Warrior and Witch (47 page)

There
, Eclipse thought, and then hissed in pain.

Blood flowered out of nowhere on his wrist, seeping from no visible wound in his scar. He clutched at it with one hand, whispering, “No, no, not now, not yet—” He lunged to the desk, fumbling for a brush—

Then it stopped.

Eclipse stood for a moment, panting, trying to slow his heart. Another warning. The third one, all told. Five, supposedly, was the magic number, but he wasn’t about to gamble that he had one more warning before he died.

Which meant that he had finally come to the crossroads. He could no longer hope for Mirei to pull off another miracle and save him. All that remained was to choose how he would die.

He wanted to see her one last time, even if it meant bleeding out on the spot. It didn’t seem fair, that he should have to die without being able to say good-bye. If he tried to go anywhere near her, though, the witches would kill him on the spot. They would not risk him changing his mind.

He could stay here at Silverfire, where the witches would leave him alone, and bleed to death one night soon—judged by the Warrior, and found guilty of failure.

Or he could choose a third road.

Eclipse picked up the brush once more. It had spattered ink all over the top sheet of paper: He pulled out a clean page and wrote a brief note in as steady and regular a hand as he could manage.

The instructions for Jaguar were clear, as were his reasons for them. Depending on how closely the witches were monitoring him, the charade might not do any good, but it was worth a try.

He wondered, one last time, whether the witches of Starfall already knew his information, and had sent all those Wolfstars to deal with the problem. They had to have been hired to kill
someone
.

One way or another, it didn’t matter to him.

Eclipse folded the note, sealed it, and delivered it to Jaguar’s office, sliding it under the door of the anteroom, where Slip would find it in the morning.

Then he went through the night to the stables, to saddle a horse.

Chapter Twenty-One

Chaiban, whose doppelganger had been captured months ago, did not come back to life.

They pieced it together, painfully, while the surviving doppelgangers and their witches were placed under the most stringent guard they could arrange, with Indera held apart from the rest.

From Indera, questioned under a spell to keep her calm, they got the story of her encounter with Tajio. Other witches remembered seeing the woman shepherding the children away from the scene of Sharyo’s death—and why shouldn’t she? After all, she’d been taking care of them in Mirei’s absence, and had showed such concern for their well-being. And Tajio must have informed her allies in Kalistyi of the situation. There was a crumpled note in the room where she’d taken them, telling her to kill Chaiban. The two halves of a pair didn’t have to be killed at the
exact
same instant—just close enough.

The one saving grace was that Tajio had been trying to capitalize on an unexpected situation, and had not had time to plan. If there had been a silencing spell over the room she took the children to, Mirei would never have heard Chaiban scream. All the girls in there would have died. And maybe others, as well, if Tajio slipped away and managed to find the rest of them.

Mirei put another piece into the puzzle: Rigai’s abrupt suicide, before Koika could question the witches to flush out the traitor.

Rigai’s suicide, which now looked rather more like a murder.

It had distracted them all from the search. And why should Rigai have killed herself, anyway? Why not escape, or try to stay hidden? Satomi regretted now her decision to cremate Rigai quietly, and to hold no funeral. She would have to make amends for that somehow.

Koika, dragging herself away from self-castigation over not continuing to search, wanted to know why Tajio hadn’t killed the children sooner. The traitor’s merely partial success seemed to answer that: She’d been waiting for a chance to get all of them, or at least as many as possible. The situation with Urishin had provoked her into action.

Not long after that point came up, a message arrived from the rooms where the girls were being protected. It came from Urishin.

She didn’t come out and say it, but Satomi and Mirei knew what she meant.

“I still want to do it.”

“If you knew where they were,” Mirei said, “what would you do?”

Koika glanced sideways at Satomi. The three of them were alone in the council room. Rana had retired to her rooms, her nerves shattered by the bloodshed. No one expected anything more out of her, after this. The elderly Water Prime was done.

As the silence from Satomi dragged on, Koika said with a hint of her usual wryness, “I don’t suppose you could transport an entire army to Kalistyi.”

