I’ve changed so much, so fast, but now isn’t the time for self-reflection. Not with bounty hunters approaching.
Elianna makes a frustrated sound. “I might recover my magic with the amulet!”
“You’ve been riding with me—with the amulet—all this time. Don’t you think that Artemisen would have restored your magic by now if she wanted to do so?” I flinch at the cruelty in my words, but I don’t hold back. I’m not giving up the amulet now, not after what I went through to get here.
Not after what Artemisen said to me.
If Elianna wanted the amulet so badly, she should have tried to ward it so she could carry itbeforeputting my life in danger.
Before Lil died.
“Soli, I—”
“Shh!” Riders arrive at our camp, with Kaelen and Andras in thelead. They look like any other travelers, if rougher and dressed in shoddier clothes. “How did Bern know they were bounty hunters?”
My question is answered seconds later, when a wagon carrying a large wooden cage, thankfully empty of starving or battered prisoners, rolls in behind the newcomers. The sight of it buries my curiosity beneath a wave of fear. These men have the legal right to take me prisoner, all because of the brand on my wrist.
I hear the rustle of cloth and glance back to see Elianna wrapping a shawl tightly around her neck, where the highest tendrils of her Guild markings show.
“You’re welcome to share our fire,” Kaelen calls out to the newcomers in his merchant voice. “We have little in the way of food. We were about to hunt for some game when we met you.”
“Don’t want your food,” an enormous man riding the lead horse says, his voice a harsh rumble. “Won’t mind looking at what else you got. Particularly in that wagon. Must be good cargo to risk a fancy man such as yourself riding through these parts.”
Kaelen urges River into a tight turn and stops, facing the man and blocking his path to the wagon. Protecting Elianna and me.
“I don’t think you want to try that,” Kaelen says lightly. “It won’t go well for you. Why don’t you and yourfriendsmove along?”
The man, clad in all black, his shirt unbuttoned over his large, hairy belly, shakes his long, greasy hair out of his face and knees his horse forward. “A pretty boy like you isn’t about to stop me. There’s a dozen of us, and only five of you.”
“Five?” Elianna whispers from right next to me, where she’s peering out a small hole in the canvas.
“He’s right,” I whisper back. “Where’s Sergeant Neville?”
But the man is still talking. “And now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings. I’m afraid we’ll have to take that sweet little thing with us to make me feel better.”
My mouth falls open. Is he talking about Bern? But—
No.This fool just called Chitai a “sweet little thing,” because he’s staring right at her with a sly grin on his scraggly-bearded face.
Chitai smiles, her eyes wide, and then clasps her hands beneath herchin and flutters her eyelashes. “Oh! Will you? I’ve been so longing for a man who stinks like a Khyrran warthog to rescue me from my life of independence.”
It’s not until Andras barks out a laugh that the man realizes she’s mocking him, but then he throws his head back and roars. “Kill them all, men! But keep that woman alive. Somebody in the city will pay good coin for her.”
After that, everything happens at once, and all of it isloud. The warthog man pulls an axe out of a sheath on his saddle and spurs his horse toward Kaelen, who races at him, sword in hand.
Andras fires arrow after arrow at the bounty hunters. Trick fights hand to hand with one of the men, and Chitai is a whirlwind of flying daggers and gleaming white teeth bared in a joyous expression. She races to intercept the leader, takes a flying leap into the air, and lands on her feet directly behind him on the horse. She slams a length of cord down in front of him, pulls it tight around his neck, and twists.
The man bellows and tries to fight her off, but it’s hard to get leverage when a warrior of the Dawn is choking the life out of you with a garrote. The man throws his body to the side, taking them both down to the ground, hard, but Chitai holds on, shouting something in a language I don’t know.
“Soli!” Elianna hisses, and I realize I was so focused on Chitai I forgot to watch for danger coming at us from other directions. A thuggish man with one ear missing and a nasty, nearly toothless grin is climbing into the wagon from the back.
“Stay down,” I tell her, then jump over her to put myself between Elianna and the intruder. My knife is more of a defense than the little magic she still possesses.
My hand shakes, but I raise the dagger and point it at him, so I give myself credit, thinking wildly that Captain Wavedancer would be impressed.
“Don’t even try it,” I tell him, but he laughs at me.
“You—” An expression of profound disbelief crosses his dirty face, and he looks down at his chest, where the tip of a sword protrudes from his heart. He gurgles and chokes, blood spurts from his mouth, and thenhe falls forward, his eyes going wide and blank.
