The Rasselerians made their way back, and the new arrivals came to stand before Janto, the others gathered behind them. The colors of their suits shifted in fast succession, no attempt at camouflage made though the coarse, carnelian hair on their heads matched the reed tassels around them.
Janto took a deep breath to steady himself. It was time to be an Albrecht again, and that he knew how to do. “How can I aid you, fellow Lanserim?”
“We have spoken.” The woman did not need to explain she meant all the Rasselerians with them. Their eyes were trained on Janto with the same intensity. “And we believe this finding is meant for you.”
“It is rare,” one of her companions took over. “From the days before the divide when Madel’s reach went over the mountains. It is not so old as glass, but it is costlier. Wood breaks down when glass does not.”
“I will gladly accept this gift on my father’s behalf. I am certain he will be pleased. But I am afraid I don’t know when I can give it to him. Madel’s plan may be to keep us far from Callyn for some time.” Not even his destination was his decision, or at least it didn’t feel that way.
The Rasselerians sucked air through their teeth with a tuuut. “No, slayer, you need this now.” The man unfurled his webbed fingers, revealing a box of petrified wood, dark and streaked with red on its edges as though blood had stained it.
It may well be blood. When he saw the insignia it bore, he took Serra’s hand with what he hoped was reassurance. The moment she recognized it, he knew. Tension gathered in her limbs. The sigil was carved masterfully. After centuries caked in mud, every scale of the snake’s raised hood could be counted.
“That’s a Sellwyn chest.” Vesperi took the box and rubbed her finger over the symbol, yet no gooseflesh rose on her arms like it had on his. She put it aside thoughtlessly, and the lack of heft in her action felt grotesque. “But we have not made these in at least a decade. We stopped harvesting rosewood for craft when they grew too thin. My father thinks using malnourished wood would reflect badly on our name.”
She laughed to herself for a moment, a cynical sound that had grown rarer the longer they’d traveled together. Yet her tone was pleasant, happy even, as she addressed the Rasselerians. “That is what you found in the marshes? It does not seem like much to get your lot so excited.” She shrugged.
“How do you know?” Janto feared the answer. “How do you know this is from your family?”
“It is our sigil—the forest viper. I have always been rather taken with it. Suits me, don’t you think?” She smirked.
His mind filled with ashes, remembered the greasy residue they had left on his fingers when he had reached to pull a ring engraved with grapevines out of a box such as this. Anger wound itself up inside him, a coil of metal wire pulled tight.
He said nothing but gripped Serra’s hand. She trembled. Whatever anger he felt, her body reflected it back tenfold. Silver flecks flashed in her green eyes. Yet she kept her voice calm as she spoke.
“Is it? Does it adorn all your boxes back in Sellwyn?”
“Oh yes,” Vesperi answered. “I use one whenever I have something important to send.”
He held tight to Serra’s wrist. She jerked her arm, but he did not let go, did not want her to provoke Vesperi or to see what would happen if she did. Vesperi struck first, thought second, no matter what control she had learned, and Esye was rising this time of day, its moonslight amplified in the heavy air by the lake’s reflecting waters. Serra would not consider that right now. Her vision was clouded, and Janto could only stop himself from choking on the same rage by keeping her from stumbling into the crosshairs.
Her tone was ice when Serra spoke again. “How does it feel when you use the flame? When you smite something?”
Vesperi frowned at the abrupt subject change, but her usual smirk came back fast. “Exhilarating. Like I have all the power in the world.”
“What did he do?” The love of Janto’s life had never sounded so frightening before, but he recognized a flickering hope in her words, a chance for Vesperi to explain. “What did he do to make you kill him? He was stupid, sometimes. I lived with him my whole life, Madel knows. Did he make an advance on you? Maybe he was trying to fit in?”
If they were wrong, then Vesperi would pretend confusion. She would look at Janto with unspoken questions, maybe cast a concerned glance toward Serra if brave enough to let herself show it.
Instead she flinched as realization dawned. Then she drew herself up tall and haughty. “He called me a lady. I could not let that go unaddressed.”
All the color but red drained from Serra’s face. “You killed my brother.”
Janto held on tighter.
“You filthy Meduan, you killed my brother.” Her voice was calm no longer.
Several glass shards fell to the piles with a tinkle as someone dropped them.
“Madel’s hand,” Hamsyn gaped. “Is it true?”
“Should I bind her, Janto?” Nap’s voice was unsure. Janto did not know the answer.
The Rasselerians did not react, though they scrutinized the trio, if Janto read the meaning of their flicking tongues correctly.
Vesperi spoke next, disdain laced into her words. Venom, he thought. Her speech is always venomous. “Yes, I killed Agler. He was a spy and not a very good one.”
“He was my brother!” Tears rushed over Serra’s reddened face, hot lava down a mountainside. Fists clenched, she lunged at Vesperi with enough speed to escape his grip. The Meduan jumped back and began to raise her hand—
No, no, no. Janto slid between the two women, raising his arms up. “Nap, Flivio, please hold Serra back. Please.” The Rasselerians had thrown themselves to the ground, but they were not his concern right now. There was nothing more important than the brown pair of eyes before him, filling with a silver glow.
