Steel's Edge

THREE

WHEN a man found himself in difficult circumstances, it always paid to assess the situation. Especially if he woke up and found he couldn’t move.

Richard opened his eyes.

Let’s see. First, he was in a cage, a fact made painfully apparent by the pattern of steel bars imposed on the riders, silhouetted against an old forest. Second, his hands were tied behind his back. Third, a heavy chain shackled his legs to the steel ring in the bottom of the cage. Fourth, a thicker chain secured the cage to the cart, making several loops, as if the weight of the cage wedged into the cart’s hold wasn’t enough to hold it in place. Ergo, he was captured by the slavers, and they were afraid that he would sprout wings and take off with the three-hundred-pound cage around him.

He couldn’t remember how he got into the cage. At some point he must’ve been beaten—his face ached and was likely bruised. He tasted mud on his lips, probably from someone’s boot. Also, judging from a less than pleasant odor, someone had taken the time to urinate on his chest. Slavers, a charming breed, always happy to treat their guests to their fabled hospitality.

The wound in his side didn’t hurt at all, and despite all of his expectations, he was still alive.

How in the world was he still breathing? He had taken enough wounds to recognize the stab to his liver was life-threatening even if he had been magically transported to a surgeon’s table the moment after he had received it. Instead, he’d made it fatal by running for hours.

He recalled falling by some road. There was something in between that and the cage, something murky. For some reason, he had a feeling it involved Éléonore, Rose’s grandmother, whom he’d met once. Another memory surfaced, a woman with gray eyes and blond hair. Her face was a blur, but he remembered her eyes under the sweep of dark blond eyebrows, intense and beautiful—his foggy memory made them luminescent—and the concern he read in their depth arrested him. Nobody had looked at him like that for years. It was such a beautiful memory that he was half-sure it was a product of his hallucinating brain yearning for something radiant in his grim, blood-drenched life.

Except that someone had healed him because his injury was gone. Stab wounds didn’t just vanish on their own. It gave his muddy recollection of the woman with gray eyes some credence, but healing magic was exceedingly rare and highly prized. Finding someone in the Edge with it was extremely unlikely. The Edge was the hellish place you went when neither the Weird nor the Broken would have you. A healer with talent like that would’ve been treasured in the Weird.

This was getting him nowhere. He had no plausible explanation why he was alive, so he’d have to set it aside for the time being. His more immediate problem was the cage and a crew of slavers guarding it.

There was no way to tell how long he’d been unconscious, but it was unlikely he’d been out for too long. They were traveling through the Weird’s woods, and the magic flowed full force. The forest crowded them in, the massive tree trunks, fed by magic and nourished by rich Adrianglian soil, rose to improbable heights. Against that backdrop, the riders on the barely visible trail seemed insignificant and small. The horses moved at a slow walk, hampered by the wagon carrying him.

Richard cataloged the familiar faces. A few were new, but he knew about half of them, prime examples of scum floating in the gutter of humanity. His memory served up their names, their brief biographies, and their weaknesses. He’d studied them the way others studied books. Some came from families, some were born psychotic, and others were just greedy and stupid. Most carried rifles and blades, their gear worn and none too clean. He didn’t see any wolf-dogs and didn’t hear any either. Where had all of the hounds gone?

CHARLOTTE stepped out of the truck. Ahead, the overgrown dirt road ended, turning into a forest path. The boundary loomed before her. She felt it in the very marrow of her bones, a strange disturbing pressure that threatened to squeeze the breath out of her.

The slavers had passed through it. The brush still bowed, disturbed by the riders. She saw the traces of hoofprints on the ground and the twin grooves of wide wheels. They had a cart, and not magic-powered like the modern phaetons, but an old-fashioned, horse-drawn cart, the kind country people still used in the provinces. The trail led through the boundary, so she would have to pass this way, too. The last time she had crossed it, the feeling of her magic being peeled away nearly made her turn back.

Charlotte took a deep breath and stepped into the boundary. The magic clutched her, squeezing at her organs as if trying to wring the lifeblood from them. The pressure pushed her, propelling her forward. Each step was a conscious effort. Sweat broke on her forehead. Another step. Another. The pressure crushed her. Charlotte hunched over. She would crawl if she had to.

Another step.

Suddenly, the grinding burden vanished. Magic flooded her, rejuvenating her body. It was an absurd sensation, but she felt herself opening up like a flower greeting the morning sun. If she’d had wings, they would’ve unfurled. She inhaled slowly. There it was, the familiar potent power she was so used to wielding. During her years in the Edge, living with half magic, she had forgotten how wonderful it felt.

She had never understood why Éléonore didn’t move to the Weird . . .

Éléonore.

She had to keep moving. She was at least half an hour behind the slavers, probably more. The old Adrianglian forest stretched before her. The forest path forked ahead. Which way, right or left?

Charlotte knelt to the ground, trying to follow the hoofprints. A carpet of old pine needles blanketed the floor of the woods and the path, obscuring the trail. She had learned some tracking when she was a girl from an old veteran scout living at Ganer College because she thought it was interesting. But those lessons were long ago, and she had never taken them very seriously.

A high-pitched, labored whine came from under the brush on her left. She turned. Two brown canine eyes looked at her from a large black muzzle.

Charlotte froze.

The dog dipped its big head and let out another thin whine. She smelled blood. It lashed her healer instinct like a whip. The dark magic raging inside her vanished, as if snuffed out.

“Easy now.” Charlotte crouched and moved toward the dog. “Easy.”

It lay on its side, panting.

She reached for it.

The dog’s lips trembled, betraying a flash of fangs.

Charlotte stopped moving, her hand outstretched. “If you bite me, I won’t help you.” The dog couldn’t understand her, but it could understand the tone of her voice.

Slowly she reached forward. The dog opened its mouth. Jaws snapped but fell short of her fingers. It was too weak.

“If you were healthy, you’d tear my hand off, huh?”

Charlotte touched the fur, sending a current of golden sparks through the furry body. Male, low blood pressure. A bullet wound passing through the abdomen. Someone had shot the dog.

