Chapter 27

A s I hurtle toward the open plain, I sense the air around me snap in the dark, the impact lifting me on an invisible current that has me soaring up , not down, up for a precious moment more. Then an enormous hand snatches me out of the sky and Gent’s body curls around me, the two of us now a heavy stone tossed off a cliff.

Instantly, I realize my mistake. Gent is no longer the giant he was with Merritt—he’s three times larger now. The moment he lands, the entire valley will quake with a crash loud enough to stretch to the Sounding Sea.

But Gent continues to soar up, not down, somehow gaining speed instead of losing it, and when he does finally hit the ground running, there is no rumble and roar but merely the sound of his full-throated laughter. I peel my eyes open and realize we’re no longer in the darkness of the mountain and marsh, but on the side of a rolling hill, racing through a midnight-and-white patch of flowers.

Run! Gent cries in my mind. He’s racing and I’m racing with him, his hand cradled around me. I feel twin flames of sorrow and joy coursing through him. He caught me, I think his thoughts, bracing myself in his grip. He did—he finally did.

He couldn’t catch Merritt, but he caught me .

He saved me.

Gent races into the night until even he tires, wide looping turns over endless hills bathed in summer sunlight. I don’t want to leave, but know I have to get back to the First House, to tell Nazar what I’ve learned, to warn…

My mind is a jumble, all the events of the day crashing together, especially my encounter with the female marauders on the outskirts of Trilion. Who were they? Was it truly only gold they’d stolen from the encampment? Could they be attached to that…that thing that Rihad was talking to, in the center of the fire? Were there more of them, fighting in the shadows, all of them women?

Before I can form the words to ask Gent to return me to the First House, my glorious Divh is swooping his arm down, down, dropping me once more to the cool meadow grass. I stand, so dizzy I can barely breathe, and his finger nudges me with what I suspect he believes is a gentle push?—

I sprawl face-first into the mist-dampened dirt.

Dirt. Not grass. Not flowers. Dirt.

The world around me suddenly prickles with humidity, warmer and so much louder than Gent’s meadow with the sounds of insects and chirping birds.

I’m not in the First House courtyard, I know immediately. I’m not anywhere near the First House. I struggle against the urge to rise quickly to my knees and instead lie still, breathing shallowly, smelling the mist in the air, feeling the cool, broken earth beneath my fingers.

As my senses gradually acknowledge the world around me, I hear the crash and rumble of falling water, and experience a wave of sick certainty about where I am: the falls that Caleb had pointed out to me, when we’d approached the First House gates. I’m nearly two miles from those gates, I think in sudden horror. Gent has dropped me in the middle of nowhere . How am I going to get back to the castle before dawn, before the next fight, before…

Then, over the mutter of insects and the crash of water and the pounding of my own pulse in my ears, I hear something else. Laughter. Voices.

Women’s voices.

Slowly now, with infinite care, I lift my body from the damp earth. I stand, getting my bearings. The voices are coming from a thick knot of trees ahead of me, but there’s no flickering fire to light my way. Instead they float, disembodied on the lifting mist, at times so quietly I think I must have imagined them. But no—no. There they are again. I take a slow step forward then another.

Cautiously, painstakingly, I inch forward, pausing every time the voices fall away. I can’t see much of anything, and my clothes are already sodden from the mist in the air, but I decide not to shuck the heavy servant’s robe, contenting myself only with pushing my hood back to clear the infernal chains from my eyes. If these are the women from the marauders’ camp, and they almost certainly are, then being dressed as a woman will serve me far better than?—

The sharp chill of a blade presses against my temple, and I stop short as a voice hisses in my ear. A female voice. “Not a word, girl, you understand?”

I nod quickly, remaining entirely still as I’m searched with quick, efficient hands. I have no weapons on me, for which I give silent thanks, but then the dissatisfied grunt of my captor chases even that small relief away. Did women typically approach this campsite armed? And why would they approach it at all?

With a second grunt, the woman reaches for my arm and tugs me forward. She appears to have no need for light and walks quickly and confidently through the thick trees. The sound of crashing water grows stronger at first, then dies away, and I realize it was only by chance that I landed in the place where I could hear anyone talking. Chance, or more likely, Gent—who read the uppermost questions in my mind and put me in the exact place I could resolve those questions, instead of the safety of the First House courtyard.

