Warrior and Witch (24 page)

In a room without windows, there were only so many ways to count time, and none of them were reliable.

If food came twice a day, then it had been thirteen days. If the witch who sang a spell over him—the same spell every time, but he didn’t know what it did—if she came once a day, then it had been seventeen days. But Eclipse suspected they were trying to throw off his count. He would have, in their place. The golden stubble on his jaw might be a more accurate measurement.

He retraced his capture in his mind, for the thousandth time; what else was there for him to do? There were only so many times he could analyze his situation and conclude that he had, at present, not a snowflake’s chance in a bonfire of escaping. They knew how to keep a Hunter imprisoned.

Mirei had arrived in his room, appearing out of nowhere after her miracle: that was at night. The next morning, he’d left before dawn to continue his journey to Silverfire.

They’d ambushed him about an hour after Mid.

And they hadn’t taken any chances. No witches, it was true—for the second time, too. There hadn’t been any witches there when they took Miryo, either. But Cousins enough to swamp him under, certainly. Cousins enough for him
and
Mirage, had she been there. They were sufficiently careless to say that in his hearing. He wasn’t the real target; they’d come for Mirage.

But they’d kept him anyway.

They hadn’t known about Mirei, at first. They did now. Not that anyone referred to her by name, but there came a point when nobody was talking about Miryo or Mirage anymore, just “the abomination.” Or sometimes just “
her
.” He could piece it together well enough.

No witches in the ambush, but witches soon after; he didn’t know why they’d been afraid of bringing witches near Mirage, but it seemed obvious that she was the one they’d been avoiding. He was only important to them because of his friendship with her.

He dragged his mind back to the count. The day after Mirei left him, he’d been taken prisoner. They’d kept him in some unrecognizable village that night, and that was when he’d made his first attempt to escape. The next day they’d ridden—that was day two—although it was inaccurate to say
he’d
ridden, unless being tied hand and foot across the back of his horse with a sack over his head counted as “riding.” His attempt to break free then had only resulted in his near-death from trampling. Between that and the bruises he’d taken simply from being tied up, he wasn’t in shape to try much of anything that second night.

On day three they drugged him, so he couldn’t be sure of time, but since he only remembered one round of drugs, he was pretty sure it wasn’t more than a day. Then arrival here—wherever “here” was. And since then, somewhere between ten and fourteen days had passed. Maybe.

He wondered where Mirei was.

He didn’t think she was dead. If she had been, then there would be no reason to keep him; his only value was as a hostage against her. They would kill him or let him go, and be done with this mess. So she was alive—but he had to assume her trip to Starfall hadn’t gone well.

He never should have let her go. She’d made a persuasive argument at the time, pointing out that if she could convince the women in charge, then she could bypass a lot of other trouble. And with that look in her eyes, that crazy, peaceful faith, he couldn’t bring himself to argue with her.

But now she was in trouble, and he couldn’t do a damned thing to help her.

Eclipse realized he was twisting his hands within his manacles again, trying to slip free. He kept on doing it, even though he’d proved days ago that it was a waste of his time. They’d locked him up too well; even the slickness provided by scraping his wrists until they bled hadn’t let him slide his hands out. And even if it had, then he was still in a windowless room, behind a locked door too thick for him to break down, with a grating they looked through every time before they came in. If he didn’t show them his hands, still safely in their irons, then they didn’t open the door. He’d missed a few meals that way, which was why he wasn’t too sure of his count. And the witch who sang the spell, whatever it was, never came in at all. She just watched him through the grating, and left when she was done.

They weren’t going to let him go any time soon.

When the two Cousins came in to bring his food—one with the food, the other to watch and make sure he didn’t try to attack her—he said, “Tell whoever’s in charge that I want to make a deal.”

* * *

A witch came before long. Not the one who sang at him through the door, which made her the fourth witch he’d seen since coming here. Slight curl to her hair, narrow gray eyes. No way to tell if that was her real face. They weren’t, always.

She eyed him from the safe distance of the other end of the room, with two armed Cousins at her sides. He was almost flattered by the precautions they took in dealing with him. “They say you have some deal to offer.”

Eclipse nodded. He was standing next to the pallet on the floor that served as his bed; they were careful not to put any furniture in the room that he might conceivably use to escape. There was just the pallet, and the latrine hole, and him standing between the two, looking as non-threatening as he could. “I can guess what this is about. You’re after Mirei. You’re holding me because you think I’ll be useful against her. Maybe lure her into a trap, with me as bait.”

He paused, wondering if she’d respond and give him any other crumbs of information he could use in this negotiation, but the witch held her silence.

So he forged ahead. “You can’t find her, is my guess, or you can’t get at her wherever she is. Well, fair enough; that kind of work is hardly your usual job.

“But it’s very much
my
job.”

The witch’s lips thinned into a tight line. “So you’re saying—”

“I’m offering to Hunt Mirei,” Eclipse said levelly.

The Cousins exchanged brief glances, behind the witch’s back, where she could not see.

“It’s what I’m
trained
to do,” Eclipse said. “I’m not just a Hunter; I’m a Silverfire. I’m sure you know that. I’m not a bodyguard specialist, or a spy—”

“Or an assassin,” the witch said, unencouragingly.

Eclipse was not fazed by her response. “But I can do all of those things. I can find Mirei, wherever she is; I know the resources she’s likely to call on. I know how she works—Mirage and I were
year-mates
. And she’ll let me close to her. We’ve worked together before.”

“Exactly,” the witch said, biting the word off. “You are fellow Silverfires. Year-mates.
Friends
. You will not betray her. This is a poorly thought-out ploy to make us release you, and then you will run back to her side.”

He shook his head. “You’re leaving one thing out of your calculations.”

