“Leave me or she dies,” he cried into the torrent.
A stillness settled. Thousands, all holding their breath, weighing his intent.
“Please,” the girl’s father said. “I offered you water.”
“And I slew you for your kindness. What does that tell you about my nature?”
Pevrre’s eyes were no longer congenial. He speared Quade with his hate, but only for a moment. Then he flew into the trunk of the tree and disappeared. The rest of the spirits followed, flooding back into the Confluence like a storm sucked into a bottle.
At last, only Vendra remained.
“Killing another girl,” she said. “You really don’t surprise.”
Quade smoothed his hair with his free hand. The other held the noose tight, so that the girl was lifted onto her tiptoes.
She gasped and choked, but her feet were still just grazing the ground. This would be a slow death, which was the point. He secured the rope.
“If she dies, they will be back.”
“I don’t intend to stay long,” he said. “I want my gift returned.”
“And you think that will happen? In exchange for a single life?” Vendra shook her head. “Tell me I did not die to such a stupid man.”
“In the days of old, people would touch the tree and—”
“Yes,” Vendra said, a taunting glint in her eyes. “Go ahead. Touch it and receive your gift.”
He spared her a frown. Vendra was just one wronged woman. She was not the Company of Spirits itself, which would see the larger picture. And she could not stop him.
He reached his hand out, haltingly, and grazed his fingers along the new bark of this spiritly tree.
The agony was immediate, so intense it sent him to his knees. He bit down on his tongue and his mouth filled with blood. He pressed his forehead to the ground and tried to breathe.
It was like the time that Yarrow Lamhart had touched him after making the second sacrifice—an excruciating pain that coursed through his whole body and left him shivering and weak.
Gradually, his sight and hearing returned. He caught the wheezing sound of the girl choking to death. He blinked until he could see her desperate feet, too.
“What did you expect?” Vendra whispered in his ear.
Quade breathed rapidly through his teeth, spittle flying. He felt foam forming at the corners of his lips. He pushed himself to his feet, his eyes wild and hateful.
“They will not help me,” he hissed.
“Of course not,” Vendra said.
He slipped his scimitar from its sheath. “Then blight them.”
He swung this ancient and precious blade as if it were a mere axe. It sliced into the trunk, blackened bark falling away like dead skin.
Legend held that the Scimitar of Amarra never dulled. Quade would put that myth to the test. He swung again, wild and furious and ready to set the world ablaze.
“You’re so predictable,” Vendra said.
He growled at her, but continued swinging—chipping away at this connection between man and spirit.
If he could not have what he deserved, then no one would have anything at all.
They would remember this day, and regret it.
Chapter Twenty-Five
He had killed not only the people, but the animals as well.
Yarrow squinted against the wind, taking in the carnage with a numb mind. These traders had been incredibly unlucky, to have crossed paths with a single man in such a vast desert.
“He didn’t bother to…” arrange the bodies, Yarrow meant to say, but he didn’t like the words. Quade had made a tableau of his previous murders. The corpses had been put on display; there’d been messages left in blood or ink or both. But here, the bodies remained where they fell.
“I don’t think he had time,” Bray said. “This happened recently. Perhaps within the hour.”
Her tone and demeanor as she inspected the scene was cool—not unfeeling, exactly, but clinical. Yarrow was reminded of their reunion as adults, nearly two years ago. Of the Chiona woman who worked as detective and law enforcer. And he, the unqualified Cosanta who had tagged along, much to her annoyance.
In all that had happened between then and now, he’d forgotten that this was her calling. That a crime scene, like this one, would not be so shocking to her as it was to him.
Bray knelt beside the body of a woman just outside the camp. Plainly, she’d tried to flee and been cut down. “He used that scimitar of his. I think he must not have a pistol, or he would have used it in this case. I can’t imagine he was happy to run through sand after this one.”
