tamcranver

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

The first month of her new job wasn’t all that much different than her old job. They were still moving north, and if she had a horse now instead of catching a ride in a wagon, well, she could still draw Pearl up next to Thao and Swati’s wagon and chat while they made their way. She still mostly ate with the camp followers, though sometimes she sat with her friends among the soldiers, and more and more frequently, Jessicka and Lindsey and Jimmy and Steve and even Cassadee’s boys would sit with the camp followers in one big, rowdy, fun group. She still had time to talk to Jill, only perhaps they saw a little less of each other than before. There was something different about talking to a person when you were in charge of keeping them safe, Kitty realized—it made things more serious, and she thought she could understand why Lindsey and Jessicka had never made friends with Jill in quite the way she had. It was a kind of sad realization, so she didn’t think about it too much.

Patrols were mostly boring. Once a couple of thieves tried to attach themselves to the back of the train without anyone noticing, hoping to slip in and slip out with some load of spices or a bag of money, but they weren’t nearly as subtle as they thought they were, and Kitty and her patrolling partner, a laconic young man named Alex, chased them away easily.

Until the day with the werewolves, being a woman warrior was actually surprisingly easy.

The air was thick with moisture that morning, the heat almost oppressive. It looked like it might rain, and Kitty hoped it would. Maybe it would cool the men off and ease the sense of tension that ran through the camp.

Jill sniffed the air with concern over the breakfast fire and said, “Something bad’s on its way.”

Some of the women still looked a little sideways at Jill for fiddling with magic as she did, but Patti threw a small handful of salt over her shoulder, and Jenny and Tanya muttered the Giver’s Prayer under their breaths. Swati spat on the ground.

“Doesn’t take magic to tell something bad’s coming,” she said scornfully to the rather squeamish Norah. “Anybody with the sense they were born with could tell that.”

After breakfast, the morning patrol rode back, looking nervous. One of them whispered in Morrissey’s ear, and he rode out with them himself.

“What do you think that was about?” asked Kitty. She could hear the low hum of nervous murmurs running through the rest of the camp.

“Ah, who the fuck knows,” Jimmy said, talking around the crust of bread he’d torn off and stuffed in his mouth. “Some of those new kids are scared of their own shadows.”

They weren’t the only ones scared, though. Morrissey rode back into camp not long after, his face drawn with tension. “Men,” he said, ignoring the faces Lindsey and Jessicka made. Kitty stifled a laugh. “I want everyone armed and ready to fight. Battle formations on the west side!”

“Battle formations, my ass,” Steve muttered as they shoved the last of their food in their mouths and quickly gathered their gear. “The old fart still thinks he’s in the Queen’s Army.”

But even Steve shut up when they were all in a straight line around the eastern perimeter of the camp, watching a ragtag bunch of people in gray and brown making their way towards the wagon train.

“Oh, ratfuck,” muttered Jessicka.

“What is it?” Kitty asked, feeling more frantic than she liked. The people coming towards them were on foot, dressed in what looked like dirty old pelts like wild men, and so they shouldn’t have been frightening at all. And yet, even from afar, Kitty could feel something coming from them, like a miasma of ferocity and hate that couldn’t be seen or touched or smelled, only sensed. Besides that, there was something almost dizzying about looking at them. She couldn’t put her finger on it—it wasn’t quite like looking at the sun, but there was the same sense that she was seeing something she shouldn’t, and that there was more to them than met the eye.

“Fuckin’ fairies,” said Jimmy, shaking his head. “May all of them fucking rot in the ground! We’re not even anywhere near their land.”

“Seems they disagree,” said Lindsey tersely.

The horses shifted uneasily under the men around them, and Kitty felt Pearl fidget and reached out to run a hand soothingly along the horse’s neck. The fairies—if that’s really what they were—were closer now, close enough that Kitty could make out their fierce expressions. They carried no weapons, and yet their glares and the wicked smiles a few of them were directing at the merchant wagon seemed to mean war.

“What do we do?” Kitty asked. Steve was tracing the Giver’s path on his chest, and Kitty reached for the charm around her neck almost without thinking about it.

“We wait for Morrissey’s signal,” said Jessicka, looking tensely toward their leader.

“Piss on that,” said Jimmy, “why aren’t we fucking shooting them?” But he himself kept his crossbow nestled on the front of his saddle without lifting it to shoot.

“Hold your fire!” Morrissey said sternly from his place in the line. Apparently, Jimmy wasn’t the only one who saw the appeal of sending out a volley of bolts. “Don’t waste your ammunition while they’re still too far for the shots to count. Remember, you may only get the chance to get one shot off before they’re on us—don’t you want it to take one of the bastards down?”

You may only get the chance to get one shot off before they’re on us. Kitty shivered. She’d heard stories of fairies in the woods as a child, but she’d never truly believed them, and she’d certainly never thought she’d find herself facing an army of them.

The rag-tag bunch of fur-clad figures stopped just outside of the crossbow’s range, and one of them, a little man with long straggly hair, stepped forward. “You’re on our lands!” he shouted, his voice carrying and echoing off the trees and rocks. “Get off, before we kill you all.”

Morrissey sniffed contemptuously. “We’re not on your lands, fairy,” he said. “Your king signed a treaty with ours a century ago, giving all the lands east of the Mountain Forest to humans to farm. The Clandestine Treaty—perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

The straggly-haired man returned his sniff, matching every ounce of Morrissey’s contempt with his own, and then laughed. It was a horrible sound, high-pitched, like a wounded dog, and a quick glance around revealed that Kitty wasn’t the only one shuddering at it. “You humans,” he said. “You think we’re fairies? He’s not our stinking king, and we’re not bound by his stinking treaty.”

Morrissey’s eyes narrowed, and he said, “Well, that’s as may be, but our safe passage is guaranteed by the Queen, and I guarantee you, if you touch us, she will bring a hammer down on your mangy heads the likes of which you can’t even imagine.”

“Yeah?” said the man with another sharp, barking laugh, and the ragtag bunch of men and women around him echoed the laugh until Kitty’s blood felt cold in her veins. “I don’t think you have any idea what I can fucking imagine.” And then the man was leaning forward, his straggly hair waving in the wind—no, it wasn’t waving, it was spreading somehow, like a cape thrown over his back, and it wasn’t hair, it was fur, and the man’s face was somehow shifting, pushing outward, taking on the shape of a dog…or a wolf….