“This world is full of terrible people,” she told him, and began to repair the damage. The bullet had entered the chest, cut through the left lung, and tore out of the dog’s side. Judging by the state of the wound and blood loss, it had happened about five to six hours ago.

Charlotte knitted the injured tissues, rebuilding the lung.

The dog leaned over and licked her hand, a quick, short lick, as if embarrassed by his own weakness.

“Change your mind since it doesn’t hurt as much anymore?” She sealed the wound and petted his withers. Her hand slid against a spiked collar. “You wouldn’t be a slaver dog, would you?”

The dog rose. He was a massive beast—if they both stood upright, he could put his paws on her shoulders.

Charlotte got up. “Where are your owners?”

The dog looked at her, sniffed the air, and turned to the right.

She had nothing better to go on.

“Right it is,” Charlotte said, and followed the dog down the path.

THE wagon rolled over a root, creaking.

“That’s far enough,” a grating voice called out. Voshak Corwen, a seasoned slaver with over a dozen raids under his belt. Hardly a surprise, Richard reflected. This was the man Tuline had promised to betray. They must’ve agreed to set that little trap together, and when Richard had cut his way through Tuline’s crew, Voshak took his men and went after him.

“We make camp here,” Voshak said.

“We’re only two hours from the boundary,” a tall, redheaded man called out. Richard didn’t recognize him. Must be a new hire. The slavers needed to replenish their herd regularly—he kept thinning it out.

Voshak rode into view. Of average height, he was built with a gristle-and-tendon kind of strength: lean, with high endurance. He wasn’t the fastest or the strongest, but he would go the distance. A network of scars sliced his face. No doubt he had some romantic story about how he got them instead of admitting that a stablehand had raked his face with a pitchfork during a failed slave raid.

Voshak’s hair, a pale blond braid, which he bleached, was his trademark. It made him memorable. That’s how the slavers operated. They adopted costumes and personas, trying to make themselves larger-than-life and hoping to inspire fear. They counted on that fear. One could fight a man, but nobody could fight a nightmare.

Voshak focused on the redhead. “Milhem, did I make you my second?”

Milhem looked down.

Ceyren, Voshak’s second, was likely dead; otherwise, he would be here pulling Milhem off his horse and beating him to a bloody pulp. Interesting.

“Then don’t open your trap,” Voshak said. “If I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.” He surveyed the riders. “If any of you morons are worried, nobody’s following us. These are Edgers. They look out for number one, and none of them want to catch a bullet. It’s been twenty hours since we last slept, and I’m tired. Now make the damn camp.” He turned to an older, one-eyed slaver. “Crow, you’re my second now. See they get it done.”

Crow, a broad-shouldered, weather-beaten bastard, roared, “Get a move on!”

Reasonable choice for a second, Richard reflected. Crow was older, had experience, and he worked hard to inspire fear. If his eye patch and height didn’t do it, the heavy black leather and ponytail of jet-black hair decorated with finger bones would.

Voshak turned his horse. His gaze paused on Richard. “Awake, my gentle maid? You’ve got something right here.” The slaver touched the left corner of his mouth. “What is that? . . . Oh, that’s shit from the bottom of my boot.”

Laughter rang out.

Richard smiled, baring his teeth. “Always brightening the day with your humor, Leftie.”

A muscle jerked in Voshak’s face. He clenched his reins. “You sit in your cage, Hunter. When we get where we’re going, you’ll sing like a bird when I start cutting through your joints.”

“What was that? I didn’t quite hear.” Richard leaned forward, focusing on Voshak. A hint of fear shivered in the slaver’s eyes, and Richard drank it in. “Come closer to the cage, Voshak. Don’t cower like a little boy hiding from your daddy and his belt.”

Voshak dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks. The animal jumped, and he rode off. Coward. Most of them were cowards, cruel and vicious. Brave men didn’t kidnap children in the middle of the night and sell them to perverts to earn their drinking money.

The riders dismounted. Two secured the horses, keeping well away from his cage. Others began pulling tents from the saddlebags, olive and gray, with a red logo spelling out COLEMAN sewn on one side. The tents must’ve come from the Broken. A few slavers piled together some branches. A dark-haired man soaked them in fluid from a flask, struck a match, and dropped it on the fuel. Fire flared up like an orange mushroom. He shied back, rubbing his face.

“You got any eyebrows left, Pavel?” Crow called.

Pavel spat into the fire. “It’s burning, ain’t it?”

A slaver stopped by the cage. He was thin, with dirty brown hair and pale eyes. He climbed onto the wagon, opened a small door near the top of the cage, barely large enough to pass a bowl through, and dipped a ladle with a long handle into a bucket.

Richard waited. His mouth was so dry, he could almost taste the water.

The slaver passed the ladle through the window. “Why Leftie?” he murmured.

“It’s what his father used to call him before he beat him in his drunken rages,” Richard said. “His right testicle never dropped.”

The slaver held the ladle closer. Richard drank, three deep delicious gulps, then the man retracted the ladle and latched the window shut.

The slavers began to settle down. A pot was set over the fire; a couple of rabbits had been dressed and chopped into it. Voshak came to sit by the flames, facing the cage. He bent to poke at the coals, and Richard pondered the top of the man’s blond head. The human skull was such a fragile thing. If only his hands weren’t tied.

He had to survive and bide his time. The slavers were taking him to the Market, he was sure of it. Left to his own devices, Voshak would’ve strung him up on the first tree he saw. Richard grinned. And after his neck snapped, Voshak would probably stab his corpse a few times, drown it, then set it on fire. Just in case.

Someone near the top of the slaver food chain must’ve recognized that the rank-and-file slaver crews feared the Hunter. They wanted to boost morale by making a production out of killing him. Richard might have worked for a year to get to the Market, but he had no intention of arriving there on their terms. An opportunity would present itself. He just had to recognize it and make the best of it.

If he failed now, Sophie would take his place. The thought filled Richard with dread.

