This Monster of Mine

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Most days, all Sarai saw was blood.

She found it in the crimson wine being tipped into Chieftain Marus’s cup, in the setting sun painting Arsamea’s snowdrifts scarlet. It lurked in the mahogany countertop where a dozen cups perched for her to polish. And tonight, she wasn’t the only one seeing it.

The red-eyed specter of Lord Death seemed to hover in Arsamea’s only tavern, turning the villagers’ smiles a little too wide and their laughs too forced. Everyone except Chieftain Marus, of course. At the head of the table, he slapped his pelt-covered thighs, guffawing uproariously. She stepped out of his line of sight. The more he drank, the harder he hit.

“Last toast of the night!” He thrust his goblet high, spilling half its contents.

Sarai raised an eyebrow. They had been on that “last toast” for some time now.

“To the assessors that seek out our humble town every year!” Marus pronounced. “And to the Tetrarchy. Long may they rule!”

Cups rose and clinked, and Marus promptly poured the other half of the goblet over his face in an attempt to reach his mouth. She turned her snort into a sneeze when Cretus narrowed his rheumy eyes in her direction. Hands braced on the counter, he returned to examining his tavern with predatory intent. His profits would be high tonight. Ur Dinyé’s most remote village had so little to celebrate that the assessors’ visits from the capital had become a strange annual festival. Where everyone toasted the misfortune of those assessed as a Petitor Candidate. Where they thanked the gods, High and Dark, that it wasn’t their kin being bundled away to Edessa to be trained for four years at exorbitant tuition fees, only to take their lives after graduating.

That was Arsamea. Grateful for what they had and grateful that others lacked the same. And at present, everyone was grateful that they weren’t Chieftain Marus.

“Feels like yesterday when Cisuré started at the Academiae, and she’s already graduating,” Marus boasted to a silver-haired man whose smile looked frozen on. “One month and she’ll be a Tetrarch’s Petitor.”

“You aren’t … worried?” the man ventured, causing several others at the table to stiffen.

Marus waved a hand. “She’s mountain bred. None of that city-folk weakness in her. She’ll handle the job.”

For once, Sarai wanted him to be right. She couldn’t lose Cisuré on top of everything else, and their letters, brief and stilted as they could be, were one of her few tethers to hope.

A few years back, this unease around Petitors would have been unheard of. They were highly prized for their rare brand of magic: detecting lies and tunneling into the memories of those accused of crimes to extract evidence during trials for public view. A talent so indispensable to governance that assessors scoured Ur Dinyé for Candidates and trained them at the land’s most prestigious school. Graduates all received lifelong posts with government officials, with the very best getting to work for the Tetrarchy, the land’s ruling judges. Then, four years ago, the Tetrarchy’s Petitors had begun taking their lives. Now, Candidates were highly prized for a different reason.

“Word is that there’s only a few Candidates left in the Academiae. The rest all fled Edessa.” Ethra, the town’s new healer—and Marus’s bit on the side—pursed her lips. “Imagine running from serving a Tetrarch.”

“The job’s cursed,” Flavia, Arsamea’s oldest resident, pronounced. “Don’t the Codices warn of the forbidden realms of the dead and their lust for resurrection? Something haunts the Tetrarchy. On Wisdom, I feel it. ”

Sarai hid a snort when the table agreed in hushed whispers. This was why southern Urds classified everyone from the north as backward, largely magicless mountain swine. Yet, sometimes, she wondered if Flavia had a point. The Tetrarchy had hidden the conditions of their dead Petitors’ corpses, but the capital’s grapevine had unearthed and passed on murmurs of sliced limbs, self-immolation, and daggers shoved to the hilt in throats, all of which had raised the same questions across the country. Why would a Petitor take their life with such brutality?

And here I am pining for the same job. Sighing, she picked up another cup to polish. No hope yet , whispered the meager coins in the pouch around her neck. Not for a long time. Because it didn’t matter that she possessed the magic the assessors sought. She couldn’t afford a year of the Academiae’s tuition, let alone the requisite four; and until she could, she wasn’t a Candidate. She was nothing.

“Must be nice in the capital.” Ethra gloomily stared at the snow piling outside. “Imagine all that sun and sand on our—your skin,” she corrected, after a glare from Marus’s wife.

Sarai warily eyed the two women’s tight grip on their utensils. Their last fight had ended in her scrubbing the floor for hours to prize off the deer gizzards they’d thrown at each other.

