The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

Evan had no strong feeling about the governor's actions. Thompson hadn't come after him specifically, and for someone moving through this world on borrowed time, staying out of other people's conflicts was a practical necessity. Teresa's organization wasn't exactly an innocent institution either. He looked at her with something that wasn't quite sympathy. "What would you do about Thompson even if you wanted to? What leverage do you have against him right now?"

She was mid-fury and almost snapped at him. Then she laughed instead. "Fair. Big mountain, plenty of timber. I'll find somewhere else to chop. I'm just a weak woman — can't fight someone like him. But I can certainly avoid him."

Evan regarded her with more respect than he'd been giving her. A woman who could suppress that kind of anger and think clearly while smelling the way she currently smelled had her priorities sorted in ways that mattered.

Tina was watching the exchange with the focused curiosity of someone cataloguing everything. "Is she all right? She looks like she fell into a sewer."

"Introductions," Evan said. "This is Tina — she appeared on the road and insisted on calling me her master. And this is Teresa, who runs the local criminal organization. Teresa, she fell into a sewer."

"The drainage channel," Teresa corrected, with dignity.

"What happened?" Tina asked.

"Someone wanted something I was carrying. The governor's people came to take it. I couldn't fight them. So I left through the drainage channel."

"What were you carrying?"

"Tina." Evan's voice was level.

She read it and stopped asking.

Teresa smiled. "A list. The Dominion Society's membership rolls. The Dominion Society is a hidden order within the Creationist Church — unofficial, unacknowledged by Holy Eton, and in possession of certain divine secrets."

She was saying it deliberately, watching for a reaction. Evan gave her a flat look. "That's your concern, not ours."

Tina glanced between them, worked it out, and said nothing more. Teresa had been testing whether they could be pulled into her situation. The answer was no.

Ferdinand intervened before it went further. "We have a common enemy. Stop testing each other." He looked at Evan. "You killed a Church clergyman. That puts you on our side of things, whether you like it or not."

"We're heading to Waltersdorf," Evan said. "New Church territory. So probably not the same road as you."

Ferdinand nodded. He needed to return to Windsor first and then begin rebuilding. He said his farewells — which, as a vampire baron, were brief and without ceremony — and departed.

"Waltersdorf," Teresa said. "I'm going there too."

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Evan's expression said he wasn't enthusiastic.

"I'm going to find someone. A mage named Leonardo Calvin. He was a friend of my father's."

The coincidence was significant enough that Evan paused. Franklin had written him a letter of introduction to exactly that person. A mage named Leonardo in a city like Waltersdorf — it was possible there were two, but not likely.

"We're also going to see him."

"Excellent. We'll travel together." She looked down at herself. "I need a river first."

She found one not far off and waded in without particular ceremony, clothes and all, while Evan looked at the middle distance. Her laugh carried from downstream. They made camp ten li from the city and built a fire — no horse for Teresa, which had limited how far they'd gotten.

Cavalry passed on the main road at some point, close enough that the hoofbeats were audible. Teresa tensed. Evan kept turning a piece of bread above the coals. Tina watched him and did the same.

Teresa looked at the two of them. "You're not frightened of Thompson's people?"

"They're not looking out here. And if they find us, we leave." He said it as though both parts were equally obvious. "This world has more empty land than it has people. Unless they're conducting a systematic search, the odds are in our favor."

Tina nodded. Teresa shook her head and decided to let it go.

When the clothes were dry and the food was eaten, Tina drew her saber and began to work through her forms in the firelight. The quality of her movement had shifted since the fight in Kansas City. Evan watched her and understood that she had crossed a line that couldn't be uncrossed — she had done it for real, and her body had learned things that repetition alone couldn't teach.

Teresa watched too. "Who taught her?"

"I did. Basic forms, nothing advanced. She has exceptional aptitude."

"That's Cross Blade School style," Teresa said.

Evan hadn't known that. Andrea had simply taught him what she knew, and he had taught Tina what he'd learned from Andrea, with some modifications he'd made instinctively — adjustments to the force generation that his knowledge of bone and muscle structure had suggested. He had apparently been refining the form without knowing its name.

"I don't have the advanced methods," he said. "I've taught her everything I can."

"You'd be surprised. The foundation is good." Teresa stood. "Tina — let's spar."

She pulled a long dagger from somewhere, nearly two feet of blade, and closed the distance without preamble. This was not the same style as anything Evan had shown Tina — it was a thief's tradition, close-range, the blade kept tight against the arm, the body constantly in motion, feints layered into every approach, designed for the kind of spaces where swords were inconvenient.

Tina didn't try to match the complexity. She did what she'd been trained to do: a small set of movements, executed cleanly, each one forcing Teresa to either commit to defense or break off her approach. The elaborate feints ran into a problem — against someone whose response was always the same technically correct motion, feints were only useful if they created openings. Tina didn't give them.

After several minutes Teresa was breathing harder than Tina was.

"Enough." She put the dagger away and wiped her face. "She's at Low-rank Knight level already. She's missing the advanced training methods — specifically, the techniques for developing sword-aura. With those, she'd be a serious problem for anyone at her weight."

"I don't have those methods," Evan said. "The advanced knight's training is each school's proprietary knowledge."

"There's a Cross Blade School training hall in Waltersdorf. Open enrollment — they accept students from the general public. She could learn the full curriculum there."

Evan looked at Tina. "When we arrive, you'll enroll."

Tina was about to respond when the insects in the grass around them went silent simultaneously, the kind of silence that had a reason. Evan registered it before he consciously understood it — his magical alerts, laid without announcement in the surrounding area, had registered contact. He had been doing this routinely for weeks: simple, low-signature spells with no visible manifestation, invisible to anyone who triggered them, producing only a directional impression in his own awareness.

Three people in the dark. Armed, and carrying intent.

"Come out," he said.