“You died with Brude and Kresimir.”
“My death was greatly exaggerated. Yours won’t be if you don’t pluck those gloves very carefully off your hands. I imagine you’re very hard to kill, but I can decapitate you with a twitch and I will make sure all the pieces are scattered very widely.”
Prime licked his lips, looking at Vlora ruefully. “Why don’t you just kill me, then?”
“Because,” Vlora told him, “I wasn’t lying. We’re here to destroy the godstone. We tried to destroy the one in Landfall but were unable to. If we all pool our knowledge together, we might actually be able to accomplish our mutual goal.”
“You have five seconds to start taking off those gloves,” Taniel warned. “Four … three … two—”
“Wait,” Vlora said. “I need him to heal me.”
“You what?” both men asked at the same time.
“I need you to heal me,” she said to Prime. “I can’t help in my state. I’ve got a bullet wound in my back and another on my shoulder. You at least need to take care of those so I can function.”
“You would trust him to poke around inside your body? He was ready to kill you,” Taniel said, his disbelief plain.
“If he’s going to trust us, we have to trust him.”
“I, uh, am not a very good healer,” Prime said. “I’ve picked it up over the years, but I’m slow and not as thorough as a healer who has more power in the appropriate disciplines.”
“Make do,” Vlora said. She met Taniel’s eyes. “Let him work.”
Taniel relaxed, but he did not move. “All right, Prime. Get to work. We don’t have much time, so focus on her back—and do a good job, hmm?”
CHAPTER 54
Vlora emerged from Flerring’s cabin into the daylight, blinking to allow her eyes to adjust and reaching to scratch at the tightness that seemed to stretch across both shoulders and down her spine. Prime Lektor emerged behind her and, following close on Prime’s heels, Taniel.
Vlora had been healed by Privileged on several occasions. The very best of them could make the experience only vaguely unpleasant—not unlike getting stitches from a skilled surgeon—and leave the body feeling a little stiff but good as new. Prime was true to his word in that he was not very good.
The process had taken him several hours. The bullet wound in her back was healed, true, but it felt as tight as a knot from riding a thousand miles in a badly sized saddle. The skin was taut and uncomfortable, and she would probably have to have it sliced open by a surgeon and rehealed sooner rather than later.
It was, she decided, still better than bleeding out. Or having to wait for months while she healed naturally.
“I warned you I wasn’t very good,” Prime said sullenly.
Vlora side-eyed the Predeii. There was a time when she had genuinely feared him, the way any teenager fears the headmaster of a university. That fear had changed when she found out his true nature and then … well, she’d never really come to grips with his abandoning Adro during the Adran-Kez War.
“It’ll do,” she said, rotating her shoulder and moving her sword arm. She could fight if she needed to, and that’s all that mattered. “Where is the stone?” she asked.
“Nighttime Vale,” Prime said.
Vlora swore. She’d scoured the Vale herself and seen nothing. Either Prime was lying or he had it hidden with sorcery. “You sure about that? I would have seen either it or your sorcery in the Else.”
“I’m sure,” Prime insisted, drawing himself up. His gloveless fingers twitched, and Vlora could feel his urge to reach into the Else. He still didn’t trust them. “I’m not a novice when it comes to hiding sorcery,” he said. “I hid in plain sight from the Adran Cabal for five hundred years. I can hide a bloody rock from some miners and a powder mage.”
“That’s fair. Stay here. I’m going to talk to Flerring.”
Vlora found Little Flerring up in her largest workshop, overseeing the careful packing of black powder. The workshop was in chaos, tools strewn about, powder scattered on the floor as men hurried around with sacks and barrels. “What’s going on?” Vlora asked.
Flerring glanced at her, then did a double take. “You should be in bed.”
“I’m fine,” Vlora insisted.
“You’re not fine. You bloody well got shot.” Flerring crossed the room and grabbed Vlora by the shoulder, pulling down the collar of her shirt to look at the wound. Her eyes narrowed. “There’s sorcery here.”
Vlora had no interest in explaining Prime Lektor’s role. “Taniel arrived with an old friend. I’ll be fine.”
“Don’t spill that, you twat!” Flerring roared at one of her men. “You’re overfilling the barrels!” She turned back to Vlora. “We’re packing up. The town is half-torched, and everyone is out for blood. I’m going to sell off what stock I can and get out of here before the Dynize come too far north. Fatrasta is too hot for my blood.”
“The temperature or the conflict?”
“Both.”
“Right.” Vlora took Flerring by the arm, pulling her close. “That blasting oil. I need it.”
“I don’t—”
“I need it today,” Vlora hissed. “We have a man who knows where the artifact is. I want it destroyed as quickly as possible. You’ve had your week.”
Flerring looked toward her men packing her supplies and made a sour face. “I don’t want to stick around any longer than we have to.”
“Send your men ahead. You made a promise.”
She could see the conflict in Flerring’s expression. Flerring scowled, turning her head with a quick intake of breath, before finally speaking. “All right. I’ll keep a few of my boys and all the blasting oil I’ve scrounged behind and send everyone else on. The location better be ready for blasting, because I don’t intend on staying any more than a couple of days.”
“Take all your supplies to the Nighttime Vale. I’ll be waiting.”
Vlora rejoined Taniel and Prime Lektor, and the three of them rode back into town, doing a long circuit around the base of the mountains to avoid the armed men prowling the streets and the bucket brigades still trying to put out fires.
“Who won?” Vlora asked Taniel as they crossed the entrance to a narrow valley. Nearby, a couple of drunk miners watched the town, passing a jug of grog between them and alternately weeping and giggling at some lost fortune.
Taniel looked up, deep in thought as he rubbed the cloth of Prime’s confiscated gloves between two fingers. “Brown Bear Burt,” he said, nodding toward the center of Yellow Creek. “I understand you killed Jezzy with a controlled explosion. Not much to do for Burt but to mop up Jezzy’s forces and put out the fires.”
“I hope there’s a damned lot of fires,” Vlora murmured to herself. She wanted Burt distracted until they were well and gone. He’d promised not to get in her way, but the promise of a miner baron didn’t reassure her.
“There were,” Taniel answered, as if she had spoken to him directly. “But he also has a lot of men.” A half smile crossed Taniel’s face and he seemed to withdraw into his own thoughts again. Vlora leaned over and smacked him on the arm.
“What do you mean he has a lot of men? I thought Jezzy outnumbered him?”
Taniel blinked back at her. “Oh, yeah. That’s what everyone thought. They also thought he was from Landfall.”
“He’s not?”
“He’s not,” Taniel confirmed.
Vlora’s mind scrambled, trying to figure out what could be keeping Taniel distracted like this. Her thoughts went to the conversation they’d had riding into Yellow Creek three weeks ago. “Palo Nation?” she asked.
Taniel nodded. “I didn’t know until I caught a glimpse of him on my way to find you. He’s Palo Nation, and so is the army he’s had camped up in the mountains until he brought them down to restore order last night.”
Vlora felt her stomach lurch. “How big of any army?”