"You don't need to spare me. I asked for a thorough accounting, and you haven't given one yet."
"What?"
She marched to the second bedroom. He didn't make a move to stop her. She threw open the door to see two small sleeping mats. Unmade but empty.
She turned to him. "Where are the children?"
He looked perplexed for a moment, then he nodded. "I haven't seen any. That's odd . . . Unless . . . Are children more susceptible? More likely to become shadow stalkers? Or perhaps they've been taken--"
Now he paused, obviously realizing what he was suggesting. Shadow stalkers were predators. If they took the children, it would be no different from a bear carrying off what it could easily drag back to its den for . . .
"We'll figure that out later," he said. "We're almost at the barracks."
Moria wasn't in the barracks. There was no sign she'd been there in their absence--the door was ajar, as they'd left it.
"She's rescued the children," Ashyn said as they stood in the empty barracks hall. "They escaped and ran to her. They trust her. She'd take them someplace safe."
"Without fetching you?"
"She must have had a reason. I know a few places she might hide with them."
Ronan stepped into her path. "That doesn't make sense, Ashyn. If she was looking for a safe place, why not bring the children to us, in the cells?"
She skirted past him. "There's no escape route down there. If the shadow stalkers came, we'd be trapped. And she might lead the stalkers there. She'd take the children someplace else and return for me when she could."
Ashyn kept going until she reached the wall of the livestock enclosure. From within, she heard silence. No cackle of chickens or grunt of pigs.
She ran along the fence, past the village's main gate. On reflex, she looked for the guard on duty. Of course there wasn't one. She could see his empty post. No trace of him. Not even blood. Just . . .
Empty.
She ran around the livestock enclosure. The heavy gate was closed. Ronan helped her push it open, all the while muttering, "She's not here, Ashyn. You know she's not."
Ashyn squeezed through. Behind her, Tova whined. She turned to see him trying to push his massive head through the narrow opening. Ronan heaved the gate a little more.
When Ashyn tried to run again, Ronan caught her. He motioned for silence as they looked and listened. Nothing. Then, as they were about to move, a whisper came from the barn. Ashyn smiled at Ronan, but his expression stayed grim, and his grip on her cloak only tightened.
"Slowly," he whispered. "Get behind me and stay there."
She didn't appreciate being given orders, but he did have the sword.
They crept along the fence until they reached the barn. The sounds from within became clearer: first rustles and whispers, then finally voices.
"I heard something," a young girl murmured. Someone shushed her quickly, but Ashyn smiled. She'd been right. The children were here. Moria was here.
Ronan nudged her into the lead, whispering, "They ought to see you first. I'll wait here until you can explain."
Before she could argue, he slid off into the night. Ashyn opened the barn door. An excited cry. A scrabble of shoes. Tova tensed. A small figure shot out from the darkness as someone whispered to stop, to come back. The figure launched herself at Ashyn. It was Wenda, the girl who'd walked with Ashyn to the temple.
Ashyn hugged her and motioned her back farther into the barn, where a woman leaned out. Someone closed the door behind Ashyn, making her jump. A lantern swung up. A guard stepped forward. Ashyn didn't recognize him--he looked like many of the others, around thirty summers, brown-skinned, dark braids, no tattoos. A warrior, but not from the highest families.
Ashyn did recognize the woman. One of the farmer's wives. Beatrix. She was older--her children had grown and left Edgewood for something better, as many did.
"Where's my sister?" Ashyn asked. "Did she leave to look for me?"
Silence. Another figure shuffled from the shadows. An elderly man, past his days of working. Quintin was his name, as he reminded her. The guard was Gregor.
"My sister," Ashyn repeated after the introductions. "She was here, was she not?"
"No, miss," Beatrix said. "I haven't seen her."
"But the children. They're here?"
Ashyn already knew the answer. If there were children here, they would not be so silent.
"Where are the children?" she asked. "They aren't in their homes. There are no . . . signs they were hurt." She started for the door. "They must be with Moria. I need to find--"
"You won't, miss." The old man moved into her path. "The little ones were taken."
