He offered her the cigarette; she reached forward to take it. She was looking forward to smoking it, to be honest – it had been an age since she’d kept them on her person, worried that one of her children would discover them and adopt her bad habits. She’d never had Mallos’ gift for conjuring them from thin air, damn him very much. So the smile that ghosted across her face was subtler this time. Less threatening. Even as the appraisal in her eyes intensified.
There was potential, here. Smugglers were useful; smugglers that had heard of you and thought it wise to cooperate, even more so. She might not have had an active crew and a marauding ship, but Croe knew a thing or two about networking in Shaman’s dark underbelly, and this could prove to be a valuable transaction in the making.
Or, it might have been, had they not been interrupted.
Croe’s face did not quite register surprise as the girl fell into her brother’s arms, bloodied and smelling of ash. It wasn’t because this scenario wasn’t surprising – no, this was wholly unanticipated, and pretty unwelcome if she were honest – but living with a target on her back had led her to react to such occasions with barely a drop of emotion. She’d tangled with kings and gods, after all; there were only so many adversaries left to mystery. So she turned, scanning the treeline as the girl wept and gasped, and uttered the magic words.
Demi-hunter.
Croe’s eyes narrowed, her hand procuring a dagger from…somewhere. It shimmered faintly, prismatic in the filtered light.
“You should take her and go,” she advised over her shoulder, but then the girl collapsed. Croe half-turned, glancing between them. This Ghede didn’t seem the sort to abandon family, not with that look on his face; she sighed and turned her back to him, redirecting her attention to a commotion out in the woods that was drawing rapidly nearer. It wasn’t long before the source of the racket appeared, snarling and slavering.
The rider was talking – they always talked too much. Croe ignored her, instead assessing the creature she rode. Big. Blind, too, or nearly so, judging by the way its head moved and its nose wriggled. Sharp claws, sharp teeth. All in all, not what she’d had in mind when she set out that morning.
She could have teleported out of there. She had nothing to prove, and valor was hardly among her celebrated traits. But this woman and her creature would come for her children, next. And Croe couldn’t have Gwythr leveraging Tsi, either. And after the morning she’d had, she was happy to kill his agent out of spite.
So she threw the dagger, hard, toward her head.
The woman deflected it easily, laughing as her power coiled around her, and Croe used this moment of arrogance to force herself into her mind. The laughter stopped abruptly, choked off into quiet. Croe cocked her head. Her vision expanded, taking in the whole clearing with the addition of these new eyes; she could see herself, cold and still, and Ghede behind, and the seal, and the girl on the ground. She could see the bounty hunter’s hands trembling before her. She could see the reins clenched tight, and through the hunter’s nose, she could smell the creature. Croe did not know how anyone could stand to ride animals, for the smell alone.
“Your pet first, I think.” Her voice was doubled flatly, spoken by two mouths.
The woman reached for her own weapon, and plunged it into the back of her mount’s neck. The sound it made was unearthly as it thrashed, but the huntress held on with the strength of one who does not know or care for her own limitations. Croe wrung every ounce of strength from that body, forcing the short sword down, down, through the neck, until the creature collapsed and the huntress trembled, blood seeping into her trousers. She did not let go. Her breath came in quick gasps.
Croe was sweating, because possession was difficult, but she had never been one to heed her own limitations, either. She walked steadily toward the twitching creature and its shivering rider, as the woman fought so hard to repel the psychic attack. A new dagger has appeared in her hand. They were conjured from nothing, from her mind, plucked from imagination and made real. They always looked the same; like the one Mallos has conjured for her, an age ago.
She dragged the woman from the saddle, unrelenting. Their wills were not equally matched.
“If it’s any consolation, Lorraine could barely fend me off.” Croe released her long enough for her to scream, and be silenced. The severing of the connection between them made her feel light, like an afterglow. Her eyes shone as she looked back at the siblings by the crates. Her breathing was deep. “Ordinarily I’d have questioned her, but she didn’t seem very cooperative,” she explained, before walking back toward them. Her hands were empty again; she raised them, palms up, as if that could possibly reassure the boy that she would remain unarmed. Then she knelt by the girl.
Healing had been her first magic, and it was still the easiest. She pressed her hand to the seeping wound and let the power flow out, like a current. It seemed to tap some other source, different from the possession and hypnosis; this one felt bottomless, though she was sure it ran out somewhere. These wounds were easy enough.
“Do you even know him?” She inquired, tilting her head up to the brother as she worked. “The son of Tsi.”
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