Hinterland

  But Lord Jessup had washed his hands of her. Though she might escape punishment, a god’s judgment was of a higher order. She had already been banned from setting foot in Oldenbrook.

  Which left Lord Jessup needing not one but two new Hands to fill his wing.

  Brant adjusted his crimson sash, marking him a Hand of blood. But no longer for Lord Jessup. With the god’s blessing, he now resided in the High Wing here, serving the regent while Delia attended her father in Five Forks. And there were rumors here, too, that she might not return at all.

  “Look how they’ve grown!” Laurelle said. “Almost to my knee now.”

  The cubbies were indeed growing fast, three times their weight when Brant had found them.

  “But they’re still young,” Dart said quietly. She bent a knee and muffed up the fur of one of the pups, the sister. The cubbie lolled on her back, tongue hanging loose, happy for the attention.

  “And learning fast,” Brant said. “Especially yours, Dart. She’s a true little hunter.”

  Dart smiled up at him. He was happy to see it. Her rare smiles cheered him more deeply than he cared to admit. Since she had returned from the Eighth Land, a haunted look often shadowed her eyes. And he could not blame her. He still woke up sometimes covered with sweat, picturing moldering heads on stakes. But at least the real nightmare was over. Back in Saysh Mal, Harp was putting the forest in order, helped by a pair of acolytes that had descended from Takaminara. As the goddess had protected her daughter’s people, she watched now over their land. They should fare well from here.

  Dart straightened from her wiggling cubbie and nodded to the other, who sat straight-backed at Brant’s side now.

  “That boy of yours is no laggard either,” Dart said. “He might let his sister run down a mouse, but it’s his nose that always roots it out to begin with.”

  Her words lifted a proud grin to Brant’s face. The whelpings had been left in his care, a burden shared with Dart. It allowed them both an excuse to escape their roles for a short time—he as a Hand of the regent, she as page to Warden Vail. Out in the fields, with the wolfkits, they could be themselves.

  With everything packed up, Dart waved Laurelle on with the others. “Go on ahead. We’ll catch up.”

  Laurelle searched between them, a ghost of a smile hovering, reading something more behind Dart’s words. Laurelle had a disconcerting ability to do that, to understand what was unspoken better than any. Brant barely recognized her as the girl he’d known at school.

  It seemed they were all learning fast, struggling to find where they fit in this new world.

  “We’ll meet you at the gates,” Laurelle said. She turned, drawing Kytt along with her. If the tracker had had a tail to go along with his nose, it would have been wagging.

  At least some things hadn’t changed about Laurelle.

  As they left, Dart lowered again to her little she-wolf. “We said that by the knighting we’d pick names for them. Have you decided on your boy?”

  Brant crouched beside her in the shade, glad the others were gone. “I have.”

  He patted the lone blanket remaining. Dart sank to it. She seemed oddly nervous, shifting a bit too much, as if she were sitting on a root.

  “What have you decided?” she asked.

  The two cubbies had grown bored and taken to wrestling in the sun and trampled grass.

  He nodded toward the brother. “I thought a good name would be Lorr. He was certainly wise to the wood.” And he had spent his life to save theirs, so they could be sitting in the shade under blossoms with the sun shining.

  She reached out and touched his knee. He glanced from the cubbies’ play to her. Tears filled her eyes. “He would like that.”

  Brant’s throat suddenly tightened. He stared at her too long, finally dropping his eyes. “What about your cubbie,” he whispered. “The sister?”

  “It’s why I sent the others on ahead,” she said softly. “I wasn’t sure it was appropriate…not an insult…”

  He glanced to her, sweeping back a fall of his hair, his brow crinkling.

  She continued, not meeting his eye. “You mentioned what a good little hunter she was…what a good little huntress. I thought maybe…”

  Brant knew immediately the name she picked.

  “Miyana.”

  The god’s final plea echoed in his head. I want to go home. Maybe in this small way, they could grant her that, a heart in which to live, to become a huntress of the forest once more.

