“I was wondering about that,” he said. Perhaps it was just the dry nature of the Badlands, but it seemed like the battle had happened a long time ago.
She walked across Baezin’s Road, through the dead trees, pausing over each ominous blood spot.
“These are days old. Like the horse,” she said, her hand lightly touching one. They had passed the mount she had brought down with her Ringblade during his escape. It had been long dead, eyes sunken, skin tight, though not a single fly had come to feed on it. It had been damned eerie. “At least three days, probably more. It could be twice that,” she said.
“We were only in the Dead Woods for half a day,” Grei said.
She looked at him strangely. “Indeed? I lay in that meadow for much longer, or so it seemed. Did you ever see the sun?” she asked.
All he could remember from the Dead Woods was the shining white trees. The smell of the towering pines. The presence of the spirits.
“You’re saying we lost time,” he said, and he thought about the Forest Girl and the slink seven years ago. He had aged a year and had no memory of it. His stomach rumbled. “Did you ever feel hungry in there?” he asked
She shook her head, then glanced at the hot sun overhead.
He cleared his throat. “Well, I’m going. If it was more than half a day, there is even less time to waste. I have to find Adora.” He didn’t want to spend any more time with Selicia than he had to. She could practice her oath to obey him by leaving him alone.
“We must hunt soon,” she said.
He wanted to tell her no, but his stomach rumbled again at the suggestion.
“Okay,” he said. As he thought of it, he realized that would work even better. Wherever they hunted, he’d make sure he escaped her, and that would be the last he would have to watch his back.
Selicia rose to her feet and moved toward him, and he stepped away. She acted as if she didn’t notice, continued past him along Baezin’s Road. “We will find no food here.”
He fell in line behind her, and they walked for the rest of the day, emerging from the Badlands just as the sun slipped behind the horizon, plunging the world into a fading purple light. Selicia took them off the road and over the tall grass to the north. The stars came out, growing brighter as the sky darkened. The fields stretched forever under the scant silvery light.
“This is where it gets dangerous for us,” she said. “But we are almost to a place we can rest.”
“I’m fine,” he said, though his stomach felt like a hollow log. He was dizzy with hunger.
A black shadow suddenly blocked out the starlight, and an enormous shape slid overhead. Grei flinched and stepped back, but there was nowhere to go. It was an enormous chunk of floating rock! The thing was larger than the delegate’s palace, perhaps larger than the entire city of Fairmist. Selicia took hold of his arm to steady him.
“What is it?” he said, wondering how he hadn’t seen this thing from miles off.
“Surely you have heard of the Night Mountains,” she murmured.
The Night Mountains! He wondered if this was how visitors felt when they saw the Lateral Houses for the first time. The Night Mountains were a legend that was only murmured about in Fairmist, because you could never see the sky through the haze of floating droplets, especially at night. Supposedly, the Night Mountains had always been there, even back when Emperor Baezin first came to Thiara and founded the empire. They were long chunks of earth that floated high in the sky. It was rumored that Emperor Baezin took his Faia-made floating ship up to them long ago, though there were no written histories of Baezin’s adventures on the Night Mountains.
Some had pursued the legends, searching for the civilization that supposedly lived there. Some Thiarans had tried to shoot ballistae with ropes tied to them so they could climb up, but no ballista was powerful enough to shoot that far. There was a group who tried to harness flying hares into a flock and attach a wagon to it. But the hares could not be trained to work together, and they leapt frantically in every direction, never getting the wagon off the ground. Another woman made huge wings like a bird and jumped off a cliff. She flew quite fast. Into the ground. Some would call it falling.
But no one had ever been able to reach them.
“Why didn’t we see them earlier?” he murmured as they slid silently overhead.
“The Night Mountains only float at night.”
“I thought that part was myth,” he whispered. How could mountains completely vanish?
“Hmmm,” she said.
“How do they do it?”
“How do buildings float?”
“But those are mountains!”
“Floating houses are sensible but floating mountains are not?” she asked.
He watched the mountains slide overhead.
“Come, prince. We are not safe in the open.”
She chose their camp, a distance away from Baezin’s Road behind a small rise that hid them completely from any other travelers. The Fairmist River rushed loudly to the north just beyond a small copse of trees. She crouched, pulled together some rocks and gathered fallen sticks from the trees. Furthering the farce, Grei searched around and found some other pieces of wood. She started a small fire.
“Keep it alive,” she said, producing a little steel hook from somewhere inside her tunic. A black thread that looked like she had pulled it from her clothing hung from her other hand. “I will bring dinner.”
“You had that hook in your clothes all this time?” he asked.
She didn’t answer him, but moved toward the river, a gray blur in the dying light.
Once she had disappeared through the small stand of trees, Grei rose and slunk off in the opposite direction. He walked softly until he was sure no one, not even a Ringblade, could hear him from the river, and then began to jog west toward Thiara. He ran until his legs hurt and his stomach was crying for food, and then he headed back toward the river. He found another spot like Selicia had done, with a stand of trees hanging over the riverbank, creating a sheltered hollow beneath.