Clearly, I need to think more careful thoughts with my Divh going forward. Assuming I get the opportunity.

We step into a clearing, but by the time we do, all is silent. I squint, trying to see in the gloom, but there is no campfire, no shadows of women huddled together. My captor also stands quietly beside me, so still that if my arm wasn’t being held by her, I’d doubt she was there at all.

Then something shifts in the darkness behind us, and a soft whistle breaks the stillness. An eerie voice floats out of the gloom, thick with an accent I can’t place, but an accent I’m certain I’ve heard in recent days. “She wasn’t followed?”

“She was not,” confirms the woman beside me. Her voice is flat, with notes of Trilion’s broad accent, very different from the other’s.

“You’re dressed as a servant of the First House. Why are you here?”

The question is bold, abrupt, and I scramble for a moment, thinking how best to answer. But I am too disoriented, too exhausted, really, to do anything other than speak my truth. It’s been so long since I was able to do it. And here in this disembodied forest, with darkness all around, I find the words come more easily.

“I am Talia of the Tenth House,” I say simply.

The next command is spoken in a language I don’t know, but what’s left of my hair is pulled back, a hand clapped over my mouth. “Careful now,” the woman beside me hisses in my ear, her anger as cold as the blade of her knife. “You’ll march, you’ll not say a word, and maybe you’ll live.”

I don’t give the woman the benefit of another nod, but she pulls her hand away from my mouth and our trek begins anew, this time toward the falls. We make it there in a matter of minutes, and as we step into the clearing near the rocks, I finally can see. The line of women is still almost invisible, wraiths disappearing behind the falling water to what I now realize is a cavern of some sort. We don’t walk for long, though, once under the cover of stone. After a few turns deeper into the cave, a flame is struck.

That sudden light blinds me after so many minutes in the dark. I flinch away briefly before my captor pushes me forward.

The flame lights a small fire in the center of the cavern, and there rests a familiar figure, the injured marauder from the attack in Trilion. Her leg is no longer bandaged by my green sash, though I notice that sash is now wrapped around her wrist. She’s wearing a fresh robe, cut down the middle, and I can see the bandages at her shoulder as well.

She’s not the only woman at the fire, though. Another one reclines an arm’s length away, beside a large earthenware bowl that steams with a smell I don’t recognize. Soup? Medicine? Either way, it’s not the bowl that captures my attention most fully about this woman—but three entirely different details.

First, she’s wearing a large scabbard strapped to her back, the hilt of a longsword protruding up from it, even in the relative safety of the cavern. Second, her face is marked with lines of war paint, the likes of which I have only seen on male warriors—warriors represented in paintings of the far distant past, celebrating the battles of the Western Realms.

And third, the woman’s belly is swollen heavy with child.

I know what it is to be gaped at, and I don’t wish to do the marauder any dishonor. Instead, I take all these truths into account at a glance then return my gaze to the woman I’d helped by the well. She stares steadily back at me. Unlike the pregnant woman, she’s not merely a warrior of these people, I decide. She’s their leader.

“You’ll heal,” I say simply, my words so calm and assured they bring a smile to her face.

“I’ll heal,” she agrees. “Thanks in no small part to you. You could have brought the others back to that well, easily and quickly enough. It was built at a time when far more water rushed over these lands. The chute that leads away from it is straight and offers no place to make a stand until it empties out into a far ravine. We would have been killed well before we ever reached the surface.”

I don’t move, don’t nod, as if of course I wouldn’t have betrayed her and her people in such a way. In truth, it never occurred to me to bring the force of the guards and warriors back to that well. Were this woman my true enemy, I would have failed my house beyond redemption.

But this woman, I sense, is anything but my enemy.

She continues, “Instead, we ran free, and you returned to your exalted procession, riding all the way to the First House. Not as Talia of the Tenth House, we’ve learned, but as the warrior son Merritt. A warrior son bonded to a Divh, by all accounts.”

The woman beside me hisses in derision. “Gods in service to fools.”