“Fire, fire, fire!” Morrissey shouted, and Kitty was shocked out of her horror enough to let off a bolt from her crossbow and load it again. The others, most of them, anyway, did the same, and a few of their bolts hit home, sending a handful of fairies—of werewolves—to the ground, hopefully dead. But the rest of them were running towards them, fast as the wind, and Pearl reared under Kitty, throwing her down.

The carefully constructed battle line fell to pieces as riders were thrown from their horses, or as wolves tore them down. Kitty watched one horse fall, a chunk ripped out of its chest, as its rider struggled to unsheathe his sword quickly enough to defend himself. She didn’t have the time to find out whether or not he succeeded, because she had only a moment to gain her footing from Pearl’s throw in which to pull out her own knife.

The wolf was on her before she could take a breath, snarling, its breath hot in Kitty’s face as it pushed her to the ground. She reached out with her knife, stabbing blindly and hitting it squarely in the ribs. It bounded off of her, whimpering, and looked at her with—well, if she didn’t know better, she’d say it was an almost confused expression.

“What are you waiting for?” one of the wolves who was still half man growled, and the wolf yipped at him. He narrowed his eyes at Kitty. “They wouldn’t.”

Who were “they,” and what wouldn’t they do? Kitty didn’t know, and she wasn’t about to find out, because Lindsey, who’d somehow managed to keep Susan under control, rode by like a hero in a song to strike the man-wolf’s head from his shoulders completely. The first wolf growled and made a leap for her foot, trying to drag her from the horse’s back, but she kicked it aside and shouted, “Kitty, you all right?”

“Fine!” she shouted. She’d managed to reload her bow before Pearl had thrown her, and she sent a bolt off toward a wolf heading in the direction of Patti’s wagon. It stopped and tilted its head again, pointing its nose at her and sniffing with that same confused expression, and Kitty felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. Why wasn’t it running towards her to attack? What did it smell on her that made it hesitate like that?

You’re the only person in the Giver’s Great Plan who’d complain about a werewolf not attacking her, she thought wryly, and she moved to load her bow again.

In the end, they managed to kill half the ragtag little band and send the rest scurrying off to the woods to lick their wounds, but the toll they paid was high—almost a third of their horses were killed, along with half a dozen men. One of them was Rob, the man who’d tried to sweet-talk her when she’d first joined the army, and she surprised herself by mourning his death as much as those of the others. They’d died hard, torn apart by the wolves when they’d been thrown from their horses, and she wouldn’t wish that on even the sleaziest and most unpleasant of men.

Her friends had come off rather well, all things considered. Steve’s horse had thrown him, and he’d broken an arm, Jessicka had gotten bitten on the leg by one of the beasts, and Jimmy and Lindsey had both gotten some deep scratches, but there were no life-threatening injuries among them, and the camp followers were all unharmed.

“How about you?” Jimmy asked Kitty after Jenny had finished stitching the deepest of the scratches on his chest. “Seems to me like you got off without even messing up your hair!”

“Don’t be stupid,” Kitty said, still feeling a little uneasy about how the wolves had behaved around her. She showed them all the bruises on her arms she’d gotten breaking her fall from Pearl’s back. She concluded, “I guess werewolves just like you more. You must smell like food.”

“Oh, yeah, smells like dinner,” said Jimmy, standing up and turning around, sticking his rear end in Kitty’s direction. “You want a sniff?”

That night, after she’d talked with Cassadee and Thao and Swati to get their versions of the battle (and to reassure Cassadee that Jersey, who’d gotten some flesh bitten from his arm in an attempt to shield his face, was going to be just fine), Kitty retired to her tent, troubled.

She had already lain on her bedroll and closed her eyes in a vain attempt to fall asleep when she remembered the book of fairy tales she’d bought all those months ago in Kor. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to catch her reading it alone in her tent, she reasoned, or as if they’d even care if they did. Besides, if they were going to face more unnatural beasts than fairies in these parts, the more she knew about them the better she could fight back, and surely the others could understand that. Still, she felt unaccountably nervous as she lit a tallow candle and curled on her bedroll with the book.

The section on werewolves was long and included a section on their origins (they were said to be the descendants of a king cursed by the Giver for cannibalism) the nature of their transformations (supposedly tied to the moon, although the werewolves today seemed to be able to change at will whether the moon was even out or not) and ways to kill them (silver seemed to be the key). Maybe this last was the reason they’d left her alone, she thought as she fingered her charm. Maybe…but then, Jessicka carried her pay in a saddle bag, and Kitty was fairly sure she had some silver coins left from last pay day. Why hadn’t the wolves sensed it, as they seemed to have with Kitty, and left her alone?

She fingered through the pages, more or less sure she’d gotten everything useful out of them but still unsatisfied and unable to sleep. She flipped restlessly though a chapter on water spirits, scarcely taking in the words as her eyes moved over the page, and then turned to one on tree spirits.

Tree spirits, the book said, are said to be among the most ancient of mythological creatures, having sprung from the earth only days after the Creation. In the sect of the Great Mother, they are said to be harbingers of life and fertility, and in some rural areas, offerings are still made to spirits whom they call “The Mothers of the Forest.”

The words sprang unbidden into Kitty’s head: No human king or queen banishes us from our own lands. Our mothers and grandmothers and their sisters have lived here for a thousand years….Who had said them? Who had—

It was as if a door had suddenly been opened in Kitty’s mind, letting in a feverish flow of things she didn’t remember she had hidden away. The two sisters, one dark and one fair, their reluctant kindness, the bargain she had struck with them, all of it returned like a memory from her childhood, clear and perfect but distant. What had they said? Wherever their word was good, she wouldn’t be harmed? Well, was their word good among werewolves?

Oh, Giver, was she marked in some way, something about her that screamed, “This woman is the friend of tree spirits and fairies?” She hoped not, oh, how she hoped not. It was such an unexpected kindness on the part of the spirits, a good where one might expect only evil, but those spirits couldn’t know how little she wanted a protection that would set her apart from her friends, would make her seem like a witch. She sent up a quick prayer to the Giver, unable to decide whether she should feel grateful or cursed.

She felt herself all over, trying to feel if any part of her felt, well, fairy-touched, then she chided herself for her stupidity. If it were something human eyes could see, someone would have seen it—Lindsey, if no other person she traveled with. If she couldn’t see it, than no one could, and as long as they didn’t encounter anymore werewolves, no one would be the wiser about the deal she had made in Ann and Nancy’s forest.

Unfortunately, the Rule Giver didn’t seem inclined to let her hide it.