He went down to the river, but he had no hook, and after an hour of splashing around in the dark, trying to catch a fish with his bare hands, he went back to the little hollow and hunkered down, hungry and miserable.
He needed rest. Forget food for now. The air was warm, and he was exhausted. Once he’d had some sleep, he’d make a plan. He would find a nearby farm, beg some food and continue on.
He closed his eyes and fell asleep.
He drifted through dreams. Images of Adora, of the Faia, of Selicia and Blevins flashed past him. He rose to the surface of consciousness, and he could hear the comforting rush of the river. The fire crackling. The smell of cooking fish.
His eyes snapped open, and he drew in a ragged breath.
Selicia sat on the other side of a small fire. Over it, four fish were cooking on a makeshift spit.
He swallowed. His heart thundered.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
She looked up at him, expressionless. Then she looked at the fish again, as though his question didn’t deserve an answer. She turned one of them over, and he noticed they were all fixed on slender spears that looked suspiciously like they had been sharpened with a dagger.
He remembered how both Selicia and Ree had pulled daggers from nowhere, and a cool chill ran down his back.
“Do you have a weapon?” he asked, trying to come awake and absorb the fact that she’d been here, with him asleep, for however long it had taken to build that fire.
He barely saw her hand move, but suddenly there was a thin dagger there, glinting in the orange firelight. She made it disappear just as quickly.
He jumped to his feet and backed up. “The tree spirits took your weapons!”
She regarded him again, the firelight making her scar prominent, a crevice in the side of her face.
“You don’t have to trust me,” she said simply, “But the fact remains that I am yours, and I will serve you as best I can.
If I wanted to hurt you, I would have done it long before now.”
His heart thundered.
“Why didn’t you?” he demanded.
She watched him for a moment, then went back to tending the fish. The small fire sizzled as juice dripped down. Slowly, Grei sat back down. His stomach growled, and he was dizzy with the smell.
It seemed only a few minutes before the fish were ready. She offered two of them to him, and he reluctantly accepted. They ate in silence. He pulled the hot meat off the bones and stuffed it greedily into his mouth. Selicia carefully ate one, then wrapped the other in a black cloth.
Afterwards, he sat with his back against one of the trees and gazed at the fire, making sure to keep her in view. He wondered if he could get her to leave the campsite again so he could run, but then what? He recalled Blevins’ words.
She will find you. That’s what Ringblades do.
“You should go back to sleep. You will need your rest,” she said, her dark eyes watching him.
“Why don’t you sleep?” he asked.
“I have trained many years to overcome my need for sleep. I will guard you.”
“I bet you would. I’ll just close my eyes and you can do whatever you want. Well, I’m not. I don’t trust you any further than I can throw you.”
“You should not waste the opportunity. Sleep.”
“You sleep.”
She nodded and went back to looking at the fire. With the orange light flickering across her face, lighting up the crease of her scar, it looked like she might be smiling. He couldn’t tell.
Perhaps he could cross the river, escape that way. He stared at her, and his eyelids felt heavy. How could he get her to leave the camp again? Some kind of night patrol? Highblades did that sort of thing. Did Ringblades?
He blinked. His eyes burned, but his stomach felt good for first time all day, contented and full of fish. The warmth from the fire was soothing.
She sat there, stoic. The moon rose higher in the sky. The Night Mountains slid enigmatically by. Eventually, Selicia extinguished the fire, scooped dirt over it and scattered the rocks. She stood up and went to stand by a tree, looking toward the road.
He ought to walk around to keep himself awake, but he didn’t feel like moving. He’d wait until she moved off a little further, then get into the river and float downstream.
His eyelids slipped closed, and he told himself to blink, told himself he had to stay awake.
You are awake, his mind told him, but he was pretty sure it was lying.
* * *
Grei awoke with a start, his arms jerking and his legs kicking dead leaves. He blinked furiously, then he remembered where he was, and a different worry filled him. The last thing he remembered was deciding he must stay awake to keep an eye on Selicia. But night was gone. The thin light of daybreak crept across the plains.
He sat up, expecting to be bound, but his hands and legs were free. Selicia wasn’t there.
He glanced at the scatter of ashes that had been their fire. He rubbed his eyes with his good fist, got to his feet and stumbled out of the grove. She’d gone for reinforcements. She had—
He pulled up short.
In the scant dawn light, Selicia danced through the tall grass. She wore only a black loincloth and a twist of black cloth across her breasts, knotted in the back. She shone with sweat, her body lean and hard. Her legs were smooth, and light ridges of muscle stood out on her flat stomach. Her arms were ropey, veins prominent on her forearms and hands.
She leapt and landed on one leg, holding perfectly still, arms level to the ground as her body leaned impossibly sideways. Then slowly, she pivoted, coming upright. The movement gained momentum after one revolution, then she snapped into a spin. She became a blur, her long black braid whipping around her. She jumped, right foot lancing out at an unseen foe. She landed, still spinning. Her fists struck. One. Two. Three. Four. Grei could picture the bodies falling in the wake of her furious attack.
The spin culminated in a drop that took her below the level of the tall grass. She emerged a second later, slowly rising, arms held toward the sun like a flower. She stayed there, facing away from him.
