Page 57 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

A copse of them stood like a group of crones, gnarled and ancient and implacably disapproving. Their branches tangled so thick she could not see the bruising sky or those eerie pinpricks of starlight. Even in this bitter cold, clusters of silver berries, as delicate and shining as ice crystals, hung from their boughs. They were as tempting as the long slivers of bark that curled like fiddleheads, begging to be peeled off. Lorelei had the distinct impression that taking anything would be a fatal mistake.

Sylvia pulled a flask from her bag and approached the tallest of them. Its roots had erupted from the earth and twisted into the shape of a skull. She poured water over it, murmuring softly to herself. “Now I sacrifice so that you do no harm.”

The leaves shivered in response. It sounded like a woman sighing.

“Don’t touch any of these trees.” So that confirmed her suspicion. Sylvia jabbed a finger at Lorelei. “Better yet, do not think about them atall. Do not walk in front of me, either. The eschenfrau are very particular about their offerings.”

“Yes, yes, I understand.”

Sylvia gave her a considering look before corking her flask. They continued up the mountainside in silence, flanked by rows and rows of ash. It was terrible. On an ordinary day, Lorelei might have celebrated the small victory of managing to stem the flow of Sylvia’s unfailing chatter. But the trees’ leering presence made her long for one of Sylvia’s sparkling-bright moods. She rarely found herself in a position where she needed to start a conversation with Sylvia, and she was hard-pressed to think of a topic that wouldn’t devolve into bickering.

“Tell me,” she tried. “Where did you acquire all your arcane knowledge about the wildeleute?”

Sylvia glanced over her shoulder. “You really want to know?”

Lorelei leveled her with an impatient look. “I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”

Sylvia stopped to pour water over the roots of another tree. The dark, rich smell of damp soil rose around them. “Much of Albe is wild and untamed; we haven’t driven our wildeleute out as they have in Ruhigburg. My nursemaids told me all sorts of tales, and I grew up chasing sylphs through the woods outside my home. I saw many wildeleute during the war as well. Many of them fled their natural habitats, but many more were drawn to the carnage. Eventually, I came to understand that even the most fearsome of them can be communicated with, if you care enough to learn how.”

“How did you learn?”

“Trial and error, mostly.” She smiled almost shyly. “And I suppose I talked to people. My soldiers told me about their lives, about the stories their mothers had told them. I believe that’s why I am still alive and so many others are not.”

It felt terrible to carry the weight of what Ludwig had told her, to hold on to it alongside this half confession. Lorelei had known the depths of despair and had forged herself on the iron of that pain. She hadn’timagined Sylvia knew something of that, too. Lorelei had once believed her life to be so charmed.

Itwascharmed, she reminded herself. Hardship she had chosen did not undo that. Under no circumstances would she begin to feel sorry for Sylvia von Wolff.

“I see,” said Lorelei, more coldly than she had intended.

Sylvia looked stung only for a moment before turning back toward the path. “And you? Do you really know so little about them?”

“I have lived in the city all my life, so I’m afraid I had no opportunity to frolic among them as you did. Yevani used to have house spirits, but most of them haven’t survived.” Her grandfather, also a shoemaker by trade, apparently had a shretele that would finish any shoes he left out after the workday ended. It never asked for anything in return. “They defended their homes quite fiercely, but there is only so much that can be done.”

“I’m sorry.” Sylvia sounded earnestly sad. “People are unspeakably cruel.”

As they walked, Lorelei could feel the attention of those pale-barked trees on them. It unsettled her, the bark rippling, the knotholes seeming to blink like eyes. Little voices whispered in the flutter of the leaves. Sylvia walked as though she belonged among them, as ethereal as the sylphs she’d followed as a girl.

Something crunched beneath Lorelei’s boot. When she glanced down, she saw something glitter with a reflection of the unnatural twilight. She bent down and retrieved a shard of glass. “I found something.”

“What is it?” Sylvia grabbed her wrist, startling her, and inspected the glass in her palm. Her face paled, but it took a moment longer than she would have liked for Sylvia to let her go. “This looks like a piece of one of Ludwig’s collection vials. Do you thinkhe’s...?”

Wind gusted through the trees. Their branches clattered. Their leaves hissed. All at once, they went silent.

A warning.

As storm clouds clawed their way across the sky, darkness closed like a fist around them. And then, cutting through the eerie quiet: a scream.

Fourteen

THE SOUND ECHOED THROUGHthe trees, distorted. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Sylvia’s hand flew to the saber at her hip. “Stay behind me.”

Lorelei almost resented the implication that she needed protecting. But with that cry ringing out in the deepening night, she didn’t feel much acid behind the insult readied on her tongue. Swallowing it back down, she followed Sylvia into the ash grove. They clambered over the roots and pushed through the curtains of leaves. Lorelei did her best not to shudder at the phantom sensation of tiny hands pulling at her hair and the hem of her coat.

The scream came tearing through the woods again, louder this time.

“It sounds like it’s coming from above us.” Sylvia pointed at a rocky outcropping. A cascade of water tumbled off its lip and into a narrow stream. “Up there.”

A thicket of pine loomed nearly five meters above them. There was no clear path forward; they’d have to climb. With no hesitation, Sylvia hoisted herself up, fitting her boots and hands into small grooves in the rockface. Lorelei kept up as best she could, but the stone was treacherously slick beneath herfingers—andas cold as death. When she looked up, Sylvia had already scaled the cliff. It hardly seemed fair.