Two weeks later, a band of centaurs with long wild hair and bows as tall as a grown man attacked the merchant train on the Northern Plain. The centaurs didn’t have the kind of supernatural communication the werewolves had with their howling and dog-language, but they were stronger than humans and as good at human weapons as the soldiers themselves were. They lost another handful of men, and again, Kitty came out totally unscathed, save her pride, when a female centaur with sharp features and dark hair looked down her nose at Kitty and said, “Ann and Nancy must have lost their rotting minds” before turning away, leaving her sprawled on the ground without so much as a scratch.

By this time, almost the whole army was sporting some kind of wound, and as soon as the carnage had been somewhat cleared, Kitty could feel the attitude in the camp change as far as she was concerned. Others besides Jimmy noticed that Kitty, the newest soldier in the band and a woman to boot, had come out of both battles without a scar to show.

She had always gotten on pretty well with Alex, one of the younger soldiers who’d let her ride patrols with his group of friends, but when she went to visit him in Patti’s tent, which was being used to treat and house the wounded for the time being, his expression was tight and angry.

Before she’d even gotten a chance to ask how he was doing—he’d been shot through the arm with a crossbow bolt—he said, “I see you came out smelling like a rose.”

“Rotting rose,” someone muttered from a nearby bedroll.

Fear tightened in her chest, making her lungs burn. “I--” she started, unsure how to respond. “Just lucky, I guess.”

“Fucking bullshit,” muttered Alex, giving her a resentful look. The soldier on his other side spat on the ground in disgust, and Jenny sent her away with a kind of hostile suspicion that Kitty had never heard from her before.

But even more worrying than that was how fast it seemed to spread. When she swallowed the lump in her throat and turned to walk back to her tent, every man she met between Patti’s tent and hers traced the Giver’s Path on his chest and half of them also made a gesture that, as she’d recently learned from Swati, was supposed to protect someone from witches. She hurried past the place where Cassadee and the rest of the camp followers usually set up their tents—if she had to see that kind of fear and hate in Cassadee’s eyes, she thought she’d probably burst into tears.

Giver’s Goodness, who’d have thought protection could prove to be such a curse?

Clustered around her tent when she reached it were Jimmy, Steve, and Lindsey, and Kitty wanted to cry at the looks of dark suspicion on their faces. Jimmy’d taken an arrow to the shoulder in this bout, and Lindsey had gotten, of all improbable things, punched by one of the centaurs she’d disarmed. Somehow, her expression looked particularly damning when accented by a black eye.

“We sure are getting a lot of, shall we say, unusual attacks on this trip, aren’t we?” Jimmy said. His voice was higher than usual, his calm obviously forced.

Kitty swallowed and nodded slowly. “I’ve never seen so many strange creatures.” She wanted to say she’d never seen any strange creatures at all before she’d started at this job, but it wasn’t true, if you counted Ann and Nancy, and she didn’t think they’d believe her anyway.

“No?” asked Steve. “You sure? Because they seem to know you.”

“They don’t,” she said. “I swear they don’t.”

“You know what I heard?” Jimmy said with the same high-pitched false casualness. “When I was a kid, my pa’d tell me stories about how fairies could hide themselves with glamour—make themselves look however they wanted. They’d just slide on into towns and farms and whatever, with no one the wiser, and once they were in….” He drew a finger across his neck, mimicking the spray of blood with a gesture at the end.

“Oh,” said Kitty. “I never heard that. I heard that they couldn’t touch iron, though, without it burning them. Did you hear that one?” She reached conspicuously for the iron buckle on her belt, clutching it tightly.

“Yeah,” said Lindsey, her eyes cold. “I heard that one. But did you hear what that werewolf said the other day? ‘We’re not fairies,’ he said. So I guess that means there’s all kinds of horrible things out there, and maybe some of them can touch iron just like humans.”

The three of them stood, anger in every line of their bodies, and Kitty wondered, almost disbelieving, Would they hurt me? To think of all that had passed between them…but then, if she had really given them away to whatever creatures roamed this land, she would have betrayed them far more grievously. She weighed the benefits and downsides in her mind for only a moment before deciding—she had to tell them the truth. “Please,” she said, “I need to tell you something.”

Lindsey’s face softened a fraction, but only a fraction, and her eyes were still accusing. “What?”

Kitty shot a nervous look around the camp, with their suspicious expressions and gestures against evil, and said, “Not here.”

They refused to enter Kitty’s tent, and Kitty remembered some nonsense folk tale about not accepting hospitality from a fairy, lest they trap you in their kingdom with magical obligation. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to laugh or cry at the thought that her friends—her friends, the people who’d taught her to hold a sword, and helped her build the muscles in her arms, and fought for her with Morrissey—could possibly think she was some supernatural monster. She forced all her emotion down her throat. She understood their fear.

They made their way to Jimmy’s tent, which was cluttered but closer than either Lindsey’s or Steve’s, and Kitty told them the whole story, everything she knew about Ann and Nancy and that night in their forest.

When she was finished, she glanced around the tent to gauge their expressions. Lindsey’s face was carefully neutral; Jimmy looked vaguely disturbed; Steve was incredulous.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “So you mean there’s some, some mark on you telling the rotting fairies to leave you alone?”

“I guess,” said Kitty. “I don’t know what it is, but they just kind of get near me and then…go away.”

“We noticed,” Jimmy said with raised eyebrows.

“Look,” she said, “I didn’t ask them to do it, and if I could get them to take it back, I would. I’m not a traitor. It kills me that our men keep getting hurt, and if there was anything I could do to stop it…I’m not off, you know, running out to the woods and telling the centaurs to attack.”

“I guess not,” said Lindsey with a laugh.

“Well, wait, let’s think about this a little.” Steve stood up and started pacing, frowning in thought. “Let’s say for a second that they didn’t mark you. Because you don’t remember them putting a spell on you, right?” At Kitty’s nod, he continued, “Plus, if they’d actually made you, I don’t know, a friend of the fairies, it would have changed you. You’d be different.”

Different than what? Kitty couldn’t help but think that she was a lot different from the girl who’d met Ann and Nancy in the forest that night, but she didn’t think that was what Steve meant, and besides, he and the others didn’t seem suspicious of her anymore, so she kept her silence and nodded again.

“Right,” said Steve. “So, if it isn’t in you, this mark must be…a token, or something, something they gave you.”

“What kind of token?” asked Lindsey with a frown.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But whatever it was, it’s something she would have had then and still has now.”

“Not just something I have,” Kitty said, “but something that I carry out into battle with me.”

