Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(15)

Someone knocked briskly at the door, but before I could do much more than stand up from where I’d been kneeling beside the bed, the door opened, and my da came striding into the room where I was working. He looked at the woman, then at me.

“Is she worth the death we have laid before her?” he asked me soberly.

“I do not know those of yours that died today. As for the forest lord, he well earned the ending of his life and no blame to my lady for it,” Haida said. “But my lady is worthy of much. You have seen her scars.”

“She’s been treated badly,” I told Da. “Torture over months, perhaps years.”

Haida bobbed her head. “Yes. Torture to force her to build that which should never be made. She fought with what weapons were hers.” Then she told us the forest lord’s intent and the outcome her lady had seen for that artifact. So for years she had fought to deceive him, suffering horribly for her defiance.

My da bowed. “A worthy lady,” he said wearily. “My da, if he were the man he was once, would have given his life happily to protect such a one. He died fighting for me, not knowing that we fought to save a woman of worth. But I do.”

“Dafydd?” I said.

“Your grandda.” Da grimaced. “Once, he was a power to challenge the witch, and also a good man. Adda was the youngest of us all, and his particular favorite. If he could not be moved to help him, then whatever humanity lurked inside the monster was too faint to attend to. Dafydd would have died today at my hands; instead, he died saving his grandson’s life. It is a better outcome.”

I nodded, cleaning my hands a final time. “If I pick her up, Da, can you strip the soiled blankets and help Haida spread new ones?”

In no time, we had the fae woman tucked back in clean, dry bedding, bandaged and treated to the best of my abilities. Being covered with dirt had not particularly bothered me when we’d changed to human in the forest, but here in the clean room, it felt wrong.

When I requested clean water to bathe in, Haida directed us to bedrooms, no less grand than the one in which the wounded fae lady rested. Though I had seen no signs of servants here, there were great copper tubs of hot water and clean clothes waiting for us (I ducked a head into both rooms before we separated).

I scraped away my beard with a knife so sharp that it did not nick my skin, though it had been a very long time since I had shaved. I washed my face again in an astringent that hadn’t been on the table beside the bath when I started shaving.

Clean and dried, I put on the plain-made clothes left on the foot of the bed. The stitching might have been simple, but the fabric was rich and fine. If it felt odd to wear clothes again, it felt odder still to wear boots after so long barefoot.

But when Haida called us to the kitchen to eat, I did not think again about either boots or clothing. The food was plentiful and hot—and tasted fit for gods.

I almost felt human again.

For three days, Da and I took turns watching over the fae woman, Haida’s lady, who did not wake, though several times she stirred. We poured cups of willow-bark tea and clear meat broth down her as often as we could. The second day, fever made her restless and me worried.

On that day, just after midday meal, I felt the witch’s collar tighten around my throat. My da growled and surged to his feet while I dropped to my knees. Haida grunted, and the witch’s call faded.

“It is a strange kind of magic,” she said. “Powerful, and my power is limited. I will try to break it.”

NINE

Ariana

She awoke in her own bed when she didn’t expect to awake at all. She blinked and tried to get up and her body revolted—she felt the beast stir within her. She subsided hastily, breathing through her nose as she tried to remember what happened.

Her father . . . his missing hand—and then the beasts who came to his call. Not his hounds, with their overwhelming aura of terror, but these wolves who needed no magic to invite fear. She remembered teeth and snarls and . . . nothing. She was weak and vulnerable, empty of magic.

Unfamiliar feet scuffed on the floor of the hall outside her door. She forced herself to sit up, expecting something more threatening than the young human who bore a tray of soup in his hands.

“Ah,” he said. “You are awake. Haida said she thought you’d be stirring soon.”

“Who are you?” she asked as he set the tray on top of the leather-bound wooden chest. He was very tall. He had all of his teeth, and he moved well—balanced and more graceful than the humans she’d seen. He wasn’t handsome, but she couldn’t take her eyes from him. The beast inside her tried to tell her he was a threat, but the man’s movements were slow and careful.

He dragged the chest over to the bed with a suspicious lack of effort. Humans, in her experience, were weak and fragile things prone to dying and breeding with about the same frequency. This one was stronger than he looked. The chest was heavy, and she could not have moved it on her own without magic. The beast warned her again that he was dangerous.

“I asked you a question, human,” she said, fear making her cold.

He looked up, and his eyes, some shade between noon sky and moonlit waterfall, met hers. The expression in them held her prisoner. I see your fear, they told her, but no harm will come to you by me.

“I heard you,” he said deliberately. “I was just considering the answer.”