Blood Challenge

THIRTEEN

THE moon’s lumpy face beamed down on the land in its remote, silvery way, making Arjenie think of that “from a distance” song. Maybe things on Earth looked just fine from 238,857 miles away.

Actually, it was closer to 233,814, though that figure might be imprecise. She’d done the calculation herself a couple years ago because the other figure was the center-to-center distance between Earth and its satellite, and she’d been curious about the surface-to-surface distance. She’d used the equatorial dimensions of both bodies to keep things simple, so …

So she was distracting herself with trivia again. Not that the distance between Earth and the moon was trivial, but it was not relevant.

Arjenie took a deep breath and opened her car door. The dome light did not come on, and she congratulated herself for remembering to remove the bulb. Lights could be seen much farther away than her Gift could operate, which was why she’d driven the last few miles without headlights.

Tonight’s mission would not be nearly as scary as visiting Dya had been, she assured herself. This time the worst-case scenario didn’t involve anyone killing her.

Though it might involve someone seeing her. She hoped—no, she believed, as firmly as she could manage—that last night’s big, beautiful wolf had gotten away unscathed. Which meant he might be around to see her tonight. Which would be bad, but much better than him not being around at all anymore.

All that determined believing contributed to her thudding heart as she grabbed the tool belt she’d bought that afternoon and got out.

The tool belt went around her waist—or her hips, really, since even the smallest size was a bit large for her. She wiggled her hips, making sure nothing clinked or rattled. Then she reached into her left pocket and withdrew the smaller vial.

It held a tablespoon of clear liquid. Arjenie tugged off the stopper and downed that tablespoonful in one gulp. No taste, no scent—it was like thick water.

She didn’t experience a thing. Dya had told her she wouldn’t. Still, she lifted an arm and sniffed her hand, then under her arm. No change that she could tell. She’d just have to trust that the potion did what Dya said it would. Her Gift would let her go unnoticed, but she needed the potion to keep from leaving her scent on things.

Then she reached into the car for one last tool: a cane.

Arjenie hated the cane. She had one at home, but it spent almost all the time in the back of her closet. She’d long since resigned herself to the clunky orthopedic shoes, but the cane felt like an accusation, an exclamation point at the end of Oh, no, I did it to myself again! But her ankle hadn’t stopped aching since she took that tumble last night. She’d kept it elevated, she’d used a healing cantrip, she’d alternated hot and cold packs. Still it complained, even when wrapped snugly in an elastic bandage.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t wait for it to quit fussing. Her life might not be on the line, but other lives were. That’s what Dya said, and Arjenie trusted her. Not that she thought Dya had been utterly and completely honest. Arjenie suspected Dya’s life was more at risk than she admitted, and there was so much Dya hadn’t told her. But Dya wouldn’t trick her.

Sometimes the best outcome was no noticeable outcome at all. She’d go in, do what she came here for, and nothing would happen.

With that goal firmly in mind, Arjenie and her cane and her complaining ankle set off down the road to Nokolai Clanhome.

The road hadn’t been resurfaced recently, and that was a blessing. The gravel was mostly packed into the ground. She still made some noise as she walked, but hopefully anyone close enough to hear would be within range of her Gift. But lupi hearing was terribly acute. She didn’t know precisely how acute because they’d never let anyone study them that way—and she couldn’t really blame them, given the history between lupi and humans. But it would be interesting to find out.

Only not tonight. Tonight she’d settle for ignorance on her own part as long as it meant ignorance on their part, too.

The air was crisp, the sky cloudless, and her ankle hurt.

Two miles. That’s not so far, she told herself. She might be clumsy, but she was fit. Two miles to the entrance, then another mile or so to her target. If she hadn’t turned her ankle last night, that would be a breeze. It was still doable. Pain was a familiar sparring partner. It might make her cry, but it didn’t stop her.

She was a little worried about the walk back, though.

Nokolai Clanhome covered three hundred forty-nine acres of rough terrain. Fortunately, she didn’t have to hike up and down all that terrain. The road ran right up to her target. Unfortunately, she couldn’t just drive up. Even if her Gift were strong enough to make an entire car impossible to notice, the glass in the windows would blow that plan. Glass impeded magic—Arjenie’s magic, anyway.

Focus Fire, stop Air, seal Water, open Earth. Her feet kept time with the little ditty she’d learned when she was five years old.

Like many mnemonics, it wasn’t strictly accurate. Useful when one was first learning the Craft, she supposed, but not accurate. Glass did magnify some aspects of Fire magic, like precognition, which was sometimes linked to Fire. Some practitioners with that Gift found crystal balls helpful in clarifying the information they received. But others didn’t, and some types of Fire magic were unaffected by glass. Uncle Hershey said glass had no impact either way on his ability to call fire.

Then there was Air. Arjenie’s Gift was tied to Air, and glass didn’t stop her magic. It interfered. The closer the glass, the greater the interference. If she used her Gift while standing right next to a window, for example, she’d get a dreadful headache and lousy results. If she were foolish enough to use her Gift while actually touching a big plate glass window, she’d black out.

