She stepped aside, away from the open flap. The ebbing sunlight was at their backs. The tent's interior was in shadow. This was, she admitted, a good vantage point. It offered a clear shot at the target, though that shot was going to have to be uncannily accurate.

Deo's lips were working silently as he steadied and aimed. Concentrating. Droplets of sweat stood out quite suddenly on his forehead. His shoulders were bunched. Crow's-feet etched around his squinting eye.

Radstac quietly drew her sword. The next moments promised to be lively ones.

She saw Deo's finger squeeze the instrument's trigger. There was still enough mansid in her that she could actually see the bolt as it launched. The flanges of feathers— purple and white—shivered as the hand-length metal bolt shot out through the tent's flap. Twang went the bow string. Deo let out a sharp gasp, not unlike the sounds he made during lovemaking, Radstac noted.

At that moment it occurred to Radstac what they should now do.

She tugged the flap shut. Deo was rising from behind the crate. "I have to see if I got him!" he cried breathlessly.

She thought she heard voices rising outside. She sheathed her sword.

'Take off the tunic." She wrested the crossbow from his grip, broke the stock cleanly over her knee and jammed the pieces into one of the crates.

Deo had never gotten his rightful chance to be Petgrad's premier. He was instead merely Cultat's nephew, a publicly adored philanthropist, a hero of the people without having done anything, really, to have earned that regard. If he had just now succeeded in killing the Felk war commander, all that would change. He would rewrite his place in Petgrad's—and even the Isthmus's—history.

Whether he had just succeeded or not wasn't important to Radstac at the moment.

Deo shed the tunic. He was confused. He looked like he was actually going into shock, paling, lips moving wordlessly once more. The enormity of what he'd done was overtaking him, Radstac judged.

Her right hand clapped over his mouth, clutching his jaw. Her left moved sharply, snapping the twin prongs from their sheaths in her glove. Fist swinging, a weight of leather and metal. Her hooks caught flesh.

She wrestled Deo onto the cot. He went almost bonelessly. Outside, a commotion was now definitely rising.

Deo kept his jaw clamped when she released it. She was straddling his body. She put pressure on the wound with both hands. The cut was shallow and precisely made.

It was entirely possible, Radstac had realized in a flash of insight, that no one would see exactly where the shot was fired from. A guess could be made from the angle, wherever the bolt landed, but the two of them might actually be relatively safe here. Fleeing the scene would draw attention; and just how were they supposed to escape this camp now anyway?

But this might just work.

In a few fierce whispers she explained it to Deo. He listened, teeth gritted.

"We're scouts. We met bandits. You got wounded. We've just returned to camp."

Deo's grimace verged toward a grin. "I play the wounded man, right?"

She resisted the urge to grin back. Now wasn't the time to enjoy Deo's charms. "This won't even mark you as bad as your dueling scars," she said, keeping up the pressure on the wound she'd opened across his chest. Warm blood seeped out over her fingers, dribbled onto the canvas cot, but the flow was already slowing.

She mopped up the blood with her sleeve, then removed the small aid kit from a pouch beneath her armor. She always brought this north with her. She'd mended any number of her own wounds on Isthmus battlefields. She now deftly threaded a needle and started sewing up Deo's gash.

"Can you handle the pain?" she asked, not pausing.

He nodded, once, a short jerk. The alarm outside was growing louder, closer.

They might live through this. They might. It was a good ruse. Those Felk would be looking for an enemy, for an assassin, a sniper. They would find in this tent two soldiers. One hurt, one tending to her colleague.

That was just how Radstac and Deo were discovered a few moments later.

RAVEN (5)

IT WAS IRONIC. General Weisel was treating her more like a daughter than Lord Matokin, who was her actual flesh and blood. Weisel went out of his way to include her in things. He was interested in her. He trusted her.

Matokin trusted her, too, though, didn't he? After all, he had given her this assignment of spying on Weisel.

But there was something more. Raven was barely willing to admit to it. Weisel made her feel... desired. He had gotten her these new clothes, which flattered her body in a way she had never experienced before. Men now looked at her. She knew what they wanted to do to her and the thought frightened and excited her all at once. She had never known any kind of love in her life, though twice before she had experienced quick, grunting, unsatisfying sex, once in her home village with a boy as outcast and homely as she, and once at the Academy.

The disturbing thing was, she lately found herself desiring Weisel. He was a handsome man, and he radiated power. Raven felt herself longing for him. It was an effort to contain these feelings, which of course she could never share them with the general.

What was perhaps most odd, however, was that she thought she sensed the same feelings from him. Well, maybe not the very same, but there seemed to be a lascivious look in his eyes sometimes. Raven was still very new to reading these sorts of signals, and no doubt her own desires were interfering with her perceptions. But she couldn't completely shake the notion.

She had returned from her mission. She was proud that she had overcome her fears after that first incident with the portals. That had been unnerving. If she concentrated, she could still hear those eerie voices. And, according to the wizards she had met when she came out the far side, hers wasn't a unique experience; others had heard the voices while in transit between portals.

But Raven had completed her assignment, her first as this army's liaison officer. She had visited the scout parties, all but the one whose Far Speak wizard had not responded. The other three squads were by now in proper position around the outskirts of Trael. Weisel's plan awaited only his signal.

She had enjoyed exerting her authority. Those Far Movement mages had been reluctant to go along with the general's plan, though none had outright refused to obey. Raven was satisfied that her visit had convinced them to follow orders when the time came.

She was glad to be back. She headed for her tent to freshen up and eat a meal, figuring General Weisel would summon her when he wanted her. The wizards in her unit were sitting around the campfire, and conversation ceased as she approached; then, recognizing a fellow magic-user, they resumed.

Raven paused, listening. She had made no general announcement about her new status as liaison officer.

"I tell you, it was murder!"

"Despite what the physicians said?"

"They didn't let a proper healer look at the body," said one of the wizards, who was himself a healer.

Raven's curiosity was piqued. She took a step closer to the fire. "What's happened?" she asked.

The mages drew her into the circle, speaking in hushed voices. "A Far Movement mage died—" one started to explain.

"—was murdered," interrupted another.

"—died last night," finished the first. "We don't know anything else for certain. He died in his tent, and the army surgeons say it was a paroxysm of some sort. That's all we know."

"It is not," the healer said. "I've heard the tent where he was found was slit down the side, like a knife had cut it."