Abbee woke the following morning to a cold fire and an empty camp. She tracked Ipsu’s footprints to a hilltop overlooking Lencoe. From her vantage, Abbee saw scattered, broken crates on the ground on this side of the continental road. The stopover yard was empty. All the trains had departed already. Bala and her friends were gone, but Gerro and Lencoe’s marshal were still down there.
So was Ipsu. She saw him at the edge of town, talking to someone. Abbee couldn’t tell who it was from here, but she knew it wasn’t Gerro. Somebody else. Ipsu didn’t know many people in Lencoe. They’d been there twice in the past three years, and Ipsu had only visited Gerro and one other person. The leatherworker. Ipsu had been all business with them. He wasn’t a chitchat type of person.
Ipsu finished his conversation and turned away from town. The person he’d spoken with watched him go. Abbee realized she was standing in full view of the town. Felt eyes on her. She stepped back into the trees and waited for Ipsu. When he neared, she saw that he had bathed at some point. His clothes had been washed, and he’d cleaned out the dirt from under his fingernails.
“What, you went into town? Who was that?”
Ipsu walked past her. Heading west.
“Where are you going? Who was that? Ipsu.”
Ipsu walked for another fifteen minutes without saying a word. Abbee had no choice but to follow. She wondered where they were going. Yesterday they’d been heading northeast. Now they were going west, back the way they’d come. Ipsu hadn’t ever backtracked in all their time together. He led her to a pond. The one where she’d cleaned her bloody knives.
“What are we doing here?” Abbee asked.
Ipsu tossed her something. She caught it. Soap. He gestured at the water. “I’ll meet you on the other side. Wash everything.”
She held up the soap. “So they are sending for a sniffer.” Supposedly, sniffers had a hard time across bodies of water. Abbee didn’t know if that was true, but if she could get the stink of blood off her, maybe that would be enough. She waded into the murky water. It was frigid.
“Start a fire. I’m going to be freezing when I get out.”
***
Abbee’s teeth were chattering when she emerged from the pond. The air was like ice on her skin. Ipsu sat on the ground with his back to a tree.
“Where’s the fire?” Abbee demanded. Her feet squelched in her boots. She pulled them off and dumped them out.
Ipsu stood up and jogged away. West. “You’ll warm up as we run.”
Abbee swore. She tugged on her boots and sprinted to catch up. “Where are we going? Who were you talking to in Lencoe?”
When he didn’t answer, she asked, “Are they really sending a sniffer?”
“No,” Ipsu said.
“They’re not?” Abbee demanded. “Then what was the business with the pond? Why make me freeze to death in—”
“Hunters.”
Abbee slowed to a stop. “What?”
Ipsu turned. He raised his eyebrows and halted. “You killed two people last night.”
Abbee felt like he’d punched her in the gut. She’d never killed anyone before. Had thought about it plenty, especially under the bridge with Sammy and Mith. Her father. But she would never have done it on purpose. Abbee blinked. Thought about the blood. Stabbing Bala in the neck. The woman had been awful, but Abbee hadn’t meant to kill her. Or the other one. Abbee remembered her broken shoulder. Her broken nose. They’d toyed with her pain. Well, maybe she’d meant it. A little. Abbee shied away from the murderous desire. It felt wrong. But right. That felt more wrong.
Ipsu cocked his head at her. “You didn’t know.”
Abbee let out an explosive breath. “No. They were alive when I left.” Nausea roiled in her belly. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Breathe.”
Abbee breathed. Four in, hold four, four out, hold four. She walked around in circles. It didn’t help. She wasn’t sorry they were dead, but she wished she hadn’t killed them. She knew she was being selfish. She was alive and they weren’t. Abbee didn’t care. She told herself that Bala would’ve graduated to killing at some point. She’d held that darkness. It was good that Abbee had stopped Bala. Keep telling yourself that.
“Why hunters? It was self-defense.”