"With Moria," Wenda piped up. "That's what I said, and no one believed me, but if you're here and she isn't, then I was right."
Beatrix cut in. "The child thought she saw the Keeper, but we did not. The children were taken, miss. Rounded up and taken. There was naught anyone could do. There was naught anyone could do about any of it. It happened so fast."
"What happened? What did you see?"
"Nothing. My husband was here, in the barns, so I was alone. I woke when Wenda came to my door. I went out and . . . and the village was . . ." She swallowed. "Silent. Empty."
Ashyn turned to the child as Tova padded to the door to stand watch.
"I heard a noise," Wenda said. "I woke and went to see my parents, but they were gone. Everyone was gone. It was so dark and quiet. I ran next door. Beatrix was there. We went to her other neighbor and . . ."
"They were dead," Beatrix whispered. "All of them. I didn't let the child see, of course. I took her, and I was running to the barracks, and that's when we heard old Quintin, coming out his door, gibbering about monsters."
"Then I found them," the guard said. "I was patrolling the road outside the village. I came back and found the gate unguarded. I ran into the village, but whatever had happened was over. I met these three. Then we heard the children."
"They were being taken down the road," Wenda said. "They hardly made any noise. Like they were walking in their sleep."
"They were alone?" Ashyn said.
"No, there were men," Wenda said. She paused. "I think they were men."
Ashyn glanced at Beatrix. "Did you see . . . other things in the village? Not men."
"Shadow stalkers," Quintin said. "I saw one. I live with my son and his wife, and I heard her cry out. I walked from my bedroom and . . ." He inhaled sharply. "My son. He was . . . one of those things. He'd killed her and he was eating--"
Beatrix cleared her throat loudly. He mumbled an apology and withdrew, his gaze dropping.
"It all happened so quickly," he said. "We'd barely gone to bed and then . . ."
"They weren't shadow stalkers with the children," Beatrix said. "They were riders on horseback. Wenda meant that we couldn't tell for certain they were men, but I'm sure no woman would steal the children."
She turned to Wenda. "You saw Moria?"
The girl nodded. "She was hiding behind the rocks. I think she was trying to save the children. But the men captured her and took her along."
Ashyn turned to the others. "You saw none of that?"
"There was a commotion," Beatrix said. "I heard it. But my eyes are not good. Nor his." She gestured at Quintin.
"And yours?" Ashyn turned to the guard, Gregor.
"I had gone back to the barracks, looking for more survivors."
"After you saw riders stealing our children?"
Gregor squared his shoulders. "There were many riders. Only a fool would chase them."
Only a coward would not try, Ashyn thought. Her sister was not a coward. Moria wouldn't be foolhardy enough to engage the entire party, but she would have tried to follow them. That's how she'd been spotted and taken.
"Which way did they go?" she asked.
"Following the road across the Wastes," Beatrix said.
"Then so will we. I'll need you to gather what you can while I conduct a quick ritual for the dead.
They deserve more than that, but it's all the time we can afford."
As they left the barn, Ashyn remembered she needed to warn them about Ronan. When Gregor saw that she'd brought the exile, armed, he would--
Before she could explain, she saw paper pinned to the barn wall. A note? Ashyn hurried over and pulled it down.
The characters were written in a neat, precise hand, almost as good as her own. Not Ronan's, then. Most of the empire was illiterate, leaving books and writing for the priests and scholars. She read the note. Blunt and simple, despite the perfect calligraphy.
Follow the road. Take care.
It was signed Ronan. She read it twice, to be sure, as if there were any mistaking his intent. There was not. She'd freed him. He'd repaid her by helping her find other survivors. Then he'd left.
Ashyn crumpled the note. As she did, though, it made her think of something she should do before they left the village.
Moria
Seventeen
Moria ran into the forest chasing her sister. She could still make out Ashyn's and Tova's forms, but they were getting fainter.
Blast it, how could they be pulling away? Ashyn wasn't nearly as sure-footed as Moria, and Tova was as graceful as a newborn calf.
