Zera objected. “I told you before: we don’t have to tell him anything. Let the remnants decay on their own. They’re separated from all of humanity. What harm can they do?”
“You don’t like that the job’s unfinished,” Jentt said to Kreya. He was still scowling at her as if he had a hundred more things he wanted to say, most of them critical of her choices.
“I wish I still believed it was finished,” Kreya said. It didn’t make sense that they could be functioning so well without any maintenance whatsoever. But it couldn’t be Eklor—Zera was right about that—so she was content to let someone elseinvestigate. “If we warn the grand master, he’ll be obligated to look into it.”
Jentt covered her hands with his.
“There are zero ways you can explain without answering questions,” Zera said. “None. Zip. Zilch. You remember Lorn, right? He’ll jail you if you don’t tell him how you know. He’ll burn you if you do. Leave it be and forget what you saw and heard.”
Kreya felt herself still.
What she’dseenwas inhuman soldiers.
What she’dheard...
She’d thought she’d imagined hearing Eklor’s laugh. After all, she’d had hallucinations so often in the past, living alone for so long, that she didn’t trust her own psyche. “What didyouhear? When we were leaving.”
“I heard nothing,” Zera said too quickly, twisting her hands. “The wind.”
“Zera.”
“He had a fucked-up laugh. I remember it. And I thought I heard it, okay? Is that what you want me to say? You want me to admit that I’m still damaged. I look put together, I look like I have it all, I look like I’ve moved on. But no. As badly as I tried to leave it all behind. Eklor. Jentt’s death. You, abandoning all of us. And the aftermath, when everyone wanted to celebrate and I felt like I’d died. Guess it’s still implanted in my subconscious, tearing at me, no matter how much I’ve achieved, and when we were back there at his tower with his atrocities around us again, I hallucinated his laugh. Happy now?” Zera sucked in air but didn’t allow Kreya to speak. “That’s why I don’t want to reopen this wound. It’s over. The war ended. We won. And now we even have Jentt back! Yay! Let the atrocities have the plain, and let me have a future free of those horrors.”
Kreya felt Jentt watching her. He knew her better than anyone, even with the secrets she’d kept from him. He was squeezing her hand as if he knew what she was going to say. Carefully, she said, “I heard his laugh, too.”
“Shared hallucination,” Zera said dismissively.
Kreya shook her head.
“Why not? We shared the trauma. Makes sense we’d share the nightmares.”
“I heard it as we flew from the tower. When did you hear it?”
Zera paced through the cave, and the rag dolls skittered out of her way. “He’sdead.”
Mildly, Jentt twisted her earlier comment back at her. “So was I.”
Zera glared at him. “Kreya and I had this argument before, and she agreed that he’s definitely dead.”
“Before I knew you heard him too!” This changed everything! Couldn’t Zera see that? It was one thing if Kreya had hallucinated his laugh, but if they both—
“Iimaginedhearing him too,” Zera corrected. “Very important difference. He died, his apprentice was caught, and there was no one left to revive him.”
“I don’t know how he did it, but he could have found a way,” Kreya said. He’d done the impossible before. By the bones, she’d done the impossible just now! Jentt was living proof that bone magic could be stretched and bent. “If he wasn’t fully dead when we left him—”
“This is bullshit!” Zera yelled. “You killed him! You were there! And after, Marso confirmed it. He swore he was dead! Even if you flaked out after, Marso didn’t.”
Kreya was about to respond when they heard a sound: voices echoing through the caves.
The villagers,she thought.
And they were close. Much too close. Intent on their own conversation, Kreya, Zera, and Jentt hadn’t been paying enough attention to the sounds in the tower above. She swore silently to herself.
She was too weak to fight, and Jentt was too newly revived to risk. They’d have to flee.
Quickly, without a word, they gathered everything—the linen strips, the knife, the lantern. She scanned the cave. There wasn’t much they could do about the bloodstains on the stone except hope whoever followed didn’t notice them. Without the direct sunlight, the stains faded into the granite.
Kreya opened her coat, and the rag dolls climbed up to the pockets and squeezed themselves inside. She lifted the bird construct onto her shoulder. Catching the attention of Zera and Jentt, she nodded toward one of the tunnels.