Yarrow thought this sound reasoning. He had enough difficulty walking through these dunes; sprinting would be awkward. “That’s good,” he said. It was the only good he could see before him.
Of course, they didn’t have a gun either. Their flight from Accord had been too hasty to track down one of Dedrre’s new revolvers. They carried only swords and a few daggers, none balanced for throwing.
It would have to be enough.
“We better pick up our pace,” Bray said. “He might be at the Confluence by now.”
Yarrow nodded, his thoughts bleak. He had no fear that the Spirits would grant Quade gifts or knowledge; they had sacrificed the existence of the Chisanta specifically to thwart him, after all. No. He feared what Quade might do upon being denied.
They looped arms to support each other as they climbed the last dune. Yarrow’s boots slipped and slid as he went, and at times Bray was the only thing keeping him on his feet.
Yarrow was tired to a degree he couldn’t articulate, it was so deep and boundless a feeling. Only the knowledge that they were nearing the end kept him moving.
At his side, Bray radiated with the intensity of her focus. Her green eyes were slitted, glinting like gemstones in the bright morning light. He tried to borrow some of her drive, just enough to see him through.
The sight of the ancient ruin was just as he remembered. They slogged down the final slope, with the sun full overhead, hot as a brand upon his skin. Bray released him and charged forward, sword in hand. She scanned the area quickly.
“He’s inside,” she said, gesturing to an abandoned pack animal. “Let’s see this through, shall we?”
All at once, his heart remembered what they’d been chasing these long weeks, and skittered into motion. A flash of memory, a vision of the man caressing Yarrow’s vacant body, made his gorge rise.
He faltered for just a moment. Chin up, feet flat.
Bray extended her hand to him, and he snatched it. Her touch calmed some of his rattled nerves.
“No dying,” she said, her face grave.
“No dying,” he agreed.
They mounted the stair and did not pause at the top—they leapt.
The ruin and surrounding desert rippled, and a different reality sprang to life.
Yarrow took it all in at a glance: the Aeght a Seve; the new Confluence blooming from within the old; the young girl, her face turned purple, hanging from a blackened limb, toes skittering along the ground, seeking purchase just out of reach.
And Quade Asher, hacking at the Confluence with a scimitar. It was the only bridge left between man and Spirits, and this one black-hearted soul meant to chop it down.
Yarrow whipped his sword from his hip and lunged forward, but Bray caught his arm to pull him short. “I’ll get his attention. As soon as you have the opportunity, go save the girl,” she whispered.
Yarrow studied her face. She exuded confidence, looking not at all like a woman intending to throw herself to the wolves. So he nodded. Between the two of them, she was the superior swordsman.
“So good of you to come,” Quade shouted over his shoulder.
He swung his vicious Adourran blade again, and this time it stuck in the trunk. He tried to wrench the scimitar free, failed, swore in frustration, and turned to meet them.
Quade unsheathed his second sword, this one at his hip, and strode in their direction.
“I’ve been expecting you. Well, you,” he said with a nod to Bray and a wicked grin. “Lamhart, I confess, I hadn’t anticipated you. But it’s fitting. This is all your fault, isn’t it? And you are mine.”
This Quade Asher didn’t match the image in Yarrow’s head at all. It wasn’t just the change from losing his gift—no, he had been made savage. His hair was overgrown, his face unshaven. With blistered, peeling skin, and lips that flaked and bled, he finally looked like the horror he was.
The man had mad eyes, and he strutted towards them as if he hadn’t a fear in the world. Perhaps he hadn’t. He had already lost everything.
Quade whipped his blade in a silver swoop that audibly cut the air. “I think I will kill one of you quickly, and the other I’ll play with for a while. Guess which is which?”
Yarrow flinched away from the vicious lust in the man’s gaze. His attention flitted to the girl hanging from the noose. She had stopped dancing. Yarrow darted to the girl’s aid, but Quade glided sideways, blocking his path with a curling smile.
