“Quite an exchange. Power that’ll drive me mad when alive, and an eternal contract to work after death.”
The god laughed, short and pitiless. “Death would bore you. Who are you if not a politician? You have no purpose in the quiet. You need the next war, the next enemy.”
“I have both.”
“You will lose against them without me.” Wrath’s grin exposed four rows of teeth this time. “I will return, mortal. When you are ready to beg.”
Kadra inclined his head. “As you’ve just done.”
Wrath’s eyes kindled seconds before he vanished in a screech of warping metal.
Kadra paused and turned. He examined the tangled knot of iron that had once been the gate to Aoran Tower. The gods, he decided, were a headache.
Yet, Wrath had been more forthcoming than he might have realized.
There is someone here who shouldn’t be.
That the culprit was in the city meant they were trapped by Cassandane’s edict that none could enter or leave. They would be running out of places to hide. They’d already come out to engage him today.They didn’t want me to interrogate that hunter.
The spill of blood always meant war and the start of a game. There were only six questions to ask each time: Who were the victims. Who orwhat did they know. What did they do. Where and when did they die. How. The more one killed, the harder it became to muddy the answers to those questions every time. There was no avoiding the creation of a pattern.
This one was a jagged thing of blood and bone. He saw it straining to coalesce. It had begun in the north, and the north held the key. Sarai would find it. As for him… his spine burned with every step into Aoran Tower. He uncorked four bottles of wine, sloshing the crimson liquid into a glass, and leaned against his desk with a cruel smile.
He would play the game.
Seventh day of the Month of Breath, first month of the newyear, fifteen days after Sarai’s departure
Homecoming was a bittersweet thing.
Sarai couldn’t call Arsamea her home any more than a blade could call an anvil “father.” It had only borne her as she had formed. She had grown despite it, not of it.
And yet, this still felt like homecoming.
It had taken fifteen days to reach Arsamea from the port town of Sal Flumen. Bridgers could only open Bridges, also called portals, to places they had already visited, and Méherre had only ever been as far north as Sal Flumen. The resulting lengthy ride up the mountain had been a test of their mounts’ endurance and the southern-born vigiles’ tolerance for cold. She didn’t know how the Academiae’s assessors—especially a drunken Telmar—made the trek every year.
Sarai dismounted from Caelum and held the mare’s reins as she trudged through the snow. The Month of Breath turned Arsamea into a sea of the softest white. It draped the stone houses, knee high at its lowest and piled as tall as she was on the sides of the village’s lone street.
And she knew this too. How cold Cretus’s shed would get in the winter. How much the men would drink and the hundreds of cups she would have to clean and polish every night. Her feet traced the path to Cretus’s tavernwith such ease that she feared for a moment that the last eleven months had been a dream. So much had changed. So much stayed the same.
Here, in Ur Dinyé’s most remote village, time held still. The comings and goings of Tetrarchs, gods, and plagues meant nothing to the good folk here, so long as they got their grain, vegetables, and tallow and hoarded it while their less fortunate starved. That Marus had sent for her meant that something had thrown this gentle balance balance off kilter.
“Why does he call himself ‘Chieftain’?” a half-frozen vigile called over the howling wind. “Thought we did away with those titles hundreds of years ago.”
“Arsamea enjoys clinging to the past,” she said dryly. “In more ways than one, if you see how they treat the womenfolk.”
One of the women among the vigiles scowled. “Are you certain you don’t want us to come with you?”
Sarai liked them all immensely, but something in her rebelled at the thought of them seeing the reality of her origins. “Thank you, but I’ll manage.” She softened the refusal with a smile. “These folk aren’t a pleasant sort.”
“I’ve always wondered if they really do smell of goat.” Méherre trudged through a snowdrift with the natural ease of a northerner.
Sarai smiled despite her disquiet. The Bridger had largely kept to herself during the trek up the mountain, but had a welcome dry wit, wore no masks and couched nothing in fawning terms. It was hard not to like her.
The vigiles fenced the tavern while Sarai tied Caelum under its awning. Her hand tremors made a mess of the knot, but it didn’t have to hold. She didn’t trust this place enough to stay the night.
A blur of candlelight peered through the frozen windowpanes. Voices drifted past the door. They stopped when Sarai knocked. A familiar, heavyset man threw it open. Her gaze trailed up his white-flecked beard to his small eyes, glittering with dislike.
“You’re here,” Marus said after a moment.
