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  It ignored her and tried desperately to free itself to run after Jicks. When that didn’t work, it finally turned to her and howled at her. The terror drove her to her knees, but she clutched her dagger to her, and kept it pinned, until it, too, evaporated with a pop.

  She turned just in time to see Stev literally chop the remaining demon in two as it hesitated between two targets. Its hesitation cost it. Jicks threw her dagger again (while inside Abi shrieked never throw away your weapon). This time it struck the Mage in his shoulder; he went down with a scream, and his shield vanished.

  It’s over. Oh, gods, it’s over. And we lived.

  Jicks went back to the last Mage she’d killed and began rummaging in his shirt.

  Then she cursed and tore the clothing off the corpse’s body, clearly searching for something. Then, as Abi fought down nausea and sank to her knees in the bracken, she cursed even louder and began kicking the dead body.

  “These bastard’s aren’t even Karsite!” she screamed, kicking it again and again.

  Stev paused, his swordpoint at the Mage’s throat. “Is that so?”

  “What the hell, Stev?” she screeched at him.

  “That’s what I’m about to find out,” Stev said, far too calmly.

  Abi looked down at the ground a moment to control her stomach, wiped blood off her face, and by the time she looked back up, the blue glow of the Truth Spell surrounded the prone Mage. And the faint glimmer of shielding was gone from around her and the other two. Thank you, Korlak.

  “Are you Karsite?” Stev asked the captured Mage.

  “No!” the Mage spat, “Holy hells, man, get your knife out of me! I surrender! You Valdemarans have to take a surrender!”

  Stev pondered a moment. “I think we’ll leave the knife where it is for now. Why are you here?”

  Abi couldn’t control her stomach anymore; she vomited. But that didn’t keep her from hearing the man’s answer.

  “To keep you crazy people from annexing this area. Get it out! Help me!” The Mage’s hand kept reaching for the knife as if to pull it out himself, but then he seemed to lose the courage to do so. Which was probably all for the best, as the wound would certainly start bleeding badly if he did get the knife out. But Abi could scarcely believe how indifferent everyone else seemed to be to his pain.

  Abi, you idiot, he tried to murder us all! He could have killed other people if he’d rigged a bridge to fall!

  “I like the knife where it is. It looks good on you,” Jicks said, and sat down in the bracken as Korlak and his crow approached.

  “Sorry I didn’t do more,” Korlak said apologetically. “I was putting the fires out. I mean, literally putting them out.” He looked pale, and a little sick, but no worse than Abi felt. He glanced at the enemy Mage, and his lips curled up, just a little.

  “Just as well you did, or they’d have had us pinned down for the fire to take,” Jicks told him, thumping his shoulder. He staggered. “Good thinking.”

  He shrugged. “There wasn’t much more I could do, anyway. Nothing else I tried seemed to work.”

  “Help me!” the enemy Mage shrieked.

  “That’s an odd demand from someone who was trying to kill us a few moments ago. Why were you doing this?” Stev continued, doggedly.

  “We were hired! Help me! You’re a Herald! You’re supposed to help people!”

  “I’m supposed to help Valdemarans,” Stev corrected. “And you’re not a Valdemaran. Who hired you?”

  “Some rich bastard.” The man struggled against the Truth Spell, trying not to reveal the name, speaking what was literally the truth, but obviously not the whole truth.

  Stev, however, was a veteran at this sort of interrogation, working methodically through questions designed to get the most information in the least amount of time. “And what was the rich bastard’s name?” he persisted.

  The Mage’s eyes bulged and his face reddened as he did his utmost to foil the spell. But Stev’s Mind-magic was too strong, and finally he burst out with, “I only heard it once! I’m probably wrong!”

  “What was the name?” Stev leaned over the man. “You know, I’m going to find it out one way or another. You might as well make this easier on both of us.”

  Does my father do this? Silly question. Her father dealt with the worst of the worst. Of course he did. Meanwhile, the man was weeping in agony, hand hovering over the dagger he didn’t dare remove, or he’d probably bleed to death. “The name,” Stev repeated.

