Lightning in the Blood

  Three days wasn’t a problem, though. She could do three days of silence just fine.

  Her feet took her up and down the valleys, along ridges and into the hidden folds of the forest, searching because there was no reason not to. Here and there she found signs of a human presence, but never anything substantial enough to make her think it was the rebels. More likely hunters, or lone outlaws hiding from the king’s judgment. Ree didn’t much care what crimes the latter had committed, unless her appearance panicked them into attacking. And if they do? They’ll deserve what they get.

  She didn’t pay very much attention to where she was going. At any point she could climb a ridge or a tree and spot enough landmarks to have a general sense of her location; until she found something useful, the specifics didn’t matter. She just walked, and waited for the new moon to end, and knew that nothing would be different when it did.

  At twilight on the final day she stopped to rinse her face in a stream, washing away a layer of sweat and grime. The coolness of the water was pleasant enough that she cupped some of it into her hand and drank, even though she didn’t need to. Then she sat back on her heels and closed her eyes, sighing.

  Three days wasted. A good match for the wasted weeks that had preceded them. But she would never talk Aadet into giving up, and seimer or gemer, she would never try.

  Lightning danced in her blood, and she opened her eyes.

  She almost didn’t see it, in the deepening shadows beneath the trees. If the cat hadn’t blinked, she might never have spotted it. But it did, and she did, and only instinct kept Ree from reaching for her blade—an instinct that said if she tried, the beast would be on her before the weapon cleared its sheath.

  At first she thought it was a leopard. Black ones were rare, but not unheard of; there were several pelts in the king’s palace, prized for their unusual color. The cat was certainly big enough to be a leopard. Too big, in fact. Its head was heavy, its bent legs stocky and powerful; at full stretch, Ree thought it would stand a foot taller at the shoulder than a leopard.

  In the end, though, it didn’t really matter what kind of cat it was. Because no normal cat of any kind had eyes that gleamed blood-red in the fading light.

  It crouched on the far side of the stream, one good bound away. Ree stayed where she was, not even moving a finger, hardly daring to breathe. What the fuck else could she do? She was alone in the forest, like a goddamned idiot; nobody could come to her rescue. Even if she’d drawn her sabre, she didn’t really want to bet on it against a predator that weighed four hundred pounds. She had one weapon; it had five, and that was assuming she counted its four paws instead of each razor-sharp claw on them.

  Though if it came to that, she would fight. The cat would take her out, but she’d make it bleed for its victory.

  The cat didn’t move. Neither did she. Around them both, the light continued to fade. Are we going to sit here all night?

  In one smooth shift, the cat rose to its feet. Without a sound, it turned and began walking into the night. And Ree, without thinking, followed.

  What the ever-loving fuck am I doing?

  She had no rational explanation for it, and not much of an irrational one, either. Just the way the cat’s blood-colored eyes had lingered on her as it cast one final glance over its shoulder, and the way her own blood had sparked in response. Which didn’t justify walking after a four-hundred-pound predator, just because it had red eyes and made the lightning dance—but here she was, doing it anyway.

  The creature couldn’t be an archon. They were all basically human in shape, allowing for a certain amount of variety. Could any of them shape-shift? Maybe; Ree’s memories were nowhere near extensive enough to tell her. But there was no damned reason a strange archon would show up out of nowhere and then walk away, expecting Ree to follow.

  No, not expecting. But giving her the chance.

  For one wild moment, she wondered if the cat was actually Mevreš in a different form. His veins glowed red; so did the cat’s eyes. And he, at least, had a reason to help her. But nothing about him had seemed feline, and besides, the cat was female. Ree had a vague recollection of once encountering an archon whose seimer and gemer aspects were male and female, but changing both sex and shape seemed like a bit much. And Mevreš, she thought, wouldn’t have just walked away like that.