Ipsu arched a brow. “You started it.”
“They started it,” Abbee snapped. “I tried to get out. They ran me down. Would’ve had a grand old time with me if I hadn’t defended myself.”
“You healed in front of someone. They think you’re a wizard.”
Abbee swore. “Did you tell them I wasn’t?”
“Too late,” Ipsu said. “The marshal sent the call out with the first train.”
Abbee had known this might happen eventually. She’d imagined that she’d be able to explain. Prove it to someone that she healed, and that was all she did. No fireballs, no warping, no anything else. No wizard. It hadn’t occurred to her that someone would just decide when she wasn’t even there. Decide she was a wizard and then call for wizard hunters. In Abbee’s vision, she’d never had to run.
“Where can I go that’s safe from hunters?” Abbee asked.
“They go everywhere,” Ipsu said.
“How long are they going to look for me?”
“Trails go cold sometimes. But they don’t give up.”
Abbee felt a surge of anger. “It was Gerro, wasn’t it? He told them.”
“Gerro didn’t see anything except you hitting a drover with a mug. Are you saying that didn’t happen?”
When Abbee stayed silent, he nodded. “Gerro asked if you were a wizard, and I told him no. Didn’t matter, though. The drover you stabbed saw it with his own eyes. A telepath in town confirmed it. Saw what he saw. You healed yourself.”
“I don’t suppose that telepath also saw that they held me up by my ankle and were torturing me?”
“They saw,” Ipsu said. “You let yourself get caught.”
Abbee felt her jaw drop open. “What? You think I … seriously? Ipsu, movers threw crates at me from across the continental road, like catapults attacking a town. They hit me in the dark.” She shook her head and walked past him. “But sure, yeah, I let them catch me. Where are they? Where did the marshal send word?”
“Joor.”
“So they’ll be coming from—” Abbee stopped. “Then why are we heading west?”
“Because they’ll ride a train to Lencoe and then look everywhere but west.”
“Oh,” Abbee said, understanding. “You think we can sneak past them. Crafty.”
“Perhaps,” Ipsu said, walking by her. “Hunters are crafty too.”
***
Lencoe was a day away from Joor by train, but continental trails covered hundreds of kilometers each day. It was ten days by foot. Abbee and Ipsu made good time, especially since five of the ten days turned into chase days. Abbee didn’t see any hunters. She saw the ground a lot. Ipsu seemed miffed that Abbee had let herself get caught in Lencoe. They were close to Joor when Abbee grew tired of the extra punishment.
“I’m thinking that I’m just going to hand myself in to the hunters,” she told him, lying on her back.
“Up.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking whatever they do is better than this. They can run their wizard tests, and then I’ll go.”
“Up,” Ipsu repeated.
“No.”
Ipsu darted forward and launched a kick at Abbee’s ribs. She blocked the strike with her forearms, grabbed his ankle, wrapped her upper arm around his calf, and rolled into him. He went down onto his back. Ipsu blocked her elbow from a vicious shot to his groin. Abbee scrambled away and popped up to her feet.
“Run,” Ipsu commanded.
Abbee attacked. Frustration and anger sang through her limbs. She imagined she was fighting Bala. Fighting drovers. Fighting people trying to maim or kill her. She kept her knives in their sheaths, but she fought for her life all the same. Every strike was an attempt to disable and maim. Knock out or kill. Abbee pierced Ipsu’s defenses and landed a blow to his head for the first time in her life.
Ipsu jerked backward in surprise. Abbee pressed her attack. Landed another strike to his knee. Another to his gut. His breath whooshed out. She hooked his ankle and pushed him down. Ipsu landed flat on his back.