“Good thinking,” Steve said, pointing at her as if she’d said something brilliant. “So! What would that be?”

“It’s not the horse or any of the gear,” said Jimmy. “That’s all new.”

“My clothes are new, too,” Kitty added. “Well, except for my belt. But…I mean, the belt’s the same as it’s always been.”

“What about the stuff in it?” Lindsey’s face abruptly took on some of the sharpness it had lost earlier, but there was nothing hostile in it now—she looked alert, like she’d caught the scent of something she was hunting. “The stuff in your belt pouch, I mean. You have one, right?”

“Well, yes.” She reached down to pull it off. “I mostly just keep my money in it, though. I think I’d have noticed if there was some fairy—tree spirit—token in it.”

Steve reached out to grab it. “Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn’t,” he said, and he spilled the pouch out onto his bedroll, sending coins rolling out. There weren’t that many—Pearl had taken almost all of Kitty’s money, and keeping her fed was taking up most of the rest of it at present. All that was left were a few coppers and…a golden leaf?

Kitty bent to stare at it, vaguely aware that Lindsey and Steve were doing the same on either side of her. It was as perfectly veined and shaped as a real leaf, but it shone like metal, and when she reached hesitantly to touch it, it felt like metal as well.

“Fuck a duck,” Jimmy said under his breath, reaching over the other three to pick up the leaf. “Feels like a coin,” he reported.

“Put it down, you idiot!” Steve stood up quickly to knock it out of Jimmy’s hand. “They didn’t give it to you, they gave it to Kitty. What if it has a curse on it so people won’t steal it, huh? Did you ever think of that?”

“Shit, I wasn’t stealing it,” said Jimmy disgustedly. “Keep your pants on, Mother.” When he shot another look down at the leaf, however, his eyes were worried.

“Well…” Kitty began nervously, “what should I do with it? You think maybe if I threw it out into the woods, that would do it? Make the fairies realize that I’m not under their protection anymore? Or maybe if we put it in the fire?”

“The fire, maybe,” said Lindsey, but Steve shook his head.

“It’s like you all got hit with the stupid stick,” he said. “Didn’t you ever listen to your mama’s bedtime stories? If there’s one thing you don’t do with fairy gifts, it’s fucking with them. It’d be like when that king and queen didn’t invite the witch to their daughter’s name-day, and she got offended and cursed the baby to death. How much more pissed do you think those tree spirits would get if you ruined a gift they gave you?”

Kitty was about to ask how they’d even know she’d destroyed it, but it occurred to her that she didn’t know how the werewolves and centaurs had been able to sense the leaf in her belt pouch and what it meant, either, so maybe fairy creatures had ways of knowing things that humans couldn’t even imagine. “What should I do, then?” she asked.

Steve knelt on the floor and, using the corner of his tunic as a shield between the leaf and his fingers, picked the leaf up and handed it to her. “Hold onto it, I guess,” he said, “and hope we don’t get attacked again.”

It wasn’t much of a hope. The whole caravan veered east in hopes of avoiding invading bands of magical creatures from the Mountain Forest, but they still spotted little winged things spying on them from the trees and saw the tracks of unnaturally large wolves clustered outside their campsites. They were losing men to more than injuries, now—soldiers were running off in the night, one or two at a time, and Morrissey’s expression was cloudier every morning.

They stopped for the night at a good-sized village called Sawyer in order to stock up on supplies, find some real healers for the injured men, and hopefully do a little recruiting. Kitty took advantage of the opportunity to spend her last few coins on a real bed for the night and a bath.

There were few people in the inn’s common room. Doubtless, Kitty thought, the town had fewer visitors than usual these days, what with all the werewolves and centaurs prowling the surrounding lands.

The serving maid seemed almost pathetically grateful to have another customer, and the meal she brought Kitty was far, far more plentiful and luxurious than she would have expected for the money. As the woman bent over the table to take plates of roast beef and cheese pasties and spiced pork-and-apple tarts from the tray, she also gave Kitty a spectacular view of her ample bosom.

Kitty instantly felt a flush of warm blood coloring her face, and she looked down to stare at the food and thanked the maid as politely as she could until the woman went away. How disgusting, she thought, mentally kicking herself, to ogle the poor woman like that! It would never have occurred to her to stare at a woman’s breasts like that before sleeping with Lindsey. Then again, she thought, it wasn’t as if there were many breasts to see at the nunnery, besides her own. She decided to push the whole incident from her mind and devote her attention entirely to the food, which looked delicious.

She succeeded so spectacularly that she didn’t even notice the woman drawing up beside her until a female voice said, “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”

Kitty choked on a bite of her cheese pasty and turned her head. Sitting next to her was a woman she’d absent-mindedly noticed sitting on the other side of the common room, a slender, dark-haired woman with freckles across her face that made her look younger than she probably was.

The stranger laughed. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.” She waited for Kitty to swallow the lump of cheese in her throat before saying, “The serving maid, Edele. She’s pretty, right?” She gave Kitty a helpless smile. “I noticed you, earlier.” Leaning closer, she said in a conspiratorial tone, “Don’t worry, I’m very good at being discreet. I’m the sort who notices a pretty girl, too.”

“Oh.” Kitty couldn’t decide whether to be mortified that someone had noticed her blushing at the sight of a woman’s chest or elated that she had found another woman like herself. How many were there, she wondered? Suppose there were some back at the Order? Suppose Mother Phyllis was like her? Such a possibility could scarcely even be contemplated.

“I’m Victoria,” the other woman said, flipping a lock of glossy brown hair back over her shoulder.

“Kitty,” said Kitty. And then, to change the subject to something more easily discussed in public, she asked, “Are you from Sawyer?”

Victoria took a sip of her ale and shook her head. “Kor,” she said.

“I’ve been there. It’s lovely,” said Kitty politely. “What brings you here?”

“You mean when everyone else is packing their bags and heading south, away from the fairies?” Victoria’s expression was light, but her tone…Kitty couldn’t quite interpret it. It seemed curious, maybe even challenging, under a veneer of wry humor.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.” Victoria sipped again at her ale, wiping her mouth clean of foam. “I saw you when you came down here, too. Looking around the room, figuring out that there aren’t nearly as many people in this inn as there ought to be.”

There was something irritating about this, as if Victoria knew more about Kitty’s mind than she herself did, so she let herself sound a little testy as she said, “All right then. Why are you here, when all the werewolves and whatnot seem to want to attack everything and everyone they find?”

