Chapter Fifteen
The shadows seemed to taunt her, waving and crawling as wind blew through the budding leaves.
With only the first slender sliver of the Greening Moon in the sky, the night was near impenetrable.
With the sliding shutter mostly closed to hide her presence, the lantern she carried barely illuminated a few trees ahead of her.
Iryana kept her back glued to the fissured, pale bark of the linden tree. The branches were still bare of heart-shaped leaves.
She clung to her bow and the lantern.
This was a spot she and her sisters had come to multiple times with their mother before things got too bad with their father.
Those trips were some of the few times they saw Hadima—she was so busy studying to be a healer.
There were rarer plants nearby that were important for her mother’s tonics, but it was also a relatively safe spot to have a picnic.
Those memories, which should have been good, now just brought her pain.
Listen to the trees, my little owl. Her mother had said that so many times, pulling Iryana into her lap as she rebraided her hair. Iryana could remember the feel of her mother’s fingers against her scalp, slowly working out the tangles, as she named the creatures that sounded around them.
Iryana couldn’t focus on things like birds, deer, and sables now, her single focus being listening for her sister.
Hadima was late.
In her stillness, Iryana couldn’t stop imagining what could have held her sister up. Had she forgotten or had she run into trouble on the way there? Was she even now fighting off a beast? Was she lying against a tree somewhere, bleeding out?
Stop. You’re spiraling.
But she wouldn’t be able to wait much longer; she had to get back to the fort before morning.
While it had taken almost eighteen hours to make it from the Dovaki Post to Myura River Fort before at Pyetar’s limping pace—all the snow, mud, and the breaks he had needed to take had really slowed them down—she could cover the distance much quicker on her own.
Once the ground dried out more and she was familiar with the path, Iryana bet she could jog to the post and back in about six hours.
But even though their meeting place was only two-thirds of the way to the post, it was dark and slick enough that it would take the rest of the night to head back.
“Iryana?” came a familiar voice from the trees.
Iryana nearly sagged with relief.
The shadowed figure of her sister slipped through the trees. Finally. Iryana’s hands slightly loosened their grip.
A deep breath, and then Iryana answered, “I’m right here.”
Hadima rushed over to her, a large basket and a short bow awkwardly strung over her shoulder.
She looked tired, more tired than usual, with shadows under red-streaked eyes.
Her braid was loose, her brown scarf already slipping down.
Iryana’s usually composed sister was a mess.
Despite that, Hadima’s gaze carefully traced all over Iryana.
“How is it going with the brigade?” she asked.
Iryana shrugged. The report of how she helped during the ambush had impressed Darish, but the others were still distant. And she hadn’t talked to Karvek yet beyond that brief encounter. She wasn’t dead though and hadn’t been kicked out, so there was that.
Hadima sighed. “They are recruiting you though? You have food and somewhere to sleep?”
“Yeah.”
“I am working on a way to get messages through the liaison to you, to make this easier.”
“Nevesh Dyol is a cowardly, untrustworthy cockroach,” Iryana seethed. “You can’t trust him.”
“I never said I did,” Hadima snapped. “But I know how to properly motivate a man like him. You said to figure things out—I’m doing that.”
“Fine.” She wanted to argue more. The thought of her sister owing that slimy man anything was repulsive, but she was right. Hadima could fix this.
She stopped herself from bringing up Misha and the others, instead asking, “What about the hunts?”
“We killed one a few days ago, but it’s been… difficult.” Hadima avoided eye contact. “Levek twisted his ankle badly. He’s doing all right now, but I just don’t know if it’s worth trying again.”
Only one dakya in two weeks? Iryana’s heart sank. “Could more of you hunt together?”
“It’s hard enough to sneak a few of us out at a time. Grandmother is still not letting anyone leave, so we have to wait for one of us to be on watch to open the gate.”
“Maybe you need to come at it a different way?”
Hadima sighed, the twist of her usually gentle-looking face making her look even more rundown. “Different how? Hunting dakii is the only way to kill them any faster than we do normally.”
Iryana hesitated, trying to curb her frustration. “Have you thought about setting traps?”
Then she remembered a thought that she had been playing with since seeing the seer back at the water settlement village. There were more ways to use water-forgings than just amplifying healing properties.