Abbee fought the urge to pummel him on the ground. She didn’t have to. She didn’t even feel a surge of triumph that she’d finally beaten him. It felt empty. She wasn’t trying to kill him. She didn’t want it to be Ipsu. She wanted it to be Bala. Wanted to land a killing strike and see the light go out in the woman’s eyes. Abbee blinked at the thought. Felt wrong. She didn’t have to kill anyone. She was never in any permanent danger—her gift saw to that. It didn’t matter to her. Someone had tried to hurt her, to maim her, and she’d made sure they couldn’t do that ever again. Made sure by accident, but it still felt right. And wrong.
Abbee set her jaw. “I’m done.” She walked away to the edge of the clearing and sat down on a log.
A few minutes later, she heard footsteps behind her. Abbee tensed. “I said I’m done.”
Ipsu sat down on the log next to her. He was chewing on some dried meat. He turned to her and asked, “Who are you?”
Abbee met his gaze. She was done answering that question, and all the others. “I owe an explanation to no one.”
Ipsu nodded. “Do you truly intend to surrender to the hunters?”
“No,” Abbee said. There was no guarantee the hunters wouldn’t experiment on her. That was the other fear, that they’d try to find the limits of her gift. “But I don’t want to run from them for the rest of my life either. I was just trying to defend myself.”
Ipsu gave her a long look.
Abbee waved her hand. “Fine, fine. After the mug. I was defending myself after the mug. But what they did wasn’t even remotely equal. Anyone else would’ve died from getting hit in the face with a crate.”
“There might be a way,” Ipsu said. “With the hunters.”
“What way? Who do you know?” Abbee knew Ipsu had friends in high places. He knew wizards, or at least the one with the staff in the precinct, the night of Towerfall. Abbee wouldn’t put it past Ipsu to know hunters too. He was recalcitrant about his past, and even more tight-lipped about why he traveled with Abbee. Why he hadn’t handed her over to an orphanage. The only thing he’d ever said, after much pressing and many ultimatums, was that she was “a task that becomes something more.” It was the closest Ipsu had ever come to saying that he cared about her. He had never expanded on what the task was, though. Tasks were given by others. Abbee had wondered who the others might be for the past seven years. Did anyone else know about her gift?
“I will have to send a message in Joor,” Ipsu said. “I will say when I know more.” He pointed at the trees with his chin. “The city is over the next two hills. Tomorrow, when I go into the city, don’t follow me.” He stood up and walked to the other side of the clearing.
Abbee watched him over her shoulder as he gathered sticks and branches for a fire. Don’t follow me. That was code. Abbee’s job the following day was to track him without getting caught. At tomorrow’s evening fire, she’d tell him all the places he’d been. It was like hide-and-seek in reverse. Seek-and-hide. It was her favorite game, and Ipsu knew it. Abbee wondered if this was a reward for finally beating him.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
She doubted it. Ipsu didn’t do rewards.
***
Ipsu was gone when Abbee woke in the morning. She scrambled to her feet, grabbed her pack, and set off west at a sprint. She had no idea how long it had been since Ipsu had left. On other don’t follow days, he’d let her know he was leaving in the morning. And he’d usually told her not to follow him in the morning, not the previous evening. Abbee wondered if his admonition to stay behind yesterday had been true, that he truly did not want her to follow him. He’d have said something. He’d have said that today wasn’t a don’t follow day. He’d have told her.
Abbee crested the second hill and saw the city and the sea. Joor’s sheltered port faced her, angling southeast from its position behind a short, rocky peninsula. The peninsula looked like a lone knob in the otherwise flat basin. The basin stretched from the sea toward rolling hills several kilometers to the northwest. While some might consider it foolish to place a city at sea level, this part of the world received little dangerous weather. Abbee couldn’t remember the last time Joor had suffered any storm like the ones that regularly demolished Bloch, on the continent’s opposite coast. A couple of dozen ships clustered in the harbor, ranging from single-mast sloops up to tall clippers out of Kiva.