“Oh?”

“She’s not Mirage.” Eclipse smiled, bitterly. “She’s not the woman I knew in training, the sister I’ve fought beside. She’s someone else. And it’s her fault I’ve been stuck in this hole all this time.” He lifted his manacled hands, with the blood still crusted on them. “No offense to you, but she’s a witch now. Hunters don’t take kindly to
your
kind trying to pass as one of us. Who knows what secrets of ours she’s already betrayed? The Grandmaster of Silver-fire may even have given orders for her to be eliminated.”

The witch studied him for a long moment, one slender finger tapping against the side of her leg. Then she shook her head abruptly. “No. Your loyalty goes deeper than that, I think. It was a clever attempt, Hunter—but not good enough.”

She snapped her fingers at the Cousins, and the three of them left him alone in his cell.

* * *

Two days later—four meals, two spells; he was pretty sure of his count—the witch returned.

“Commissions,” she said crisply, after a minute or so of studying him, while the Cousins stood ready to kill him if he somehow managed to slip his bonds after weeks of failure. “How do they work?”

His heart beat faster. She would only be asking if she were considering his offer. “They’re more formal than hires. Pay better, too. Record is made of them, unless they’re for work you wouldn’t want known publicly. Whether there’s a record or not, all the parties involved swear a sacred oath on them—the Hunter to complete the task, the employer to deliver the reward and to provide any help they’ve promised.”

“An oath,” the witch repeated. “The blood-oath?”

The ambush had not been kind to his clothing; anyone looking for it might have been able to spot the scar on his right wrist. It was the only visible relic—and, he guessed, the only record—of his one previous commission, when he and Mirage had been hired to find out who assassinated Tari-nakana.

“No, Katsu,” Eclipse said. “Not for normal commissions. Blood-oaths are rare.”

“But they cannot be broken.”

He chose his words carefully. “Breaking them, or failing the task, means the Hunter dies. But no one would break even an ordinary oath—”

“No one except a desperate man,” the witch said, watching him closely. “No one except a man who, perhaps, believes the Goddess will forgive him his transgression, if it means saving a friend.”

Eclipse snarled at the word. “I told you. She’s not Mirage. She’s not a Silverfire. She’s one of yours, and I’ll gladly kill her if it means getting out of this hole. If I wanted to die instead of being in here, I could arrange that, trust me.”

“And so you expect me to believe that you will not break your word.”

He met her eyes coldly. “You have a low opinion of my honor, Katsu.”

“I have a practical opinion of it, and all the honorifics in the world will not blind me to who and what you are.” The witch snapped her fingers to the Cousins again and left. Eclipse sagged against the wall, teeth gritted in frustration.

This time, she waited only one day before returning.

“This is our offer,” she said without preamble. Eclipse had been sitting on his pallet, fed up with the dance of courtesy, but he looked up sharply at her words. “We will free you—if you swear to Hunt and kill the abomination known as Mirei.”

Eclipse rose swiftly to his feet. “I will—”

“Swear,” the witch interrupted him, “with a blood-oath.”

He stood very still, praying that he could keep his true thoughts hidden from her eyes.

“Katsu,” he said when he could speak safely, “do you know what the blood-oath means on your end?”

“Yes,” she said, indifferent. “Money for you—we will pay, easily. Glory, if you wish to claim it; we will not stop you. In fact, you will publicly have the gratitude of Star-fall, for the elimination of this threat.”

“And three boons.”

Even that did not surprise her; she must have done research during that day of waiting. “Of course. Any three things you wish to ask of us, we will grant, if it is within our power.”

If I asked you all to drown yourselves, would you do it?

He put his hands behind his back, approximating a Hunter’s formal stance, hiding the rigid fists his hands had become. “Out of professional curiosity,” Eclipse said, “what happens if I refuse?”

The witch shrugged, but her casual manner carried just the right amount of menace. “The abomination has not come for you yet. She tried to find you with magic and encountered our blocking spell, but after that she seems to have given up the search. There are ways for her to find you without magic. But as she seems not to be interested in following them, your usefulness is at an end.”

Meaning that this “offer” was no such thing. He would accept, or he would die here, and never get a chance to accomplish anything.

The knowledge that Mirei hadn’t kept searching for him hurt, though he couldn’t let it show.
Come on, idiot, she said that in
order
to hurt you. It probably isn’t even true
. He prayed it wasn’t true. He’d spent the last several days telling himself Mirei meant nothing to him, so he could lie and be believed—but what if he meant nothing to her?

Then he was dead either way, because as slim as his hopes of saving himself were, they depended entirely on her.

The witch was still watching him; he couldn’t delay any longer. “So she gave up,” Eclipse said, and pasted a cynical grin onto his face. “Told you she wasn’t Mirage. My year-mate would never quit on me that easy.” He rubbed at his wrists, scraping off some of the dried blood.

“My services won’t come cheap, Katsu.”

“You believe you’re in a position to negotiate?”

“Can anybody else offer you the advantages I can? But this will be risky for me. She’s got all the training I have, plus magic. I’m going to need resources to go after her. I’m going to need money.”

“You’ll get it,” the witch said, and nodded at the Cousins to unchain him.

For the first time in sixteen to twenty-one days, he left the cell they’d placed him in.

They’d even given him water to wash in—though nothing to shave with. Eclipse scrubbed himself as clean as he could, then followed his guard of Cousins and witch through the halls. They still had shackles on him, as if he might run away, but it was more freedom than he’d had in weeks.

He hadn’t seen much of the building when they brought him in, because at the time the only light had come from torches. Now the place was no longer deserted; tallow candles stood dripping in sconces on the walls, and he could hear murmurs behind some of the doors he passed.