Chapter 112: Never Reveal Everything

Torin’s POV

The mist was almost gone. What was left of it sat low between the trees in thin scattered patches, burning off slowly as the morning moved forward.

The road ahead was clear. The sky above was still grey but the kind of grey that had accepted its situation and was not going to do anything dramatic about it.

We had been walking for a while without talking. Not uncomfortable. Just three people moving through the same space in the same direction and no particular need to fill the quiet between them.

Then I stopped.

Azura took another step before she realized I was not moving. She turned. "What is wrong?"

I did not answer her.

I was looking at the trees. Both sides. The left first and then the right. The way the branches sat. The way the undergrowth was arranged. The particular stillness of a space that should have had small sounds in it and did not.

No birds.

No wind was moving through the lower branches.

Nothing.

"We are not alone," I said.

They came out of the trees before the words had finished settling in the air.

From both sides at once, stepping out from between the trunks with the practiced timing of people who had done this before and knew that coming from one side gave the people in the middle time to think.

They came from both sides so there was no time to think. Faces covered with dark cloth tied across the nose and mouth. Weapons in hand. Moving into position around us with the steady unhurried patience of people who believed the numbers were already working in their favor.

I counted. And there were ten of them.

They formed the circle with the efficiency of practice, closing the gaps between them, making sure the three of us were fully inside it before anyone said a word.

One of them stepped forward slightly. The one nearest to me, which told me he was either the most confident or the least sensible. Sometimes those were the same person.

"Hand over the ladies," he said, "and we will not hurt you."

I looked at him.

Then I looked at the nine men standing in a circle around us with their weapons ready.

Then I looked back at him.

"Are you sure about that?" I tilted my head slightly. "I would genuinely advise you to turn around and go back to your mother before this gets to a point where I have to send you all to your creator instead."

He lunged.

I let him come. I waited until the last possible moment, until the commitment was complete and there was nothing he could do about where his momentum was taking him, and then I moved.

One step to the side. One hand finds his wrist. One controlled application of the force he had already built up himself. He hit the ground hard enough that the impact told everyone watching something important about how this was going to go.

He did not get back up.

"Mmph. Lazy thing."

I moved fast.

Three men on the left side came at me together, which was the right instinct, but they had not coordinated it well enough.

The first one was too far ahead of the other two and that gap was all I needed. First one down.

The second one stepped over him which slowed him just enough. Second one down.

The third one had enough time to adjust his approach, which made him slightly more dangerous than the others had been. Slightly.

He went down too.

I had cleared a path on the left side of the circle. It was not wide but it was enough.

"Run," I said. "Now. Go straight and do not stop."

Azura turned to look at me. "What about..."

"Dammit woman, just go!" The word came out with more force than I had planned. There was no time to apologize for it.

They ran.

I watched them disappear down the road, their footsteps fading fast, and then I turned back to what was left.

Five men are still standing. The other five had peeled off after Azura and Liona, which was exactly what I had expected. And exactly the problem I could not deal with right now.

I had to finish this fast.

I looked at the five men in front of me.

Then I did what I had been hoping not to do.

I stretched out my right hand.

The golden chain came from my palm the way it always came, coiling out into the air like something alive, moving with a speed and precision that had nothing to do with anything a normal wolf could produce.

It found the three nearest men before any of them had time to understand what was happening. Wrapped around them once. Pulled tight.

They dropped.

The chain dissolved. Gone as completely as if it had never existed, leaving nothing behind except three men on the ground and two men standing very still with expressions that had changed significantly in the last three seconds.

I rolled my shoulders. Cracked my knuckles.

"Your turn," I said.

Neither of them moved toward me.

That was when I realized they were not looking at me.

They were looking behind themselves. Past their own shoulders. Toward the trees at the edge of the road.

They stepped aside. Parting like they had been waiting for something.

The figure that came forward from between them was not one of the men.

Smaller. Moving differently. The walk of someone who was not here to brawl, who was here for something specific and had simply been waiting for the appropriate moment to step forward and claim it.

A hood pulled low. Face covered. Could not see anything below the eyes and even that was mostly shadow.

But the voice.

Feminine. Measured. And something underneath it that I could not immediately place but that my mind caught the edge of and held.

"I knew you were not ordinary." The voice came out calm and certain. Not impressed exactly. More like someone confirming something they had already suspected. "You are a sorcerer, ain’t you?"

I went completely still. I knew that voice.

I was certain I knew it. It sat in some part of my memory that I could not access quickly enough, like a name on the edge of your tongue that retreats the harder you reach for it.

"Your first mistake in a fight," she said, "is revealing everything you have. It makes it considerably easier for the people standing across from you to understand your capabilities and plan around them."

"I do not have time for your philosophy," I said.

I whispered the words.

Low and fast, the syllables that I had learned from my mother before she understood what she was teaching me, and had stopped. The dagger at my belt responded before I had finished speaking, pulling free and launching through the air with a velocity that had ended encounters faster than this one on more than one occasion.

It went through the first man’s head. The second. The third.

It turned in the air, curving back on itself the way it always curved when I sent it with the right intention behind it, and flew toward her.

It stopped.

Dead. Mid-air. Hovering in front of her face with the point aimed directly between her eyes and absolutely no intention of going any further.

I stared at it.

That was not possible. That should not have happened. The only thing that stopped the dagger mid-flight was something with enough power to interrupt the intention I had put behind it, and the only things that had that kind of power were not things you ran into on a road between two villages in the middle of Hollowcrown territory.

The dagger floated there. Patient and useless.

She laughed. Soft and genuine, like something had genuinely amused her.

"I told you," she said. "Never reveal everything when you are fighting someone you do not know. You have shown me your chain and your dagger and the particular syllables you use to send it. That is far too much information to give away this early."

I blinked.

She was gone.

The space where she had been standing was empty. No movement. No retreating footsteps. No sound of anything leaving. Just gone, the way things went when the method of going was something other than walking.

I turned in a full circle. Trees. Road. The men on the ground. The dagger hovering in the air where her face had been before I called it back to my belt.

Nothing.

Then I felt her.

Right beside me. The warmth of a presence that had appeared from nowhere, close enough that I should have heard breathing, and I was not hearing anything.

Her voice came next to my ear. Low and unhurried. Each word was placed with the deliberate patience of someone who had done this before and knew exactly how much time they had.

"You should have run when you had the chance."

The cold moved through me.

Not temperature. Something deeper than temperature. It started somewhere in my chest and moved outward in both directions at once, reaching my hands and my feet and the back of my skull at the same time. My fingers stopped responding to my instructions. My legs understood what I was telling them and declined to act on it.

I tried to speak. The syllables were there. I had them ready. I opened my mouth and pushed them toward the air and they did not arrive.

My knees hit the road.

The impact registered distantly. Like something happening to someone nearby rather than to me directly.

The grey sky above was the last thing I saw, still doing nothing dramatic about itself, completely unbothered by what was happening below it.

Then nothing.