“Yet here is a woman claiming her place among them.” The leader gestures, and the woman beside me claps her hand to my left arm, below my shoulder, searching but not squeezing tight. For once, there’s no pain, no bolt of agony at the sentient band being touched. Still, even through the heavy servant’s robe, there’s also no mistaking that I do, in fact, wear the band. The marauder gives a tight nod to her leader, who smiles with satisfaction. “And not an idle claim, it would seem. Stranger still.”

I keep my voice even. “No stranger than a group of women without a single man to protect them, harrying the edges of the greatest tournament in Protectorate. No stranger than a band of marauders who, if the stories are true, are possessed of demons from the Western Realms, a harbinger of even greater evil that’s to come.”

That revelation sparks grim laughter in group. I glance around, my vision sharper now that my eyes have adjusted to the gloom. There are maybe twenty women in this cavern…and not only women. I see girls, too, some not even as old as I am. Their eyes are wide and searching as they stare at me, as if they can’t believe what they’re seeing, can’t believe that someone like me exists.

I know the feeling.

Before me, the leader of these women and girls tilts her head, eyeing me shrewdly.

“It seems we are at an impasse then, Talia of the Tenth. But we hold the strength here. We could kill you and drop your body at the gates of the First House, a testament to our demons’ strength, and none would be the wiser. Why shouldn’t we?”

I take in these words, but without the fear that should attend them. Because these women are hiding out in secret, brandishing long swords, their faces streaked with war paint. They’re terrorizing the encampments at the edges of the grandest tournament in the Protectorate, hiding beneath a roaring waterfall, and living free without the protection or aid of men. This isn’t merely unheard of in the Protectorate, it’s heresy. Blasphemy. Sacrilege.

And it’s not all that different from what I am doing.

“You could kill me,” I agree. “And dump my body to cause panic and unrest. But there wouldn’t be so much unrest as you maybe expect. Warriors are dying on the road to the Tournament of Gold, more every day. Darkness flows from the west on the whispers of bards and the slithering tongues of creatures in the fire.”

Someone shifts in the back of the room. “What’s this you’ve heard?” comes the sharp demand, but I ignore it, my eyes only for the leader.

“And so, instead of killing me, you can tell me why you’ve come to Trilion, where all the eyes of the Protectorate are focused. You’re healthy, strong. Well fed.” Once again, I cast my gaze around the stone chamber, taking in each of them, their fierce expressions and set jaws. Then I nod to the pregnant warrior. “Safe enough in your center that you choose to bring life into this world. There’s no need for you to cause disruption at the Tournament of Gold, merely for the sport of looting. I don’t care if it was gold in that packet you smuggled out or something far more valuable. You don’t need it. Why are you here?”

The woman besides me grunts with appreciation. “Not completely an idiot, then,” she observes drily.

“My name is Syril,” the leader says, and I can finally place her unique accent. It’s the same resonant inflection that the tall warriors of the Eighth house used. This woman is from the western borders of the Protectorate. “Marta, beside you, is my second.”

She gestures around the cavern. “These women who live and hunt with me, we are the Savasci. Some of us came to this life by choice, eager to hunt and fight and stand beneath a sun that doesn’t seek to keep us in shadow. Some were pushed into the fold by the blows of our supposed betters and the damning silence of our own kind. But all of us value our lives, and we value the soul of this land. There are battles and then there are wars. We choose both carefully and with purpose.”

She leans forward, staring intently “How did you come to choose yours, Talia of the Tenth?”

Clearly, I wasn’t going to get any answers until I gave a few of my own.

For the second time since coming to Trilion, I tell the tale of my journey to the Tournament of Gold—or most of it. I speak of Gent, and Merritt, and the push for soldiers, honor, and even vengeance. But I don’t share the shame of being firstborn and female, not even to these women. They might guess my shame—might even understand it, living as they do. But that disgrace is still a guttering heap within me, and it will do me no good to stir those ashes here.

When I finish, the marauder at my side, Marta, murmurs something in a language I don’t know. The word is harsh and guttural, a curse.

By the fire, Syril nods. “You’ll be killed if they discover you,” she says, her tone contemplative. “Or if they discover that you’re female, anyway.”

