“What?”
“You look sick.”
“Oh.” Yemi thought about telling her right then, about the things that led her to Hurand, the way blood triggered her to… Well, she could spin it as greatness, perhaps. How it made her a better fighter, an asset in the danger to come. “It’s this ride,” she said instead. “I feel like a bowl of water being sloshed around up here.”
“You’re not thirsty, are you? For tea, maybe?”
“No,” Yemi replied.For something else, perhaps.
Cutter called them all to a halt on the edge of a cliff overlooking a steep climb down into a thick green forest. The ocean was a thin line disappearing into a hazy horizon beyond it. Somewhere in all of the green was Holicrane.
“The amblers will catch the light. We continue from here on foot,” said Cutter.
“Oh, thank fuck,” Yemi said, extricating herself from the metal beast. What she could feel of her legs was jelly. A climb wasn’t ideal.
“Don’t suppose I could rideyoudown the mountain, Cutter?” she asked, collecting her things.
He turned with a raised eyebrow and a glimmer of a smile. “Ten years and a hundred pounds ago? Absolutely.”
“A hundred pounds off you or me, old man?”
His laugh was warm. A sound she’d missed. It made the others smile as well. “Come on,” he called. “Take it slowly. We need your skull intact when we reach the bottom. Shiro and I will go on ahead to scout. Ennova knows the way.”
Nova nodded.
“My men take their orders from you,” Shiro declared.
“Understood,” said Nova.
“Obé Selah, they’ll be happy to help—”
“No need,” Selah snapped, yanking her hand from the careful grip of one of the Gold Guard and straightening her back. “I’ll get there before you.”
Yemi and Nova glanced at each other just long enough to hear the snap, and when they looked back, Selah was gone, leaving the puzzled soldier in her wake.
As they began their descent, Yemi replayed in her mind the gibberish spell Ursla had whispered into her ear. Selah could have gone anywhere, or nowhere at all. She could have been on the breeze, waiting for her to utter a betrayal or an unkind word. Wherever she was now, Yemi decided, she’d better be at the house when they got there.
A series of totems carved into trees would ordinarily have directed them to the manor house. The Swan King had had them installed for his son, the Stag King, who in his youth had a habit of wandering off in search of, well, stags. The same animal appeared on the surface of ancient pines with directions to the next tree toward the interior coded into its antlers so the young Qorrea could find his way home. As it was tonight, the forest’s canopy was too thick for moonlight to make out the worn symbols, and they carried no lanterns to avoid giving themselves away. And so Nova guided them from some memory, a series of lessons burned into her mind like so many other things Cutter had taught her in preparation for becoming Yemi’s guardian.
Everything Nova did, every sacrifice she’d ever made, every task and skill she’d ever mastered in order to be by Yemi’s side, seemedmore pronounced when weighed against the secrets Yemi was keeping from her. Feeling awed by her was one thing. The embarrassment—shame, maybe—of not being awed sooner was another.
And then there was the latent dread of the hunger returning, of being forced into a fight where she would become something else. Something unlovable and unstable. In front of the one she loved.
Please let the house be empty.
Spots of warm light appeared in the interstices of tree trunks maybe two hundred yards ahead. Nova halted and issued a soft, two-toned whistle, and the footfalls of the Gold Guard fanned around them stopped as well. They drew toward her, and together they all crouched behind a low thicket.
“Did Cutter turn on every light in the house?” Yemi whispered.
“Unlikely,” Nova replied gravely. She licked her lips and whistled a second, more elaborate whistle, more like a bird call than an obvious signal.
They listened in the thick quiet until a similar whistle was returned.
“That’s an ‘advance with caution.’ Someone’s here,” she sighed and got back to her feet. “Single column. On me.”
Shit,Yemi thought.
As she followed, the lights became windows. They were approaching between the looming manor house itself off to the right and the smaller staff house on their left. Between the two buildings, moonlight glimmered off the tops of a pair of packards. A lot of someones were here.
