The Silvered (42 page)

The air was never that still naturally.

Turning to call, she realized that the house had moved again and she was staring down the west lawn toward the pond and the rough land beyond it. She heard a bird and then Ryder came over the hill, running toward the pond. Highlights danced over his fur and his tail looked unnaturally fluffy. He changed as he dove in, and stayed on two legs as he climbed out of the water, having swum across to the nearer side. His dark hair hung down into his eyes, the water made the muscles of his arms and shoulders gleam. She drew her gaze down the line of hair on his chest, over the flat planes of his stomach, between his legs…He’d obviously caught her scent.

She smiled and stepped forward.

He ran toward her, but ended up farther away.

The light behind him grew brighter until she had to raise a hand to shield her eyes…

Staring up at the tiled ceiling, Danika blinked and remembered. When the distant howling had finally stopped, she’d made her way to the bed. It had been comfortable enough, certainly more comfortable than anything she’d slept on since being taken, and her body had almost convinced her she could die of tiredness. But her mind hadn’t allowed her to rest. Fear for the others had chased its own tail around and around her head. Jesine and Stina would manage, but Annalyse was very young and something had been broken in Kirstin. She’d suddenly realized warm water and food and a bed did not translate into her ever seeing the other women again. This was a better prison—and the thought of going back into the dark, into that hole with its patina of old death and fear made her feel like throwing up—but it was still a prison. They should have fought. Screamed. Struggled.

Died free?

No. As clichéd as it was, where there was life there was hope.

Eventually, her body had won and she’d slept.

Her body had won because it was no longer only her body. She could feel tears prickling behind her eyelids and wished she could
give in to a prolonged bout of sobbing but was afraid that if she started, she wouldn’t be able to stop.

Taken from her husband. Taken from her home. Her family would be frantic.
All
their families would be frantic and, for all that their families were high in the leadership of Aydori, Danika doubted they’d be able to count on anything as civilized as diplomatic recourse. There was no one country left in this part of the world strong enough to stand against Leopald’s armies. Should the news of their kidnapping reach the international community, the action would be weighed against the chance of losing Imperial trade and then ignored. Leopald, she’d told Ryder at dinner nearly a year ago, had begun to conquer with his purchasing power as much as with his armies—and although Ryder had laughed to hear it put that way, he’d had to agree she was right.

The five of them would have to free themselves.

Danika rubbed at the tears running into her ears and then scrubbed her nose with the sleeve of the nightgown. She had no idea how long she’d been in Karis. How long in the hole in the dark. How long asleep in a bed. No idea if it was day or night.

“RISE!”

The voice filled the room and pressed against her as if it needed the space she filled as well. The nightgown twisted around her legs, Danika nearly fell out of the bed but managed to get a foot free at the last moment. An Air-mage could have sent such a message, shoved it in under the door as she’d slipped her messages out under the door last night, but Danika would have recognized the use of the craft. The voice had
not
come from an Air-mage. Trolls and giants were creatures of myth. Therefore, in order to achieve that volume, the voice had come from a machine. She searched for a speaker and found a small circular grill set almost invisibly into the tiles of the ceiling. Without the net she could have followed the air currents back, if not to the speaker at least to the machine. As she understood it, machines were delicate. She wouldn’t have to be.

A thought occurred and she searched again, finding no lenses. They might be listening, but they weren’t watching.

“Use the commode!”

Not quite so loud this time and identifiable as a woman’s voice. Older. Embarrassed by her failure to use the machine properly the
first time. Angry at those who’d made her feel embarrassed. She was trying to hide both, but words were air given form and Danika had been…
was
the most powerful Air-mage in Aydori. It could have been the woman from the wet room.

Why would their captors believe they needed to tell five expectant women to use the commode?

Danika had barely finished when the sound of the bolts slamming back announced the opening of the door.

Perhaps it had been a time warning rather than a command.

She didn’t recognize the two guards who stepped into the room. They weren’t the two who’d taken her to the cell, but they might have been the two who’d taken her from it. The uniform, the hair cut short, the cap pulled low on the forehead, all worked to obscure individuality.