She breathed hard, her back expanding and contracting, and he saw two prominent scars there. One was a ragged circle the size of a fist underneath her right shoulder. The other was a long, pink scar that curved from the left side of her neck down to her right hip. A sword or dagger wound for sure, and not too old. Probably the same age as the scar on her face. He wondered if Blevins had delivered that one, too.
She turned toward him as though she’d known he was there, and nodded.
“That was amazing,” he said.
“The fifty-fourth,” she said quietly as she passed him, untying the strip of cloth over her breasts as she stepped into the river. She dropped her loincloth also, then crouched naked in the shallows to wash herself.
Her casual disrobing shocked him. He cleared his throat and turned around. “The fifty-fourth what?” he asked over his shoulder.
“Dance.” Water splashed.
“I didn’t realize you were a dancer.”
She laughed, and it was all he could do not to look at her. Selicia? Laughing? Her laugh was husky, as though rusty from disuse.
“I didn’t realize you had a sense of humor, either,” he continued.
The laughter faded, and he regretted saying it. He half-turned, then thought better of it. He felt he should apologize, but before he could, she spoke.
“Dance is a Ringblade’s path,” she said quietly. “Silence is her art. A Ringblade moves, but is not seen.” He heard her step out of the water. Clothes rustled.
“I thought it was about killing for the emperor.”
She was quiet, and he listened to her dress.
“There are many purposes for the dancing,” she finally said.
“The dance you just did?”
Again she paused, as though she didn’t know whether to answer him or not, but then she said, “There are seventy-seven. That was the fifty-fourth.”
“I’ve never even heard of that,” he said.
“No one knows except the emperor, the empress, the Ringblades,” she said as she passed him, now fully dressed in her long-sleeved black tunic and tight breeches. “And now you.”
He opened his mouth to reply, and realized he had nothing to say. Feeling like a child, he followed her. “No one?”
“No one alive,” she said, unwrapping the fish she had cooked last night. She pulled it apart and offered half to him. He took it and put it in his mouth, chewed thoughtfully. She did the same.
When he had gulped down his bite, he said, “Did Ree do these dances?”
She stopped chewing and looked at him, then swallowed. “All Ringblades do. Or they die trying.”
“Die?”
“Yes.”
“Learning the dances?”
“Better to die among loved ones than to fail among enemies,” she said.
“That’s brutal.”
“The world is brutal,” she replied. “We prepare as best we can.”
“Is that why you kill?”
“I kill because it is necessary.”
“I don’t think it’s ever necessary,” he said.
She paused, cocked her head. “You are a smart man, Grei. But that is naïve.”
“It makes me ill, the thought of it. People doing that to other people. I don’t understand how you can.”
She mused a moment. “I would call you a fool, but it is this foolishness that saved my life.”
“Ree could have killed me, but she didn’t,” Grei said.
“Ree broke more than one rule before the end,” Selicia said.
The end? Suddenly the taste of the fish was cloying, and he swallowed with difficulty. He remembered the image of Ree in Selicia’s mind. Shrunken and bloody, missing her arm. “Is she dead?”
Selicia shook her head. “Not when I left her. But she is no longer a Ringblade. She betrayed the c
ircle, the other Ringblades, her vows.”
“What happened to her, if she didn’t die?”
“She is at the Sanctum. She was halfway gone and incoherent when I found her. The slink sickness had taken her mind. I think she may have actually reached the slink cave and returned. She might be dead by now, but Ree has a powerful will. If it is possible to survive what she has endured, she will. But that would be two miracles. No one has ever returned from the slink caves. Likewise, no one has ever overcome the slink sickness.”
“Are you betraying your vows by helping me?”
She nodded. “I won’t return to the Sanctum. They would kill me, and I would expect them to. I have stepped outside the circle. I don’t serve the empress or the emperor anymore. My life is yours, for as long as it lasts.”
“As long as it lasts?”
“We are rogue, Grei. The emperor sent me to find you. If he sent me, he will stop at nothing to capture you, and you insist on heading directly to him. It is only a matter of time. He has Highblades, Ringblades, and other advantages at which you and I can only guess. He will find you. I’ll help you avoid him as long as I can, but there is only one way this can end: with my death and your capture. Perhaps with both our deaths.” She took another bite of the fish, chewed slowly, and swallowed. “The emperor is relentless, and you are far too valuable to let slip. We have only one advantage.” She took a last bite and offered the rest of the fish to him.
He watched her, then took it. “We went into the Dead Woods,” he said.
She nodded.
“He thinks we’re dead.”
“Possibly. But that will not stop him from looking. At best, it might reduce the number of Highblades he sends. I did not know what was inside the Dead Woods, but the emperor likely does. He might even know that they would let you go. I think he will at least consider your survival, which means our advantage is a small one indeed.”
“What can we do to avoid him? To avoid the Highblades?”
“I am doing it. I am better than most, but you would still do better to run north to Benasca. Going to Thiara is a fool’s gambit.”
“I’m not leaving Adora.”
She nodded as though she understood this. “Love is powerful.”
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