21 EYES OPENED

21

EYES OPENED

Sorasa

Fleeing on horseback was not the means of escape Sorasa would have chosen. The farmlands of the Great Lion’s fertile valley rolled with gentle hills and patchwork fields, offering poor cover in daylight. Their mounts were little more than pack horses, even the strange gray mare the Jydi witch had somehow summoned. There would be no mad gallop for the border. Not on these stumbling nags, Sorasa thought, despairing of the stolen horse beneath her. It was no sand mare, a shadow of the horses of her homeland, who moved like wind made flesh.

She led the way again, with Andry on her left. The squire was sharp-eyed, at least, always watching the horizon behind them. He named castles as they loomed, silhouetted on the hills, pointing out the feudal holdings of some lord or lady. Information of little use, mostly, but at least Corayne drank it in, asking questions as the hours passed.

The Cor girl was like a rag in water, soaking up whatever she could of the lands around them. She wore a stolen shawl over her shoulders to hide the Spindleblade on her back. And she had a hat ready, should they pass an errant patrol. Not that Sorasa—or Dom, for that matter—would give a country patrol the opportunity to see Corayne’s face. The assassin would sooner kill ten watchmen than risk one breathing a hint of their whereabouts. Her focus strayed from the road to Corayne more often than not. Dom was the same, his eyes never leaving Corayne’s shoulders, as if his stare alone could shield her from the dangers of the world.

Valtik didn’t seem to notice any of them at all. The witch let her horse meander, keeping pace but weaving away from their track to pick through broken hedges and saddle-high fields of wheat. She sang under her breath, in Jydi and in another language no one could place. Of course the words rhymed. Sorasa shut the song out.

It’s difficult enough minding the squire, the Elder, and the apparent hope for the realm. I refuse to waste time or energy minding the witch too.

The farm lanes branched, trailing between hills and streams. Peasant farmers paid them little notice. No one patrolled the lanes, but they were winding, doubling back on themselves. As the hours wore on, the farms grew more sparse, separated by brush and woodlands instead of hedges. The horses slowed, picking their way on tentative legs.

“Our only advantage is speed,” Andry said, sitting up in the saddle as they broke through another stand of undergrowth. He urged his horse alongside Sorasa’s. “If we get on the Cor road west, we can give the horses rein and make better time.”

Sorasa grimaced when Corayne mirrored Andry’s motions, maneuvering her horse to her other side. The assassin did not enjoy being hemmed in by anything, let alone teenagers.

“I’ve always wanted to see a Cor road,” Corayne said. She even heaved a wistful sigh.

“I met you on a Cor road, you scheming imp,” Sorasa bit back, and Corayne’s face fell. “If the Queen of Galland has any sense, she’s sent her fastest scouts along the roads in every direction, with orders to look out for a beanpole squire, an immortal troll, and a cloaked girl with a stolen sword and too many questions.” Sorasa twitched her heels and her horse jolted out ahead. “If you want to take the roads, fine, but we’ll be riding into an easy trap.”

Dom’s voice was deep behind her. “Certainly you have a plan for whatever enemies we do run into, Sarn,” he said dryly.

“Most of them involve throwing you at them,” Sorasa shot back. He grumbled in reply.

“No roads, Corayne,” she added finally. The girl sank in the saddle, scowling. Sorasa could see a hundred replies fighting up her throat. “Farm lanes and deer paths won’t get us to Adira quickly, but they’ll get us to Adira alive.”

“And once we’re there?” Andry reined alongside her again, undeterred. He looked older on horseback, at ease and in control. “You going to sell us to a northern slaver or bet our lives in a game of dice?”

Sorasa wanted to ignore him. Silence was a stone wall few could climb. And the squire’s fear of Adira was inconsequential, if not idiotic. But she had a feeling he would pester her all the way to the city gates if need be. She offered a flash of teeth barely cousin to a smile.

