She recoils a little, startled out of wherever her thoughts had taken her. “Of course they’re not dead. They were sent to safety. Some of them as much as six months ago, others after the first attack and the destruction of the Eighth House. It wasn’t safe for them here. And we have gone through too many cycles of privation not to know the signs. There are places where they canblend into the villages, and we’ve amassed enough wealth over the years that we don’t need to go empty handed anywhere.”
My lips twitch. The Savasci are some of the most skilled thieves the First House has ever experienced. If they did show up someplace empty handed, they certainly didn’t leave it that way. I glance over to see if Fortiss shares my reaction, but he’s standing at the far edge of the Savasci camp, his gaze hard on the Eighth House rising silently in the distance. He’s up on his toes, his fingers twitching.
That’s not good.
“Then why not simply hide these goods until you reunite with them?” Tennet persists.
Syril sighs. “Because we may not reunite with them, Lord Tennet, and I won’t let their belongings be used by the skrill to fool others with their illusion magic. Besides, if we do survive this night,whenwe do, we’ll be forever changed. They will be forever changed. And the trappings of our past, especially bits of clothing and toys they are even now outgrowing have no place in the lives we will forge. We’ll keep our tools and our weapons, the food we can carry and the clothes that can serve us in the weeks ahead. The rest we will make or buy when the time comes.”
“But this—” he holds up an intricately carved comb, sized for a young girl, almost like it’s a weapon, but there’s nothing but sorrow in his voice. For a man made of fire and fury, Tennet burns strangely soft for the innocent. “This is fine work.”
Syril’s eyes fall upon it, and her mouth falters a bit, her gaze going a little soft. “You’ve had the luxury of having a place to call your own, a place of safety and certainty. We have that luxury, too, as the Savasci—but only here.” She taps between her breasts with two fingers. “Anything of value that cannot be carried here doesn’t truly serve you, not when you’re both hunted and hunter.”
Tennet looks like he’s about to object but merely sets his jaw. Gently, Syril takes the comb out of his hand and tosses it high upon the pile.
Glancing back to the edge of the camp, I stiffen. Fortiss is gone.
Blood and stone.“Syril, I’ll be back in just a?—”
“Lady Talia!” A tall, lean Savasci calls me from the opening of the great cave, and I wheel toward her, blinking as she leads a row of more than a dozen women out of the shadows, all of them in tunics and breeches, their well-muscled arms bared. Some of them I’ve seen before, some I haven’t—but they all could be sisters in the way they move. Stern-faced, sharp-eyed, and as fluid as the wind through the trees, they follow the first woman until she stops in front of me. Tennet and Syril have turned as well.
“These are the women you will band—with no training?” he begins, blustering, but Syril places a hand on his shoulder, staying his complaint.
“Arrant, Johl! Report with your men,” she calls out. A few moments later, a small knot of guards appear as well, the soldiers who’d managed to survive the first attack of the skrill and remained to serve the Savasci. They line up with the women, a group of nearly twenty souls.
“These are the best warriors I can offer you, Lord Tennet.” She hasn’t removed her hand from his shoulder. “I trust them with my life. I have trained most of them myself. They will follow your lead wherever it may take them, even into the Light itself. But if you can’t accept them, I’ll release them now. It’s your decision.”
I bite my lip to keep myself from smiling, though no one is looking at me. Still, Syril has caught Tennet well and truly in her trap. He grits his teeth so hard I can hear them grind together, but he nods. “Then we shall fight,” he says.
By the time he turns back to me, I’ve schooled my face into stoic indifference…but I don’t miss the fact that Syril’s hand isstillon Tennet’s shoulder. She’s easily ten years his senior, I think—but only ten. Could there be a connection there?
Not a possibility we have time to consider today, of course. The Savasci and guards now stare at me with a mixture of hope, anxiety, and wonder…and I can’t say that I blame them. I don’t know what I’m doing either.
The warrior acts first with the mind, then with the body.
I square my shoulders and lift my voice.
“I’ve been blessed with a battalion of Divhs who need warriors, and you have been chosen to meet that need.” My words carry out boldly across the open space and into the plains. Before I can even wonder if Gent is listening, I hear his hooting laugh of pleasure, equal parts commentary and call to arms of Divhs I’ve barely met. But their buzzing energy builds within me, and I gesture to the wide plain. “To take the band is a swift and painful experience, but the pain is fleeting and the connection life-long. The best advice I can give you is to surrender to it. To leap, knowing you’ll be caught.”
Gent’s howl is louder now, and it’s joined by the keening cries of twenty-some additional beasts, their roars pounding through my blood so loudly I can barely hear Tennet’s question.
“How will they know whose Divh is whose? Do they just pick?”
“No.” I shake my head, sudden clarity laying out the way in front of me. “I do.”
I point at the woman closest to me, the oldest of the group of warriors. Gray streaks her hair, and deep lines bracket her mouth and eyes, but they tell the tale of a woman who not only fights with ferocity but laughs with all her spirit. As I focus on her image, an answering call screams across the Blessed Plane,and I see the creature in its full, magnificent glory before it bursts into view.
The group collectively gasps, and they should. A bird almost as large as Wrath soars over us, breathing fire. Though she only has one set of taloned legs, the talons are that of a raptor and the glint of steel at the end of her orange wings indicate that her wings are every bit as vicious weapons as her claws. She screams and the woman I’ve designated as her match shocks me by screaming back, a wild and vibrant howl that has the winged phoenix banking back sharply, searching the ground where we stand. Wind whips off the plains and around us, drawing our unit more tightly together.
I command the woman forward and extend my left arm as she approaches, palm up. At my direction, she places her left hand in mine, barely flinching as I squeeze our hands into a tight grip.
What happens next does make her flinch, of course. As I hold her gaze steadily with mine, I can feel the lowest strand of my segmented warrior band break away and carve its path down my bicep, into the crook of my elbow, and along my forearm, leaving a bloody welt in its path. It spins around both our hands and cuts into the warrior’s wrist, burning its way up her arm until it burrows deep into her bicep, circling it in a ferocious clamp.
Her eyes widen, and she falls back. But she doesn’t falter from there. Her chin comes up, her jaw sets, and her hand redoubles its strength as she grips mine.
“What’s your name?”
“Selena,” she shouts, And I realize the wind hasn’t died down, and that the phoenix is not the only Divh that has entered this plane. The sky is choked with flying creatures, while furred beasts pound the earth as far as the eye can see.
