The Silver Scar Read online

  “You bring this man who kills my kin to my freehold?” Reine said. The skin creased around her pursed lips and narrowed eyes.

  “I go where Castile goes,” Trinidad said.

  Reine looked at Castile, brows raised. “You got this archwarden on heel?”

  Castile nodded. “Consider us blood. Kin.”

  Reine studied them again as the wind whipped its promised shards of ice in their faces. “Who sent you? Your lord is dead.”

  Steady, Trinidad thought as Castile shifted on his horse and a few spears twitched in response.

  “My lady sends me,” Castile said.

  “And you, archwarden? You gonna speak for the parish?”

  Trinidad urged his horse a step closer, so that he stood next to Castile, their legs almost touching. “I speak for no one.”

  “Still got the marks. You still one of them.”

  “I bear the marks of Christ and my order,” Trinidad admitted.

  “And a pentacle.”

  Trinidad just looked at her. It would take more than that to rattle him. He was cold and exhausted and in no mood to die on the end of one of those spears.

  “I think his debt to you is paid, yeah?” Castile said.

  Reine held for a long moment before giving them a curt nod.

  “You won’t like what we have to say,” Castile said. “But we’re here to help.”

  She raked them with her hard stare again and turned her horse, indicating with an offhand wave for them to join her. Her spearguards encircled them.

  The path through the gates was rutted with recent tire tracks and hoof prints. Their horses slipped slightly in the iced mud. People and tents packed every inch inside the freehold walls. She led them to a graveled paddock filled with warhorses with different brands on their flanks. After they dismounted, a couple of wide-eyed Indigo teenagers took their horses away, staring daggers at Trinidad.

  Reine whistled, low. Abruptly, the guards turned on them, grabbing Castile. Trinidad caught the motion out of the corner of his eye. Adrenaline scouring his veins, he drew his sword and swung a wide arc, making the Indigos leap back.

  The Indigo guard holding Castile tightened his arm around his throat. Castile clawed at the brawny arm, but it didn’t make a difference. The Indigo gave Trinidad a savage grin. “Do it. I’ll choke the backsass right out of him.”

  “Castile is my blood,” Trinidad said. “Spill his and I spill yours.”

  “Enough,” Reine said. “Put them in the cell ‘til we sort this.”

  They dragged Castile down to the trampled mud and searched him for weapons. He writhed and fought in their grip, cursing, and Trinidad had a sudden image of what it what it must have been for him to have been violated in prison and then in jail. Fury erupted inside him. Two spearguards blocked his way when he lifted his sword into high guard. They drew their spears back.

  “Put it down,” Reine said to him.

  “We came here to help you,” Trinidad said. “Not to fight.”

  “Archwardens only know how to fight,” Reine said. “And that Wiccan’s been nothin but trouble.”

  “If Trinidad wanted to fight you, you’d already be dead,” Castile said, sounding strained under the weight of the Indigo on his chest.

  Trinidad shifted his sword toward a spearguard edging toward him. “Let him up.”

  “We’re here to help!” Castile yelped as someone kicked him. It couldn’t have hurt too badly with his armor but Trinidad stiffened from his jaw to his toes, rubbed raw from the dead slaver’s boots.

  “Got me enough help from Wiccans and Christians at the moment,” Reine said. “Put that sword down before we stick him.”

  “You can’t harm him,” Trinidad said. “He’s here to savvy. He said the words.”

  “I’m figurin out why you’re here before takin what you say as dead true. Even savvy talk. Fuckin put it down.”

  Trinidad held for another couple of seconds, considering options and coming up empty. Jaw clenched, he laid the sword down. Spearguards instantly surrounded him, though they didn’t throw him to the ground as they had Castile. Their fingers found all his weapons, the knives hidden in his bracers and his boot, his pistol and the Savage slung over his shoulder. One of the Indigos held up the Savage. “Blood on this, queen.”

  “Slaver blood,” Castile muttered as they hauled him to his feet. “Friends of yours, yeah?” One of the Indigos backhanded him across the face, nearly knocking him down again. Trinidad struggled against the hands gripping him, but they held him firm.