Revenge was an infectious disease. For a time it gave you the strength to go on, but it devoured you from the inside like a cancer, and when your target was finally destroyed, all that remained was a hollow shell of your former self. Then the target’s relatives began their own hunt, and the cycle continued. He’d learned that lesson at seventeen, when a feuding family’s bullet exploded in his father’s skull, spraying bloody mist all over the market stall. What he had lost was irreplaceable. No amount of death would bring his father back to life. Back then, Richard was already a warrior, a killer, and he continued to kill, but never out of revenge. He severed lives so the family would be safe, and the new generations would never feel the pain of having their parents ripped out of their lives. He fought to keep the rest of them safe.

He failed.

Richard’s memory resurrected Sophie the way she used to be—a funny, beautiful, fearless child. The muddy swamp flashed before Richard. When he had finally found Sophie in one of the holes, she was standing on the body of a slaver she had killed. As he pulled her out, her eyes burned with a fear and hate that had no place on the face of a twelve-year-old child. She had survived the slavers, but she would never be the same.

He’d hoped the years would cure it, but time only nurtured it. He watched, powerless, as that fear and hate germinated into self-loathing. When she came to him asking to be taught to work with the blade, he viewed it as a diversion. Sophie had never taken her lessons seriously before, neither from her own father nor from her sister. He thought she would get bored. He had no idea.

Her self-hate grew and matured into steely determination. He saw it in Sophie’s face every morning when she picked up her sword to meet him in practice. He was running out of things to teach her. One day, she would decide she was good enough, take her blade, and go hunting instead. He wouldn’t be able to stop her, so he had chosen to beat her to the punch. What he was doing wasn’t revenge, but justice. The world had failed Sophie by allowing slavers to exist. He had failed her by letting her suffer at their hands. He hoped to restore her faith in both.

A woman walked out of the forest. She was tall, about five-foot-eight, and pale. Mud splattered her faded jeans. Her lavender T-shirt had a scoop neckline and was smudged with something dark, dirt or possibly soot. Her blond hair rested on top of her head in a loose knot. Her mouth was full, her eyes were wide and round, and the line of her jaw was soft and feminine. She was beautiful, refined, but iced over by a lack of emotion and an eerie, unnatural calm.

Their stares connected. Every cell in his body went on alert. He couldn’t see her eye color from this distance, but he was sure her eyes were gray.

She was real.

His stomach tightened in alarm. What are you doing here? Run. Run before they see you.

The conversation died. The slavers stared.

Crow picked up his rifle and rolled into a crouch.

“Now that’s what I call free merchandise,” Voshak murmured from his perch on a fallen log.

“There are no towns around here,” Crow said quietly. “Where did she come from? I say shoot her now.”

“What’s your hurry?” Voshak leaned forward. “No gun, no knife. If she could flash, she would’ve hit us by now.”

“I don’t like it,” Crow said. “She might be with him.”

Voshak glanced at the cage. Richard turned to look him in the eye, and the slaver captain shrugged.

“Hunter is the Weird’s animal. She’s wearing jeans. And if she’s with him, then he’ll enjoy watching me fuck her brains out.” Voshak raised his voice. “Hey, sweetheart! Are you lost?”

The woman didn’t answer. She was still looking at him, and her eyes told Richard she wasn’t lost. No, she was exactly where she wanted to be. She had some sort of plan. How did she get here?

“Where are you from?” Voshak asked. “Talk to me. Are your folks worried about you?”

The woman said nothing.

“She’s mute,” someone offered.

“A pretty woman who doesn’t talk. My God, we can charge double.” Voshak grinned.

Appreciative laughter from half a dozen throats rang out.

“I don’t like it,” Crow repeated.

“I’ve seen this before.” Pavel spat into the fire. “She’s a loonie.”

“What’s a loonie?” A younger slaver asked.

“An Edger or someone from the Broken,” Voshak said. “Sometimes they blunder halfway through the boundary into the Weird and get stuck. Not enough magic to go either way. Eventually, the boundary spits them out, but they’re not quite right after that. The lights are on, but nobody’s driving. They just wander around until they starve to death.”

“Too much magic.” Pavel waved his hand around his ear. “Fries their brains right up.”

“I don’t—” Crow began.

“Yes, we know. You don’t like it.” Voshak grimaced and turned it into a smile. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” the slaver captain called out. “We’ll take good care of you. You come sit by me.” He petted the log next to him.

The woman didn’t move.

“Come on.” Voshak winked at her. “It’s all right.”

The woman approached, moving with innate grace.

Richard watched her. She glanced at him briefly as she took her seat, and he saw a smart, agile mind behind her eyes. No, she wasn’t fried. Not at all. But Voshak was right. She had no weapons. Even if she was a flasher, the slavers were too spread out. Someone would shoot her before she got them all. He had to get out of this cursed cage.

“Pass me that puppy chain,” Voshak said.

Pavel passed the twelve-foot chain to him. The slavers used them as human tie outs—just enough length to let slaves shuffle off to the bushes to relieve themselves. Voshak smiled and locked one iron cuff on the woman’s ankle, above her shoe. He locked the other on his own ankle. “There we go. Just like marriage.”

The woman gave no indication she understood what had just happened.

Voshak leaned closer to her and brushed a small tendril of hair from the back of her long, graceful neck. “That’s a good girl.”

Richard wished for a sword, a knife, a nail. Anything he could stretch his flash on. He’d slice through the bars with the first cut and sever Voshak’s fingers from the rest of him with the second. Watching him touch her was like seeing filth smeared on her skin.

Voshak let go of her neck. “If only you were fifteen years younger. You’d be worth double.”

“That’d make her what, like ten?” a young man asked from the right.

“More like fifteen,” Voshak said. “She’s fared well, but you’ve got to look closely. See, no baby fat left. No wrinkles yet, and her lips are still full, but the face doesn’t have that fresh look. Buyers like them young. She’s thirty, if she’s a day. She’ll still be worth a good chunk of change, but in our trade a woman past twenty-five is past her prime. And some of those bitches look like hags by thirty. It all depends on how gently they were used.”

The woman sat still, her gaze fixed on the flames.

Voshak leaned over and checked her face.

“Told you,” Pavel said. “Nobody’s home.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Voshak said.

