Chapter 19 — House Guest

Yvette had seldom heard of a culture that did not have at least one major celebration around the winter solstice. And though her own upbringing was far from conventional, Yvette had to admit that she found enjoyment in the simple mundanity of the particular traditions her family observed.

Most years they would practice a rough amalgamation of various gift giving celebrations, with perhaps a certain culture’s version emphasized if her family happened to be in a corner of the world where that culture was present. And this year Yvette again found herself adding the finishing touches to a present months in the making.

A dull pounding came from the wagon’s door, accompanied by an indistinct voice.

Yvette frowned as her attention was pulled away from the Astral and back to the physical. She was well and truly tempted to simply ignore the summons, but in truth no one would be so furiously knocking on a healer’s door unless it were an emergency.

Yvette rose off the massive cushion and answered the door.

A kick meant for the door met only air as its owner—a roughly dressed man—stumbled through the entryway.

“What are you fucking deaf!” he yelled, grabbing Yvette by the arm, “Move your ass, and—”

The man, musclebound and half a head taller than Yvette, pulled hard on her arm but nearly lost his footing as Yvette remained unmoved.

Yvette sighed. ‘Bedside manner’ was the phrase Rína used to describe the patience one needed in situations like these. Yvette gently, but firmly, grabbed the man’s offending wrist saying, “Take a breath, and tell me what has happened.”

“Your little village is under new management,” the larger man sneered before looking confused as he struggled to free his hand.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’ll be begging for a lot more if you don’t let go of my hand,” the man said, drawing a dagger and brandishing it at Yvette’s chest, “and if you think I’m the only one out and about, you’re dead wrong.”

“Oh.” Yvette said, her voice cold. While she was working, she had kept the wagon well insulated from sound, but now with the door open, her body’s hearing was able to confirm the truth of the brigand’s claim.

She could hear perhaps a half dozen sets of footsteps in this part of the village, with accompanying sounds of burglary. She couldn’t be sure of their total number, but if they were bold enough to attack the entire village, Yvette could estimate a lower bound on their full number. Thankfully, she heard no other footsteps close enough to be within line of sight.

Yvette hauled hard on the man’s wrist and sidestepped, pulling him into the wagon and throwing him to the floor. The larger man made a cry of surprise as the door was sealed behind him and his dagger went clattering across the floorboards.

“What the hells—” the brigand said as he tried to get to his feet.

Yvette sent her threads into his body, foregoing the precision of healthcare as she quickly tore at the nerves going to and from the man’s limbs. In an instant he collapsed back down to the floor, crying out in a shriek of pain as his arms and legs spasmed before going limp.

“Gods, what the fuck did you do to me?” sudden fear on the brigand’s face.

“I—” Yvette considered for a moment, looking down on his body, “I poisoned you. If you cooperate I will give you the antidote, otherwise you will die in a few minutes’ time. Do you understand?”

The brigand did not seem to understand as, in his panic, the only words that left his lips were descriptions of the things he and his compatriots would be doing to Yvette once they found him.

Yvette sent a jab to his shoulder, his collarbone snapping beneath her knuckles.

The brigand cried out a second time as Yvette huffed and began again, “No one can hear you. Your only path out of this conversation alive is through cooperation. Do you understand?”

The brigand whimpered a nod.

“Good,” taking a moment, Yvette located the nerves carrying his pain signals and disabled them, the strain on his face immediately lessening.

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“To clarify,” Yvette continued, “you and your compatriots are attacking the village?”

He nodded.

“For what purpose?” Yvette snapped.

“Just a… just a bit of vacation,” the brigand averted his gaze, “It’s what some of the boys like to call it.”

Scenarios intruded upon Yvette’s mind as she manually controlled her heart to keep its rate steady.

“How many are your number?” she continued in an emotionless tone.

“About fifty or so,” he said, his breathing unsteady, “Look, I’m sure we can work something—”

“Among the villagers there would have been a girl,” Yvette continued, her quickened breathing betraying her rising panic, “auburn hair, one hundred and seventy centimeters tall—”

“Look, I haven’t—”

“—sixty-five-kilograms-brown-eyes—” Yvette raised her voice.

