Creed had stayed back with Mishtaw in the poisoner’s hideout but even without his bulk the healer’s cave was crowded between the injured, the rest of the Red Hand group, the healer and her assistant, and Petra and Eliss who were keeping watch over them all.

The cave’s entrance was covered now by the pine needle strands to keep the cool night air out and the only light in the cave came from a small banked fire in the middle of the floor. Which only added to the claustrophobic feeling strangling the room.

I drew in a deep breath and held it for a few moments before letting it out again while Eliss focused in on Prevna and demanded to know what was going on. I could handle small spaces better than I used to, now that I had more experiences to combat the memories, but I still had a strong urge to push past the pine needles and step out into the relief of open air. And perhaps I would, once I knew Eliss wouldn’t drag me right back into the cave so she could keep an eye on me.

It figured that she had ignored me in favor of Prevna even though I had been the one present for the entire thing. She tried to pretend I wasn’t around as much as possible. I wasn’t sure if it was because she thought that if she acted like I wasn’t there to cause trouble than reality would follow suit or if it was her way of silently protesting Mishtaw’s decision to take me on without actually questioning her.

Petra shifted toward me with a glad smile even as she kept her eyes on the others. “Alright?”

I nodded and gave her a small smile in return before touching my throat and deliberately wincing. She got the message between that and the short tale Prevna was finishing up quietly nearby. My voice was basically shot for now but I figured I might be able to force it when I really needed if I let it rest for a bit.

Petra patted me on the shoulder and nodded at Mirabeth and Desai, who were watching us in return. Mirabeth looked bitter while Desai had a kind of desperate intensity. “I’ve learned a bit of signing in the past. I couldn’t catch everything but from what I saw those two knew what he was up to. They tried to tell us you were dead. Can you believe it?”

Petra shook her head and chuckled lightly at the idea and my smile turned a little more vindictive. I wasn’t surprised at all to hear that they knew what was going on given Mirabeth’s previous actions, but I was glad to hear I had ruined their expectations as well.

Eliss finally paid me enough attention to see that I was standing before changing focus to the Healer and assistant pair. She stepped up close so she loomed over where they were sitting and whatever other murmurs had filled the silence instantly quieted.

“Did you kill any with your own hands?”

Mirabeth’s face went ashen and she shook her head no once, sharply. Desai glared up at the whisper woman.

“I taught him the art and nothing else.”

“And he should not have even known that.”

“We were children and already shunned by most of our tribe. I did not see a reason as to why I shouldn’t share one of my interests with him, especially when he obviously excelled at it.”

“And what about now?” Eliss’s fingers tightened on her spear. “What about when he started to kill?”

“At first it was an accident. Then it was a mercy—an old woman whose insides were rotting. She would have been dead anyways, only it would have taken longer and been more painful.” Desai squared her shoulders. “He never killed before we were kicked out of the tribe.”

Eliss was about to continue her interrogation when Mirabeth signed something and Desai translated. “By the time he showed his true intentions we were in too deep. I was their cover and they’re my protection. My tongue was gone and she is loyal to her brother.”

“That was all it took for you aid a death bringer?”

Mirabeth’s hands rapidly gave her answer but Desai took a long moment to fill the rest of us in. “If I turned away patients then he said I would be his next test subject…I wasn’t ready to become one of them yet so I healed who I could.” Desai’s next words were Mirabeth. “You weren’t meant to be touched! We need the gifts you get from the bands.”

Practicality over sentimentality then. Not that I couldn’t understand where she was coming from. The healer and her seeming assistants had a nice set up where all the surrounding bands likely owed them for surviving the elements and each other, but they likely weren’t able to keep ahold of a true territory of their own that would help them survive without those band’s payment. Nor were any of the bands likely keen on taking in the trio given the healer’s stigma and the difficulty of taking on more mouths to feed. So this arrangement suited everyone best until Dahrii came into the picture and the bands learned they were a killer’s fee for every band member Mirabeth saved.

“How many dead?” That was Kuma and she looked she wanted to rip her bandages from her wounds. “How many has he killed since you came here?”

Desai’s hands clenched. “I didn’t count.”

I eyed Eliss. She could add fuel to the fire or keep the information we had learned to herself. I was tempted to blurt it out myself, just so they would get their due, but my raw throat kept me quiet.

“You—” Eliss never got to finish.

Harup grunted and Jika screamed. A spear was sticking out of the big man’s back. He had been standing near the covered cave entrance, watching the drama unfold, and he was slumping to the cave floor, eyes dull.

Jika scrambled back as another spear struck the ground between her feet and then everything was chaos. The pine needle strands moved unnaturally and I moved before I could think about what I was doing. All I knew was that I could never move Eliss and I didn’t manage more than a croak when I tried to shout.

So I stepped in front of her and a spear punched through my back just below my ribs. For a moment I thought it had punctured through to the other side but when I looked down nothing poke through my stomach. Then my head got light and my knees went weak and I sank to the ground in accidental imitation of Harup.

The goddess was really testing Her blessing tonight.

