Chapter Fourteen
This is what it feels like to die: choking, hacking, my lungs on fire, bone-deep pain everywhere.
“Bria,” I hear distantly. “You can do it.”
Oh, I see. This is what it feels like to try to keep living.
Something twinges deep inside me, a tiny, magical push below my rib cage. Water is expelled from my lungs and pours from my
mouth into the dirt. Suddenly the coughing is better somehow, like I’m coughing to cleanse myself rather than for survival.
I smell woodsmoke, and something musky like wet fur.
“Titus?” I manage, between coughs.
“Oh, thank the gods,” he says.
“I got the glove,” I tell him weakly.
“Yes, I see that.” His forehead presses against mine; his long hair is loose from its tie and tickling my cheek. It’s wet,
as though he just came back from a swim. He inhales deeply, like he’s breathing me in.
“You saved me,” I say.
“You saved my quest,” he whispers.
“I guess that’s how it’s supposed to work between a shield maiden and her liege, right? We help each other.”
“Yes.” He pulls his face away, then a large hand lifts my head. “But if you’re going to go on saving me,” he says, “I’m afraid you must eat something. You expended a lot of magic.”
“Not hungry.”
With his other hand, he reaches for something. “Too bad. While you were in there, I made some very thin, very unappetizing
soup, and you’re going to eat all of it.” He tips a hot mug to my mouth. More liquid is the last thing I want in all the world,
but I obligingly part my lips.
He’s right; it’s thin and unappetizing, but suddenly I’m swallowing gulp after gulp like a craven thing, as though my body
knows what my mind struggles to accept: If I used any magic right now, I would Gift-starve myself.
“What’s in this?” I ask.
“You don’t want to know.”
I swallow every drop.
“Now rest,” he says, setting down the mug beside the fire. “Sleep if you can. I need you sharp.”
“Too cold,” I mumble. I’m having trouble forming thoughts and words, as though the hot soup is sending me back into a coma.
“Just cold? Anything hurt?”
“Toes. Fingers. Like hot needles.”
“That’s good. It means circulation is returning to your extremities.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I tell him. I really could use a nap.
“Circulation is the way blood . . . never mind. It’s a healer thing. Just rest.”
“The assassins—”
“Will surely find us. I’ll keep watch. You can’t travel in this condition.”
My eyelids are heavier than millstones. “The mistwraiths . . . my grandda . . .”
“Sweet gods, you even talk when you’re half asleep. Tell me about it later.”
I am not half asleep. My mind is too thick with deadly assassins and ghostly monsters. And there’s something about my journey into
the mine that teases my thoughts, though I can’t . . .
My eyes flutter open, and it’s like I’ve awakened into another world. Night has fallen and our fire has burned down to embers,
letting the stars shimmer in full glory. The Banshee is prominent tonight: the line of stars representing her silken hair
point north, to the Edge.
The air smells of must, and something damp tickles my nose again. It’s not unpleasant. I stretch my toes and discover I’m
wrapped in the warmest, most luxurious fur I’ve ever felt. I am comfortable, safe, warm. I could sleep here forever. Maybe
I will.
“Bria!”
Hands are shaking me.
“Put on the clothes you left by the fire. Quickly.”
I jump up, and I’m pleasantly surprised to find myself steady on my feet. The needle pain in my limbs is gone. Sunshine bathes
our lakeside campsite in warmth.
The camisole and drawers I’m wearing are completely dry. I give a brief thought to Titus pulling me from the water while they were soaking wet, leaving little to the imagination.
I rush toward the fire and retrieve my clothing. As I don my pants, Apple and Blackwind stomp and blow air, as though they
sense an approaching threat. Two griffin condors patrol the sky, circling close. Another perches in a stunted pine tree, her
shimmery black wings stretched to absorb the sun, but her head bobs up and down with restlessness.
Titus takes the horses by the reins and leads them toward me. He’s already packed everything except my bedroll, which he rolls
up and tosses to me. I catch it, attach it to the hook on Blackwind’s saddle. Titus swings his massive bow over his shoulder,
then stoops with a cupped hand to help me climb onto Apple.
“How close are they?” I ask while he mounts Blackwind.
“Too close.” He clicks to his horse and guides him toward the path leading back to the miners’ village. “I scouted them as
you were stirring. Thought they were a good distance away, but I was wrong.”
“Distances are hard to gauge in the mountains,” I say as we urge our mounts into a trot.
“It’s more than that. They’ve been hounding me for months. You asked a while back how they always find me, and I think it’s
magic.”