Richard locked his teeth. It had taken incredible courage to walk into the camp like this, to surrender herself into their physical custody. She had to know what they would do to her. He’d seen the aftermath of what happened to pretty women in slaver camps. They would pass her around and rape her, and he wouldn’t be able to stop them. He would have to watch, helpless. He had seen worse things, but never from inside a cage with his hands tied.

He wanted to scream and throw himself against the bars, but he couldn’t even move.

She had to have some sort of a plan. Please, whoever you are above, let her have a plan. Perhaps she planned to wait until they went to sleep and bury a knife in Voshak’s throat. She couldn’t hope to survive after that. Was this a suicide mission?

Voshak half turned to him and ran his hand down the woman’s back. “Friend of yours, Hunter?”

Rage boiled inside him. Richard pictured cutting Voshak into pieces. “No.”

“I bet you don’t have any friends, Hunter. Did we kill them all, or are you just an asshole?”

Magic brushed against him, a subtle, delicate current. Richard forced himself to sit completely still. The magic touched him again, nipping gently on his body, draining him. He focused and felt other currents sliding to wind around the slavers. He followed their source back to the woman. Their stares connected.

Her face was so placid, but her eyes burned. The woman looked away. The magic current slid away from him to find another victim.

His magic sensitivity was off the charts—one of the benefits of being born into an old Edger family—but he had no idea what she was planning. Whatever it was, she could use a distraction, and he was the man for the job.

“Let’s talk about your friends,” he said, leaning back as casually as his restraints would allow. “Jeremy Legs. Chad Gully. Black Nil. Isabel Savage. The Striker Brothers. Angelo Cross. Germaine Coutard. Carmen Sharp. Tempest Wolf. Julius Maganti.”

Voshak’s face skewed with rage.

The mysterious magic currents weaved back and forth among the slavers. Anger and fear stamped their faces, but he couldn’t see any adverse effects. The brush of the current that had slid by him was too light to cause any real harm. Maybe she needed more time.

Richard kept going, hammering each name in.

“Ambrose Club. Orville Fang. Raoul Baudet. My personal favorite, Jackal Tuline. Where are your friends, Voshak? Or rather, I meant to say ‘your cronies,’ since a lowlife like you doesn’t have friends. My mistake.”

The woman stared into the flames. Perhaps her magic wasn’t working.

Inwardly, Richard swore. He took a risk and provoked the slavers. They glared at him like a pack of mongrel dogs. If he kept aggravating them, he’d be in real danger of getting shot. He had to get out of this damn cage before they killed him and her, and he didn’t have any idea how to do it.

Richard feigned indifference and shrugged. “Do you want me to keep going? Would you like to know what each of them looked like when they died?”

“What the hell did we do to you?” Voshak snarled. “Did we rape your wife, did we take your children, what? What the hell is it?”

“You trade in human lives, which makes you an aberration. Your kind shouldn’t exist. You’re a wrong, and I decided to correct it. Or perhaps I’m just bored, and you’re stupid and easy to kill.”

Voshak swore.

The magic was getting thicker. She was still working on it, whatever it was. He needed to create some strife. As long as they fought among themselves, they wouldn’t pay attention to other, subtler changes. He picked a familiar face. Daryl Long, bad-tempered, neurotic, and jumpy. Perfect.

“Daryl?”

The dark-haired, lanky slaver startled.

“Two weeks ago, I killed your brother.”

Daryl recoiled.

“Every time I end one of you, I hope for some backbone, but your brother didn’t die like a man. Before I cut his head off, he offered to set you up for me if I let him go. I killed him anyway because there was nothing I needed from him. You see, I know everything already, Daryl. I know about the old man. I know about the barn. I know what the two of you did to him before you slit his throat, and I know why you had to set the fire to the place.”

Daryl’s meager control snapped. He lunged at the cage. “I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you!”

Crow swung the butt of his rifle and slammed it into Daryl’s face. The blow knocked him backward. The slaver crashed to the ground, blood drenching his face.

“Nobody touches that bastard!” Voshak thundered. “The orders are he goes to the Market, and we’ll deliver him there even if I have to blow your brains out.”

Nobody said anything.

“We got him.” Voshak pointed to the cage. “He’s chained up! All he can do is talk. Let him yap. You touch him, I kill you. Anybody have anything to add?”

On the left, Pavel, the one who’d started the fire, coughed.

Voshak spun to him.

The man next to Pavel coughed, too.

Pavel coughed again, harder.

“Do the two of you think this is funny—” The end of the word dissolved into a wet hack. Voshak strained. “What the hell?”

Across the clearing, another slaver coughed, then another and another.

“All of you, stop it,” Voshak barked. “I said stop!”

The coughs died.

Pavel strained, obviously trying to contain his hacking.

Voshak pointed his finger at him. “Don’t you do it.”

Pavel clenched up, gagged, holding it in . . . The cough exploded out of him in a gush of red. Blood burst from his nose and the corners of his mouth. The slaver dropped to all fours, retching. A clump of something wet, soft, and bloody fell out of his mouth.

Voshak grabbed his gun.

Across from Pavel, at the other side of the fire, another man collapsed, coughing and bleeding. People gripped their weapons, looking around.

“What the hell is going on?” Voshak roared. His voice caught, he sneezed and stared at his hand, covered with red mist and tiny chunks of flesh.

The slavers fell, as if cut down at once by an invisible sickle. Voshak spun, looking left, right, his eyes wild.

“The woman,” Crow croaked, dropping to his knees. “The woman!”

Voshak whirled to her. She still sat on the log.

“You bitch!” The blond slaver lunged at her and fell back, staggering under another fit of coughing.

Crow struggled upright, raising his rifle.

A familiar wolfripper hound burst from the bushes and rammed Crow. A rifle shot popped, going wide into the sky. The dog bit into the slaver. Crow screamed once, writhing on the ground, and fell silent.

A stream of translucent darkness flickering with red sparks spiraled around the woman. An identical stream twisted in the opposite direction, winding about her body. She turned slowly to look at Voshak, hacking his lungs out on the ground.

Richard saw her eyes, and her gaze chilled him all the way to the bone. Power luminesced within her irises.

The woman rose. The dark streams of her magic widened and collided. The sparks flashed with deep crimson. The streams split into dozens of small tendrils and shot out like striking snakes, biting into the slaver captain.