“—seen anyone. I’m just doing—”

“—TwentyYearsOldGrayCoatBlackSatchel—” she practically yelled.

“—the outskirts—Wait! Yeah, the coat and the bag! Yeah, I think I saw her. The mage chick, right?”

Yvette froze, save for her heaving chest, “How do you know she’s a mage?”

“How do I fucking know?” the brigand almost laughed, “She dropped a dozen guys just by looking at them, just like how the boss does whenever he gets pissed. The boss had to handle her—”

Yvette’s heart stopped.

She wasn’t sure when she had done it, but as she regained lucidity she found herself pinning the brigand up against a now cracked wall, her hands locked around his similarly cracked ribs.

“What did you do to her?” Yvette asked, her voice hollow and eyes unfocused.

“Wha-” the man struggled to breath as blood dribbled from his mouth, “I don-, ah, know. Look, the bos-, ah, probably just-, ah, bagged her.”

Yvette’s eyes snapped onto his, “What?”

“That’s ho-, ah, how we do it. We, ah, grab hosta-, ah, hostages. Keep people in li-, ah, in line, you know?”

Yvette slowly lowered him back down to the ground, his limbs still limp.

He continued shakily, “But, you know, that’s great news for you. Cause you got me, right? You can swap me for the girl and then everyone gets to go home happy.”

They took her as a hostage?

It was unlikely—incredibly so. Mages categorically were far too dangerous to try and capture alive. Perhaps an exception could have been made for an apprentice without any spell structures, but with so many non-mages around, she would be a liability too dangerous to be kept alive. The brigand’s superior might be keeping Rína close—keeping her suppressed—while using her as bait to lure out the master they presumed was nearby, but it would be a longshot, and a dangerous one at that.

Either Rína was being held hostage, or…

Yvette pushed her soul’s rising panic back down, restarting her heart while she was at it.

Rína was being held hostage. Rína was alive. Yvette would find her. And that was the end of it.

“So, uh, any chance you could undo what you did to me?” The brigand hazarded.

“No…” Yvette said.

“Oh, well—”

“There won’t be any trading of hostages,” Yvette clarified, “that was not the purpose for which Rína was taken. Besides, you have seen too much.”

“Wait—!”

The base of Yvette’s palm crashed through the brigand’s skull as if it were made of eggshell. With a mental command, the floorboards of the wagon splayed open, revealing the interior of the living vehicle’s normally compacted stomach. Yvette washed her aura over what was left of the skull, confirming the departure of the soul. Then she flicked the gore of what used to be a face off of her hand and into the stomach, and finally stripped the corpse and tossed it in after.

Closing the floorboards, Yvette began changing into the brigand’s clothing and visage. He was slightly taller than her and much broader of shoulder, but that was nothing a slight skeletal shift couldn’t fix.

“Do-Ray-Me-Fa-Cah-Dah—” Yvette scowled as she tested the brigand’s voice. Replicating a male voice was always finicky, even when one still had the original vocal cords in their mage sight to compare to.

“Fa-So-La-Ti-Do.” Yvette tried a second time, now to her satisfaction.

Even with the technical voice, there was still the trouble of accents and speech patterns, not to mention the expected shared knowledge, but there was no way around it. The brigand could have been interrogated for that kind of information, as well as the manner of mage his superior was, but there were far more reliable ways of obtaining that kind of information.

Yvette the not-brigand inspected herself, looking for anything she had forgotten.

Admonishing herself, she grabbed what had the appearance of a simple pack from a cabinet and slung it over her shoulders. With a thought, Yvette doused the wagon’s oil lamps, and headed off into the night, resealing the wagon behind her.

She made straight for the center of the village—it was where all of the villagers should be and thus the bulk of the rest of the brigands. But before even a minute had passed, Yvette heard the sounds of three pairs of footsteps moving hastily in her direction. She needed information, but the gaps in her knowledge would be far more noticeable in a one on one conversation—or one on three in this case. She needed to mingle or perhaps just hover on the outskirts of a larger group of brigands. As such, Yvette picked up her pace, avoiding the anonymous trio as she closed in on the village square.