“I was sold into slavery before I could walk, Trelland. I don’t intend to put anyone else through that, even Lord Domacridhan,” she said, jerking her head back at the Elder. It was easy to pretend she didn’t see the sudden pull of pity on their faces. Even Dom softened a little, like granite worn by centuries of wind and rain. Sorasa had no use for any of it. “And I doubt any of you would be worth much in the gambling dens. The witch, maybe.”

Corayne and Andry exchanged uncertain glances, falling quiet. But before Sorasa could enjoy it, Dom rumbled from the rear of their party.

“You aim to recruit more of your kind in that cesspool,” he growled.

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.

“You sent 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.”

Corayne felt it now, clawing at her throat. The memory of her nightmares nearly turned sunlight to shadow. She swallowed hard but saw no lie in the old woman.

Then the squire jolted like a startled horse, some realization breaking over him. He circled the witch, incredulous. “I have not heard the whispers since I found you.”

“The whispers—what whispers?” Dom’s voice stumbled.

Trelland ignored him. “So many voices, and one like winter. One like yours.” His breath caught. “You’ve been speaking to me for weeks, telling me what to do. Keep the sword hidden, abandon my mother—”

“How?” Dom sputtered. “Whispers? A sending? They were Taristan’s army, the Ashlanders exactly—”

Valtik said nothing, content to watch them flounder. And Sorasa watched her. She crossed her arms, keeping her distance from the Jydi witch, far from the circle of the weak fire.

“I think instead of how, we should be asking why,” Sorasa murmured. “Why whisper to Andry Trelland? Why send corpse shadows after us in the night?”

To her surprise, Valtik’s head snapped up and her grin was manic, unhinged for a shivering second. The kindling crackled at her back, outlining her hunched figure, leaving her face in shadow, half formed. The light played tricks. Her teeth were too long; she went cat-eyed, pupils like slits in the strange blue. The ivy braids gleamed metallic, slick. Sorasa clenched her jaw, willing herself to see what existed and not what the witch wanted her to see.

“You know why, Forsaken,” Valtik said, blinking. She shifted, and the shadows pulled back to show an old woman again. “Something to guide you. Something to guide them. To open your eyes, after where you’ve been.”

Her muscles tightened, taut as coiled rope. “Stop calling me that, Witch.”

“I only call people what they are,” Valtik replied with a half-moon smile. She waggled her feet like a child playing before the hearth.

“And what would you call yourself, Gaeda?” Corayne said, easing herself to her knees next to the witch. Andry tensed, as if he wanted to pull her back from the old woman. But Corayne was unafraid, looking intently into her eyes.

Valtik put a wrinkled hand to Corayne’s cheek.

Corayne didn’t flinch, letting the witch stare into her.

“The North Star,” the old woman finally said, tweaking her on the nose. Then her hand darted into her long cloak, pulling out the twig-and-bone charm still crusted with dried blood. She pressed it into Corayne’s fingers, closing each one over it. “Or bizarre,” she added, chuckling.

“I agree with the latter,” Dom said.

Corayne leaned back on her heels, whirling to him. “You go to sleep,” she said, full of force. He blanched, flushing red over his cheeks and neck. The Elder had probably not been ordered to bed for centuries, if it had even happened at all.

He sputtered, “I am not a mortal infant.”

Corayne stood and shrugged, undeterred by his towering height. “We need you healthy, Dom.”

“I—oh, very well,” he blustered, storming away from the campfire.

Sorasa nearly howled when he lay down in the dirt like a dog, with no cloak, no blanket, no bed of any kind. He simply folded his arms, face to the sky, his eyes dropping shut in an instant. The snore that followed was instantaneous and unbearable.

“Would anyone stop me if I smothered him?” she muttered, scuffing her boot in Dom’s direction. “Joking,” she snapped, catching sight of Andry and Corayne’s disapproval. “Andry, I’ll wake you when it’s your turn at the watch.”

The squire ducked his chin. “All right.”

“And you, no sendings, no whispers—” Sorasa added, turning back to the witch. But Valtik was gone, leaving no trace, not even the odd earthen scent that followed her everywhere.

