grasses. As I got close, I caught glimpses of the slaves' formation through the billows, and I released a sigh of relief.
We were safe for the night once more.
They trailed off in equal relief when they saw me emerge from the mist, and ushered me inside. I rejoined them, and Letta folded me against her with an arm as we turned to go back inside. Dashsund drew the children similarly to him, holding them against the cold, and we all filed back through the door.
I let the screen swing shut behind me, and then turned to cast my eyes through its filter and across the field once more. A crop of firefly sentries shone through the gloom all around us, pin-pricks of lancing light to any godforsaken Wardog that contrived to prowl the territory.
Satisfied, I shut the door with a bang against the night, and threw the latch into the wall.
T h r e e –
Fellow Albinos
Two things the Serbaens had indeed brought to Darath were Wardogs and disease. They had fled their land in a desperate haste, careening through the battlefields and swimming the bloody rivers, tracking the carnage across the border. It was inevitable that the Wardogs would follow them here, when the feasts on Serbaen soil ran low or the alpha beasts had claimed all the available battlefields and sent the hungry runts packing.
A 'hungry runt' of a Wardog was as fearsome a thing as any. They were bigger than mountain wolves – more squatted toward the ground with their proportions, perhaps, but broad as an ox and lithe as a cat. They had large paws 'for swiping off heads', Enda said, and frightful knife-like claws 'that made ribbon stew'. Their heads, dreadfully big, were flat and short like a cat's, but their noses bashed in like a bulldog and their mouths wider than any face even of that size warranted. Great maws that grinned from ear to ear with chiseled yellow fangs zig-zagging across, like the frightening face of a rag doll with its mouth stitched loudly shut. Their tails were short little stubs, their fur coarse wiry and brown.
I had seen one, once. It was prowling the fields when I went out to sing the flowers awake, and I risked prolonging the darkness that might call more so as to wait for it to pass before I carried out my duty. We had been lucky.
Disease was the other thing. The Serbaens brought with them the infections they had merited from the uncleanliness of war. A great number of them had died. But, strangely, only a handful of the Masters had suffered the passing-on of their conditions. There was a theory that it was because the Darathians had shunned the new people from their circles from the beginning, and so disease had only lived in the slave quarters.
Most of the disease had left their ranks by the time I came into the world, but I remembered getting sick when I joined them. There was a period of time that smeared into a feverish haze in my memory, filled with dark faces peering down at me and cold things mopping my forehead, which gave way only to the crazed fever dreams that took me in sleep. They were nonsense, but frightening. Worlds of disturbed nuances unleashed to wreak havoc on my defenseless state of mind. Even today, snippets came back to me that I had forgotten upon waking. Little things in my daily life would spark the memory of them, and I would revisit that strange patch of time from my past.
I had a scar from that fever. A rash had developed on my back, and one shoulder blade now sported an immortal splotch of color, like a birth mark.
I dropped my tunic over my head after Letta used her deft root-pulling fingers to lace up my corset for the day, hiding the mark and muffling the memory. I stooped and hiked up my skirt to lace my boots, tucking a knife into the side of one. Letta knotted my light brown tresses partially back, and inserted a blade there as well. The locks fell well past my shoulders, and even if the clever means of self defense embedded in the knotwork weren't necessary, keeping it out of my face was.
“All set, minda,” she said, putting her hands on my shoulders. I straightened, and met her eyes in the mirror. The smile the middle-aged woman wore was fond, proud, but etched with concern. I could not blame