Prevna dragged me to my feet, shouting something, just before Eliss took the spear sticking out of my back and broke it over her knee so there was only about half a foot sticking out.

Others were shouting and scrambling around the healer’s cave as people I didn’t recognize slipped in between pine needle strands. A few bodies lay on the floor but I couldn’t focus enough to see who they were in the low light. Mirabeth and Desai were gone.

I tried to point that out, that they were gone and more enemies were coming, but my tongue wouldn’t work and my breathing was too rapid and there wasn’t something that definitely wasn’t supposed to be in my gut sticking out of me after I had already nearly been killed once today. Twice, if you counted what might have happened if the knife wounds I had gotten in the forest fight had been better placed.

Prevna dragged me forward and then we were back in the tunnels, turning this way and that. I tried to focus, tried to ignore the pain that was slowly radiating more from my middle, like I usually did, but it felt like I had used all my focus battling the poison. My instincts were telling me to slow down, stop, treat the wound and stop the bleeding, but there wasn’t time for that. Others were crowding the tunnel behind us and the attackers were likely pursuing behind them.

Suddenly, we did stop. Bottlenecked by Mishtaw and Creed coming the other way with Mirabeth and Desai bound and senseless on Creed’s shoulders.

Prevna gasped out, “Death bringers! Attacking!”

They immediately backed up and Prevna pulled me after them. We ended up back in Dahrii’s lair, packed tight and waiting with whoever else made it here with us while Mishtaw and Eliss were pressed to either side of the entrance. Eliss had activated her blessing, giving her skin an unusual texture. Really, I should have let her handle the stupid spear even if she wouldn’t have been able to see the attack from where she was standing.

My gaze wavered over the plants hanging from the ceiling. The pots and sacks pressed up against the walls. I needed to be able to focus. To think through the pain and blood loss and shock even if my mark was starting to prickle again. Dahrii might have been a poisoner but surely he had something I could use as a stimulant without poisoning myself as well.

My eyes caught on the dried fire blossom I had wanted to use earlier to make an antidote. It would do. Mishtaw yelled her battle cry and I felt my body strengthen even as the sounds of fighting came from the entrance. They could hold the door. I reached up, stretching and pulling on my wounds, but all I reached was the air just below the storming plant. Prevna shifted and I found myself sitting on the floor, glaring up at her, until she snagged the dried fire blossom and crouched down next to me.

She smiled at me even as fear and worry made her eyes tight. “You wanted this?”

I scooped the bundle out of her hands in answer and crushed it against my face. My eyes and the insides of my mouth and nose burned as I breathed in once, twice, three times. But with each breath I felt my focus return. Felt the world crystallize into a burning kind of clarity even as my eyes watered from the plant’s pollen.

Dahrii was collapsed in a corner of the small cave, dead. Mirabeth and Desai had been set down next to him, still bound alive. Mishtaw and Eliss held the cave’s entrance and killed any death bringer who got too close while Creed and Petra supported them where they could. Of the others who had made it with us, we still had: Kuma and Jika, the younger injured man and the sick young boy. Apparently, the others hadn’t been able to move fast enough to avoid the death bringers.

We had no way to know how many death bringers were attacking other than the assumption that there shouldn’t have been that many given the number the Peacekeepers had wiped out. We also couldn’t stay here. They knew where we were and even if we got them to retreat they would know where we were.

I eyed the hole in cave ceiling that was letting starlight light up the room. Our escape options were find a way up through that or chance going further into the tunnels or back out through the healer’s camp. If only that whisper woman who could stick to things was here. She’d have no trouble reaching the top and securing a rope for everyone else to climb.

I shook my head mentally and refocused. That could come later. For now we needed to win the fight as quickly as possible. Our chances were better all around if Mishtaw and Eliss weren’t exhausted.

Well, we were in a poisoner’s den. And I still remembered everything Dahrii had been proud enough to walk me through. The smelling poison would take too long and carry the risk of affecting our people as well. Thankfully, I saw that no one had knocked that little bowl over. I snatched it up and carried it to a safe corner before focusing on my other options.

Would using his killing poisons count us among the death bringers? Most likely, unless it was Mishtaw or Eliss as they had the Peacekeeper’s divine right and duty. Still, perhaps it was better to use something that wasn’t lethal, just in case. I hobbled over to a little jar that held one of the poisons I had considered using earlier. A poison that was just waiting for someone to breath it in and keep them awake while they felt like they were being burned from the inside. It was cruel and terrible and exactly the kind of thing that would likely break the death bringers assault. Who could fight when it felt like they were a living torch?

I took a drink from my water pouch and then held out the jar to Prevna. It took me a couple tries but I managed, “Throw. Don’t breathe.”

Her face was grim as she nodded but she took the jar and got Petra’s attention who spread a warning to the others. Mishtaw stabbed the attacker in the throat and then they all took a moment to cover their faces with a bit of cloth as Prevna lobbed the jar down the way we had come. I heard it shatter. An agonizing moment passed as another attacker bore down on the entrance but Eliss stabbed the person in the gut and then the screaming started.

It started and didn’t stop for a long while, though the voices did fade into the distance the longer it went on.