They reminded Danika of a line in
The Governing of Reason
by Gregor Mertait, a politician from Talatia in the Southern Alliance.
Safe within the obscurity of the mob, many deeds are performed that would not be countenanced by the individual.
If Leopald had read the book, she could only assume he thought no one else had because Mertait went on to say:
The mob cannot be reasoned with and will sweep all before it, but divide the mob back into individuals and it loses its power.

The guard on the left had a mole under his right ear. The other man had a black thumbnail, the edges still red and swollen enough the accident had likely just happened.

They both held pistols pointed at her and black batons thrust through loops on their belts. Clearly, Leopald was taking no chances on two grown men being unable to physically overpower one pregnant woman. More evidence that Leopald didn’t trust the net. Nor did he know exactly what he’d taken. If the net failed this moment, this very instant, they’d have no time to pull the trigger before they were slammed against the far wall of the corridor hard enough to splatter their brains over the stone!

Danika took a deep breath and let it out slowly, knowing they’d see the trembling of her hands as fear rather than reaction to the sudden violence of her thoughts. She’d killed once. She didn’t
want
to do it again.

She would.

Want
had nothing to do with the situation she found herself in.

Mole-under-ear gestured with his free hand, indicating she should move forward into the hall. He moved with her, backing up as she advanced. Bruised-thumb stayed where he was. As she passed him, she murmured a polite, “Excuse me.”

Manners, her mother had taught her, could be a shield in troubled times. And she remembered the confusion of the guard she’d thanked. Given the insults from the soldiers who’d taken them, the guards had very probably been taught the mages of Aydori lay with beasts and were therefore less than beasts themselves. Confusing the guards was a place to start.

Once in the hall, the guards…

No, as portentous as using the descriptions might be, she needed to always think of the guards as individuals.

Once in the hall, Mole-under-ear and Bruised-thumb fell in on either side of her. Mole-under-ear on her left, was left-handed. Bruised-thumb on her right, was right-handed. As they stood beside her, their weapons were in their outside hands, making it all but impossible for her to grab one—had she decided to do something so incredibly stupid. Either the more over-the-top stories about the Pack had not only been believed but applied erroneously to the Mage-pack, or Leopald
really
didn’t trust the net.

Or, she reluctantly admitted, it was coincidence.

The lamps were on over the other doors, but the doors remained closed. Wherever they were taking her, she was going there alone.

She could feel the weight of their attention. She didn’t dare try and send a message.

The door at the end of the hall opened into the vestibule…

…and she froze.

Not back to the darkness. To the stone and the damp and the smells and the hunger. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t…

They dragged her out of the hall. Closed and locked the door behind them.

Danika knew herself a heartbeat away from begging when they turned her toward the open door on the right—the door to the water room.

She found her feet, shook off their hands, and walked in.

No woman waited inside this time, but, this time, she knew what to do. After days in the same clothes, in the woods, in the mail coaches, in the hole, hot water was the next best thing to freedom.

Back in her room—no, her cell. No matter how comfortable it seemed in comparison, it was still a cell. Back in her
cell
, the commode had been emptied and cleaned, the bed made, and the robe hung from a hook that hadn’t been there previously. A wide-toothed comb had been left on the small table, and a high-waisted, long-sleeved dress of blue cotton had been laid out on the end of the bed.

Danika turned as the bolts slammed into place behind her and dropped to the floor, listening to discover if the other women were to be treated the same way. She heard the bolts pulled back on the door next to hers. Heard the door opened. Heard Annalyse’s voice, young and frightened, heard her bare feet against the slate floor in the hall, not moving freely but shoved along. Heard the door open at the end of the hall.

As Annalyse entered the water room—Danika couldn’t hear either Annalyse or water, but she had to believe that was where the younger mage had been taken—much lighter footsteps—leather shoes not boots—hurried down the hall and turned into Annalyse’s empty room. The sounds from the room were the familiar sounds of a maid at work.

