Then her mind locked on another equally fateful night three years ago, when she’d crept down to the stables in secret and flown her triffon back to the spot where they’d left Trey to die. Even numbed with grief and guilt, she’d known she would never believe in his death unless she had viewed his corpse for herself—even if it meant seeing him after the wolves and ursas had been at the body first. But by the time she reached the place, she couldn’t find him …
* * *
She flew through the dark sky until she found Onfar’s Circle, the standing stones encircling the sacred place where Ravindal’s cursed—the maimed, scarred and deformed—were left to perish. But not Trey. Even that bit of ceremony had been denied him. They’d left him to die in the woods to the west, discarded like an old bait-sack.
She landed near the patch of bloody snow where he had fallen, but there was no drag-trail leading away. A wolf pack would have torn the body to bits, but there were no tracks, no bones or shredded skin or clothes—there was no evidence of him at all. She paced in frantic circles until she finally worked out that all those footprints leading to the plain had not been left by their hunting party. Then she realized that she knew the area of forest beyond the plain by reputation, if not by name. There was no game worth hunting, not with packs of lagramor that could strip a triffon down to the bone in no time at all.
She got back in the saddle and flew in that direction, keeping low so she didn’t lose the trail. She landed when it led into the trees. She knew better than to enter the forest alone, but she went anyway, following the trampled undergrowth until she came to a clearing. In the center stood an ancient ice statue, scrubbed of its identity by weather and time, but something about its facelessness gave it a terrible power, very different from the comforting familiarity of Ravindal’s green-glass gods. A sacrificial basin at its feet held a rounded mound of snow.
A man darted out into the clearing so suddenly that Kira leaped back, fumbling for her sword, but before she could draw, she saw that the right sleeve of his bedraggled coat had been sewn together at the wrist. She froze. He had no right hand.
<What are you doing here?> he demanded. She stared at the closed sleeve, afraid that if she moved her eyes at all she would faint.
<She’s alone, at any rate,> announced a woman who appeared from the shadowy forest. The woman, who wore no hood, had scaly purple blotches covering her face. Kira could almost see the cursed rising out of Valrigdal behind them, just like the picture in her mother’s copy of The Book of the Hall. They both had steel swords; she might have been able to take them with Virtue’s Grace, but she still didn’t draw. She had the worrying feeling her blade would pass right through them.
<Trey. My husband,> she said finally, startled to find she still had the power of speech. <He’s here, isn’t he? Someone must have brought him here. Where is he?>
Their reaction left her no doubt. She spotted the gap in the briars and ran for it as the one-handed man reached out, too late to stop her. She followed a tunnel of sorts through the hedge, tearing her coat and her skin in the process, until it led her into the remains of a courtyard in front of a vine-covered ruin. Trey sat on the ground with his back up against a pile of stones, next to a lamp shining in a circle of melted snow. A woman stood by his side holding a cloth soaked in something so pungent it made Kira’s head spin, pressing it against the fist-sized wound in Trey’s shoulder. A young girl clung to her side as if their ragged cloaks had been sewn together.
Enough blood had been cleared from Trey’s face to show his mangled ear and the deep cut on his head. Kira waited for the shock and revulsion she knew she was supposed to feel, but it didn’t come. He was still Trey, and she didn’t know what to do about it. She wanted to take him in her arms and cradle him like a broken doll, but the moment he noticed her there, his rejection pushed her back like a bitter wind.
<What are you doing to him?> Kira demanded of them.
<Cleaning this wound so it doesn’t sour,> said the woman. Her words were precisely clipped, as if she had few to spare, and even less time.
<But,> Kira stammered, <he wanted to die.>
<We don’t always get what we want. Anyway, it’s too late now. He’s out of danger.> The physic pulled up one shoulder and twisted her neck, and only then did Kira notice the bones of some kind of cage or case bulging under her wool cloak, holding her upright. The little girl wasn’t just standing next to her but providing support. With a twist of mockery, the physic added, <He’d have to do something on purpose to die now, and you know what happens to suicides in the After-realm.>
The man and woman from the clearing came pounding into the yard. <Sorry, Cyrrin,> said the woman with the burned face. <We didn’t expect her to run past us.>
Trey turned away as Kira pulled off her hood and walked over to stand beside him. Blood still leaked out from his shoulder, and those swollen cuts on his face and neck not already scabbed over were weeping a yellowish fluid.
<The gods—Onfar and Onraka—they’ve abandoned me.> Trey’s words were feverish and too quick, like the pulse throbbing in his neck. <They were going to let me die like that, in an accident, right in front of Gannon. Leaving me to scrub floors in the After-realm. How could they do that? After everything I did for the glory of Norland?>
<It was just an accident, Trey,> said Kira, grasping for some way to comfort him. <It’s all right now. These people saved you.>
<Lord Valrig didn’t want me to die,> said Trey. <He’s the one who saved me, so I can help him in return. Lord Valrig wants to raise his armies and he needs my help. That must be the reason. It has to be.>
Kira knelt down on the frozen ground and brought up her gloved hand to touch his face, but he flinched, then shut his eyes and drew away from her.
