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  “It’s my duty to help the humans preserve their delusions of control. In return, my people live out of sight and feed only on those who won’t be missed. It’s not a flattering arrangement, but it preserves the lives of hundreds of vampires and countless humans.”

  I wanted to disbelieve. It’d be an easy thing not to accept, after all. The very idea of our crown allowing monsters to live among us, to feed on us, sounded crazy. My eyes inadvertently strayed to the asylum.

  When I looked back to Larsa, she was staring, watching my thoughts play out across my face. What reason would she have to lie? Her skin seemed suddenly drained—unhealthy, bloodless even. Was she, a half-vampire, her own proof?

  “Ellishan Thorenly,” I cautiously ventured, choosing for the moment to accept her claim and racing to chart the implications. “She and her family would be missed.”

  Larsa nodded. “Not all of my people accept the truce with the humans. Every vampire has a prideful streak, but those who refuse to restrain themselves jeopardize us all. I track down any who break the terms of the truce and either report or put an end to them before too much damage is done.” A humorless half-smile crossed her face. “It doesn’t make me popular.”

  She was like Mardhalas, a hunter of the dead. The difference was that she was one of the things she hunted. It occurred to me how terrible it must be to work as an assassin against your own people. Terrible, but I was finding it more difficult to pity her.

  Her grin faded. “Usually my investigations led me after reckless young vampires or arrogant foreigners, but that’s not what I expect in Ardis.”

  “The one you mentioned to Trice—the one you said sent those murderers to Lady Thorenly’s home.”

  She nodded. “Rivascis Siervage. He’s old, and among my people, that means dangerous. We’ve pursued him for a long time. Now that he’s come out of hiding, I plan to take his head.” She removed her hat and pulled her scarlet hair back into a tight ponytail. “You’re going to help me with that.”

  I didn’t let her presumption rankle me. “You called him your father.”

  Her jaw tightened. “Yeah.”

  “Does that have anything to do with—”

  “It’s my duty to slay vampires who violate the truce. Rivascis has done that. I’ve never met him, and I’m not some human whelp he turned into a slave. He’s nothing to me but an outlaw.” She sounded like she believed most of that.

  I gave a slow nod and didn’t press. “Your people, they’ve been after this Rivascis for a long time?”

  “Yes.”

  “I assume that hasn’t gone well.”

  She replaced her hat, but didn’t answer.

  “Others have gone after him. Did any return?”

  “None.”

  “It sounded like Kindler did.”

  “That’s entirely why I plan to meet her. If she truly made a hobby of hunting Rivascis, I want to find out how she’s still breathing.”

  That sounded thin. “So tips from a retired Pathfinder and my prayers are going give you your advantage?”

  “We’ll certainly see. Even if they don’t, I don’t have to play by the same rules as the other vampires we’ve sent after him. I know what he is and his weaknesses. That’s an advantage.”

  It was still far from a plan. “I suppose we’ll have plenty of time to come up with details on the road.”

  Something in her neck twitched. It didn’t seem like she’d be asking for suggestions.

  “Something about this one really gets to you, huh?” I knew I was walking on delicate ground. “If I’m to be helpful, I hope you’ll come to trust me with why.”

  Adjusting her hat’s brim, she started toward the cart.

  I found my enthusiasm for the trip waning, especially if she thought I was going to be taking orders the whole way. “Remember, though, my church’s arrangement with Doctor Trice is for me to see to Miss Kindler. That’s my first duty.”

  “Fine.” She slowed but didn’t turn. “But you might want to hope that she’s dead.”

  “Honestly?” That kind of lashing out seemed beneath even her cynical nature.

  She gave a detached look over her shoulder. “Rivascis already struck Kindler’s family half a nation away. If you’re intent on being her new protector, then you’re probably making yourself a target. Maybe you’ll rethink how much you want to help me once the heroic sheen wears off your assignment.”

