Nephele points at the center painting, a river winding through the desert, greener than Alexus’s eyes. But it’s a birds-eye view painting, revealing mountains to the west and a stretch of desert to the south.
“Is that the Jade River?” Callan says, but then they look closer, studying the words carved into the wood near the bottom of the painting. “Ah,” they say. “It is.”
“Are you all thinking what I’m thinking?” Zahira says.
Hel laughs. “I’m thinking we let Raina get us the fuck out of this endless journey and breeze our asses to that river,” she whispers. “No matter what the men folk say.”
“Snatch them in the night, Raina,” Jaega says, keeping her voice low. “They can’t stop what they can’t see coming.”
Quiet laughs and snickers travel between us because she’s serious, and I’m very much considering doing exactly that.
When Alexus returns, he scrubs his hand down his dirty face. “He can get us provisions, and we can stay here for the night, in the stables with the camels. No defiling the sacred space.”
A feeling passes through me, and the same look crosses every face. A silent, yet collective refusal. We’re tired. We’re dirty. We’re ready to meet Fia Drumera, and I can get us to the river that lies within Mount Ulra’s shadow. We are not sleeping with camels.
I know Alexus is worried, because this ability with my abyss is such a new and untested thing, but there’s a sureness in me that I can’t explain, same as there was in Aki-Ra. It’s time to start using that gift. I’m not certain where it came from, but I have it for a reason.
When Alexus, Rhonin, and Keth head outside to lead the horses to the stables, leaving us alone, we all look at one another.
“Tonight,” I sign, and they smile. And much to my surprise, they all sign back.
“Tonight.”
Oh, the determination of a woman and her friends.
Once the temple’s attendant and Alexus arrive at the stables with food and two large pails of clean water, we clean up as best we can, then we set to refilling our rucksacks and canteens while the men prepare a small dinner of flatbread and salted snake meat.
It isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever eaten, but we’re eating it in a dung-filled stable that smells like dirty camel and shit. I would give just about anything to be sitting by a fire in the open valley eating Mother’s custard pie and roasted venison and stewed vegetables and… Gods. Warm, mulled cider.
The night is colder and bright with moonlight streaming in through the single window in the stables. We’re surrounded by sleepy-eyed, unsaddled camels, staring at us from their stalls. I’ve never seen a camel until tonight. They’re rather large and extraordinary creatures, but it doesn’t appear that we’re going to have the chance to get acquainted.
As Jaega wraps up the leftover bread and meat, Nephele and I fill canteens. She glances at the men, her eyes telling me to look. They’re laying out our bedrolls on the ground—even Joran—while Callan, Hel, and Zahira make sure to place our rucksacks and weapons near our respective cots so we can carry them with us. But I hadn’t thought about the fact that we will be without bedrolls once we arrive. We’ll have to survive.
With our bellies filled, we lie down, our beds close enough and in a circular pattern that we can reach one another to form a chain. Rhonin is in front of me, and Alexus is behind me, and Nephele behind him. It will work.
The night air tightens with tension. I take a deep breath as Alexus slips his hand around my waist and moves closer to me, settling in. I am not averse to the nearness anymore. I can remember my hate of him, and it still has sharp edges sometimes, but there’s something far more powerful that shadows that now. Besides, the closeness makes my task tonight much easier.
But then he goes so still, and not the kind of still that comes with sleep, but the kind of still that says something is wrong.
Our rucksack and swords and daggers lay between me and Rhonin who happens to be facing me. Alexus reaches past me and pulls one of the swords free with a quiet hiss.
Rhonin opens his eyes, the whites visible in the moonlit night. Smoothly, he frees a dagger.
I don’t hear anything, but then Alexus is on his feet as he shouts, “Vipers! Glamours up! Get your swords!”
As though emerging from shadows, the Dread Vipers who must’ve been lurking outside waiting for us to sleep flood into the stables as we reach for our weapons and lunge to our feet. How they followed us without us knowing, I cannot grasp.
Power crackles through the air, alive as lightning, spiderwebbing along the mud-brick walls, making the camels grunt and bleat and spit.
Before the Dread Vipers have a chance to immobilize his magick, Alexus yells, “Get down!”
A second later, he pours his power into the guards about to rush him.
I turn and throw my arm over my head, and though I don’t see it happen, I feel the pressure in the room change and hear their bodies explode with a horrific squelch. In the ravine, the bits of the destroyed men had hung from trees, the limbs glistening with flesh and shards of bone.
Tonight, we’re wearing the remains of Dread Vipers.
Shaking and drenched in blood and guts, I turn, just as more guards rush into the stables, though they pause at seeing the carnage. I wipe splatters of blood and sinew from my cheek, trying not to be sick when I realize an eyeball is in my hand.