  “Into the cell,” Reine said.

  Under the eyes of curious Indigos, spearguards marched Trinidad and Castile to a low reclaimed cinderblock building with shuttered windows. They shoved them in and Castile tripped to his knees on the rough dirt floor. He shrugged off Trinidad’s offer of help as the door slammed shut behind them.

  “How quaint,” the witch said, frost lacing his breath as he glanced around. “It’s the old West all over again.”

  Two windows with ill-fitted metal shutters bolted over them. A patched metal door hinged on the outside, last century by the looks of the rust, but secure enough to require tools to break through.

  Trinidad sat against a wall, laid his forearms on his knees, and looked at Castile. “When the Bishop doesn’t find any more witches awake, she’ll come here next.”

  “I’m aware. At least it’s morning. They’re bound to all be up for a while yet.” He shook his head. “This is your fault. You had to insist on coming with me, didn’t you?”

  “You’re the one who made me promise to kill you if you got caught again,” Trinidad said. “Well, you’re caught. You want me to break your neck or strangle you?”

  Castile rewarded him with a sour grin and slapped his hands against his thighs. “Cold in here.”

  “Come sit,” Trinidad said, but Castile paced across the little building to press his eye against a crack in a shutter. Light knifed through the dusty gloom when he drew back.

  “I don’t see Reine,” he said.

  “She’s going to sweat us for a while. It’s what I’d do.” Trinidad leaned his head back and closed his eyes. He thought of his sword in the hands of some Indigo, then pushed it from his mind. His face felt cold but his cloak and armor kept the rest of him at a bearable temperature. He couldn’t deny the relief of getting off his feet. The ill-fitting slaver’s boots were protection against further cuts, but not making those he already had feel any better. He started to feel the dragging that warned of sleep until Castile’s voice broke through.

  “You’re fucking napping?”

  Trinidad sighed. “She’s going to let us cool it here for at least a couple of hours. Might as well get some rest.”

  “Maybe they’re just planning on how to best kill us.”

  “Castile, relax. We gave her enough hints to make her curious.”

  “One of us should stay on guard,” Castile said. “The bishop and her men could be roving. I can wake you if they attack.”

  “Suit yourself,” Trinidad said, letting his eyes fall shut again.

  The sanctuary took shape around him, candles flickering crimson in their little red glass cups, dark beams quiet overhead. Trinidad knelt in the aisle and bent his forehead to his knee. No words of prayer came. He felt empty without Father Troy to guide him. He swiped at his stinging eyes and climbed the steps to the altar. But when he tried to touch it, his hand passed through.

  Someone else’s dreamscape.

  “Wolfie?” he asked into the silence.

  A shout answered, faint as if it passed through an ocean of water or sifted through sand. Alarm prickled Trinidad’s back and he fled for the Barren.

  In the little valley where he always first arrived, surrounded by silent tombs, Malachi, Seth, and Bishop Marius stood in a circle. Wolf stood a short distance away, as if to respect a private conversation. Trinidad couldn’t quiet him in time.

  “Trin!”

  They all turned, hands reaching for hilts
. Malachi drew first.

  Trinidad leapt toward him. He ducked inside his guard and jammed his right palm upward. Malachi’s nose gave way with a nauseating crack and blood spouted. He gave a strangled, wet cry. With his left hand, Trinidad grasped Malachi’s sword by the blade and wrenched it free of his grip. The honed steel bit deeply into his fingers, sliced them to the bone. He darted away as quickly as he’d attacked, switched grips to hold the sword up in an effective defensive position, and thrust his wounded hand deep into the sand. He grunted in pain as the silver cauterized his wound.

  Malachi struggled up from his hands and knees, a hand to his bloody face.

  Marius shrieked, “This is your chance! Kill him!”

  Wolf started to move, to grab for a sword from Seth. The archwarden swung it easily away, smacking Wolf with the flat and knocking him to the sand. Seeing Wolf fall was almost Trinidad’s undoing. Then Seth was on him. Barely ducking the attack and unable to fully regain his balance, he returned an awkward slash, one that would have only blocked Seth’s blade with luck. But his sword found only empty air.

