Heat and jungle noises lulled her. She woke with a start and berated herself for drowsing. Phailin still slept, but the spirits had quieted. Xinai drew her daggers and listened through broken shutters. Footsteps, stealthy through the brush. Then Riuh whistled their all-clear signal, and she sighed.
He stepped into the light, Selei and a handful of warriors with him. Xinai sheathed her blades.
“I feared—” She paused, and Selei smiled.
“You feared I’d be no match for soldiers.” The woman knelt beside the fire and kindled a lantern. “Don’t worry, child, I’m neither toothless nor helpless quite yet.” She drew Xinai aside as Phailin’s relatives entered the room. “Let them tend her. I need to speak with you.” Her milky eye flickered toward Shaiyung. “Both of you.”
They followed Selei into the thicket of the banyan tree, and the light cast their shadows wild and writhing amid the branches. Shaiyung stood close to Xinai, a line of cold down her left side.
“You can see her?”
Selei snorted. “I’ve been speaking to ghosts since before your mother first propositioned your father, girl.”
“You knew she was here.”
“Yes. We’ve talked, Shai and I.” She smiled at the ghost. “She’s been waiting for you.”
“I’ll do the rites, if you’ll teach me. I’ll sing her on—”
Shaiyung shook her head, twisting the gash in her throat wider. “No,” she hissed.
“That isn’t what she’s been waiting for.”
Xinai crossed her arms against the chill. “What, then?”
“She’s been waiting for you to come and free her, so she can join our cause.”
Shaiyung nodded.
“A ghost?”
“She’s not the only one in these woods.” Selei brushed dry fingertips over Xinai’s eyes. “Do you see?”
And there, pale in the darkness, stood half a dozen ghosts, lurking among the tree roots. Xinai sucked a breath through her teeth. Most looked more substantial than her mother, but still gray and hollow-eyed, bearing the marks of their deaths.
“You haven’t sung them on?”
“And lose allies? This is their war too, and they’ve already paid a higher price than any of us.”
“But they should rest.”
“We’ll rest when the land is free again,” one of the ghosts whispered, nearly lost beneath the distant song of crickets.
Shaiyung nodded again. “There aren’t many us of us,” she whispered. “It’s hard, hard to stay awake, to stay sane in the Night Forest. So many have faded or wandered on, or been trapped in their bones.”
“You’re a good omen,” Selei said. “The last Lin child returned. Hope for the clan again. Maybe other clans might live again too.”
Xinai didn’t know what to say to that—bad enough when the living pinned their hopes to her, let alone the dead. “Does everyone know of this? Riuh and Phailin and the rest?”
“Phailin does,” Selei said. “But not everyone knows of the Ki Dai.”
The White Hand. Xinai’s eyes widened. “Rebel ghosts.”
“Ghosts and witches, yes. Not all our warriors can see or hear the dead, and some wouldn’t understand why we don’t sing them on. The Dai Tranh works in the land of the living—the Ki Dai works in the twilight lands as well.”
“So Deilin Xian—”
“Was one of us, yes. We tried to keep her away from that child, but the madness took her.” Selei’s eyes narrowed. “You know what happened, then? What your companions did to her?”
She nodded. “I heard.”
“Can we free her?”
Xinai heard the rest of the question and swallowed. “I don’t know. But the necromancer wants to treat with you, with the Dai Tranh.”
“We fight for a free Sivahra, not to trade one master for another. We won’t be snared in webs of foreign gold. Nor can we barter for Deilin like a fish in a market. She would understand.”
Xinai’s shoulders sagged. “So it was all for nothing.”
Selei clucked her tongue. “We won’t treat with foreigners, girl. You’re kin. If you want to fight with us, we welcome you.”
She glanced from Selei to Shaiyung. The ghost nodded. “Stay,” she whispered.
“What about my partner? He’s saved my life more times than I can count. We’re…close.”
Selei shook her head. “He may be a good man, but he has no place with us. If you care, send him away. Will you stay?”
Her chest felt too tight. Years of partnership, of friendship. It would hurt him. But she only hesitated a moment; she was home.
“I will.”
“There’s one thing I must ask of you first.”
Xinai waited; there was always a test, a cost.
“Shaiyung is bound to this place, to the tree. You’re the only one who can set her free.”