Victoria let out an amused huff of air. “I came here to meet someone,” she said. “A friend of a friend, you could say.” She set down her ale and reached for a grape on Kitty’s plate. “You going to eat that?”

“Take it,” said Kitty irritably. “Is this something you do often? Sit down with strangers, act mysterious, and take their food?”

The other woman laughed at that. “Only when the strangers are pretty. Especially when they’re pretty hired mercenaries. I don’t see very many of those these days.”

“Well, if they’re there, I’m sure you find them,” said Kitty. This woman didn’t seem to be fazed by anything—some of the townswomen had drawn the Giver’s Path over their hearts or gripped at protection charms when they saw Lindsey and Kitty and Jessicka ride out with their bows and leather armor, but Victoria, despite her words, acted as if she saw women warriors every day, as if she’d seen enough and knew enough that nothing surprised her anymore. “Hey,” Kitty said, a thought occurring to her. “You seem to know just about everything about everything.” Ignoring Victoria’s chuckle, she asked, “Do you know why there are so many strange creatures about? I rode south from near the Briopian border just a few months ago, and I didn’t hear anything about fairy attacks.”

“Well,” said Victoria thoughtfully, “I couldn’t say much about what the werewolves are thinking. I mean, who knows what goes on in a beast’s head? Might as well ask a thundercloud what it thinks. But I can tell you that I’ve heard a little something about the Queen.”

“The Queen?” asked Kitty, confused.

Victoria nodded. “Yeah. Word is, she’s finishing up marriage negotiations with Par.”

“Marriage?” Kitty had never heard anything about the Queen’s getting married. She made a mental note to ask Jill if she’d heard anything from the Parian end.

“Mm-hmm. To a Parian prince, one with a navy like you’ve never seen or heard of in your life. And from what I hear, the Parians have a sort of peace with the fairy creatures down south—selkies, mermaids, that kind of thing. But that obviously wouldn’t work if he married our Queen, now, would it? The people wouldn’t stand her being married into a people of fairy-lovers.”

“I suppose not,” said Kitty, feeling vaguely troubled. Ann and Nancy sprang, unbidden, to her mind, in all their dignity and righteous anger, and she tried to banish them with a sip of her own ale.

“Of course not,” Victoria continued. “So probably the marriage contract will include something about the Parian navy wiping out all those selkies and mermaids, and maybe something about Parian troops to take on the fairies in the Mountain Woods.” She shrugged. “If I were a fairy, maybe I’d think now was the time to strike. Before the Queen’s Army gets too big to be conquered by anyone.”

“You make it sound like a war,” Kitty said cautiously. She’d always thought fairies were a thing of the past, stories told to scare children or a few remnants of a dying breed. The way Victoria talked, though, made them sound like a country planning on invading.

“Honey,” she said, “I’m pretty sure it is a war. Or it’s going to be, anyway.” She leaned back and gave Kitty another enigmatic smile. “But what do I know? I’m just a clerk from a Korian counting-house.”

Kitty snorted, more rudely than she’d intended but no more than she felt. “Just a clerk, my ass.”

Victoria’s smile grew, warmed into something less enigmatic and more real. “D’you know, Kitty, I think I like you.” She beckoned the barmaid over for another round of ale, saying to Kitty, “What do you say we find something a little more pleasant than fairies to talk about?”

Kitty felt a brief moment of panic at the flirtatious note in Victoria’s voice, but only a brief one. After all, she thought, she’d managed all right with Lindsey. And if she could manage that without getting her heart broken or going mad with guilt, surely she could handle just about anything.

The morning saw her a bit wiser in the arts of cunnilingus, though not much wiser so far as Victoria’s story was concerned. Kitty’d bet anything she owned or loved that Victoria was no counting-house clerk, but the woman was clearly uninterested in talking about her past, and, well, Kitty could certainly respect that. All in all, she thought, the trip to Sawyer was a success—she was well-fed, well-bathed, and well-fucked, the caravan had picked up a handful of soldiers (not as many as Morrissey had wanted, but more than Kitty would have thought he’d find), and Lindsey and Jessicka looked faintly proud when they realized how Kitty had spent the night. Plus, Kitty, thought, she might have a new friend in Victoria, assuming they ever met again.

The trip north seemed to be going a bit more smoothly, as well. The road was mostly clear of human bandits, who were probably avoiding the open country for fear of fairies, but they were free from supernatural attacks, too. The tense mood in the camp started to ease, and if the bulk of the soldiers weren’t terribly keen on Kitty’s company, well, that wasn’t so surprising, and as long as Jill and the camp followers stood by her and her friends, well, Kitty was content.

Even the weather seemed better, getting cooler and drier the farther north they went. The North wasn’t a fantastic place in the winter, Kitty knew from experience, but it was lovely in the summer. They were some fifty miles east of the Order of Order, too, so she didn’t have to worry about running into a familiar face on the road. Not that they’d recognize her, she thought, but it was one more load off her mind.

“Maybe it was just a phase, like the weather,” Cassadee said, when they got to talking about the fortunate lack of supernatural attackers. “Aren’t the werewolves controlled by the moon or something? Maybe…maybe something in the stars got them and all the others riled up, but it’s over now, and they all went back where they came from.”

“Good thinking, Moon Maiden,” Thao said, making the women around the fire laugh.

Kitty poked at the fire with a stick, feeling strangely restless. “Maybe,” she said, but for some reason, with the moon a sickly yellow overhead and her odd conversation with Victoria still clear and sharp in her head, she couldn’t think that all their troubles were behind them yet.

Two days later, the sun rose blood-red over the horizon. “Red sky at night, sailors’ delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,” Cassadee recited. She frowned. “I can’t remember why they’re supposed to take warning, though. Something to do with wind, I think.”

“Well, thanks for that, Mother.” Tanya rolled her eyes. “You’re a regular font of wisdom.”

Take warning. Something prickled at the base of Kitty’s spine, and she put down her bowl of barley meal on the pile with the other dirty dishes. “Anyone seen Jill?” she asked. “I want to ask her something.”

“She’s back in her wagon,” Swati said, standing up. Though her tone was light, her eyebrows were drawn together in concern. “I brought her breakfast earlier. What’d you want to ask her?”

Kitty shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just have a bad feeling.”

Maybe a few months ago, the women would have laughed. But these days, bad feelings got taken pretty seriously, and they worked together to clean up the plates from breakfast as quickly as they could, not wanting to be caught off guard by anything.