Daigo glanced back, his yellow eyes glowing. Then he let out an unearthly wildcat scream.
"Well, they ought to hear that," Moria murmured.
"Stay there," she called, as loudly as she dared. "I'm coming."
Her sister seemed to stop. With every few steps, Moria would lose sight of Ashyn, and her heart would pound, but then she'd catch sight of her again.
Then, without warning, she plowed into something. Her hands hit soft, sleek fur.
"Daigo? Blast it! Don't do that."
He didn't chirp an apology. Moria moved up beside him as he stared at the pale forms of Ashyn and Tova.
"Ashyn?" Moria called softly.
No reply.
A little louder. "Ashyn?"
The figures just stood there.
What if that's not truly Ashyn? What if she's become . . . ?
Her mind refused to finish the question.
But why else would Ashyn run into the forest? In all the time Moria had been chasing her, she hadn't paused to wonder that.
Moria crept forward, gaze fixed on her sister's face. She could see the shape of it but not the features. Not enough to know that it was still her sister's true face.
"Tova?"
Daigo let out a soft snarl, as if also calling the hound.
Even if her sister couldn't hear them, Tova should, but he stood straight and unflinching at Ashyn's side.
Daigo and Moria skirted a dead tree. As they rounded the roots, the figures of Ashyn and Tova disappeared behind it. Then Moria stepped out the other side and--
They were gone.
Moria shoved through the dense woods, squinting into the darkness until Daigo stopped and nearly tripped her again. He glanced over his shoulder, not at her, but behind them. Then he backtracked. Moria hurried after him. This time when he stopped, she halted in time. He looked up at her and made a noise deep in his throat.
They must have passed the spot.
"Where are they?" she said, her voice echoing.
Daigo grunted and started into the forest. When Moria tried to follow, he growled softly, telling her to stay. As soon as she stopped moving, the silence prickled at the back of her neck, as if someone was creeping up behind her. She spun and saw nothing.
She strode to the nearest tree, rammed her dagger into her belt, and grabbed the bottom limb. She swung up from branch to branch, not slowing until there weren't any more that would hold her weight. Then she stretched out and peered down to see . . .
Nothing. She saw nothing.
Moria's boots squelched in mud. She could not see well in the ink-gray night, but she could make out obstacles before she smacked into and stumbled over them. There were no trees in this barren strip. There were rocks, though, and the gurgle of water, so faint it was as if a tiny underground spring was trying to hide beneath the stagnant, fetid water.
She walked to a large rock. There was a smaller one attached, like a baby on his mother's back.
"We've been here before," she said, casting an accusing glare at Daigo. "I thought you were leading us out."
He harrumphed, as if to say, What do you expect? I'm not a tracking hound.
They needed to find out what had happened to Ashyn. Moria had no idea what she'd seen--a hallucination, a phantasm? It didn't matter. What was important was that it had not been Ashyn. She had to get back to the village to find her sister . . . but they were lost. Hopelessly lost.
Moria collapsed on the rock. Daigo put his front paws on her knee, the dampness of them seeping through her breeches. He rose until he was looking her in the eye, his whiskers tickling her cheeks.
They said the Wildcats of the Immortals possessed the spirits of ancient warriors. Moria had never given that much thought. She tried not to, if she was being honest. It seemed demeaning to be trapped in the body of a beast and bonded to a mortal girl.
"It doesn't matter, does it?" she whispered. "Even if you were a great warrior, there's nothing here for either of us to fight."
He sighed, his breath warming her face. Then he backed off her and looked around. As he did, his gaze stopped on something behind her. She turned to see a dagger stuck in the shallow streambed, point up.
Moria took off her boots, unwrapped her feet, and stuffed the silk into her boots. Then she rolled up her breeches and stepped into the stream. It was like breaking through winter's ice on the cistern, and she bit back a gasp as she walked.
The blade was buried up to the collar. When she crouched and reached into the water, her fingers brushed something oddly soft. Then she felt the ridges of the carved handle. She yanked. The dagger flew up . . . with a hand wrapped around the haft.