  Wherever the cat was taking her, she hoped it wasn’t far. The light was vanishing at speed; pretty soon Ree wouldn’t be able to see where she put her feet, much less a black cat in a black forest. Already she was having to strain her eyes, following the creature less by seeing her than by tracking where the darkness moved. Then Ree’s feet began to catch against roots and drop unexpectedly into dips in the ground, and she knew that if she kept on going, she was going to break her ankle, and maybe some other bones, too.

  She also knew that if she stopped, the cat would leave her without a second glance. And she doubted she would see it again.

  So stop. There was no point risking her neck when she didn’t even know what, if anything, she would get in return.

  But why had the cat appeared to her in the first place? Why put her in motion, if not for a purpose?

  Ree’s stride faltered. Even in that instant of hesitation, she almost lost sight of her guide. And that, against all logic and reason, decided her.

  Fuck it. Let’s see what happens.

  Ree followed the cat into the night.

  * * *

  She couldn’t see a goddamned thing. Not the cat, not the trees, not her own hand in front of her face. It was a moonless night, the last of the new moon, and what little starlight came through the branches wasn’t enough to do more than create patches of thinner blackness among the deeper ones. Ree didn’t even know how she was still following the cat—couldn’t even be sure she was, except that from time to time she would see a glimmer of red eyes. Unless she was hallucinating that, which was entirely possible.

  But if so, her hallucinations were doing a remarkably good job of keeping her from falling off a cliff.

  With no moon, no stars, and no sense of the landscape passing beneath her feet, there was no way to measure time. She might have left the world entirely; maybe she had fallen off a cliff, and now she was walking through the apeiron, the realm where archai waited in timeless nonexistence between death and a human calling them forth once more. Except that she doubted the apeiron had all the scents and sounds of a tropical forest, the owls hooting and the leaves rustling and the night flowers blooming.

  One thing she didn’t hear: the grunts and roars of the leopards she knew haunted this area. I don’t blame you all for staying away from this thing.

  On and on she walked, in blind faith, until she began to think she would walk forever.

  But the darkness began to lighten. At first so imperceptibly, she assumed she was imagining it; then enough that she knew it was real. Dawn was coming. She hadn’t died. And the cat—

  The cat wasn’t in front of her anymore. But a sheer drop-off was, and Ree grabbed hold of a tree just in time to keep herself from walking over the edge of it.

  She bit down hard on the urge to swear. Like half the trees in this forest, the one she’d grabbed was well-defended by thorns, and one of them had stabbed deep into the heel of her hand. Ree drew it free and sucked at the wound, tasting the copper of her own blood.

  What the hell just happened?

  The last time she’d experienced anything like that night-long walk, it was on the Lhian’s island. Could she have wandered into another archon’s domain without knowing it? Not a chance. No archai had survived Valtaja’s military coup, and even if one moved in after the revolution, it took time for their presence to shape the world around them. There was no way one could have been here long enough to do that, without the royal court at least catching a whisper of it.

  Ree’s mind, worrying at that question, left her eyes free to drift over the landscape below her.

  Then she threw herself flat to the ground.

/>   The encampment in the ravine below was well-concealed, but not perfectly. Wisps of smoke rose from cook-fires, not quite blending with the morning mist. Ree counted two fires, three—maybe four. Enough to indicate a sizable camp, more than any hunters or simple bandits would set up. And their concealment spoke of discipline, a commander with enough control to stop his men from just settling down wherever they felt comfortable.

  She’d found the rebels. Or, more to the point, the cat had led her to them.

  What she didn’t know was why.

  Maybe Sihpo Teglane had his own bound archon, of which the cat was an icon or something like that. Can an animal be an icon? She didn’t know. Say it could: then obviously he’d sent the cat to lure her into a trap.

  But if it was a trap, why hadn’t it sprung?

  Ree made a quick survey of the area, not moving from her spot. She recognized the notched peak of Ahvelu; she wasn’t that far from where she’d come through into Solaike. Assuming she could retrace her steps to Aadet before the rebels had a chance to move on, he could bring his force in, trap them in this valley, and crush them with one blow.

