OLIVIA

As she watched the long tail of the obviously irritated one-eared feral leading them through the increasingly dark woods swivel sinuously back and forth, Olivia couldn’t help but wring her hands in worry. It was already late afternoon, and they only had a few hours until sunset. Unlike Sidori, Sachi’s younger and one-eared sister, Olivia couldn’t see in the dark.

Emily’s brilliant plan for tracking the bandits had, it turned out, involved walking all the way back to the silverwood and getting a vero to contact someone from Kel’s pack. While Olivia knew it made sense, it also meant that everyone in the manor had to know, by now, that they’d left. Were they going to get in trouble for that? Was she, specifically?

The fact that Sidori carried both a bow and a full quiver was at least somewhat of a comfort. Olivia knew ferals rarely missed, and if they came under attack, Sidori could leap into the trees and cut down their attackers with arrows before they could do too much damage. Still, Olivia remained tired, hungry, and worried about what would happen when they actually found the bandits. If they found them.

At least she had gotten to eat some of her mother’s delicious stew. What she hadn’t had enough of, today, was water. Using her rarity always made her thirsty after, and she was thirsty now. She would be all but dehydrated if she was forced to use chainfire against the bandits.

She wasn’t even supposed to be here today! She hoped at least Lord Gloomwood would approve of her initiative in keeping the roads in Gloomwood Manor territory safe... or, maybe, Emily’s initiative. Which Olivia was a part of.

She and Emily were helping the people of Shadowfort, even if they hadn’t intended to do so when they headed off to Shadowfort this morning. The biggest question Olivia was grappling with was if she could simply burn a bunch of people to death without giving them the chance to surrender first. She’d always been terrified Lord Crow would order her to do that.

Olivia had eagerly defended her home against the invading kromian army, but they had been trying to kill the silverwood and hurt everyone she cared about. Negotiation with the kromians had been impossible. Yet these bandits, while they had broken the law, weren’t a direct threat to her or those she cared about.

If they were smart, the bandits wouldn’t go anywhere near Gloomwood Manor, and if confronted, they might surrender rather than face death. Or the bandit with the rarity that killed those horses might simply kill them both. The threat of that was why Emily wanted Olivia to simply burn everyone and get it over with, and it was the most efficient solution.

If only they were wearing their silverweave maid outfits! Yet Emily had insisted they didn’t have time to go back and get them. The bandits could slip away if they took too long. That meant the safest way to end this would simply be to let Sidori find the bandits, at which point Emily would tell her where to strike and Olivia would burn them all alive.

“How close are they?” Emily asked in a stage whisper.

Sidori hissed. “Not close enough they will hear you. But they would, if they were.”

“But you’re certain this is the right trail?”

Sidori growled low in her throat. “I am certain you cannot find them without me. So be quiet now, human girl, and let me focus on the scents of the wood.”

“I was just asking,” Emily said defensively.

They crept on for what might have been a few minutes but, to Olivia, felt like an hour. Eventually, Sidori crouched low and crawled forward on hands and feet. Emily did the same beside her, and Olivia followed their cue as best she could. At least, so far as she could tell, she wasn’t making too much noise. At least not more than Emily.

Sidori slapped a hand down on Emily’s shoulder and stopped. Emily stopped moving as well, though Olivia didn’t miss the telltale motion of her reaching out with one hand as if trying to grasp empty air. The moment Emily wished for it, Chopper would manifest.

Olivia crawled closer until she was lying on the other side of Sidori. The one-eared feral glanced at them each in turn, then pointed ahead. She then showed four fingers and a thumb, followed by two more fingers. Olivia took that to mean there were seven people ahead.

Emily looked across Sidori at Olivia and pointed ahead eagerly. Emily’s meaning was clear, as was the order she was giving as the senior battle maid. It was time for Olivia to call her chainfire and send it down on the people clustered ahead. To burn them alive.

Could she? Would she? Olivia remembered the Hawk Merchant’s horses, whom the leader of this group of bandits had impulsively killed with her rarity. Others might be willing to let the fact that the bandit leader had killed horses go, but Olivia wasn’t. She very much liked horses... and anyone who casually killed them couldn’t be a good person.

Stolen novel; please report.

Still, what about the rest of the bandits? Did they all deserve death? As Olivia considered and Emily gestured again, urgently, Olivia decided that she wasn’t ready to burn seven people to death without at least giving them the chance to surrender first. She rose to a crouch, reached deep inside herself, and moved her hands like she was pulling on rope.

A chain of living flame manifested around her. The heat was comforting, not threatening. Olivia rose to her full height and pulled another chain from the ether, then a third. Finally, she marched forward and looped those chains of fire around the people she now saw leaping to their feet at the bottom of the hill.

As chains of living fire swirled around them like burning snakes, people screamed. Seven bandits in various mismatched sets of armor huddled together fearfully at the center of a small camp piled with crates and knickknacks. They’d found the Hawk Merchant’s goods!

“Don’t move!” Olivia shouted as boldly as she dared. “By the authority of Lord Gloomwood, all of you are now under arrest! If any of you try to attack us, I’ll burn you, and if any of you try to get away, you’ll burn yourself!”