Oblivious to the fact that he was the root of most of the village’s problems, Marus shot Ethra an irritated glance. “Nothing wrong with our life here.”

“It can be a little dull,” she foolishly persisted, looking around the table for support. “Haven’t you wondered if the south might have more to offer?”

The table fell quiet. Clouds gathered on Marus’s face. Now she’s done it.

He rose with the menace of a blackstripe bear. “Run off to Edessa then. Or have you forgotten what happened to the last brainless woman who did that?” He jabbed a finger that, even in his drunken state, unerringly found Sarai.

She stilled. Anger, always so close at hand, welled forth like blood as heads swiveled toward her from across the tavern, sporting matching expressions of glee. Reminding her that she was worse than nothing because nothing received merciful indifference. She silently prayed to all seven of the High Elsar that the barb was a one-off. Then again, the gods had never been overly fond of her.

Booted steps approached the countertop. Marus tossed his cup at her, spite on his red-splotched face. Emptying half an amphora into his cup, she returned it to him. Don’t do it, Marus. Leave me alone.

“That’s what stupid ideas get you,” he told Ethra, prodding the air by Sarai’s face to indicate the ridged scars mapping every inch of her, brown tributaries within golden skin. “Still think the south has anything to offer?”

Sarai’s nails formed red crescents in her palms as Ethra shook her head with distaste. Stupid ideas. As though her scars were a punishment from the gods. She had no insight into whether the Elsar gave a hav?d that she’d dared to be orphaned in a town that froze over for nine months of the year, or that she’d been desperate enough for education to leave Arsamea four years ago and follow Cisuré to the capital. But the good townsfolk certo did. So when she’d returned as a scarred wreck after only three days in Edessa, they had never let her live it down.

Perhaps the scars were punishment for the day she finally poisoned them all.

Marus snorted when she forced herself to placidly polish another cup. “If Cretus didn’t need the help, I wouldn’t have allowed you back , scum. So certain you were too good for us, only to crawl back as a patchwork creature. The Academiae didn’t want the likes of you, and Cisuré had no use for you at all.”

At least the second half wasn’t true. Your daughter writes to me every month, asshole.

“Four years,” Marus told his rapt audience. “Cisuré’s soon to be a Petitor, and this one’s still a barmaid. Blood will out. The worthy will rise, but the rest? Destined for dirt.” He seized her jaw. “Though someone already taught you that lesson, didn’t they? ”

A shudder ripped through her at his touch. Crimson tainted her vision, bitterly familiar. She bit her cheek as the walls pressed closer, the room tilting and rippling while the warm salt of blood filled her mouth. Just as it had that night in Edessa when her body had smashed into the ground, blood pouring from shattered limbs, as someone crouched over her and—

Marus released his grip, shoving her head back. She collided with the wall, nearly knocking over a row of amphorae. The cup she had been polishing clattered to the ground as laughter erupted from every corner of the tavern.

“Did you see her face?” someone yelled. “Where’d you go, Sarai? Back to Edessa?”

“Maybe get another new nose while you’re there,” another hooted.

Trapping her tongue between her teeth, she picked up the fallen cup and braced herself for another blow. Marus’s fist rose right as an ear-splitting cheer went up outside. Past the window, a stampede of Arsameans launched themselves onto the snowy streets.

“The assessors are here!” a passerby yelled. “Drag your sotted selves out!”

Thank the High Elsar.

Sparing her an ugly glance, Marus raced out the door. Chairs scraped across stone as the town’s fairest and finest elbowed past each other to parade behind the magi. A mismatched assortment of bells chimed in chorus, dull peals mingling with the deep boom of a gong that some enterprising villager must have dug out of the cellar. It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, and tonight would be no different. She’d man the tavern, manage the raucous magi and their helpers who showed up expecting Arsamean women to do anything to please them—and wonder if she’d ever have enough coin to leave this glacial hellhole.

Snow swirled through the open doorway, ice clinging to threadlike fissures in the tavern’s stone walls. Rubbing the shoulders of her thin tunic, she straightened the chairs and collected the grease-covered plates left on the tables.

“Tunnel rat.” Cretus hobbled over, holding out a wrinkled palm. “You still owe a denarius for this month’s rent.”

She frowned. “I’ve paid my two denarii.”