  A grin spread across her face. The moon was up, a pale sliver in the dawn; the three days were over. She was seimer again, and ready to get this done.

  Knowing the rebels’ location was only part of it, though. Ree edged back from the precipice, then worked her way around and down, trying to find a vantage point from which she could get at least a rough count of their numbers and equipment. The terrain didn’t oblige her. The only way I’m getting that count is if I walk into the middle of the camp and yell for them all to come out. Ree had a healthy respect for her own skill with a blade, and turning seimer always made her a little giddy with self-confidence, but she wasn’t stupid enough to push it that far.

  She turned, and cursed under her breath. Yeah. What was that about overconfidence?

  The commander of this group was smart and disciplined. Of course he would put out patrols—and one of them was approaching her position. They were pretty good, too, barely more than a ripple in the undergrowth of the forest. Ree had been hiding from eyes in the valley below, so she hadn’t paid much attention to anything behind her; she was too exposed on that side, and trying to move to better cover would just draw their eyes to her.

  Three of them, it looked like. Bad odds—unless she could take one of them out before they noticed her.

  Ree focused on her clothing, masking as far as she could to make it blend with the forest around her. Her hair was dark enough not to stand out much, and her skin wasn’t too pale. Her red sash was a different matter . . . not to mention the gleaming blade of her sabre, but she had a knife in her boot, and she slipped that from its sheath, keeping it concealed behind her leg. Then she relaxed her muscles and waited for her moment.

  The patrol’s point man barely had time to look up before she slammed into him, sinking her knife into the side of his neck. He wasn’t dead when they hit the ground, but he couldn’t yell either, and at the moment that was all she cared about. Ree rolled and surged to her feet, sabre coming out; it slashed across the throat of the second man as he opened his mouth to shout. That left just one man whole, and those were odds she could deal with.

  But he had a long gun, and he had time enough to raise it and fire.

  Ree plowed into the dirt again. The bullet whined overhead, narrowly missing her. Idiot. She wasn’t sure who she meant, herself or the gunman. She hadn’t seen the weapon before she leapt—but he’d fired too quickly, not taking enough time to aim, and now he was left with a glorified club in his hands. Ree came up sabre-first, ripping open the inside of his thigh; he dropped a moment later.

  Last woman standing—for all the good it does me. There was no way the encampment below hadn’t heard that shot. She could escape before they found her, but the bodies would announce her presence anyway. And then the commander of this place would order his men to pull up stakes.

  When she looked up from cleaning her blade, the cat was there again.

  Ree locked eyes with the beast, black to red. The cat’s lips skinned back, showing her teeth. And Ree, understanding, nodded.

  The sounds began as she loped away through the forest: a wet ripping, the lap of the cat’s tongue. They’d find three bodies, all right. Three corpses savaged by the predator they tried and failed to shoot. It might send them onward; it might not. Either way, Ree had to hurry.

  She could think about the cat later.

  * * *

  Luckily Ree knew the direction Aadet intended to take his search during the new moon; otherwise she might have needed another feline visitation to find his new encampment. As it was, she got there just before sunset. His men had their guns up when she reached their perimeter, but she was making too much noise to be the enemy trying to sneak up on them. Enough noise that by the time she came into the camp itself, Aadet was there to meet her, face creased with worry. “Are you all right?” He glanced at the sky. Checking for the moon, she thought, as if he might have miscounted the days.

  “Fine,” Ree said, dropping onto the nearest pack. Something inside crunched at the impact. I hope that wasn’t important. She wiped sweat and dirt from her forehead, grimaced, and wiped her hand off on her equally filthy pants. “Just half-killed myself getting here, and I expect I’ll half-kill myself getting back, because there’s a chance we can still catch them.”

  “You found the rebels? How?”

  Ree shook her head. “Hell if I know. I mean, I know—I just can’t explain it. There was a cat.”

  Aadet listened as she told the story. Listened, but didn’t quite believe; she could see it in his expression. When she was done, he said, “You’re telling me there’s a magical leopard in this forest.”

