After a few more minutes of useless staring, Mitch picked up the basket. “We can’t linger forever. The ice gives you an excuse for being later than normal, but it won’t cover too much time.”
A sigh inflated, then deflated Tasia’s form. “We will have to figure out what to do while we walk.”
And so they did.
The pair quickly determined that more information was needed. Mitch would use his wolf form to spy on Granny’s cottage after the delivery. If they were lucky, the crone talked to herself loudly and they could learn everything they needed to know in a few minutes. He doubted it would work that way, but Tasia needed to hope.
Mitch didn’t want her anywhere near the cottage while he was sniffing out information, but her ability to get lost faster than rabbits reproduce made him hesitate. Tasia, naturally, had full confidence in her abilities to get most of—if not all of—the way home. The eventual compromise was that Tasia would stop and find a safe place to hole up as soon as she didn’t recognize her surroundings. In his wolf form, Mitch could track her with ease, and he promised to come for her before full dark.
At the cottage of the gray-haired evil one, they split. Tasia flounced her way to the front while a wolfed-out Mitch slunk around to the back. Moments after getting into position, the wind shifted. Every bit of his hair stood on end before his mind caught up and recognized the new scent: Olev Rebane was nearby.
Everything in Mitch screamed at him to remove Tasia from the premises, but it was too late. He could hear the front door opening and just make out the pleasantries the two ladies exchanged. Or rather, Tasia maintained her usual cheer, greeting the old lady, who did little more than grunt. Pride for Tasia’s coolheadedness swelled in his chest, fighting for space with the growing fear.
“Who’s at the door?” an unseen man demanded. The grim voice confirmed what Mitch’s nose already knew. Rebane.
Granny snorted. “Just my delivery girl. After I pay her, you can get on with your reason for interrupting my peaceful afternoon.”
Mitch tried to guess what was going on from the sounds, but apart from the footsteps, the rustling was too generic. He did hear the clink of coins moments before the front door opened and Tasia accepted her compensation.
“N—” Rebane’s word cut off.
Mitch suspected Granny had something to do with that, because a few moments later, she moved away from the front of the cottage and closer to the window he was hiding under, then spoke, “She’s gone.”
“Estutu is feeling pressure to make up the numbers since Pozik’s route was blown up. And when Estutu is pressured,Iam pressured. You won’t like how I deal with pressure,” the dark voice threatened.
“Oh, hush,” Granny scoffed. “I have socks that are older and scarier than you.”
Mitch imagined Rebane’s scowl was etched pretty deep at that sentiment. The man had never taken well to being anything less than the most intimidating person in the room.
Granny continued, “I have three more deliveries before the winter dance in Boschivo. With that amount, we can subdue the whole village from here to the markets. That should make up for the shortfall.”
Another beat of silence that Mitch wished he could witness. There was no way he would endanger Tasia by poking his nose above the window ledge, though.
“The whole village?” Rebane sounded uncertain, and a cushion squeaked. “How are you going to explain a whole village disappearing overnight?”
“With fire,” Granny answered with eerie calm. The clink of porcelain suggested she was having tea.
Mitch heard nothing for a long moment.
“You idiot. Do I have to explain everything?” Pure scorn dripped from her words, tainted with anger. Her next clink was more of a crack. “My thugs are ensuring that the whole village will go up in flames after the dance. Our village informant will doctor the punch or what-have-you with filemu; we’ll round everyone up, start marching them south, and the evidence will go up in flames. Boschivo has been having quarterly dances for decades. It will be tragic that a fire started at the dance and left no survivors, but nobody nearby will question it.”
“Ah.” Rebane switched tactics. “Why are you involving an outsider?” he demanded.
“I’ve had eyes on me for a while now. But no one pays any attention to that twit. In fact, they go out of their way to ignore her.”
“A win for us.” To Mitch, it sounded like Rebane was trying to reclaim the authority he thought he had possessed when he waltzed through Granny’s door. She wasn’t inclined to let him keep any.
“Tell Pozik to be ready for the influx. Depending on our rate of travel, we should be able to hit the Diomland markets by the second month of winter.”
“Provided the snows—” Rebane cleared his throat. “Right. You have the resources to deal with snow.”
“Indeed.”
Rebane responded to the ice in her reply by standing up and taking his leave. Mitch hunkered down in the shadows at the base of the wall and waited until he was sure that the villain had left and that Granny wasn’t going to start recapping her full plans aloud as Tasia had hoped. When he felt safe doing so, he crept away.
The restraint he displayed while putting sufficient distance between himself and the cottage exacerbated his anxiety about returning to Tasia’s side. Revealing his presence—or worse,leading their enemies to Tasia—was undesirable in every way, but his heart pumped with a ferocity that made not running the hardest thing he could remember doing.
In the safety of the trees, he allowed himself to pick up the pace. Tasia’s scent soothed him as he followed it away from Granny’s and into the woods. Despite her assurances, the inattentive girl had not walked in the correct direction for more than a few minutes. Her scent trail veered off-course toward a section of the forest that Mitch knew contained some steep drop-offs. Visions of finding her broken body at the bottom of one of these had him almost sprinting. Only the topography of the landscape and the hidden patches of ice kept him to a reasonable pace.