  “Wolf?” he shouted, spinning. “Wolf!”

  Not so much as an echo answered in the dead, empty world. He sank to his knees and let the blade of the sword sink into the sand between his thighs. It had all happened bewilderingly fast. Wolf had seen it start to go wrong for Trinidad and roved them away before they could do him harm.

  Trinidad had no doubt Marius would make Wolf pay dearly for his disobedience.

  He leaned his forehead against the cold steel hilt and whispered, “Wolf. What have you done?”

  “Wake up, Trin.”

  He blinked as a draught of cold air swept his face. He flexed his empty hand and examined his fingers, slashed through with silver. The sword had stayed behind in the Barren as he’d been dragged back.

  Castile knelt on one knee next to him. Beyond, four hard-faced Indigo spearguards with notched brows and hairlines waited in the open doorway, faces covered to their cheekbones with blue scarves.

  FORTY-THREE

  Reine noted how stiffly Trinidad moved as he entered her house, like he was hurt. When Castile sat at her invitation, Trinidad took up position behind the Wiccan, one hand hooked on his weaponless belt, the other hidden under his cloak. They both wore scoured armor, freshly painted with Wiccan sigils. They were clean down to their fingernails. Wiccans were always fussy about that anyway. Castile laid his hands on the table. She caught sight of silver fingernails before he curled them into fists.

  “We start with truth,” Reine said. “Tell us, Castile, about payin me to bring Trinidad to you.”

  Trinidad’s soulless stare didn’t flicker from her face. “This isn’t about that,” he said. “The crusade is begun.”

  She realized she’d never really heard him speak calmly before. His natural voice was soft and gentle. It didn’t match the strong lines of his face or the harsh black cross tattooed on his rigid brow or the things he’d done.

  “Look,” Castile said, lifting a hand and straightening his fingers. “We know it all. We know you savvied with the bishop. We know about you and Paul—”

  She stared at Castile’s raised hand until he lowered it back to the table. “Fuckin Trinidad killed him.”

  “Good. We’re not lying to each other anymore.” Castile glanced up at his archwarden, forehead creased in a frown. Trinidad didn’t talk, so he went on. “We had to blow out of the parish yesterday. Got to the cave last night to find the coven under attack.”

  Her brows dropped. “They found the cave? How?”

  “No. Archwardens roved through their dreamscapes and killed a dozen witches,” Trinidad said. “They would’ve killed more if we hadn’t woken the rest of them.”

  Castile sat still as death, gray eyes glittering like the silver embedded in his fingernails. “You get what we’re saying? They killed them from inside their heads. From inside their dreams.”

  Reine found her hands were gripping her thighs. She spread her fingers on the table in the universal savvy posture. “Who roved them? Not Lord Hawk.”

  “They got a new rover,” Castile said, flinty. “You know the kid called Wolf? Apparently, he’s a witch, too. Of course, he’s forgotten he was. He was chemwiped at some point. But the ability to rove stuck.”

  Reine held her face perfectly still, riding dual waves of shock. Roving mojo should have been chemwiped from the kid along with everything else that had made him Israel. If he could rove into witches’ heads and to the Barren, he had powerful magic, Israel did. Maybe that meant Trinidad did, too, if such ran in families. But she didn’t like talking about Israel. Too many issues around him, starting with the chemwiping and ending with the bombs.

  She swallowed to dampen her dry throat. “We’ll sleep with spears—”

  Castile barked a pained laugh. Trinidad moved and made her spearguards shift their weapons to a battle-ready two-handed grip. But he just shifted closer to Castile.

  “You think we don’t sleep with weapons? They ghost right inside your heads,” Castile said. “And, even if they don’t manage to kill you right off, Indigos don’t have magic. You can’t rove away. You can’t escape them or chase them down. How long can you ask your warriors to go without sleep? How will you keep all these people, your children—” he swept an arm “—awake? By sundown they’ll start picking you off.”

  So, it had come to this. “We’ll have to run, then.”

  “Roving knows no boundaries,” Trinidad said.

  Castile nodded. “Distance means nothing. They’re not going to stop until they get to you. You’ve been to the Barren. That makes you a liability to Marius. Don’t pretend to be stupid now that we’re finally being honest with each other.”

