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  Could this be some ritual, some ancient test of faith we were interrupting? If this were a monk of the cloistered order, I couldn’t expect him to speak, but even for an anchorite at the world’s edge this behavior was more than just discourtesy.

  I backed away, skidding back to the cart as fast as my courage would let me. Tashan and Larsa were waiting, the Osirian shivering violently.

  “He’s a monk from the monastery, I think! But he won’t acknowledge me, and he doesn’t seem interested in moving. He pointed that way.” I repeated the figure’s gesture to the north.

  “The monastery’s right there!” Larsa shouted. “Tell him to take us!”

  “I tried! But there’s something … something wrong about him.”

  “There’s something wrong about us dying on a mountainside! I’m not freezing just because some monks are afraid we might track mud in from the trail.” She vaulted over the side of the cart. “Tashan! Bring the wagon. Jadain, come on!” She strode past me, into the dark.

  “Larsa, wait!” I tried to yell through the gale, but either she didn’t hear or she didn’t listen—I had my guess at which. Something knotted in my stomach. “There’s something wrong here! We should go!”

  She was only a step away from the monk when I caught up to her, one hand smashing her hat to her head, the other gripping her cloak closed. Her mouth was moving, but her words were lost to the wind. I came alongside them a moment too late.

  “Are you deaf as well as mute?” Larsa’s voice tore through the rain, as did her hand, grabbing for the man’s shoulder.

  I started to shout, outraged at her lifting a hand against a brother of the faith. It escaped as nothing more than a shocked squawk, though, as in the same instant the monk faded away—or appeared to. It happened with such sudden smoothness that in the rain it took several blinks to realize he’d fallen back several steps. In his retreat, the wind caught his hood, throwing it back, releasing a tangle of knotted hair to lash over dark, lowered features.

  Larsa’s glance snapped to me, but then she was closing on him again. I followed a step behind, increasingly sure that he wasn’t just some religious hermit.

  He stabbed a finger north. As light and deafening thunder burst over us, he lifted his eyes, accentuating his silent command. For a moment the flash revealed his face—or what there was of one.

  A savagely twisted whorl of flesh spun where there should have been a mouth. Instead of a natural gap, uneven knife-work and crude stitches carved away lips and nose, replacing them with a wound parodying Pharasma’s holy spiral. His eyes were glistening flecks somewhere between the coils of skin and his sopping mop of hair, just two slightly darker pools amid the rivulets of water charting unnatural courses over his deformities.

  The goddess’s name was on my lips as I recoiled, but Larsa’s sword was between her and the stranger who certainly wasn’t a brother of my faith.

  “Get out of our way!” Larsa shouted, seemingly unfazed by the man’s vicious scars.

  Still the figure didn’t move. She advanced on him, and I found the cold grip of my own dagger hidden amid my robes. My training with the blade leapt to mind, as did the names and motions of a thousand different mercies. Before I drew, the stranger was once more replaced by darkness.

  Both of us searched the storm futilely, Larsa turning quickly, trying not to expose her back to any one direction for long. Obviously her sight wasn’t serving her any better than mine. I waited for the next flash of lightning.

  When it came, the trail leading toward the Monastery of the Veil was empty. I looked to Larsa, but she wasn’t looking down the trail, but up, seemingly into the storm clouds. Without turning to me, she pointed.

  Lightning flashed again, and I realized I wasn’t staring at the clouds, but rather the rocky cliffs above the trail. The stranger was there, a man-shaped silhouette staring from a higher ridge. He wasn’t alone. At least nine other silhouettes joined him in looming over us.

  Something hit my boot. I couldn’t see what clearly, but it felt like a small rock, rolling against the wind. Then more came. Only for a moment did I mistake the rumbling that followed for thunder.

  Larsa and I turned for the cart as one. Half-blind, we raced back, the trail shaking beneath us, threatening to buck us off the mountainside. Behind us it sounded like the mountain was moving, obeying the commands of its strange, scarred masters.