He tsked. “Not even a reply? Don’t disappoint me, Lamhart.”
Yarrow could feel Bray like an extension of himself. She dug her heels into the earth, prepared to spring forward, to engage. They shared a fleeting look of understanding, and then they acted in concert.
Bray cut to Quade’s right, so that Yarrow could run past.
The girl hung limp, swaying slightly from side to side. Yarrow crossed the grass at a sprint, the muscles in his legs screaming. He severed the noose with a quick swipe of his blade, and caught the girl. He was still weak, however, so they both tumbled to the grass an instant later.
The child did not cough, as he’d hoped. She remained completely still.
Yarrow’s hands shook as he loosened the rope, revealing a deep welt encircling her slim neck. “Please don’t be dead,” he whispered.
Quade had killed so many only to taunt them. But if Yarrow could save just this one child, it seemed the burden of those deaths might not bury him. Please.
His fingers probed at where her neck met her jaw, hunting for a pulse. He remembered what it had felt like when he could heal people, the way the warmth had rushed through him like light in his veins. But this was a futile wish. He had dismantled the very system which had given him such an ability.
His shoulders slumped; his eyes burned.
And then the girl gasped—a painful, rasping draw of breath. Her brown eyes flew open.
Yarrow had managed to hold back his emotions until then, but tears leaked from his eyes. “Thank the Spirits,” he said.
The girl saw him, and searched his face for some sign. Then her lower lip trembled and she began to cry.
“It’s alright,” Yarrow said. “You’re alright.”
“The bad man?” she asked.
Yarrow wheeled around, looking to where Bray and Quade still fought. “He isn’t long for this world,” Yarrow said with certainty.
And then Bray’s sword shattered.
She had the better of him.
Quade was noticeably weakened from his trip across the desert, more so than she. In fact, the trek had given her time to heal. Her wrist only twinged now and again, and her ribs were nearly painless. Whereas Quade seemed to have suffered: his skin was a peeling ruin, the hollows of his eyes were deep and shadowed, and his clothing hung loose on his bony frame.
Quade’s attacks were unhinged, reckless. Unsettling to witness, perhaps, but not difficult to deflect. His ravaged face contorted with glee. When her blade opened a slice in his forearm, he only grinned.
Exhaustion did not touch her. Bray was a living, breathing resolution. An aspiration with a pulse. Her sword arm remained steady, her strikes technical and deliberate.
Their blades connected again and again, chiming out in the quiet of the Aeght a Seve. Quade’s reflexes began to slow, so she pressed her advantage.
And then a jolt ran up her arm.
The sound of her sword shattering was like the breaking of a dream. She was not even left with a jagged edge she might wield. No, this was a clean break. Bray cast aside the useless hilt, bracing herself for hand-to-hand combat. She rooted her feet in the Cosanta way.
Quade’s eyes lit up with cruel delight. He sheathed his sword, as she knew he would. “We’ve done this before. Do you remember how that ended, dear?”
She did.
In an instant, she was trapped inside that memory once again. He’d disarmed her, and then he’d slammed her to the ground. It all came rushing back: the sensation of his weight on top of her, his nearness and the invasion of his touch. She’d lost her wits. Quade became her uncle, and she became powerless.
Bray remembered.
In fact, she was still remembering—too vividly for comfort—as Quade barreled into her, sweeping her from her feet and driving her into the earth.
The back of her head connected with a rock, and her vision sparked. Bray couldn’t breathe.
Because he was on top of her, pinning her, his hands rough and unwanted.
No…
Yarrow called her name. She saw him running, but he seemed far away. She blinked, her ears roaring.
A bruising hand grasped her by the chin, forcing her to look up. An arm pressed against her trachea with crushing force. Quade leaned in close, horribly close. She could see every detail of his face. The sharp blade of his nose, the deep brown of his eyes, the dark stubble that surrounded his thin, twisted mouth.