  Dart’s eyes flicked to him, still moist with tears. “Is that all right?”

  Brant leaned forward and brushed his lips against hers.

  “More than all right,” he whispered.

  He stared into her eyes, their noses touching. She smiled softly, like the sun rising over Saysh Mal. It warmed completely through him.

  “Thank you,” he whispered again and kissed her, knowing that more than a god had found a new home this morning.

  Two others had, too.

  It had been a long day…and the night promised to stretch just as far.

  Tylar stood on a small private balcony as the grand ball waged behind him, a war of pomp and finery, set to flute and drum. Dancing had already begun, and as the feast was in his honor, he would have to attend.

  But first he needed a moment alone.

  He stared beyond the rail of the balcony. It overlooked the Tigre River as it snaked to the east. The sun had nearly set behind the castillion, casting a great shadow across the dark green waters. A few stars shone to the east, along with the rise of a full moon.

  Another Hunter’s Moon.

  He tried to read portent in it, but failed.

  The day’s knighting had left him with a heavy heart and an unsettled sense of doom. He could not shake it.

  He ran a palm down the cloak that was clasped in gold at his shoulder, a new shadowcloak, and at his waist, a fine new blade. On his other hip, he carried Rivenscryr, sheathed. It did not bear its diamond as his new sword did. That was kept on a cord around Brant’s neck, his new Hand of blood. Only a handful of people knew the significance of that drab, dull stone, and that was the way it would remain.

  Until Tylar understood it better.

  A hand drifted to the gold hilt.

  A son had designed it, and a father had used it to sunder a world.

  He pondered if the world might not be better if he tossed the blade into the river. Perhaps the stone, too. He wondered for the hundredth time why the stone had come again into the lives of gods and men. It had been dropped like a pebble in a still lake, and those ripples continued to spread. He feared he had not yet seen the full extent of that rippling.

  He pictured again that dread island, shaped like a rocky crown.

  As they had departed by flitterskiff, Takaminara had claimed the island, welling up a churn of fiery rock, no longer held off by poisonous flames. Molten fingers rose out of the boiling waters to grasp the island and drag it burning back into the waters. The fiery conflagration could be seen far across the flooded forest as they retreated. It spewed steam and great gouts of fire high into the sky as morning slowly dawned.

  Finally, a creak of a door drew him around, away from that dark night.

  A slender shape slid through, closing the door behind her. “I thought that was you slipping away.”

  “Delia?” A bit of the darkness around his heart lifted. He had known she had arrived, but commitments had pulled them both in different directions until now.

  She stepped into the moonlight, dressed in a slim gown of the lightest green, a complement to her hazel eyes and dark hair. She smiled at him, shyly, as if this were the first time they met. She paused a few steps away, plainly fearful that she was intruding.

  He motioned to the rail, but she remained where she was.

  “Tylar…”

  Frowning, he came forward, sensing some great consequence in her stance. “What is it?”

  “I wanted a moment with you, but there’s been such chaos
this day. All the retinues, all the Hands from various lands.”

  “I know. I was hoping…once all the tumult died down. After the feast—”

  She cut him off. “I’m leaving with the evening flippercraft.”

  He stared at her, stunned.

  “My father,” she said. “I don’t like leaving him alone for too long—mostly to protect the servants from him.” She offered a smile to blunt the sting of what she was saying.

  “You’re going so soon?”

  “I must.” She even backed a step to prove it.

  He searched her face, her eyes, and discovered the deeper truth.

  “At this moment of my life,” she explained, “there’s room for only one man in it. And that has to be my father. While in the past he might have shirked his responsibility to me, quite callously even, I won’t do the same. I won’t pay back bile with bile, or I’d be no better. He needs me. That is my place.” She glanced up at him. “For now.”

  “Delia…”

  She took a deep breath, and her voice somehow both softened yet held a harder edge. “I spent time with Kathryn. I’ve gotten to know her. Her heart and her will. She’s borne much pain, now and in the past. I won’t add to it.”

