“In that case, why didn’t they wait for me?”
The maid glances at my leg, then quickly averts her eyes. “There was much to carry, with the candles and vorkhi and prayer dolls. They instructed me to assist you to the swamp, if you’d like?”
“No, I can manage.” I force a smile to ease the maid’s anxious bumbling. It isn’t her fault they presumed to know my own abilities. I tell myself it came from a place of kindness, but the twinge in my leg and the tugging in my arm feel more prominent than ever as I descend to the swamp.
“Ziva? Yatindra?” I call once I reach the root pathways. I don’t know where they set up, but it must be farther down the path, since I can’t see a flicker of light. Only the sheep jostling in their pen bleat in answer.
I pick my way along the bumpy pathway, trying not to choke on the foul swamp air and the stench of soggy wool. The animals are huddled together in the center of their ramshackle pen, blowing and stamping as if I’m a predator.
Every night, one of the shepherds keeps watch, and tonight Iree is on duty. He leans against a tree on the other side of the pen, his head bobbing closer and closer to his chest before it snaps back up and the pattern starts again.
“Iree!” I shout, but he doesn’t stir.“Iree!”I try again. Nothing. If I were a reed panther, the entire flock would be dead. Bultum would have a heyday if he knew his nemesis was sleeping on duty. I consider walking around the pen to wake him, but I save myself the trouble. It’s a long way, and Iree wouldn’t have seen Ziva and Yatindra.
After muttering a curse, I continue edging along the fence line, collecting threads of night to sharpen my vision. Would it have been that difficult to wait for me once they got down here? Or at least make themselves easier to locate?
Unless they don’t want you to find them….
My feet hesitate and unease grips me. For half a second I consider turning back. I can pray by myself. I don’t need to traipse around the marsh for them, especially if they can’t be bothered with basic consideration. But then I spot a flash of movement up ahead, just beyond the sheep pen, and I banish my worries with a shake of my head. Yatindra’s apology was sincere. Even if it wasn’t, she wouldn’t use the Lady and Father to bait me. No one is that blasphemous. I won’t be ruled by suspicion and fear any longer.
“Ziva? Yatindra?”
“Over here!” Yatindra answers, and I exhale with relief. “Ziva is cloaking us in darkness for privacy.”
I frown down at the filaments of night in my hand and give them a little yank. There’s no resistance on the other end. And no matter how I twist the tendrils, Ziva and Yatindra don’t shimmer into focus.
“Where are you?” I demand, stumbling in the direction of Yatindra’s voice.
Without warning, my feet drop out from under me and my shout becomes a scream. My good leg sinks into a hole that’s been hacked into the root pathway, and when I try to catch myself, my bad leg wrenches painfully. I scream even louder as I crash into the lowest rung of the fence.
The plank immediately snaps, and the adjoining posts wobble and groan—the wood too wet and bent, and the construction too quick and shoddy, to withstand the blow. One by one, the posts tumble, the cross-planks falling with them. In the space of a breath, the entire structure collapses.
The frightened herd stampedes past me, charging down the pathway and into the murky night.
Burning skies!
“What have you done?” Iree shouts. He’s wide awake now and on his feet, gaping at me as if I released the animals on purpose.
“It was a t-trap!” I stammer. “Yatindra cut a hole in the pathway, knowing I’d hit the fence!” I gesture to the thigh-deep hole still swallowing my leg.
Iree looks like he wants to murder me as he unties a bullhorn from his hip and fills the sleeping marshlands with three trumpeting blasts.
Lights flare in our barracks. Within seconds, a swarm of shepherds barrel across the platforms toward the call. Sleepy-eyed Namagaans pull back their drapes and squint at the waterfall of frenzied shepherds, but none of them leave their homes or offer help—despite the “goodwill” and “unity” we’ve supposedly been currying.
“Enebish destroyed the fence and the animals escaped!” Iree announces as the first of the reinforcements arrive.
“I didn’tdestroythe fence!” I counter. Even though, technically, I did. But “destroy” makes it sound like I demolished the fence on purpose. “It was a setup!”
No one hears me over panicked shouts and thundering hooves.
Serik stumbles onto the walkway with the rest of the shepherds, and his eyes immediately widen when they land on me in the hole. “What happened? What are you doing down here? Aren’t you supposed to be with Ziva and Yatindra?”
“They lured me into a trap!”
Serik stares at me for an excruciating moment.
“You have to believe me. I swear to you—”
“Not now.”He summons an orb of light, which he holds overhead like a torch, and pulls me out of the hole. Then he jogs into the sticky darkness. “We should head toward the saw-grass clearing,” he calls to the shepherds. “It’s the first place the animals will go—their food source.”