<I don’t believe any of that. You’re a hero.> She tried to take his hand, but he jerked it away. <You’re not cursed. I don’t care what the Book says. You’re Trey Arregador, the hero of Redland. You’re my husband.>
<You don’t have a husband any longer,> said Trey. <Your husband is dead. Go, Kira. You need to go.>
His arm came around her—she’d been afraid to hurt him, but he held her fiercely—and she felt the coolness of his cheek against her forehead and the flutter of his eyelashes. Then he drew his arm back and pushed her away, and whatever chink had remained open in the wall he had put up against her sealed over, shutting her out completely.
<Trey.>
<Tell my brother I’m dead.>
<Please don’t ask me to lie to Rho,> Kira begged him.
<I think you owe me that much, don’t you? Or did you think I didn’t know?> He turned away again, even before the flush of shame had finished sweeping over her. <Go. Go away.>
Kira stood up as more broken people melted out of the darkness: three at first, then six, then a dozen, wearing patched furs and old woolen cloaks. She saw missing limbs, twisted torsos, scarred faces, bodies damaged in every possible way. They lifted Trey up and helped him toward the ruin and were gone before Kira had even thought to say goodbye to him.
Cyrrin turned to the small child at her side. <It’s all right, Berril.>
The girl—she might have been about seven or eight, but she was small and malnourished—took a crude wooden medallion from around her neck and placed it in Kira’s gloved hand.
<Berril was four years old when they set her out. She crushed her fingers in a doorjamb,> Cyrrin explained. Kira looked at the girl’s hands, but the child’s over-sized mittens made it impossible for her to tell which hand had been maimed. <Her sister Aline hid her for days before they were found out. Find Aline and give her that and tell her Berril is all right.>
<You’d let me go back?> Kira asked, astonished. <Just like that?>
<Why not?>
Kira stared at her. <I could tell th
em about you. They’d hunt you down.>
<But you won’t,> said the physic, <because now you don’t believe anything the Book says about the cursed. And once that nonsense is gone from your mind, it’s gone.>
Kira looked down at Berril’s medallion again before tucking it into a pocket in her glove.
<You can never come back here,> Cyrrin warned her. <Never. It’s too dangerous for us.>
<I understand.>
<You’ll have to pretend he’s really dead,> said Cyrrin. <Say it now. Make me believe it.>
The trees crowded in around her. Kira drew in a deep breath and threw back her shoulders.
<Trey Arregador is dead.>
* * *
Kira opened her eyes on the throne room, and for a moment could not remember in which direction she had been heading.
For three years after she’d lost Trey she had spun like a hollow top through a pointless round of feasts and hunts and tournaments. When she was not having to be present at some function or other, she shut herself up in her rooms with Aline. Then six months ago Gannon had come back from Thrakya and sought her out. Perhaps if she had put him off more firmly at the beginning; perhaps if he had been less attractive, less virile; perhaps if the attentions of the Scion of Norland had been less flattering to her vanity and less provoking to her self-appointed rivals, then perhaps Gannon would never have boasted of the witch’s predictions and she would never have stuck her foot in the trap.
She could never go back to the life she’d led as Trey’s wife. She couldn’t leave Ravindal, not knowing he was still out there and needing to be warned if the witch turned her elixir-sharpened eyes his way. But keeping up the vapid courtier act was wearing her down. In the old days, when Trey had been out on one of his long campaigns with Gannon, she had turned to his brother Rho for company, frequently racing him to the bottom of a wine jug. Now Rho was gone too, and neither one of them was coming back.
She suddenly realized Aline had been anxiously watching her all this time.
<You can’t keep on like this, my Lady,> Aline said. <It’s making you ill.>
<Oh, I’m all right,> said Kira, shaking her head and shoulders to wake herself up properly. <I just need a little sleep.>
<They’re going to find out, aren’t they?> asked Aline. <About my sister, and Lord Trey?>
<If they do, we’ll warn them,> Kira reassured her, heading for the throne room doors. <That’s what all this has been about, remember? In any case, the witch hasn’t said anything about them being alive, or in hiding. Maybe she can’t see that. Maybe she means someone else entirely when she talks about the “cursed.” What would she know about them anyway? I know she’s been here a long time, but she’s still a foreigner.>
Aline trailed behind her, still fretting. <But she did say the cursed would rise, just like it says in the Book.>
<The Book!> Kira said derisively, stopping where she was and spinning around. <Aline, you and I both know that everything The Book of the Hall says about the cursed—and probably everything else, for that matter—is nothing but a pack of fear-mongering, self-serving lies. I’m sorry that you have to be burdened with the truth at your age, but there it is.>
<But the witch’s visions have to mean something, don’t they?> Aline persisted, staring uncomfortably down at the clasps of her wool cloak. <You said she’s never been wrong—not ever. Can’t you think what she might mean, my Lady?>
Kira closed her mind against the memory of the wretched yearning in Trey’s words when he’d told her, Lord Valrig wants to raise his armies and he needs my help. He couldn’t have known what he was saying; not after what he’d just been through. He wasn’t cursed. There was no such thing. She clamped down on the panic swelling up in her chest until her breath came out in a thin, painful wheeze.