Danika dressed while she waited for Annalyse to return. The fabric was coarser than any she’d ever worn, but the style was Aydori. The front panels of the dress crossed over themselves, support built into the bodice, a double panel of fabric down the center front. Undoing the two buttons in the band tucked up under her breasts would allow her to step out of it. Lady Berin had been wearing a nearly identical style in the carriage, although Lady Berin’s dress had been of significantly better quality. She wondered if Leopald realized the Mage-pack was not actually Pack and couldn’t change.

When Annalyse was returned to her cell, she thanked the guards in stiff Imperial before they closed and bolted her door. Danika smiled. The shield of manners.

Kirstin, next to Annalyse, refused to leave her cell. To Danika’s surprise, the guards left her and moved on.

Jesine and Stina went with the guards in turn. Stina was unusually
quiet, but neither of them sounded as though they had to be forced. The maid attended to their housekeeping while their cells were empty.

When Stina returned, the boots marched down the hall to Danika’s door, and she scrambled up onto her feet as the bolts were thrown. Bruised-thumb beckoned her out into the hall. Mole-under-ear stood with his pistol aimed into Kirstin’s cell. Without waiting for instruction, Danika hurried down the hall.

Still in the robe, Kirstin had curled into a nest of bedding in the far corner of the room between the bed and the wall. The room smelled like vomit. No, not quite vomit. Like bile that remained when there was nothing left to throw up. Wishing she had Jesine with her, Danika stepped farther into the room and softly called Kirstin’s name.

Kirstin looked up, her eyes widened, and any fear Danika had that she’d been injured fled as she suddenly found herself with an armful of her ex-rival. Danika sank to her knees, holding on as Kirstin crumpled with her, sobbing over and over against her shoulder. “I thought I was alone.” There were bruises wrapped purple and green around pale wrists and another that looked like a handprint just visible where the robe pulled away from her shoulder.

I am Alpha
, Danika reminded herself, and somehow kept her voice from wobbling. She would lend Kirstin her certainty because that was all she had right now to offer. “No, dearling, no. We’re all here. You’re not alone.” When one of the guards made an impatient noise behind her, she freed an arm and gently lifted Kirstin’s head so that blue-flecked dark eyes met hers. There was more of Kirstin in them now than there had been at any time since they’d been taken. “The guards are here to escort you to the water room. And that’s all they want. When you return, your cell will have been cleaned and there’ll be clean clothes left for you. Granted, not clothes even approaching fashionable, but…”

“Where we lead, fashion follows.” Kirstin found the strength for a half smile and Danika mirrored it.

“Exactly, and fashion
will
follow.” It was as close as she could get to declaring they’d find a way to escape. It was unlikely the guards spoke Aydori, but they already had evidence that it was spoken here, so they had to assume every word would be overheard. Except…

Heard you in the coach.
Kirstin exhaled the words. Sniffed, pulled back a little, and added,
Only one dead. Sad.
She frowned when she felt Danika tense, but there was no way Danika could explain how that one death had made her feel with the guards in the room.

Shielded by Danika’s body, Kirstin took a moment to slide on an approximation of her best society face, then she stepped away and said in broken but passable Imperial, “My apologies for the delay. I found myself indisposed timely.” Hopefully, only Danika heard how brittle her voice was. How easy it would be to break her again.

Bruised-thumb raised a hand and held Kirstin in place, while Mole-under-ear beckoned Danika out into the hall and escorted her back to her room.
Cell
, she corrected herself again. Not a house, not a dorm, not a hotel: a prison.

As her door began to close, she heard Kirstin say, “That is a Deni pistol, yes? The brass work is very distinct. Sloppy action on old style. Single shot, yes? Too bad.”

Kirstin’s uncle was a Metals-mage who developed weapons for the army. Officers among the volunteers carried a double shot pistol, and Danika remembered either Ryder or Jaspyr saying he was working on a rotating something or other that would shoot up to six rounds.