Voshak screamed. His knees gave, and he crumpled to the ground.

“Help me!”

The bodies didn’t move.

Voshak tried to roll to his feet, but his legs refused to support his weight, and he crashed down, coughing blood. “What do you want?”

She didn’t answer.

Voshak cried out. Tremors wracked his body.

“Do you want money? I have money!”

The woman said nothing.

“What is it? What do you want?”

“You killed Daisy,” she said. Her hoarse voice trembled with barely contained anger. “You murdered Éléonore.”

So his memory of Rose’s grandmother wasn’t a dream or hallucination. Regret washed over Richard. Indirectly or not, he’d caused another casualty. The boys would be heartbroken.

He put it away, in the same place he put his guilt for the other things he had done.

Voshak squirmed on the ground. “I hate you. I fucking hate you. I’d do it again. I should’ve killed that skinny bitch, too.”

A tendril of dark magic streaked from her, stinging the slaver captain. He shuddered, gurgling.

“Éléonore was like a mother to me. You cut a hole in my life. You murdered a young woman. She had her whole life ahead of her. You just ended it, and now her sister will have to live with her death,” the woman said, her face iced over. “I want you to understand how much suffering you’ve caused. I want you to hurt before you die.”

Voshak flailed, as if she had whipped him.

She watched, her pain plain on her face. Richard wondered why she didn’t prolong the torture for the rest of the slavers. Considering the circumstances, instant death was a mercy.

Voshak drew one last shuddering breath and lay still. The odor of putrescence flooded the clearing. Nausea choked Richard. Voshak’s body began to decompose.

The dark currents of magic shrunk, once mighty dragons, and now just pet snakes, sliding over the woman’s skin.

She stepped forward. The chain from the shackle around her ankle pulled at Voshak’s leg. The slaver’s bones fell apart, rotting flesh rolling off them, and suddenly she wasn’t chained to anyone. She walked toward him, picking her way among the bodies, beautiful and terrifying, like an angel of death.

She reached his cage.

They looked at each other through the bars.

Her eyes were just as he remembered: luminescent with power and heartbreakingly beautiful, but this time he saw no concern in their depths. His cage had changed owners. Whether it was for the better remained to be seen.

Richard weighed his options. One of three things would happen: she could kill him; she could walk away, letting him die slowly; or she could let him out. If he had any hope of getting out of this mess alive, he had to talk her down. He had to survive and finish what he started.

The dark currents of her magic licked the bars of the cage, sparking with red on the metal. Richard braced himself. He could tell by her eyes that whether he left this cage a free man or died of starvation and thirst inside it depended on what he’d say next.

THEY were dead. All of them. It had felt so unbelievably good to experience their dying. The darkness sang inside her, triumphant, while the rest of her trembled, repulsed and terrified. She was painfully aware of the corpses littering the clearing behind her.

It had taken all of her will to sit quietly and siphon off their life force, weakening their bodies and building up her own reserves. She’d thought it was the only way to kill them all at once and quickly. Finally, she had infected them and used their own magic to feed the disease within them. They felt nothing until the magically accelerated disease finally bloomed and severed their lives in a few painful instants. They didn’t deserve mercy, but she didn’t want their suffering as much as she wanted their lives. They couldn’t be allowed to continue, and so she ended them fast.

All except their leader. Something had compelled her to kill him slowly. She’d monitored his body, as it surrendered to the disease, and the feeling of intense satiation that came over her as he lay there dying terrified Charlotte to the very core of her being. She had to cut it short and kill him before she began to revel in his pain.

The magic pulled on her even now, whispering into her mind, begging her to continue. She locked the magic in the cage of her will, forcing it to subside. She had broken her oath as a healer, but she wasn’t a mindless abomination. Not yet. She could still hold it in check.

Richard leaned closer to the bars of the cage, his long, dark hair falling over his face. She almost took a step back.

His color was good, Charlotte noted. Stable vital signs. His body was strong and fit but still, he was recovering with surprising speed. His face was muddy and bruised, and the stench of old urine rose from his clothes. The thugs had tried to batter and debase him, but it made no difference. He refused to notice it, the way most people made a conscious decision to ignore light rain when they were in a hurry. He wasn’t humiliated. He wasn’t cowed or beaten down. A calculating mind looked at her through his eyes. He was like an old wolf on a chain, lethal, cunning, restrained for the time being but biding his time. Danger rolled off him. In her years as a healer, Charlotte had treated many threatening people: soldiers, agents, spies. Her instincts warned her to stay away from him.

Richard opened his mouth.

Her pulse spiked in alarm.

“You’re real,” he said.

What? “I am.”

“When I woke up in the cage, I thought I dreamt you.”

She wasn’t sure what to make of it. “You were delirious when we met.”

“Did you heal me?”

She nodded.

“Thank you.”

She forced herself to sit down on a pile of bags on the ground. The slaver dog trotted over and lay by her feet between her and the cage. Richard raised his eyebrows.

“Éléonore is dead,” she said. “They killed her, and they killed a young woman, Daisy. Then they set my house on fire.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

There was an unexpected sincerity in his voice.

“You brought this nightmare on me,” she said.

He nodded. “I did. It wasn’t my intention, but the responsibility is mine.”

“I want to know why. Why did they do this to us?”

Richard shifted in the cage. His hands were tied behind his back. It must hurt, Charlotte realized.

“These men are slavers. They raid the isolated settlements in the Weird and the Edge and sometimes even in the Broken. They kidnap men and women, and deliver them to the coast to the secret meeting points, where ships pick them up. From there, the captives are taken to the Market, a hidden auction house where they are sold off to the highest bidder. Slavery has been outlawed for three hundred years, but they prosper.”

“How? If slavery is illegal . . .”

“The border barons always need fodder for construction and armies. Mine owners use slave labor. The magic users who tangle with outlawed applications of magic theory buy subjects for their experiments. And others, well, when you see a rich man with a young, beautiful woman on his arm, would it occur to you to ask if she was free?”

“That’s barbaric.”

Richard’s eyes turned hard. “You would be surprised how many ‘servants’ come from the Market.”