Being imprisoned beneath his weight filled her with—
Purpose. Drive.
She would not die this way, not after all she’d been through. Not now that she had Yarrow back, and the future was a bright and hopeful place.
It didn’t matter that she was afraid, that her mind was a mire of dark memory.
There was no need to think, only to act. She’d trained this body how to fight over long years, and she would trust it now that her thoughts were a tempest.
Bray planted her feet and thrust her hips straight up. The arm that choked her flew to the grass, to prevent a fall.
She gasped for air but did not pause. She popped to her side, slid her arm through the gap under his armpit, and grasped the material of his shirt. And then she shot up and around, so that she was clinging to his back.
Bray elbowed him in the skull, and he flattened to the grass. She allowed him to roll to his side, then attacked his face.
Her blood was singing, her knuckles smarting, her heart roaring in triumph.
I win, Bray thought.
She hit him and hit him and hit him—until his face was a ruin, and his eyes were swelling shut, and she felt the spray of blood.
“Go ahead, Bray Marron,” he rasped. He still sounded as if he was taunting her. “Give me a proper ending.”
She stopped herself, heaving and streaming with sweat. She looked up.
Yarrow had halted midway in his dash to help her. His lovely gray eyes were wide, his mouth set in a grim line. Beyond him, a little girl sat watching.
And standing beside the tree, a spirit studied her with serious amber eyes.
Adearre?
Her heart, which had been battering her breastbone, suddenly lurched. She had not seen her friend in so very long. Spirits, how she’d missed him. His absence was like losing a tooth as a child—the way your tongue could never stop probing the gap.
She had forgotten just what it felt like, to be pinned beneath that steady, searching gaze of his.
When she remembered Adearre, she tended to focus only on the pleasanter side of their relationship. But now countless arguments surged forth from her memory. He had not agreed with her methods, with her willingness to kill.
He deserved a trial, Adearre had protested again and again. Bray Marron: judge, jury, and executioner. Bray had thought him squeamish or worse, inclined to coddle criminals. She had retorted, over and again, that these men did not deserve mercy.
But it wasn’t mercy he’d wanted. It was justice. Justice under the laws of Trin
itas. And he’d been right.
Quade was not innocent. He was guilty—patently, undeniably guilty. He had committed countless atrocities. Even now, beaten as he was, he grinned up at her without repentance. He had a black spirit, and he deserved to die.
But he was no longer the incredible threat that he’d been. He was just a man, now.
Bray did not have to kill him, and so she shouldn’t. His blood was not hers to claim.
Something tight and painful unraveled inside her. She kept her eyes locked on Adearre for a long moment, her heart in tatters. He smiled, and she loved him.
And then she glared down at Quade. He was only barely sensible. He blinked up at her, his brow puckered in confusion.
Bray swallowed against a dry throat. She uncurled her fists. And then she said the words that her mentor, Dolla Adder, had taught her over a decade ago. “I am taking you into temporary custody,” Bray said, her voice growing stronger by the word. “Until such a time as you can be handed over to the proper authorities, who will offer you just treatment under the law of the land.”
Quade began to laugh, a rattling, choking sound that clearly pained him. “You’re arresting me?” he wheezed.
“Yarrow, could you bring that length of rope over and help me secure him?”
“Certainly,” Yarrow said, a tender quality to his voice.
They tied the bindings tight enough to cut off circulation. She also bound his feet, trussing him up like game. Quade looked pathetic, with his arms and feet twisted behind his back and his face turning black and blue. He drooled blood into the grass.
When she searched for Adearre, desperate to speak with him, she found her friend already fading. Light had begun to pierce his form.
“I am proud of you, love,” he said. There was so much she’d like to say, but he was gone before she could utter a word.
Bray wiped away her tears. They left Quade and went to check on the little girl. Her neck was bruised, and she was plainly spooked. But she was alive. And as Bray could well attest, it was better to live on, traumatized, than to die.
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