Moria fell, splashing as she landed on her backside, icy water shocking her again. A man's hand still clutched the dagger's haft. An arm was attached to the hand. A dark-skinned arm covered in tattoos. When she made out eyes in the inking, her breath jammed in her chest. She was sure of what she was looking at--the nine-tailed fox. Then the design became clear. A dog's head. The Inugami clan.
It was Orbec. A substandard warrior from an elite family. He'd been sent to Edgewood to toughen up, and he'd stayed there by choice. It was easier in Edgewood, where his tattoos meant something and where no one expected him to be more than average. He was above average in one skill, though. Throwing a dagger. He'd been the one who'd taught Moria.
Moria stood there, looking at his body. I let the commander send him into these woods. I got them all killed--everyone in my village. I was supposed to protect them, and I was underground, entertaining a convict, throwing daggers at a wall.
That was the fact she'd been struggling to ignore. The shadow stalkers had come and the Keeper had not been there to stop them. That her village--her father--died because she wasn't there.
I failed.
Her legs gave way and she fell to the ground, shaking and gasping for breath. Daigo yowled and rubbed against her, but she barely noticed. She tried to cry, to let it out, but no sound would come. She just kept shaking.
When something struck her hand, she looked to see Orbec's dagger on the ground. It was an ancestral blade, with the stylized dogs engraved along the handle. Daigo bent and nudged it toward her.
"I don't want--"
He snarled, cutting her off, then glowered at her, telling her to stop being dramatic. Gather her wits. Take action.
He nudged the blade toward her again.
Fight. That's what he meant. You missed your chance before. Take it now. Fight back any way you can.
She took the blade. Then she put on her wraps and boots.
Eighteen
"The sun." Moria laughed. "The sun, Daigo. It came."
He grunted and walked behind her, prodding as if to say, Yes, yes, that's all very nice, but it
won't come down here and rescue you, will it?
That's when she noticed blood on the rocks.
The blood drops continued over the rocks. Then the drops became smears, as if the wounded had fallen. Furrows were raked in the soft ground by the creek. Someone dragging himself along. Near death but trying to escape it.
When she rounded a boulder, she saw a man's body downstream, his arms over his head. A sword lay beside one hand. His hair was in braids. His forearms were covered with tattoos.
There were only two guards with braids and ink. She'd already found one and left him in the stream.
"Gavril," she whispered.
Daigo leaped over and started nudging Gavril's corpse. She wanted to call to him. Tell him to leave the body. She'd had enough--enough of looking upon the spirit-fled corpses of people she'd known, people she had cared for. There is a point when the mind says, I've had enough. Strike me again and I'll shatter.
She took a deep breath and walked slowly toward him. Daigo nosed away his braids to show a gash in the back of Gavril's head. Moria took a moment's pause to brace herself, then she bent and laid her hand on his inked forearm, and--
She yanked her hand away and bit back a yelp.
Gavril's skin was warm. She pressed her hands to his upper arm, as if there might be some sorcery in the tattoos that warmed the skin. When her ice-cold fingers touched warm flesh, her hands flew to his neck. She felt a pulse. A strong one.
Daigo huffed as if to say, I told you.
"Yes, yes," she muttered.
While she'd been trained in battle healing, Ashyn was much better at it. Moria had spent most of her lessons grumbling that, in a battle, she was supposed to be on the front lines with the warriors, not tending to the wounded. That was woman's work, and it seemed that's why she was being trained in it--a sign that they might give her a blade, but they didn't truly expect her to be much use on the battlefield. So to prove them wrong, she'd thrown her focus into fighting instead of healing. A foolish choice, motivated by pride.
She dragged Gavril by his tunic to drier ground. Daigo tried to help, but when she snapped at him for ripping Gavril's breeches, he stomped off, offended. As she reached the edge of the mud, it seemed to make one last effort to keep Gavril, and she had to dig her boots in, hands wrapped in his tunic, and heave--
Gavril's arm shot out and struck her, the blow so unexpected she let go as he scrambled to his feet, his hand going to his empty sword scabbard. Only as he pulled out his dagger instead did he look up.