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Every step from Iona, since the Monarch sent me forth into the harbinger shadows of coming doom.Dom nearly threw himself into the saddle to keep the memories at bay, jolting the horse beneath him. The cloak fell around his shoulders.It no longer smells like home, like clean rain and old stone.
The yard of the Priest’s Hand used to be a cemetery, but most of the gravestones had been torn up like rotten teeth. Now it served as a meeting square outside the market, teeming with traffic. Still Dom heard Corayne’s voice, low as it was.
She stood by the crooked fence, staring up at Sorasa, who was already in the saddle.
“The second Spindle is in Ibal,” she whispered.
The assassin leaned down to meet her. To Dom’s confusion, Sarn did not smile or even seem pleased. Her copper eyes clouded. She set her teeth. “How can you be sure?”
“I’m sure” was all Corayne said in reply, her voice like iron.
With her back to him and hood raised, Dom could not see her face. He judged Sarn instead, as her brow furrowed, her eyes downcast and searching. She faltered, looking for any misgiving in Corayne. Dom did not trust Sorasa Sarn, with his life or anyone else’s. But he trusted the assassin with her own survival. Sarn would not risk herself, not without cause.
“Fine,” she muttered, tightening the reins in hand until her horse tossed. “We’ll ride west, stop at the crossroads before finding passage over the Long Sea.”
Dom winced at the thought of another voyage, let alone one in such close proximity with this steadily growing band of shabby travelers.At least I won’t spend this one shoved below deck like a corpse in a steadily rocking tomb,he thought.
“We should get passage here,” Corayne hissed back. She glared over her shoulder for a second, once again looking toward the port. Her eyes flared. “There are ships enough.”
“You said before, you trust my judgment. Trust it again. We’ll head south within a few days, be on the sands as fast as the winds can carry us.”
There was something in Sarn’s voice that Dom had not heard before. In the many long days since he’d found her in Byllskos, she’d been frustrated, annoyed, weary, enraged, and mostly bored. Never desperate.She is desperate now,he realized, reading the carefully masked motions of her face. In spite of himself, the immortal knew her enough to note the pull of her lips, the hard clench of her jaw, the minuscule narrowing of her tiger’s eyes.
“All right,” Corayne said, spinning on her heel. By the time she mounted her own horse, the saddlebags full to bursting, her golden cheeks were moon pale.
Pale with fear or with frustration, Dom had no idea.Mortals are impossible to fathom, especially Sorasa Sarn.
He urged his mount alongside Sorasa’s as they trekked from the old cemetery. She didn’t acknowledge him at first, focused on checking her saddlebags too many times. He saw her whip, a great many flashes of steel and bronze, alongside small packets he vaguely recognized. A few were blue, some green, one of them a tiny square of black covered in Ishei writing. Clearly she had stocked up on supplies of her own.
By the time they reached the Adira gate, she huffed a sigh.
“Just say what you’re going to say, Elder.”
It felt like victory. A corner of Dom’s mouth curled into a smirk. He leveled his eyes on Charlon, swaying on his mule a few yards ahead, planted firmly between Andry and Valtik. He didn’t favor either for company.
Dom pointed his chin at the forger. “You’re using that young man as bait.”
It was meant to be an insult. Sarn took it as anything but.
“Catching on, are you?” she said, spurring her horse down to the marsh.
Larsia was a sea of tall yellow grass and gentle hills, the dirt too poor for much planting. As night fell, Dom’s eyes perceived the empty, sloping lands, without forest or farm, all but barren. The emptiness rankled. A pang of longing shot through him. He had never been so far west, the travels of his long life having taken him only to the Gallish border. His days were not well spent under harsher suns in distant lands, away from home. He ached for woods, for glens, for rivers swollen by rain and snowmelt. A stag beneath the boughs of a yew tree, its antlers indistinguishable from branches. The old gray stone of Tíarma, the proud ridge thrust out of the fog, her windows like glowing eyes. The Monarch in her silver gown, waving from the gate. Ridha, smiling in the stable yard, her armor cast away, her sword forgotten and unneeded.
Will I ever see them again?
The stars above gave no answer, veiled by cloud and doubt.
The Cor road was still too dangerous. They rode a dirt track instead, a path older than the empire, rutted by centuries of cart traffic. Every step took them farther from Ascal and the lands of the Queen. Even so, Dom felt Taristan breathing down his neck again, his voice hateful and gloating.
Shall I kill her in front of you too?
The leather of the reins cracked between Dom’s hands, threatening to tear. He wanted to do it, to feel something break that wasn’t his own heart.
The sun rose and the sun set and still they moved on, shadow-eyed and tired. The others dozed off and on, heads lolling with the rhythm of the horses. All but Corayne. Even as the hours passed, the dawn sliding into day, she did not sleep, her pulse disquieted. The sword was a gargoyle on her back, misshapen under the cloak. It made her slump.
Dom wanted to take it from her, to ease her burden. And claim what little of her father remained on the Ward.
It’s not for you to wield,he scolded himself sharply. He wished for Corayne’s questions or Andry’s gentle platitudes. Sarn’s hissing retorts, sharp and quick as the whip coiled on her saddle. Even Valtik’s rhymes, annoying as they were, would be better than his own thoughts.