  “Kemp! Lemp! Hemp! That’s all I remember!” the Mage cried.

  “Was it ‘Remp’?” Stev asked, cold as ice in Midwinter. “Dudley Remp?”

  That startled Abi out of her nausea. Dudley Remp? What on earth was he up to, here? What could he possibly gain from meddling with the politics of a few small cities on the Menmellith Border?

  “Yes!” the man shrieked.

  “And why did he want Valdemar discredited here?” Stev asked.

  The smell of blood and even worse things made her dizzy, but this was an answer she needed to hear.

  “He wants his own kingdom where he can do what he wants. Please, please, help me,” the Mage blubbered, pawing at Stev’s foot.

  Stev glanced over at her, finally. She swallowed down the sour taste of bile in her mouth, winced at the taste of blood on her mouth, and looked the Herald straight in the eye. “You know Remp better than I do,” he said. “Does that sound logical?”

  She thought it over, but not for too long. “Completely,” she replied. “He’s always thought he should be allowed to do whatever he wants because he’s rich. I can see him sending these Mages in to discredit Valdemar, hiring a mercenary company, and coming in to offer himself as the new king.”

  Stev’s lip curled in contempt. “As in, ‘this is a lovely city you have, it would be terrible if anything happened to it while your defenses are down. But of course, I have the men to prevent that’?”

  She nodded.

  Stev turned his attention back to the Mage. “Is Remp still on this side of the Border?”

  “Yes,” the Mage moaned. “He’s waiting for us in Carnsbridge, near the Karsite Border.”

  “Well, now,” Stev continued, looking down at the enemy Mage. “That’s all I needed to know. The question now becomes, what are we to do with you?”

  Jicks took that as a cue to come up beside Stev and rest the point of her sword against the Mage’s chest. The man froze. Even the tears on his cheeks seemed to stop moving as he stared into Jicks’s impassive face.

  The blue light of the Truth Spell flickered and died as Stev stepped back. Jicks looked down on the man, expressionless. “That’s a good question, Stev. I was looking forward to collecting six Karsite bounties. This bastard and his little friends have deprived me of a whole lot of money, and I am not happy about it.”

  She put a little pressure on the sword. Stev looked off to the horizon.

  “You’re a Herald!” the Mage screeched. “You’re supposed to uphold the law! Do something!”

  “Valdemar law,” Stev reminded him. “This isn’t Valdemar. And you’re a problem for me. I can’t let you go and alert Remp to the fact that we know his plans. And you did try to kill us. I can’t take the chance you won’t try again. I can’t take you with us—you are way too much trouble; we’d have to keep you tied and gagged all the time, and tending to you is far more work than I care to go to. And besides, every time Jicks saw you, you’d remind her of how much money you cost her. It would be a waste of time to keep arguing with her about not killing you.”

  “There’s no law out here,” Jicks reminded the Mage. “Or if there is, we decide what it is.” A drop of blood welled up from where the swordpoint rested on his chest. “I really am mightily irritated with you.”

  “You want to take responsibility for this piece of trash, Jicks?” Stev asked. “I mean,
if I take him across the Border to account for himself, very bad things are going to happen to him because of what it’s like for a Mage trying to get into Valdemar. I’m not sure he’d stay sane more than a couple of days.”

  Abi was . . . appalled. She glanced over at Korlak, who just seemed fascinated.

  “Oh, gods, no, no, no,” the Mage whimpered. “That’s torture!”

  So’s this, Abi could not help but think.

  “So it is,” Stev agreed. “And torture is illegal in Valdemar. So taking you across the Border isn’t an option. Jicks? Got any ideas?”

  “You cost me a big fat pile of money,” Jicks reminded the Mage again. “Captain Whitepants there seems to think I should decide what happens to you. I’m inclined to take my irritation out on you a piece at a time.” She gazed off into the same distance as Stev. “However . . .”

  “However? However what?” the Mage gasped, desperately.

