Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle #1) - Jay Kristoff Page 0,31

boy fell silent, slipped off his rock into a crouch. He took out an old captain’s spyglass, engraved with the same three seadrakes as his ring, and pressed it to his eye.

Mia crouched next to him, peering toward Last Hope. “See something?”

“Caravan.”

“Fortune hunters?”5

“Don’t think so.” Tric spat on the spyglass lens, rubbed away the dust. “Two laden wagons. Four men. Camels leading, so they’re in for a deep trek.”

“I’ve never ridden a camel before.”

“Nor me. I hear they stink. And spit.”

“Still sounds a step up from Bastard.”

“A whitedrake wearing a saddle is a step up from Bastard.”

They watched the caravan roll across the blood-red sand for an hour, pondering what lay ahead if the group were indeed from the Red Church. And when the caravan was almost a dot on the horizon, the pair clambered down from their throne, and followed across the wastes.

They kept distance at first, Flowers and Bastard plodding slowly. Mia was sure she could hear a strange tune on the wind. Not the maddening whispers—which she’d still not become accustomed to—but something like off-key bells, stacked all atop one another and pounded with an iron flail. She’d no idea what to make of it.

The pair weren’t outfitted for a trek into the deep desert, and they resolved to ride up to the caravan when it stopped to rest. There was no creeping up on it—the stone outcroppings and broken monuments studding the wastes weren’t enough to conceal approach, and Mia’s cloak of shadows was only big enough for one. Besides, she reasoned, if these were servants of the Lady of Blessed Murder, they may not take kindly to being snuck up on as they stopped to piss.

Sadly, the caravan folk seemed happy enough to go as they went, so to speak. The pair were gaining ground, but after two full turns in the saddle, with Bastard nipping her legs and occasionally trying to buck her into the dust, Mia could take no more. Pulling the stallion up near a circle of weathered statues, she didn’t so much lose her temper as dropkick it across the sand.

“Stop, stop,” she spat. “Fuck this. Right in the earhole.”

Tric raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“There’s more bruises in my britches than there is bottom. It needs a breather.”

“Are we playing alliteration and you didn’t tell me, or…”

“Fuck off. I need a rest.”

Tric frowned at the horizon. “We might lose them.”

“They’re led by a dozen camels, Tric. A noseless dog could follow this trail of shit in the middle of truedark. If they suddenly start trekking faster than a forty-a-turn smoker with an armload of drunken prostitutes, I think we can find them again.”

“What do drunken prostit—”

“I don’t need a foot massage. Don’t want a back rub. I just want to sit on something that isn’t moving for an hour.” Mia slipped off the saddle with a wince, waved her stiletto at Bastard. “And if you bite me again, I swear to the Maw I’ll make you a gelding.”

Bastard snorted, Mia sinking down against a smooth stone with a sigh. She pressed one hand to her cramping innards, rubbed her backside with the other.

“I can help with that,” Tric offered. “If you need it.”

The boy grinned as Mia raised the knuckles. Tethering the horses, he sat opposite Mia as she fished a cigarillo from her case, struck her flintbox and breathed deep.

“Your Shahiid was a wise man,” Tric said.

“What makes you say that?”

“Three turns of this a month is plenty.”

The girl scoffed, kicked a toeful of dust at him as he rolled away, laughing. Pulling her tricorn down over her eyes, she rested her head against the rock, cigarillo hanging from her lips. Tric watched her, peering about for some sign of Mister Kindly. Finding none.

He looked about them, studying the stonework. The statues were all similar; vaguely humanoid figures with feline heads, blasted by winds and time. Standing up on the outcropping, he squinted through his spyglass, watching the camel caravan trekking away. Mia was right—they moved at a plodding pace, and even with a few hours’ rest, they’d make up the lost ground. He wasn’t as grass-green around horses as Mia was, but after three turns saddlebound, he was aching in a few of the wrong places. And so sitting in the shade for a spell, he tried his best not watch her as she slept.

He only closed his eyes for a second.

“Naev counsels him to be silent.”

A slurred whisper in his ear, sharp as the blade against his throat. Tric