Abbee swept her gaze left to right over the city. Several blocks of warehouses sat around the port, followed by rows and rows of two- and three-story houses. The skyline dropped to ground level around the tall clock tower marking Justice Square, the center of town. Abbee couldn’t see Judgment Hall from here. Where most city squares had fountains, Joor had an ominous stone building with no windows. Abbee had never been inside, on account of not getting caught committing anything the city considered a capital offense. Joor had no hangmen, headsmen, or other executors of swift, deadly justice. The gray-clad enforcers, Joor’s equivalent of constables, kept the peace. Anyone who couldn’t be reformed with a wooden club was shoved into Judgment Hall and never seen again.
Past Justice Square was the marble open-air auditorium where the city’s democratic government held court. The building was up a little hill and faced Justice Square. A person petitioning the senate or debating a new law did so within full view of Judgment Hall. Joor was a strange place.
More houses and schools spread out on the other side of the city’s civic center, and beyond those, farms. Abbee saw the tops of continental trains to the north, behind another hill. Joor’s train yard. A road connected the yard to the East Gate. The road was quiet this morning.
Abbee couldn’t see it from this hill, but she knew the sealed wizard monastery lay a kilometer south, within a big grove of redwoods. She’d seen the shield once, on the same trip where Ipsu had shown her Judgment Hall and the rest of Joor. She hadn’t known what to look at—the shield obscured a big compound of interconnected buildings that she’d only seen in drawings, or trees with trunks wider than a house that stretched at least a hundred meters into the sky. Maybe two hundred. Seeing them always made Abbee feel small. She wondered how old some of these trees were. They’d been here long before her and would remain long after she was gone. But the shield might open in her lifetime. Twenty-three years if stories in Joor were to be believed. Abbee wondered if she might get a chance to match the monastery to the drawings. She wondered if the wizard hunters would set up camp outside the monastery, and what that meeting would be like. The Joor wizards were rumored to be much more powerful than the old Tower ones.
Abbee spotted a lone figure approaching the East Gate. Ipsu. She couldn’t tell the number of his limbs from here, but she recognized his walk. She took off down the hill at a dead sprint. Ipsu would reach the city before she caught up to him. He’d disappear into a throng of people. Abbee reached the train yard road and increased speed.
She was close enough to make out the scars on Ipsu’s shaved head when he disappeared through the gate and around a corner. Joor didn’t really have gates. More like two big stone posts. There was no wall around the city, not like Akken’s giant stone barrier. No guards at the posts either. Joor was an open city with an open culture. Its few laws were all some variation of no theft, no violence, and no arguing with an enforcer.
Abbee slowed as she passed the stone posts marking Joor’s outer edge. More people here. Lots of foot traffic heading toward the train yard. Abbee weaved upstream through the crowd. She found a shop inside the city with a porch and climbed up on it, looking for Ipsu.
She was momentarily distracted by a small crowd across the street, surrounding three people wearing distinct leather jackets. Each one had bright red pauldrons, stubby iron spikes at the elbows, and fringed tassels on the sleeves. Hurling jackets. Only players wore those jackets, and that was the color of the Veronna Valiants.
The game had shown up a couple of years after Towerfall, an exciting test of skill, strategy, and mettle involving talented players. Abbee remembered begging Ipsu to visit Akken one year to see the Veronna Valiants play in the continental championship tournament. She’d idolized their team captain, Mira Nabo. A rags-to-riches story. Born a refractor, she’d lived beneath the Veronna peaks in the dark, survived some cave-in as a child, and jumped at the chance to play hurling when she was just thirteen. Abbee didn’t see Mira’s signature braided red locks across the street. Otherwise, she’d have completely forgotten about Ipsu.
She pushed aside the intense desire to go meet the players and looked for a bald head. Saw lots of bald heads. Looked for a particular color, a particular scar pattern, a particular gray and white of the short hairs collected around the base of the neck.