He was right. It would never have occurred to her to ask anyone if their attendants were slaves. She simply assumed they weren’t.

“The slavers feed their own legends,” he said. “They dress in black, they arm themselves with wolfripper dogs, they ride dark horses. They appear from nowhere in the middle of the night, reap their human harvest, burn the settlements to the ground, and vanish like ghosts.”

“Like a night terror,” she said. Bastards.

Richard nodded. “They want to be the stuff of nightmares because fighting one’s fear is always harder than fighting another man. They see themselves as outside the law, as wolves who prey on sheep. Most of them didn’t amount to much, and they cling to their illusions of grandeur both because they have nothing else and because they find cruelty empowering. So if you wish an honest answer, here it is. They killed Éléonore and Daisy, and burned your house because that’s what they do. It wasn’t personal or planned. They didn’t give it a second thought. They simply did it because that’s the way they do business. Other people’s lives matter to them not at all. They’re slavers.”

His words only fueled her rage. “And you?”

“I hunt the slavers. I’ve killed dozens over the past months. They think themselves wolves, so they call me Hunter. They’re not fond of me.”

“I can see that.”

“I made a mistake, and they finally caught me. They were taking me to the Market for a public execution.”

That explained things. The slavers had beaten him not to hurt him—he was unconscious—but to make him less frightening. They were terrified of him. If they were the night terrors, he was their legendary killer, and when you kill a legend, you must make it as public as possible, or it might not take.

“Are there more of them?” she asked.

“Many more.” Richard grimaced. “No matter how many I kill, there are always more.”

Many more. That meant many more dead Daisies and Éléonores, many more Tulips, weeping over bodies. Many people like her, left with a gaping hole ripped in their lives, not sure how to pick up the pieces and move on. Her magic seethed within her. Her body was nearing exhaustion, but she wanted to scream in outrage. Why did this go on? Who allowed this to keep happening? Did they think nobody could stop them? Because she could, and she had, and she would do it again. It wasn’t finished. She wasn’t finished.

“Tell me more,” Charlotte said.

He shook his head. “Not through the bars of the cage.”

She leaned back. “I’m not sure it’s a good idea to let you out. I don’t know what you might do.”

His eyes met hers. “My lady, I assure you, I’m not a danger to you.”

“Says the Hunter of wolves.”

“You view me as dangerous, but you allow a slaver dog with bloody teeth to lay by your feet.”

“I’ve known the dog longer than you.”

He grinned at her. “‘Can two people ever truly know each other through the bars of the human cage?’”

Charlotte blinked. He’d quoted the Prisoner’s Ballad, a work that was considered to be one of the pinnacles of Adrianglian literature. She was sitting on some dirty bags in the middle of a clearing filled with corpses, and a man who, by his own admission, was a serial killer just quoted a philosophical masterpiece to her. This had to be some sort of surreal absurd dream.

“I can simply walk away and leave you in the cage,” she said.

“I don’t think you will,” Richard said.

“What makes you so sure?”

“You healed me,” he said. “I remember your eyes. You wouldn’t sentence a man to slow death.”

He’d called her bluff. Leaving him to starve to death was beyond her now, no matter how dangerous he was. “If I open this cage, you’ll answer my questions.”

“As honestly as is in my power.”

“Before I let you out, typhus, malaria, red death, Ebola, tuberculosis . . . Do you have any preference? I have others, as well.”

“Where?” Richard asked.

“I carry dormant samples of them within my body. To cure a disease, you must first understand it, and sometimes a deliberate infection is necessary for vaccination. If you attempt to attack me, I will end you, Richard. Look around you if you have any doubts.”

“I’ll strive to keep it from slipping my mind.”

Charlotte rose. The white-haired slaver was the leader. He would likely have the key. She crouched by his body—it smelled awful—and searched his clothes, briskly turning out his pockets. Money, bullets . . . “No key.”

“Thank you, but we don’t have to have one,” Richard said. “I only need a knife and free hands.”

She pulled a blade from the sheath on the slaver’s waist, reached between the bars, and sawed through the tough cord binding his wrists. The rope snapped. He rolled his shoulders and held out his hand.

She might regret this, but she couldn’t just leave him in the cage. Charlotte put the blade into his hand. Richard flipped it. She felt magic flow toward the blade. It drained from his body onto the metal, stretching in a thin glowing line of pale white along the edge.

Richard sliced at the chain wrapped around his feet.

The metal fell apart.

She’d seen concentrated flash sever a body before but never metal. Not like this.

He struck at the chain securing the cage’s door, and it crashed to the ground. Richard pushed the door open, slid out, and swayed, catching himself on the wagon. She hadn’t realized how tall he was, almost six inches taller than she. Charlotte waited for him to sit down, but he remained standing. It was an obvious strain.

Then the light dawned on her. She sat back on the bags, and Richard sank to the ground as well, leaning against the wagon wheel. Ridiculous. Richard might not have been a blueblood, but he behaved like one, and the ingrained manners of the Weird wouldn’t permit him to take a seat if she was standing.

“You had questions?” he asked.

“Tell me about your involvement with the slavers,” she said.

“Are you familiar with the Marshall of the Southern provinces?” Richard asked.

“Earl Declan Camarine? Rose’s husband,” Charlotte said. “Éléonore spoke of him quite often. I never met him in person, but I do know of the family.”

“The Office of the Marshall of the Southern Provinces has fought slavery for years,” Richard said. “Unsuccessfully. The slavers have an elaborate organization, and the slaver crews like this one are just the lowest rung of it. The slavers employ shippers, accountants, brokers, and guards. The list goes on. In the last decade, the Marshall of the Southern Provinces has led several operations against the slavers and failed. Somehow, they knew exactly when and where he would strike.”

“Someone is protecting them,” Charlotte guessed.

“Someone highly placed and well connected, with access to the inner workings of the Ministry of State. A little over a year ago, Declan invited me in for a conversation. Declan needed someone on the outside, a man who could act without the constraints of his office. He asked me if I would be that man, and I agreed.”

“Why?”

Richard paused. His eyes grew darker. “My family is from the Edge. I have my own motivations to want the slavers dead. Suffice it to say that my reasons are highly compelling.”

