by Megan Bannen
“What is it?” I ask, a fresh fear taking root in the pit of my stomach.
“Brother Miklos and his men were last spotted in Oltagov.” Ambrus is already flattening the map of the north on the table as Tavik asks, “Oltagov? Where is Oltagov?”
“Here,” Ambrus and I answer in unison, each of us with a finger on the same point only three miles from Dalment.
“Father of death.”
“Time to fly, my birdies,” says Ambrus.
We’re ready to go within minutes. It’s a simple matter of leaving the way we came, only this time there’s no hackney. Cloaked in our pilgrims’ robes, Tavik and I walk a quarter mile down Saint Polova Street and take a right at Market Row, heading straight for the west gate, where, hopefully, Ambrus’s guard friend will wave us through without batting an eye. You’d think we would stick out like a pair of sore thumbs, but Dalment is one of the larger cities in the province, and we blend in far easier than we might have in a smaller town. I pass plenty of foreign faces in this crowd, many of them wearing pilgrims’ robes like us, so no one gives us a second glance. My newfound anonymity is short-lived, however, because once we’re in line to exit the city gate, we see four Knights of the Order a few yards ahead, slapping Ambrus’s guard.
One of them is Brother Miklos.
“Oh, death,” Tavik curses. He takes me by the arm and drags me in the opposite direction. Just before my head turns with the rest of me, Ambrus’s “good lad” spots me, and he points at us.
“You!” Brother Miklos’s deep voice rings out behind us. The word feels like an arrow shot into my back. Tavik and I come to a halt.
“Follow my lead, and do exactly as I say,” Tavik murmurs quietly before he plasters a grin on his face, turns, and calls out, “Brothers!”
He still has me by the arm, only now he escorts me toward the knights. Holy Father.
“Young man.” Brother Miklos acknowledges him while I pull my hood down as low as it will go. “You look remarkably like the killer we’re looking for. A Kantari. Have you seen him?”
Tavik laughs and steps into his Ukrenti accent. “Oh, you northerners. You think all southerners look the same.”
Miklos doesn’t return Tavik’s smile. “And I suppose that’s your ‘wife’?”
I’m tempted to rip my arm out of Tavik’s grasp and make a run for it. I don’t know if he senses my panic, but his hand tightens around my arm as he draws me in close for a fake cuddle. “My little tick,” he calls me in Ukrenti, and if I weren’t about to vomit from fright I’d be impressed that he knows an Ukrenti endearment.
“My sweet wine,” I offer back in Degmari, with an unconvincing smile that no one can see with my head buried in my hood.
They can help you, Gelya, a small but mighty voice shouts in my head even as a larger and mightier voice screams, That’s the man who killed Zofia, you idiot.
I glance up and see Brother Miklos nod at one of his men, the gesture that probably sent an army to destroy Tavik’s town. The knight yanks back my hood, revealing my shorn head. It doesn’t hurt, but there’s a violence to it, a sense of violation just as hurtful as a slap to the face, leaving me as scared and powerless as I was in the Dead Forest all those years ago.
“Your ‘little tick’ is a Daughter of Saint Vinnica,” Brother Miklos’s lackey sneers at Tavik.
Tavik’s smiling veneer transforms into a glare deadlier than the blades he carries beneath his robe. In a voice that could freeze blood, he tells the knight, “Oh, that was a bad idea.”
With unnatural speed he whirls out of his robe, whipping the fabric across the knight’s face. The man reels backward, flinching in pain, a hand coming up to cover his scratched eye as he blindly stabs his sword point in Tavik’s direction. In one motion, Tavik pushes me behind him and dodges the attack, wrapping the man’s arm in the cloak. He twists and pulls, and the man collapses to his knees, screaming in agony as a bone breaks with a nauseating crack.
Tavik’s eyes flash at me. “Run!”
I sprint through the streets of Dalment, weaving through crowds and plowing into anyone who gets in my way. Tavik is hard on my heels, panting behind me.
Until he isn’t.