She spotted Ipsu disappearing around a corner, four buildings away. Next to a bakery. Abbee stepped off the porch and darted through the crowd. Found the bakery. Found the corner. An alley between two buildings, stacked high with crates and sacks. Abbee caught a whiff of freshly baked bread, and her stomach growled. She almost threw off her hunt. Decided against it. She’d stop for bread later. The bakery would be there tomorrow. Abbee trotted down the alley. Passed the end of the bakery and found a small courtyard. A dead end to the left, with three workers moving heavy sacks of flour off a laden cart. Two women and one man. The sacks moved by themselves. Movers.
The memory of hanging upside down in the dark flickered through her head. Abbee felt a sudden stab of fear at being so close to three movers. One worker saw Abbee, and he stared at her, startled. Abbee turned and hurried away, toward the other end of the courtyard, where another alley stretched further into the city. Abbee didn’t see anyone, but Ipsu must have gone this way.
She got five steps and felt bands of pressure around her ankles. Abbee stopped and looked down. Nothing there. She tried to turn, and more bands of pressure wrapped around her hips and shoulders. She twisted and saw the workers walking toward her. Both women in front and the man in the rear. He watched her, concentrating.
Panic sang through Abbee’s limbs. “Hey, let go of me.” The bands of pressure tightened across Abbee’s shoulders. She felt momentarily weightless. The world spun, and she impacted the ground. Hard. She saw blue sky. “Stop.”
“I got her,” the man said. “Hold her mouth shut.”
Something grabbed Abbee’s jaw and closed it. She was lucky she didn’t bite her tongue. Abbee gurgled and struggled in an invisible iron grip.
A woman’s face appeared over Abbee’s head. Blond hair. She had a rough face and kind eyes. “It’s her.”
“You sure?” another woman asked, peering over the first’s shoulder. Long brown hair in a ponytail.
“Young, short brown hair, green eyes,” the blond woman said. “Fur coat from a wolf, carrying lots of knives, and a beat-up pack. Tough fighter, apparently. Can’t tell about that last bit, though. She looks a little scrawny.”
“Doesn’t look like any wizard I’ve ever seen,” the brunette woman said.
Abbee tried to tell them she wasn’t a wizard, but she couldn’t move her mouth. They didn’t look like hunters. Wizard hunters dressed a lot like House soldiers. Black leather armor with metal plates. These movers were dressed like regular laborers. Hunters didn’t hide. They let you know who they were and weren’t shy about it.
“Maybe she isn’t,” the blonde said. “Wouldn’t a wizard warp away?”
“I gagged her,” the brunette said. “Wizards speak incantations.”
“Not all of them.”
“Didn’t realize you were a wizard expert.”
“I’m not, but you didn’t get her mouth right away.”
“I bet she doesn’t know how,” the man said. “She looks young. I bet nobody’s taught her how to do it yet.”
“He said she’d heal herself,” the blonde said.
Abbee wanted to know who “he” was.
The blond woman pulled a knife from her belt. “I can cut her and see.”
Abbee felt her arms stretch out. Felt a momentary pressure on her hips and legs. She saw something whip away from her. A flash of steel. Her knives. The movers had just grabbed all four of her knives.
The blond woman looked up in alarm. “Hey, hey, no need for that.”
“You heard the stories,” the man said. “She murdered six drovers in Lencoe. Turned them inside out, one by one, while they watched.”
Abbee struggled to tell them that was a lie. That hadn’t happened. It had been three, not six, and all three had still been alive when Abbee had left. It didn’t matter. She could barely move or make a sound.
“This is the least she deserves,” the man went on. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to try it.”
The blond woman’s eyes widened. “No, don’t—”
Abbee heard a sliding slorp. She heard and felt a crunch as pain lanced through her hands and feet all at once. She gurgled her scream around the pressure holding her mouth shut. Every movement was agony. Abbee stopped struggling. The pain didn’t stop. She fought against the mover’s grip to turn her head. She caught a glimpse of her arms. Her knife hilts poked up from her hands. She couldn’t see, but she knew it was the same with her feet. They’d staked her to the ground with her own knives.