  “Delia, Kathryn and I, we’ve already—”

  “No, you haven’t, Tylar.”

  He wanted to protest, but she fixed him with those eyes, as hard as Argent’s, as sharp as Kathryn’s. He could not lie. Not to her. And in turn, he knew, perhaps it was time he stopped lying to himself.

  She nodded, as if reading his thoughts. She stepped forward, kissed him on the cheek, then backed away. “I must hurry to meet my maid.”

  She turned, and in a shimmer of pale green she was gone.

  But before the door closed, a hand shoved out and stopped it. “Now that wasn’t pretty,” Rogger said with a sad shake of his head as he entered. He smoked a pipe and was dressed in fine cuts, a gray cloak over black.

  “Rogger, I don’t—”

  The thief held up a hand to silence him as he crossed the balcony, expounding his wisdom. “Young women…they’re as fickle as they come. Pretty, I’ll grant you. But I’ll tell you, great-mothers and great-aunts—they have a head on their shoulders and know what to do with the rest of their bodies.”

  Tylar shook his head. “I see someone discovered Chrismferry’s ale.”

  “And its cooking wine.”

  Tylar leaned on the balcony’s rail. “I heard you met with the Black Flaggers this morning.”

  “Had to. Cook needed salt. A barter for the wine. And if you need salt, no better place than a pirate’s ship to get it. Scrape it off their hulls.”

  Tylar looked at him in exasperation.

  Rogger waved him off with his pipe. “I met with Krevan. That is a pirate in a sour mood. Even with that comely Calla doting on him because of his chopped arm.”

  “Any word on the Wyr?”

  “Not a word. Like they packed everything and took off.”

  Tylar frowned. Here was a major source of his unease. When they had escaped back to land with the flitterskiff, they’d found the Wyr had folded up tents and vanished, leaving only Krevan and Calla. He wouldn’t have been bothered by their sudden departure, except for what he had found on the island.

  The six songstresses.

  All identical.

  Wyr-born.

  Had Wyrd Bennifren left knowing what Tylar would find? Had he sold the songstresses to the Cabal? Had he fled to avoid any uncomfortable questions of collusion with the Cabal? Or were there deeper plots here?

  He remembered the slain songstresses, throats cut by their own hands.

  Only afterward did Tylar realize the absence of any Cabalists on the island. In fact, he had seen no real evidence of their direct involvement at all.

  Only the hand of the Wyr.

  But what did that portend?

  Tylar’s hand settled again to Rivenscryr. A cold chill crept through his bones. He wondered what hand had truly wielded this sword back on that island. And to what end it had been put. An act of mere mercy or something more dire?

  Facing the Hunter’s Moon, Tylar knew only one thing with certainty. In this war between Myrillian gods and naethryn, there were as many shades of gray as there were gods. And until this war was over, he would keep Rivenscryr at his side.

  A knock on the balcony door announced yet another visitor.

  “Regular crossroads here,” Rogger mumbled.

  The door opened to reveal a cloaked shadowknight. Kathryn dropped her masklin when she saw they were alone. Strands of music flowed in with her, a dance under way. “Tylar, I don’t think you can hole up here much longer. Gerrod can dance with only so many Hands.”

  “Sounds like duty summons the weary,” Rogger said and headed toward the door. “And women and wine summon the bearded.”

  The thief slipped past Kathryn and through the door, leaving a pall of pipe smoke behind.

  Kathryn waved it from her face and stepped into the more open air of the balcony. “The feast won’t be much longer.”

  Rogger left the door ajar when he departed.

  Music flowed out to them. Kathryn joined him at the rail. Stars rose to fill the sky, reflected in the water below.

  “I saw Delia heading down…” she began.

  “She’s leaving. With the evening flippercraft.”

  “Back to Argent?”

  “Back home…” he said with a tired nod.

  Kathryn remained silent, and they stood together at the rail. Once lovers. Now regent and warden.

