The Blood Curse (11 page)

“Serril!” Harkeld hissed, wrenching his leg free with a sharp tearing of fabric. “He’s seen her! We don’t have time for—”

The dog moved to block his way, teeth bared, snarling.

I’m important, not Innis. I’m the one Serril will save.

The realization made his panic spike. Harkeld shoved past the dog. “Innis!” he shouted. “Get—”

A hawk screamed warning overhead, drowning his words. A flash of steel sliced through the air. Throwing star.

Harkeld grabbed his fire magic—scorching hot—and hurled it. The weapon flared alight with a white-hot burst of flame and sharp thunderclap of sound.

For a moment there was utter silence—and then the marketplace erupted into chaos.

Harkeld threw himself back against a stall and crouched, his sword clenched in his hand. Around him, people screamed and pushed to flee. Serril stood at his shoulder, hackles up, a low growl rumbling in his chest. Adel hunkered behind them. The crowd surged past. What did they fear most? The assassin’s weapon, or the magic that had destroyed it?

Harkeld gripped his sword, straining for a glimpse of Innis, for a glimpse of the Fithian. He shoved aside his panic. Innis would have shifted. She’d be a bird now, a dog, a lizard. She’d be safe.

“Serril, how many of them are there?”

The black dog wrinkled its lips, pushed its lower jaw out, uttered a growl that sounded like...

“Two?”

The dog nodded.

“Adel,” Harkeld said, his gaze fixed on where Innis had been. “Stay here.”

The water mage uttered a squeak of dismay. Harkeld ignored it. He gripped his sword tightly and headed in the direction he’d last seen Innis.

Serril gave a deep-throated growl.

Harkeld ignored that, too. He needed to see that Innis didn’t lie dead on the ground. She was a shapeshifter, but Fithians could kill shapeshifters. Gerit and Linea were proof of that.

The crowd parted and there—
there
—was the assassin, staring directly at him, a throwing star gleaming in his hand.

Harkeld held the man’s gaze for an instant, and saw the Fithian bare his teeth in a grin and hurl the star. He grabbed for his magic as the weapon flashed towards him.
Burn
.

The throwing star burst alight.

Harkeld crouched low, blinking away the after-image of flames. A roar resonated in his ear. He flinched as a thickly-muscled lion barreled past him.

The fight was over in a handful of seconds, quick, savage, brutal. The Fithian lay dead, his throat torn open. The lion turned to face Harkeld, blood dripping from its mane.

Harkeld tightened his grip on his sword. “The other one?”

Serril lashed his tail, fastened his gaze on something to Harkeld’s left, and bounded off.

Harkeld glanced at Adel. The water mage crouched behind him, sword half-extended, eyes wide with fright, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

Harkeld cautiously straightened to his full height. He scanned the marketplace. It was almost empty. He could hear individual voices now. To his right, a mother screamed for a child. Beneath her cries were the frantic squawks of hens and the high, terrified yelping of a dog. “Innis!” Harkeld bellowed.

There was no reply.

Produce lay scattered on the ground. He headed for the stall where he’d last seen her, crushing apples beneath his boots, trying not to panic. Innis would be fine. The first hint of danger and she’d have changed shape. She wasn’t lying dead. She was flying high in the sky. A sparrow, a swallow, a hawk.

He looked up at the gray sky. Only Justen flew there.

A lion’s roar sounded behind him. Harkeld jerked around. Was the lion Innis?

He ran, pushing past abandoned stalls and overturned carts, stumbling over bolts of fabric and iron pots and pumpkins the size of his head.

In a muddy space between stalls, a lion crouched over the body of a man. The corpse lay in a widening pool of blood with one hand outstretched, a razor-sharp throwing star inches from his fingertips, as if even in death he tried to reach for it.

The lion was male, its pale mane streaked with blood. Petrus.

Harkeld met the lion’s eyes. “Thank you.”

The lion nodded, shifted into hawk shape, and flapped up into the sky. A black dog came to stand at Harkeld’s side. But where was Innis?

“Innis!” he bellowed again.

“Here.”

She stood beside a cartload of coal, sword in hand.

Relief surged in his chest. Harkeld crossed to her at a run. He wanted to hug her, instead he said, “We need to get back to the tavern.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

T
HEY WALKED WITH
cautious haste. Innis looked up, and saw Justen and Petrus flying overhead. Serril trotted beside the prince. “Serril, you only saw two Fithians?” the prince asked.

The black dog nodded.

“Two at the market,” Innis said, scanning the street. “But maybe more elsewhere. Fithians always turn up when you least want them to.” That was the last thing Cora had said to her—her exact words—before a throwing star had buried itself in her skull. Innis touched the hilt of her sword. The mood of the town had been anxious before; now it was in the grip of full-blown hysteria. Did the people shoving past them even know why they ran? Or did they think the curse had arrived in Hansgrohe?

A cry caught her attention, a toddler screaming in open-mouthed terror. And then she saw why, saw the blood.

Innis halted instinctively. Healing magic surged inside her, tingling in her palms, in her fingers.

The prince halted, too. He followed her gaze, and hissed between his teeth. “Can you help her?”

“Yes. But the Fithians—”

“Do it.” The prince took her elbow and pulled her across the street, cutting through the tide of people.

In the dozen strides it took, Innis assessed the situation: the woman lying sprawled, her long plait caught in the spokes of a wagon wheel, her scalp half-torn from her head; the man screaming at the wagoner; the abandoned child shrieking his terror. Her thoughts moved with lightning-fast clarity. Her magic gave another surge, the tingling in her hands became stronger.