I give Apple a gentle kick to speed him up. “I’ve never heard of a Gift that could—”
“A tracker,” Titus says. “My father has one in his service. He could learn someone’s location merely by holding an object
that had belonged to them. But that doesn’t explain how they always catch up so quickly.”
“Another Gift. Something we don’t know about.”
We crest the rise and look down on the tiny valley that cups the miners’ village. More griffin condors sun themselves atop
the stone ruins.
“The catalog of Gifts kept at the college is a work in progress,” Titus says. “No one knows the full extent of power the gods
have given us.”
“Well, many choose never to tell,” I point out.
Titus is nodding. “Which is why, everywhere we go, everyone we meet, we have to assume they’re more dangerous than we expect.”
“That’s a terrible way to live. . . .”
My protest dies when we round a slight bend, giving us a fuller view of the village. A group of people on horseback waits
at the other end, forearms crossed over their pommels, gazing up at us: Five bearded men dressed in dark leather, led by a
Suratian woman whose black hair sparkles with abalone beads. She seems familiar.
The Suratian sees us and smiles. One of the men whips a sword from its scabbard.
“I’ve seen her,” I whisper. “She was with the enslavers when my inn was raided. I’m sure of it.”
Titus asks, “Is there another way out of the Spires?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then we fight. Stay out of it if you can, but if they engage, just remember what I’ve been teaching you. And do not hesitate
to use your Gift.”
His eyes seem stricken. It’s not fear—not quite. Dread? Regret?
The assassins start forward. They’re in no hurry; they know we’ve nowhere to flee. Apple dances in place, sensing my rising panic. I can’t believe I once thought that swearing myself into Titus’s service would help me survive these mountains.
Titus notches an arrow. Surely he can protect us. When he rescued me, he killed everyone all by himself. No, that’s not true.
I remember an animal scream, something that sounded like a banshee but not quite. And I saw strange tracks on the ground as
I scavenged the dead.
He had help last time. I don’t know how, or what helped him, but I’m sure of it. We need help now.
“Titus! Toss me the gloves.”
“Huh?” He lowers his bow.
“The gauntlets. I have an idea.”
I expect him to protest further. Instead, Titus wordlessly reaches into his pack, retrieves the gloves, and lobs one over,
then the other.
The assassins continue to close the distance as I shove on the first glove. Titus aims an arrow and yells, “Come any closer
and you die!”
The Suratian woman in the lead pulls up her horse, but she’s grinning as though there’s nothing to be afraid of. I yank on
the other glove.
I was able to speak with my grandfather in the mine wearing only one glove. Surely two will be even more useful.
“Hello, griffin condors,” I say, certain I sound like an idiot. “You are . . . especially lovely today.”
Titus looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. I probably have. How does one speak to griffin condors, exactly? Maybe the glove had nothing to do with my grandda understanding me.
But the condors are eyeing me now. One particularly large specimen cocks her featherless head at me and shakes her thick mane.
“These people came to kill us,” I explain, and I imagine swords piercing our flesh, our blood pooling beneath our lifeless
bodies.
Behind the Suratian woman, one of the Deathsworn readies his own bow.
“Please help us,” I whisper. “We shared the night with you. We did not disturb your nests. But these assassins . . . they
are nest destroyers.” I imagine the last thing I saw as I was taken away in the cage cart. Smoke billowing from a thatch roof,
growing thicker and blacker as we rode away. The roof of the common room collapsing in a shower of sparks and splintered wood.
The largest condor looses a single piercing shriek. She launches from the roof and begins to circle above us. The others follow
her lead, one after the other in rapid succession until the sky is black with them.
The Suratian’s smile falters. The archer behind her shifts his aim from Titus and looks instead to the sky.
Titus lets fly before he does. I see the arrow plunge into the assassin’s chest just as his own bow twangs. The assassin’s
arrow fires wildly, tipping the wing feathers of a circling condor. The bird screams. Another dives for the shooter, but he’s
already falling from his horse, wetness spreading across his leather vest.
The other riders spur their mounts into a gallop. It was too much to hope that they would flee; Deathsworn will die rather than lose their quarry.
Titus sends off another arrow, but this one merely grazes a shoulder. The Suratian woman charges him, head low across her
mount’s neck to make herself a difficult target. The others are right behind her.
The assassins command their horses with feet and legs, leaving hands free for bows and swords. They spread out as they charge
us, making unpredictable direction changes. They’re fast, experienced, impossible to hit with arrows.
Titus tosses his bow down and draws his daggers. Then he slides to the ground and gives Blackwind a slap on the rump with