His hands went right through it, the magic continuing into the darkness and vanishing.
“Huh.”
He looked up to see Kard watching him.
“So, you can’t touch magic,” the El-Spehari noted. “But you can see it.”
Kard shifted. Something changed and he was suddenly blurry. Teer blinked a few times to try and stave off the discomfort.
“I can still see you,” he told Kard. “You’re blurry, it hurts my head, but I can see you.”
“Which I knew, but you still shouldn’t,” Kard replied. “Anyone else, even a Spehari, would see a Merik man right now. I keep my own features unless I think I’m in real danger, but I darken my skin and hide my ears.
“I am not Spehari and I have no desire to draw the attention they do,” he said quietly. “Were someone to figure what I truly am, the Inquisition would follow within tendays.”
The campfire was silent. Teer wasn’t sure what to say to that. He appeared to be able to see right through Spehari tricks and to see their magic working. He wasn’t sure how useful that was going to be—unless Spehari came after his new master.
“Can you see this?” Kard asked. He gestured toward a spot by the fire. Sparks of white light flashed across the air, taking a vague shape in the air roughly a yard high.
“I can see that there is a thing there,” Teer said slowly. “Four legs, a yard high. A big dog, maybe? But all I see is a shape in white sparks.”
The shape bounded over to Kard in a way that made the dog guess more solid. The El-Spehari touched the illusion, his face softer in the mixed light from the fire and the one moon that was up.
“Berk was my dog growing up,” he murmured. “Gift from my father. I thought he was the best companion a boy could ask for—my father thought he was fantastic security for his investment.”
The white shape vanished.
“You resist mind trickery and you ignore illusions,” Kard observed. “I figure you’d still burn if I threw fire at you, but that’s not a thing we’re going to test. You see what others don’t. I figure it stretches more than we can tell right now, but that’s enough for tonight.
“It’s been a long day and tomorrow will be longer. Can Star take it?”
“She’s in good health and well fed; she’s just used to herding cattle,” Teer replied. “I think she can do it. I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“If she needs to stop, we stop,” Kard promised. “We don’t have spare horses, which means Star and Clack are worth more to us than catching Boulder before he moves on. We can catch up to the brigand so long as our horses are with us.
“Lose the horses and we’re heartbroken and stuck.”
10
Odar was too small to be a full wardtown. There was no wardstone to guard the town against inclement weather. No defensive shield that could turn aside arrows and gunfire at the command of a Wardkeeper.
It was a tiny village, barely bigger than the compound at Hardin’s Ranch.
“I don’t see any farms around here and this isn’t even good ranching country,” Teer said as they rode toward the settlement. “I see…a tavern and a dozen boardinghouses. What do these people do?”
“You’re looking at the hills with the wrong eye,” Kard told him, his blurry illusion back in place. “The scrub and such around here is crap for cattle but perfect for sheep. This is shepherd country, Teer. Odar does some business as a supply point for them, but they’ll take their sheep up to Carlon to sell. That’s a proper wardtown with a proper stockyard.”
“So, it’s a just a supply point?”
“No. Odar’s a mining town,” the bounty hunter replied. “The rivers in these hills run with gold and redcrystal. Every few turnings, one of them strikes it rich. The rest of the time, the diggers and panners find enough gold and redcrystal to keep themselves in liquor.”
He snorted cynically.
“And to make the exchange who buys their finds and the saloon that sells their liquor rich,” he concluded. “Come on. Doka works out of the saloon. She’s supposed to be waiting for me, but… Ahh, you’ll see.”
That wasn’t reassuring—but what about Teer’s new life was?
He urged Star up to speed after Kard and Clack as the gelding trotted down Odar’s sad excuse for a main street. He saw the exchange at the end of the road now. It had been hidden behind one of the ramshackle three-story log boarding houses.
It was a low-slung stone-and-brick building, as solidly built as the Wardkeeper’s jail in Alvid. He figured it had vaults instead of cells, but it also had something Komo’s jail generally hadn’t had: obvious armed guards.
Two men with repeaters flanked the door, and a third guard was on the roof.
“Unless it’s changed, the exchange is run by a Rolin named Iko,” Kard told him. “Unless someone has killed them in the last tenday, this is their town. Nobody fucks with Iko or their people. That includes us.”
There was shouting from the saloon as they drew closer, and Kard sighed.
“It might, however, not include Doka,” he noted. “It’s just that no one who knows her actually takes it seriously.”
A figure went flying through the saloon doors a moment later. A second figure followed a moment later—and then a third, much smaller person walked through the doors behind the flying debris.
“Doka tol’ you and Doka tol’ you,” she barked at the men on the ground. “Doka like to say yes, but if Doka say no, you fucking listen.”
The woman was blue. That caught Teer’s attention more than anything else. Doka’s face was a pale blue color and her braided hair was a deep black that shone purple in the afternoon sun.
Teer was rapidly aware that the blue color continued down onto the stranger’s chest as well, as she wore what appeared to be a fitted corset under a fringed leather jacket. The garment was