  A cloud of dust and grit defied the storm and blew past us, reaching Tashan before we did. I could hear him coughing, then shouting my name and Larsa’s. The sound of grinding rocks followed, a cacophony repeating in every crag and fissure. I barreled into the side of the cart, choking on rain and crushed stone. Larsa, only a step behind, crashed next to me, also struggling to breathe. Tashan shouted questions, but there was little to be said and less to be done. Nowhere else to run, we waited for the mountain’s fist to fall.

  The gnashing of ancient stones swelled. It rolled, so much like crashing surf. Then, finding no outlet for its anger, it grudgingly receded. Echoes carried the mountain’s rage into the surrounding chasms, but soon the thunder and rain drowned them, too.

  I gasped, not realizing I’d been holding my breath. It took several moments more, but when we were sure that rain and wind were again the only things threatening to kill us, all three of us approached the trail leading toward the Monastery of the Veil. We didn’t need to wait for the lightning. It was clear the path had disappeared, transformed by the rockslide into a seamless slope of jagged rocks plummeting from the cliffs above into the ravine’s impossible depths.

  We stared, searching the dark for the ridge above, seeking out the mountain’s jury of strange masters. When the flash came, the rise was destroyed, but a single cloaked figure still watched over us.

  Larsa was moving before I’d done more than point. Her blade cut ahead of her as she charged up the wall of loose rocks. I shouted as she vanished into the storm, but she didn’t listen. Neither Tashan nor I dared follow. I wondered if Larsa, who considered herself only half alive, considered her life to be of only half value.

  When lightning flashed again, she was already climbing back down. The cloaked figure was gone, replaced by an uprooted scrub tree.

  “What happened?” I asked as she returned.

  She held up a tattered cloak, little more than rags. “Nothing. It was only this.” It thrashed in her grip and she released it to the wind. The storm swept it up and the dark consumed it. “But I could see down the trail from up there. There’s a light ahead.” She pointed. “That way.”

  Her finger traced the path of the northern trail, just as the stranger had directed.

  17

  COLD COMFORTS

  LARSA

  We leave the monks be.” Mrs. Saunnier handed me a threadbare towel. “It’s better for everyone that way.”

  The Slit o’ the Sun had only been a short push from the turnoff toward the Monastery of the Veil and its freakish watchmen. Wind still tore through the mountains outside, shaking the roof and windows of this heap of old stones posing as an inn. Huddled in the corner of two colliding cliffs, the elaborate hovel and its adjoining stable dug into the rock as if fearful of falling into the ravine only a few dozen steps beyond its door. The place might not have much to recommend it, but it was reasonably dry.

  The owners, the Saunniers, had been reluctant to admit us, but once Jadain displayed her holy symbol the door flung wide. A stringy pair with the same weather-beaten look as their establishment, the couple had seemed surprised to hear we were travelers. For a moment I thought they might try to throw us back into the storm, but, grudgingly, they had their son stir the fire in the taproom’s chest-high fireplace—its strange design presumably meant to suggest a burning hollow in a tree of crudely carved stones.

  I accepted Mrs. Saunnier’s towel with a nod—Jadain and Tashan had already said enough “thank yous” to mark us as the most desperate sort of rubes. Not that we weren’t. Leaning against the warm rocks of the fireplace was gradua
lly returning feeling to my hands and feet, but had we spent much longer in the storm I doubted they would have ever thawed.

  “Who says it’s better?” I asked, squeezing half of the storm from my hair onto the increasingly muddy dirt-and-straw floor.

  “I do.” Mrs. Saunnier spoke like a woman unused to being questioned. Mr. Saunnier stood on hand, weary detachment plain on his long face. I don’t think he’d spoken a word since we entered. “I suppose you’ll be wanting something to eat, too.”

  “Anything warm would be a blessing,” Jadain said. “Thank you again for your hospitality. We’re so sorry to be a bother.”

  Mrs. Saunnier gave a stern harrumph, then shouted over her shoulder at her straw-haired son. “Kensre! Kick up the kitchen fire, too.” The boy—actually near enough a man not to be jumping at his mother’s orders—disappeared through a split orange curtain behind the row of tables that doubled as a bar.

