Wen glanced around once more at the empty countryside. If ever a place was a perfect setting for a trap, this was it, and many an unwary traveler had been seduced to his doom by the appeal of a plausible waif. But the boy looked so small and frail, and there was the slim possibility he was telling the truth. “Indeed, I can set a bone,” Wen said, “and I can make a fire, too. Show me where she is and I’ll have everything sorted out in no time.”
A smile broke through his grimy, tear-streaked face. “You will? Oh, this way, this way!” He scampered off the left edge of the road, through a maze of bushes, toward what looked like a stand of squat trees. Wen followed warily, one hand on her sword.
The boy’s sister was lying on the hard ground without even a blanket to protect her from the dirt. She looked like she might be thirteen or fourteen. Her hair, a darker auburn than the boy’s, spread out in a tangle all around her face, which was pinched and pale. She lay on her side, one leg curled up under her, one stretched out stiffly, as if it hurt. Wen didn’t immediately see any sign of blood, which made the boy’s story even more questionable.
She knelt anyway and put a hand to the girl’s forehead to check for fever. At that instant, the girl’s eyes flicked open, though she didn’t move a muscle of her body. She looked straight at Wen and whispered a single word. “Trick.”
Wen leapt to her feet, pulling blades with both hands, and whirled around seconds before she caught the crunch of feet in the undergrowth. Three bodies came barreling around the scant cover of the short trees. All men, all armed, only one of them big enough to cause her problems. Wen jumped high, kicked the closest one hard in the groin, and used the momentum of that maneuver to launch herself toward his nearest companion. The first man went down grunting, but he’d be on his feet again soon enough. She had to work fast. Midair, she raked her knife across the second man’s throat, deep enough to kill him outright. Landing on her feet, she raised her sword to counter the third man’s assault.
He was the biggest of the three, and he looked slow and stupid. Certainly he hadn’t been prepared for his victim to turn into his attacker. “Back away,” she snarled. “I’d just as soon not cut you down.”
But her voice—or the realization she was a woman—was enough to spark his rage, and he bellowed and lumbered forward, swinging his own sword in a ham-handed arc. It was quickly evident that brute force, not skill, had shaped his method of fighting. All Wen had to do was keep out of his way long enough to stay alive, then dart past his flailing weapon to slice him halfway up his torso. Not a deathblow. Gods, if she could keep from killing anyone else! But enough to slow him down, to scare him, to make him lurch backward and stare down at the blooming red on his filthy shirt.
The first man was on his feet and charging toward her, more lethal than his friend, but still not much of a challenge. A few quick parries, two hard thrusts, and he was yelping with pain and cradling his useless right arm against his chest. The man on the ground never stirred.
“I’ll kill you all,” Wen said in a cold, calm voice, “if that’s what you want.”
The big man stepped forward, stepped back, looked uncertainly at his companion. But this one—a scar-faced fellow with a mean expression—grasped his sword in his left hand and dove for her again. Fury made him sloppier but more dangerous, and Wen backed up a little to keep out of his way. She heard rustling noises behind her and realized that the girl was scrambling out of her path. No broken leg after all, Wen thought, though she had little attention to spare for the young plotters.
The evil-looking man suddenly made a lunge for her. Wen practically rammed her sword against his in a hard parry before driving the tip of her own blade deep into his heart. Surprise loosened his sneering scowl and he made a strange whimpering sound as he collapsed to his knees. Wen wrenched her weapon free and spun around to face the last remaining attacker.
But the big man was staring at her and backing away, waving both hands in front of him as if to head her off. “No, no, no,” he said. “Stay away from me.” And he turned clumsily and went crashing through the bushes, making as much noise as a troop of men. She could still hear him even after she lost sight of him, and then there was the sound of hoofbeats pounding into the dusk. They had horses, then, she thought. Those will come in handy.
Best to make sure the ones she thought were taken care of were really dead. She strode between the bodies, but neither one had a pulse. Her mouth tightened as she wiped her hands clean.
Three fights in the past week. Even by her standards, that was excessive. And this one she hadn’t asked for, though she’d been careless. She’d suspected a trap, but she’d still walked right into it.
She spun around to locate the children, half-expecting them to have fled during the melee. But no, there they were, huddled together in the shadow of one of those small trees, looking worried and frightened. The girl, now standing on her obviously uninjured leg, was almost exactly Wen’s height and just as dirty as her brother.
Wen strode the few steps over to them and glared, hands on her hips. “Now,” she said in a stern voice. “You just tell me about your part in this little drama. Two men dead because of you. Any reason I shouldn’t kill you as well?”