“Oh she’s gone again,” the assassin sneered, eyeing the darkness. She felt oddly like the darkness was staring back. “Magnificent.”

With every passing day, Sorasa bet with herself. Who would break first and succumb to their curiosity? The next afternoon, she thought it would be Dom, when his eyes narrowed on her with his usual furor. But he never spoke. Corayne was an easy guess. The girl had thoughts about everything, from the strength of the wind off Mirror Bay to the growing season in the lowlands. Certainly she would find the spine to question Sorasa Sarn, the Fallen, the Forsaken. And there was Trelland too, not as blatant as the others. But he stole glances all day long, his interest obvious even to the horses. Valtik already knew and wouldn’t bother. She probably spends all day thinking up rhymes, Sorasa thought, grinding her teeth.

In the end, it was Corayne who summoned the courage. She had the tact to ask a few days later, in the evening, apart from the others, who were busy preparing another meager camp. Andry was off using his foolish kettle, brewing up some tea.

“Osara,” Corayne said, letting the word hang in the air.

The sky was clear, and Sorasa lifted her face to the stars. She stared at them instead of Corayne. They had known each other only a few weeks, and sometimes it was easy to forget that the girl had Corblood in her veins, and a pirate for a mother. Not tonight, Sorasa thought.

“It’s a title given to blooded Amhara exiled from the Guild,” she said plainly.

Fallen, Forsaken, Broken.All meant the same, all were uttered with the deepest and most vicious disgust. Osara, in her language, which stung worst of all. Lord Mercury had declared it in front of all the Guild, with every eye upon the fresh mark still bleeding on her ribs. Cruder than the rest, only a few lines of stick and poke, given without thought to her pain. She never made a sound while they did it, branding her forever, casting her from the ranks of the Amhara. Even Sorasa admitted the punishment fit the crime.

“I suspected as much,” Corayne murmured, dropping her voice. It would not stop the immortal from hearing their conversation. Sorasa only wished he could hear all the times she cursed him in her head. “Dom didn’t know, when he found you in Byllskos. When he contracted you to find me.”

“I was simply the first Amhara to cross his path, the easiest to find, the only one no longer shielded by the strength of the Guild.” She glanced across the clearing, a flat surrounded by thick forest. The border was close, the trees pressing in as they could not in the valley. Sorasa moved into the eaves of the wood and Corayne followed without question. “He doesn’t know how money works, or much of the world, for that matter. Of course I took the contract, even if the Guild no longer allows me to.”

Corayne narrowed her eyes, and Sorasa braced herself for the inevitable question. The why. The reason for the words cut and inked into her flesh.

But it did not come.

“What are you going to do with the money?”

“What does anyone do with money?”

“Most get old and fat in comfort.” Her gaze lingered on the assassin’s tattooed fingers. They were crooked, scarred beneath the ink, callused by bow and blade. “I don’t think that’s what you want.”

Her scrutiny rankled. Sorasa gave her a sneer sharp enough to cut flesh. “You think smuggling steel and charting trade routes for a ship you’ve never sailed on gives you the faintest idea what I want?”

“I think growing up with a pirate for a mother, a woman with all the money she could ever want, a daughter she claims to love, who will never turn from the risk and reward of the sea, gives me some idea,” she said coolly, folding her arms. “I know he offered you something more than money. Something more valuable than all the gold in the vaults of Iona. I just couldn’t figure out what.”

Until now.

“Well, Corayne an-Amarat. Impress me with what you think you know,” Sorasa hissed. She felt like a lonely traveler facing a mountain lion, spreading her arms wide in an attempt to scare it off. An odd thing for an assassin to feel against a young girl, even one as keen and clear-eyed as Corayne.

“You need a way back in, and you can’t buy it, or you would have already.”

