third watch, Xinai slipped out of their woven-leaf shelter to relieve herself. When she returned, the air beside her cooled. A nearby nightjar fell silent, though insects and frogs continued their songs; only animals large enough to attract attention feared ghosts and spirits. Only men were brave enough—or stupid enough—to seek them out.
She crouched in a tangle of hibiscus shrubs and listened to the rain and distant thunder and Riuh’s soft snoring. Hunger sharpened in her stomach, till she fished a strip of jerky from her pouch. Dry and salty, but she always craved meat before her courses came and they had no time to hunt. The silence stretched and she shivered as her wet hair chilled.
“Hello, Mother,” she murmured at last.
Shaiyung materialized, shimmering and pale. Stronger now, clearer, the color of her skin less sickly. The wound in her throat still gaped—the unsung dead would always bear their death-marks while they lingered.
“That stone you wear,” she whispered. “It’s an ugly thing.”
“I know. I hope I won’t wear it long.” Xinai swallowed salt and a dozen questions. “Can you scout ahead for us?”
Shaiyung shook her head. “It’s still hard for me to see when I’m not with you. Hard for me to leave the Night Forest. I can find spirits and ghosts, but not works of man.”
“What’s it like, the twilight lands?”
“Strange,” Shaiyung said after a pause. “Even after all these years. Before you came home, there was only the dreamtime. I saw things…distant cities…I can barely remember now. I hear the songs of our ancestors on the eastern wind.”
“Will you go to them?”
“One day, perhaps.” Her smile was kind and ghastly. “When Cay Lin is rebuilt. When I see your children playing by the tree.”
“Mother—” Xinai shook her head, frowned at the half-eaten piece of meat in her hand. “I know how much this means to you, but what you did by the river—” Even now she couldn’t force the word past her teeth. Possession. “You can’t do that again.”
“It would have been good luck, a child conceived with the rain.”
“Worry about the Khas first. I won’t be much use in a fight if I’m pregnant.”
Shaiyung’s eyebrows rose. “The northlands made you soft. I was leading raids a month before you were born. My mother still had enemy blood on her hands when I came. Your foremothers are warriors, child.”
Xinai turned her head, cheeks warming. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“It’s not the fighting, is it? You’re still thinking about that foreigner of yours.”
She pulled a knee close to her chest, her heel digging a rut in soft earth. “I know I shouldn’t—”
“Oh, darling.” A cold hand stroked her back. “I know. Your father wasn’t the first man I cared for. I know what it’s like to lose, to let someone go. You can’t help what you feel. But you can’t let it cloud your thoughts either, or dull your blades.”
“I know, Mama—”
Leaves rustled and Xinai stiffened. But it was only Riuh. He rolled over, propped himself up on one elbow. “Who are you talking to?” He blinked sleepily, but his knife was in his hand.
Xinai let out a breath. “Just ghosts.” Her mother’s coldness faded.
Riuh stared at her for a moment, the question—Are you joking?—plain on his face. But finally he rolled over and tugged the blanket back over his head.
She wasn’t sure if she was grateful for the reprieve.
Chapter 13
Thunder came in the dead hours of morning, with wind to rattle the windows and arcs of blue lightning. Despite her bravado with Zhirin, Isyllt barely slept. Twice she woke from nightmares of faceless assassins and cold blades, of seeing her body lifeless in the street as uncaring crowds stepped around her.
As the storm eased into a gray dawn, she finally started to doze again, only to be startled awake by a knock at the door. Louder and more insistent than Li. Fumbling for her robe, she rose to answer it. Assassins didn’t usually knock first.
“I’m sorry to wake you,” Asheris said when she opened the door, “but I have a favor to ask.” He wore riding clothes and carried two oilcloaks over his arm.
She stepped aside and waved him in. “What is it?”
“I’ve had reports that something’s happened in one of the villages on the North Bank.”
“Something?”
He shrugged wryly. “They’re sketchy reports. But I’m told people are dead, and that ghosts or spirits may be involved. You’ve no obligation to help, but I still don’t have a necromancer on staff.”
She blinked sleep-sticky lashes. They’ll never find the body. “I’ll come.”