  She went to join Tashan, who was waving from the driver’s bench of the loaded wagon, expression sunny and eager to be off.

  15

  EVIL’S MARK

  LARSA

  They left me on a hill.

  Vauntil was the first burg we’d seen sizable enough to call itself a town, but that wasn’t any reason to spend the better part of the day there. My companions didn’t share my opinion, though.

  They both assured me it was a lovely spot, insisting the surrounding lavender fields made it seem like the whole countryside was wearing the town’s famed perfumes. They said my vantage ensured I’d see anyone coming up from the Crown’s Procession—the highway we’d been traveling the past two days. They said they’d make a quick call at Pharasma’s shrine to learn anything of interest.

  They didn’t say they’d be all day.

  Something over a mile away, pale buildings and rooftop gardens spilled across a much broader hill than mine. Colorful and quaint, Vauntil was Caliphas’s niece from the country. She was pretty in a naive way, and made a show of being carefree. Lazily rocking wagons heaped with like-colored flowers made their way up from the fields, as if the townsfolk had a diet far different from the cereals of most villages. The lazy course of the Raiteso River wound its way beneath the town, unburdening itself of cask-laden skiffs into the blue-black waters of Avalon Bay.

  It was all something out of some too-idyllic scene from a lady’s dressing chamber. In my experience, the most inviting faces were the ones hiding the most. Fortunately, I wasn’t interested in making Vauntil my problem.

  It was past noon by the time I picked out the slightly deeper twilight of Jadain’s robes amid the wine stain of the roadside lavender fields—the trailing speck of Tashan’s yellow scarf giving her away. She said her people had, amid the common traffic, noted a coach passing south several days ago, as well as one of her faith’s inquisitors headed north a day or so earlier. The first I’d seen in the drive at Thorenly Glen. The second didn’t seem relevant, but caused Jadain to frown—from our discussion at Maiden’s Choir, I could see why. Beyond that, the local priests didn’t have anything useful to add.

  With no more excuses to tarry, we circled the town and headed west.

  The New Surdina Road tracked the Raiteso River back to it distant mountain origins, winding through lands holding Caliphas county’s rich wine country and the estates of many of its most influential nobles. Fortunately, like the Crown’s Procession, regular travel warranted the road be paved and well maintained, and we made good time.

  Over the course of the next two days we followed the Raiteso. From Vauntil, the Hungry Mountains were nothing more than misty shapes on the horizon, their snow-capped peaks easy to mistake for clouds in the distance. But every hour they grew more concrete, more formidable, and more obviously opposed to visitors. The even rise and fall between dales gradually gave way to a slow climb. Brooding clouds regularly bloomed amid the peaks, carrying short cold showers into the lowlands. Even the numerous hamlets and side roads winding off toward austere estates became rarer, as most settlers had the sense to heed the mountains’ none-too-subtle warnings.

  Or it might have been the guards.

  Setting out from the capital, we’d passed several patrols of the Crown Guard. The tower and antlers of Ustalav’s national seal proudly shone on their breastplates and the barding of their shaggy black fell ponies—the prided steeds of the riders of Amaans, horses renowned for sturdiness and bravery. After passing Vauntil, the patrols had changed. Gone were the simple dark breastplates and fur cloaks of
the royal riders, replaced by crimson-clad soldiers that would look more at home on a parade ground than the road. Each group included a single lancer whose weapon flew an elegant red pennant bearing the silhouette of a hawk with sweeping antlers.

  “Whose men were those?” Tashan leaned over to ask, but not until we’d rounded a bend in the road. They’d scrutinized us intently, going out of their way to split ranks and flank the cart as they passed.

  “The countess’s troops,” Jadain said from the bench next to him.

  “They don’t look like the others.” Tashan looked back to where crimson still peeked through the thin woods.

  “Because they aren’t like the others,” I added from my uncomfortable lounge in back. “They serve the countess. The others served the prince.”