Innis dropped to her knees, cradled the woman’s head. “Flin, cut her hair!”

The prince drew his sword and severed the braid in a swift movement, releasing it from the wagon wheel.

The woman’s scalp had peeled back from her brow to the back of her head, revealing the gory dome of her skull. Blood streamed from the wound. Grazes marked the left side of her face. Her abdomen was rounded, a firm and definite swelling. Seven months pregnant, was Innis’s guess. She sent her healing magic swiftly to the wound, halting the terrible loss of blood. “You’re going to be all right.”

The woman didn’t respond. She gazed up at the sky, not blinking as rain fell in her eyes, lost in pain and shock.

Innis took hold of the scalp—limp, warm, heavy with wet hair—and inspected it for dirt before smoothing it over the exposed skull. She focused on her patient, ignoring the child’s piercing screams, ignoring the shouted altercation between the wagoner and the woman’s husband, ignoring the crowd surging past her.

“Can you heal her?” The voice was Prince Harkeld’s.

“Yes.” It would be rough and hasty, the scar wouldn’t be pretty, but the woman would live—as long as there was no infection. Innis coaxed the skin to refasten to the skull. There was no time to match capillary with tiny capillary; the major blood vessels, those she could mend. Everything else, she’d have to trust to fate.

Her magic couldn’t tell her the woman’s name, but it told her who she was: practical, kind-hearted, not clever, but with a strong streak of common-sense.

The shouting stopped. Dimly, she was aware of the woman’s husband turning towards them. “What d’y think y’re doin’?” he snarled.

“Helping her,” the prince replied.

“She cain be helped.” The man was a farmer, young and burly, armed with a thick wooden stave. “She dead! Her head tore off.”

There was a skirmish—she glanced up and saw Prince Harkeld grappling with the man, saw his skill outstripped the farmer’s, and looked back at her patient, pouring magic into the woman, urging the scalp to bond to the skull, creating a ridge of scar tissue along the woman’s hairline. When she next glanced up, Prince Harkeld had the farmer pinned to the ground. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he told the man, panting. “Head wounds bleed a lot. She’ll be fine. Now see to your son!”

The farmer clambered to his feet and obeyed. After a long moment, the high-pitched shrieking died to a whimper. She heard Prince Harkeld talking again. “The skin’s back in place. Your wife will be fine. But we’ll need a bandage to hold the wound tight. Give me your shirt.”

Half a minute later, the prince crouched opposite her, a rough cotton shirt in his hands. “Don’t look at it for three days.” The words were for the farmer, not her. “Three days, do you hear me? It needs a chance to heal.”

It was healed already, hastily, roughly, but she met the prince’s eyes and nodded to show that she understood: he was hiding her magic.

Prince Harkeld wrapped the shirt around the woman’s head, a bulky, concealing bandage. “Time to go,” he said, in a low voice.

The woman was shivering, still dazed. A contraction rippled across her distended abdomen. Innis’s attention fastened on that movement. “Not yet.” She reached to touch her patient’s stomach. The muscles tightened beneath her hand, a fierce spasm.

The farmer knelt alongside his wife. “Lemme see.”

“No!” Prince Harkeld reached for the man’s wrist.

Too late. The farmer pushed the bandage up from his wife’s bloodied brow, exposing the fresh, pink scar along her hairline.

There was a moment of silence, and then the man reared back. “That ain natural!” His gaze fastened on Innis, fierce with fear. “Ye’re a witch!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

H
ARKELD SAW THE
farmer raise his wooden stave, saw Innis scramble backwards. Too late, too slow. The stave hit her head with a sound like an ax splitting wood.

“Witch!” the farmer screamed, swinging the stave again.

Harkeld uttered a roar. He seized the man, wrestled him to the ground, beat him with his fists.

Someone grabbed the back of his cloak, dragging him off the farmer. Adel. “Run!” the water mage yelled.

“Innis—” Harkeld looked for her. Serril cradled Innis’s body in his arms. The shapeshifter was in human form, black-bearded, naked.

“Witches!” The farmer pushed to his feet, reaching for his stave again. His shout lifted above the crowd, raw-throated. The current of people faltered; some turned towards them, others still pushed to flee.

“Witches!” someone else cried. “Witches!”

A dozen voices picked up the cry. “Witches!” And above that word, someone shrieked, “Kill them!”

Adel yanked on Harkeld’s cloak again, pulling him towards the mouth of an alley. “Run!”

Harkeld ran, staggering slightly, numb with disbelief. Innis was dead. Dead. No one could survive a blow like that.

The roar of voices swelled behind them. The sound held a baying note. Then, the deep bellow of a lion cut across it. Harkeld glanced back, stumbling, almost falling. A lion with a dun-colored mane stood between them and the mob. Justen.

A stone struck the lion’s side, drawing blood. Justen stood his ground. He roared again.

“Run!’ Adel yelled in Harkeld’s ear.

Harkeld ran, along alleys and down side streets, following Serril, his eyes on the shapeshifter’s naked back, on Innis’s body in the man’s arms.

The cries grew fainter behind them, yet still they ran, panting, weaving through the backstreets of Hansgrohe, following the hawk that was Petrus. They turned left, and left again, doubling back on themselves. Finally, in a deserted alleyway, Petrus landed and shifted into himself. “Let me see her,” he demanded.

Serril laid Innis’s body on the ground. He was wheezing for breath.

Petrus crouched and cupped her face in his hands. His eyes closed, his brow furrowed with concentration.

You can’t heal her
, Harkeld told him silently.
Mages can’t reverse death
. He blinked his eyes fiercely and looked away.