  She licked her lips, oblivious to the blood that spattered her face. “You might be worth more alive than dead. You’re obviously for hire. How about if I hire you for my Company at the handsome rate of not being dead?”

  His blubbering assent did not particularly impress Jicks, who glanced over at Korlak. “You know any way to make an oath binding on this piece of trash?”

  Korlak smiled, slowly. “As a matter of fact, I do,” he told her. “Let’s get that shoulder taken care of first, though. Abi needs her dagger, and we don’t want this idiot to bleed to death. Yet.”

  Korlak rummaged in the damaged wagon, then knelt next to the Mage with a wad of rags he’d gotten, packing them around the dagger. As the Mage moaned with pain, he put pressure on the wound, then Jicks leaned down and pulled the dagger out with a quick yank.

  The Mage screamed and passed out cold.

  That just allowed Korlak to work in peace. By the time the Mage woke up again, his wound had been cauterized, packed with herbal powder that would keep infection out, stitched up and bandaged, though he was still lying where he had fallen. The rest of them had had a chance to get cleaned up as well, going down to the brook one at a time with changes of clothing from the wagon. Abi just left her gore-soaked clothing in the pile of trash they’d burn before they left this campsite. She didn’t want to see what she’d been wearing ever again.

  “You see this?” Korlak said, holding up a wad of the bloody rags left over from treating the wound.

  The Mage nodded.

  “You are going to take a vow to obey every single command that Jicks gives you, and you’re going to do it on your own blood on these rags,” Korlak told him. “And then I am going to bind that vow to a very specific consequence if you ever disobey. Your wound will open, no Healer will be able to mend it, and you’ll bleed to death in about as long as it takes you to make up your mind that disobedience was a mistake.”

  The Mage, already pale, turned white. Before he could protest, Korlak squatted down, grabbed his hand and shoved it over the wad of rags. “Swear!” he ordered.

  “I swear to obey every command Jicks gives me!” the Mage gulped, probably wishing he could think of some prevaricating way to rephrase that.

  Korlak pulled the hand away and dropped the rags on the ground beside them; then he made a few gestures, clapped his hands over the rags, and they burst into multicolored flame. The Mage blanched again.

  “Now,” Jicks said, “whatever your name was before, it’s now Del.”

  “Why Del?” Stev asked.

  “Because it’s short, and I don’t know anyone named Del.” She turned back to “Del.” “You are never even going to attempt to run away,” she told him. “You’re going to be serving my Company from now on. When I or the Commander says to do something, you’re going to figure how to get it done. No excuses. Am I clear on all counts?”

  “Yes, sir,” the Mage replied, beginning to look as if every bit of strength and energy had been wrung out of him.

  “And you are never, ever, ever to conjure up one of those gods damned demons again!” Jicks snarled.

  He started back away from her vehemence and whimpered a little in pain as he jarred his wound.

  She dropped some clothing on him. “Brook’s that way,” she told him, pointing, “Get to your feet, get down there, get clean and changed, and come back before sunset.”

  The Mage stumbled to his feet, clutching the bundle of clothing to his chest, and staggered through the bracken to the nearby brook.

  Stev had meanwhile brought back the hinnies, who had been watered and were now enjoying better fare than they’d had in the forest. “You actually bound him to Jicks?” Abi said, as soon as the Mage was out of earshot.

  “Total bluff,” Korlak said with a shrug, as his crow cawed derisively. “He thinks I can because I made shields that worked against the demons. He doesn’t know I tried three spells before that and six after. The only one that worked besides the shields was the one that put out the fires. Pure luck. I kept more of his blood on the rags, though, and I’m giving them to Jicks. If he ever does try to run, she can get another Mage to use the blood to track him down or maybe force him to come back.”

  “I think I’ll go make sure he doesn’t try to test your ‘spell’,” Stev said, and he followed after the Mage.

  Abi looked around to make sure that Stev was out of earshot before she spoke next. “Listen, Korlak, when we get back to your city, I want you to talk to that Mage-smith. And Albemarle, if he’s sane. If they do invite Valdemar to extend its borders here, you need to know that the day the new borders are set, the same thing that keeps Mages and magic out of Valdemar will move down here. You’ll have to leave if you want to stay sane.”