“Hey!” the blond woman snapped. “Knock it off.”
“Don’t see her healing any,” the brunette said.
The blonde looked down at Abbee. Chagrin painted her face. “Uh, what’re we gonna do if she’s the wrong one?”
The pressure and pain left Abbee’s hands and feet. “Maybe she can’t if she’s got blades in her,” the man said. Abbee’s knives clattered to the ground.
Abbee knew her healing worked fine with blades stuck in her, it just took a bit to get going if the wounds weren’t fatal. Getting impaled wasn’t fatal. A tiny scratch, and her gift would’ve just ignored it. Her gift pushed all sorts of things out of her while fixing wounds. Over the years, she’d felt and seen plenty of dirt, debris, shards of glass, blades, spikes, and even a machete slip out of her skin. Once the healing started, nothing stood in its way—though she’d never tried to heal against a mover before.
She felt a familiar itch at her wrist. Mote. The wounds in her hands and feet healed and closed. The pain slowly lessened and faded.
The movers watched in fascination. “That’s incredible,” the blonde breathed.
“Wow,” the man said. “She really is a wizard.”
Abbee tried to shake her head. She managed a frown.
The man grunted. “Guess she’s not happy we know.”
“Can we cut her again?” the brunette asked. “I want to see that again.”
“No,” the blonde said. “We’ve taken too long already. Get the hood.”
The man walked away, and Abbee felt an irrational surge of indignation. My boots. They’d pierced her boots. She loved these boots, and now they both had holes in them. Abbee knew she should be worrying about herself and not her stupid boots.
The man returned with a dark hood. “I hate these things.”
“Well, you don’t have to wear it,” the blonde said. She took the hood and stuffed it over Abbee’s head.
The thick cloth blocked her sight, and heavy muffs crammed painfully over her ears, muting most sound. A mover hood. Typically used to subdue a mover, as they couldn’t direct their gift. Abbee had seen them but hadn’t ever worn one.
She felt the pressure on her body shift until she was upright and her feet touched the ground. Abbee’s toes dragged as the movers pushed her along. She lost track of the turns. Couldn’t hear anything. Abbee wondered where they were bringing her, and why nobody had noticed three movers dragging a hooded person through the streets. The movers weren’t dressed like enforcers, and they weren’t hunters, so who were they? More importantly, who was “he”? Who had told them she’d heal?
At least fifteen or twenty minutes had passed when she felt her toes bounce off some stairs. The air changed. Grew cooler. Musty. A basement. Underground, at least. A couple more corners, down some more stairs. Not many basements had two levels.
The pressure on Abbee shifted again, and she felt a hard surface under her bottom. It shifted beneath her. A chair. The movers bent her forward and bound her arms to something. Her legs, same thing.
All the pressure left her. She could move. She could talk. Still had the mover hood on her head, though. She couldn’t see or hear.
“Hey!” she said. “Hey, let me out!”
Silence.
Abbee struggled against her bonds. She was stuck fast. She was definitely in a chair and seemed strapped to a heavy table. She flailed with all her might, and it barely moved. The chair barely moved. Must be nailed down. Abbee struggled some more, trying to loosen the nails. When she finally relaxed, spent, they hadn’t budged a millimeter.
Abbee took stock. She was underground somewhere in Joor. She had no idea where she was. Ipsu had no idea where she was. She was alive, and her gift would heal just about anything, but maybe that was the point. Abbee spent a small eternity wondering if someone was going to slice her to ribbons over and over again. Burn her, maybe. Bury her in a crate full of spiders. Abbee wriggled uncontrollably at that idea. She hated spiders. Creepy-crawly grossness.
Abbee sat there and terrorized herself with nightmares of the torture she’d endured. Terrorized herself with the growing realization that Ipsu’s don’t follow directive had been real. She shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be in this mess. Shouldn’t be sitting here, imagining all the terrible things that were about to happen to her. Even though she was in limited discomfort and she knew she should enjoy this quiet respite, she wished her captors would just come in and get on with it.