“Rent’s gone up.” He stuck a finger in his ear and dug for something. She hoped whatever it was tunneled all the way to his brain.

They’d played this game before. As the only person in Arsamea who’d house and employ her, he meddled with her rent and wages as he saw fit. And every time, he would seek a reaction.

Cretus snapped his fingers, beady eyes slitted. “Deaf now? You paying or moving out? Plenty who’d take your room.”

It’s a fucking storage shed . She held back the urge to snap his wizened wrist. “I’ll pay.”

His mouth pulled back in a triumphant smile. “Keep everyone drunk tonight. I want an accounting of every bottle sold. And for the Elsar’s sakes, duck your head while serving, or you’ll put the assessors off dinner.”

With that, he dragged his hood over the wisps of hair valiantly clinging to his scalp, and plodded toward the outhouse. She saluted his back with a middle finger, then sank onto the nearest chair.

Cretus paid her one bronze assarius a day. With rent going up, she’d have to miss meals to maintain her current rate of saving. Sarai quashed the ache in her stomach warning her that she ate too little as is. Four years ago, she had felt life drain from her with every agonized breath. Had barely survived, only to be thrown out of Edessa without justice and left with no recourse but to save coin after coin serving wine, while the man who’d destroyed her body, her hands—her life —ran free. Hunger held little weight in comparison.

Unknotting the coin pouch from her neck, she spilled her savings onto the drink-spattered table. Firelight winked off three gold aurei and five silver denarii. Not enough. It would take years for her to afford the Academiae’s tuition. But only Petitors and Tetrarchs could access sealed case records. And somewhere in sun-drenched Edessa, within the restricted Hall of Records, was a wax-sealed scroll bearing her name. Victim . Beside it would be a single charge—attempted murder—and details of the night she couldn’t remember four years, three months, and twenty-eight days ago. Details someone had wanted hidden. And somewhere in that same city lurked her assailant. Becoming a Petitor was her best chance at revenge.

Once she could afford the Academiae’s tuition at least.

Sighing, Sarai scraped the coins off the table. “I hope at least you’re doing well, Cisuré.”

For a moment, she could almost see the other girl sitting across from her with a blinding smile, enthusing over a new bit of frippery, or sobbing into her shoulder after Marus had beaten her for yet another imagined show of defiance. But that had all been four years ago, before Cisuré had become a Candidate and the Fall had made vengeance Sarai’s master. Before they’d discovered that even friendship couldn’t entirely bridge some divides.

Swallowing, she rose and halted at a movement past the snow-streaked window. A figure stealthily emerged from the shadow of Cretus’s smoke chamber for wine, lugging an amphora behind her.

Hav?d . Sarai snatched her birrus from behind the counter, locked the door, and raced outside into a blast of icy wind. Cursing roundly, she covered the scant yards to the fumarium and shoved both the girl and the amphora into a snowdrift, just as Cretus emerged from the outhouse. She ignored the wine-thief’s annoyed squeak, waiting until he’d faded to a thumb-sized speck in the direction of the town square before releasing her grip to scowl at the sputtering girl.

“I thought we’d agreed that you’d stop.”

Vela brushed snow from her closely-cropped dark hair. “Coin’s got to come from somewhere. Cretus can afford the loss.”

“You can’t afford being caught. He’ll whip the blood out of you.”

“The last time Cretus moved faster than an inch a minute was when Marus was in swaddling furs. ”

Sarai’s lips flattened. “He sliced off another tunnel rat’s fingers only two weeks ago for pocketing a loaf off the counter.” The boy had met her eyes with knowledge of his fate—infection, fever, which would become sepsis without a healer, and a delirious, prolonged end. Before the Fall, she might have been able to heal him. Now, her hands were too ruined to save anyone.

Undaunted, Vela shrugged. “The boy was careless. I’m—”

“Clearly as bad, because I saw you. Wrath and Ruin, if there was a drunk asshole around, he’d break your hands if it meant getting his on this.” She took the amphora from her. “There are worse things in life than Cretus’s retribution.”

“I know.” The twin moons lit Vela’s wince as her gaze darted away from Sarai’s scarred features.

Pretending not to notice, her grip tightened around the amphora, a ruby-red drop leaking past the loosened seal to hit the ground. Blood on ice.

Sarai looked away. “Where are you selling it?”

“Sal Flumen.” Vela fell into step beside her.

