“Pigshit.”
His eyebrows raised.
“You don’t give a fuck if Frosttaken drain every town, now tell me the truth.”
He grinned, amusement dancing in his eyes. “Believe it or not, I really do.” He looked up at the night sky. “Some things aren’t meant to roam, Amarya.”
That feeling I'd felt in my chest for weeks, the pull and the surge and the column in the dark with its slow, patient pulse.
“You really think it started from up there?” I asked.
“I think it started from somewhere, and that's the only direction I haven't been able to look.”
I looked at my bound hands. At the dark beyond the hollow. At Vorn, crouching in front of me with his very non-villainous reasons for taking me. Was he a bad man? Kidnapping and holding women hostage suggested he was, but I still wasn’t sure he wasbad. Right now, hewasdesperate, which was different. Dangerous in different ways.
“If I find your pass,” I said carefully. “You take me to the community, we establish whether they're alive or not, and then you let me go?”
“Yes.”
“Unharmed.”
“You have my word.”
I thought about how much Vorn's word was worth in light of the recent evidence. Then I thought about the column, the tracks in the snow, and the creature that had come from the north to visit a source point. I thought that whatever was happening in Crystallese, with monsters of myth moving freely over the snow, had a direction, and that direction was north.
I was already north and already involved, whether anyone had asked my permission or not.
“Alright,” I said.
Vorn looked at me. “That was easier than expected.”
“Don't mistake me being a practical person for being a willing one,” I told him flatly. “You kidnapped me. Now, I'm going because I want to know what's up there.Notbecause you took me.”
His mouth moved. Not quite a smile. “Fair enough, Trailfinder. If that makes it easier for you.”
He stood and moved away, and I sat in the hollow with my bound hands and the cold pressing in and the stars sharp and clear above the rock formations, and I thought about Nicco, andwhat his face would have looked like when he found Larana taken down, and what he was going to do about it.
He was going to follow.
And not because he cared about me, or whatever Vorn assumed.
I knew that with a certainty that had nothing to do with logic. He was going to follow because I was useful, andexceptionally usefulwas not something he was going to leave in the hands of Vorn's people if there was another option.
I just didn't know how far behind he was. Or how much time I had before the pass was found, and I took us through it.
I looked across the night. Two days, Vorn had said. I suppose I'd better start looking for the trail before things got any worse.
I stood. “Vorn, untie my hands, and let’s get to work.”
His grin shouldn’t have unsettled me, but it did.
When I got out of this, I really needed to think about a new line of work.
Chapter 27
Findinga trail was the same in the dark as in the light if you knew what to look for.
My brother Karlus had told me that years ago, crouched in the snow outside our village, his hand flat against the ground and his eyes scanning everything, making me do the same until I understood what he meant. Not seeing the obvious trail.