They had no way of knowing that was an idle threat, but the boy, at least, looked unimpressed. “It’s good that they’re dead—both of them!” he blazed, shaking himself free from his sister’s arm. “Howard beat us and Ricky was a terrible man! I would have killed him myself, but Ginny wouldn’t let me.”
The chances of the little scamp killing anyone were absolutely zero, but Wen narrowed her eyes. Had they been accompanying the older men by choice or coercion? “Why were you traveling with them, then?” she asked, keeping her voice stern. “And helping them scam poor travelers? Don’t you think they could have killed me?”
“They would have,” Ginny said calmly. She pushed her auburn hair back out of her face and tried to look mature. It was the way she summoned an expression of dignity that got to Wen. Such an old look on such a young face. “We’ve seen them kill others. We told them we wouldn’t help them, but then they—they—” She fell silent and pressed her lips together.
“They hurt Ginny,” the boy said fiercely.
Wen didn’t even want to know what all the “hurting” had encompassed. “How’d you end up in their care?” she said, making the last word ironic.
“Howard’s our stepbrother,” Ginny said. “Our mother died last year.” She shrugged, letting Wen fill in what detail she wanted. “For a while, Howard took jobs as a driver or a farm worker, but he couldn’t keep them. The last few weeks we’ve mostly been on the road. Like this.”
“This is the worst,” the boy said.
“Like Bryce said,” Ginny added, “it’s good that they’re dead.”
Wen drew a deep breath. “Yes. I suppose it is. Now the question is: What do we do with the two of you?”
Bryce looked up at her expectantly, his big eyes confident. Why is he so sure I’ll help them? Wen thought irritably. But Ginny’s face maintained its sober adult expression.
“We can take care of ourselves,” she said. “Thank you for your assistance but we don’t need you anymore.”
Bryce gave his sister an indignant look. “Yes, we do! We don’t have money, or water, or food, and we don’t know where to go, and—”
“We’ll find our way,” Ginny said in a hard voice.
“Well, you don’t have to,” Wen said briskly. “I’m here, and I’m used to taking over when the situation looks dicey.” Ginny opened her mouth as if to argue, and Wen grinned at her. “Don’t even think about trying to get rid of me,” she advised. “Didn’t you see me take on your stepbrother and those men? Can’t you tell I’m a fighter?”
“We don’t need you,” Ginny repeated.
“Don’t listen to her,” Bryce said. “We really do.”
Wen glanced around. Nothing at the campsite except a couple of dead bodies and one threadbare duffel bag, which probably h
eld everything the siblings owned. “I thought I heard that other fellow ride away,” she said. “Are there more horses? They’d be useful.”
Bryce nodded eagerly. “Two more.” His face fell. “We can’t ride, though.”
“You’ll figure it out quick enough,” she said unsympathetically. “You go get the horses, bring them here. I’ll check these two and see if they’re carrying anything that looks interesting. Then we’ll travel a little way from here and make camp.” It was closing in on night; they’d be doing all this in darkness if they didn’t hurry. She glanced around. “ ’Cause I don’t think any of us wants to try to sleep tonight anywhere close to these fellows.”
“Rather sleep next to them dead than alive,” Bryce muttered.
Ginny hissed at him but he made a face, wholly unrepentant. Wen tried not to grin. “Go get the horses,” she repeated.
As soon as they moved off, Ginny lecturing Bryce in a low voice, Wen bent over the bodies. The weapons weren’t good enough to keep, but one of the men had a purse full of money. Mostly copper coins, a few silver ones. Whether this was the stepbrother or his associate, the money would still serve as something of an inheritance for the orphans, Wen thought. The other one had a few more coins in his pocket, and a belt with a fine silver buckle, worth pawning somewhere. Wen snaked it off his body and rubbed the leather in the grass to clean off the blood.
The children returned in about ten minutes with the horses. Both looked rather the worse for age and ill-treatment, and one of them kept shying at the halter, trying to bite Bryce. Wen sighed silently. She’d have to let one or both of the children ride her own well-mannered gelding while she forced one of these hardmouthed brutes to accept her commands. Tomorrow looked like an even less pleasant travel day than today.
Although today was at least proving to be more interesting than she’d anticipated. She was actually feeling pretty good, she realized. Pleased with herself for effecting another rescue. For having something worthwhile to do. Pleased at the prospect of having company over dinner. Even such miserable company as these two abandoned children.
“How far do you think we need to travel tonight?” Ginny asked in a polite voice. Whoever their mother had been—and however ill-judged her decision to marry Howard’s father—she had tried to instill a sense of manners in her children. Or in her daughter, anyway.