  “But the countess serves the prince.” He sounded unsure.

  Jadain snickered. “Not if she made the rules.”

  I turned just enough to see the look of confusion deepening on Tashan’s face. “Formally, yes, but there’s tension there. These are the countess’s lands.”

  Tashan looked about at the drizzly woods. “Since where?”

  “Did you cross Lake Encarthan to get here?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then since you set foot in Ustalav.”

  His brows screwed together. “All of this, then? The city, too?”

  “All of Caliphas county, including the city of Caliphas, are the lands of the Caliphvaso family—the countess’s family.”

  “But then, what about the prince? If the capital is where the royal palace is, surely he must rule there.”

  I tried not to smirk. He was flailing over a system we Ustalavs took as second nature, despite its complexities. “The prince rules from Caliphas, but his home is in Odranto, much farther north.”

  Tashan pondered this. “So then who were the soldiers we passed before?”

  “Near the capital? Members of the Crown Guard, our national army. Soldiers whose first loyalty is to the throne.”

  “So your prince allows his servants to keep their own armies, then rules from within their lands?”

  I nodded.

  “He must trust his counts a great deal.”

  I joined Jadain in laughing this time, the Osirian’s innocent question made all the more comic by his clear bewilderment.

  “What’s funny?” A hint of frustration tinged Tashan’s voice.

  I stifled my laughter. “Given the choice, the prince would bed down with a pack of wolves before his counts.”

  “If they’re disloyal, why keep them?”

  “They’re not disloyal. They just hate each other.”

  Tashan stared. “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me try,” Jadain said. “The prince rules the nation, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the nation is divided into counties, which are largely ruled by counts, yes?”

  He was slower to answer this time. “Yes.”

  “But the prince and the counts, they’re all just nobles, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “So what’s the difference?”

  He pondered. “Well, in my country, the family of the Ruby Prince was chosen by the gods and given the right to rule. Is it not so here?”

  “No,” I chimed in. “Ustalav’s first royal family died out centuries ago. The Ordrantis were chosen to rule only because few other families were as old. They were just counts before that.”

  “So your prince—forgive me if this is insulting—is no different from your counts?”

  “In all but title and tradition, yes.” Jadain grimaced, as if revealing a dirty secret.

  “Then what keeps them loyal? Why don’t your other counts just call themselves princes and use their armies against him?”

  “Tradition,” Jadain offered with a shrug.

  I added, “And the fact that they all hate each other too much to cooperate, even in rebellion.”

  Tashan’s expression became distant. A moment passed before he asked, “And this arrangement, it works for your people?”

  “Not in the least.” Jadain smiled.

  Tashan shook his head, still perplexed. He obviously thought he was missing a joke. But the only joke was that we acknowledged and more or less accepted our nation’s baroque, utterly dysfunctional government.

  Jadain offered him a pat on the shoulder. “My father told me there’s a saying in Sinaria: ‘A good heart rarely has a good name.’”

  The foreigner stared at her for a long moment. “You Ustalavs, you are a strange people.”

  She shook her head. “My friend, just wait and see.”

  As night approached, Jadain noticed a weathered wooden sign etched with the words “The Trail’s Tail.” Turning the cart off the main road, we followed the arrow-shaped marker down an uneven wooded path only to find the charred shell of a building, its timbers scorched, its roof and porch collapsed. The destruction was years old, moss and ivy having done considerable work reclaiming the building. Broken glass still glinted in a few of the windows, reflecting just enough to suggest movement amid the shadows collected inside. Three splintered posts leaned before what remained of the front stairs.

  Jadain stopped the wagon at the path’s abrupt end and I hopped down. I knew the posts were grave markers before I even left the cart. I only bothered with them to see what was written on each.

  Approaching, I could make out Pharasma’s spiral on all three, crudely etched near the top, but in reverse. The backward mark wasn’t a mistake; it was an insult to the dead, meant to confuse their spirits’ paths and prevent them from finding the goddess’s judgment. On each was a single word: liar, eunuch, thief.

