The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,98

small fortune sat in the pack lashed to my saddle. I’d replaced all I’d lost to Jylla, and could finally give Melly the safety and the future Sethan had so desperately wanted for her.

Hell, I should be proud. I’d managed to complete the job in the face of avalanches, snowstorms, and angry mages. I ought to be going out celebrating tonight, damn it.

The thought only swelled the guilt gnawing at my guts. I clenched my hands on my reins. People were bought and sold in Ninavel all the time. Khalmet’s hand, I’d been sold twice over, and it hadn’t hurt me any. So what if I’d lied—so had Kiran. He’d been using me like I was using him, and he’d only told the truth when I forced it out of him. I didn’t owe him anything. He’d murdered Harken and a score of others, endangered my friends, and cost me my future as an outrider.

None of it eased the memory of that terrible look in his eyes. Fuck. I kicked my horse into a heavy trot, but I couldn’t outrun the other memories that chased me. His despair in the cave, when I’d seen the blood mage sigil; his white, pinched face after he’d pushed me clear of the rockfall; and worst of all, his blindingly bright smile when I’d first returned to the cabin.

Damn it, maybe I’d feel better if I made certain the mystery buyer wasn’t Ruslan. I didn’t see how it could be—why should Ruslan bother to pursue us across the mountains, otherwise? Yet I couldn’t figure why anyone else would want a runaway blood mage apprentice so badly.

I’d been to Gerran’s compound enough times over the last few years that I had a fair idea of his security measures. Breaking and entering in Alathia was far easier than in Ninavel, where anyone with enough coin could place seriously nasty wards. Gerran surely used deadly Ninavel-made wards inside his office, hidden from the Alathian authorities, but the wards scribed over his compound’s outer fence met the Alathian legal standards and were laughably weak.

Gerran had placed his wards well, and no gaps existed in the protections on the sturdy fence. But the biggest failing of Alathian wards was their limited field of effect. I’d long since noticed that a good climber might scale the wall of a neighboring grain barn to a height that’d place him safely above the reach of the ward energies. One long jump would clear both wards and fence and give access to Gerran’s storage yard. The barn wall was made of tightly fitted, weather sealed boards, making the climb a tricky prospect, but thanks to Red Dal, I’d had years of practice with exactly that kind of balance work.

Gerran had told his men to take Kiran to the third level, and only one of his warehouses had more than two floors. When I’d glanced that way after leaving Gerran’s office, I hadn’t seen any wards on the warehouse walls, only around the doors and windows. An old smoke vent sat high up under the eaves, a hole just big enough for a small, wiry person like myself to squeeze through into the maze of rafters beyond. Alathians rarely bothered with internal sealing for mere storage buildings, due to the expense, so likely there’d be cracks between ceiling boards wide enough for me to peek through to the rooms below. Soon as I’d secured my pay, I’d sneak into Gerran’s compound and find where they’d stashed Kiran, take a look at the buyer...maybe even figure a way to provide Kiran a little anonymous help before I left Kost.

***

(Kiran)

Ever since he’d taken the hennanwort, Kiran felt trapped in a nightmare. A terrible smothering numbness engulfed his mind, his inner senses vanished as completely as a severed limb. Wavering colored halos shimmered in disorienting array over his sight, and the distances between objects grew and shrank with no discernible pattern, as in some bizarre dreamscape. Every time he reached for power, he felt nothing but a sickening void, and his thoughts scattered and skipped like striderbugs in magelight.

He couldn’t move. Sometimes he thought he was bound to a chair in a small, bare room with wooden walls. Other times he was certain he remained in Ruslan’s workroom, held immobile by wards, and his memories of the mountains nothing but a dream and a lie. Had Dev betrayed him yet? He wasn’t sure. Perhaps he was still huddled in the darkness of the abandoned cabin, waiting for