Shadows and Light

had answered those pleas with more pain.
    In the end, she’d used her knife because it was the weapon that felt comfortable in her hand, and she dressed the Black Coats as she would have dressed a deer—but without the respect she felt for a deer whose flesh would feed her people and without the mercy of a swift, clean death before her knife sliced through those human bellies. Their blood splashed her. Their screams filled her ears until there was no other sound. She heard the screams even after she stood over silent corpses.
    When she looked at her men, they looked back at her fearfully, even the ones who were predators in their other forms.
    Not even a wolf was safe against a shadow hound, and now they’d seen that side of her while she was still in her human form.

    Then, as the sky began to lighten with the dawn, Morag road into that thorny, barren place.
    Have you nothing to say about what I’ve done here, Gatherer?
    I’ve seen worse things done, and they were done by an Inquisitor’s hand.
    Morag gathered all the ghosts in that place and took them up the road that led to the Shadowed Veil and the Summer-land beyond.
    Death’s Mistress didn’t fear shadow hounds.
    Ashk blinked her eyes several times. It was just looking at the sunlight that made them wet. Just the sunlight.
    It would be some time before she could walk in the light again. The Black Coats had created the foul, soul-eating creatures called nighthunters, and those things were growing somewhere in the woods. No, she couldn’t walk in the light while her people were in danger.
    She turned her back on the meadow and looked at the men standing in the shadows of the woods, the men who had followed her here, waiting for their orders.
    “Send word through the minstrels and the storytellers,” Ashk said. “They’ll make sure everyone hears the warnings. Send it swiftly. It must reach the witches and the barons as well as the Clans.”
    “What should the minstrels and storytellers say?” one of the huntsmen asked.
    “They should give warning about the nighthunters. One of the Black Coats, the one who led the other five, got away. He could create more of those soul-eating creatures in other places while he flees the west. People need to be careful.”
    “Is there anything else?” the huntsman asked.
    “No stranger is welcome in the west, and if any come, no one is to talk to them about witches or the House of Gaian. No one. If any strangers want answers, they can come to me.” It hurt, knowing what her next words might cost. “And if any strangers who come into the west are reluctant to explain to the Fae why they have come among us... kill them.”

Chapter Twenty
    Glynis set her wet, soapy fists on her hips. “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’ll say it again. It isn’t right. Lady Elinore would never stoop so low as to do a servant’s work, and you’re just as fine a lady as she is—and kin besides.”
    I don’t think Elinore would refuse to help with chores if her help was needed, but her servants would probably faint from the embarrassment, Breanna thought as she slipped the handle of the basket that held the wooden clothes-pegs over one arm. She and Glynis had been arguing this point on and off ever since the woman came to work for them. “I think my dignity can survive hanging up the wash. Besides, I do it every week, and I’m not about to stop doing it just because Elinore will see me.”

    She lifted the large basket full of wet sheets and pillowcases and left before Glynis could continue the argument.
    As she walked toward the three wash lines strung between sturdy posts, she saw Clay look at the wash house, then look at her. He grinned.
    Breanna stopped to give him a narrow-eyed stare. “I suppose you’re going to tell me a gentry lady would rather run naked down the main street of Willowsbrook than be seen hanging out her own wash.”
    “Truth to tell, she probably would,” Clay replied. “And it would be more entertaining for the rest of us.
    But I’ve no objection to a healthy body doing healthy work, so if you ever have an urge to shovel out horse manure, I won’t be telling you it’s not a fit occupation for a gentry lady.”
    She bit back a chuckle, shook her head, and continued her walk to the clotheslines. Setting down her baskets, she plucked a couple of clothes-pegs out of the small basket and started filling the lines with clean linens.
    A light breeze from the west