I slow down to look for him as panicked Dalmenti rush past me, and I find him several feet behind me, fighting Brother Miklos and the other two knights at once. When one of the men swings at his legs, he leaps into the air, higher than any normal boy could. When another slashes at his airborne torso, he bends in midair, flipping all the way around until he lands on his feet, facing them again, swords out and ready. He blocks two blows from two different men while kicking the third hard in the stomach, knocking the knight into a wall.
He fights the way he prays, with his whole body, a beautiful and deadly dance, but the combined skill of three knights is too much. He inches closer to me with each defensive maneuver.
My instincts bellow at me to run as far from Brother Miklos as I can, but while I’ve only known Tavik for two days, I can’t leave him to get cut to ribbons. My eyes land on a weathered brick lying in the littered street. Without a second thought, I pick it up and hurl it as hard as I can at Brother Miklos. When it hits him in the ribs, he cries out and staggers sideways in pain.
Tavik uses the advantage to fall back, but instead of telling me to run again, he slams his right-hand sword into its scabbard and reaches for me. The next minute is a terrifying fog of sight and sound and feeling as Tavik physically moves me wherever he needs me to be while fending off two knights with the Sword of Mercy alone. He rolls me over his back, casts me sideways, catches me before I plummet down a city well, but he’s wearing down fast.
One of the knights takes hold of my cloak and pulls me to him. Tavik lashes out, cutting through the fabric. The next thing I know, Tavik has me pinned against him, my full length plastered to his front as he sweats against my cheek and breathes hard in my ear.
The Sword of Mercy is at my throat.
Brother Miklos regains his footing just in time to call a halt, and the men freeze. A long pause thunders between us, with Tavik gasping in exhaustion and me gasping in terror.
“You wouldn’t,” Brother Miklos pants.
“Would I not?” Tavik seethes in Rosvanian. “What will happen if I open the Mother’s prison here, now?”
“Tavik?” I whimper. For once, my body responds rationally, quaking in fear, while my mind refuses to accept reality. All I can think is He was supposed to be my friend.
“Shut up!” He grips me so hard I can’t draw breath. The blade at my throat presses in, cutting into the skin of my neck.
I trusted him.
First Zofia, now Tavik.
Why did I trust him?
Even now, as he holds a blade to my throat, there’s a part of me that trusts him, the part of me that clings to the moment he vowed to protect my life with the last breath of his body.
Without warning, Tavik charges at the men, pulling me behind him as he slashes his way past the knights. We’re heading straight into the wall of a house. I scream, my body bracing for impact, when Tavik leaps, taking me with him all the way to the roof above us. I have no time to adjust to the new perspective because he’s still running, dragging me behind his madness.
“Tavik!”
“Jump!” he shouts, and I do. My stomach drops as I rise, and now we’re on the next roof over, even higher than the last.
We’re still running, Tavik as sure-footed as a cat and me stumbling, sending roof tiles raining down to the street sickeningly far below. Our breakneck pace is leading us straight to the edge of the building with nothing but the top of the city wall and the earth below us. I scream so loudly, I feel as though I’ve set fire to the inside of my throat.
“Jump!”
His arm wraps around my waist, and we’re flying.
Then falling.
Down to the top of the wall.
Another jump. Tavik’s arm is hard around my middle, and we drop, down and down. The ground rises, and Tavik�
�s whole body wraps me up as we hit the ground, the two of us one body rolling and rolling until we finally come to a dizzying stop.
I’m spread-eagle in the grass, the air knocked clean out of my lungs. Tavik’s face is in mine, sharp, focused, a pinpoint of energy. “Are you hurt?”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Any broken bones?”
I cough, fighting for air.
“Good. Let’s go.”
He pulls me to my feet by the scruff of my cloak and takes off running again, straight for the queue of people waiting to pass through the city gate. Every man, woman, and child in that line gawks at us as if the circus has just arrived.
Tavik grabs one man’s horse by the bridle. “I need this.”
“Um.” But that’s all the man has time to utter before Tavik forcibly removes him from the saddle and leaps up to take his place.
“Hey!” the man protests as Tavik reaches down and pulls me up in front of him.
