead ursus. With their heads together, it was impossible to miss the familial resemblance. Both animals wore the same russet fur, had the same wedge-shaped head and the same white dappling on their chins.

The riser had killed Farrow’s cub, and her mournful wail at that realization broke my heart.

Unaware of the danger it faced, the riser stood with an incoherent groan.

Farrow lifted her massive head as though it was the hardest thing she had ever done.

Her sights locked on the stumbling riser, and I almost let fear convince me to slide off her. It was more that my hands were knotted in her fur, clenched too tight to release my grip, that kept me astride her.

A mother ursus’s justice against those who harmed her children was final. I knew that. But I had never experienced it until then. Chest heaving, Farrow charged the riser, slamming her broad shoulder into it, knocking it back to the ground. She straddled it, getting nose to nose to yell at it.

Before I could blink, she had reared back one meaty paw and, using the force of her muscular shoulder, crushed the riser’s skull between her palm and the cold, hard floor. Her child avenged, Farrow’s head drooped. The fight drained out of her, leaving us both staring at the wet stain she had made.

“I am so sorry.” I scratched the back of her neck and her shoulders. She was inconsolable.

I hated myself for using her grief as my opportunity.

Digging my heels into her sides, I nudged her forward. Broken as her spirit was, when I pulled at the fur to one side of her neck, she followed my order, allowing me to guide her to the ramp. I held my breath when she balked at using the unfamiliar incline, but firmer pressure on her sides urged her up and into the tunnel’s mouth.

There was no sense of triumph in my escape. Though I had killed my share of animals for survival, I had yet to hunt an ursus. There were few native to the southlands, and I hadn’t been interested in traveling north in pursuit of larger game when I could catch my fill of fresh salmo at home. No. I had never hunted a wild ursus for sport or otherwise.

Struggling to shake the memory of Farrow with her fallen cub, I swore I never would either.

Chapter Ten

Araneidae tunnels were not meant to accommodate the girth or height of an ursus, and certainly not one bearing a rider. Pressing my face into Farrow’s neck, I squeezed my eyes shut against the dull pain spiraling up my leg from my ankle. When I could stand to, I urged her forward with my knees, but she was wary of the tightness of the place and decided it was best if she trudged along.

I kept my ears cocked for sounds of pursuit. I heard nothing but Farrow’s heavy sighs.

Because I also turned an eye to the blackness at our backs, I missed when we were spotted.

“Zuri?”

Relief at the sound of Henri’s voice turned my limbs to pudding. When he reached me, I slid willingly into his arms. Farrow chuffed at him but otherwise surrendered me without complaint.

“What happened?” He studied my face. “You’re speckled with blood…and riding an ursus.”

“Nothing happened to me—thanks to Farrow.” I grasped his collar. “Listen. You must send someone to secure the stables. I went exploring while you were with my brothers and ran into a riser. It slaughtered at least one ursus before I disturbed it and killed another before Farrow helped me escape. Where there was one, there may be more. Do you think Edan could have left a hatch open?”

“No.” His tone left no room to argue. “How did you mount Farrow?”

A pulse of discomfort shot up my calf. “The best way I could.”

He gifted my savior a slight frown. “She will have to wait out here. I’ll send Asher and Braden to comb the area and secure the stables. Braden can lead Farrow back to her stall. She trusts him.”

“It’s a large task.” Made larger by the frantic ursus. “Can they accomplish it alone?”

“They have no choice.” Henri sidestepped Farrow and carried me into his laboratory. “I may ask Kaleb and Tau to help them. I had just been considering moving them into quarters in the stables.”

My grip on him tightened. “They’re well then?”

“They are.” His voice strangled until I let go. “Ghedi has stabilized. They can’t do any more for him than they have, and neither has shown any signs of infection.”

Careful of my cast, Henri sat me on a chair and used an empty crate to prop my leg.

“Don’t move,” he ordered. “I will be right back.”

He jogged to the rear of the laboratory and slipped inside the bastille. He kept the door open and led Braden and Asher out of there while placating the others still on guard. The three of them dashed past me in their haste to, I assumed, recruit Kaleb and Tau for the unsavory tasks awaiting them.