There was trauma there, she could sense it. Some great injustice had been done to Richard. She wanted to know what drove him, but his eyes told her that was the one question he wouldn’t answer. And Sophie, whoever she was, had to be a part of it.

“I spent eight months collecting information and gathering people I could trust and another four pursuing the slavers. I studied them, then I killed them. I slaughtered them in the open against overwhelming odds. I killed them in their sleep. I destroyed their camps. Four slaver captains are dead by my hand. It made no difference. They simply recruit more thugs. I knew I had to climb up their food chain and sever the head of the organization. And for that, I needed to find their Market, where the kidnapped are sold. During my latest raid, I obtained a map. It’s the record of where the slaver ships are landing, but the map is in code, and I couldn’t break the cipher. I needed the key.”

“Is that how you ended up in the cage?”

“I bargained with a man and fell into a trap,” Richard said. “It was a miscalculation, and I won’t repeat it. They chased me, and I ran. I knew the Edge was my best chance. Unfortunately, I was too delirious to know where I was going or to deliver a warning when I got there.”

He leaned forward and bowed his head. It was a bow that would’ve been a credit to any blueblood lord. “I’m sorry I brought this on you. I will make them pay. It’s all I can offer you.”

He was about to end this conversation and leave, taking her chance to matter with him. No. No, she wouldn’t stand for it. The wounds inside her were too raw, the memory of the fire too fresh. “Not all,” Charlotte said. “I’m coming with you.”

“It’s out of the question,” he said.

She gathered herself and looked down on him with all of the haughtiness her upbringing could provide. “You mistake me, my lord. I’m not asking.”

“My apologies. In that case, I should advise you that I don’t respond favorably to threats.”

The dog raised his head and bared his teeth.

“You’re not my enemy,” Charlotte said. “I don’t want to kill you, Richard. I want to end this.” She pointed to the cage behind him.

He sighed, and for the first time, she saw the signs of weariness in his face.

“Perhaps, I should explain further. I mentioned that I needed a cipher key.”

“Yes.”

“Jackal Tuline, one of the slaver undercaptains, had a sister. A month ago, she was serving drinks at a tavern. Voshak bashed her over the head with a bottle and forced himself on her in full view of a dozen witnesses. He flattened her nose and dislocated her jaw. I’ve seen her personally, and the woman is almost unrecognizable. The experience left her deeply damaged, and her face is the least of her injuries.”

Charlotte glanced at the decomposing corpse. He wouldn’t force himself on anyone again. That knowledge filled her with a frightening, savage joy.

“The word on the street said Tuline wanted revenge but was too afraid to take Voshak on directly. I approached him and offered him a chance to get even. We bargained.”

His voice dripped with derision, as if he were describing swimming through sewage.

“We came to an agreement. He would sell me the cipher, and I would see to Voshak’s death. When I met Tuline in the woods to deliver the payment, six of his men ambushed me.” Richard smiled. It was a hard, humorless grin. “Tuline took a few moments to astonish me with his cleverness. He had deliberately engineered the rape of his own sister.” Richard paused. “He thought this plan up, talked it over with Voshak, then he did it. All to draw me out. The level of depravity is mind-boggling.”

It made her want to retch. “What happened?”

“I left him in two pieces.” Richard leaned forward. “When Declan came to me with this proposal, he told me that this mission would consume me—and it has. He chose me for many reasons, in large part because I have nothing to lose. My family doesn’t need me now. My wife left me. I’m childless.”

An old pain stirred in her. She was childless, too. “I’m sorry.”

He paused, momentarily off-balance. “Thank you.”

An awkward silence stretched between them.

Richard cleared his throat. “I chose this road deliberately, and when I started, I thought I was worldly. I wasn’t. I’ve seen atrocities along the way that would horrify most people, and I committed some because I had to be as ruthless as my enemy. There is no room for mercy or compassion in this quest, and there is no turning back. It changes you, and should I survive, I’m not certain that I’ll be capable of normal life. Make no mistake, my lady. I’m a monster. Don’t follow me. It’s a one-way trip. Sane, kind people aren’t meant to take it.”

“How about mass murderers?” she asked. “What’s the policy for us?”

Richard shook his head. “Go home, my lady.”

“My home is burned to the ground.”

“These people are ruthless, cruel thugs. Think of what you must become to hunt them.”

He didn’t understand. “Look around you,” she said softly. “I came to the Edge to hide from my magic. I ran because I have an obligation as a healer to contain it and prevent it from hurting anyone. I needed to be someplace where my power was weakened and nobody knew me. Someone had injured me, and I wasn’t sure I could hold my emotions in check and not seek revenge. I came to the Edge alone, and I had nearly starved to death when Éléonore found me. She saved me, Richard. I rebuilt my life. I was content and this”—she indicated the corpses with the sweep of her hand—“had fallen dormant. And then they killed her, and they killed Daisy.”

Her voice snapped, and she swallowed. “She was only twenty-three, Richard. Twenty-three. She had barely started her life, and they crushed her and ripped out her sister’s heart. Every time I close my eyes, I see Tulip wailing over her sister’s body. I can’t undo it. I can’t just let it go.”

“You have to try,” he said. “Vengeance will eat you alive.”

“It’s not about vengeance.” She shook her head. “It’s about stopping them. You’re trying to warn me about the road, but I’m already walking it. Have you heard of the Healer’s oath?”

“‘I swear to hold the human body sacred,’” he quoted. “‘I will apply all my effort, all my magic, and all my knowledge of procedure and remedy to preserve life, to treat malady, to ease suffering. I swear to knowingly do no harm through the use of my magic or craft. I will prescribe no remedy when none is needed. I will not seek to improve on Nature’s design for the sake of vanity, knowledge, or human passion.’”

“How do you know that?”

“One of my relatives was a certified Physician,” Richard said.