“Vesperi,” he said calmly, “Block it out. Block out the moon.”
“Why should I?” Her hair lifted. She was close. “I have no choice. I know what happens to women who kill men.”
“Block it out. Breathe. Focus. Send Esye back.” It was pointless. Vesperi would not listen. She did not need to hide her magic anymore. Too many people knew the silver flame had returned, the weapon been reborn. She would strike. She was a killer.
“Breathe. Focus. Pull it back.”
She lowered her arm. Relief flooded him but only until Serra yelled. He spun around to find her staring up at the heavens, fists raised as high as they could reach.
“I cannot do this! I cannot do this!”
Nap and Flivio released her when he gestured to, and then Serra ran far from them all. Sar Mertina made to follow, but Janto waved her back.
“She will be back.” He tried to sound certain, but her cries as she disappeared into the miry forest to the east reminded him of his own the day she had not returned for him. If she did not return again—“Never mind, Sar Mertina. Trail her, but give her space?”
The guardswoman mounted up in an instant.
Janto had to have faith something greater was happening here. Madel required the three of them to stop the claren, and that was what mattered most. Protecting their people. He would be damned if he let anything get in the way of that. Even his anger.
“You are not our prisoner, Vesperi.” She sat on the bench beside him, silent and perhaps as shocked as he that nothing had changed when everything felt different. Her mouth was tight but the silver was gone from her eyes, leaving only the brown of a doe’s.
He averted his gaze. “But I do not think I can look on you right now.”
He picked up a purple shard of glass and held it to the light.
CHAPTER 46
SERRA
Stomping off into the woods wasn’t what she wanted to do. That was reaching her hands around Vesperi’s neck and squeezing until no air came through it ever again. The Meduan had not murdered Agler—she had eviscerated him. Serra knew what that was like, had seen it with her own eyes no more than an hour ago when they h
ad found a claren swarm in front of the missing candlemaker’s hut. The creatures had sizzled, shells turning to ashes as they fell.
Agler pleading and burning in front of that woman who knew pity but not compassion—it was all Serra could imagine. The tears would win if she stopped moving, so she kept on. Madel’s hand, I do not know if I went east or south. She would be lost if she kept this up, and Janto would come hunting for her. She did not want to see him, did not want to see the murderer with him who she knew—she knew—would be free. He would not kill Vesperi, would not even restrain her. Janto Albrecht believed.
Unrelenting tears made Serra’s eyes sting, but no amount of rubbing could make them stop. She did not want them to, did not want clear vision.
A mangrove root spilled her onto the slimy floor of the forest. Crushed libtyl leaves clung to her sandals, and she closed her eyes to take in their sharp, minty tang. She looked on the familiar sight of water-logged forest floor and spindly branches. Also familiar were the blue lights beckoning like fireflies.
She shook her head violently. Oh no, she was not going to come when they called, not after this. But her feet moved to follow, and her reasoning soon caught up to them. She needed answers only the Brothers could give, and she’d be damned if she had to face Vesperi again without them.
The drop took her unawares when it came, but Serra knew enough to brace herself this time, landing on bent knees. Only one wraith waited in the cave, its gray robe illuminated by a faint blue aura.
She threw a stone from the cave floor at the Brother. “What right do you have to force me to do this?” Another thrown stone pushed into the fabric before it fell.
Her arm hair raised as the Brother cackled, “Serrafina Gavenstone, you are the seer. You must guide the weapon. You have accepted this.”
“You left out a few details when I said yes.”
It faced her, orbs flickering from the darkness of its hood where eyes should be. “They were insignificant.”
“How dare you! He was my brother.” She leapt toward him, hitting the packed dirt wall instead. “He was not insignificant!”
The Brother reappeared at the other end of the cave. “You must guide the weapon.”
She should have known better than to think this would get her anywhere.
“You must guide the weapon.” Its monotonous tone did not make the Brother’s words any easier to hear.
“I cannot. I cannot do that.” If she said it enough times, perhaps he would believe her. “I cannot work with her.”
“She is the one who was chosen.”
“I thought I was the one who was chosen. That’s what you …” No, maybe not this Brother, specifically, but does it matter? They were all the same, all loathsome, inhuman spirits who would make her do this. “…what you told me. That is why I am here, is it not?”
“You were chosen because you made the choice to come. The slayer and the weapon, too, must keep making the choice to do what they must. And the weapon cannot do it without you to guide her.”
The thought of anyone guiding that spiteful Meduan was ludicrous. Maybe months ago Serra could have, before she had become this other person. Before her brother had been taken from her, and Janto, too. Maybe when her life had been filled with practicing her courtesies while Bini braided golden threads through her hair, and she had wanted a future of leading couples to dance, her arm looped through Janto’s. Maybe then she was someone who could have forgiven a wrong this horrific.
But she gave that life up because these creatures said it was her fate to do so, her destiny. What sort of goddess was Madel if She asked for sacrifices like this? “You are wrong. The prophecy is wrong.”