  I touched each post lightly. They were cool and damp.

  “Wait here,” I called back to Jadain and Tashan, still with the cart.

  I circled the wreck, watching the darkened gaps. I could see through the shadows better than the humans—if there was something lurking just within, I’d notice. I could also see in a way they couldn’t. To them, it wouldn’t look like anything unusual. But for me, it was a cold kind of sight. It felt like reaching out with the empty places inside, willing the silence between my heartbeats to find like silence. I knew the sights and smells of death well enough, but what had saved me countless times was the ability to sense it, to feel death before it struck.

  This place looked like death. It was old. Nothing unnatural stirred within now.

  “We should camp here,” I said as I came back around to the front of the inn.

  Jadain stood before the posts, eyes closed and hands folded over her heart in prayer. I came up beside her as she finished.

  “Really?” She opened her eyes, surprised.

  I nodded.

  “There’s plenty of wood, shouldn’t be too hard to get a fire started,” she said. “And I’d be happy to cook again. Tashan, could you take care of the horse?” She started toward the supplies loaded in the back of the cart.

  Tashan hadn’t moved from the cart’s bench and didn’t budge now. His eyes were fixed on the ruin and its gaping windows.

  “This place is not right.” His voice was a dire whisper. “We should leave.”

  Jadain looked at me sidelong.

  “It’s fine,” I repeated.

  Tashan didn’t move, and for a moment I thought he might be right. There was just a twinge …

  “I’m not doing double the work just because in a few minutes you’re not going to be able to see in the dark. Now get down and make yourself useful.”

  He tore his eyes away from the building. “Don’t you see it?” He threw his palm toward the wreck. “This is a place of death!”

  I sighed. “Yes. But that’s past. It’s fine now.”

  He looked at me like I was insane.

  “We’re staying here.” I nodded to Jadain, who had started gathering some fallen limbs. “You can head off if you want, or you can stay with us. Your choice.”

  It didn’t take him long to
make a decision. Reluctantly, he helped us set up camp—though he never took more than one eye off the wreckage.

  It was after supper before he asked.

  “How do you know?” He was eyeing me suspiciously.

  “How do I know what?” I wanted to hear him say it. I’d taken a seat with my back to the ruined inn just as purposefully as he’d taken the seat across our small fire from me. He’d spent the meal in silence, watching the firelight flicker off the charred porch banisters.

  He nodded past me. “That it’s safe.”

  “I never said it was safe.”

  His eyes bulged. “You said we should camp here!” He looked from me to Jadain, then back. The priestess raised an eyebrow at me, but took the opportunity to quietly collect the meal’s dishware.

  “Yeah,” I said, purposefully sounding as nonchalant as possible. “We can’t camp in the road. The clearing makes a good shelter, and any bandits who know the area likely give this place a wide berth.”

  “Probably because they have eyes to see this place is cursed!” He was whispering dramatically again.

  “No more so than anywhere else.” I retrieved a stick and prodded the fire. “You really mustn’t let a few shadows bother you.”

  “That’s more than a few shadows.” His voice rose an octave. “Someone burned this place. People died here—died badly. Those posts aren’t graves, they’re insults. And you suggest we sleep here?”

  “Jadain, how well do you know your history?”

  She didn’t look up from bundling the cooking gear. “Don’t frighten him more than he already is.”

  “I’m not trying to frighten anyone, but it’s better he knows. He plans to travel out here alone someday. Can’t have him scaring himself to death.”

  She scoffed, obviously not buying my faux good intentions.

  Tashan turned to his ally. “What’s she talking about?”

  Jadain put down her pots and spoons with a soft sigh, giving him a sympathetic look. “You’ve been places that feel … wrong?”

  His nod was urgent. “We’re in one of those places now.”

  I chuckled, first at Tashan and then at Jadain’s scolding look.