So would anyone within twenty feet of her. She knew that because she was foolish sometimes … but she’d wanted to know. And she’d only tried it that once.

The mnemonic was right about Earth and Water, though. Glass was open to Earth magic—it had no effect at all. And glass did seal Water. That’s why most potions were kept in glass bottles. Potions drew on lots of different energies, but they used Water magic to hold their action in potential.

Arjenie’s fingers brushed the lump in the pocket of her jacket. The reminder of Dya made her heart ache and started her mind down another worry-path.

Arjenie did not understand Binai ethics, but she knew contracts were their high holy writ. Violations of contractual obligations were far more serious than, say, killing someone you didn’t know. Killing a relative was murder, but otherwise, the morality of murder depended on the context—and the contract.

Dya was risking a contract violation by sending Arjenie here. She said Friar was violating Queens’ Law. Normally Queens’ Law only applied to the sidhe realms, not to Earth—but Dya said it applied to her even here because it was in her contract. She could not be tasked with or coerced or tricked into violating Queens’ Law.

Robert Friar had tricked her. Maybe. Probably.

Dya had overheard something. That’s all Arjenie knew, but whatever Dya had heard, it had shaken her badly enough to risk breaking contract. Of course, if she was right, Friar had already broken contract and she was off the hook on that score. Breaking Queens’ Law invalidated any contract.

Queens’ Law. The words sent cold tingles along Arjenie’s spine. Dya had reason to be shaken, and Arjenie had reason to be hobbling down a dark road well after midnight, doing who knew how much damage to her ankle.

Arjenie was leaning on the cane a lot more by the time she neared the gate. It was the kind made from pipes, and it was closed. Beside it stood a young man in cutoffs with a rifle slung over one bare shoulder.

Arjenie took a deep breath, pulled harder on her Gift, and kept going. The young man didn’t notice her, not even when she climbed up awkwardly on the gate, careful not to let the tools in her tool belt clang against it. Her Gift would probably keep him from noticing sounds, but probably wasn’t good enough.

She swung a leg over and clambered back down. Success. She grinned at herself, at the young man who didn’t know she was there, and limped forward.

A wolf stepped out of the scrub beside the road. He looked right at her.

Arjenie froze. He was much more silvery than last night’s wolf. And he wasn’t looking at her, she realized with a rush of relief. In her direction, yes, but his gaze was focused a little to one side. Maybe at the guard?

Still, she didn’t move as he trotted up the road toward her … and on past. Her heart pounded so hard she was almost sick from it. But he did pass.

She looked over her shoulder, curiosity temporarily defeating fear. Sure enough, the wolf went right up to the young man, who made some kind of sign with his hands. The wolf shook his head. The man made another sign. The wolf nodded and set off along the fence.

Whew. Dya’s potion must have worked. Obviously she hadn’t left any scent on the gate.

Arjenie’s hands were shaking as she started moving again. Maybe not just her hands. Excess adrenaline was a lot like sheer terror in that way.

The rest of her mission was anticlimactic. She didn’t see anyone as she trudged down the road, and the only wolves she heard were yodeling at each other up in the mountains. The cluster of houses and a few commercial buildings that she thought of as Nokolai Village lay about three miles beyond the gate, but her target was quite a bit closer. There was one largish dwelling she’d have to pass, however.

The largish building was dark when she reached it, as it should be at this hour. Her heart beat a little faster as she walked by, but no one stirred. About forty feet beyond it she spotted the twin ruts of the trail she needed.

In the end, she didn’t need any of the tools she’d brought, not even the penlight. She had unusually good night vision, and with the moon so near to full she had no trouble finding the wellhead.

Nokolai had multiple wells—probably three, according to the expert she’d consulted. She’d only had time to locate the most recent well, drilled after the state began requiring permits. But Nokolai had a large water tank, easily spotted on the aerial photos. That tank supplied the forty-two houses and six other buildings in its central village. It, in turn, was supplied by all the wells.

In other words, she didn’t have to find and dose all the wells. Whatever she put in one would mingle with water from the others before reaching the houses.

Had the man Friar sent here emptied his vials into a single well, or had he poured them into the water tank? It probably didn’t matter, but she’d never been good at not thinking about something once it caught her interest. Friar’s agent had had a potion like hers to nullify his scent, but he couldn’t have gone unseen the way Arjenie did. There was no such thing as an invisibility potion. How had Friar’s agent snuck around without being spotted?

Very likely he’d put the potion in one of the other wells, she decided. This one would have been hard for him to reach without being seen, and the tank was way too exposed. But he’d had a lot more time than she had to do his research. He’d probably found a well he could approach more secretively.

She lowered herself to the ground beside the wellhead. Her ankle throbbed once, hard, as if surprised by the sudden lack of weight grinding down on it. Then the pain gentled. She smiled in relief.

The cap was right where she’d been told it would be, sticking out of the seal. “People have to chlorinate the water, yaknowwhatImean?” the driller she’d spoken with had told her. That’s how he said it, with the words melted into a single blob. “Got to keep it simple for folks, yaknowwhatImean? Unscrew the cap, pour in the chlorine. That’s it.”