“Thank you!” Tavik calls back in Rosvanian, and we gallop off to the west, leaving Dalment behind us and nothing but the slimmest hope ahead.
Twenty-Three
We make it to a stable beside a run-down farmhouse before we stop and dismount. I’m not used to riding horses, and I’ve lost all feeling from the waist down. I fall over when my feet hit the ground. Tavik helps me up, but not before he slaps the horse’s rump, sending it running off to the south.
“Come on. We need to hide.”
Thankfully, the stable is empty except for a tabby cat and a cow. My body is so thoroughly out of commission that Tavik has to shove me up the ladder to the hayloft by my bottom, but I’m too shaken by our narrow escape from Brother Miklos to care much about the indignity of it. Once I’m safely stowed away in the loft’s darkest corner, we spend the next hour in silence, Tavik crouched and waiting by the ladder, the Sword of Mercy clutched in his left hand.
Silence is a fresh torture, giving my mind the required space to reconsider and question and doubt as the uncanny presence within me hums, unwilling to be ignored. I can’t tell right from wrong anymore. Is staying with Tavik the right thing to do? Should I have turned myself in to the Order in Dalment when I had the chance? Yet how could I give myself over to the man who murdered Zofia?
An idea strikes me, a plausible answer for Goodson Anskar’s actions—or inaction—the night of the summit. What if there was a coup? What if Brother Miklos wrested command of the Order away from the Goodson? Tavik said Miklos massacred an entire Kantari town, and I witnessed his murder of Zofia with my own eyes. He let assassins slaughter a roomful of men. I can’t believe the Goodson would hurt me, but I can well believe Brother Miklos would. The more I consider this possibility, the more it rings true. For all I know, Goodson Anskar’s position is as precarious as mine. What if he can’t help me?
The sound of the barn door creaking open below cuts through my thoughts and turns my body into a vise tightening with fear as the farmer comes in with his workhorse shortly before dusk. He spends an eternity rubbing the beast down and brushing it out, but I think it’s safe to assume that my screeching anxiety makes time stretch unnaturally. Once the farmer finally leaves, I let the back of my head hit the wall behind me.
“We’re going to be caught, sooner or later,” I tell Tavik bitterly as he scuffles toward me through the hay. He looks worn in the dim light seeping in between the barn’s wooden slats.
“No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are.” And is that such a bad thing? To be caught? To have my choices taken from me? An answer bubbles up from deep inside me, and I don’t know if it comes from myself or from the spirit my body houses. In either case, it’s loud and clear: Yes, that is a bad thing.
Tavik puts the Sword of Mercy back in its scabbard and squats in front of me. “I vowed to keep you safe. Don’t you trust me?”
The cut on my neck stings, reminding me of what he did to me today, and I give him a hard look. “You held a blade to my throat. Again.”
“I was bluffing.”
“Then you essentially told Brother Miklos that I’m the Vessel of Elath.”
“Uh, hello? He’s the Goodson’s right-hand man. He already knew. Why do you think the Order is after us?”
“You don’t know that,” I argue, my theory taking root and growing steadily in my mind.
“Pretty sure I do.”
I sigh as he sits down next to me. I don’t have the energy to debate this with him right now. Eventually, he breaks the silence.
“You saved my life today.”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
“You did. A knight like Brother Miklos only lives that long because he’s a fantastic fighter. If you hadn’t taken him out of commission when you did, I’d be a dead man.” He holds up the ring of his index finger and thumb in front of me.
“This again?” I ask wearily.
“The last time was a bargain. This is an oath. We are going to make the Official Circle Swear of Friendship.” He traces a line around his circle with the index finger of his opposite hand. “You see this? A ring is infinite, no beginning and no end. That’s what I’m offering you.”
“Eternity?”
“Eternal friendship.”
I breathe out a humorless laugh. “You are ridiculous.”
“I’m very serious here.” Irony tinges his voice, letting me know this is all hyperbolic, meant to amuse me. And yet there’s an odd sanctity in the moment, the sense that if I lock my ring with his, I’m attaching a part of myself to him that I can’t take back.