  “It’s been a long day,” he muttered.

  She nodded as music flowed.

  He held out a hand. “Care to dance?”

  She frowned at the offered hand.

  “We once knew how to dance,” he said.

  “That was another life.”

  “Still, sometimes a dance is just a dance. To prove that we still live.”

  He kept his hand out. She finally took it.

  Stepping back, hand in hand, they spun across the balcony, two shadows in the moonlight, scribing a path for the stars to read.

  That they still lived.

  In Shadow…

  THE WYR-LORD WAITED FOR THE SUN TO SLIP BENEATH THE sands of Dry Wash. Under a tent awning, Wyrd Bennifren lay nuzzled tight against the woman who carried him, his new milk mare, one hand clasped to her teat. He had already suckled his belly full, and now used the nipple to tug his watery eye up to the fold in his swaddling.

  It wouldn’t be long.

  The screams had died a full bell ago.

  From his perch, he saw that the unkali ara knelt in a circle around the center tent. As they had since midday. Heads bowed to the sand, waiting. They wore their traditional haleesh capes, brooched in silver and gold at the neck, one side knotted back to expose their family bone daggers, passed from father to son.

  But all their sheaths were empty.

  Each had buried his dagger to the hilt in the sand, gifting the blood to the desert. Not that the sands were thirsty, having been well slaked this past night.

  Bennifren willed his milk mare to turn.

  The bodies of the dead littered the sands, sprawled out in all directions, for a full league. Thousands. They were all that was left of the legion of a hinter-king who had crossed into Dry Wash, claiming dominion, as such men were wont.

  Only this particular king wouldn’t be wrong.

  He would rule.

  That is, if all went well in the center tent.

  Finally, the flap lifted, and a woman stepped out, eyes bandaged, shaven-headed, fingers stretched to an extra joint. A Wyr-witch. Few knew they existed. She bore a large tome in her hand. The Nekralikos Arcanum. One of the rarest texts, written on human skin and inked with alchemical bile.

  The witch had overseen the long and torturous preparations within, following the rites that had been devised during the time of strife, between the Sundering and the settling, when much blood had been spilled, and
all gods raved.

  She had performed the sukra lempta gall.

  The Rite of Infamy.

  Even this rite had to be hidden in code within the Nekralikos.

  Such was its great secret.

  But the Wyr had always known it.

  For they had devised it—they, the first to play the game of gods.

  Over the past day, the hinter-king had been hollowed out—both flesh and that which lay beneath—leaving him an open vessel. Then they had baited the trap. Bennifren had hoped to use the Godslayer’s seed, but other humours served just as well, especially blood.

  And scent was scent.

  All that remained was to discover if their prey had been woken enough, stirred enough. Their brethren had been slaughtered, twelve in all, screaming in agony. Surely those on high had stopped their ageless dreaming long enough to turn their faces down toward Myrillia. Surely they would send one of their own, drawn by the scent of the murderer.

  Bennifren found it amusing that the Cabal sought to pit man against man or god against god. For the Wyr’s goal, though, a larger game needed to be played, one with levels of intrigue that stretched across ages, on all sides of the field. It had required a manipulation of both shadowknight and Cabal, of ravening rogue and calculating god. Even the lives of many of the Wyr had been spent to hide the design, buried under bodies and blood, a carefully crafted game of lies and false trails—all for one reason.

  To slay a god. And not just one god.

  The Godslayer had proven his name so well.

  A dozen rogues. A dozen deaths.

  All to wake the sleepers above.

  Surely those blessed with Bright Grace, undisturbed for so long, noted their brethren flickering out, torn from their midst, torn from the aether.

  But had it been enough? Had they come? Had they accepted the Wyr’s hollowed vessel?

  The witch stepped away from the tent, holding back the flap.

  A naked figure stumbled out, bronze-skinned, black-haired, and long of limb. The hinter-king. His torso had been split down the middle, from groin to collar, and burnt back together, sealing what had been captured within, a trap of flesh.