“There is more,” she said. “‘Should I break this vow through my ignorance, I will surrender myself to the mercy of my peers. I will accept their judgment and my dishonor, and should they convict me, I will cease to practice medicine. Should I break this vow by deliberate action, I will know that I have betrayed myself. I will have drowned my teachers in guilt and cast doubt and suspicion upon my students. Let my name be a bitter taste on the lips of those who knew me, let my countenance be that of dishonor, let me fade into nothingness and be forgotten, save as an example of failure and weakness, for I would become an abomination in the eyes of the world.’”

He waited.

“I’m a certified healer from the Ganer College. Today I killed human beings through the use of my magic. I did it willingly.” The words tasted foul on her tongue. “My life is over. Do you understand? I sacrificed everything I was so I could do this because it’s my responsibility as a peer of the realm and a human being to destroy this human cancer before it hurts anyone else.”

She pointed to the dead bodies. They lay there, silent and accusing, evidence of her fall from grace.

Charlotte turned to Richard. “I own the consequences of my deeds. I have nothing to lose. I need your knowledge and expertise, but I’ll keep going, with you or without, and I won’t stop until the slave trade is broken. You can benefit from this alliance, as can I. Think what an asset I can be. Don’t let my sacrifice be wasted.”

RICHARD leaned back. She was looking at him, waiting for an answer.

He had done his best to persuade her to leave, but everything about her, from the coldness in her eyes to her wary posture, convinced him she would not. He had no idea who she was. He only knew that they had the same purpose.

She was beautiful and radiant. He remembered the concern in her eyes. The same concern drove her now, pushing her toward acts of violence. On the surface, he’d be a fool to turn her down. She was driven by tragedy, just like him, and she would be incorruptible, just like him. He needed a blade to kill, but she could kill dozens at once empty-handed. She was Death, and she had just asked to be his ally.

Walking next to him would break her. He’d fought so hard to spare Sophie from this grisly soul-eating burden. He couldn’t bring himself to say yes to this woman.

“How often can you do this?” He pointed at the corpses, delaying his need to answer.

She frowned. “The process is complicated. When I healed you, I used the reserves of my own body to speed your regeneration. When I injure, the method is similar. It takes very little magic to introduce a pathogen to the body, but to make it kill with unnatural quickness requires a lot of power and control. To kill this many, I infected them all, then siphoned off the natural life force of their bodies until I was overflowing with it. There is a high degree of risk: had I poured too much of myself into the process, I would’ve died, but I am very angry, and I’ve never killed with my magic before, so I took the chance. Given ample rest and the right circumstances, I can do this again tomorrow.”

“Would you risk it without rest?” Richard asked.

“If the incentive was high enough,” she said.

So she valued her goal higher than her life. He would have to take that into account. She was likely to overextend herself on her own.

“What about doing this on a smaller, individual scale?”

The woman shrugged. “Infecting a single target is much easier.”

“Are you still capable of healing?”

She reached over and drew her hand across his cheek, letting the tiny golden sparks penetrate his skin. The ache in his face dissolved.

“Does the bruise still hurt?” she asked.

“No.” It was in his best interests to keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t help himself. “What you do . . . it’s a gift. Reconsider.”

Bitterness dripped from her voice. “Too late.”

“Are you able to control your magic? Can you rein it in?” Richard had to account for all possible contingencies.

“Yes,” she said. “What I do requires a very deliberate intent and concentration. I won’t be infecting you in my sleep because I had a nightmare.”

“Do you have any family? Anyone who could be used to compel you to do something against your will?” Anyone he could use to talk her out of this madness.

“No.”

“Do you have any enemies?”

“Yes. Elvei Leremine, my ex-husband. He’s terrified of me and will take every opportunity to obtain revenge. Also, by using my art and magic to murder, I’ve broken the healer’s oath. If I’m discovered by the realm, Adrianglia will execute me. If you don’t want this to happen, the use of my magic must be more covert.”

He was running out of questions.

“There is one more thing you should be aware of,” she said. “I can’t heal myself. If I’m injured, I’ll have to recover by normal means unless we can find another healer.”

She had committed herself to it. She would embark on this path with or without him, but her chances of survival were much higher if he took her with him. She had great power, but she was vulnerable. This time she got lucky. If he abandoned her now, eventually she would walk into the wrong camp. It would take just one man to shoot her dead or knock her unconscious. She had saved him twice, once from the wound and the second time from the cage. No matter how much he didn’t want to witness her transformation into someone like him, he owed it to her to safeguard her.

Richard held out his hand. “Last chance to turn back.”

“No.” She put her hand into his.

“These are my terms. You will accept my authority. If I say to wait in a certain place, you will wait. If I say to kill someone, you will kill them. You understand that your life is secondary to our cause. If your compassion jeopardizes our mission, I may not be in a position to be merciful. If you choose to hinder me, I’ll cut you down.”

He waited, hoping he’d scared her off.

Her face showed no hesitation. “Agreed.”

They shook.

“My name is Richard Mar.”

“Charlotte de Ney,” she said with a sigh.

A noble title. She had mentioned she had one, but even if she didn’t, he would have known simply by the way she held herself. Blood itself, noble or no, didn’t confer any special benefits. He was living proof of that—an Edger mongrel, yet he could and had passed for a blueblood many times. But he had years of education, and he recognized in Charlotte the grace and poise that training imparts.

Propriety dictated that he should let go of her hand. He did, although he didn’t want to.

“We start with the bodies,” Richard said. “Voshak should carry a copy of the cipher. One more thing.”

“Yes?” She raised her eyebrows.

“The dog.”

“What about him?”

“You can’t possibly mean to take him with us.”

She raised her eyebrows at him.

“He’s a wolfripper. Born and bred to hunt wolves, and since he was owned by the slavers, he was trained to hunt men. You’re looking at 170 pounds of cunning and vicious predator.”

“I’m so glad you think he’s smart.” Charlotte smiled at the dog. “The dog stays, Richard.”

He sighed.

Charlotte pushed herself up from the pile of bags. He read exhaustion in the slump of her shoulders. Her magic had come at a cost. He decided not to argue.

“As you wish.” Richard handed her his knife. “We have some corpses to strip. It’s easier to cut pockets than rummage through them. We may have to ride hard once we find what we’re looking for. Can you do it?”

Charlotte raised her head, her gaze regal and proud. “Of course I can.”