He shakes his circle at me, insistent. “Friends?”
I remember how he knelt before me in reverence as he vowed to keep me safe.
“Gelya,” he says softly.
Not a Daughter. Not a Vessel. Me.
Maybe he can see the girl who lives inside this body after all.
I lock my ring inside Tavik’s, my fingers pale against his. “Friends,” I agree, and as I stare at our intertwined rings, my resolve to leave Tavik when we find the Goodson suddenly feels more like a suggestion than a firm course of action.
Tavik takes both my hands in his and rubs them briskly.
“Um?” I ask in alarm. I’m not used to being touched, and I’m definitely not used to being touched by a boy, friend or not. My stomach flutters in a way that is completely unrelated to the immortal life inside me.
“Your hands are freezing, pal.”
“I’m all right,” I assure him, taking my hands back, even though they’re cold as ice.
I know I might have to leave Tavik eventually. I know I might have to go my own way and let him go his somewhere down the road. But I also know this: given the opportunity, I would throw that brick at Brother Miklos again and again and again.
Tavik promised to protect me. As it turns out, I’d do the same for him.
III.
The Sword
Twenty-Four
According to Ambrus’s map, we’re heading to a safe house in the Pavane Forest, sixteen miles northwest of Dalment. We’re definitely not going to make it that far before daybreak, but hopefully we can get under the cover of trees.
“How much do you trust Ambrus?” I ask Tavik as we trek across a pasture and try not to trip over the sheep.
“More than you do, I think. Look, even if Ambrus is not the sweet old man we thought he was, the Milk Road is our best bet to find the Goodson and get our hands on the Sword. And with a price on our heads—or my head, at least—we don’t have much of a choice now, do we?”
I can’t disagree with that.
A drop of water plinks on my head, followed by another that trickles down my cheek. I turn my face to the night sky and scowl as the raindrops grow fat and plentiful, drenching my skin, making my clothes wet and heavy. Considering everything that’s happened over the past few days, the sudden storm takes on an ominously prophetic tone, as if the thunder is Saint Wenslas shaking his apocalyptic verses at us, shouting, “I told you so!”
Tavik moves thr
ough the muddy fields with sure-footed grace. I, however, slip and slide and trip over every rock in our path and a few sheep as well, mostly because I’m exhausted. Normally, when I use my gift, it takes me an hour or so to recover, but singing The Ludoïd took so much out of me that my body is still sluggish and clumsy. Then again, can I really say I relied on my own abilities? To be honest, I’m not certain what happened in Ambrus’s attic. All I know is that singing The Ludoïd felt good and right when the Father’s Word has only ever felt cold and heavy before. Whatever the case, I’m worn out, and by the time the sky begins to lighten, my right big toe is nothing but a giant bruise, and my legs hate me.
The Pavane Forest evolves from a dark distant blur to an army of oaks, beeches, and—my namesake—gelya trees. Once we’re safe under the canopy and moderately drier as a result, Tavik inexplicably grows more fretful rather than less. “What if we’re wasting all this time moving west, only to find that the Goodson has veered off in a different direction? Or what if the Milk Road loses track of him altogether?”
“The world will not end if we don’t find the Goodson tomorrow,” I tell him wearily.
He looks at me sharply, then drops his gaze. “Help me build a shelter, will you?”
We prop fallen branches against a tree trunk to fashion a rough lean-to and stuff wet leaves into the cracks. The second it’s complete, I crawl inside to sleep, to dream of Zofia and of a slaughtered stag beneath a great tree whose roots give birth to a stream.
I don’t know if Tavik slept beside me, because by the time I wake up, he’s already up and praying. The movements are exactly the same as before, only now the rain makes his skin wet and slick. Once again, his shirt is off, and once again, I can’t tear my eyes away. As he comes out of the logic-defying backbend and sweeps his blades low to the earth, he gives me a full view of his many scars. I have the giddy urge to run my fingertips over his skin, to read him like the embossed text of The Songs sitting on my desk in the scriptorium. Could I sing the song of his body, or would I feel only lean muscle, rough skin, the heat of him?