Mirei shook her head. “I won’t even try.”

Satomi roused enough to shake her head and speak. “Urishin would only be able to give us a direction. Not anything more specific. And we already know they’re in Kalistyi.”

Mirei took a deep breath. What Satomi would think of the suggestion she was about to make, she didn’t know, but she would make it anyway. “I can get her closer. And if she pegs the direction from multiple angles, we can pinpoint it on a map fairly well.”

They were finally accustomed enough to her specialized skills that they knew what she meant. Koika moved in startlement. “But I thought translocation was bad for you.”

“It is,” Mirei said, and tried to suggest by her tone that this was a minor concern. “But only in repeated doses. Urishin’s never gone through it before, and it would only take a few jumps; I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“But what about
you
?”

Mirei met the Earth Prime’s eyes, unflinching. “I’ll take my chances.”

“No,” Satomi said softly, and then repeated it louder. “No. It’s all too risky.”

Despite her best intentions, Mirei’s temper snapped. “So what are you going to do? Sit around and wait for more of them to die?”

It produced an ugly silence. Koika seemed torn between agreement and shock at Mirei’s lack of respect. Satomi just stared at her, pale green eyes flat and unreadable, but not happy.

Finally Mirei caved. “I’m sorry, Aken,” she muttered, and tried to sound like she meant it. “We may have a chance here. I don’t want to miss it. But it’ll be for nothing if there’s no plan for what to do once we find them.”

Koika exhaled, laying her hands flat on the table. “Shimi and Arinei are the largest problem. The Keys who have defected with them are a problem, too, but those two are the worst. Loyalty is what’s keeping their followers with them, as much as fear and confusion and dissent with us. Cut that tie, and the group loses its organization; disorganized, we can bring them back in.”

“Cut the tie,” Mirei repeated quietly.

The Earth Prime looked at her, unblinking, for several heartbeats. “Could you do it?”

Had she still been Mirage, her answer would have been easy. But she’d known since she faced down the helpless Ice that she had changed.

“No,” she said. “Not as an assassination.”

Koika’s jaw hardened. “You know what a threat they are. What damage they’ve already done to us. You want to leave that out there?”

“No,” Mirei replied, this time with more strength. “No more than Miryo wanted to leave Mirage out there, with the danger she posed. But I don’t want to just kill them off, either. They’re a part of us, Chashi; we can’t just cut them out because of a split between us. We have to bring them back in, somehow.”

The Earth Prime shook her head, but before she could muster up a response, Satomi spoke. “She’s right.”

Mirei turned to look at her.

Satomi’s face was weary but resolved. “They’re our people, Koika. And some of their concerns are valid. I can’t condone their methods—but neither can I send Mirei, like a shadow in the night, to kill them while they sleep.”

Koika slapped one hand on the table. “So what—are we just supposed sit here? Mirei, I thought that’s what you were arguing against just a minute ago!”

“It was,” Mirei said. “It is. I’m not going to assassinate them. But I want to know where they are, because we can’t do a Void-damned thing until we have that information. And that means Urishin.”

In this room, insulated as it was from the outside, layered with permanent spells to prevent eavesdropping, there was no sound apart from the quiet breathing of the three women as they faced their dilemma. Mirei’s heart beat in her ears, marking off the moments as Satomi considered it.

Finally the Void Prime spoke.

“Very well.”

The ritual required five women to work, so they had to recruit help.

They did it privately, because no one wanted to admit to Starfall that they were taking such a risk. Which meant they could not use Star Hall; instead, they went outside. And besides, the original miracle of Misetsu’s power had come in the wilds of these mountains, atop a rocky crag where the woman had prayed all night long. It seemed fitting to return there.

Mirei studied the necessary spells ferociously, committing the syllables and pitches to memory. Satomi had granted her the right to stand for Air, even though Naji outranked her. It was the closest she was ever likely to get to the Ray she had once thought would become hers. With her were Churicho, the interim Fire Heart Key, and Paere, the Water Heart Key. No one trusted Kekkai to be a part of this, and Rana refused to participate.