Sorasa had never met Meliz an-Amarat, Hell Mel, captain of the Tempestborn, the furious and fierce mistress of the Long Sea. And if Taristan’s face was any indication, her daughter did not take after her mother’s line. But her mother was in her all the same, in the set of her voice, the steel resolve, the dogged and unyielding pursuit. For Meliz, that meant treasure, bounty, a profit. For Corayne, it was truth. She hunted it like a hound.

“Assassins love gold,” she pressed on. Her eyes took on a distant look as she spoke, sifting through her own thoughts. “But they love blood more. The Amhara Guild is famed for their skill. And what could be more skillful than killing an Elder?”

I asked for gold and he paid it. I set a higher price than any before. All the wealth of Iona, an immortal queen’s treasure laid at my feet. He promised it without thought.

And when I asked for his life, for his throat cut by my own hand, in a place of my choosing, before the eyes I wanted . . . he didn’t hesitate to promise me that too.

There was no use in denial. Corayne would see through it. She wouldn’t push, but she would know. And what do I care? I’ve done worse to better, and for less in return.

One insufferable immortal life is worth the Guild. It is a cost I am happy to pay.

“If you’re worrying about Domacridhan’s gigantic head, don’t bother,” Sorasa answered. They were closer to the water now, Mirror Bay only a few miles south. A breeze blew cool through the trees, smelling of rain somewhere far off. She inhaled greedily. Still, the scent of rain was a novelty to her. “The road is long before us.”

Corayne’s throat bobbed. The stars were in her eyes. “And at the end?”

“If we survive, you mean?” A rather large if. “Let’s think about that bridge when we cross it.”

“I’d like to know that bridge isn’t going to be cut in half.”

The constellation of the Unicorn shone brightly overhead, said to be a good omen. A sign of luck. Sorasa believed in neither, but it was still a comfort. There were unicorns in her homelands, among the famed Shiran herds of the sand dunes. Black with onyx horns, white with pearl, brown with bronze. She had seen them with her own eyes, more than once. They were gone in most of the north, fading with the years, but the south knew how to protect its wonders. Sorasa longed to see one again, a wonder made of flesh instead of starlight.

She took a step away from Corayne, drawing her stolen coat closer. Summer still ruled, but Sorasa felt a chill sink into her desert blood.

“Ask the witch, if you want the future. ‘So the bone tells,’” she chuckled, rolling her eyes.

Corayne’s expression soured. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“If it works at all,” Sorasa replied. “She might be Spindlerotten, but she’s not exactly helping us along, is she? Or, at least, she only helps when she feels like it.”

“I think they prefer the term Spindletouched. And she is helping.”

“Calling us names and speaking in riddles isn’t the kind of help we need.” Once again, the witch was nowhere in sight. She could be hiding three steps away or three miles, for all Sorasa knew. It was frustrating; it was unnerving. There was no urgency to the old woman, even with all her warnings about the realm and its doom. “She says there’s another Spindle torn, fine. Where is it? What is it doing? What are we supposed to face, and how? Does she expect us to ride into hell and fight What Waits ourselves?”

Sorasa jumped when Valtik seemed to melt out of the tree line, a pair of dead rabbits dangling from her belt. “Where’s the fun in telling you everything?” she said, not breaking pace. “That’s a boring song to sing.”

“There are too many curse words, in too many languages, for me to choose only one,” Sorasa growled at the witch’s silhouette. Why am I doing this? She asked herself for the hundredth time.

The corpses loomed in answer, just as terrible. Even though she now knew their origin. That was somehow worse, to think they’d only been sendings, shadows of what the realm truly faced. The many hands of Taristan of Old Cor, who was the hand of What Waits.

After a moment, she realized Corayne was still with her, letting the shadows creep around them. She watched Sorasa as she would the sea, reading a tide. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

“You didn’t ask why I was exiled.”

Corayne shifted, as if coming unstuck. “I figure that’s your business,” she muttered, nearly inaudible as she walked away. It was her turn for first watch.

Sorasa tried to remember the last time she’d said thank you to a living person and meant it. Years, if not decades, she realized, racking her brain.

Well, no use in breaking the streak now.