as she wedged the knife between vertebrae and sawed. She felt the spinal cord sever, both through the blade and in the rushing chill as the spirit left the flesh.
Gulping air, she staggered away from the mangled body. The corpse was harmless now, the spirit dissolved; demons only had one chance at life.
Another clawed for her, nails raking her outflung arm. She buried the knife in its gut and twisted. Nothing close to fatal, but it screamed as the silver burned. The stench of bowel filled the air as she tugged the blade free; ropes of blood clung to the metal, thick and sticky as jam. Someone else was screaming, high and unceasing.
“Fire!” she shouted at Asheris. “Fire will stop them!” The screams ended in a gurgle; pistol shots echoed.
She kicked the demon’s legs out from under it, wrestled it to the ground. Easy with the newly wrought, still clumsy and awkward. An old demon was nothing she ever wanted to meet again.
This was butcher’s work—when the corpse fell still she pushed herself up, wiping at the mud and blood splattered on her face. The air smelled of roasting flesh.
Half a dozen bodies smoldered on the ground, while another handful writhed and flamed and shrieked. The soldiers huddled back-to-back while Asheris set demon after demon alight.
What came after the butchery was worse.
One soldier was dead, another badly mauled. Isyllt eased the woman’s pain and checked the wounds as best she could. Corpse-bites always festered, but sometimes worse traces lingered. When she finished, the woman’s comrades carried her off for proper treatment and returned with a barrel of salt from the closest village.
One by one Isyllt and Asheris searched the houses for demons or survivors—of the latter they found a few: an infant in her cradle, a toddler hiding under his bed, a dog nursing a litter, two cats, and a caged bird. Whether the ghosts took pity on them or they were simply too small to be worth eating, Isyllt couldn’t say.
When all living things were out of a house, Isyllt circled the building with salt and Asheris burned it to the ground. He was one of the most skilled pyromancers she’d ever seen—fire answered him instantly, burned clean and fast, never a stray spark to threaten them. Even by the fourteenth house, when sweat ran down his face and strain washed his skin gray, the flames never faltered.
She salted the charred remains as well. The reek of death and witchery clung to everything, seeping into the soil. The crops had already spoiled from the chill. The village was as dead as its inhabitants; no one would rebuild here soon.
Xinai found the first ghost-marker late the next afternoon. Bones and beads woven around a wooden frame, dangling from a branch. A ward and a warning—it marked cursed land, haunted by spirits and the hungry dead. Even with Shaiyung beside her, Xinai had no desire to meet another gangshi, or any other incorporeal predator. They climbed higher into the foothills to avoid it, though that left them edging beside the mountain’s wards as well.
They were perhaps a third of the way around the mountain; she’d never ventured so far northeast before, and nothing was familiar. Riuh only shook his head when she questioned him, and soon they were both cursing under their breath as they stumbled through the brush and over craggy hills. Xinai snarled at Riuh nearly as often as he spoke, only to apologize a few minutes later. After an hour of this he gave up talking, and Xinai cursed herself for not remembering the potion that put off her courses.
The mountain towered over them, blocking the sky. Once or twice when they broke through the tree line, she smelled the smoke and sulfur stench of the burning cauldron. The jungle spread out all around them, dipping and swelling over the hills, rising to meet the eastern mountains. Shadows floated across the canopy as clouds drifted east, where they thickened and shed their rain.
As dusk came on, Xinai was cursing in earnest. They’d passed three more ghost-wards, a greater expanse of unclean jungle than she’d ever seen before. Twilight chased purple shadows across the hills and the light was nearly gone. And as they circled east, the diamond’s pulse began to fade.
Finally she stubbed her toe once too often and sat with a snarl, flinging a stone down the slope. Riuh turned back, eyeing her so warily she wanted to throw rocks at him too.