Page 3 of Practical Boots

"You carry a child."

"Iwhat?" For an instant the phrasing came upallwrong in her mind. Cat was absolutely, definitely not carrying a child. For one thing, she took drugs to keep that from happening, and for another, she was on her damn period right now, which didn't mean shewasn'tpregnant, but was a sign in the right direction, and besides, it was at least her second period since she'd last had sex and—

—and that wasn't what he meant. At all. Cat shifted her backpack off one shoulder so she could actually see the carrying compartment, and sort of shook it at her father. "You mean there's an embryo in this thing? No wonder they're paying good money for fast transportation. Anyway, it's obviously not yours."

"But it is, and if you will give it to me, you will receive both the payment you expect and my promise that I will never again cross paths with you."

The promise of that promise slid through Cat's chest like a blade of light. Along it lay a path of freedom, of never looking over her shoulder again, of never second-guessing her journeys through the Waste. It stung with its brightness, almost blinding her, and tasted so sweet that she moved a step forward without meaning to. Only a step: the boots couldn't yet take her from this corner of the Torn.

Only a step, which jolted her back into herself, reminded her that even blades of light had cutting edges. Her throat seemed to taste of the raw flavor of blood, like she'd been screaming, when she spoke. "Are you the person who paid me to make this journey?"

Anger sizzled through her father's eyes. "No. But I will pay the fee for taking it, none-the-less."

"Nope." The word rasped. "Nope. Sorry. No can do. Somebody else offered me a contract for this delivery. I'm not giving it up for you. I'm not givinganythingelse up for you." She had to leave. That was her exit line: quippy, cutting, confident. She had to leavenow.

"Besides," she heard herself say, "what would you want with it anyway?"

"It is mine!" Thunder crept into her father's voice, the anger of a man who hated both explaining himself, and being denied.

That anger let Cat take a step back, re-centering herself. Not a retreat. Just familiar ground. "Look, Pops, unless you've jacked off all the way across the Torn into a human fertility clinic, I don't see ho—ooooh, wow. Oh wow, what have you done." Her stomach roiled and she stepped back again, pulling the strap of her pack over her shoulder again. "What did youdo?"

He would never explain himself. He never had, not even to those above him in the court, and certainly not to his recalcitrant, unmanageable daughter. But he didn't need to. The rage in his face, the thin wavering line between disgust and self-satisfaction, told her enough. Not everything, but enough.

He had managed it, somehow. Had succeeded in having his seed carried across the Waste and embedded in some unsuspecting, non-consenting human woman's egg. The child she'd been hoping for was his power play, and he would stop at nothing to acquire it.

And Cat knew why. Or suspected it, at least. For all the reasons she kept stuffed down deep inside her where she tried not to even think about them, so no one else could come across their probable truth. Few enough of the Torn-born could travel the Waste. Fewer still could be dropped in it, defenseless, and survive. And almost no one became an Artificer, trying.

But as far as Cat could tell, those who did were like her. Half of the World, half of the Torn. She had been the first Torn-born, half-human child in decades, maybe centuries; those from the Torn who could travel to the World rarely brought their human lovers back. Children were left behind, forgotten, and born with a power their deadbeat parents never knew about.

Most of those children, Cat suspected, never knew about their power themselves. It didn't take the Waste to trigger it, but it did take either intense need or the knowledge that it could be awakened. World-born Artificers lived a long time and sought each other out, teaching the skill to those whose bloodlines ran strong with the blood of the Torn, although those were fewer and fewer each generation, even in the World, where so many more people lived than in the Torn.

In the Torn itself, Artificers were beings of almost-legendary status, only half-believed in, like fairy tales within fairy tales. Cat didn't know where her father had found the one who had almost trapped her, but she suspected he'd come from the World, bribed or bargained into a Faustian trap.

Either way, whether the other Artificer was World-born or Torn, the fact that he was trying to get another child of half-human blood meant Cat's father suspected Cat's heritage may have had something to do with her survival.

"No." She barely recognized her own voice. "No. Absolutely not. You can't have this—"Sibling. She was carrying her own half-sibling in a frozen container on her back. She knew what kind of father they shared. "It'd be better off dead than with you raising it."

"Believe me," her father purred, "I intend to shower every honor and every luxury on the coming child. On my beloved heir. It will adore me."

"Heir? A legitimate heir? After me? How are you even going to—did you getmarried?" Cat's voice broke. "Who would be stupid enough to marry you? And how do you expect to—" She cut off her own questions. In the World, it would take doctors and hormones and she didn't know what all, to implant an embryo. In the Torn, it would no doubt take the same things, but the healers there had magic instead of science. Given an unethical-enough healer, a woman could probably be impregnated with somebody else's embryo without her ever even knowing it. And children were sufficiently rare in the Torn that even if she had suspicions, she probably wouldn't voice them.

And Cat's father would never marry somebody smart enough to question it anyway. If he married someone smart, he might struggle to control her, particularly if she had a child to protect. Well, maybe. Her own mother had apparently genuinely fallen for him, but she hadn't stayed, either. Either way, he was a master of manipulation. The only reason Cat had escaped relatively unscathed was his absolute lack of interest in her, but she'd seen how he'd treated everyone else.

"You may congratulate me," he said with his thin smile. "The Margravine Yylana Alara has recently become my wife, and I her husband."

"Yylana?" Cat's eyebrows drew down far enough to make her head ache. She remembered the margravine, in the vague way that children remembered adults who had very little to do with their lives. Yylana had been very, very pretty to Cat's half-human way of appreciating beauty, but she'd been considered unfashionable by the court. Her features and figure were too round, and she had, in fact, been dumb as a stump. Cat thought there'd been something lacking about her skill with magic, too, as if she'd been a hedge witch or something else crass, a shifter with only one other shape to command. Even in the Torn, where magic was as common as breathing, there were still powers that weretoocommon.

The Yylana that Cat remembered would have been overawed and thrilled by attention from the Woodlands Lord of the court, and would never, ever have imagined she was being used as a pawn. Cat doubted she would even be able to recognize when the overtures of friendship from those who wanted to curry favor with Woodlands Lord were false.

Cat didn't almost feel sorry for Yylana. Sheabsolutelyfelt sorry for her.

And she was absolutely not getting any more involved than that.

"Congratulations." The word, offered stiffly, still somehow pleased her father, which was nice, because the next ones wouldn't. "I'm still not giving you this package."

"We're in a warded pocket of the Torn," her father murmured. "Your Artifact cannot carry you from this place. How do you propose to stop me from taking it?"

She still had the backpack in one hand, and her gun in the other. She put the muzzle of the weapon against the carrying compartment of the pack and slid her finger to the trigger, all without taking her gaze from her father's face.

---