Chapter Thirteen #2
Thank God I’d taken off Gerald’s coat when I got back, or there would be hell to pay!
But it wasn’t a healer who waited outside.
“What the hell was that?” Sienna demanded, before I’d gotten through the door.
I blinked at her, still warm and steamy from the bath, and faintly sleepy. “What was what?”
“What was—” she rounded on Cyrus in obvious outrage. “Has the healer been up yet? Is she all right? Did one of the mages put her under a compulsion or—”
“You know those don’t work on us,” he said mildly, going over to the ridiculously overpriced bar to pour a drink.
He was wearing a bathrobe, too, not having taken the time to dress, and with Sienna’s caftan, we looked like we were having a slumber party. Or possibly something else, as Cyrus hadn’t shaved today, and was halfway to a beard and sexy as hell. I suddenly hoped Sienna would make this visit short.
“The healer’s coming,” Cyrus murmured, having picked up on something in my ever-shifting mood. He knew me too well.
“Would you two pay attention?” Sienna raged.
Cyrus handed me a drink. “All ears,” he assured her. “Would you like something?”
“Yes! I would like to know what the hell is going on! You’re fortunate that Ulmer trusts you,” she added, whirling on me. “He would have killed anyone else who tried that!”
“He trusts me?” That was news.
But Sienna didn’t like that answer. “Cut it out!” she snapped. “This isn’t funny!”
“Sorry.” I drank whisky because I needed it, and it seemed the safest course right now.
“We have worked out a temporary solution,” she told me, breathing a little heavy.
“But I want an accounting of all those vargulfs—every single one. What they did to be exiled, and not just their word on it. I need clan records, witnesses, and people who can vouch for them—assuming there are any. And anybody who was exiled for murder or rape can forget it! I’m only interested in those who talked back to their leadership, or violated some arcane rule in one of the more traditional clans, or maybe thieves, if they didn’t hurt anyone while—”
She stopped because Cyrus and I were both looking at her oddly.
“What?” she demanded.
“That’s my line,” I said, wondering if I’d missed part of the conversation, but if so, Cyrus had missed it, too.
“I’m not letting them into Wolf’s Head without it!” she said. “And it’s no good trying to talk me around. There are children there!”
I looked at Cyrus because my headache was back. “You wanna take this?”
“That won’t do any good,” Sienna told me. “You’re their Lupa—all three hundred of them! Or so they are busy telling anyone who stands still long enough. I don’t know what the hell you did, but they’re fanatically loyal. You’re going to have to tell them, or they won’t budge an inch.”
“Tell them… what?”
“What I just said!”
“Pretty sure you didn’t.”
“You really didn’t,” Cyrus agreed, as Sienna sighed and shoved some of her usual perfect fall of rich, pin-straight brown hair out of her face.
It was a little frazzled-looking at the moment; her makeup could use a touch-up, and there were more lines than usual beside those bright brown eyes.
She looked like she’d been through the wringer, and I suddenly felt bad.
I wondered how much political clout she’d expended getting us whatever deal it was we were being offered.
“It’s the best you’re going to get, so no saying it isn’t enough,” she warned us.
“Okay.”
“The best of those downstairs can be accommodated at Wolf’s Head.
Our numbers were depleted in the attack a month ago, and it’s been a bear keeping patrols up with what we have.
Everyone’s surly and out of sorts from too little sleep, but we can’t risk another attack, so we’ve all been pitching in.
But that means using grannies as snipers these days—”
“Some of those grannies were scary,” I recalled.
“—but they’re old and tired and their feet hurt, and I have to hear about it every damned day!”
I nodded. Sienna was the unofficial—or maybe the official now, I hadn’t kept up with it—leader of the dispossessed clans who had taken up residence at Wolf’s Head, the Were fortress in the desert where the Clan Council usually met.
It had been thought impregnable and a safe place for them to ride out the war after their own homes became too vulnerable or, in a few cases, sustained attacks.
It had proven its worth in the fight, but had also been breached, resulting in more patrols being needed as everyone realized they weren’t as safe as they’d thought.
Which was hard, as the attack had caused the small clans out there to sustain losses.
Losses that a few hundred vargulfs might just fill, I thought, glancing with dawning hope at Cyrus.
“Don’t look like that,” Sienna said sourly. “I haven’t said this will work, only that we’ll try it. And only with those who can be vetted!”
“Got it,” I said, trying—and failing—to wipe the smile off my face.
“How did you get Sebastian to agree to this?” Cyrus asked. “When we left, he was talking about using them as cannon fodder—”
“Yes, well, that was before a crazed Lupa got in his face—and at his neck. You really are unbelievably lucky!” she told me.
“Sorry,” I said quietly. “Would it help if I apologized—”
“God, no! We’re pretending it didn’t happen! Just—don’t do anything else crazy for a few days, okay? Give us time to—”
“Us?” Cyrus asked archly.
“Don’t,” she warned him.
“It’s just… interesting… that every time I see Sebastian anymore, there you are. The Lupa of—forgive me—a rather small clan. And yet, you’ve been in some high-level meetings lately.”
It took me a minute; that was how out of it I still was. “Oh, that’s wonderful—”
“Shhh!” she said, looking uncomfortable.
“Why are you shushing me? It’s about time that Sebastian had a little comfort. His wife has been dead a long time—”
And suddenly, I had an enraged Lupa in my face. And, damn, even for Weres, the last few days had been something for posturing, I thought, not that I thought she was. Sienna looked genuinely pissed.
“I—sorry,” I said, knowing that I’d stepped in it, but not being sure how.
“No one can know!” she said. “It’s stupid for us to even be—I don’t know what we were thinking!”
I do, I didn’t say, nor did I look at Cyrus, who I knew was hiding a grin. At least, I hoped he was hiding it. Sienna looked almost as wigged out as I’d been feeling lately.
“The Clan Council sees me as some kind of outrageous hippie,” she said bitterly, “just because I want to keep people fed and safe and—anyway. If they thought I was influencing Sebastian, there would be hell to pay!”
“But you have influenced Sebastian,” Cyrus pointed out. “You helped us today—”
“Yes! And that needs to stay between us! Sebastian is already viewed as dangerously progressive. Any rumors that he’s with me—”
“And is he? With you?”
“Cyrus!”
“Sorry,” he said, while not looking remotely sorry. “And, of course, I won’t say anything. But… I’m happy for you—and him. It’s been a long time since he had much in his life besides work.”
“Yes, well.” Sienna tossed her hair. “There’s a lot of that ahead of us. But we’ll get through it. And in the meantime—”
“I know,” Cyrus said. “We’ll try not to do anything crazy.”
“Anything else, you mean!” she said, getting in the last word. And then flouncing out when the healer showed up, a rotund Latina with an old-fashioned doctor’s bag and a no-nonsense attitude.
“I think Sebastian might have finally met his match,” I said to Cyrus.
“Or she has.”
“Fifty bucks on the Lupa.”
He grinned and kissed the top of my head. “I never bet against a Lupa.”