Gaius bowed gravely. “Please be very careful, Petitor Sarai. Kadra just may raze the land should anything happen to you.”
She turned before the tear clinging to her lashes could fall. Then, she headed to Aoran Tower to pack.
Cato was a genial man most days, iron-gray hair brushed back and deep smile lines on either side of his mouth, but he looked practically apoplectic silhouetted in the doorway to Kadra’s bedroom.
“Wrath’s blade, you can’t believe the rumors that this is your fault?” He stormed in as she shoved a tunic into her satchel with too much force. “Don’t let them drive you out of town! Fight back—” He caught sight of her face, and his eyes widened.
Her throat seemed to have swollen shut. “Iamfighting,” she croaked. “The Order’s about to wreak havoc with this, Cato. Only the north hasanswers.”And I don’t know what to do if it doesn’t.She pressed her lips together, knowing that she’d sob if she said it.
Cato leaned against the doorframe. “Drenevan won’t like it.”
“He’s needed here.” She secured her satchel and fought the burning behind her eyes.Twenty-five days there. Twenty-five back. But I can’t protect him from here.
“Cato, you’re an Illusionist, aren’t you? A strong one?”
He nodded. Concern lined his kindly face.
“Watch over him. There’s something greater than us at work here, and it might be targeting him.” She slung her packed satchel across her body. “Please don’t let him take any risks.”
“Oh, my dear.” He gathered her in for a hug, and she almost bawled at the fatherly way he patted her head. “He’ll be alright. He’s weathered a lot, our Drenevan.”
But this is new, and it isn’t the only battle he’s fighting.Holding herself together, she hugged Cato back and left.
Mounting Caelum, she glanced back, gripping Kadra’s key as the gate swung shut. One last glimpse at the black tower and its obsidian pillars. Her heart climbed up her throat and stuck her in an aching mass. Then, she rode to a marketplace of corpses.
Healers, vigiles, and loved ones patterned the snow-powdered ground with bloodstained steps in a dance of desperation and defeat.
Sarai strode quickly toward the makeshift tent the Tetrarchy had set up around a table in the marketplace. Scorched beetle corpses crunched under her feet. The surrounding mob spewed accusations and threats as she passed, but all that penetrated was the bitter knowledge that she had no right to offer anyone consolation. She had no answers, and Death had set her free twice and released Kadra from the afterlife’s grasp. What right did she have to kneel among the grieving and tell them that sheunderstood?
Some yards from the tent, Anek folded their arms while arguing with a cloaked woman. “I understand, but the Tetrarchy is presently preoccupied.” Catching Sarai’s eye, they wearily nodded in greeting.
“Temperance give me strength. I have information they need!” the woman snapped in a distinct northern accent, vowels elongated in comparison to Arsamea’s softer ones.
A Komis accent, just like Clanlady Dalvia.Sarai thought back to the other woman’s quiet desperation. “Is this about the plague?”
Anek’s conversant shoved back the hood of her birrus with a frustrated grunt. Wary eyes stared back at her from a heart-shaped face framed by short, dark hair. She looked around the same age as them. Anek let out a garbled sound, eyes climbing up all six feet of her, then down again. Something that looked like worship slackened their jaw.
Sarai hid a laugh.Cassandane has competition.
“Petitor Sarai.” She bowed. “I’m Méherre, a Bridger. Weeks ago, I was hired to Bridge some asshole noble named Lucanus to Edessa, who certainly didn’t inform me that he was infected with the same plague that’s decimated my city. I just heard that he’s caused an outbreak. Let mehelp.”
Recovering, Anek subtly angled their armilla to show Saraizosta’s glint. They’d been Examining Méherre. “Bridger make excellent assassins,” they muttered under their breath before turning to the woman. “Why do you want to help us when Edessa has been no friend to the north?”
“Is anyone?” Méherre threw up her hands. “Yes, I abhor the Tetrarchy’s focus on the south and Edessa to the exclusion ofeverythingelse. But all of us could perish at this rate. My city, Komis, has been sealed to outsiders because of the beetle plague. None are allowed in save by the Praetor’s order. Our time is running out. We need help!”
Our hourglass runs low. A reckoning has followed in your wake.Sarai flinched when Junia’s words reared in her head.
Méherre glowered at their silence. “If you think that I’m trying to harm the Tetrarchy, let me swear here and now that I have no intention of hurting them or either of you. The north has little respect for you lot, but killing you does not serve my purposes.”
Anek’s defeated breath said that she was telling the truth. “We could use your aid,” they admitted. “We’re equally at a loss.”
Méherre’s expression fractured. “Alossis twenty thousand bodies atop a pyre outside city walls, Petitor Anek. Not a handful of privileged lives and people who scream of omens in every other breath.”
Sarai went cold.Twenty thousand dead in the north?“We didn’t know.”
Méherre’s sidelong glance said that she doubted that the Tetrarchy would have cared even if they had.
“A loss is a loss, regardless of number,” Anek said pragmatically, unblocking the way to the tent. They squinted at Sarai. “Come to think of it, why are you dressed like that?”
