Prologue
The feral bay of theking’s hounds stirred her from the nothing. Mists tangled around knobby branches and the sting of lingering heat from the flames still burned in her eyes.
“Keep those closed.” Leather-wrapped fingers brushed over her lashes. “Don’t let anyone see the silver in those eyes, girl. Hear me?”
The voice was hoarse and rough, older than hers but not as deep as her pap’s.
“We get snatched, then we’re dead. Maybe we shouldn’t have done it.” A new voice, a boy’s that was young enough it cracked and squeaked, uncertain if it was yet a man’s tone or still a child’s.
“Quiet. We’re here now, and we’re seeing it through,” snapped the first. “Get yourself into the damn shadows and stay down. Go.Go.”
A petulant protest from the second followed, but in the end the scrape of boots faded into the briars of the wood and was lostin the mists. The girl shifted and whimpered, muscles aching from running. Her mother told her to run—screamed at her to do it—and not look back.
Ropes held her tightly when she shifted, trying to break free, all at once desperate to find her family.
Through the haze in her mind she recalled the cruel sound of the door cracking against the wall, the iron and bronze blades cutting through the air, seeking flesh to split. She recalled the screams and blood.
So much blood.
“Stop fidgeting, godsdammit.”
She froze. Those ropes keeping her bound were arms. And her cheek was pressed to cold leather that reeked of ash and sweat and the bite of forest mist.
Buried beneath a dark cowl she could make out a stubbled chin. Not bearded in long double braids and bone beads like her pap’s, but a ghost of a beard was there.
She wanted to cry out, to plead with the man to let her be. There were straps of leather for knives and weapons over his shoulders, much the same as the raiders who burned her village. Fear choked off her pleas into nothing but jagged whimpers.
“Not a word, girl,” he whispered, and she felt her weak body lower to the chilled forest floor. Brambles and little pebbles jabbed into her ribs. She tried to shift, but those leather-wrapped fingers curled around her chin, tilting her head back. “This’ll sting, but it won’t last long. Don’t make a sound.”
A hiss slid through the girl’s teeth when a sharp bite of pain lanced across her throat. Through hooded lashes, she watched the faceless man pull back a knife. He mumbled strange words and brushed his fingers through something wet and hot on her neck.
She trembled, keeping still, terrified he might use the edge of his blade to finish her off.
In the next breath, her eyes fluttered, heavy with fatigue, and his sturdy arms scooped her up once again.
The fear burning in her veins faded to something gentler, something calm. Enough, the girl thought she might fall into a deep sleep.
Until her body shifted and she was handed over to new arms, thicker and smellier.
“She going to talk?” A smoke-burned rasp of a new voice broke the darkness.
“I’ve made certain she won’t recall much of anything about this night. See that she’s forgotten from others’ memories.”
“With what you be payin’, I’ll bury her in the realm of souls if you want. Won’t be found, this one. You’ve my word.”
Her pulse raced, her mind grew frantic, but her body kept still when heavy steps thudded across wood, and somewhere beneath it all was the lap of the tides and the smell of brine and rotting scales.
With a grunt and a breath of smoking spices in her face, the girl was nestled beside rigging and damp linens.
“Blessed little barnon, you are.” The man spoke in common tongue, a dialect known throughout the three kingdoms and over the Night Ledges where feral folk claimed no king. Doubtless he was a tide wanderer, a soul without a land to call his own. “They coulda torn out your skinny little throat.”
His thumping steps plodded away over wooden boards—a longship—she was on a boat.
No, she couldn’t leave. There were people she was leaving behind. But…who?
As though the thick mists of the wood dug into her skull, thegirl could not recall the fading faces in her mind. It was merely a feeling, a sense there was something—someone—she was forgetting.
Before the weight of exhaustion drew her into a murky sleep, the girl saw a darkly clad figure on the water’s edge, a glow of flames at his back.