“Oli, please!” Emily sounded rather disappointed in her. “Just burn them already!”

“I agree,” Sidori said stiffly. “They are scavengers. Be done with them.”

“Don’t, please!” one of the panicked people below shouted back. All seven of them pressed together to avoid the roving chains of fire. “We surrender!”

Olivia smiled triumphantly as she glanced at Emily, still moving her hands in a rhythmic motion to keep hold of her fire chains. “See? They surrendered!”

Sidori scoffed. “Do as you wish.” She looked to Emily. “Is my commitment met? Or do you demand more in trade for our sanctuary?”

“We still don’t know if we have their leader,” Emily said... petulantly. “Since someone is apparently soft on bandits, I guess I’ll have to go talk to them first. So... stay put for now.”

Sidori’s tail twitched. “Only until nightfall.”

“That’s fine! I think they’ll be dead by then, anyway.”

Olivia couldn’t help but be a bit annoyed by Emily’s annoyance. “Even bandits deserve a chance to surrender. If Lord Gloomwood was here, I bet he’d agree with me!”

“Val wouldn’t,” Emily said crossly. She tromped down the hill toward the bandits surrounded by three concentric rings of flame. “Just keep an eye out. If I start looking like I’m dying or scream in an unreasonable manner, burn them all.”

“If they hurt you,” Olivia said loudly enough the bandits could hear, “I will end them.”

While Olivia didn’t believe in killing people who might still surrender, she also wasn’t about to let them hurt Emily or Sidori. She’d make sure the bandits knew that.

“Which of you is the leader?” Emily called as she stopped just outside the swirling chains of fire. “Or should I start chopping you one by one?” As she spoke, the golden form of Chopper, her spectral battle axe, manifested in the grip of her right hand.

“Our leader isn’t here right now!” one of the bandits, a large man, called back fearfully. “She left us to guard the spoils while she contacted her friends! We told her that robbing a merchant in Lord Gloomwood’s lands would cause trouble, but she didn’t listen to us!”

“And you still robbed a merchant traveling on Lord Gloomwood’s roads?”

“We didn’t have a choice!” another bandit, a woman, yelled. “She told us if we didn’t do as she said, she’d use her rarity to burn us inside! And then she did it! With Roger!”

Even as she continued to swirl three chains of fire around them, Olivia felt a surprising pang of empathy for these bandits. She knew from talking with her mother than not everyone was fortunate enough to be able to find employment with a manor lord or even find a job that paid good coin. When people got desperate enough, they often resorted to thievery, and while Olivia didn’t approve of robbing others, she could at least understand their reasons.

“So who’s your leader?” Emily asked loudly. “And where is she now?”

“We don’t know her real name!” the big bandit man yelled. “She wouldn’t tell us! She just makes us call her Boss, and anyone who doesn’t listen to her gets their blood boiled!”

This was more confirmation that the leader of these bandits (Boss) had a rarity that could kill without touch, like Valentia’s. Blood boiling was a powerful rarity, powerful enough that Olivia wondered why this person wasn’t part of another manor.

Was this bandit leader an independent mercenary like the Asp, the evil acid lady Lord Gloomwood had fought back in Korhaurbauten? No. That didn’t make any sense. A bandit leader would know better than to rob a merchant on the lands of a manor lord... and if they didn’t, they certainly wouldn’t let that merchant live to tell on them.

Olivia was growing increasingly parched and dizzy from the effort of maintaining her chains. The longer she had to maintain these fire chains, she knew from experience, the more light-headed she would grow. She would need to drink a lot of water after they finished interrogating these bandits... if they could find some.

“You said Boss left you to guard the treasure,” Emily said. “So is she coming back?”

“By nightfall!” the bandit woman yelled. “Please, if you let us go, we won’t trouble anyone here again! We’ll leave Lord Gloomwood’s lands and never come back!”

“Do any of you have rarities?” Emily demanded. “Everyone speak up!”

The group all responded with negatives.

“Throw down your weapons!” Emily shouted. “Every last one of them, right now.”

The bandits tossed daggers, clubs, and even a couple of axes at the ground. Emily watched them until they were finished, then glowered. “Is that all of them?”

Again, all the bandits responded in the affirmative.

Satisfied, Emily glanced at Olivia. Olivia gratefully extinguished her fire chains. Dots danced before her eyes as she wavered on her feet.

She had no doubt she had burned enough blood that it would be difficult for her to use chainfire again until she’d recovered, but she also felt a warm sense of pride at making the right choice. The choice she knew Lord Gloomwood would have made if he was here.

These people were thieves, but they weren’t murderers. Neither was Olivia, at least not unless she was given no other choice. While she knew Emily would likely be cross with her and Valentia might disapprove, they didn’t have to live with burning people alive.

They’d captured the bandits. They’d even found the Hawk Merchant’s stolen goods. So now, they could order the bandits to pick up all their ill-gotten booty and carry it back to Shadowfort, where they could finally get supper, report back to the manor, and set out to find and arrest this “Boss” lady with the full might of Gloomwood Manor backing them up.

That is, of course, unless Emily had an even worse idea.