“You’re mad.” It was a fifteen-day walk. She’d attempted it once and nearly died of cold.

“I’ll survive.” The younger girl set her jaw. “I’m staying there for good. Hav?d to this village.”

“Agreed.”

A few minutes south of the tavern, they stopped before a depression in the snow. Vela tapped her boot over it in a series of metallic thuds, and the trapdoor to Arsamea’s tunnels swung up. Centuries-old relics of Ur Dinyé’s wars, they ran under the village and through the mountain, though no one dared venture that deep. A bedraggled girl waited atop the ladder leading down. No more than eight winters, she stared at the amphora, all hollow eyes and cheeks.

“Guard it, and I’ll bring you dinner, Elise,” Vela promised.

Sarai reluctantly relinquished the amphora when Elise held out her hands, wincing when the girl staggered at the weight. But assisting her would only make Sarai a target. The folk in those tunnels would gladly rip the pouch from her neck and divide her savings just as they had done to many others. She knew their ravenous hunger well. The tunnels were her birthplace, and where her parents had met their end in an ibez -smuggling run gone wrong, leaving her with misshapen memories of gaunt faces and what could have been a mother’s smile or a drunken grimace. Cretus had plucked her out at seven when searching for exploitable labor, because she’d been small enough to harvest snowgrapes from their thick, brambly vines. She’d been lucky. Those tunnels held more corpses than people.

“Any other children this winter?”

Vela closed the trapdoor with a clang and followed as Sarai turned back to the tavern. “Just Elise. Parents lost everything at a gambling house and crawled down with her. They’re long dead.”

Damn it. Pretending to adjust her birrus, Sarai discreetly withdrew a silver denarius and shoved it at her. It’s fine. She was nowhere close to affording the Academiae’s tuition anyway . Vela’s eyes widened as she took it.

“Take Elise with you.” Sarai tamped down all regret as the coin left her fingers. “When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow morning, while everyone’s wasted in bed. Might even steal a horse.” Vela’s grin faded. “You don’t have to keep looking out for any of us, you know. It’ll confuse Elise into thinking that people are decent. Still confuses me.”

“Tell her that the coin is yours. In Sal Flumen, pretend to be middle-class siblings whose parents were attacked by brigands. Pity and a child in tow might get you far.”

“Brilliant.” Vela marveled at the denarius, flipping it between her knuckles. “You sure you don’t want to leave Cretus to rot and join us?”

The thought was always compelling, like spun sugar on her tongue until reality dissolved it.

She feigned a laugh. “The rent’s twice as high, and I can’t compete with the fabri. They’ll say I’m too old for any profession but pleasure-work.” The irony was that Arsamea was the safest place for her until she had enough for tuition. She knew the villagers’ habits. In any other northern tavern, she could suffer much worse than Marus’s fist.

“Must be warm.” Vela stared longingly at the golden glow emanating from the town square at the end of the street. Raucous cheers carried on the wind. “Do you think they ever wonder if we’re cold?”

“They don’t think about us at all.” Sarai eyed the snow-mottled furs strewn on the street in a semblance of a carpet for the assessors, while people froze to death in the tunnels only yards away. “So you shouldn’t think about them. If they poisoned us all tomorrow, no one would care.”

Wind shoved at their backs. Both moons hovered above, silver Praefa melding with Silun’s bluish incandescence to cast the town in a sepulchral glow. A moonbright night—both orbs near full but never full together, ordained by the gods to wax and wane at different intervals. Perhaps her dreams were the same, destined to never intersect with her.

A sharp rap snapped her out of self-pity. Squinting at the tavern, a frisson of worry ran through her at the violet-robed figure silhouetted at the door. What in hav?d is an assessor doing away from the square?

He knocked again. “Anyone inside?”

Sarai sighed. “I’d best go get his drink.”

Vela nodded, staring at her feet. “Well … goodbye then.”

Sarai managed a smile. “I’m glad you’re getting out of here. Steal that horse tonight. There’s a snowgale in the air.”

The younger girl sniffed the wind and scowled. “Damn. I’ll leave now then. I’ll try to send some fruit on the next merchant wagon.”

“Save your coin and eat well instead—” Sarai grunted when Vela threw her arms around her. Letting go just as quickly, the other girl stuffed her hands in her pockets and bobbed her head awkwardly before racing in the direction of the stables.