  Eventually Mrs. Saunnier sent her husband upstairs, charging the mute, post-still man with being too much in the way. We quickly covered the fireplace with every bit of drenched clothing modesty allowed. Modesty, of course, meant something different for each of us. Although I’d expected the opposite, the Osirian suffered the grip of most of his soaking clothes while the priestess stripped down to nothing more than her battered amulet and a drenched linen shift. Jadain didn’t show the least shyness even though I could have counted the freckles on her shoulders for all her drenched undergarment hid. Part of me envied her for being so thoughtless of her body. I mentally inventoried every scar on my own, knowing that removing my hat and cloak hadn’t revealed any of them, but unsure enough that I double-checked a moment later. When I realized my stare had been lingering on Jadain, I turned it on Tashan, mindful of where his eyes might stray. To his credit, he comported himself as a gentleman long before noticing my glare.

  Supper arrived with a clatter, two bowls of thin broth drowning a few stringy pieces of nameless bird meat. Mrs. Saunnier dropped them on a table close to Jadain and Tashan, hardly pausing before she circled back to the kitchen to retrieve a third bowl and a handful of battered silverware. Though far from appetizing, the meal was hot, and I supposed that was all Jadain had asked for.

  “So, do the monks ever come here?” I pressed after she’d returned to check the locks on the door.

  “This isn’t some big city where everybody makes everybody else’s business their own,” she said matter-of-factly. “You want to know about our neighbors, you go right out and ask them, but they ain’t any of my concern.” She moved on to check the fire. “And I’m not going to say anything more on that.”

  The wind rattled the building, confirming the finality of her words.

  Always the peacemaker, Jadain was quick to chime in. “Forgive our curiosity. It certainly wasn’t our intention to offend you, ma’am.”

  “Didn’t offend me. That’s just the way it is.” She swept the straw around the hearth. I was impressed by the woman’s resolve. I guessed you had to be stubborn to survive all the way up here.

  I thought to test her stubbornness, but she beat me to the next question. “You’ll be wanting rooms, ‘less you’re in a hurry to die out on the ridge.”

  She was obviously aware she had something of a captive clientele.

  “How much?” I asked suspiciously.

  She didn’t disappoint. “Three gold.” Then she took it a step further. “Each.”

  Tashan’s eyebrows rose and Jadain’s mouth was already open by the time I lifted a finger to restrain them. Guests probably paid several times that back at the Majesty, but this was more than several times less accommodating than that palace. “How many beds does that get us?”

  “One.” She didn’t look up from her sweeping.

  “Arrange it so we each get a bed, a hot meal in the morning, and our horse watered and fed, and we’ll pay four—each.” We obviously weren’t getting out of here cheap, but I also wasn’t particularly concerned about the money. Between my stipend from the crown, what Grandfather regularly granted, and what Trice had sent us with, our expedition was exceedingly well funded. Not that I’d let my traveling companions know that.

  Mrs. Saunnier looked up from her floor, still looking slightly perturbed despite having transacted a deal only a half-shade from brigandry. “That’s fine.”

  Despite my expectation, the rooms at the Slit o’ the Sun weren’t terrible. Modest to be sure, but better than the closets with flea-infested pallets that I’d expected. My purposefully poor dealings had bought us two rooms, one with beds for Jadain and me and another for Tashan. I couldn’t help but note that had we pushed together all three beds the combined size would still be smaller than my unused mattress at the Majesty. After a week of sleeping outside, though, I wasn’t about to complain about the amenities. The wooden second story of the inn didn’t weather the wind and rain as well as the stone of its sunken ground floor, but any leaks were far enough from the beds to not be a bother and the thunder had receded to just an occasional rumble.

  I snuffed the light as soon as Jadain got into bed. After the day’s various exhaustions, it wasn’t long until her breathing was deep and regular enough for me to venture changing out of my own still-sopping clothes. As soon as I had, though, the sound of the rain and the comforting stiffness of the bed was enough to lull me to sleep.

  Screams woke me.

  The faintest glow at the window suggested it was only just dawn. Jadain lurched upright in her bed. “Larsa,” she said into what, for her, was still mostly blackness.

  “I hear it.” It, in this instance, was a woman’s screeching. Mrs. Saunnier, I guessed.

  Jadain fumbled out of bed and quickly dressed. She paused in the door. The weak yellow glow of the hall lantern seeped into the room. “Aren’t you coming?”

