Tevor drew back the section of roof to let the cloudy morning sunlight in. Drissa touched the wood already stacked in the hearth and it began blazing. They took up positions on either side of Logan and the air above him shimmered.

Kylar brought the ka’kari up within him to his eyes. It was like putting spectacles on a man nearly blind. The weaves over Logan that had been just barely visible to him were suddenly clear.

“Do you know herbs?” Drissa asked Kylar. At his nod, she said, “In the great room, get Tuntun leaf, grubel ointment, silverleaf, ragweed, and the white poultice on the top shelf.”

Kylar came back a minute later with the ingredients, plus a few others he thought would be helpful. Tevor looked at them and nodded, but didn’t seem capable of speech.

“Good, good,” Drissa said.

Kylar began applying the herbs and poultices while Drissa and Tevor worked the weaves of magic. Over and over, he saw them dipping a weave as thick as a tapestry into Logan, adjusting it to fit his body, raising it above him, repairing it, and dipping it into his body again. What surprised him, though, was the way some of the herbs responded.

He’d never considered that normal plants might react to magic, but they obviously did. The silverleaf that Kylar had packed into the stab wound on Logan’s back turned black in seconds—something he’d never seen it do.

For Kylar, it was like watching a dance. Tevor and Drissa worked together in perfect harmony, but Tevor was tiring. Within five minutes, Tevor was flagging. His parts of the weaves were getting shaky and thin. His face was pale and sweaty. He kept blinking and pushing his spectacles back up his long nose. Kylar could see the mage’s exhaustion, but could do nothing about it. Critiquing a dancer was different from being able to step in and do better. That was what he wished he could do. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but it seemed that Drissa was attempting smaller and smaller changes in Logan each time, and he still had some things terribly wrong in him. Looking at him through the healing weave, his entire body seemed to be the wrong color. Kylar touched him, and he felt hot.

Kylar felt impotent. He had Talent here. Talent to spare, even after everything, he still had Talent. He willed the ka’kari back, willed himself to be unshielded, tried to will all that magic into Logan. Nothing happened.

Take it, damn you. Get better!

Logan didn’t stir. Kylar couldn’t use the magic; he didn’t know how to form any weave, much less one as complex as what the Niles were doing.

Tevor looked at Kylar apologetically. He patted Kylar’s hand.

At the contact, light blazed through the entire room. It burned beyond the magical spectrum into the visual, throwing their shadows on the walls. The weaves over Logan, which had been flagging, dimming, fading into nothing just a moment before, now burned incandescent. Heat flashed through Kylar’s hand.

Tevor gaped like a fish.

“Tevor!” Drissa said. “Use it!”

As Kylar felt the Talent flood out of him, he felt his magic all the way through Tevor being pulled down into Logan’s body. It was out of his control. Tevor was directing Kylar’s Talent completely. Kylar realized that Tevor could turn that magic to kill him, and having submitted like this, Kylar wouldn’t be able to stop him.

Sweat broke out on Drissa’s face and Kylar could feel the two mages working feverishly. They ran magic through Logan’s body like a comb through tangled hair. They touched the glowing scar on his arm—still glowing, hours later—but there was strangely nothing wrong. It wasn’t something they could fix. The healing magic moved right past it.

Finally Drissa breathed and let the weave dissipate. Logan would live, in fact, he was probably healthier than when he’d gone into the Maw.

But Tevor didn’t let go of Kylar. He turned and stared at him, eyes wide.

“Tevor,” Drissa said, warning.

“What are you? Are you a Vürdmeister?” Tevor asked.

Kylar tried to draw the ka’kari up to sever the connection, but he couldn’t. He tried to ready his muscles with Talent strength, but he couldn’t.

“Tevor,” Drissa said.

“Did you see? Do you see this? I’ve never—”

“Tevor, release him.”

“Honey, he could incinerate us both with this much Talent. He—”

“So you’d use a man’s own magic against him after he submitted it to you? How do the Brothers look on that? Is that the kind of man I married?”

Tevor dropped his head and his hold on Kylar’s Talent simultaneously. “I’m sorry.”

Kylar shivered, drained, empty, weak. It was almost as disconcerting to get control of his Talent back as it was to give it away. He felt like he’d gone two days without sleeping. He barely had the energy to be excited that Logan was going to make it.

“I think we’d better see to you and your simple friend. Your wounds can use more mundane treatments,” Drissa said. She lowered her voice, “The, ahem, king should wake this evening. Why don’t you come with me to another room?”

She opened the door and Kylar stepped into the waiting area. Gnasher had curled up in a corner and was sleeping. But directly in front of Kylar was a beautiful, shapely woman with long red hair. Vi. She was staring at him down the length of a bare sword. Its tip touched his throat.

Kylar reached for his Talent, but it slipped through his fingers. He was too tired. It was gone. There was nothing he could do to stop her.

Vi’s eyes were red and puffy like she’d just gone through a wringer, though how or why Kylar had no idea.

She stared down the length of steel for a moment that seemed to stretch and stretch. He couldn’t read the look in those green eyes, but it was something wild.

Vi stepped back three measured and balanced steps, Valdé Docci, the Swordsman Withdraws. She knelt in the center of the room, bowed her head, pulled her ponytail to one side, and laid the bare sword across her hands. She raised the sword in offering.

“My life is yours, Kylar. I surrender to your judgment.”

55

Seven of the eleven rent girls had left the safe house to see if they had families they could go back to. Six had come back, weeping. Some were now widows. Others were simply rejected by fathers and boyfriends and husbands who could see only whores and disgrace.

Kaldrosa’s courage failed her; she never left the safe house. For some reason, she’d been able to face death. She’d emasculated Burl Laghar and watched him bleed to death, tied to her bed, screaming into a gag. Then she’d moved the body, put fresh sheets on the bed and welcomed in another Khalidoran soldier. He was a young man who’d always had sex first and afterward was half-hearted in the beatings and the invocation. He always seemed disgusted with himself. She asked, “Why do you do it? You don’t like hurting me. I know you don’t.”

He couldn’t look her in the eye. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he said. “They have spies everywhere. Your own family will turn you in if you make the wrong joke. He knows.”

“But why beat up whores?”

“It’s not just whores. It’s everyone. It’s the suffering we need. For the Strangers.”

“What do you mean? What strangers?”

But he wouldn’t say any more. A moment later, he stared at the bed sheets. Blood in the mattress was soaking through the fresh sheet. Kaldrosa stabbed him in the eye. The whole time, even when he came after her, bleeding, roaring, furious, she’d never been afraid.

Facing Tomman, though, that was too much. They’d fought bitterly before she left for Momma K’s. He would have forcibly restrained her except that he’d been beaten so severely he couldn’t get out of bed. Tomman had always been jealous. No, Kaldrosa couldn’t face him. She’d leave with the others and go to the rebel camp. She didn’t know what she’d do there. They were inland and nowhere near a river, so jobs as a captain would likely be scarce. In fact, if she couldn’t obtain clothes that covered her up more, honest labor of any kind would be scarce. Still, after Khalidorans, being a rent girl for Cenarians might not be too bad.