[Eastern Moors Border — Day 118]
The net was professional work.
Nathan landed at the edge of the eastern treeline and assessed: iron-mesh net, hand-forged, the kind of equipment that cost money and suggested someone who'd done this before and intended to do it again. The hedge fairy currently underneath it was approximately the size of a house cat, green-brown and thorned like its namesake, and producing a sound that the Verdant Communion translated without ambiguity as pain, trapped, fear.
The man holding the net's corner had a knife. Iron-bladed, not military — a working knife, the kind carried by people who did things with their hands. He was broad-shouldered, forty, with the weathered competence of someone who'd learned practical skills and had made a practical decision that the Moors' border being open now represented an opportunity.
He saw Nathan and didn't run, which told Nathan the man had dealt with authority before and had a plan for it.
"It's just an animal," the man said. The pre-emptive defence of someone who'd worked out the opening argument in advance.
"It's a citizen of this realm under Aurora's protection." Nathan kept his voice flat. The Sovereignty reached for the knife — not pulling it yet, just feeling it, the way you put your hand on a door before deciding to open it. "Release the net."
"Worth good coin in the eastern markets. The buyers don't ask what kind of—"
"Release the net."
The man lunged. Not at Nathan — he'd assessed Nathan's size and decided on a different tactic. He went for the fairy. Not to take it. To use it.
Nathan moved faster. The Sovereignty hit the iron knife and pushed it wide — the iron going the wrong direction, fighting its owner's wrist, Nathan crossing the distance in three steps and getting between the man and the net.
The knife redirected. Still in the man's hand. Came across Nathan's side.
Not deep. The angle was wrong, the Sovereignty had moved it, but not deep and not there at all were different situations and the blade was iron and the bloom of pain below his left ribs was immediate and specific.
The Sovereignty picked the man up — not high, just off the ground, the gravity field wrapping around him like a vice — and moved him ten feet back and set him down with enough force to sit him on the ground and enough firmness in the grip to communicate that getting up was inadvisable.
"Walk back to wherever you came from," Nathan said. His hand was at his side. Wet. He didn't look down. "Leave the net. Leave the knife. Don't come back to this border."
The man left the knife. Left the net. Walked. Fast.
Nathan lifted the net's edge with the Sovereignty and the hedge fairy scrambled free, made three panicked circles, then stopped and looked at him. The Verdant Communion received something brief and raw: hurt, you, why.
"You're all right," he said. "Go."
It went.
He sat against the nearest tree. Looked at his hand. More blood than he'd wanted. The wound wasn't deep — he'd dealt with worse, had treated worse on other people while managing his own adrenaline — but iron wounds in this world bled with an enthusiasm that plain steel didn't, something about iron and magic interacting in the environment even on a non-magical person.
He pressed his palm flat against his side. Applied pressure. Watched the treeline. Calculated.
He could fly back. Slowly. The exertion would open it more. He could walk. Slower, but less physiologically demanding. He could wait. Someone would come eventually — Diaval ran the eastern circuit on alternate days.
The sound of wings reached him before he'd finished the calculation. Not Diaval's wings. Larger. Faster. The particular displaced-air sound of a flight that was not leisurely.
Maleficent landed beside him and the ground shook with it, just slightly, the impact of someone who'd been moving at speed and had chosen to stop here, now, without the slow approach she used when she wasn't alarmed.
Her face was not composed.
"I felt—" She stopped. Looked at his side. At his hand pressing against it. Something moved through her expression that he didn't have time to catalog before the composure framework came down over it like a shutter. "That needs tending."
"It's manageable."
"You're bleeding."
"That happens when you get cut." He managed to keep his voice even. The blood was soaking through the fabric at a rate that suggested manageable was optimistic.
"Don't." Her voice came out sharper than she'd intended. He could hear it — the sharpness that wasn't anger. "Don't joke. Nathan." Her hands came to his side, pressing his hand firmer against the wound, her fingers over his, and he could feel the slight tremor in them. "How deep?"
"Not very. The angle was off. Iron blade, though."
She pulled back the edge of his tunic and looked. Her jaw tightened. "Up. I'm taking you to the grove."
"You could just—"
"Up."
He let her pull him to his feet. The movement pulled at the wound and he made no sound about it, but she felt it — he saw her face register it even before he'd finished suppressing the reaction.
"Lean," she said.
"I can fly myself."
"Lean," she said, in the tone that had stopped fifteen soldiers from moving, "or I will carry you."
He leaned.
They flew west together, her wing extended on his injured side, close enough that he was half-sheltered, the warmth of her presence against the cold that was starting at the edges of his fingers. The wound wasn't serious. He knew what serious looked like. But iron had a way of making everything worse than it should be, and the blood loss was real, and the Sovereignty was taxed from the poacher encounter and wasn't at full capacity.
"I don't know how I knew," she said, when the Moors boundary passed beneath them. "I was in the grove. And then—" She stopped. The wings adjusted, bringing him closer. "I just knew."
He felt the laugh somewhere under the pain. "Maybe you care whether I live."
A pause.
"I've cared since day twenty-eight," she said, with the precision of someone who'd looked up the exact date. "You were already aware."
He had been. He'd been aware since she'd said I would prefer you not die with the specific tone of someone saying something they hadn't meant to say out loud.
The grove appeared below them.
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