  “I’ll be along.” I didn’t feel any particular rush. The shouting had already plummeted from the sound of immediate shock to a grief-ridden warbling. Since Jadain was accounted for and I doubted Mrs. Saunnier would be sobbing over Tashan, I wasn’t in any particular rush to loiter over a stranger’s grief.

  Jadain didn’t wait. As soon as she disappeared down the hall, I found my still more than damp clothes and shrugged on my cloak. Although soggy, it was heavy in all the right places, the weight of a dozen concealed pockets and sheathes reassuring me more than any armor. My hair, matted by sleeping on it wet, was another matter entirely, but one I and the world would just have to deal with.

  The narrow hall was short, and once around the only corner it was clear where the commotion was coming from. Inside a room hung with ropes and climbing gear, Mrs. Saunnier pummeled the floorboards. Her husband, as still and aloof as before, stood over her, his face registering only a sad sort of quiet surprise. Jadain sat alongside the bed—Kensre Saunnier’s bed, where the young man lay stock-still. Her thumb traced the spiral of her goddess’s symbol endlessly as she muttered to herself. It was obvious from that alone that Kensre wasn’t asleep.

  Jadain looked up at me as I came to the foot of the bed, her eyes wide. My name was an accusation on her lips.

  “What?” I dared over the lady of the house’s sobs.

  Jadain touched the youth’s cheek, turning his stare toward his mother. She brushed away a shock of shaggy blond hair. Blood had dried into the collar of his bedclothes, collecting from two small rips on his neck.

  I clenched my jaw, first to resist the urge to gape, then at the priestess’s implication. This wasn’t how I fed. Even though it had been more than a week and the urge gnawed at the back of my mind, I knew how to control it. The need to steal blood didn’t compel me like it would a true vampire. Even then, this was reckless … indulgent.

  “Bastard,” I said in a moment of utter awe. The first time was under my breath, the second time less so. “Unbelievable bastard!”

  Ignoring Jadain’s glare, I was out of the room and down the hall. The door to Tashan’s room was locked, but wasn’t so strong that a solid kick didn’t bust it open
. He was still in bed, splayed naked amid a tangle of sheets. The door slamming against the inner wall roused him, and he lifted his head groggily. His hookah was set up on the bed stand, one of its hoses reaching toward his pillow like a limp arm.

  I slammed the door behind me then kicked a piece of the splintered doorframe underneath, wedging it closed. It would hold well enough.

  “Who?” I shouted, driving my heel into his ribs. “Who’s commanding you?”

  Pain drove the grogginess from his eyes and he rolled away. “Larsa? What?”

  I kicked him again, aiming for the same spot. “Who?”

  He threw his pillow at me and I batted it aside, but he was fast behind it, flailing to push me away. I caught his arm and dragged him out of bed, a tangle of thrashing limbs and sheets. His face slammed solidly into the floor and I ground it down. “Who?”

  Tashan attempted several awkward, backward kicks, eventually managing to buck me off. He pulled himself completely onto the floor and twisted to get his legs between us. I moved faster than he could spin, getting around him easily. Forcing all my weight into my knee, I dropped onto his gut. Stew stunk in the rush of breath he gasped out. I shot past his flailing limbs and dug my hand into his throat.

  He might not need to breathe anymore, but he still needed something to keep his head on. I tightened my grip and—

  A pulse. So much for that theory.

  With my free hand, I pinched back his upper lip. His teeth were normal. “Then how?”

  I seesawed back onto my feet and stepped back, staring at the gasping man on the floor. He was breathing, deeply and desperately, but otherwise lay still.

  I let my own breath slip away in a long, thin sigh, quieting the noisy thrum of blood. Something still and dark readily rose in the depths of my chest. I cast out with it, sending the dead part of me searching.

  It swept first toward Tashan. Its thin fingers reached for him but instantly recoiled, flinching as if from a flame. He didn’t show any signs of being a half-blood—an undead slave, a vampire spawn. I wasn’t wholly surprised. I’d searched him for the taint of undeath multiple times since staying the night by the ruined inn. The night I knew I’d sensed death from him.