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Sorasa sucked in a frustrated breath.How can a few rumors of thievery, murder, and citywide criminal enterprise have everyone in such a twist?
“Assassins and mercenaries,” Dom pushed on. “Bound by coin, not honor or duty.”
“Am I still being paid for my services, Elder?” Sorasa snapped, turning in the saddle to face him. Dom’s infernal gaze bored into her. “No, the Amhara are not my aim,” she said, collecting herself. “One of us is enough. But I do have two others in mind.”
“Murderers and thieves, then,” she heard Dom mutter.
“Better than a queen already allied against us. Or an Elder monarch too afraid to leave her palace,” Sorasa snapped. She listened for his telltale snarl or hiss of frustration. Somehow, he rewarded her with both.
She guided her horse down a stream bank and crossed the rocky shallows. The air was cooler, the light soft. Though her homeland was dominated by the vast beauty of the Great Sands, it was also a country of water. Oasis pools, thousands of miles of bright coast, and the mighty Ziron thundering out of the mountains to dance northeast across the desert, giving life to Qaliram and Almasad before joining the Long Sea. She felt better with the water kissing her boots and the farms fading behind them.
The others followed her into the stream, silent and storm-faced. Andry, afraid of the city ahead. Corayne, afraid of the sword on her back. Dom, afraid of nearly everything.
And I am afraid too.It did no good to ignore fear or doubt.
The borderlands between Galland and Larsia were no wilderness. An hour’s ride in any direction would bring them to a farm or castle or village. But for now they threaded a needle. It was right somehow, the path unseen but still felt.
Though the horse beneath her was next to useless, Sorasa patted a hand down her neck.
“Besides,” she said, “only one of them can be considered a murderer. Best not to bring it up.”
“I can take first watch.”
Andry stared down at her. He was both taller and wider than the Amhara assassin. His stance was broad, his brown hands on his hips, his dark eyes black in the dim light of evening. Even in his battered clothing, with no beard and light bruises on his face, he looked the picture of a knight.
She heaved the saddlebags from her horse’s back, tucking them over her arms. “Noble of you, Squire,” she said, dropping them in a heap. The clearing was good ground to make camp, halfway up a rocky crag, their backs defended by sheer rock, their front obscured by trees. “But I think the Elder can manage.”
Corayne stood at the edge of the campsite, looking down into the valley of the Green Lion. Under a black moon and clouded stars, there was only darkness. Her sword laid flat next to her. She rolled her shoulders, working away the ache of carrying it.
“Dom should sleep,” Corayne said, glancing at the immortal. He tightened under her suggestion. “Heal up. It isn’t every day you lose half the blood in your body.”
He scowled, working on a small fire. The kindling glowed. “I doubt it was half.”
Sorasa and Corayne rolled their eyes at precisely the same time.
“We’ll double,” the assassin said, patting the squire on the shoulder. He pursed his lips but didn’t argue. “I don’t intend to sleep through another corpse vision. Or worse.”
The witch returned abruptly, her hair braided with ivy. She grinned toothily at them all as her mount nudged its way in among their tied horses.
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about another sending,” Valtik said airily, sitting down in the dirt. Her bare feet splayed out before her, soles black as the sky. “The threads have drawn together, all that is ending.”
Dom stood and frowned at her. “A sending?” he breathed, incredulous.
“Care to explain?” Corayne said, looking between them.
“It’s Vederan magic, rare even among my kind.” Dom paced around the witch so he could face her. She didn’t look up from her hands, busy weaving something Sorasa couldn’t see. “Vedera of great power can send images, visions, figures. To carry messages, mostly.”
Valtik tutted low in her throat and stuffed her weaving up her sleeve. She kept her back to the growing flames. “It isn’t just your magic.” Then she checked the pouch at her waist, rattling the bones inside. “Keep an eye out for rabbits, boy. I’m low on knucklebones. Tragic.”
Sorasa wanted to point out the absurdity of calling a five- hundred-year-old immortal being such a thing.Unless it isn’t. Unless he is a boy, to someone like her. A Spindlerotten witch.She eyed Valtik again, glaring through the shadows. The old woman was as gnarled like a tree root, her eyes unnatural, blue as the heart of a lightning bolt.
“You sent them.” Corayne’s voice was flat and hard, steely as her face. Her grip on the sword tightened, fingers locking over the leather of the sheath. “The corpses, the ghosts.”
I could smell them: they were burned and broken. I could hear the air gasping in their ruined chests. I could feel them, the heat of unending flame. They were as smoke, real and unreal, before my very eyes.Sorasa clenched her jaw, searching Valtik’s face for some answer. The old woman did not move.
“Yousent them,” Corayne said again, her teeth gritted. Cold air rippled over them, a brush of winter. “Did you send my dreams too? The nightmares I’ve had all summer long?”
“Was not I who touched your sleep,” the Jydi crowed. “But something red and dark and buried deep.”
