Another explosion deadened Anna’s hearing, this one surging a wave of smoke over the crowd and choking out the light that streamed from the chamber’s rear. Tendrils of fracturing metal wormed along the upper crest of the pod. Everything smelled of blackened oak and forge bellows and rocks left in the guts of campfires.
Dazed, Anna lifted her head over the tangle of corpses and saw Bora, black against an argent sprawl, standing amid smoke and superheated panels. The northerner was swinging her knife in lazy circles, still eyeing the trio of riders.
One soldier, spurring his soglav to the far side of the pod and edging into the chamber’s bleeding candlelight, jerked a cylinder out of his pack. After a hasty twist of the device’s ends, the action nearly obscured by the smog and the swiftness of his beast’s galloping, he cocked his arm back in preparation for a throw. Upon release, Bora’s knife shot out in turn, revolving once with a glint before striking the device, sparking its edge, and detonating it an arm’s length from the rider. The seed of flame was instantly swallowed by an ensuing black blossom over the flats, the aftershock and concussive wave tearing through the pod with deafening results. A film of dust erupted from the carpeting and bit at Anna’s eyes.
She rubbed at her face, blinking away the debris in a wash of tears.
Her vision resolved with the final two riders drawing closer, undaunted by the explosion and the blackened fur along the sides of their beasts, oblivious to smoking armor panels beneath their scorched robes. They fished through their own pouches as the soglavs dashed over a rock outcropping, the pale snouts whipping and dark tongues lolling in the moonlight. Only one rider managed to produce a cylinder, but it escaped Bora’s attention.
The northerner had turned back to Anna and was shouting, her warnings buried under the dulling press of the blasts.
“Bora,” Anna cried, unable to hear her own voice. Unable to know if her muteness was derived from a broken throat or deafness. “Behind you.”
The northerner failed to turn, standing still among the shroud of dust and shadow as the cylinder shot through the pod’s sheared edge and tumbled over smoking carpeting. It spun in short cycles, drawing Anna’s attention by virtue of its unassuming shape alone, coming to rest at the heap of bodies before her and nuzzling a corpse’s bloodied palm.
Without a second thought, Anna shifted an oozing neck aside and grasped the cylinder. It was smooth, chilled by Hazan’s plunging temperatures like trail canteens from so long ago. She fought her way onto her knees, drew back her arm, and cast the cylinder toward the pod’s lighted gap.
After two tumbles, the cylinder exploded.
Anna felt the snap of heat, the cascading force, the—
Blackness.
“Waterskins in my quarters. Somebody fetch those.” Heavy footsteps circled Anna and came to rest beside Bora. “Impressive work for just a few hours out of my sight, sukra.”
There was something familiar about the man’s voice, and Anna hated herself for embracing it. Remember what he is, she told herself, the room’s candlelight pulsing as she closed her eyes. Her throat was dry, stinging with acrid smoke. Remember what he’s done.
Bora’s callused hands took hold of Anna’s temples, and in spite of the northerner’s recent violence, the sensation was calming. “They descended upon us.”
“Spare me,” the tracker hissed. “Girl needs air you lot haven’t breathed.”
Disembodied arms dragged her feet over metal and carpeting and fine grains of sand, and soon warm air rushed past her. But now her eyelids were dark and free of the sun’s orange press. The world was frigid. She opened her eyes to darkness and the boy, with his pearl eyes and moonlit arms reaching out to embrace her.
Through the shadow and closeness of death, Anna heard one thing:
“I take care of you.”
Chapter 11
The first jinn emerged when the nebulae were at zenith, and the night sky was a field of cracked mica and smeared color. There were so many stars that Anna lost her peripheral sight of the deck and iron railing, drowned in the vastness of it all. Perhaps it was the wonder of the night that drew the jinn from their dunes.
Or, perhaps, it was to stare at Anna.
