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Corayne furrowed her brow, looking over the ruins again. She tried to imagine it long ago. “Why would they build a lighthouse this far from the sea?”
“Well seen,” Sorasa said, baring her forearm. The black lines on her fingers continued over her wrist, forming the lashes of an open eye halfway to her elbow. The pupil held the moon and sun, a crescent fitted around flame. “It wasn’t for sailors. Haroun’s Eye blazed night and day, guiding caravans home across the Sands.”
“I wish I could have seen it,” Corayne replied, a lament all too common in her life.
Sorasa covered up her tattoo again. Another flashed on her inner arm, some kind of bird. “Let that wish go, Corayne. It won’t do you any good.”
If only it were that easy.
“It’s past dusk,” Dom grumbled. He glared at the sky, the light waning into purple. “Your priest better get those horses. I can walk the desert to hunt Spindles, but can any of you?”
“Of course, go ahead,” Sorasa snapped, waving her hand at the dunes. “We’ll catch up.”
Again, Valtik plopped onto the ground. She traced her nails in the sand, drawing Jydi spirals and knots. “Sand and rain, salt and grain, much to lose, much to gain,” she chanted.
“Valtik, please,” Corayne sighed, her nerves fraying.
The first star gleamed directly above, straight out over the desert. Corayne tried to name it and found she could not.I don’t know the stars here. I don’t know the way forward. I don’t even know the way back.
If she squinted, the dunes could be the Long Sea, their rolling backs like waves. She tried to picture the cliffs of Siscaria, Lemarta in the distance, the cottage behind. Her mother’s ship on the horizon, returning.How fare the winds?Corayne thought, her lips moving without sound. The breeze that played in her hair was nothing like what she remembered, too hot and dry. Still, she could pretend.Fine, for they bring me home.
Andry kept his distance, pacing, wearing tracks closer and closer to the collapsed ruin of the tower. She was glad for the space, oddly comforted by the gap between them. Through long weeks on the road, Corayne had never been truly alone. She wasn’t now either, but felt better than being loomed over night and day.
Oddly, the Spindleblade seemed lighter. Or at least she took less notice of the giant sword on her back. It wasn’t any more comfortable, and she sweated where the leather pressed against her clothes. But somehow it felt less. More like a limb than a piece of metal. She reached back over her shoulder, fingers grazing the hilt. It was still worn to her father’s hand, the grooves fitted to a dead man.They will never fit me,she thought, pulling back.
The sun disappeared completely, the disc of gold slipping beneath the western horizon to leave smudges of red and purple. Though the day had been hotter than any Corayne could recall, the night was almost immediately cold, the sand quickly losing its warmth. Blue and then black came, like a blanket drawn from one end of the sky to the other, pinpricked with more stars. As they winked into existence, Corayne breathed a sigh of relief.There is the Dragon. There is the Unicorn.
The Ward was still her own. Any navigator could find the way now.And so will I.
Mirrors on the sand.
“Sorasa!” she shouted, tearing back over the sandy ground. Her companions whirled to the sound of her voice.
Dom caught her first. “What is it?” he said, eyes wide with worry.
She looked to Sorasa. “The Eye was a mirror, wasn’t it?” Corayne demanded, heaving a breath. “An enchanted mirror? Special?Spindletouched?”
“It was.” Sorasa clasped her arm through her sleeve, instinctively touching the tattoo. “Glowing without flame, bright as a second sun.”
“Where did it come from? Here?” Corayne demanded, grabbing at the assassin.
Sorasa furrowed her brow. “No, not Almasad,” she muttered, racking her memory. “Priests of Lasreen found it, in the desert. At an oasis.”
“An oasis. Does it have a name?” She felt Valtik staring, silent, her eyes blue and cold. “Where, Sorasa?”
The arrow thwipped between them before Sorasa could answer, and Corayne was thrown bodily to the ground, half buried in the sand, half crushed by Dom’s weight. He didn’t let her up, using one hand to keep her down, the other to draw his sword. Corayne glanced up through her wild hair to see his eyes trained on the city. Another arrow whizzed past his head, missing by inches, fluttering the long hair tucked behind his ear. This time it came from the tower, the opposite direction of the first.
Ice bled through Corayne’s gut.
Ambush.
She squirmed under Dom’s grasp, trying to get up, but his hand was a deadweight on her spine. Sand choked her mouth, tasting of heat. She craned her head, looking for Andry, only to spot Sigil emerging from the ruins of the tower, a contingent of soldiers with her. Corayne gnashed her teeth, so angry she couldn’t even scream.
In a second, she counted forty troops approaching from the tower. Twenty of Ibal, with their bronze swords and pale rose silk over steel. Twenty of Galland, their green cloaks unmistakable, their pale, pig-eyed, sweating faces grim beneath their helms. Sigil stood between them, her weapons abandoned on her hips. She raised two fingers to her lips and whistled, a keen, sharp sound that made Corayne’s ears hurt.
Another forty soldiers appeared from the outskirts of Almasad, all of them Ibalet, arrows nocked to every bow.
A stream of Ibalet curses spilled from Sorasa’s lips like blood from an open wound. Soldiers surrounded her, their blades drawn, as Sigil approached.
