It was for the best, Peva decided. Kill Cerise quick, dump the body, and tell Lagar it’s been done and done clean with no pain.
A trace of movement flickered through the narrow break in the trees, where the stream made a sharp bend. He concentrated. A shadow darker than the others was sliding along the water. A boat, and before dawn, too. Damn. The brazen bitch had chanced the night after all.
Instantly he was hot: his heart thudded, his mouth went dry. The excitement surged in him. He leaned forward, alert eyes fixed on the dark silhouette at the bow. His breathing slowed. Peva aimed. The figure on the cutter sat slumped over. Tired from the sleepless night. It was all too easy.
He held her in his sight for a brief delicious moment. In that precious instant they were linked, he and his target, by a bond as ancient as the hunt itself. He felt her life, quivering like a fish on a line, and drank in the rush it brought him. Only two things made man equal to Gods: creating life and destroying it.
Slowly, regretfully, Peva squeezed the trigger.
The bolt punched the silhouette in the chest, knocking it to the deck.
“Back to the mud, Cerise,” Peva whispered.
Something whistled past him, smashing into the pine trunk with a loud thump. The night exploded with white light. Blinded, Peva dropped into a crouch, fired in the direction of the boat, and rolled into the ferns. A magic bolt. Damn.
A whine sliced through the air. He heard two solid thuds: bolt heads punching the ground where he had sat a moment ago. Circles of searing white light swam before his eyes. Peva reloaded on feel alone.
His heart fluttered as if a small bird were caught in the cage of ribs and now fought to escape in a frantic frenzy. He caught his breath and forced himself to slow down.
Hugging the ground, Peva reached with one hand toward the area he had guessed the bolts had hit. His hand found a shaft. He pulled it free, letting his fingers explore the length of the bolt. Short shaft. He’d almost been hit with a short bolt.
Cerise couldn’t have him from ten yards with a short bolt. The bitch had help. She must’ve dropped a bowman off on shore, and Peva had given himself away with that shot.
Peva’s fingers touched the bolt head. Smooth, balanced. Professional. Too good for a casual bowman. Peva dropped the bolt before he cut himself on the razor-sharp edges. Feathery ferns brushed his face. He still couldn’t see. To move was to die. To stay was to die, too—eventually the bowman would figure out where he hid. He felt the bolt coming, felt it speeding along that same ancient connection he had savored earlier. Peva dashed to the side, fired two shots at a wide angle, and reloaded again.
The blinding fire in his eyes began to dim. He saw the ferns, dark strokes against the bright haze. A few more breaths and he would have his vision back. He had to buy some time. To the left, a dim outline of a large cypress loomed, its base bloated and thick enough to shelter him.
Peva Sheerile wouldn’t die in the swamp today.
CERISE halted in the sea of rust ferns. Peva died on his knees, hugging the cypress. William had pinned him to the tree with two bolts, one through the neck and one through the chest. Death turned Peva’s face into a bloodless mask. She looked into his eyes, hollow and sad in the moonlight, and felt guilty for no reason.
Cerise looked away. That was the dumbest thing. The man would’ve killed her without a moment’s thought, but she’d known him for so long, it was almost like family dying. What would it be like when one of the family did die?
She swallowed. Now wasn’t the time to lose it.
William walked out of the ferns, sliding bolts into a leather quiver. Cerise tensed. She’d watched the whole thing from the boat, hiding behind the body of the Hand’s spy. She’d guessed that Peva would set up an ambush somewhere along this route. Lagar would give him plenty of people, but Peva, the arrogant snob that he was, would send them off to cover other routes, so he could get the kill all by himself. She and William did the simple math: one man was easier to take down than several. They’d set the corpse up as the rolpie driver, she stayed low, steering, while William had trailed the boat along the shore for the past mile. The moment Peva showed himself, William would take him down. Except it didn’t quite go that way.
“You made him run,” she said, keeping her voice neutral.
William gripped the bolt in Peva’s back. The dark shaft was deep in there. Only the fletch and about an inch stuck out. It would take a lot of strength to pull it out. He strained and the body released the bolt with a wet sucking sound.
“Did you have fun playing with him?”
“I didn’t do it for fun.” William wiped the bolt on Peva’s back and examined the sharp head. “I fired the flare bolt to blind him and then ran him around on an off chance he had some help hiding in the bushes. When he didn’t flush out any friends, I killed him.”
He reached for the second bolt. The shaft had gone clear through Peva’s neck and into the tree, at least three inches. She probably could’ve stood on it and it wouldn’t have budged. Mikita with all of his strength wouldn’t be able to wrench it out.
William’s fingers closed on the bolt. He put his foot against Peva’s back and grunted, his face jerking with strain. The bolt popped out of the cypress. William sniffed it and grimaced. “The head’s bent, but the shaft is still good.”