Page 30 of Lies Within the Darkest Tower

“At least she can walk,” Talon said. Which was as much of a peace offering as Rider was going to get.

Rider sighed and strode to the nearby benches where we were originally supposed to meet and sat. “I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Thechildrendidn’t notice her condition and swarmed her.”

“Most women like that,” Talon said, sinking onto the bench across from him.

“Do you?” Rider shot back, pointing out that Talon was often swarmed, especially in the human realm if he wasn’t careful, and didn’t enjoy it at all.

Talon shrugged, his gaze sliding to the path where the redhead had disappeared. “I’m not a woman.”

“And this isn’t what we’re here to talk about,” I said, jumping in before Rider could respond.

As much as I wanted to know more about the woman and was worried she wouldn’t be all right, we needed to discuss the novices before they arrived. Which was the whole reason we were meeting in the Garden tonight and not waiting until tomorrow when I was in the Gray.

“Fine,” Talon huffed, jerking his attention back to Rider. “How do you want to train the novices?”

“It can’t be the same as usual,” I said, sitting beside him. “We’ve lost too many men and we can’t afford to keep them out of the full rotation for the regular two seasons.”

“I know,” Rider replied, his expression grim.

Talon only needed four replacements for his elite unit and I only needed two, but Rider had lost a dozen of his elite guard and close to another dozen of the regular guard since the last lottery. And almost all of them were human. We had more human novices this time than we’d ever had before— Hell, we had more novices than we’d ever had before, and we didn’t have nearly enough time to train them properly.

“We should be able to put the fae novices straight into a modified rotation after initial assessments,” I said, “But maybe there’ll be a few humans who already have decent fighting abilities.”

“Not if they’re like the one who just arrived,” Rider said. “Sure, he managed to kill a shadow hound, but he was stupid enough to use the ring after dark.”

Talon’s eyes widened. “You’re talking about that red-haired child who stumbled into the bathhouse covered in shadow blood? He killed a hound?”

Red hair? I’d delivered the summons to a redhead that afternoon. What were the odds Ash, the other guardsman who handed out summons, also had a redhead on his list of novices?

“Saw it with my own eyes and it was dumb luck,” Rider huffed. “Dumb being the operative word.”

“But that shows promise,” Talon said, his expression darkening. “I know the humans think they’re men at sixteen, but they’re not. And he’s small, even for a sixteen-year-old human male. If he managed to kill a hound, then we can work with that. He’s young. He’ll grow into a man soon enough.”

“So, you’re saying someone came through the ring after dark?” I asked, stunned.

We’d made it clear to the humans that it was suicide to come to the Gray after dark and their priests were supposed to pass that knowledge to every man in the lottery. The light created from the ring’s magic was a beacon to all the shadows in the area. There was a slim chance someone could run to the Tower before he was swarmed, but that depended on how far away the shadows were, and with their increasing numbers, the odds that at least one of them was close to the ring was good. “Suicide attempt?”

“I don’t think so,” Talon replied. “He’s… inexperienced, not stupid or suicidal.”

“Yeah, and he better getexperiencedfast,” Rider growled. “Next time we might not get so lucky and someone will get hurt. Unless of course, that idiot is Ash.” Rider ran a hand over his face, already looking tired and the first rotation of training the novices hadn’t even started. “I really hate when he plays the dumb ones.”

CHAPTER 19

Quill

I hatedit when Ash played the dumb ones, too, but he usually wasn’t dumb to the point of endangering someone. And stepping through the ring after dark endangered whoever had ridden out to save him. He had no way of knowing that Rider would be one of his rescuers, so couldn’t have counted on Rider coming to his aid. Sure, because the novices arrived tomorrow Rider wouldn’t be hunting with one of the elite teams tonight, but he also wouldn’t have taken a position on the wall. I suspected it was just luck that Rider had been on the wall when the novice had arrived.

But Talon has said the novice had red hair and was young. I’d delivered a summons to a boy who fit that description that afternoon, which meant he couldn’t be Ash, since Ash was out delivering summonses as well.

“I don’t think this novice is Ash,” I said.

Ash, with his magic to change his appearance, always disguised himself as a human novice for the first of the two seasons of novice training to help identify those who might be a problem once they were part of the regular rotation.

Because the humans didn’t join the guard voluntarily like the fae, not everyone had the same skill level and some humansbelieved that meant their life was already over and attempted to end it, while others thought it gave them the right to make life more difficult for those weaker than themselves. Some fae believed that as well, but most were too afraid of Rider to create serious problems.

The problem was that Ash was damned good at what he did and, as much as we tried, we could never figure out who he was until he revealed himself as a potential target for those looking for someone to intimidate or an intimidator ready to join in. The only advantage we ever had was that Ash took two thirds of the list of summonses and hid himself among them, which meant there was always one third of the novices who I or Talon knew wasn’t Ash because we’d delivered those summons ourselves.

“The boy’s name is Sawyer Herstind, but I’m surprised he didn’t wait until tomorrow to come to the Gray,” I added, my mind jumping back to that moment.

---