Ben craned to see.“Push harder!”
“I am,” Samuel gritted out.I heard a crunch of ice-hardened snow and the snap of a branch, but the barrier remained in place.“Stand back, both of you.”
I shuffled away and Ben skulked, an expression of quiet disgust on his face.At first I thought it was directed towards Samuel or thedoor, then I saw the way he shifted his bad arm and glanced back down the passageway.His eyes were pained and haunted beneath his perpetual glaze of anger.
Pity tugged at me.
Samuel slammed into the door with a crack, a moan, and a fresh rain of deadfall.The door relinquished another few inches, and he finally squeezed through.I made to go after him, but Ben beat me to it.He elbowed me aside and pushed through the gap.
I swallowed my irritation and followed into the cool of the night.“We need to find Charles.”
“I see a road,” Ben called from a pace away.His half-shadowed form moved and, carelessly, let go of a pine branch.It immediately smacked me in the face.
I let out a garbled curse and just resisted the urge to throw the lantern at him.My nerves were beyond frayed now, the pain of Adalia’s attack on Tane lingered in my bones, and the stab of a thousand needles on my rapidly cooling skin made my eyes water.
“Watch out,” he said belatedly.
“I am not your enemy,” I shot back, still grasping the lantern like a weapon.With effort I took hold of myself and held up the dragonfly-filled glass.“We can’t risk this light, not out here.”
Sam nodded and I unlatched the lantern’s small door.The dragonflies flew free, swirling around us in eddies of gold.They converged on Samuel for a breath, and, despite the tension of the night, I was not impassive to the eerie awe of that scene— Samuel in his dark monk’s robe, framed by pine boughs and girded with snow, surrounded by a swirl of tiny, Otherborn creatures.The Sooth’s expression was stalwart, with a quiet fatigue and determination.
Then the dragonflies streamed away into the trees, darkness resumed its hold, and Sam and I joined Ben on the road.We set off at a jog, or as much of one as our injuries and the rutted, crusty snow afforded.
What felt like an eternity later—minutes riddled with tension and straining ears, and an unsettling lack of sound drifting from the monastery—we found Charles.He had already retrieved our stashed weapons and readied a stolen quartet of horses, which we dispersed to.
“Sam, will they be tracking us in the Other?”Charles asked, setting his musket across his knees as he pulled up his collar and tugged down his sleeves against the cold.Dawn was breaking, and a morose twilight spilled through the trees behind him, throwing his haggard face into partial silhouette.“Enough other monks have fled that our trail will be hard to find, at least with a natural eye.”
Samuel shook his head.“Yes.Inis Hae was there, the Sooth the mage at the creek mentioned.We came into contact in Tithe, and it is him that has been tracking me all along.”
“I may have killed him,” Ben stated.“I certainly tried.”
That failed to console me, not least because of Ben’s callousness towards his actions.Still, I couldn’t help but envy the simple, uncomplicated way he accepted his violence.
Images of the soldiers flickered through my head again, accompanied by flashes of terror, satisfaction, and anger so deep, so fierce, I’d been blind with it.
Charles nudged his horse into movement.“If Hae has your scent, you should wear Mary’s talisman.I know there are risks to you using Sooth talismans too much, but—”
“Either way, he can track us.Our best chance is to claim what lead we can.”Samuel glanced at his brother.“Though I hope you did kill him.”
My horse came up alongside Charles, and we exchanged a look of veiled uncertainty.Then, knowing my part to play, I began to hum.I drew the winds to me gently, tasting them.The varied possibilities of spring were all within reach, and I saw what they could be.
A storm of deadly ice.
Sam went on, “I have lost sight ofHart.The last I saw of him, he was still being escorted east, presumably to Ostchen.”
The gathering winds scudded around me, sensing my distress.I snatched at them again, singing low words now—a child’s lullaby, the only thing my exhausted mind could produce.
Tane felt my hopelessness.We will escape Mere, she told me, the familiarity of her speech an ineffective balm.
“How could you lose the ship?I thought only ghistings could affect your sight,” Charles asked.
“Any concentration of Otherborn creatures will,” Samuel hedged.
“Including a fleet of ghisten ships,” Ben said, the word like a stone dropped down a long, dark well.“Like the Mereish Fleet.In Ostchen.”
“All roads lead there,” Samuel concluded ominously.He twisted in the saddle to survey us.“I cannot abandonHartand the crew, and the Uknaras.Besides, if I struggle to see into Ostchen, Hae will too.It will be simple for us to disappear in a city full of mages and ghistings.Would you all agree?”
His question was weary, irritated, with a hint of beseeching.I knew that tone.He was driven towards his duty asHart’s captain but hated to risk us.