  She thrust herself up from the table to pace. “What, then? You bring us a dray full of problems and no fix.”

  Trinidad edged back from Castile and turned to the window. He stared out at a couple of kids playing in the mud. Their giggles penetrated the silence. “There is a way. We take the battle to them.”

  Castile twisted around to look at the archwarden. “So we can all die sooner rather than later? Brilliant plan, Trin.”

  “Not all of us will fight. Just me.” He turned. His cloak made a quiet swish around his boots. “I’ll challenge Bishop Marius to single-handed combat.”

  Castile leapt to his feet so fast the bench tumbled back. “No.”

  Trinidad stepped forward and righted the bench without answering.

  “She’s old,” Reine said. “You can take her.”

  “No. She can still fight. Even so, she’ll choose a stand-in. Probably one of her archwardens.”

  Castile stepped up, pushed his face close to Trinidad’s. “Even in the off-chance Marius agrees to it, you could still lose.”

  “I’m good. I have a shot. But in the end, I don’t think it’ll matter.”

  “Why are you so fucking determined to die?” Castile smacked his fist against Trinidad’s armored chest. Trinidad didn’t flinch.

  “Nothing means more to archwardens than our vows. We fight to defend our Church, but we swore ourselves first to Christ. To peace. A challenge like this might be enough to make some archwardens remember their vows to Him. At least some of them might lay down the cross. If they do, parishioners will follow.”

  Castile shook his head. “You stupid, stupid fuck. This will never work.”

  Trinidad lowered his voice. “We can’t fight that army and win. We have to destroy the crusade from the inside. It’s a small chance, but it’s the only one we have.”

  The two men stood as if there were no one else in the room: eyes locked, close without touching.

  “It was never going to work anyway.” Trinidad gripped Castile’s shoulder. “You have a life. A home. I don’t. I lost mine a long time ago.”

  Castile shrugged free of Trinidad’s hand. He paced away, flexing his hands and drawing a deep breath before turning back to Trinidad.

  “Wolf is Israel,” he s
aid.

  FORTY-FOUR

  The only sound in the Indigo’s house was the jingling of the chains in Reine’s locks as she turned to look at Castile. Everything faded into the roar starting in Trinidad’s head. His cheeks flushed hot. Israel is dead. He didn’t even know if he spoke the words aloud, but Castile raised a hand as if he had.

  “It’s true,” he said. “It was an Indigo store your folks blew up, yeah? Israel survived. Indigos found him, took him from the wreckage, brought him to the freehold. He was barely alive.”

  Reine flicked a hand and the spearguards filed from the room. She crossed to a shelf, uncorked a stoneware bottle, and drank. The harsh sting of alcohol filled the air. She offered Trinidad the bottle; he didn’t take it.

  “No,” he said. “No one survived.”

  Castile spread his hands. “You survived it, Trin.”

  “They left me outside. But Israel—they took him in.”

  “He made it,” Castile said. “The Indigos took him. Roi d’Esprit chemwiped him. Think it through. His burns, his amnesia.” He glanced at Reine. “The bombs. Tell him, Reine.”

  Trinidad could only stare at Castile. He realized they were waiting for him to speak. He turned his head toward Reine. “Did you chemwipe Wolf?”

  Reine eyes flicked between them. Her lips twitched. “Papa Roi did.”

  Trinidad spun and drove his fist into the wall. The house shuddered. Pain split through his knuckles, leapt up through his wrist. He shook his head, shook all over. The Indigo queen and Castile watched him warily, giving him wide berth.

  “Inparish tribers found him,” Reine said. “Would’ve given him back, too, till we learned Wiccans did the bomb. They knew he was a Wiccan kid. He had a pentacle pendant.”

  Trinidad had dropped his own under his family’s marker, burying the craft along with them all.

  He’d forgotten to breathe. He sucked in sour, dirty air.

  “He was burned bad.” Reine touched her own cheek and let her hand fall back to her side. “I tended him while Papa was havin talks, findin stuff out. You were inparish by then, but Papa sorted out who he was—Israel.”