“We are at war, however it happened,” she said with silent rage.
“And you’re gonna tell us we shouldn’t be,” Ulmer interrupted, and then abruptly shut up when those flashing eyes fixed on him.And then she was across the room, too fast to track, and in his face.
“What do you take me for, Ulmer, son of Conall—and son of Rudina, too, are you not?Grandson of Lady Randelle,great-grandson of Lady Aylin, and descended from the feared Lady Esmeray—”
“I don’t see what that has to do—”
“Who they say stood her ground at Brunanburgh, when all the men fled.Yes, theyfledthe battleground, torn and bleeding, with their tails between their legs!Yet Esmeray would not yield.No, not an inch, she said, other than the six feet it would take to bury her.That much she would have if nothing else, and she rallied her troops—yes, and more than half of them women!Women who were tired of burying their sons and daughters from the clans the Vikings brought with them, women who were sick of war but knew the needfulness of it, women with their young children behind them—the most dangerous foe on Earth!
“They tore through their enemies with a savagery still whispered about today, like Lia did to that clown Bleddyn tonight.She was Esmeray reborn, defending a cub, while the men stood aside and didnothing—”
“You know why we did not,” Sebastian said quietly, but all that did was to turn her attention on him.
“Yes, I know!And what good did it do?What good has restraint brought us all this time, but bodies on the ground, blood in the sand, and now war in any case!They will bleed us out if we don’t bleed them first, and quickly—”
Ulmer blinked, recognizing an unexpected ally when he saw one.
“—and defend our children!What thought have you given to them, hm?In all this talk of war, these vaunted plans, what thought of them?Who protectsthem?”
Shit.She was right.And I was as guilty as the rest, sitting here reeling from the new reality instead of doing anything useful.
“Call on the Circle,” I said, sitting up.“If they want allies, then they need to be one.And if there is magic on the other side, we must counter it with our own.”
“They’re not going to go after the children—” That was Ulmer.
Who regretted it when Sienna and I both turned on him.“The Black Circlewants something,” I reiterated.“Something they were going to exchange Sebastian for.But if they can’t get to him, how long before someone thinks, what would they give for theirchildren?”
Sienna sucked in a breath, turned, and ran from the room, already yelling for her clan.Sebastian ran after her, and Cyrus, Ulmer, and I just looked at each other.Before I got up and put down the whiskey glass.
Movie night was going to have to wait.
Chapter Six
Oh.God,” I fell into bed, face-first, hours later, and wondered if it was a bad sign that I couldn’t feel it.
I did vaguely feel Cyrus stripping off my boots, the ones I’d taken from the girls’ haul, along with some ridiculously overpriced jeans and a shirt I didn’t know the cost of because they’d wisely taken the tag off before I saw it.Fortunately, no one at the Corps knew a damned thing about fashion, so no one had so much as blinked when I showed up in cowgirl chic, complete with fringed suede jacket, and started demanding help.Help they had most definitelynotwanted to give.
It had been a fight, as our resources were already stretched paper-thin, and it would likely take a few more to cement things.But for the moment, we had Silver Circle war mages crawling all over the five different compounds that Sebastian and Sienna had set up for clan children.They were also being warded all to hell and would have Weres and mages guarding them until we could resolve this, and with five, there was no concentration of all of the kids in one place to draw anyone’s attention.
I hoped it would be enough, but I didn’t know, partly because I couldn’t hold onto a thought for more than five seconds.
“Go to sleep,” Cyrus said, kissing my temple.
It was all he could reach, but I didn’t have the strength to turn over.“’Kay,” I think I managed to mutter.
Then I was out.
The walls were stone or really hard-packed earth.I couldn’t tell which because I couldn’t see them.I could feel, and I could smell, but my eyes returned only boiling darkness, without even a sliver of moonlight.Of course, maybe that was because I was inside—in a cave, by the feel of it—but one with no cracks to allow me to see out.
Just more rough walls, sliding under my fingertips as I slowly felt my way along.Or scratching under them might be more accurate, because I seemed to have super-overgrown, very hard nails.They were scraping up a lot of dust, which wasn’t good, as the air in here was already full of animal droppings, probably from bats.
And wasn’t that all I needed: bats dive bombing me in the darkness, and possibly getting tangled in my hair.I put up a hand defensively, and didn’t encounter smooth, well-conditioned strands, as I’d expected.But something else, something strange…
Dreadlocks?That’s what they were, as far as I could tell, and yes, they were growing out of my skull.Like the smell of unwashed body had my musk underneath it.
I smelled like dirty feet—and dirty everything else.And like I might have been bedding down with some dogs recently, or possibly pigs.Yeah, it had to be pigs; no dog I ever met reeked like that.
My feet were also bare, but the soles were so callused that I hardly noticed the sharp little stones I encountered from time to time.I might as well have had on leather sandals… to match my rags?I seemed to be wearing shreds of animal hide, mostly around my waist, and an excessive number of necklaces on top.
