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Hide Your Heart
The cavern’s shadows clung to Verve, binding her in darkness and squeezing her heart like a vise. By the One god, nighttime was bad enough, but prowling along the shores of one of Aredia’s underground rivers was like being buried alive. Her breath also struggled in the shadows’ grip but she ground her jaw against the feeling. Stop fretting and just do the job, she told herself, and pressed on, silent.
In theory, Verve only ever had one chance to kill a mage. If she bungled that first opportunity, she’d have pissed off someone who could—and would—shoot fireballs or throw lightning spears her way, and then she’d be too busy trying not to get burned to worry about making that nice clean kill. But no matter how they died, the world would be free of one more magic-user. A few new scars were a small price to pay.
At least, according to Danya.
Ahead, Verve’s target and his companion chatted as they set up their camp. Their voices echoed through the massive underground chamber, and the light from their campfire danced over the cavern walls. Verve came around a bend in the black, rippling water to assess the situation. Two men—a mage and his ally—sat beside a small fire, burning merrily without fuel. The hair on the back of Verve’s neck prickled at the sight of the magic-made fire and she swore inwardly. A part of her—a stupid part—had hoped this mage might not be the type who could manipulate fire, but of course, her luck was shit. As usual.
Best not to worry about her terrible luck and focus on the task before her. Fire-wielders were tricky, but not impossible to take down — with the right equipment. Best of all, once she did her job, she could get out of this damp, dark sodding cave, and never think about it again.
Verve smoothed her gloved hands over her hematite gear one more time. Both her hood and close-fitting jacket boasted an intricate pattern of dark-gray hematite beads, which Verve had sewn on herself. The jacket hung to her thighs, shielding her upper legs as well, and her boots had hematite fittings. The hematite would prevent mage-fire from burning her to ash — at least for a few minutes. Long enough for her to gain the upper hand.
She eased forward. Mage-made flames meant her daggers would have to stay in their sheathes for the initial strike, so her crossbow was already in her hand, along with a hematite-tipped bolt she’d not yet loaded. If her aim was perfect, the mage would be dead before he hit the cavern floor. But if the shot didn’t kill the mage immediately, the hematite would slow him down enough for a quick thrust of her dagger. Then she’d just have the other fellow to capture, per Danya’s orders. Soft-spoken and unarmed, Verve’s target seemed mild-mannered enough. Seemed.
Stalagmites thrust up out of the rocky ground, concealing her from the mage’s view. But the other fellow, her true target, stopped talking, inclined his head, and Verve froze.
“What is it?” the mage asked, glancing around.
Her target didn’t respond at first, but his gaze landed on Verve’s location. Twin stars burned briefly in his eyes before he glanced away. She swore mentally again. Ea’s tits. Her heart pounded; surely the sound would echo off of the cavern walls.
A faint feeling tingled at the base of her spine: a sensation of a single finger stroking up her back. And with the feeling came an awareness, a sense of recognition, like seeing someone you sort of knew from across a crowded room.
Magic? There was no other explanation. As one of Atal’s Chosen, Verve had met—and killed—plenty of mages in her twenty-four summers, but had never encountered one with this sort of… bizarre mind-magic. But the evidence shuddered over her skin: she now faced two mages, not one. Her patron, Danya, had passed on faulty information, but that would be no excuse for failure. Verve had no choice but to bring in this fellow alive.
Fine. But her fingers trembled as she eased the bolt into its seat of the crossbow.
The second man, the secret mage, murmured, “We’re not alone.”
Fire bloomed at the first mage’s fingertips. “Get behind me, Celidon.”
Nothing for it. Verve aimed through a slit in the stalagmites. May the One god forgive me, she prayed, bracing herself, and pulled the trigger. The kickback shoved the weapon’s butt into her shoulder, but she’d grown used to the impact well over a decade ago, when she was only eleven. A strangled cry echoed in the cavern as the mage staggered backward, grabbing at the bolt now protruding from his chest. His companion dove for cover behind another rock formation—the fools had made their camp out in the open—but Verve was already on her way.
Black water rippled around her as she slipped toward them. But the mage caught sight of her before she could duck beneath the water. As she stepped onto the other shore, water sluicing down her sides, he gave a cry of pain and fury. But the fire at his fingers flickered and died as the hematite muted his magic.
“Who sent you?” he gasped, struggling to stand despite his injury. Magic fire flared again at his hands, but briefly.
Verve unsheathed one of her daggers—an old style sentinel’s dagger, hematite fortified with iron—grabbed the mage’s hair, and wrenched him to his knees. She steeled herself, as she always did, for the moment when her prey’s life would end by her hand.
“Please,” the other fellow said, stepping forward. His eyes were dark like her own, but a strange light flickered in their depths. “Please, don’t do this,” he added. “You don’t want to do this.”
Her reply was steady, even if her heart was not. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s not personal.” She punched her dagger into the mage’s throat. He crumpled to her feet, blood streaming over the cavern floor.
“Karel,” the other fellow cried and fell to his knees, moaning, clutching his head as if he’d been kicked. He said other things, before she gagged and bound him, but Verve shut her mind to his voice, his fear, his pain. The ache in her chest, the gnaw of her heart eating itself; she shut her mind to them, too.
She had a job to finish.
* * *
Each breath came easier once Verve was out of the caverns. Early afternoon sunlight poured over her dark-brown skin, warming her all the way to her bones despite the chill of the early spring day. The underground river system may have made travel through the country of Aredia convenient—to a degree—but by the One god, she regretted each foray into the caverns.
Her prisoner sat atop the horse she’d left waiting on the surface. When Verve had wrapped the apparent-mage in iron chains, he’d cried out as if the chains had burned him. Although he was awake, he barely seemed conscious, so she’d had to pull him into the saddle like a sack of yuzah roots. At least none of that strange starlight flared in his eyes. He was still gagged, but she thought that even if she removed the rag from his mouth, he’d not say one word to the one who’d murdered his friend.
Her stomach clenched. She tugged the horse along faster. They’d made good time; she could already see Freehold’s sturdy walls ahead. Soon, this job would be over.
But what about the next job? And the next? And on and on, until—
As always, she cut off the thought. Until didn’t exist yet. Just like tomorrow.