Live well, Vela. The ache in Sarai’s stomach rose to her chest. Envy, yearning, happiness for the other girl. She let it fester, grow tendrils that sank all the way to her threadbare boots. Then, the cold seeped in and killed the roots, the buds, the ache .

Glancing at the annoyed magus banging on the tavern door, she returned to her frozen life.

Sidling in through the back door, Sarai peered at the assessor framed in the window.

“One moment!” she called, crouching behind the counter and fishing in her pockets for her armilla.

Engraved with the user’s runes of choice, the white-gold bracelets were a magus’s preferred way to access dormant magic—much tidier than the alternative, bloodletting and drawing runes with the blood. She prized out the pin slotted into the bracelet’s bulky hinge, pricked a fingertip, and smeared the blood over nihumb , the rune for “concealment.” Silver flashed in the rune’s deep grooves, a corresponding lurch tugging within her chest. The deep brown scars wrapping her blurred, then faded into her skin. An illusion discernible by touch, a secret she’d kept from the townsfolk, and a skill she’d nurtured in the event she ever saved up enough for tuition. She’d never used it in public before. Contrary to Cretus’s certainty that her face was bad for business, the assessors were usually too deep in their cups to care about how mangled the barmaid was. But he was early, and she was alone, and despite her features having been altered during reconstruction, her scars were a rarity, evidence that even multiple healers had been unable to fully restore her. They made her recognizable. And there was always the risk that one of these assessors could be him .

Unlocking the door, she bowed. “Welcome to Arsamea. I’m Sarai. A pleasure to serve you, Magus …?”

“Telmar.” He swept past her in a whirl of violet robes and collapsed into a chair, snow sliding off his shoulders. “Icewine. And shut the godsdamned door before I freeze to death.”

Judging by the magus’s bloodshot eyes, he was more in danger of pickling himself in drink. Nevertheless, Telmar seemed lucid enough to survey her as she brought out an amphora of Cretus’s best icewine .

“Sit.” He imperiously gestured at the chair beside him once she’d filled his cup.

“Apologies, Magus Telmar, but my place is behind the counter.”

He gave her a disdainful look. “By the Elsar, you hicks bore me to tears. Off to your counter then. Like there’s anyone else for you to serve. They’re all busy listening to the same speech year after year.” He affected a sonorous voice. “Every year, our courts accumulate defendants requiring a Petitor’s aid. Some need to be Examined, their truths distinguished from falsehoods, and—”

“Others must be Probed and their memories Materialized in public for assessment,” Sarai finished, and the magus snapped his fingers.

“See? You should deliver it next year. I’m tired of shaking hands and being praised like I’m one of the Elsar. You lot reek .”

He doesn’t seem out for lechery. She sat across from him. “How’s the search for Candidates going?”

Telmar gave her a look that could have been appraising. His eyes merely twitched in his skull. “What do you think? Like Petitors offing themselves in every godsforsaken way for the past few years wouldn’t dampen things.”

“What about borrowing some from other cities?”

He snorted. “No chance. No Praetor or Tribune will relinquish them, and Petitors who would’ve killed to serve a Tetrarch won’t go near one now. They’d rather be bound to a no-name town official than turn corpse in Edessa. Only three Candidates from this year’s graduating class haven’t scarpered, and they’re being watched in case they try.”

“Cisuré’s one of the three, isn’t she?” At Telmar’s confused squint, Sarai elaborated. “Pale hair, dark eyes. Memory like a bear trap.”

“Oh yes. Taught her to handle a sword last year.” He chuckled at her unamused stare. “Mind out of the gutter, barmaid. I meant that literally. She was terrible with a blade. Wouldn’t be surprised if she’s the first to die.”

“Don’t say that,” she grit out .

Telmar flapped a hand in dismissal. “Well, she’s graduating. Time for her to be bound to an official, and there are no vacancies anywhere but the Tetrarchy. Her father sounds right proud.”

And Sarai had nearly taken refuge in Marus’s certainty. But here was an assessor, an instructor at the Academiae, musing that Cisuré was poised to die .

The wall enclosing her scant memories of that night shuddered. She drew slow lungfuls of air, but it wasn’t enough. Every breath brought back a sound, a sliver of memory from her journey to Edessa four years ago. Squeezing into a fruit seller’s wagon with only two goals: to follow Cisuré to Edessa and become a healer so renowned that no one could look down on her. Jumping off the wagon, ready to forge forward, and … blood. Rain. A wet crack as her body hit the cobblestones. Splinters of her ribs shoving through her lungs—

Her fist hit the table. Telmar gave her a wary look. “Do all the Petitors die every year?”

