Night Season

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The gut-wounded guard had woken, and was moaning. Kai tried not to listen. At least her own patient was quiet, though the way she stared at Kai with those big, dark eyes… Kai raised her hand to brush the hair from her face, noticed the blood on her fingers, and didn't.

"His name is Harry," the woman she was sewing up said. "He's Harry. He doesn't have much of a chance, does he? He's just human. Humans don't heal well, and they got him in the gut."

"I don't know," Kai said. "I don't know what's possible here."

"You're a Theilo?"

"Sort of." Theilo meant a slider, one of the many who'd accidentally slid into Edge from elsewhere over the centuries.

"You speak Common Tongue well."

"Thank you." Kai knew the language for the same reason she knew what Thielo meant: Nathan. He'd given her the tongue one night soon after they arrived.

She finished her sewing, tied off the thread, and reached for the peroxide. The woman flinched when the liquid bubbled over her wound, but held as still as she had throughout. Kai appreciated a patient like this. The wound in her shoulder was shallow, no stitches needed, but the one in her thigh had gone to the bone. Yet she'd sat motionless the whole time Kai stitched her.

She was a pretty thing, rather feline looking, with a jaw that hinted at a muzzle and pointed ears. Then there was the fur—soft, short, and subtly striped like an orange tabby cat. Kai had had to shave it around the wounds, but it should grow back.

Kai carefully put the needle and thread back in her little sewing kit. Nathan planned well, but the carnage that had greeted them when they reached the inn at Shuva needed so much more than their little medical kit. Not that the villagers hadn't been trying to help the wounded, but their only medical person was an herbalist who doubled as dentist since he owned a pair of pliers. A real scary pair of pliers.

They needed more than a physical therapist—or former physical therapist. What was Kai's profession now? Wanderer? "Does your species heal well? Are you susceptible to infection?"

The woman shrugged one shoulder. "I'll heal. That's a beautiful cat you have. Well-trained."

All eight feet of Dell were stretched out as near the hearth as she could get without interfering with the two patients also laid out there. Her dappled coat was winter-thick, so she didn't really need the fire's heat, but like most cats she enjoyed it. "She is lovely, isn't she? She's not exactly my cat, though. She's my familiar."

The woman's eyes widened. "You're a mage?"

"No. Do people here have to be mages before they can take a familiar?"

"Huh… yes. I always thought so, anyway. Where are you from? You're human, but he isn't." She nodded at Nathan, who was with the moaning guard. "He looks human, but his scent… I've never smelled anything like him."

Kai just smiled and stood. Her back twinged and she twisted, stretching it out.

"Not going to tell me, huh?"

"No." She looked at the others in the room. Most of the villagers had cleared out when they arrived, taking the dead with them to the ice house to await burial, but the one they called the sheriff remained. He was the tall, bearded man sitting at one of the two intact tables, nursing a mug of ale and keeping an eye on them. He'd answered their questions honestly, if tersely. The man sitting with him was the innkeeper, who hadn't answered honestly—until he realized Kai knew it when he lied. Since then, he'd been more afraid of her than of Nathan.

Foolish man. She looked across the room at Nathan.

He sat on the floor between Dell and the gut-wounded guard, whom they'd laid close to the fire's warmth. He'd done what he could for the man—and that was rather a lot. The wound was neatly closed now, and when he laid his hands on the man's head, the moaning stopped.

Kai's anxiety shot up—but the man's colors were still there. Subdued now, with the pain colors fading. She started toward them.

Nathan met her partway. "I don't think he'll make it," he said softly. "I've done what I can with the wound, but he's lost a great deal of blood, and infection is likely. I put him back in sleep. It won't last. His pain will rouse him again in a few hours, but he will rest deeply until then."

Kai nodded, brushed her hair back from her face—then remembered the blood on her hand. She grimaced. "If only we hadn't been delayed in that last village! To miss them by only hours—"

"Couldn't be helped. And it may be just as well. Dell and I are very good, but I am not sure we could have killed fifty Ahk warriors."

"The sorcerer would have burned some of them." And maybe she could have changed their minds. Or maybe she would just have made them crazy. Fifty insane Ahk warriors would likely be even worse than the regular sort.

Kai chewed on her lip. "Nathan, I can't do this the way the queen wants me to. People are dying."

He was silent a beat too long, his expression stilling. "What do you mean?"

"She doesn't want us to reveal ourselves or let anyone know she sent us, but—"

"If the gnomes knew Winter was meddling in this realm, the power balance here and in other realms would be disrupted. More deaths, Kai. Possibly many more."

"There aren't any gnomes with the party from Earth. Not anymore."

He considered that. After a moment he nodded. "It's your quest. If you believe the time is right… we have to catch up to them first, of course."

She sighed. "I suppose we'd better eat before we set out."

Nathan laughed softly. "Kai, Kai. We will eat, yes, and also sleep. Even if you were able to go on without rest, the horses can't."

This was one of those times when their senses of humor didn't mesh. She knew Nathan wasn't heartless, but at the moment, laughter was very far away for her. She turned her head, swallowing the hard words she knew she'd regret later.

"Kai." He put his hand beneath her chin, stroking her there as if she were Dell. "I have lived long enough to know that I do not help others by taking on their grief. We are doing what we must. These people will do as they must, also."

"I guess I—"

"Hsst!" That came from the innkeeper's wife, who was tending the other patient laid out near the hearth. "She's waking up," the woman said. "You said to let you know if she did."

They crossed to see. Nathan had spent most of his time working on the guard because this woman, while she'd looked dead, had been unconscious from a blow to the head. The deep, bloody wound in her chest from a sword thrust had miraculously missed anything vital, and Nathan had said that the woman's own healing ability was sufficient. Since Kai could see from her colors that she had a minor healing Gift in addition to whatever natural healing ability she possessed, she hadn't argued.

She was not as pretty as the feline woman. Though Kai had yet to see an Ahk, she'd been told what they looked like. This woman's skin and short tusks proclaimed her kinship to them, though she'd fought on the side of the party from Earth.

"Who are you?" the woman demanded weakly when Kai knelt beside her.

"I'm Kai, and this is Nathan. What is your name?"

"I'm…" Her eyes widened when she looked at Nathan. "You! You're a—"

"Eh!" he said hastily. "I'd rather you didn't say it. You're the first to recognize me, and I'm wondering how."

"Then it's true?" She looked shocked. "I didn't know you could—"

"As I said, I don't wish it spoken of." He spoke with authority this time, a subtle shift that was probably not simply a matter of voice. He looked at the innkeeper's wife, who was staring, her colors turned fearful. "You may go now."

The woman gathered herself to her feet and hurried away without a word.

Nathan looked down at the injured woman. "You may tell me how you knew me, now. And your name."

"I shouldn't have said anything about recognizing you." She was bitter. "My brains are addled from the blow."

"But you did speak of it," Nathan said gently. "Your name? You may give me a call-name, if you wish."

"I am called Tash."

"And you recognized me because—?"

At first it seemed she might not answer, but finally she gave a small sigh. "I've a bit of a healing Gift, nothing major, but it lets me sense bodies directly… I saw the Hunt once, you see."

"Ah." Nathan nodded. "I'm afraid I must make sure you don't speak of this." He bent and reached for her head with both hands.