Thankful to be alone at last, she washed and dressed in a fresh tunic and pants, cleaning her leathers before she returned to the tent she shared with Revna. After polishing her sword, she climbed into her bedroll and lay staring at the ceiling, toying with the gold rosary beads she had slipped off Jevin’s wrist.
People thought of cons as long, elaborate schemes, full of detailed steps and daring moves, but a con could be as simple as telling a good lie or framing a scene in order to craft the story you wanted. It could even be as straightforward as seizing an opportunity of distraction—say, a mug of ale flying at someone’s face—in which to act.
There were some things she could not stop herself from doing, even in her near-catatonic state. Her heart kept beating, her lungs kept breathing, and her mind kept running through cons. Tomorrow she would wake and face another hunt. Her sword would carve new flesh, and she would wash the creature’s blood from her hands andreturn to a camp full of people who did not trust her and whose cause she did not believe in. Again and again, day after day.
Sleep. Wake. Hunt. Sleep. Wake. Hunt.
It had become the rhythm of her life, and she had fallen into it with the tenacity of a mule, drawn along by its beat to place one foot in front of the other. It got her through the day, then the week, and soon another year would pass. Another year still alive.
Another year closer to freedom.
It was a poor attempt at fulfilling the promise she and Loraya had made to each other, but Kasira would not have survived twenty years in prison, and that was exactly where she would be without the Malikinar. She had no choice, no life, nothing but that rhythm. She fell asleep to it.
Sleep. Wake. Hunt. Sleep. Wake. Hunt.
Survive.
CHAPTER 2
KASIRA
KASIRA WOKE WITH A SCREAM ON HER LIPS.
It was several moments before her mind caught up to her eyes, and in those protracted seconds between nightmare and wakefulness, she was back in her cell in Belvar, the walls too close, the stale air too thin. Then her vision resolved into the sloping outline of Revna’s slumbering form, the deep rumble of her snore filling the tent.
It wasn’t the first time her dreams had woken her. She hadn’t slept through the night since before Belvar, when the woman beside her had been a thief so clever Kasira had spent her teenage years desperately chasing her skill. Back then, it was so easy to believe that nothing would ever change. Now she knew that worlds could collapse on the turn of a wind.
With her heart beating painfully against the cage of her chest, Kasira rolled out of her bedroll and donned her boots, slipping silently out into the light of a harvest moon. A slurring voice emanated from a nearby tent, fighting its way through the garbled final refrains of “In the King’s name, the beasts we will slay.” The camp was quiet otherwise, the last revelers from the night’s victory celebration drunk on watered-down ale and passed out on their bedrolls.
Anywhere else in Kalthos, such debauchery would have been condemned, but not among Haidra’s chosen. Born from a group of Haidrin priests when the religion flowed south, the Malikinar’s rankshad swelled over the past several decades, now firmly rooted beneath the crown’s military despite their church ties. Kasira was convinced half the Malik only joined up for the lax restrictions, tired of being told they couldn’t drink or swear or fight lest they tarnish their souls.
She started walking, but it wasn’t long before her breath began to quicken with nerves, and she slid into the Isherwood. Sometimes, the openness of the sky made her feel as though she were drowning. She had spent so many years locked inside a cell that cramped spaces made her nervous, but even worse were the ones that felt as endless in their vastness as the sea.
This isn’t real.She summoned the familiar refrain as she walked.This is only temporary.
She made it all of thirty yards before she reached the bodies, still stacked in a pile and waiting for the Paratal to set them alight in tomorrow’s Burning. The Alkatirs’ white-furred limbs lay bent at awkward angles, feathered wings snapped like paper kites. She covered her nose against the stench, unable to look away from the open, staring eyes of the dead beasts.
The orphanage’s priests had drilled into her that beasts were the manifestation of human sin. That when one trespassed against Kalish law, when they lied or cheated or stole, their sin led to the birth of another beast. The only way to purify one’s soul was through dedication to Haidra, or by killing beasts as part of the Malikinar. Only then, once the world had been purified of sin, would their goddess return to them in the flesh for the Final Forgiveness.
Never mind that the Library’s international laws permitted killing beasts only in defense of human life. If anyone asked, the Kalish government would spin some story about how the pride had attacked a town, and there had been no time to call for help, but everyone would know it for the cleansing that it was.
Looking at the corpses before her, graceful even in death, Kasira felt anything but clean.
Something rustled in the brush, and Kasira stilled. A creature barely smaller than her slunk from the trees, the moonlight catching on a sleek white body and a single golden eye, the other a ravaged mess.
The Alkatir cub.
The beast sniffed the pile of corpses, making a pained keening sound.
“Hush,” Kasira hissed. “They’ll hear you.”
The cub turned on her, snarling and trying to lift its wings to look bigger, but one remained limp at its side.
Kasira stepped toward it, arms spread wide. “Go!” She clapped once, hard, and the cub scurried back into the forest.
“Kasira?” called a slurring voice.
A broad-shouldered form detached itself from the shadows. Commander Dessen’s usually stiff gait was loose from the mylak he indulged in too freely. One of the few magical artifacts that the Library deemed safe not to confiscate, the enchanted wine tasted different to anyone who drank it. She suspected Dessen would say his tasted of beast blood and good Kalish steel, his possession of the wine a secret as open as the grave behind her, as he often shared it with Malik he favored.