“They make tricks,” Shem explained. He sat with his face pressed to the railing, legs in an awkward tangle, staring at the nebulous creature like a puzzle waiting to be solved. “Maybe you see them, the ones who make praising. They say jinn bring good luck.” He wrapped his fingers around the iron bars. “I never know what is wanted by them.”
Anna also rested against the railing, but she lacked the strength to hold onto anything. Her legs were splayed numbly out to her side, draped in a thin cotton sheet. She’d woken up in that position, but hadn’t dared to move. Instead she listened to Shem’s stories and ramblings, staring out at the dunes as they rushed past the kator and shrank away. She wanted to delve into her memories, but it was impossible. The blast swallowed her recollection of both the chamber and meditation alike, forcing her mind back to the immediacy of the starlit dunes and the wind sifting through her hair.
Anna strained her throat, begging the cords to twist and produce noise. “I can’t see it.”
Shem turned to her, his smile radiant in the starlight, and waddled closer. With a guiding hand he turned Anna’s head to the left and rested her chin between the iron bars.
The jinn ran alongside the kator as a jumble of radiant, shifting streaks, purple, blue, amber. Its form was humanoid, to some degree, but not its flesh. It was a condensed storm of the cosmos; flecks like planetoids and suns and moons swirled beneath its outer shell. Tendrils of cerulean and emerald curled from its lips, and in one blur, it was a hound of the same composition.
Anna had heard about them in the songs, but the beauty of the moment was lost to thoughts of killers. She could hardly keep her eyes open, and heard only the hushed arguing ten paces behind her.
The tracker groaned. “Don’t try my patience, korpa.”
“Will you still my heart? We are not beholden to the same masters. My end would come quickly—”
“Mine wouldn’t come at all,” the tracker said. “Do you see what’s on my neck, sukra?”
Bora’s reply was unfazed by the curse, by the sudden anger. “Your end will be long, painful, and done in the nests of shadow.”
While Anna watched the jinn and its shifting forms, which always came amid wisps of colored light, she tried to parse the dispute. Her vision blurred past clarity, but the abrupt silence at her back was her only concern. She realized that bloodshed would prompt a decision, and it would be one of absolutes.
Bora could throw the tracker from the kator, and Anna would be far, far away from his crimes and wickedness. It was a fantasy that played out in her head as she watched the endless sands and the jinn’s wild galloping. And yet, if left only with Bora and Shem, death was certain. There was no place in Hazan for a girl who couldn’t understand flatspeak, and certainly nobody who could protect her. Her value in these lands came from the tracker, who’d promised her so much for all of her suffering.
From the tracker, who put himself in front of blades and Malchym itself to protect her.
But Bora’s slaughter would do nothing for Anna either. Whether for her own survival or Anna’s, she’d stood against killers and emerged. She’d braved blasts that would’ve sent Lojka’s best men running for cover.
For a fleeting moment Anna wished she could utilize the force she’d seen in Bora when the men arrived. One day, when she knew the names and faces and crimes of every wicked man, she could make them answer for their evil. She could burn their fields, scourge their flesh with whips, and make them beg for breath before—
Anna’s eyes jolted open. She heard the tracker’s heavy boots clomping toward her, rattling the thin metal of the deck.
“Anna,” the tracker said gently. He moved to her side, just within her range
of vision, and sank down onto his haunches. His burlap mask rustled as he turned his head to the side, presumably eyeing the jinn. “Your kin ever tell you about those cults in the peaks, girl? They say that there are gods. Not just the Grove and the Claw’s spirits, but real, walking gods. Some say that they took these gods to bed, had babes with them. Some bring their babes into the forests and slit their little throats.” He shook his head, suppressing a laugh. “The kretiny in the flatlands are just as superstitious. They think fortune and miracles come from jinn.” The tracker huffed. “Those from Rzolka have more sense.”
“Sense?” Shem asked from behind the tracker.
“Sense,” echoed the tracker. “The sense to walk away when you aren’t needed.”
“Anna needs me.”
“Shara, Shem,” Bora called. “We should leave the Rzolkans to their sensible dealings.”
