Chapter 6
Six
Ivy
For all Casimir’s concern about keeping us warm and dry, he’s the one sneezing when we finally stop for the night.
“I’m all right,” he tells me when I go over to check on him, but his voice sounds unusually rough. His face has flushed with what might be the start of a fever.
Guilt and worry tangle in my gut. I caress his cheek and grab another roll from our stash of provisions. “You should get a little food in you and then rest.”
He grimaces. “It’s only a little cold.” But when I drag him into the tent after Stavros and Alek get it set up, he sinks onto his sleeping bag as if it was taking all his energy just to stay standing. His breath rasps out of him as it slows with sleep.
Cuddled up next to him, I only manage to drift off when I’m sure he’s completely out. My heart keeps aching until slumber rolls over my mind.
I wake up to the warble of the night breeze passing over the fabric of the tent and a twinge in my bladder.
Casimir is still deep asleep beside me, the hoarseness of his breath smoothed out enough that no fresh worries grip me. Alek has tucked himself close at my other side, our shared body heat stopping us from freezing during the chilly autumn night. I can’t really complain about having only one tent.
The scholar’s cool citrusy scent has mingled with the courtesan’s honeyed sandalwood into a complex perfume. I wish I could wrap it around me always.
I close my eyes, but my bladder protests more emphatically. Julita lets out a soft chuckle. One of the few things I don’t miss about having a body.
Scowling, I ease myself up between the two men. I need to be able to get back to sleep if I’m going to be rested enough to ward off whatever illness Casimir has caught.
Moving slowly and carefully, I manage not to rouse either of my lovers or the daimon-man who’s sprawled back-to-back with Alek. I slip out from under the two wool blankets we layered across our sleeping bags and step through the tent’s flaps.
Stavros glances up from the log where he’s been keeping watch. He’ll have traded off with Alek a little while ago, and he’s meant to switch with me in another hour or two. I don’t think he trusts Rheave to take on guard duty alone at this point.
Like the rest of us, the former general has traded his stolen soldier uniform for the more discreet tunic, jacket, and trousers Garom supplied us with as well.
The rain washed the black from his hair like it’s mostly rinsed the temporary dye from mine, though the dark red strands still look almost the same shade in the faint moonlight that penetrates our campsite.
He arches his eyebrows at me in question, but his expression tenses with concern at the same time.
I wave toward the trees, pitching my voice low to avoid waking the others. “I just need to relieve myself.”
Stavros’s stance relaxes in a way I don’t totally understand until he says, in a matching low tone, “No nightmares?”
I choke up for a second at the history implied in those two words.
Stavros knows as well as I do that he was the starring figure in most of my recent nightmares, wrenching a noose around my neck as he once thought he might need to do in reality.
He even instructed one of his students to partly strangle me with a rope to test my control over my magic.
But we’ve come a long way from there—both of us.
I walk over to the log. “No bad dreams at all.”
Drawn to the mix of affection and anguish in his eyes by the same emotions coiled inside me, I bend down to kiss him.
Stavros meets the press of my lips with an encouraging hum and teases his fingers into my hair. When I pull back a few inches, he gazes up at me with a hint of his old cocky grin. “Trying to distract me from my duties?”
I snort softly. “Trying to show you how much I appreciate you watching over me.”
“Hmm. I think I’d better appreciate you a little more, then.”
He tugs me back down and claims my mouth with enough passion to leave my head spinning.
We both know this isn’t the time or place for a lengthier interlude. I squeeze his shoulder before weaving off between the trees for a little privacy.
As I squat behind a bush several paces away, Julita speaks up with no apparent concern about what I’m up to. Really, privacy isn’t a concept that can exist when you’ve got another person’s soul residing in your head.
Where do you think we go from here?
I gather the skirts of the plain woolen dress I changed into and take a few steps from my makeshift latrine. The rustling and buzz of the forest life around me stir up memories of my ventures into the campus woods to join in the scourge sorcerers’ rituals and spy on them.
We rode another few hours from the spot where we stopped to eat yesterday evening, to an isolated stretch of land Stavros says is along the border between two provinces. With no towns or roads nearby, it’s unlikely anyone will stumble on us.
But clearly we can’t simply camp out in the woods for the rest of our lives.
“I don’t know,” I murmur. “I guess we’ll come up with some kind of plan in the morning after we’re properly rested.”
What a plan it’ll need to be. She huffs. We were supposed to be done with those fiends. I can’t believe they’ve managed to spread their toxic magic across the whole country.
Horror colors the noblewoman’s tone. She’s more familiar with the brutal side of scourge sorcery than the rest of us, having been subjected to blood-letting experiments by her brother and his best friend as a child in their fumbling attempts to enhance their magical talents.
I grimace in answer. “Rheave might be mistaken about just how far their operations have expanded. But it does sound as if it’s a much bigger mess than we had any idea about.”
My ghostly passenger shudders. When I set you on this mission, I never thought it’d ask anywhere near this much of you, Ivy. I never thought it’d ask this much of me. And now the king wants your head too… I’m sorry.
Does she really think this disaster is somehow her fault?
I wrap my arms around my waist, wishing I could touch the woman I now consider a friend, look into her eyes, make sure she accepts how much I mean this.
“You didn’t launch the Order of the Wild.
You never asked me to use my magic. I’m still glad to have a friend through all this chaos, as long as you can stick with us. ”
I think the tickle of Julita’s presence at the back of my skull gentles a little. Her voice comes out softer. I’ll stand with you until the end of it—as well as I can actually stand.
The corner of my mouth ticks upward, but the unsettled mood the conversation provoked lingers. Pulling my cloak closer around me against the breeze, I peer through the night-cast woods.