“Madel’s intent cannot be mistaken. Her hand touches us directly. You have seen it. You know it is true.”
“I do not care!” Serra tugged at her hair. “I am the seer. I cannot deny that. You float three inches from the ground yet I am the only person who notices. But maybe the weapon isn’t her. Maybe you are mistaken and there are others with the flame. It cannot be her. She is Meduan! How could Madel put our fates into one of their hands?”
“You are the seer, Serrafina Gavenstone, and you must guide her. You must work together to defeat them and save us.”
But she killed my brother and has stolen Janto. She wanted to scream it. She wanted to find a way to grab onto the Brother’s invisible body and wrest that truth from him.
“The slayer cannot realize his destiny without you. The stag has been caught, but he must find the right place to release her.”
“You pilfer thoughts from my mind now? Then listen to these.” She would find some other way to serve Lansera, become an herbalist and tour the afflicted cities where the claren spread, bring aid to their suffering where she could … if the claren left anyone to soothe.
Pressure built in her jaw as she clenched it, and her stomach gnawed with pain that had no relation to food. It hurt, realizing her commitment was unchanged. Knowing Vesperi had killed Agler did not change the evil preying on Lansera. Serra had to keep doing this. She could not punish innocent people because her heart and soul were broken.
The Brother shimmered as though a chime in a breeze. “Our time grows short. We forget, sometimes, how it was when we lived. How it feels to be human.” It laughed again, and she could almost call it a chuckle, if it did not make her shiver. “You are ready?”
“I am.”
Its hood dipped in assent, and the cool, dry ground beneath her returned to slick libtyl leaves and moss.
“There she is!”
The gruff voice startled Serra, and she stumbled backward as two unknown men advanced from the mangroves. They held swords aloft and wore strange that looked more like silver vestments and veils. The closest one spoke again. “You’re a tricky one, whore. Thought you didn’t have the sense to know we were trailing you.”
The Guj’s men. She’d run off, not thinking about the danger when—
The one farthest back screamed as the tip of a blade went through his flesh, slicing through the chainmail just as easily. The blade rotated and pulled back out, leaving the man to fall to his knees just long enough for a sure stroke to take his head off.
Sar Mertina spurred her horse into a charge, yelling, “Get down, Lady Serra! Roll aside!”
Serra dropped to her knees, heart pounding.
“That’s a—that’s a woman.” The other man barely had time to finish before Sar Mertina slashed through his chest from shoulder to hip bone. His blood splattered on Serra’s arm as the guard withdrew her sword. Part of his chainmail dropped into her lap. She rubbed the soft, malleable metal between her fingers in a dazed wonder.
“Lady Serra, are you all right?”
Serra let the metal drop and raised her head to her rescuer. “I am.
Was that all of them?”
“All that I’ve seen since Janto sent me after you. They were nearly on you before you gave them the slip. That gave me enough time to plan an advance. Can I take you back now?”
Serra took her extended hand without hesitation. “You can. We need to tell the others that we’ve been discovered here.”
It was time to move on in more ways than one.
CHAPTER 47
VESPERI
When Serra returned, she resolutely avoided the spot on the bench were Vesperi sat. Mud and blood splotched her arms and stained her sheath, but the seer left the explanations to Sar Mertina, disappearing inside to change when Napeler confirmed there had been no new claren reports.
Vesperi was fine with that, more than fine. In truth, she waited for shackles to be clasped around her wrists. But the only restraints she felt were ones of silence from everyone in their group. News of the attack on Serra subdued them more than they already had been, each preferring their own thoughts. More of the frog people brought them dinner, or perhaps it was the same ones; Vesperi could not tell the difference. Soon after, she went to bed, the hut’s straw floor more welcoming than the others’ wary glances.
There is no rope, but I am not free. Janto and Serra could not look her in the eye, yet they fought to keep her with them. It made no sense, but she was grateful they felt tied to her. Her hand traced the line around her neck where Janto or one of his men should have sliced the moment she confirmed killing the Raven. She should have denied it, but she was so tired when Serra had asked. It was easier to say yes, and she had felt lighter at once, as though she had lost her head after all by admitting the guilt.
She dozed until she heard footsteps walk from the doorway to where she lay. Vesperi sucked in her breath, bracing for the blow.
“You will cramp up in that position,” Mertina’s soft voice chided. The female guard stood tall, one hand resting on her sword pommel.
“Why are you speaking to me?” Vesperi cringed at her own tone. She hadn’t meant to sound as though upbraiding a servant. Sar Mertina was certainly not one of those.
“Because I did not want you to wake up screaming. This will all be more difficult if we aren’t well rested tomorrow. We’ll have to move soon.”
“No, I meant why are you in here at all? Has Janto changed his mind? Am I to be a prisoner again?”
“Then you should say what you mean, not sling barbs with your tongue at a friend.” The older woman shifted her tight black braid from her left shoulder to her right. “I am guarding you. That fight—the prince’s companions needed reminding of how great the threat is, even after seeing it every day. You are safe, but they do not trust you. Janto had to compromise.”
“But you know what I can do. None of you could hold me.”
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