in battle. His face was shaven close, which revealed three scars where a bear had tried to take off his jaw. But it was his eyes, as pale as the horse upon which he rode, that fixed Talen’s gaze. Those eyes had scared Talen as a boy. He had thought the man was full of evil. His father had convinced Talen otherwise, but, faced with those eyes, Talen could never maintain his certainty.
The bailiff directed that hard gaze at the other men. “What is this here? Why are the fields empty?”
“There are Koramite Sleth about,” someone said.
Sleth? Soul-eaters?
Sleth were those who had given themselves over to Regret, the one Creator of seven who, when he’d seen what he and the seven other Creators had wrought, recognized that it was flawed and despised the work of his hands. To the men, women, and children who came into his twisted power, he gave horrible gifts—unnatural strength and appetites, odd growths and manifestations of beasts, and the power, with a touch, to steal Fire and soul. The stories of Sleth and the hunts the righteous led against them were legion.
Had Talen heard that right?
“This one ran like a monster,” one of the men said.
“Yes,” said the bailiff. “But it appears you caught him anyway.”
Talen looked up at the bailiff, but a wave of pain and nausea slammed into him, and he was forced to turn and vomit into the grass. He hurt everywhere.
“Get up,” said the bailiff.
Talen gagged once more, spit. He took three breaths to steady himself. He was dizzy and shaking.
He got to one knee. Something was running out of his nose. He wiped his face with his sleeve expecting blood, but it was nothing more than snot. There was a ringing in his ears, and he didn’t know if he could stand.
But he did know one thing: he would not show weakness. Not in front of these men.
Two more breaths. He could barely open one of his eyes.
Goh, these arrogant Mokaddian garlic-eaters. This would go to the Koramite Council. And the Council would take it to the Shoka lords. He was within his rights—every one of these men should pay! And that thought was enough to take the edge off the flood of tears pushing up within.
Talen stood. He almost toppled over, but then his dizziness seemed to recede.
Two other horsemen rode up from the village and joined the bailiff. One was the bald Fir-Noy he had seen at the gate. His black beard and eyebrows were even bushier than they had first appeared. His Mokaddian wrist tattoo with its boar’s tusk had been extended up his forearm, showing not only his clan, but also the military order to which he belonged. The other Fir-Noy was a small man, a messenger. He rode a horse that was lathered and blowing from a long gallop.
The bearded Fir-Noy shifted on his saddle and the leather creaked under him. “We tried to find you, Zu,” he said to the bailiff. “There’s been a Sleth hunt, and it appears that things have taken a turn for the worse.”
The bailiff turned. “A Sleth hunt?”
The messenger eyed Talen, then addressed the bailiff. “We identified the parents of the abomination pulled from the river. Yesterday, our forces closed in on Sparrow, the Koramite master smith of the village of Plum. But things did not go as planned. His two hatchlings escaped. And then some Sleth spawn came back and slaughtered a family in the village.”
Except for the buzzing in Talen’s head there was dead silence. Sleth, he thought. What are these men doing wasting their time chasing me? They should be out—
Then his brain processed that last statement. There were Sleth among the Koramites, among Talen’s people.
“We have reports,” the messenger continued, “that they were spotted in this district. A Koramite girl and her blind brother.” He turned to the men. “There’s a sizeable bounty for any who bring them in, dead or alive. A miller’s annual wage.”
The reports of Sleth that sailors brought this spring had given him nightmares. A Sleth wife taken in Mokad who had filed her teeth into sharp fangs—they’d all thought it was to make her more fearsome in battle. But the hunters discovered the true reason when they broke open her smokehouse and found the bodies of four men hanging, butchered and half cured.
And that was just this year. There were stories of Sleth stealing your soul away, then walking about in your body. Sleth growing horns, growing gills so they