She didn’t know if it was the leaf in her belt pouch or some kind of newly-developed sense of danger jabbing at her nerves, but whatever it was, it proved true. Around mid-morning, an arrow, white as a moonbeam and slender as a willow whip, hit Jersey’s horse right through the head before anyone had even heard it coming. The horse fell over, dead, and if Jersey hadn’t been so quick to jump, he’d have been crushed under its weight.

Immediately, the camp erupted into chaos. The frightened merchants retreated to their wagons while the camp followers took their bows and arrows behind the cover of the caravan and the soldiers calmed the terrified horses as best they could, grabbing whatever weapons and armor were close at hand before circling the caravan to face the enemy.

Any hope that they were facing human bandits died in Kitty’s chest as she blinked back tears in the bright morning light. The people—if you could call them people—in front of her glowed with a faint, unearthly light, as if each was lit from within by his or her own personal star. They were dressed in armor that looked like leaves and tree bark, which should have made them look shabby and wild, but instead made them look as if the forest had sent them out in a tide of warriors, a unified wave of tree-soldiers.

An unexpected burst of…what was it? Sadness? Desperation? Confusion?...wracked Kitty’s heart. Remember that, not so long ago, our folk were friends. That was what Ann and Nancy had said, all those months ago, giving her a token of their own friendship to keep her safe. Surely, surely they would understand that she had a right to defend her friends, her people, but at the same time, guilt pierced her at the thought of repaying their kindness by attacking, well, tree people. For all she knew, they were related somehow to the tree spirits in the forest. For all she knew, today she might kill someone dear to them, make them regret they had ever extended a hand of peace. Rot them, why had they done it to begin with?

Perhaps so she’d have thoughts just such as the ones she was having, making her hands tremble as she brought an arrow to her bow.

She let it fly, and it joined the hail of arrows from the others, falling on the fairy army surrounding them. Some of them hit flesh. More of them didn’t. The fairies had a way of stepping aside at the last moment, letting the arrows pass them by as if they were shadows. With calm, implacable expressions, they let fly more slender white arrows. Men and horses screamed, and Kitty shuddered, trying to block out their cries and grip her bow as the foe advanced.

“Fire at will!” Morrissey shouted, and they all fired again, over and over, but the arrows passed through the fairies without causing any more than a few wounds. The fairies closest to Kitty eyed her with curious, resentful expressions.

Oh, no.

And then the fairies were upon them, quick as the wind. Considering how few of them there were, they seemed to be everywhere, slashing and stabbing. Everywhere except where Kitty and Pearl stood.

Giver curse it. Would Kitty be the only one left? Not if she could help it. She rode into the midst of the battle, yelling a battle cry in a fierce voice she didn’t even recognize as her own.

She caught one fairy under the ribs with her knife, piercing his bark-armor with enough force to make him—her?—stagger back, and he or she glared at her before vanishing into thin air like a sun-vision when you got too close. Another was slashing at Susan’s legs—but Susan was a fierce horse. She kicked one away while Kitty jabbed one in the back with her spear, leaving Lindsey free to shoot at the others surrounding her.

“Thanks,” Lindsey panted. “The others?”

Kitty shot a quick glance around. Jimmy’d lost his horse, but he seemed to be holding his own well enough with his sword, grinning manically as he whirled in the middle of a knot of green-clad fairies. Steve, Steve, where was he….there, there he was, swinging his axe from horseback, making the fairies around him scatter. Relieved, Kitty turned to look in the other direction. At first, she saw no sign of Jessicka, and thought to ride around to the other side of the caravan, when out of the corner of her eye she saw it—long, dark hair against the trampled green of the grass. Jessicka was lying on the ground, and a tall fairy stood over her.

It—he or she--had wounded her in the leg, left her bleeding on the ground, and now threatened to kill her with a sweep of his or her cruel sword—not metal, but as long and brown and sharp as a dark thorn. Kitty shot at the fairy, and the sword swung in the air, knocking the arrow to one side as easily as if she’d thrown a stick at it. Lindsey was already turning in Jessicka’s direction, her relief turning into alarm, but there wasn’t time to wait. Kitty pressed her knees into Pearl’s sides, urging her on. Sensing danger, perhaps, or simply tired of fighting, Pearl refused to go any further when they got within twenty feet of Jessicka and the fairy, so Kitty dismounted and ran as fast as she could. Her breath pounded in her chest, and her thoughts flowed in and out as quickly as the air in her lungs, burning just as much.

If I’m going to have this gift, she thought, what better use could I put it to than to save someone else? And with that, she stepped between Jessicka’s fallen body and the downward swing of the fairy’s blade, closing her eyes and waiting for the blow to fall if it would.

It didn’t.

There was a long moment of silence, and Kitty tentatively opened her eyes. “Hmm,” said the fairy. “A nice display of selflessness, there. I can almost see what Ann and Nancy were thinking.” She couldn’t tell from the voice alone whether the fairy was male or female. There didn’t seem to be any breasts under the armor, so she went with ‘he,’ though who knew whether women fairies even had breasts anyway.

“You’ll go, then,” said Kitty, summoning the courage that had fled at the sight of the sword swinging towards her neck. “You’ll leave us alone?”

The fairy sighed. “I said almost.” The sword swung again, this time low, cutting through the bottom of Kitty’s pouch. Her month’s wages, along with the golden leaf Ann and Nancy had given her, fell to the ground. Still pointing his sword at her, the fairy leaned down to pick up the leaf. “I’ll just be keeping this,” he said. “No sense in giving you one more weapon to beat us with.” He flicked the tip of his sword at them. “Go now. If you can.”

Kitty didn’t wait for a second invitation. A few frantic attempts to get Jessicka off the ground failed almost immediately—the leg wouldn’t carry her weight—but it was all right, because Kitty felt the almost giddy strength that came of knowing she had escaped death, and would have to move quickly if she was to escape it again. She picked Jessicka up, slung her over her shoulder, and moved as quickly as she could in a direction she hoped meant safety.

The leg wasn’t good. Morrissey called in a real healer from a local village, who came to them laden with charms and wards against evil. Jessicka wasn’t the only one wounded—far from it—but she was the most seriously wounded who didn’t die within hours of being brought in. Her leg was cut almost through—it was the same one that had been bitten by the werewolf weeks before, and infection had set in, making the whole leg inflamed and red.

Jessicka wouldn’t wake up.

Two mornings after the fairy attack, Kitty went to visit her, only to be met with a truly bizarre sight: Lindsey, her sword to the healer’s neck, Jimmy and Steve standing nearby hesitating between anger and fear.