  Korlak eyed her curiously. “Why are you telling me this? Aren’t you supposed to be persuading people they want this?”

  “Because it’s not fair to you and people like you,” she replied frankly. “And I’m not sure they’ll tell you this before it’s too late.” She turned to Jicks. “And you need to talk to Steen, too. Make sure he knows this and what it will mean for him.”

  Jicks raised an eyebrow at her. “Isn’t this going counter to what your King wants?” she asked.

  “Maybe Stev doesn’t care about non-Valdemarans, but I do,” she replied, feeling just a tiny bit better about what had just gone on. “It’s not fair to the Mages and the people who depend on them to hide what’s going to happen if they accept Valdemar’s offer.”

  Later that night, when they had all—even Del—gotten a dinner of Jicks’ stew and some pine-needle tea, Abi made a bed on the other side of the wagon where the carnage wasn’t, while Stev was communing with his Companion, relating everything that had happened today.

  Today? It felt as if it had all taken a week. She was exhausted and wanted nothing except to sleep, but the presence of Del meant someone was going to have to watch all night, and she volunteered to take first watch.

  Del curled up on a bed of bracken in a borrowed blanket. The rest, except Stev, fell asleep immediately. She kept herself awake by splashing water on her face, wondering if she could ever wash away the smell of blood.

  Finally, when her watch was just about over, Stev roused himself and stretched.

  “What took so long?” she asked.

  She heard the dry amusement in his voice as he replied and knew it would be matched by a slightly cynical smile. “As you can imagine, what I had to say aroused the same sort of reaction you’d get from taking a stick to an ant’s nest. Court Dinner got cut short. An emergency Council meeting was called. There’s going to be an actual trial of Dudley Remp tomorrow, with or without his presence. They’re not letting any grass grow under their feet on this one. I . . . might have neglected to mention that the last Mage is still alive.”

  “Why?” Abi asked.

  She saw his silhouette shrug. “Taking him North would be torture, and torture is illegal in Valdemar. Jicks is just as w
ronged as I am, and she’s satisfied with the punishment. Not my Mage, not my country.”

  She couldn’t help herself. She had to ask, because his words were so cynical and so dismissive. “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Besides the fact that it’s true?” Silence hung between them for a very long time. “Because Valdemar has limited resources, Abi. Tales about Herald Vanyel aside, what would happen to the people inside Valdemar—people who rely on our aid and protection—if everyone on the other side of a Border came crying to a Herald for help?”

  She bit back a retort that this didn’t matter. Because she was wrong. It did matter.

  “I see you’ve taken my point. Remember what we Heralds do, besides all the day-to-day business of making sure the Kingdom runs smoothly. We literally save peoples’—our peoples’—lives. If we go interfering in matters that don’t concern us, our people could suffer and die. And I know it’s not fair, but you’re Mags’ daughter. You know there’s no such thing in life as ‘fair.’ But there’s no reason for us to trade ‘unfair’ for ‘worse.’ Sometimes doing your job means knowing when not to do it.” He chuckled dryly. “And technically, every time I would do something on the wrong side of the Border, I’d be violating agreements between the two Kingdoms in question. Vanyel was a legendary Herald, but he was sometimes terrible at the job.”

  She hated hearing this. But part of her knew he was absolutely right. She went to bed with her head a complete mess, and only utter exhaustion allowed her to get to sleep.

  The last thought before she did fall into a kind of stupor was, I don’t want to do anything from now on but keep my ears open and fix bridges.

  * * *

  • • •

  The Mage traveled in the wagon with Korlak keeping an eye on him, and they pushed their speed as much as they could. They also progressively lightened the load by giving the hinnies more grain, which meant they needed less time to browse.

  When they reached Korlak’s town, they got a new cover for the wagon, Abi left her daggers and Stev’s sword back with the Mage-smith Evelie, and she had a word with Evelie herself about what becoming part of Valdemar would mean to Mages.