Page 29

At least, that was probably the hope.

How true it was, I didn’t know. Like I didn’t know how many people weren’t coming in, because they hadn’t survived. Either through the fight or the flood that had followed it.

How many had been swept over the side of the bridge, into the cold embrace of the water? And then thrown through the churning rapids to come out the other side, or what was left of them? I tried telling myself that most had fled before the portal was loosed, and that was true.

But not all, as the bedraggled types who kept dripping all over the floorboards could attest.

I was dhampir, with a vampire’s resilience married to the human will to survive, yet I had despaired of my odds with that current. What ones would a human have had? And how terrible to die like that, through some cataclysm they couldn’t have predicted or even understood.

My eyes found an old woman, her clothes steaming in the heat of the fire, looking about with red rimmed, uncomprehending eyes. “My grandson,” she said to the man next to her, a veined hand on his arm. “Have you seen him? Has anyone seen him?”

No one had.

She started going from table to table, describing him and asking the same thing, and received the same answer. And I suddenly lost my appetite, pushing the platter in front of me away. Only to have Mircea push it back, the long-fingered hand as pale as newly bleached linen in the firelight, because he was tired, too.

“Eat. You need to keep up your strength.”

“Why do you care?” I turned accusing eyes on him. “Why do you care about me at all?”

“I paid good gold for your arm. I want it strong.”

That was no answer, and we both knew it. But this was no fit time nor place to discuss it. After a moment, I pulled the platter back and resumed eating.

For her part, the younger witch looked somewhat ashamed of her outburst, but the older one was as practical as ever. I thought she might have made it through that bridge and out the other side, to toast her success at the nearest tavern. As she was doing now.

She downed a good pint of her drink, wiped her lips with the back of her hand, and patted the young woman’s shoulder. “It’s not a disaster,” she said. “Not yet.”

“How is that?” the younger witch wrapped her arms around herself. “My first solo mission, and I’ve already screwed it up.”

“Everyone has to learn—”

“Ca— the Lady didn’t.”

The old woman spared her a glance. “You know that isn’t true. She struggled, too, especially at the beginning—”

“But she always figured it out!”

“As we will.”

“I don’t see how,” the girl said miserably, and took a drink. She made a face; she didn’t seem to like the tavern’s beer as well as her counterpart. But she didn’t ask for anything else, although they had a good selection.

She had the air of someone who thinks she deserves bad beer.

“The Lady?” Mircea said sharply. “You are not Pythia, then?”

The young woman flushed, but met his eyes. “No. I am her heir. She is . . . busy.”

“Busy?” Mircea’s tone didn’t change, but something in his eyes flashed. Enough that the girl sat up straighter in her chair. “From what I understand, we have a witch with the ability to possess bodies who is set on doing who knows what sort of mischief. She has already loosed more than a dozen revenants onto the countryside, wiping out an entire village—”

“What village?” the older woman said.

“—and has just shown that she has no compunction about fighting in public, putting large numbers of lives at risk. Yet you tell me your Lady is busy? With what, pray tell?”

“If you know what my Lady’s office is, then you know I can’t tell you that!” the younger woman said, showing a bit of fire of her own. “I shouldn’t be telling you anything!”

“He won’t be allowed to remember it,” the older witch said, looking at the vampire. “You understand, that is the price?”

Mircea nodded, and I carefully kept on eating. Because the older woman could charm him all she liked, but with his mental gifts, it wasn’t likely to avail her much. But that wasn’t my problem.