“What’s going on?” asked Kitty, as casually as she could.

“This bastard,” Lindsey gritted out. “I found this bastard getting ready to cut off Jess’s leg.” Despite her anger, she seemed near tears. “Cut it off. When Jessicka wakes up, how could I tell her that I let some copper-penny quack take her leg?”

The healer bit his lip and said, “Look. The leg’s just about been torn off at the knee, here, and it’s, it’s a rotting cauldron of infection. The question’s not whether she’s going to lose the leg, now—it’s whether she’s just going to lose the leg, or whether she’ll lose her life, too.”

Lindsey didn’t let her sword down, until even Steve and Jimmy started to look a little nervous. “Lindsey….” Kitty said gently.

“I know,” said Lindsey tightly, and she lowered the sword. Her voice was as sharp as a blade, though, as she said, “You’d better save the rest of her, or you’ll have me to deal with.”

Jessicka fought off the fever for three days and nights after he took the leg off. For three days and nights, every man in the camp walked around with a face like his father had died. It seemed for all that a woman warrior was a strange and laughable thing, Jessicka was their woman warrior, and they’d already lost so many comrades. For three days and nights, Tanya asked Kitty to help her pray, and Kitty dug up every prayer she could find in the recesses of her memory. For three days and nights, Lindsey and Jimmy and Steve hovered outside the healer’s tent, their faces less worried than desperate.

On the fourth morning, Jessicka opened her eyes, sighed, and said, “I could eat a horse.”

Kitty had never seen a man cry for joy before, let alone two. She pondered saving the memory for a time she needed a quip in a light-hearted exchange of insults with Jimmy and Steve, but eventually she discarded the idea. Even if they didn’t mind, and they weren’t the sort to, it wasn’t the kind of memory you kept in your reserve of insults. It was the kind of memory you kept back for the days you needed to remind yourself that there was love in the world.

On the fifth morning, while Jimmy and Steve were telling Jessicka a funny story, Lindsey and Kitty were listening, and Jill and Cassadee were talking to the healer about what kind of food to feed a woman recovering from fever, Morrissey came to the tent and said, “We’re moving on.”

The healer frowned and said, “I really don’t think she’s ready--”

“That’s fine,” said Morrissey, “because she’s not coming.”

Half a dozen jaws dropped around the tent. “What exactly are you saying, Morrissey?” asked Jimmy, his voice deceptively calm. Or maybe not so deceptively—the edge was apparent to anyone with even a superficial acquaintance with Jimmy.

“Look, the girl’s fought hard, done good work. But I can’t pay wages for a one-legged man, much less a one-legged woman.” He couldn’t seem to meet anyone’s eyes as he produced a small pouch of money from his belt and tossed it to the floor next to Jessicka’s cot. “There, now,” he said. “Let’s part friends and have an end of it.”

“That’s not fair,” Cassadee began, but Lindsey clearly wasn’t in the mood to wait her turn to speak.

“Let’s part friends and have an end of it?” she asked, her voice rising in outrage. “Listen, dickweed, leg or no leg, Jessicka’s a better fighter than any ten of the fucking bunglers you hired in Kor, and if you think you’re gonna--”

“He’s right,” said Jessicka dully. “How am I supposed to fight now?”

“Uh, that crossbow you keep in your pack?” Steve suggested. “Throwing knives? I hear they can make you wooden legs these days, and I will get those fucking fiddlemakers to make you one, don’t think I can’t do it.”

“I can’t get on a horse,” said Jessicka, staring at the stump where her leg had been. Her voice was as melancholy as Kitty had ever heard her. She winced and thought about the day they’d met, Jessicka’s friendly smile and easy laugh, how Kitty had looked at her like a hero in a poem, not like a real woman whose body and dreams were as fragile as anyone’s. How quickly things could change. “Morrissey’s right,” Jessicka continued. “If you’re going to make Sudul before winter, you have to cross the Briopian border soon. I’d just hold you up.”

Morrissey gestured as if to say, See, even she agrees with me, and Cassadee appeared to have the wind knocked from her sails, but Lindsey was not about to back down. She reached to pick up the money pouch and poured it on the ground. It was mostly copper, with a few silvers. “Say you are right, Morrissey,” Lindsey said. “Say Jess can’t fight anymore. What is this bullshit?” She gestured at the pile of money, which looked smaller and more pathetic the more Kitty looked at it. Barely enough to pay the healer for another week’s services if Jessicka had to pay for her own food and lodging as well.

Lindsey glared fiercely up and said, “She and I came here five years ago—this is what you give a new boy when he breaks an ankle and you drop him off at his mother’s. When Matt got that shoulder wound, you sent him off with a pound of gold. When Ben got it in the eye, you gave his wife and children a whole pissing pile of money. Jessicka gets injured fighting for you and this is the gratitude you show her?”

The chief shrugged uncomfortably. “We’re short on money, and you and I both know she doesn’t have a family to support.”

Everyone was too appalled to speak for a long moment. Finally, Jimmy stood and said, “Fuck it! You don’t want Jessicka, well, I don’t want you. I quit.”

“Me, too,” said Lindsey hotly.

Steve looked from one of them to the other and then rolled his eyes before turning to Morrissey. “Well, I guess I quit, too. This caravan is just gonna have to get along without the Steve Right touch, so, you know, good luck with that.”

“This is fucking ridiculous,” said Morrissey with a scowl. “Just because--”

“Oh, don’t,” Jessicka said.

Jimmy looked at her pertly and said, “My, you’re just interrupting everybody today.”

“It’s bad enough that I don’t have a job, but you guys….” Jessicka struggled to sit up. Lindsey was still sitting by her cot, hovering over the little pile of money, and Jessicka put a hand on her shoulder. “Linds,” she said, “don’t give this up for me. You know you won’t find another gig this good anytime soon.”

Lindsey lifted her chin stubbornly. “Piss on that, Jess,” she said. “You and me, we’re family. You don’t have a job, I don’t have a job.”

“Giver preserve us from idiots and women,” said Morrissey. “Fine, quit, see if I care.” Without even looking back at the four warriors he’d lost in the span of a few minutes, he stomped out of the tent.

In the moment of silence that followed, Jill cleared her throat. “Excuse me,” she said. “But who said that you don’t have a job?” Everyone turned to stare at her, including the healer, who was in the process of putting a cool compress on Jessicka’s forehead. Jill smiled at them serenely and said, “I think I’ll be leaving this caravan soon—the journey to Sudul is a long one for little profit, and I think I could have much better luck on the east coast. I find myself in need of a guard to take me there.” She squinted thoughtfully. “Four, perhaps, to ride, once I am ready to leave, and one to stay in the wagon in case any brigand should make it past the other four.”

