“Rested?” Cutter grunted.
“Something like that. Where’s Nova?” she asked, the words carving their way from her dry throat.
“She’ll be back. Went out for supplies.”
“Is that safe?”
“She can handle herself. There’s chicken. Eat. Get some more water. We leave when she gets back.”
She hungrily plucked at the half chicken resting on the day’s newspaper. It tasted like smoke but was in that moment the best thing she’d ever eaten.
Cutter was tinkering with his spear, the tip newly cleaned but cracked and absent the lava-orange glow of its activated state.
“How’s the spear?” she asked between bites.
“Better.” He used his battle glove to ratchet up its heat by rotating a key column in its staff until he was sure it wouldn’t spark, then turned it off again. “Could use a date with a blacksmith, but that can wait. Just glad it didn’t blow up in my hand.”
“It would’ve blown up?”
“Oh yeah. When we first got these, your father and I went on this spree to see what all we could cut through. We took down trees for firewood, ran through all the targets at the training yard, sawed a muzzle off a cannon, that kind of thing. Your father took his to some stone at the quarry and cracked it down to the core. Put it to the side maybe twenty minutes later to go get a drink, and it exploded just leaning against a wall. Your mother lit him up for almost blowing himself to pieces.” Cutter chuckled. It was nice to see him smile.
“That’s why there are only two?”
“Yeah, she didn’t want anyone else blowing themselves up on a battlefield. Your dad made sure he got a new one before they shut the program down, though. Half genius, half madman, always.” He twirled the spear, swiping the tops off a line of wildflowers at the edge of the clearing.
Yemi’s own smile faltered as she imagined the ghosts of both her parents wandering a home that was no longer theirs, the braziers to her mother’s monument going unlit for the first time. “Did my mother ever mention a run-in with the Obé?” she asked Cutter. “It would have happened around the time my grandmother died.”
“Not to me. Why?”
“She revealed herself to me. I was outside lighting the braziers to Mother’s monument, and she appeared. She introduced herself and offered a warning. Something about my time being short. She said she’d told my mother the same thing back when they met.”
Cutter frowned. “No specifics in this warning?”
“No, she was vague. But she offered her help with whatever the threat was. I declined—”
“Tactfully, I’m sure.”
“—and she disappeared right before the bridge exploded.”
Cutter thought a moment, allowing the river and the crackling of their fire to fill the silence. “The Drakes have never exactly been devout. I can’t imagine them working with an Old God.”
“Well, there’s something else. When I was fighting Dahlia, there was a moment where her eyes went black, hollow like two pits. And she was impossibly strong.”
“She could have been on drugs,” said Cutter, even though he sounded like he didn’t quite believe it. “Not everyone is cut out for the gore of battle. She may have needed something to get her through it.”
It was possible. She’d heard stories of the things war did to the mind. The toxic herbs and tinctures fighters used to key themselves up to fight or rid themselves of the memories could only be considered worse if you’d never known a battle. But somehow this didn’t feel like that.
“No,” Yemi said thoughtfully. “This reeked of magic.”
“So you’re thinking the Obé knew something about the attack? Orchestrated it, even?”
“I’m thinking when we were considering the Drakes being backed by a foreign entity, we didn’t considereveryone.”
The grass rustled behind Cutter, and he tensed until the sound was followed by the whistling of a cardinal call. Before long, Nova was upon them, a packed rucksack slung over her shoulder. She groaned as she put it down and began to unpack it.
“Found us a friend. Here. Coats,” she panted, tossing them eachsomething dark, woolly, and fur lined. “Shirts without holes in them. Skins for water. We each have three days of bread and cheese, so we don’t have to stop anywhere.”
“Any trouble?” Cutter asked.