Then she reached out and gently took Aline’s arm. <We’ll just have to wait and find out, all right? Until then, we’ll just have to go on as we are. Understand? Exactly as we are.>
Chapter 7
“You said you couldn’t go without your medicine,” said Mairi, glaring from the threshold of Lahlil’s tent as she handed over the basic medicine kit she had just put together. “Give me a few more days.”
“You wanted me to go.”
Mairi shrugged, that Nomas gesture that meant whatever they wanted it to mean. This time it meant the healer was tired of explaining the obvious. “Not behind Jachi’s back, and not when you’re being such a stupid ass about it.”
“I can’t wait any longer. The trading here should have been done days ago. He’s dragging it out on purpose.” The dawn and twilight seizures were getting worse, outstripping anything she had endured before, but she had to get away, medicine or not. She could feel disaster gathering just out of sight, like a gang of bandits waiting around a bend in the road.
“You can’t take Oshi,” said Mairi. “How are you going to feed him?”
“I’ll find a way.” She was about to say more when she heard Jachad’s jovial voice coming toward the tent. He had spent the afternoon in Wastewater, ostensibly finishing up the trading. From the sound of his hollering, his business had apparently been conducted in Wastewater’s one and only tavern.
“Mairi!” he called out. “Lahlil! Where are you? Stop talking about me and come out here!”
A smile tugged at the corner of Mairi’s mouth. “Jachi,” she said, shaking her head. “He’ll never grow up.”
They came out of the tent to find him with his arm around Callia’s shoulders, grinning broadly in a patch of moonlight, with his red hair mussed and his robe askew. “You were talking about me. Look, Mairi’s blushing.”
“That’s right,” the healer shot back. “I was telling her how you used to run across the decks of the Argent, naked as a fish, flapping your little—”
“Silence!” Jachad roared, drawing himself up and frowning, but his eyes still shone. “I am your king. You will afford me the proper respect.” He grinned again. “I’m afraid I have terrible news.”
“What news?” asked Lahlil.
“No, no,” he said. “Such terrible news calls for a drink. A shock like this must be cushioned. You must all come to my tent.”
He strode off without waiting for a response, leaving them to follow as they would. Lahlil checked on Oshi: he was sound asleep in his cradle and safe enough for a little while. She followed the others to Jachad’s tent.
“What do you want to tell us?” Mairi asked, coming no further than the threshold. “I have things to do.”
“First we need a drink.” Jachad lifted the wine jug on the table, shook it and frowned. “Wait, I have more. Courtesy of the Shadari.” He dived into the corner for his pack and lifted out a small wineskin marked with yellowish smudges on one side. The chalky residue rubbed off on his hand and he wiped it on his robe before pouring the contents into four cups and handing them around. Then he stood in the center of the tent and raised his arm. “To the Mongrel! Drink—come on, drink!”
He tossed back the wine. Mairi kept her cup lowered, scowling. Callia took a small sip, made a face, and set the cup aside on Jachad’s desk. Lahlil drank steadily, readying herself for the battle she sensed was about to begin.
“Well? What about her?” asked Mairi.
“She’s dead.”
Callia turned around. “No, she’s not. She’s right there,” she said, pointing at her.
Jachad gleefully recounted what he had learned while in town: a well-known mercenary named Josten Drey had claimed to have found her sick and hiding out in a hut in some tiny hamlet. He and his crew had cornered her, set fire to the building, then killed her when she tried to escape the flames. Drey had been traveling around with her body in a block of ice, collecting on the various bounties. People who had seen the corpse up close had sworn it to be hers.
“What does that have to do with us?” asked Callia. “It’s not true, obviously. He faked it somehow.”
“No, he wouldn’t be showing off in that case,” put in Mairi. “What
would he do if she suddenly showed up somewhere? My guess is he bought or stole the body from someone else and really thinks it’s her.”
Jachad waved his hand, splashing a little shower of celebratory sparks into the air. “Who cares? It only matters what people believe—and now they believe the Mongrel is dead.”
Lahlil stood her ground as he came to her. The scent of the wine on his breath overlaid the flowery musk of Callia’s perfume.
“They’re not wrong, either,” said Jachad. “She is dead. Now no one will come looking for her, and now there’s no reason for you to run off to the edge of the world, is there?”
Mairi drained her cup in one swallow and set it down on the desk with a decisive rap. “Well, I’ve heard enough,” she said, and left the tent without another word.
“Me, too. I’m going to sit with Oshi,” said Callia. “And that wine is terrible, by the way.” She helped herself to a cake from Jachad’s desk and moved toward the tent flap, but she paused on her way out to whisper something in his ear that even Lahlil couldn’t make out. “Promise me,” she said, as she swept toward the exit.
“I will not. Be gone, you little chit.”
Lahlil suppressed a cough. Her throat was dry, but she set the half-full cup of wine down on the desk next to Mairi’s. She needed to be sober for this.
“Let me guess,” Jachad said, walking to the desk and sliding the fruit plate to the exact center. “You’re going to tell me how this changes nothing.”
Promises, assurances, vows … Those were things people said when they were too cowardly to face the truth. “I’ll come back, if I can.”