“Okay.” Maya didn’t want to leave it there, but Beq was so clearly uncomfortable she couldn’t press her. She got up and climbed back into the bed. “If you need anything …”
“Thanks.” Beq stretched out on the bedroll again, setting her glasses beside her.
There was a long silence.
“Can I ask you something?” Beq said, very quietly.
“Of course,” Maya said.
“You’ve been … out, in the field.”
“Most of my life.”
“This is my first time. You know that, I told you before. Sorry. I just …” Beq took a deep breath. “Is it always like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I shot that woman,” Beq said. “She was going to kill you, and I shot her. I spent a lot of time shooting blasters in the ranges under the Forge, I know what they can do to rock, but …”
“She was a dhakim,” Maya said. “You did the right thing.”
“I know that,” Beq said. “Obviously. It’s what I was supposed to do. My duty. But when I close my eyes I keep seeing her head coming apart.” Her voice was small. “I did that.”
“Beq …”
Maya rolled over. Beq looked up at her, eyes full of tears, and Maya impulsively grabbed her hand. The arcanist’s fingers were long and slender, as rough with calluses as Maya’s own.
“We saved people today,” Maya said. “Try to remember that. It doesn’t erase the … other stuff, but it matters, too.”
“Do you get used to it?” Beq said.
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
Beq’s eyes had closed, and her voice was fading. “I’m glad … I saved you.”
Maya grinned. “Me too.”
A moment later, the arcanist’s deep breaths told Maya she was asleep, though their fingers were still entwined. Maya shuffled the pillow under her cheek, closed her eyes, and drifted off as well.
*
When she woke again, in the morning, Beq was already up and about. Maya yawned and rolled out of bed. Her limbs ached fiercely but under the bandages her cuts only itched. Quickheal is wonderful stuff. After making sure she was alone, she pulled up her shirt to examine the Thing. The crystalline arcana looked the same as ever, but the ring of flesh around it was puffy and red, painful to the touch. That had never happened before.
I’ll tell Baselanthus when I get back to the Forge. Maya found her traveling clothes washed and neatly folded just inside the door. She dressed, with her panoply belt and haken in their accustomed places, and went downstairs. From the kitchen, she could hear an argument in progress, Tanax’s familiar arch tones mixing with the voice of a young woman she didn’t recognize.
Before she could see what that was about, she ran into Kaiura in the hall. The older woman touched her shoulder and drew her aside.
“I wanted to thank you,” she said. “On behalf of the village, and for myself. It could easily have been my girls down there.”
“Oh.” Maya rubbed the back of her neck, vaguely embarrassed. “I was lucky to find the place. You should thank Streza for taking such good care of her brother.”
“I will, believe me,” Kaiura said. “But I heard what your leader thought of your decision.” She smiled broadly. “I just thought you should know that not everyone thinks you made the wrong choice.”
“I’m glad,” Maya said. “And I’m sure you have nothing to worry about, whatever he says. The Order won’t punish people for having their children held hostage.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Who’s he talking to now? Some of your people?”
“Some of yours, I believe,” Kaiura said. “A messenger arrived not long ago.”
A messenger? That was unusual. “I’d better go and see.”
She nodded to Kaiura and pushed her way into the kitchen. Tanax, Varo, and Beq were already there, along with a young woman in the gray of a Forge servant. Tanax shot Maya a look as she came in, but his attention was on the newcomer.
“Our work here is still incomplete,” he said. “The Council has to know that.”
“I assume they do, Agathios,” the messenger said, returning his glare coolly. “But they did not give me any more details, only your instructions.”
“But—”
“What instructions?” Maya said. “What’s going on?”
“We’ve been reassigned,” Varo said. Maya thought she detected the tiniest hint of smugness in his tone.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Tanax said. “Why us?”
“As I said, Agathios—” the messenger began.
Tanax waved her away, thinking furiously. Maya caught her eye.
“What are the new instructions?”
“You’re to report to Deepfire immediately and deliver a message to Dux Raskos,” the messenger said. “Apparently, matters there are getting out of hand.”
Chapter 8
“She could be mad,” Lynnia said.
“It’s possible,” Gyre agreed. “But I’m willing to risk it.”
“You’re risking a plaguing lot,” the alchemist said, stalking back and forth behind him with her mismatched gait. “Everyone else’s life on top of your own, for starters.”
“Everyone heard what she had to say. Everyone agreed.”
“They all look to Yora. And Yora looks to you, more fool her. Never trust a man just because he dampens your knickers.” The old woman made a noise like she wanted to spit but didn’t have the phlegm. “I don’t like it.”
Gyre let out a long breath and tried to concentrate on his task.
They were in the alchemist’s library, and he was copying maps. In addition to shelf after shelf of musings on alchemical studies by long-dead scholars, Lynnia had acquired a surprisingly broad collection of maps of tunnels under Deepfire over the years. More recently Gyre had added his share, purchased from the delvers by his agents.
Kit had given them only a vague idea of where the tunnel they were looking for lay, although she swore that she would be able to find it when they got closer. Gyre had dug out every map from every scavenger who’d explored in that region, which made a substantial pile. Since Lynnia forbade any of her maps to leave the premises, he was using the alchemical paper sometimes called “lazy scribe” to copy them. Pressed against ink and paper, the stuff turned itself into a mirror-image copy; painting another reagent across it and pressing it on a virgin sheet would transfer the text or image back to it right way round.
It was tedious work, and the pot of alchemical goo smelled like rank liquor and piss. But he wasn’t going to leave anything to chance if he could help it.
“This Kit won’t explain to you how she knows where to look?” Lynnia said.
“She’s entitled to her secrets,” Gyre said, carefully peeling the sticky paper away from some explorer’s hasty sketch.
“Which only wiggles her hooks in deeper, as far as you’re concerned,” Lynnia said. “You want to believe she knows things nobody else does, because that means she’s who you hope she is.”