No movement. Whoever had done this was long gone.
Linn ducked out through the thicket. A mud road appeared beneath her boots, wet from the mist. The village, she now saw, was no more than a cluster of clay cottages and straw huts, tucked between the folds of this mountain.
She pulled on a piece of fabric dangling from her chi and held it over her nose and mouth as she walked through. Burnt pieces of debris and rubble littered the path. Entire structures had collapsed, and the village was still as death.
She wasn’t far from the sea, where earlier she’d seen theCyrilian ships docked, sails glistening pale as fish bellies in the water. She had the strongest feeling they had everything to do with the ravaged town before her.
Linn heard it before she felt it. A groan; at the same time, the smallest intake of breath against her winds. It came from the inside of a half-collapsed hut.
She hobbled forward, ignoring the sharp streaks of pain up her injured calf. The entrance of the hut had caved in on itself, leaving only a small hole. Gritting her teeth, Linn began to dig. She scrabbled at the rubble until, with a gasp, she freed the last piece.
She leapt through.
In the darkness, there was only the smell of smoke, and a gentle pulsing in the air: the push and pull of breathing.
Linn touched a hand to the hilt of her dagger strapped to her hip. She’d barely taken a step forward when she heard it. A man’s voice so soft, so hoarse, it might have been the rustle of the evening breeze.
“Shik’shei tai?”
The words drifted through her mind like wisps of smoke, the sounds so familiar, the syllables curling in a way she hadn’t heard in nearly ten years, the vowels lilting in a pattern that was song.
Who is there?
She swallowed. Wetted her lips. “Ke’mei’ra rin,” she replied.AKemeiran person.Her tongue twisted clumsily around her home language. It tasted bittersweet, sharp with nostalgia. “I am here to help.”
A pause. And then: “I beg you.”Kui’kui-nen.
Linn approached. It was difficult to tell in the darkness, but it seemed a wooden beam from the roof had fallen, pinning theman beneath. It was a miracle he’d survived at all, she thought as she felt along the structure.
“This may hurt,” she advised, bending and wrapping a firm grip around the pole. Then she heaved.
Her calf seared with pain as the muscles clenched; she thought she felt warmth dripping down her breeches anew. With every ounce of her strength, she pushed.
The wooden beam moved. Slowly, painstakingly, it yielded.
Linn staggered, clenching her teeth against the pain in her calf. Cold sweat broke out over her back. Her leg was screaming.
She leaned forward and felt in the darkness for the man. Her hands closed around a skinny arm, and then a second. She pulled, and then, slinging the man’s arm over her own aching shoulders, stumbled out of the hut.
The twilight had shifted to true night. Between the clouds, the moon poured silver onto the earth, turning the world monochrome. White was the mourning color in Kemeira, and looking around at the bleached cottage walls, black burns dripping down them like blood, Linn thought the Kemeiran gods might be remembering the dead.
She turned to her rescue. Small but lithe, he sat in the middle of the mud road. His hair was the color of clouds flecked with snow; he looked old enough to be a grandfather, an elder. He clutched his midriff, where a dark stain crept across a coarse cotton robe.
“What happened here?” Her voice was quiet, but it cracked like a whip in the stillness around.
The elder looked up. “They came,” he said simply.
“Who?”
“The pale-faces. Hair yellow as straw.” For a moment, helooked distant, as though caught in a memory. “On ships with sails like clouds.”
“Cyrilians.”
His head still tilted to the sky, the man gave a nod. “They took the Temple Masters,” he continued in a rasp. He massaged his abdomen with a hand, eyes closed. “And they ransacked the bookhouse.”
“What for?”
This time, the old man’s gaze turned to her. Though he bore the placid expression of a Kemeiran god, his eyes were the steel of daggers, midnight-colored like her own. She hadn’t realized how long it had been since she’d gazed into a face like hers.