A flutter of movement catches my eye. Was that a crow taking flight from a branch overhead?
I hesitate and then step toward that tree. Gazing up at it, I can’t see any further sign of divine presence or anything else.
Did Kosmel know all along that he was sending me on a collision course with a murderous conspiracy that extended far beyond the college’s walls? Have I offended him as much as I did the king with my impromptu shows of magic?
I was already in over my head at the college. Now I’m so deep underwater I can barely see a glimmer of light through the churning surface overhead.
How is a street-rat thief supposed to challenge a kingdom-wide, hundreds-strong plot to overturn the very fabric of our society?
For a moment, the drowning sensation overwhelms me. I close my eyes and sink to my knees at the base of the tree trunk.
I know what the clerics would say I have to do if I want to call on him properly.
Open myself up. Prove that I welcome his guidance.
Because I do need it now, more than I ever have before.
I’d started to take comfort in the trickster godlen’s interest in me. Knowing he was on my side and supporting me helped me stand up to Ster. Torstem and deal with the conspirators my way.
Please, let him not have abandoned me.
I close my eyes and bow my head, thinking out to the divine powers that flow through our world.
Kosmel, if you’re still watching over me, I could use some advice.
Our enemies are so many more than we realized.
I have no idea how I can even start to tackle the rest of the scourge sorcerers.
And the king’s soldiers will be hunting me too…
If there’s any direction you can offer, I’ve never needed it more.
I wait, cold seeping into my knees from the dirt, leaves hissing against each other overhead.
No voice comes to me. No sense of a divine presence grazes my skin.
After a few minutes, I push myself to my feet. A hollow sensation has formed in the pit of my stomach, but I ignore it as well as I can as I head back to the tent.
I’ve gotten through plenty of sticky situations in the past without any godly assistance. We’ll figure something out.
Stavros nods to me as I pass him. I tuck myself back under the blankets between my other two men and soak up their warmth until it takes the edge off the ache inside.
The sleep I fall into this time is full of jumbled images that don’t quite form a dream. Shadows whirl, and jagged shapes brush against my limbs.
Then I’m perched on a tree branch in the midst of the woods, the light of a full moon beaming over me… and a strange figure balanced on the branch across from me.
At first glance, I think it’s a gigantic crow. Then the creature raises its head, and the eyes of a man stare back at me—pale but fathomless eyes as if I’m staring straight through a star.
My pulse hitches, and I jerk my gaze away, over the body that’s feathered and winged but with a man’s legs, leather boots braced against the branch’s bark.
A low chuckle reverberates around me. “There are many ways I can appear. I promise you’d find most of the others more disturbing.”
“Kosmel,” I mumble. Am I still asleep?
The godlen doesn’t bother to acknowledge his name. “You know I can’t tell you what to do, my wayward rogue. Some of my siblings feel I’ve meddled too much as it is.”
But he’s here. He’s reached out to me after all.
“I can make my own decisions,” I say, remembering the things he’s said to me before.
I can’t quite keep my voice from shaking.
“I’d just like to do it with a better understanding of what we’re up against. You want all the scourge sorcerers stopped, don’t you?
But I don’t know how much I can risk using my magic without becoming just as big a problem as they are… ”
Kosmel is silent for long enough that I’d think he might have vanished if I wasn’t staring at his boots. The awareness of his divine energy prickles over my skin.
“It’s a complicated journey you’ve found yourself on,” he says finally.
Like when he speaks in my head, his voice resonates through every particle of my body, quivering into my bones, scattering my pulse.
“Being cautious is not my natural state, but things end in catastrophe when gods impose too much of their will on mortals. You’ve already suffered enough from those consequences. ”
I’m not totally sure what he means about my ‘suffering.’ I grope for the right thing to say. “You must have wanted to tell me something, or you wouldn’t be here.”
The godlen makes a rough sound that’s as much caw as grunt. “I heard your plea. I didn’t want you to think I’ve forgotten you. But this may be the last time we speak.”
For a second, I feel as if the branch beneath me has disintegrated. I wobble, fighting through the sensation of freefall, of the one bit of security I clung to slipping through my fingers.
“But—my magic—if I need to use it again, will you help me guide it? I didn’t want to let it loose without your direction; there just wasn’t time—”
“Don’t fret like that,” Kosmel interrupts. “It doesn’t become you.” His dry tone gives no indication that he’s upset about how I used my power in the past day.
He pauses and then clicks his tongue. “You should have guidance of some sort. I can offer better than my own, in this one case. To mend some of what was marred.”
I shouldn’t be surprised when the godlen of trickery speaks in half-riddles rather than plainly, but it’s frustrating all the same. “Better?”
He adjusts his position with a ruffling of his crow feathers.
“Walk with the sun at your left in the morn and your right after noon until you see the silver peak through the trees. Climb straight to the crossed trees, then continue to the left until you reach the waterfall. Announce to the sky that Kosmel led you there and expects you to receive a riven’s welcome. Then listen well.”
Listen well? Another question tumbles out. “If there’s more I should know, can’t you—”
Kosmel cuts me off with another raspy caw. “Mortal business is between mortals.”
His wings sweep past me in a blur of black feathers, and I really do lose my balance. My boots slip on the branch. My clawing fingers catch only air.
I plummet down and down and—
My eyes pop open as if with a smack of impact. At my gasp, the men around me stir.
Casimir blinks sleepily with a hint of a sniffle and touches my arm. “All right, Kindness?”
I stare into the darkness, the dream echoing through my head. “I think so. I know where we need to go.”