“Not more than half a mile, I’m thinking,” Wen replied. “I just want to get away from the smell of blood and the attention of the predators who will be drawn to it.” She glanced at the horizon, where a thin line of white was the only evidence of differentiation between land and sky. “Better start moving.”
It was a matter of moments for Ginny to retrieve their duffel bag and for Wen to round up her gelding, and then they began a slow procession away from the scene of the attack. Wen didn’t even have to think about it. She headed northwest, retracing her morning’s route. Back toward Forten City. She had no idea what she was going to do with these souls that had fallen under her protection, but surely they had a better chance of survival in the city. She would figure out what to do with them once they arrived.
THEY made camp about twenty minutes later near another one of those stands of stumpy trees. Bryce gathered wood for a fire while Wen unsaddled the horses and started looking through the saddlebags. Three waterskins between them, all full. Excellent. Some packets of rations, though the apples looked wormy and the bread was green. The dried meat still looked decent, though. A few pairs of shirts and trousers that she didn’t even bother to repack. Nobody would ever want to wear those again.
She tossed the saddle blankets to Ginny. “Here. Spread those out. We’ll sleep on top of two and under one, and that’ll keep us warm enough tonight.”
Most of the wood was damp and smoked before it would start, but eventually she had a fire going and food parceled out. Bryce ate so eagerly she started to wonder if his stepbrother had starved him to make him play his part in today’s charade. Ginny, though she appeared to be equally hungry, took daintier bites and had to have second helpings urged on her.
“We have plenty of food, and money to buy more when we get to Forten City,” Wen told her. “Eat as much as you like.”
The girl looked up at that. “We’re going to Forten City?”
Wen took a bite of meat and chewed it carefully before answering. “Any reason we shouldn’t?”
“It’s a pretty big place,” Bryce said. He sounded apprehensive. “We could get lost.”
So they were farm children, used to open spaces and, most likely, hard work. “Well, you won’t get lost while you’re with me,” Wen said. “And I’ll make sure you’re settled somewhere before I go.”
“Go where?” Bryce asked instantly.
Wen took another bite of meat. “Wherever I feel like going.”
“You’re not from Fortunalt, are you?” Ginny asked. “Your accent is funny.”
“Tilt. You ever been that far north?”
Ginny shook her head. “Until our mother died, we’d never been more than five miles from the farm.”
“So I’m guessing you can milk cows, feed animals, work in the garden, all that,” Wen said.
Ginny nodded and Bryce rolled his eyes. “And chop wood and push the plow and catch the pigs if they get out,” he added.
“You think we can find work in Forten City?” Ginny asked. She actually looked hopeful for the first time since Wen had encountered them.
“Not looking like that, you can’t,” Wen said. “But get you a bath and some clean clothes, and I think we could find an establishment to take you in.” She waggled her head from side to side, considering. “The trick will be finding a place that’s honest, where the proprietor won’t take advantage of you—in any way,” she added meaningfully.
“Oh, Bryce will make sure of that,” Ginny said.
That caused Wen’s eyebrows to shoot up to her scalp. “What does that mean?” she asked.
Ginny looked faintly annoyed, as if she wished she hadn’t said anything. “Oh—nothing. He’s just a very good judge of character.”
Wen cut her eyes over toward Bryce, to find him trying to maintain an innocent expression as he munched on an apple. “How good?” she said slowly. “Are you a reader?”
The word hung over the fire for a good long moment before anyone answered. Bryce and Ginny exchanged an extended look, in which he clearly communicated something to her, and reluctantly Ginny nodded. “Yes,” she said.
Wen’s eyebrows were back up near her hairline. A reader could discern what other people were thinking or feeling, no matter how much they tried to conceal. A reader could sort a man’s lies from his true tales or spy a woman’s evil heart behind her compassionate face. Cammon, considered the most gifted reader in Gillengaria, could separate the good from the bad with no effort at all.
It seemed this lost boy could also. “You’re a mystic,” she said slowly.
Ginny looked alarmed—it hadn’t been all that long since mystics were persecuted in Gillengaria, particularly here in the south—but Bryce nodded happily. “My mother never believed me when I said I could tell what people were thinking, but Ginny always did,” he said.
Ginny put her arm around him protectively. “And he’s always right.”
Wen thought it over. “So—when you stopped me on the road this afternoon—”
“I knew you would help us,” Bryce said with energy. “I waited and waited for the right person to come by. There were lots of people who would have stopped, but none of them would have been able to fight off Howard and the others. I knew you would. I knew you wouldn’t hurt us, either.”