“Depends. When one dies, the rest get spooked and flee. But last year, they all died.” He laughed into his cup. “And we still trundle to every corner of Ur Dinyé, seeking more victims.”

“But other officials’ Petitors are alive and well! Why are only the Tetrarchy’s ones killing themselves?”

Telmar’s glazed eyes shuttered. “There’s nothing we can do.” Dipping a finger in his wine, he stirred it and flicked the excess all over the table. “You serve wine, and I hunt for souls to throw into the job. It’s on them to survive.”

Wait . Her head jerked up. “Throw into the job? What happened to four years of training?”

He scratched his short beard. “By Wisdom, I knew that word came slow up here, but you didn’t know that the Tetrarchy waived that requirement? Better an untrained Petitor than none at all.”

She stared. “You’re joking. The Tetrarchy can’t be that desperate. ”

“They are.” He shrugged at her dropped jaw. “Telling truth from lie is the only standard that matters on the job, and every untrained Candidate can do that much. The Academiae teaches refinement and theory, but if a Candidate lasts long enough, the job’ll whip them into shape better than schooling could. Take me.” He jabbed a finger at his face, nearly poking out an eye. “Six years of study and all I learned was some tosh on the Borderland Wars. Nearly died during my first stormfall, because I hadn’t been taught how to handle …”

Sarai stopped listening. A foreign weightlessness expanded in her chest. It took her a moment to place the emotion; it had been so long since she’d last known it. Hope.

She wrapped trembling fingers around her coin pouch. Three aurei, four denarii. Not enough for tuition. But it would get her to Edessa.

Her pulse pounded in her ears. “Anyone you find becomes a Candidate? No training or payment necessary?”

“The Tetrarchy decreed it. But why—”

“I’m a Candidate.” Her hands trembled as the words finally left.

Telmar squinted. “You’re what now?”

“You came to find someone who can Examine, Probe, and Materialize, yes? You’ve got one.”

He nearly spat out his wine. “Drink’s gone to your head, barmaid.”

In two strides, she rounded the table. “Assess me. You’ll know if I’m lying.”

“You don’t even have an armilla!” He indicated her bare wrist. “Will you draw runes in blood? Blame all the grease on this table when they don’t work?”

In response, she dug out the bracelet and slapped it down, positioning nihumb away from his line of sight.

Telmar blinked, then shoved his cup aside. “That’s of Edessan make.”

“I was at the capital. Four years ago. ”

He peered through a fog of drink like he was seeing her for the first time. “Why leave?”

Because I was thrown off a tower at the Academiae, and I have no memory of who did it.

“Does it matter?” She reopened the cut she’d made earlier.

Telmar’s brows rose when she pressed the blood over zosta , the rune for “Examination” and the simplest of what was known as the Petitor’s Trio. No one fully understood the merging of magical bloodlines that produced a Candidate, but only they could use zosta, herar , and astomand , and after the night that had ruined her life and ended her career as a healer, she’d mastered the Trio out of rage.

Blood filled zosta ’s deep grooves, and silver blazed within, power flooding her in a heady rush not unlike adrenaline. Telmar’s eyes widened.

Sarai took a steadying breath. “Try me.”

Eyes on the gleaming rune, he didn’t move for a moment. “I, Magus Telmar, born in Edessa, graduated from the four hundred and seventy-third class of the Academiae,” he began slowly. “It’s my sixth year coming to this frozen hell you call a village.”

She closed her eyes, evaluating the cadence of each syllable as they thrummed through her. Some of it rang clear, true. “This is your sixth year as an assessor here. The rest is all true.” Her eyes flew open. “But you aren’t originally from Edessa.”

Alertness pushed past Telmar’s wine-induced languor. “Let’s see you Probe.”

She pressed a dot of blood into herar , the rune for “Probing.” Another silver glow joined the two on her wrist. At his short nod, she placed her fingertips on either side of his head. Between one heartbeat and the next, she plunged into his mind.

Probing was technically a punishment, a violation of the mind in retaliation for prisoners going tight-lipped. But it was only as unpleasant an experience as the Petitor or Candidate made it. Every mind unconsciously reflected its owner’s temperament. Some, like Cisuré, had their memories in pristine bookshelves. The sotted tavern patrons she’d tested her skills on—only after they’d been nasty first—had arranged their lives as tapestries, wine casks, or harp strings.