“I’ll be fine,” Anna said, closing her eyes against the breeze. “Don’t worry about me, Shem.”
After a moment of hesitation, Shem’s little footsteps pattered across the deck. “I clean your bed,” he chimed, his voice fading. “Very clean.”
And when the footsteps of the two northerners disappeared, it was only Anna and a wicked man.
“She nearly killed you,” the tracker said. His voice swirled around in the shadow of Anna’s closed eyes, each sound forming into true letters. “The northerners have a thousand ways to tunnel into your skull, girl. Like sedating you when hired blades are on their way.”
Anna opened her eyes and found that the jinn had vanished. “Who were those men?”
“They wouldn’t have been a problem if you weren’t there,” the tracker said. “Flatspeak is a language of lies. She lured you out there.”
Lured. It was a pebble in her mind, baiting her thoughts. Distantly, she formed a reply. “She saved me.”
“Tried to crack your thoughts.” The tracker settled himself down beside Anna. Sweat and rotted dusk-petal mingled with the breeze. “Isn’t that the first thing we do to a headstrong mare, Anna? Burn away its wild blood?”
“You just want to hold the reins,” Anna whispered.
“Ne prava,” the tracker shot back, stunned or perhaps, if Anna stretched her imagination, hurt. He cleared his throat. “You know better.”
Anna opened her eyes and gazed at his burlap mask. For the first time she saw him as ridiculous, a cowardly man who would sooner pursue a thousand kindnesses than admit his own wickedness. She glared at him. “If you cared you would’ve been there.”
“Not even the wisest man can out-think a Hazani’s schemes.”
Anna hardened her stare. “Those killers had man-skin.”
“Perhaps,” the tracker said, “but not like our kind. Not even like the easterners. Their people breed with Hazani, with Gosuri . . . probably with the ten-legs. Throat-cutters and whores are the only honest workers in the flatlands. Here, in this place,” he waved his hand over the railing, encompassing the entire swath of sand and stars above, “truth is a cracked word in Hazan, girl. That’s the first thing to learn about Bora’s kind.”
I’ve learned about lies from my own kind. She watched the tracker’s beady, violet-ringed eyes through the burlap holes. “You didn’t notice that she left?”
“Under false pretenses.” The tracker paused. “False reasons.”
“I know what a pretense is.” If only from caravan drivers. “Don’t treat me like a child.”
“Right, then,” the tracker said. “Bora said she’d bring you there to calm you down.”
“She did.”
“Not as expected.” He tilted his head to the side, the wind tugging at one corner of the burlap. “Look at you. Two paces from the Grove.”
The Grove-Beyond-Worlds. Its mention stirred old longing in her, beckoning her to a calming refuge past this life, with its soft moss and ever-present shade. With her mishu—her little bear—and parents who hid their children among the brambles and under-roots. Without salt or wicked men or the recurring sense that Anna had forgotten something at home, but could not recall its name. “It would ruin you, wouldn’t it?”
The skin around his eyes creased. “Say it plain.”
“You need me.” Anna stared at the burlap around the tracker’s neck. Pale light seeped through the threadbare patches, forcing impossible calculations of hours into Anna’s mind. Nothing could last so long. “I don’t have an investment to look after.”
“Don’t nitpick over words. We’ve been partners from the start.”
“What happens if you arrive without me?” Anna asked. “Bora was right, you know. A rune won’t always protect you.”
The tracker’s brows tightened, turning his eyes to bloodshot slits. He took in a long breath. “Such little faith in your own marks. If you knew the quality of these lines, you’d sing different songs. You carved something endless, Anna.”
“And without me,” Anna said darkly, “they’ll make your torture endless.” Riders who had fought alongside the Moskos had never been shy about their exploits, especially after a few drinks in the presence of old comrades. A dark cell, a bullwhip, and a captive were all they needed.
Now, gazing at the tracker, Anna wondered how many men he’d tortured. She wondered if he could imagine the merriment that wicked men would find in an unfailing body.