***
Abbee lost track of time. It must have been hours when she felt the air shift. Smelled body odor. Someone was in here with her. “Hello?”
A hand on her arm. Her shoulder. Her head. The fingers moved in an odd way, as if exploring in the dark. The hood came off her head. Abbee blinked at a blinding glare in her face. She squinted, trying to both see and limit the light at the same time.
She was indeed strapped to a heavy wooden table. Dark leather bindings pinned her upper and lower arms to the table’s stained and pitted surface, bending her awkwardly at the waist. The light in her face burned bright white and never wavered. A magical light, like the one she had seen at the top of the mover pit all those years ago. Such lights were rare these days, with no wizards left to make them. The light was so bright that Abbee could barely make out the other side of the table, and nothing of the room. She couldn’t see the person who’d removed her hood.
“Hello?”
Someone shuffled on the other side of the light.
“Who’s there?”
Abbee heard a door open, and she thought she saw the light change but couldn’t be sure. More shuffling. Grunting. Struggling. A thump. Footsteps and what sounded like a sack being dragged across the floor. Movement just beyond the light.
A big, dark-clad man stepped into the light. He wore loose-fitting clothing, thin leather gloves, and a hood with no eye holes. No skin showing anywhere. He heaved something into a chair on the other end of the table. Another person. Smaller, thinner, dressed in a sleeveless smock. A young man with calloused hands. His arms flopped onto the table and didn’t move. The big man tied his arms down with similar bindings to the ones pinning Abbee.
“Who are you?” Abbee demanded. No response. The big man didn’t indicate that he’d even heard her. “What are you doing? Why am I here?”
The man walked around behind Abbee. She twisted her head, trying to see what he was doing. She felt a rough tug on her back and heard cutting sounds. Her jacket slipped down. Her shirt too. She felt cold, dank air on her skin. Panic seized her. Abbee heard a scrape of metal on wood behind her. Felt the sightless man come closer. Felt his presence. Felt a finger tap on her back. She flinched but had nowhere to go. His finger moved across her spine, neck, and shoulder. Down her spine. Another finger started at her neck and traced a similar path. Little pauses. Abbee realized that the man was counting her vertebrae.
She felt a tiny prick against her skin next to the first finger. More pressure. Pain. Incredible pain. The man pushed a knife into her back. Angled perfectly between her ribs, cutting straight through skin and muscle and piercing her heart. Glimmermote exploded from her wrists. Abbee felt her heart seize around the blade. It collapsed in on itself as the sightless man withdrew the blade from her body. She heard the knife clatter onto wood behind her. She barely registered the sightless man hurrying out of the room as her pain consumed her.
Her heart stopped, and her breath died, and fear found her. Fear and rage and horror and panic clawed their way up through Abbee’s frame. She lost herself in the torrent of emotion as mote turned to rivers off her wrists, as every part of her body sang its jangled anthem of pain and healing.
When she became aware of her surroundings again, her heart beat anew, and the wound on her back tickled as it closed. Her wrists itched. The young man was still slumped forward against his bonds. His arms looked shriveled, like a raisin. Abbee stared at those arms in horror. That man was dead. My gift. I killed him. She had healed a mortal wound. It wasn’t the first time, but it was the first time since Towerfall that Abbee had been close to another person at the moment of healing from a lethal injury. The first time had been her father. Abbee realized that she might have killed him. Maybe it hadn’t been the floor of the mover pit. She’d landed first. Abbee wondered if her gift had saved her and had murdered her father to do it. Murdered this helpless man across the table. Abbee was glad her father was dead, but this poor, withered man hadn’t deserved to die.
A voice came from above, beyond the lamp’s glare. A man. She’d never heard his voice before.
“Again.”