Sure enough, that’s all Arjenie had to do. Unscrew the cap, pour in the potion.

This potion was in a larger vial. There was roughly a cup of highly viscous fluid, more like a murky gel. Arjenie’s human nose picked up a faint scent when she removed the stopper. Something similar to cloves, yet not cloves.

It smelled like Dya. Arjenie leaned forward carefully. Dya had warned her not to get any of the potion on her skin. Though it worked best if taken internally, it was extremely potent. Getting even the teeniest bit on her skin would undo the potion she’d taken earlier.

That’s what tonight was for—undoing. Making sure things didn’t happen.

“But, Dya,” Arjenie had said when she heard what Dya wanted her to do, “won’t Friar blame you when nothing happens?”

“I do not wish to insult your world, but people here are very ignorant. After I became suspicious, I chastised Friar about chlorine.”

Arjenie had blinked. “Chlorine?”

Dya had chuckled. “You are not so ignorant as he, little fox. I wished him to believe this chlorine might interfere with my potions. He had not told me that you people put it in your water here, you understand, and so I suggested that if the potions did not work, it was his fault for not informing me of the chlorine. He will be angry when nothing happens, for that is his nature. He will not think I have acted against him.”

“Couldn’t you just … well, instead of going through all this with the antidote—”

“It is not an antidote, Arjenie. It is an undoer.”

“Okay, but wouldn’t it have been simpler to just make the potions a little bit wrong, so they didn’t work?”

Dya had been silent for a long moment, then said softly, “I did not like Friar’s purpose, but it is not for me to approve or disapprove of the use to which my work is put. I did as I was bid. When I heard … when I began to suspect …” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Queens’ Law, Arjenie. If Friar violates it, then so must my lord be doing, also. He loaned me to Friar. He must know, but it—it is a very large thing to suspect one’s lord of such evil.”

“You haven’t told me which Queens’ Law Friar is messing with.”

“Do not ask.”

And that’s all Dya would say about it. Don’t ask.

Sidhe had many realms and many rulers, but only two queens: Winter and Summer. The Two Queens didn’t bother with many laws, but those few covered some terrible ground. Eledan had told her about Queens’ Law. He was supposed to have come back and explained those Laws more fully once she was adult, but he never had. Very likely he’d forgotten. His notions of fatherhood were extremely casual.

What Queens’ Law was she upholding tonight? Arjenie wanted to know and she didn’t, and on a personal level that sucked. But given the overall potential for ghastliness, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was stopping Friar. She poured the undoer into the opening, holding it tipped and steady as it slowly glug-glugged out and down.

She sighed, reinserted the stopper, and screwed the cap back in place. Done.

Now she just had to get herself out of here.

Arjenie knew how much her ankle hurt. She didn’t realize until she struggled to her feet how tired she was. Now that she’d accomplished her mission, exhaustion seemed to radiate out from her bones.

She hadn’t had much sleep last night, but she’d never needed as much sleep as most people did. Losing an hour or two didn’t affect her much. No, this kind of blood-and-bone tired had little to do with sleep, and everything to do with her Gift.

Like most Gifted, Arjenie could use outside sources to power a spell or a charm, but she couldn’t power her Gift itself that way. Unlike the other Gifted she knew, however, she could draw power directly from another source if she had to: her own body.

There was, of course, a price for that.

Arjenie dug into one of the pouches on her tool belt, but instead of a screwdriver she pulled out a candy bar. She wasn’t hungry, but experience had taught her that her body’s signals could not be trusted when she’d pushed herself too far. She needed fuel. Sugar first, then some jerky for the protein, then more sugar. By then, hopefully, she’d be back at her car and could drink the Coke she’d left there. That ought to get her back to her hotel, where she could crash safely.

Judging by how tired she was now, with roughly three miles still to walk and all of that spent drawing strongly on her Gift, the crash was going to be bad this time.

Couldn’t be helped. She peeled back the paper, bit, and chewed as she started back down the ruts that led to the main road.

Would it last two days? Three? She took another bite of chocolate. Could well be the latter. That wouldn’t be a problem as far as work went—she’d taken a full week off, and had warned her boss that she wouldn’t be checking e-mail or voice mail very often. Aunt Robin, though … if her aunt called and couldn’t reach Arjenie, she’d worry. And she’d probably call. Aunt Robin’s trouble radar was uncanny.

Best to call her on the way to the hotel, Arjenie concluded glumly, and warn her that a crash was imminent. She’d get a lecture, but that was better than upsetting her aunt. Not that she could tell Aunt Robin—or Uncle Clay, or Uncle Ambrose, or Uncle Nate, or Uncle Stephen, or any of her cousins—why she’d abused her Gift tonight.

Are most adventures like this? she wondered as she reached the road. Lots of preparation and worry, a distracting level of pain, not much happening for long stretches of time, and a whole litter of complications to deal with afterward.

Still, she’d been lucky. Also clever, and she gave herself credit for that, but luck had surely played a big part. And now that it was over, she could admit that she’d liked parts of her adventure. She did enjoy sneaking around. That was no news flash. How could someone with her Gift not develop a love for …

Uh-oh.