He did, it seemed. His silence sang.
“You wouldn’t touch me.” She weighed his eyes, twisting her blade into the new wound. It was the humanity she’d once seen, but never dared to chase. The reins she’d been holding, unknown even to her, since their first meeting. She straightened herself against the railing. “If I want to rest in the Grove, I will.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I’ll make that choice,” Anna said. “You can bring me there in bindings, but it still won’t matter. My father told me what happened when the bogat of Korkowice found a scribe. She was a small girl, and she didn’t want to leave home. She didn’t even want to work for salt. They tried to break her bones and hurt her mother, but she wouldn’t help them. She couldn’t be forced to do it. Once they broke her, then what?” She stared through the railing’s bars, watching the sand shimmer in the starlight. Her throat hummed with the flurry of activity, awakening from days of slumber. “Then they only had a girl. All they could do was kill her.”
“Partnership, girl,” the tracker hissed. “Nobody said you were a droba, even if I’ve saved your bones enough to own them.” He struggled to breathe without grunting. Behind the violet blossoms in his eyes, there was rage. “In Malijad, you’ll have as many barrels of sa—”
“I want more than salt,” Anna said.
“What, then?”
“Truth,” she said. “I need to know why they took him.” In the silence that fell over the deck, Anna felt something bizarre and nostalgic. It was a tingling swell in the back of her throat. Sadness. Julek’s weight, light, almost unnoticeable after so many seasons of carrying, fell upon her back, and the question of why became vital. When memories of a crooked-legged boy eating unripe blackberries and marveling at fireflies faded, there had to be something for her to understand. There had to be truth behind the pain, reason in an senseless world. She blinked to hide whatever tears might emerge in the moonlight. “And I want to know why they need me. I want to know why they need the runes.” More blinking. “I need to know how wicked you are.”
The tracker let out a whistling sigh. “You think I’m wicked?”
“It’s subjective,” Anna whispered, fighting the cracks in her voice.
“After all I’ve done for you, I’m a wicked man.” The tracker lowered his head. The anger was gone, leaving only a husk of bitterness. “Do you want to know what’s wicked, Anna? Malchym is wicked. Kowak is wicked. The bogaty are wicked. Rzolka is wicked. It’s rotten to its core, but you’re too young to notice. Still covered in womb blood, aren’t you?” He
raised his head. His eyes were devoid of their dusk-petal haze. “But maybe now you’re old enough to see it. Just take a good look. You’ve found the last honest man in Rzolka.”
“You’re not honest,” Anna said. “You’re a liar.”
“Only one of us broke our deal.”
By now truth had become so warped in Anna’s mind that she couldn’t recall what she had, or had not, done in the marshes; his lies were as valid as her memory. But she could never call him an honest man.
“Do you really miss home, girl?” the tracker asked. “Do you miss Bylka and its pretty flowers? Do you miss the all-wise bogat who paid two handfuls per child? And how about your father, who put the ink to the bogat’s writ?”
“Don’t talk about my father,” Anna snapped. “You chose to come to our village. You could have tilled fields, or made knives, or caught fish at the ford. But you chose to hunt us, and that makes you wicked. Just like those killers.”
The tracker sighed. “Imagine that. Me, the wickedest man you’ve ever met. Did you ever consider who put us on the hunt?”
“I want to know everything,” Anna said, unsure if she could stomach the truth.
“Huh.” The tracker folded his arms, creasing his mail undershirt. “Here’s a compromise, then. I’ll tell you who wanted the crack-leg, and who wants you.”
“Not just who,” she said. “Why.”
“Right. That too. But keep both ears open, because I’m not fond of repeating myself. Once you’ve heard it all, you’ll decide who’s wicked.”
Anna nodded.
“What do you know about Radzym’s keep, girl?”
“The bogat?”
“Yes, your bogat,” the tracker said. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been to his keep.”
“Never,” Anna replied. “The riders used to say he was taking boys, but not why. They said Malchym didn’t know. I just know that he has too much salt.”
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