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“Glad to be of service, my lord.”
Andry’s muscles remembered how to bow. The skill had been drilled into him at a young age. When he bent at the waist, sweeping back his arms, time seemed to shift. Dom could be Sir Grandel, the grassy plain beneath them the marble of a palace.
But all those things were gone, eaten up by time and the turning of the realm. Even so, Andry closed his eyes, holding on tothe sensation for just a little longer. It would have to be enough to carry him through.
When he returned to their smoldering fire, Corayne was awake, bundled up against the cold. Charlie snored heavily at her side, curled up beneath his cloak.
“The Burning Realm,” Corayne muttered, staring at Andry from across the embers. Her black eyes danced with the firelight.
Andry eased himself to the ground beside her, stretching out his wounded leg with a low grunt. Again he looked into the flames. They sparked and spit, eating at the last of the firewood, turning all to ash.The Burning Realm, he thought.Infyrna.
“Gambe-sem-sarama.Beren-baso,” he muttered, speaking in Kasan, the language of his mother. It was an old prayer, with an easy translation. “Let the fires wash us clean. Blessed are the burned.”
Corayne’s dark brows drew together. “Where did you learn that?”
“My mother.” Again, the memory of her rose up in his mind. This time, Andry saw Valeri as she was in his childhood. Vibrant, full of life, praying before the hearth fire in their apartments. “She holds the faith of Fyriad the Redeemer. In Kasa, they pray to him before all others in the pantheon.”
“I’ve heard his temple is magnificent,” Corayne said. “The fires burn night and day.”
Andry nodded. “For the faithful. They whisper their sins into the flames and are forgiven.” He squinted into the embers, trying to remember the god his mother loved. “Blessed are the burned.”
“I suppose we’re about to be very blessed,” Corayne mumbled, picking at her gloves. She didn’t bother trying to hide her apprehension, or her fear. “Do you have any idea what Infyrna might hold?”
Andry shrugged. “I know what the tales say, what my mother’s scriptures whisper. There are stories about burning birds, fiery hounds, flowers that bloom in embers. A river of flame.”
He thought of Meer, the realm of the water goddess, its Spindle torn in the middle of the desert. Sea serpents, krakens, an ocean spewing forth over the sand dunes. Andry had seen Nezri with his own eyes and yet he still couldn’t believe the sight.Will Infyrna be even worse?
“I can barely tell what’s real anymore,” he murmured, lowering his head. The motion created a gap at his collar, and the cold wormed in, drawing an icy finger down his spine.
Warmth at his wrist made him jump, his head snapping up.
But there was only Corayne, her fingers circling his arm as best they could.
“I’m real, Andry,” she said, staring back at him. “You’re real.”
Then she leaned across him and Andry went numb, his breath caught in his throat. Only for Corayne to press down on his injured thigh, testing the stitched wound beneath his breeches. He gritted his teeth, hissing in pain.
“That’s real,” she said with a sly grin, pulling away.
“Yes,” he bit out. “I see your point.”
“At least you can ride again,” she offered, looking over the camp to the horizon.
While the sky above them was clear, turning a steady, brightwinter blue, clouds hung low in the east. Andry knew they were not clouds at all, but drifting columns of heavy smoke. The sun filtered through them strangely, throwing a red-and-orange light, streaking the sky with clawed fingers. The wind blew again, cold and smoky.
Corayne shivered against it, her jaw tight.
“Those poor girls,” she said, her gaze wavering. “It was good of Oscovko to give them an escort. They’ll be in Vodin by now. Part of me wishes we were too.”
“Well, one can hardly expect to close a Spindle every single day,” Andry said, a poor attempt at a joke. “It’s exhausting work.”
She didn’t answer and picked at her gloves again, then at the vambraces on her arms. She’d worn them ever since the temple. Together with the Spindleblade, they made her look more like a soldier.
“You’re sleeping better,” Andry said.
Corayne blanched. “You noticed?”
“I mean you don’t wake me up quite so much as you used to.” He leaned back on his hands, tipping his head to the sky above. From his new vantage point, there was only the empty blue. “No more nightmares?”
