“You and Ben should wear them,” I said practically.“There is no chance any Sooth from the prison touched Grant or I.Besides, if I wear that, I cannot use my abilities and we may miss a timely warning.”
She nodded slowly.She surveyed the rest of the talismans, her thoughts clearly at silent war.“Also… If these new talismans work like your coin, they could make you worse.”
“They may,” I admitted.”
“Ben and I take them, then.Now, what about these?”Mary reached for another talisman, this one embossed with a woman’s face, eyes closed.The moment she wrapped her fingers fully around it, she stilled, and her eyes flew wide.I instinctively peered into the Dark Water.I could still see her, and the coin was teal, matching Mary’s own glow.
Mary choked and dropped the coin.“I couldn’t sing,” she whispered, fear creeping into her eyes.“But what use is that?Why would the guards wear that?”
I held out a hand and she relinquished the Stormsinger talisman.
“Try to sing now.Direct your winds against me.”
Mary lowered her chin and let out a slow breath.Then she sang a few, wordless notes.
The air in the room moved, rustling her skirts and whooshing up the chimney.But it did not touch me.I was protected, alone in an eddy of calm.
“The Mereish have talismans to protect themselves from mages,” Mary breathed.“How is that possible?How could we not know?Our peoples have been at war for centuries.If they had this kind of knowledge, surely we wouldknow.”
I rubbed at my throat, stretching my jaw in the vain hope that it would ease the resurging pain in my head.“It must be a recent discovery.Or they have hidden it very, very well.”
“Another secret the Ess Noti would kill for?”Mary murmured, her eyes scanning the rest of the satchel’s contents.She reached for one of the lead balls marked with a blue splotch of paint.She closed her fingers around it and opened her lips.
Her voice came out, but the air in the room did not stir, and the soothing wash I usually felt when she sang did not come.
When Mary’s eyes met mine, the horror in her gaze was matched by the dread in mine.
“It’s not just the coins,” she whispered.“If I was shot with one of these, when we were under attack… I’d lose my power.”
“Until it was taken out,” I theorized.
Together, we stared down at the table.But I hardly saw its contents anymore.I saw possibilities and futures, a shift in the balance of power on the Winter Sea.If the Mereish could nullify our mages, if they could hide theirs in the Other… it was an advantage too massive to contemplate.
“We have to tell someone,” Mary murmured, lifting her dread-filled eyes back up to mine.“We have to get back toHart.”
TWENTY-ONE
The Highwayman and the Hounds
MARY
Iawoke to the smell of bread and a warm back against mine.I lay facing the smoldering fire across a thick, old carpet and smooth stone floor, a cushion embroidered with Mereish patterns beneath my head.Beyond the shutters and the murky glass of the windows, I saw nothing but darkness.It wasn’t yet dawn.
I turned my head, expecting to find the shaggy dog lying behind me.Instead I found Sam, his face turned away and buried in another cushion.Even separated by layers of clothing and blankets as we were, his closeness made my thoughts scatter.Instinct told me to roll over, to slip my arm around his chest and bury my face in his back.It urged me to do far more than that.
But a sick feeling lingered in my stomach.As the haze of sleep and the consolation of Samuel’s closeness faded, I remembered our situation in all its hopeless complexity.
Us, hunted.The Mereish in possession of staggering new magecraft.Hartwaylaid and us trapped in our enemy’s heartland.
Tane, how are we going to survive this?
Her answer was a wordless nudge of consolation, but she made no platitudes.
I sat up sharply as a door opened and a sizzling filled the air.A woman bustled in, her eyes dim and her hands holding a cast-iron pan with a wad of cloth.She set it on the dining table, where anoil lamp already burned.She left without casting us so much as a glance.
I looked to Benedict.He was still in his chair, his eyes open and his shirt unfastened to reveal a new Sooth talisman hanging against his own bruised skin.Its twin was warm against my own chest, hidden under my clothes.
The Magni’s emotionless, weary gaze dropped to me.“She won’t remember us,” he promised, his voice overloud in the still house.“She thinks she’s dreaming.Go back to sleep; I will wake you all when breakfast is ready.”
