“Perhaps you could add it to your account, next to the goat,” he suggested with a smile.
It was a nice smile: not a flashing grin, but genuine, crinkling the edges of his eyes. Nice eyes, too, when he wasn’t glaring. The contrast with his dark eyelashes was striking, and Darya knew she shouldn’t have been noticing any of that. The man’s lover had been her companion for the last ten years, he was in her sword, and while he couldn’t read her mind, he got echoes of her senses.
Darya would have apologized, but that would have only drawn attention to her gaze—particularly as she’d have had to speak aloud and then explain herself.
“It was a goat, yes?” Amris asked. Clearly she’d gone too long without responding. Oh, she was doingwonderfullytoday.
“It was,” she said. “With a bag of colored powder tied to one leg, so it’d leave a track when the cockatrice grabbed it. Got me here, and after that, there were only so many places to go. So.”
“Tying things to legs seems a winning tactic of yours.”
“This one’s Gerant’s,” she said quickly. “Let’s hope it works as well the second time.”
* * *
The descent went slowly. Amris passed darkened, broken windows and walls with cracks spidering through them, briefly resting his feet or his grip on the remains of a windowsill. Always he was aware of the weight of his own body, and of his armor beyond that.
About half again his height from the ground, the rope ran out. Amris tucked his head downward and let go; the fall was hard, particularly in his armor, but he picked himself up with no more than a few bruises and pulled twice on the rope, their signal in case Darya couldn’t spot him on the ground. He couldn’t see her any longer, certainly.
The place he’d landed was an alley, once likely a route for servants to enter the great houses and tradesmen to drop off goods. Shadows were thick on the ground, as was wreckage. Plants had grown up through some of the fallen stones, and all of them were a feeble, sickly green from lack of light.
He waited with sword drawn, listening to his breathing slow back to normal and watching the shadows for motion.
* * *
He’s safe.Gerant said it like a prayer, and then, more like himself as Darya knew him,Well, he’s down.
“If he was fighting Thyran,” Darya replied, “he’ll put paid to any walking corpse or bit of ooze easily enough.”
Starting downward, she stared into the windows as she passed them. In the midst of dust and darkness, the graceful lines of statues and vases revealed themselves. Half-rotted tapestries disclosed the shape of a unicorn here, a pair of intact woven eyes there. Darya had no chance to salvage anything she saw, but she could remember beauty—and there might be other journeys, if the world survived.
That coda chilled her, and she suspected it was going to become common.
“How quickly did things start going wrong, back then?” she asked. The outline of the war she’d gotten from her tutors had been sketchy. Thyran had come with an army and storms, people had stopped the army, and the blizzards had hit regardless, though maybe not as badly as they might have otherwise. Sentinels-to-be had needed to know the sort of monsters the army had left behind. History was history. “Did Thyran just fly in on the back of a storm with his creatures below him?”
Gods, no. There’d been five years of fighting before the blizzards started. Some said only four—there was a harsh winter before, but still winter and less dramatic. And, to be fair, the monsters may have been attacking before then as well, but put down to stories of drunken soldiers and old wives. It was only in the second full year that I became at all involved.
“That’s a comfort.” Beyond the latest window, a shadow moved, small and close to the ground. Darya hurried past the windowsill and then paused, watching, until the source revealed itself as a legless torso, mindlessly dragging itself up and down the hallways where it had died.
“Never thought those things would be a relief,” she muttered, continuing downward.
Comparatively, they’re harmless. Only flesh.
“So am I.”
They descended a few more feet in silence. Then Gerant asked,Why a comfort?
“Huh? Oh, because it means we have plenty of time.” Gerant’s silence did not bode well. “Don’t we?”
I can’t say for certain. Divination was never my specialty, and it’s tricky even for those who master it. But…it’s likely that delay was because Thyran had to discover the methods of causing the storms and creating his armies, as well as gather the resources to do so. Now he knows what he’s about. And some of the creatures that followed him still remain, despite your—our—efforts.
“Well, shit,” said Darya.
Just so.
The rope ended before it hit the ground: a distance, but not a fatal one. Darya glanced down, preparing to jump, and blinked as she saw Amris reaching toward her. “Ah. Um.”
Do it. He can take your weight, and that’s six feet and a bit less to fall. There’s little point in you breaking a bone out of pride, especially now—and I’d rather not use power to shield you when I don’t need to.
