appeared, something horrible. Colin had a glimpse of slits of green balefire, scales, and claws like sickles. The man almost managed to scream before his lungs and viscera were spattered across the room. Then the thing turned on Colin, snarling.
“Stop!” a voice shouted, and the daedra stopped, panting.
Arese stood behind him, her eyes wider than he had ever seen them. It made her look very young. The sleeve of her white shirt was soaked in blood, and a red patch on her temple and eye would probably soon prove itself a bruise.
“Hunt and guard,” she told the daedra, and it turned and reluctantly slouched back toward the window.
“How did you-” Arese managed. She was breathing so hard and shallowly it worried him.
“Come here,” he said. “Are you cut anyplace else?”
“I never saw him,” she said, staring down at the body. “Never heard him. I didn’t have time to do anything.”
“Let me look,” he said. “You got your arm up,” he remarked, examining the defensive wound on her wrist. It wasn’t deep.
“I heard a crash, like glass breaking. I guess I threw up my hand when I turned, but he was there already.”
“The crash was me,” Colin said, searching for punctures anywhere vital.
“I don’t understand.”
“I was waiting on the roof across the alley. I saw him come in.”
“He came to kill me.” Her breath was still too quick, and her skin was hot, much hotter than it should be.
“That seems obvious,” he said.
“They would have killed me if not for you.”
“Well, that second guy would have had me,” he said.
“Divines, you’re bleeding everywhere.”
“Nothing serious,” he said. “But speaking of bleeding, your arm-”
She looked at it, then back at him. He realized he had one hand on her shoulder and another on her stomach. He felt her belly quiver, and something happened to her eyes.
Stupid, he thought. This is stupid.
Her skin felt almost molten. She gasped when their lips came together, as if trying to get the air from his lungs. He smelled something like burning cloves and felt a shock of energy race through him like nothing he had ever known before, filling the emptiness left in him from two hard fights with impossible strength. She buried her face in his neck and he in hers, and they went down on the rug in a tangle, both wrestling furiously at ties and buttons.
Slick with blood, the salt from their sweat burned his wounds, but not enough to matter.
Later, much later it seemed, he lay back while she cleaned his wounds, first with warm water and then with a white ointment that left a pleasant warmth behind it and smelled a little like mustard. It did more than feel good; he could see the flesh draw together almost as if stitched. They had moved to her bedroom, where she had laid out a thick cover over her sheets and let him rest stretched out. She sat on the edge of the bed, the skin of her throat and breast like pearl in the moonlight-except for where the streaks of dried blood still clung. “Feel better?” she asked.
“Much,” he said. “Although I have to say, I didn’t feel it that much a little while ago either.”
She looked down. He thought she seemed embarrassed.
“Reaction,” he offered. “When you realize you’ve almost died, sometimes-you know.”
She shook her head. “When I summon daedra, I have to touch them with my mind. I have to be strong enough to keep them from turning on me. Daedra are-violent, passionate. Sometimes I feel something of what they do.” She looked away. “I think-” She shook her head and dabbed at the cut on his chest. “It’s also been a long time, for me. I haven’t felt I could trust anyone enough to-do that. I haven’t felt secure enough.”
“And you trust me?”
She smiled. “No. But-” She smiled. “Reaction. And there is something about you.” She cocked her head. “You’ve no reason to trust me either, I know. I’ve given you every reason not to. But I’m just trying to get through this. Alive. And sometimes it doesn’t seem worth the cost.”
“Cost?”
“This isn’t a life, Colin. I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve been a spy in Hierem’s ministry since I was twenty-one. I’ve been with one other person in that time, and it was a disaster. I work, and I fear, and sometimes I do awful things. I have drinks with my sister for an hour or two most evenings and come home. I can’t talk to her about what I do. She stays out, gambles, goes for rides in the country, has affairs. I’m careful. I protect myself. And now I’m going to die anyway.”
“They failed,” he pointed out.
“But someone sent them, probably one of my rivals or Hierem himself. They’ll send more. I’ve made a mistake somewhere-probably to do with those two on the island. They know.” She lifted his hand and kissed it. “You’re very young,” she said. “You can get out of this. You should. I won’t stop you.”
“Are you giving up?” he asked.
“No. No, I can’t do that. But I don’t have to pull you down with me.”
He sighed. “I was in this already,” he said. “I have to-I have to do something right. Do you understand?”
“You did something right tonight,” she said. “You saved my life. Can’t that be enough?”
“Not if you die tomorrow.”
“We all die. You gave me at least a day more than I would have had. And not a bad one.”
“It’s not enough,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s just not.”
“Don’t get angry,” she said.
“I’m not,” he replied.
“You sound it.”
“Okay,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m not, though.” But he was, wasn’t he?
She didn’t say anything, but then he felt a tender kiss, just at the edge of his lips.
“It doesn’t have to be rough,” she said. “I can be gentle.”
He thought of the two men she had killed on the island, of the many who had perished in that house he had followed her to. He thought about the assassin he had just slaughtered, and realized he felt nothing.
He kissed her, and outside the night birds sang as if everything were normal, quiet, and in its place.
SIX
“Halt here,” Captain Falcus shouted. “Brennus, Mazgar-take three more and check out the village.”
“On it, Captain,” Mazgar said, trying to keep the fatigue out of her voice. Then realizing she’d spoken out of turn, she looked to Brennus.
“I’m not trained for this,” Brennus said. “We both know that. You choose.”
She nodded. “Merthun, Tosh, Na-Nasha, come on.”
The others were as weary as she, and in fact she was beginning to worry about Brennus. He was a scholar, not a warrior or battlemage, although his skills had saved her a few times in the past weeks. But he didn’t have the constitution or the training for this sort of forced march, and it was starting to show.
They had managed to fight their way through the southern end of the encirclement on the ridge, but none of the horses had survived and they had lost almost half their number. Since then they had been able to keep ahead of the undead creatures, but only by pushing themselves to their limits. What provisions they had were now gone, and they couldn’t stop to hunt or fish, because the band that attacked them wasn’t alone; it was part of a massive wave moving across the mountains into Cheydinhal County.
They half trotted, half stumbled down the hill to the village, if village was even the word for ten houses
