Page 23

“Where are we going?” Revni finally panted when Eavus allowed them to stop.

The stone-lined creekbed where they’d paused was a crack dividing the landscape, the stink of salt marsh behind, the curtain of vast forest on the other side. Eavus was red-faced and sweaty, his hands on his knees. They’d gone counter to the direction they’d come in, stumbling down a slope that opened to another swollen marsh—only it was a wide stretch of beach, beginning to flood with what they both understood was a rising tide. The muck pulled at their ankles, and eventually their shins, the long-necked herons flaring silent wings when the humans plashed through. By the time they’d made it to solid ground, the monk’s complex had become almost an island. Eavus had plowed forward, keeping them going, but he had begun to falter, losing moments like an old man. When he looked up at her now, he gave long, slow blinks. His eyes were glassy.

“Inland.” He mumbled in Aleterian, shivered, and repeated: “The Caerdeneii control the coast.”

“And then?”

Eavus shook his head—because he didn’t know, or because he was too winded to speak? The plum-colored bruise on his eye stood out sharply against his waxy skin, the stubble just grown enough to make him look dirty. His breathing was rattled, too fast.

A bird in Revni’s chest—a sleeping falcon, a clever raven—snapped its wings.

She licked her own dry lips. “Are there people inland?”

Eavus shook his head again, blinked against what looked like dizziness. That bird clawed along its perch, eyes on its prey.

“I don’t—Dinaeii, maybe. But that’s no good. They’re—” He fluttered a gesture, to his wound or the sword hanging below it, she couldn’t tell, but she remembered the little boy, the group tromping through the forest.

She wasn’t the only one who’d made enemies on this island.

“How do we find them?”

“We don’t. Regiment is better.”

But his eyes hadn’t been able to resist the direction. The tops of the tall trees swayed, shrouded and synchronous, like shadowed giants from the poems of the gods.

She waited, a patient little bird.

Eavus shook his head, but it was reluctant and the move seemed to make something in him worse. “Every village we’ve ever come across has been empty—like they just disappear in the middle of the night.” His voice sounded hollow. Was it fear? Or was it the sykhiti sinking its teeth? “The only time we’ve ever encountered Dinaeii is when they come to us.” His words tickled a memory. Revni’s eyes ran over his clammy, glistening skin, the ooze gluing his tunic. He’d sealed his injuries with honey, but this color wasn’t right—it was muddy with pus and blood. “Yesterday is the first time I’ve ever seen them in the wild.”

“You speak about them as if they’re animals.”

He gave her a look that said she wasn’t far off—and maybe he stood too fast, or his speech simply took the rest of his strength from him, because he suddenly fell over.

“Easy.” The Isfolj word slipped out as she caught his weight. With her hands tied, there wasn’t much she could do beyond righting him.

Any Isfolj in her right mind would end him now. Dump him on the ground, steal his weapons, and head north. But she had no food, nothing to trade, no idea where she was. The gods had plopped her here, and him, and it had to mean something, that they had put them together.

Listen.

Revni thought of the revenge etched into the Caerdeneii man’s face. She thought of Eavus’ sword, and what he must have done to get it back. She thought of that first night, while Eavus guarded, and then slept.

She’d seen something, in those bushes. A glint of watery eyelight. When he tied her to a tree and left her so he could sleep, she’d seen it again, and whispered a beg for help. In the morning, she couldn’t find a footprint, a broken branch, any sign that anyone had been there.

But it didn’t mean they hadn’t.

All Revni knew of Aleteria was that it was a vast empire that had started in the Sun Countries and just kept growing, but it had spread here, far more north than anyone she knew had been led to believe, and this warrior in front of her was a piece in it.

Eavus was keeping her alive because she held value to him. She hadn’t thought of him as valuable to her—not until she realized that the Dinaeii might like revenge on him as much as the Caerdeneii on her, or that maybe they’d like an Aleterian to bargain with. At the very least, they were enemies of her enemy, and that made them the closest thing she’d find to a friend.

“You need medicine.”

He mumbled in Aleterian—it sounded like an apology. Again, that shudder that she was realizing was the test of his memory, that translation into Gerstunt: “I need to sit down.”

“Not here.” Revni tilted her chin. “We’re too close to the coast still. We keep going.”

Eavus nodded weakly, took another stumbling step, realized Revni hadn’t moved. He blinked at her raised hands.

“Untie me. You’re too weak.” She sighed at his narrowed gaze. “If I wanted to run, I could have done it at any time. See?” She gave a little jig, enjoying the small surprise the movement earned. “I told you,” Revni said lightly, “I have no reason to run.”