  “She wasn’t a leopard,” Ree said, annoyed. “I’ve seen those. I know what they look like. Her head was too big and too square; her whole body was heavier, with shorter legs, and a much more powerful build. And did I mention the red eyes? I don’t know what kind of cat it was—”

  “A jaguar.”

  The answer didn’t come from Aadet. Ree turned on her pack seat and saw Mevreš not far away. How long had he been standing there? His eyes were wide, his jaw hanging just a little bit slack, as if somebody had knocked him on the side of the head. “It was a jaguar.”

  “And you know this how?” Aadet said.

  Mevreš swallowed, blinking as if he could restore his composure that way. “Because I think she saw a Korenat spirit. Vranatzin Iškovri.”

  “The Great Black One, with Eyes of Blood,” Ree murmured.

  She said it without thinking. Jaguar—that was one of the words she’d heard him say when he was counting the days. But she hadn’t told Mevreš she was picking up the Korenat language; to him, her understanding would be just another piece of proof.

  “Vrana—” Aadet said, then gave up. “This cat—this jaguar. What does it mean, and why would it show up to help Ree?”

  She tensed, bracing for Mevreš to say it, the thing she’d held back from Aadet before the new moon. She’s Korenat. Then Aadet would have questions, and all of that was a waste of precious time, when the rebels might vanish at any moment. But Mevreš only said, “There are two of them. Vranatzin Iškovri and Vlataltzin Iškonezal. They are . . . guardians of the path. With Vranatzin, it’s the unknown path, the leap of faith into the darkness.”

  Like walking through the forest on a moonless night. “And the other?” Ree asked.

  “The Great Bright One, with Eyes of Sun.” Mevreš held her gaze as he said it. Ree didn’t bother pretending she hadn’t known the translation; she was asking for the meaning of the spirit, not the words. “He is the path you can see, but will pay dearly to walk.”

  Maybe the other jaguar would show up when she and Mevreš sat down to talk again. “You say they’re Korenat spirits. Did you pray to them for guidance while we’re out here?”

  “Yes. But they . . . even for an archon, they do not usually answer in so dir
ect a fashion.”

  Aadet ran one hand through his hair. “All right. So in your opinion, we can trust this spirit’s guidance.”

  “Absolutely,” Mevreš said without hesitation. “Vranatzin does not play tricks. But she will demand blood.”

  It wasn’t really funny, but Ree smiled anyway. “She ate three rebels. If that’s not enough, I’m sure we’ll have more for her pretty soon.”

  “Assuming we don’t let these bastards slip away,” Aadet said. He looked around the camp. They’d gathered quite an audience by then, the soldiers whispering among themselves about the spirit. That story would be hopelessly mangled by the time they heard it all, but Ree was too tired to care.

  “We still have a little daylight left,” Aadet said. “Pack fast. We’re moving out.”

  * * *

  Ree tried to catch Mevreš after that, but he seemed to be avoiding her. Angry about the language thing? Disappointed that Vranatzin had appeared to her but not to him? She couldn’t tell, and she didn’t have the energy to chase him down and force the point. Which might be a good thing, since it gave her time to think about whether she really wanted to.

  They didn’t get far before the fading light stopped them, but they were up again with the dawn, and more than halfway to the rebel encampment by noon. “When do you want to mount the attack?” Ree asked Aadet, during a brief pause on the march.

  “Describe the area to me again.” She did her best, allowing for the fact that she’d made her way there in pitch darkness. Aadet nodded. “I think I know the valley. If they’re still there, we can move into position during the night and strike at dawn. That gives us a chance to do some reconnaissance and rest before the battle begins.”

  If anybody could scout the camp without being caught like she’d been, it was Aadet’s people. Ree was stealthy enough, but nothing compared to these soldiers; they’d spent years in the mountains, while she’d only come and gone.

  But the scouts came back too fast, crashing through the underbrush like they didn’t care who heard them. “They’re on the move!”