The laboratory’s hatch clanged shut and sealed tight.

Rubbing my face, I sat and waited for what seemed an eternity before Henri returned.

“The stable is secure.” A muscle leapt in his jaw. “The eastern hatch, near the vineyard, was ajar.”

The same hatch Henri suggested Edan use if Marne wanted to trap lepus.

I worked backwards from that revelation. Edan was in our section of tunnel. That meant he had to use an exit accessible to us. He couldn’t very well have gone back into the healthy part of the nest.

Up to this point, I had assumed Henri was the only one with a key because he was the only one I had seen unlock a hatch from the outside without assistance. The others rang one another in and out.

Now I knew that wasn’t the case. “Edan has a key.”

Henri knelt at my feet. “Edan would never betray me.”

While he gently lifted my ankle, I mentally counted the number of possible suspects. Ten.

Henri gained nothing by allowing risers access to the nest, and I sure hadn’t invited them in. Eight. Ghedi was ill and on bed rest. Tau and Kaleb had been with him, and Henri had seen all three in their room. Malik and Fynn were in the bastille. Not to mention I trusted my brothers, and I knew this wasn’t their doing. Braden and Asher were all right by my estimation, stabbing notwithstanding.

That left Edan as my prime suspect. What his motivation could be, I couldn’t guess. He gained nothing from biting the hand that fed him and Marne, but he struck me as wrong.

“How is your ankle?” Henri used my silence against me, effectively ending his interrogation.

“It hurts. A lot.” Even his tender examination made me squirm. “Did I damage it?”

“I can’t tell.” He settled it on the stool. “I’ll have to cut the cast off to check the bone.”

My groan earned me no sympathy. “When?”

“As soon as I’ve heard Braden’s report.” He glanced at the door. “You’re safe here. I reset the lock. It won’t open, even from the inside, without a key. I better go explain myself to Fynn and Malik before they revolt.”

“Do you think this was intentional, or do you think the risers found a way around the locks?”

“I trust Edan. That doesn’t mean I’m a fool.” Henri bent down so we were at eye level. “The greatest risk to my clan lies in our guards. Rhys is feared, therefore his clan respects him. Despite the fact he is now the Araneidae paladin, or perhaps because of it, he is a target the same as his wife. There are those in Rhys’s birth clan who believed Vaughn was better suited to rule us. Now Vaughn has married, and Lourdes is wed as well, leaving only one scenario where Mimetidae rule might ever come to pass. If he wants control of us, he must do as his predecessors did. Kill our rulers and seize our nest.”

I shook my head to clear it. “You think Vaughn is capable of killing his own brother?”

“I know he is.” Henri covered my hand with his. “But I don’t think he would.”

“His wife wouldn’t allow it.” Mana was Rhys’s cousin, and she would never forgive Vaughn.

“There is that,” he agreed. “The thing about Vaughn is he wants a reputation his clan can be proud of. The Mimetidae are feared with good reason. They are legend in mercenary circles, also with good cause. But what he wants most is to wash away their stigma. He wants to use his association with us to earn new contracts from other clans who find themselves in need of the Mimetidae’s specialized skills. Until he achieves his goal or abandons his dream, I think Rhys is safe from his brother’s machinations. For now, the danger to us lies in the loyalists who crave the bright future Vaughn has promised them but aren’t willing to wait for Rhys to realize those dreams. The possibility of betrayal is a safer bet than casting blame on Edan.”

His concerns seemed rather specific. “Do you have anyone in mind?”

“No one I would care to name.” He pointed at me. “Don’t move.”

I gestured down the front of my body. “Have no fear. I’m stuck in this chair well and good.”

“Any other female would have been stuck in the chair I last saw you in—wheels or not.” His slow grin tightened my gut. “That is why I asked you to sit still instead of assuming you would.”

I laughed, in spite of it all. “You know me too well.”

“I am endeavoring to try.”

“What more can a girl ask for?” Noticing the speckles up my arms, I asked, “Before you go, could you toss me a damp cloth? I ought to scrub the blood off me before Malik and Fynn see.”