Telmar’s mind was a hall of paintings. The recent ones were thin sketches, precariously insubstantial. Only some would remain after tonight, alcohol returning them to blank canvases. The intricate works of depth and color were memories he revisited often. His hometown had to be among them. She reached for a painting of a field and let go upon glimpsing the first time he rode a horse. She went deeper into the hallway before finding her answer in a scene of the Kaycakh Mountains.

She dropped her hands from his head and opened her eyes. “You’re from Kirtule.”

Telmar gaped. “Why in the Elsar’s names have you been rotting away here?”

“Couldn’t afford the Academiae’s tuition.” Darting behind the counter, Sarai retrieved her satchel. “Well? Am I worthy of being sent to Edessa?”

“Wisdom alive, it isn’t a matter of being worthy . You’re riding off into death.”

Wouldn’t be the first time. “And?”

“You’ll be bound to a Tetrarch .” He shook his head. “Your peers have gone through years of training in diplomacy and politics. You haven’t.”

“What happened to the job teaching me everything?”

“ If you last long enough . You can’t handle the stress.”

“Stress is serving drunkards every night.” She rolled up her only spare tunic and packed it. “Pursuing justice is an honor.”

Telmar’s eyes bugged slightly. “You’re mad.”

“Desperate . ” Without an ounce of guilt, she stuffed some of Cretus’s bread rolls in her pack. “I’d have saved you the trip if I’d known the Tetrarchy had waived training.”

“I almost wish I’d never told you.” He sighed, fishing out a crumpled bit of parchment and a half-snapped reed pen from his pockets. Wetting the tip with his wine, he scrawled a few lines, poured some wax off a nearby taper, and impressed his seal. “Go with the High Elsar, if you insist. I’ll send word ahead to the Academiae. The Robing is on the first equinox, the fifth day of the Month of Moons. Reach Edessa by then.”

She nodded, pulse drumming. Hefting another amphora from Cretus’s finest stock, she plunked it on the table. “Help yourself. I owe you.”

“It may be the chance of a lifetime, barmaid.” Telmar’s voice was quiet. “But it isn’t worth your life.”

“Just as well then.” Sarai shoved open the door, tying her birrus around her to face the cold. Her lips formed their first real smile in years. “I have no intention of dying.”

She stepped into a sea of snow. There was no further thought, no looking back. Adrenaline pushed her down the deserted street, feet kicking up icy clouds.

The broad logs that formed the town gates swayed under the press of wind. She veered toward the thatched stables on the left, tugging at the stiff door until it swung outward in a rush. She stumbled in to find a group of confused equine faces. But no stable hand. Arsameans were a miserly people, but this night—and this night alone—was when they lost their minds to drink and left their goods unguarded.

Sarai grinned. “Which one of you wants to get out of here with me?”

A glossy chestnut poked its head over a stall door bearing the name “Caelum.” She unlatched the stall, the empty one beside it telling her that Vela had left. The mare trotted out. Whispering a quick thanks to the Elsar, she patted its velvety nose.

“We’re going to Edessa, Caelum.”

The mare whickered, holding still as Sarai tacked her with the only halfway decent saddle available—and climbed on. Her heart pounded so loudly she wondered if the horse heard it too. Wind stabbed at her skin as she left the stables, but none of it mattered. She was finally leaving. Finally able to hunt him down .

Silhouetted between the main gates, she turned. Snow billowed down an empty street of ice-capped houses, devoid of life and warmth. A fitting final image.

“Goodbye, Arsamea,” she whispered. For all its evils, it was the only home she’d known.

Four years ago, she hadn’t looked back as she left, believing that a greater destiny awaited her. She was no longer that na?ve. This was no trade of the High Elsar’s Bright Realms for the Dark Elsar’s ten hells, but of one vise for another. Poverty and Marus’s fist exchanged for a deathtrap of a job and vengeance.

Sarai faced the winding road through the Arsamean mountains. Somewhere, hundreds of miles away, was the monster who had thrown her off a tower.

“I’m coming for you,” she whispered.

The wind took the words and flung them into the abyss down the sheer drop on her right. And as she wound her way down, she could have sworn that the abyss laughed back.