A now familiar fear worms through me, the same sour apprehension I still feel every time I think of Caleb knowing the truth about me. Because the squire had the right of it. Treason of the level I’m committing would be worth a lot of money, to the right person.

And now a friend—an enemy—and more than a score of outcast marauders know my secret.

“I’ll be killed immediately,” I agree. “But my brother’s already dead. My house is broken, though no one knows it yet. If I don’t stand and fight for what is left of my family, my home—who will?”

Something in the woman’s eyes flashes, and she shifts forward, making to stand despite her injury. Another woman steps forward quickly to help her then remains with an arm at her leader’s back, holding her steady.

“Who will indeed,” Syril says quietly, and in that moment, I begin to see why these women follow her. It’s more than simple strength, it’s conviction…conviction that what she’s doing matters more than anything in the world.

In her, I see what I could become, if I survive this night, this tournament.

What I must become, if I truly want to make my house strong.

“Our territory is along the western border of the Protectorate, and we thrive there most of all. We’re still within reach of the Third House, though not clutched within its tight grasp. Truth to tell, we thrive anywhere money and goods are needed, and where those who need them aren’t picky about who brings such items to their door. We’ve lived our lives in the shadows, many of us for years, doing what we must. As I said, some of our number wished to run from this world the Lord Protector has created, some simply longed for a life they could claim as their own. But all of us are willing to fight for what we love.”

I nod, but she isn’t finished. “Still, it’s not enough. You talk of the whispers of demon possession, stories of creatures in the night. But those tales aren’t solely limited to our small tribe. They bubble up all along the western border. There are…things across those borders that not even the bards dare to speak of. Close enough to howl in the night, chittering with excitement, filling all who hear them with despair. Because there are more of them with each passing season…and more in the past few months than twenty seasons before combined.”

I stare at her. “What are they?”

“No one knows, and the history books have all been wiped of any trace.” She curls her lip. “Or, more likely, rewritten to fit the boundless vanity of people like Lord Rihad and Lord Gamon of the Third. They want to remember nothing but the victory, not the threat that still twists and writhes at our very doorstep. That, no one seems to want to talk about.”

Twists and writhes. I can’t help but think of the creature in Lord Rihad’s fire, the snakes coiling at its feet. What unholy alliances is the Lord Protector forging, even now? And what would happen to the Protectorate because of it?

Syril’s soft words bring me back to the moment.

“You ask why we came from all the way from the western border to Trilion—we came for information. For supplies. Even, of course, for gold. All those things, we’ve found here.” She leans forward, her face harsh and intent in the flickering firelight. “But one thing we didn’t come for, was hope. We’d long since given up on that. Yet here you are. A woman who stands and fights in the sunlight, not the shadows. A woman warrior to champion the soul of the land.”

I grimace, lifting my hands. “I’m no champion,” I say quickly. “The Divhs fight. Warriors guide the Divhs. I’m a warrior—but by chance, as much as anything else. By mistake.”

At my side, Marta moves so quickly, I don’t have time to defend myself. She once more grabs hold of my band and squeezes—hard. This time, fire does erupt along my arm, but I don’t flinch away from the heat…she does.

“You’re a banded warrior,” she says, her words absolute. “Call it what you want, but that is no mistake.”

Then Syril lifts her hand to me, and I see my green sash wrapped around her wrist. “Neither is this. You helped us live another day, Talia of the Tenth. For that, we owe you a debt of honor. And the Savasci always repays its debts.”

I swallow, sensing the importance of this moment and wanting to honor it, even as I feel the peril of my immediate predicament clawing at me once again. There’s so much I need to understand about these women, about their challenges and hopes, about what really drew them to Trilion. But I know instinctively that that information won’t be shared on the basis of one meeting. And there’s no time for anything more than this meeting. Not now. Not when the night is rushing so quickly toward dawn, and I’m still miles from where I should be.

“Right now I need to get back to the castle,” I finally say. “I’ll be missed. I want to speak with you, all of you, and learn your story and your truths. But if I’m missed and caught outside the gates…none of this will matter.”

“Then you must not be missed,” Syril says, resolutely, but a smile flickers at the corner of her mouth at my obvious worry, the smile of a woman who no longer lives by anyone’s rules but her own. “We’ll get you back.”