“There’s a book in—” the word caught in Iryana’s throat. Would Hadima blame her if the idea didn’t pan out? Maybe it wasn’t worth bringing up.
“What book?”
Iryana had already been gone for so long, she couldn’t draw their meeting out by arguing.
“In mother’s things.” Iryana forced the words out like ripping off a bandage. “A book on poisons.”
“You can’t poison a dakya.”
Iryana shrugged. “Have you tried them all? Stronger ones?”
She remembered how hard her family had tried to defend Klees.
When the dakii had surrounded their fortress.
Boiling water barely made them flinch, flaming pitch stuck to their hair but didn’t seem to catch, and large stones didn’t crush them, they only slowed them down.
Even when they were injured, the dakii didn’t seem to care, especially in those early days when they were more mindless than cunning.
Her great uncle, the family’s water-forged healer who had been Hadima’s mentor, had helped make poisoned arrows, but they hadn’t seemed to do anything.
While her family was retreating toward the mountains, trying to guard as many as they could, they’d tried poisoning water sources and deer as a trap, but it hadn’t ever seemed to work.
She had never seen a beast that looked to have died from illness or natural causes.
Still, there were likely plenty of things they hadn’t tried.
Hadima shook her head slowly, her eyes getting far away.
“Maybe you will be the first,” Iryana suggested.
Hadima was the golden child of the family—she had enough luck for that sort of thing.
Always knew the right words to comfort one of their cousins, commonly perfected her herbal mixtures on the first try, and never seemed to stick her foot in her mouth.
Hadima’s face fell, and Iryana wasn’t sure why. “Here.” Iryana grabbed a jar from her pack and pushed it into Hadima’s hands.
Her sister turned it over, running a finger over the label gently before twisting it open to take a sniff. “This is earth-imbued. Where did you get this? No. Actually, I don’t want to know. This will help a lot. Thank you.”
Iryana looked out at the forest, avoiding the look in Hadima’s eyes. “We shouldn’t linger.”
“Oh, right.” Hadima sat the basket she had brought in front of Iryana. “This should be enough to explain the time.”
Iryana kneeled and searched inside, gauging how long it would have taken her to gather all the plants.
It was hard to make it all out in the bit of lantern light, but she found a stack of bark strips tied neatly with a string, a large pile of fleshy, floral-smelling golden root wrapped in a spare cloth, a bundle of yellow avens, and a few other loose plants that Hadima probably harvested on the way to their meeting. It should be enough.
Iryana familiarized herself with everything and transferred the contents to her own pack. It was all things that were easy enough to get now that the Kleesolds wouldn’t miss them.
“I should probably get back.” Iryana looked up at the moon. Too much time had passed, and they were both hours from home.
“Yeah.” Hadima shifted nervously. “Meet here in about two weeks? On the full moon? I’ll send a message.”
Time was passing far too quickly.
Iryana nodded, and they slung their things back onto their shoulders. She didn’t know how to say goodbye, didn’t want to, so she just mumbled something about seeing her later and beelined away from the linden tree.
She would try to make better time heading back.
“Iryana?”
Her sister’s words stopped Iryana in her tracks, and she turned back, only having made it a few paces. Hadima looked so small standing next to the great trunk of the tree, leather guardian armor out of place over the intricately embroidered hem of their mother’s old shirt.
“Please be careful.”
Her throat tightened. Iryana inclined her head toward her sister and then hurried into the forest, not letting herself look back.
The meeting—the whole arrangement—was starting to blur the careful lines Iryana had drawn between herself and her family. Between the dakii, the brigade, and her own abilities to ruin things, there were too many paths that ended in disaster.
Iryana alternated between running and walking, setting a grueling pace as she headed back toward the fort.
She kept the Yuresh River to her right until it met the Myura, both still high with meltwater, then followed that upstream.
It wasn’t the fastest path, but given she wasn’t as familiar with the forest this far out, it was better than getting lost. She only had to backtrack and find an alternative path around scouting beasts a few times.
When she finally made it back to the bank across from the fort, the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon. Morning mist rose over the swollen river, dancing and leaping as if hoping to taste the first golden rays.