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“Not like this,” he said.
“Okay.” I glanced past him to Hellion, but if they knew what Cian was planning, they didn’t let on.
Cian kissed me lightly on the mouth.
A small contingent of children nearby let out a teasing, “Awww!”
Odan waved a fist at them. “Back to your training, or I’ll climb in there and kick your scrawny asses myself!”
The rest of the afternoon, I could barely focus on finishing the knife. At dusk, I was supposed to meet with Harif to give him my decision, and after that… Cian had something planned. I just wished I knew what.
I tried asking Hellion when they came by the forge with some dumplings, but they shook their head and said, “It’s not for me to say.”
I had wanted to make the handle out of bone and adorn it with some moonstone, but those options weren’t available at the gargoyle forge. Once the war was over, and trade flowing again, I could always build a new handle, so I burned the tang through a simple oak handle before sanding that down and smoothing it over. When I was satisfied with it, I went to find Harif.
Our conversation was brief. I told him I would do it and he recited the rules.
“You may have water and nothing else,” he said, his hands folded. “You will not work, not at the forge or anywhere else, and you will not sleep during the purification. You will sit in the sacred lodge—alone—and reflect.”
“On what?” I asked.
Harif shrugged. “Life. Death. The future or the past. Whatever it takes to clear your mind of fear and doubt. Because when the ritual begins, you will survive it only if you have done so.” He made a vague gesture that I should follow him as he made his way over to one of the goat pens. “Your fast begins at sunrise tomorrow and lasts for two full days. At dusk on the second day, you will be dressed and prepared. Once you enter the lodge, there is no turning back. Only death or victory. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “I do.”
He turned to face me with a bow. “Then you have until dawn to get your affairs in order.”
Knowing that I’d spend the next two days sweating and starving, and that I was going to meet Cian, I went down to the bathhouse. Though I hated the idea of letting other people clean all the coal dust and soot from my body, at least they did a thorough job. When they were done, there wasn’t a speck of black anywhere on me, even on my hands.
Upon returning to the red yurt, I found Odan waiting outside. “Where’re Cian and Hellion?”
He pointed with his chin toward the grassy steppe just beyond the village. “There’s a little shelter out that way. It’ll be hard to miss.”
I went into the red yurt and found new clothes waiting for me there. Like all the gargoyle garments, it was in two layers, but these were much nicer than the layered robes I’d been wearing around. The bottom piece was white silk, and the outer robe was gold brocade on steel blue. I poked my head back out of the yurt to where Odan sat, cleaning dirt from under his claws with his dagger.
“What’s he up to?” I asked. “Another game?”
Odan shrugged one shoulder but didn’t look at me, which told me all I needed to know. He’d been sworn to secrecy.
I snorted at him and pulled down the secondary door, tying it in place. “I don’t have time for this,” I mumbled and then shouted through the wall, “Why aren’t you guarding them?”
“There are some things a gargoyle’s got to do on his own,” Odan answered.
I hesitated before sliding on the white silk. Despite being long sleeved, and made of two layers, the clothes were cooler than I expected. The lower hem reached to my ankles as if it had been made exactly to my measurements. I frowned at that, the impossibility of it, and finished wrapping the blue cloth belt around my waist. The fabric still felt cool and weightless.
I took a few minutes to make my hair and beard more presentable. If I was going to dress up for whatever this was, might as well go all the way.
Odan eyed me when I stepped out in the evening sun. He’d found himself an apple and was slowly working to remove the peel. He pointed to my shoes with his knife. “Leave those.”
I looked down. “There’s nothing but grass between here and there. I could step on anything from a snake to goat dung.”
“Trust me when I say this isn’t the sort of thing you do with shoes on.”
“Just tell me what the hell this is. Please, Odan.” I was hopping on one foot, trying to unlace my boots without falling over.
“Nope.” He drew the knife around the apple, focused wholly on that, but amusement sang in his denial.
A pair of older children stopped in the road after spotting me, turned to each other, whispering. They giggled in my direction before taking off.