Jessicka looked at Jill as if her heart was breaking. “I couldn’t do that, Madam Scott,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to leech off your charity.”

“What charity?” Jill asked. “Your fever has not yet gone away, and maybe that’s why an intelligent woman like you has not yet realized that your friends are right. Do you think your life ends because your leg is gone? Do you think there’s nothing you can do? Bullshit. You never shot an arrow with your legs. And what part of her body does a strategist use but her head?” Her voice softened, and she put a hand on Jessicka’s shoulder. “And if, when we reach the coast, you decide that being a warrior isn’t the path you choose anymore, well, you’ll see your new path more clearly if you look at it with clear eyes and a clear mind. Nothing has ended yet.”

“Kitty,” she said, and she turned to Kitty. “I noticed that you have not quit here. Yet.”

The eyes that had been on Jessicka suddenly swiveled to look at Kitty, and she felt herself suddenly on shaky ground. How could she possibly leave the friends who’d helped her so much—Lindsey, who’d taught her so much about fighting and sex and herself, Jimmy and Steve, who’d helped to get her a job she’d always wanted, Jessicka, who’d spoken up for her? And at the same time, how could she possibly leave Cassadee and Patti and Swati and Thao and all the rest—the first real friends she’d ever had, who’d taken her in on trust and nothing more?

“Jill,” she started, “I--”

“You should do it,” Cassadee said in a small voice. Suddenly, the attention was on her, and she swallowed deeply and mustered up a ghost of her usual sunny smile.

“Cass….” Kitty hoped she didn’t start burst out crying, and she took a couple of deep breaths before continuing. “I can’t just leave you. I mean, you’re….” She wasn’t sure how well ‘you’re like the little sister I never had’ would go over with Cassadee, so she said simply, “I love you, you know?”

Cassadee nodded quickly, visibly blinking tears from her own eyes. “I know. I know. Me, too. But when are you gonna get another chance like this? Not anytime soon. We don’t go to the coast that often—just north and south, north and south, same rotten roads over and over, and it’s okay for me, it’s like home, but for you….” She shrugged. “I dunno. When you first got here, I thought you were a road kind of girl, like me, but now I think maybe you wouldn’t be happy doing this forever. Maybe you need a bigger kind of adventure.”

Kitty really was crying now. “I am like you,” she said. “Remember? That’s what you said back then. I was your sort.”

“Of course,” Cassadee said, her own mouth twisted down at one corner. “You are. Always, and that wouldn’t change wherever you were.” And then, in a movement so quick that Kitty half-expected an attack, she wrapped her arms around Kitty in a tight embrace, burying her face in Kitty’s neck and sobbing twice, leaving a warm wet trail on Kitty’s skin before darting out of the tent.

Jill stood up and peered out of the tent after her. “I’ll offer her a job, too, but I don’t think she’ll take it,” she said. “She’s happy here, I think. But you, Kitty….” She shrugged. “Think about it. Talk to the others. Regardless of what that brute of a man says, he will not leave today. The rest of the merchants are not prepared. It would make me happy if you were to come with me, but even if you don’t, you will always have my friendship.”

“Thank you,” Kitty managed to choke out, feeling completely lost.

Jill nodded and gave her a brief, distracted smile. “Well. If I’m to leave the wagon train, I have all kinds of things to arrange back at my wagon. I hope you all will excuse me.”

“You’re the boss now, ma’am,” said Jimmy. “Don’t feel like you have to hang around on our account.”

When Jill had left, Kitty wiped her face with her hands and took deep breaths until the pain and love in her heart had faded in intensity from a burn to a bruise. As soon as she thought she had her face under control, she turned to the others in the tent and looked at them, trying to figure out whether, on the off-chance she decided to go, they would even welcome her to this new, small guard. Regardless of how she felt about them, she was still a new, relatively inexperienced fighter. For that matter, she was still the one who’d made a bargain with a pair of ancient, dangerous tree spirits. It would have been totally within their rights not to want to have to worry about her, to say, “Kitty---”

“Kitty?”

It was Lindsey. Her expression was sympathetic. “What?” asked Kitty.

“What, she asks,” said Jimmy. “What do you think?”

“You leaning towards coming on this zany adventure out east, or what?” asked Steve. “I mean, I think I’m gonna take her up on it—it’s not like we got anything better to do. But as far as I know, you still have a job.”

“I don’t know,” Kitty said. “I mean, would you even….” Want me to come? But she couldn’t finish the question. It sounded too whiny, too unsure, too little-girl. Even if that’s the way she was feeling, she certainly didn’t want to inflict her insecurity on friends who had bigger problems to worry about.

Apparently, though, she didn’t even need to finish the sentence, because Lindsey was already drawing near to her, touching her shoulder hesitantly as if she wasn’t sure she had the right to touch Kitty. “Kitty,” she said, “If you don’t want to come, if you want to stay with Cassadee and the others, I’d totally understand. But you saved Jess, and as far as I’m concerned, that makes you family. Of course we want you along.” The hand on her shoulder squeezed gently, and the look in Lindsey’s eyes was tender in a way Kitty had never seen, even in the afterglow of sex. It warmed Kitty’s heart in a way that had nothing to do with romance and everything to do with love.

“Shit, yeah,” said Jimmy, and Steve nodded, and they, too, were looking at her like they really liked her, didn’t want to go away without her.

Kitty shot a look over at Jessicka, who was looking thoughtfully down at her hands. As if sensing Kitty’s scrutiny, she looked up. “Hey,” she said with a ghost of her former smile. “Where there’s life, there’s hope, I guess.” She looked over at Steve. “So. Wooden legs?”

“I can make it happen,” Steve said, and Jimmy made a rude noise.

Lindsey laughed, soft but real, and something clicked in Kitty’s heart. She would always love Cassadee like a sister, and admire Patti. She would always care for all of them. And if Cassadee was the only one who thought she should go, if the others all wanted her to stay, she would. But they didn’t need her, not really, and as strange as it seemed…she thought that maybe she had a place here, with this little group of oddball warriors, a small but necessary part to play.

Nothing has ended yet, she thought, recalling Jill’s words. Maybe it’s all just beginning.

END

Onward to Over the Tree Tops, Above the Mountains--a Mix by