middle of the night, army encampments never truly sleep. Pages are always running errands. Generals are always barking orders. Warriors moan and thrash as they wake from the throes of nightmares. But not in this camp. It might as well be a graveyard. The extreme stillness feels like beetles creeping across my flesh. Not only is it unnerving, it’s problematic. I can only blot out forms, not the tread of running feet.
I slip down a row of tents, and sticky mud sucks at my boots. The air is cold enough, the ground should be frozen, but it’s a river of brown muck from so many chamber pots being emptied in one location. The filthy containers lie on their sides, spilling excrement, and I gag as I pull my boots free—nearly running straight into a mounted guard. I bite down on my scream and skid to a halt, breath held to keep it from billowing in front of my face. For a second I even close my eyes. My heart batters against my rib cage like a fox in a trap.
The horse blows and sidesteps, its eyes rimmed white, but, thankfully, the rider looks straight through me. He murmurs to his horse and urges it on with a stern kick.
Once they’ve trotted away, I double over and take two deep breaths. Then I readjust my hold on the night and dart to the first tent I’m to visit. I bend myself through the door like a shadow, and find seven warriors huddled in the center, staring as the tent flap drops back into place, seemingly by itself.
They’re gasping and shaky, most of them seriously wounded, many of them not a day older than fourteen. Their blue-and-gold uniforms are shredded and coated with blood, and several clutch broken limbs and angry gashes. Not only that, they’re horrifically emaciated—gaunt spines and knobby ribs protrude like broken bones through their tunics. It’s blindingly clear how the Zemyans are advancing. I doubt they even need to call upon their sorcery. A stiff winter wind could blow our warriors over.
Guilt drenches me like a freezing bucket of water. Maybe they do need the rations the Shoniin are stealing? But would they even see them if they’re the king’s sacrificial lambs, sent to hold the war front with no support? These new treasonous thoughts clang around my head, making the collar of my tunic feel too tight.
This is wrong. Inhumane. Just as atrocious as what’s happening to the shepherds.
And it proves Temujin right.
Again.
I accidentally clench my fists, and darkness consumes the tent. The recruits gasp, and I blow out a breath and ease back. I have to stay calm.
“This way,” I whisper, revealing my face for a moment, so they know I’m a person instead of a ghost. I lift the tent flap, and as each deserter ducks past, I toss my net of darkness over them, stretching it wider and wider until it drapes over us like a blanket. Without a word, I place the front-most girl’s hand on my shoulder and instruct them to do the same down the line—to keep us together and so my ability will transfer through them. Then we inch forward like a train of bumbling camels.
I repeat the same process at the next two tents, and by the end of my rounds, twenty recruits extend behind me like an unwieldy tail. I start to hyperventilate every time I glance back. If even one of them trips or sneezes, we’re all doomed.
We shamble forward slowly, forced to break apart again and again to let guards pass, which means I have to loop back around to retrieve the severed group members, who are standing, blind and petrified, in the darkness.
By the time we finally make it to the clearing, my hands are tingly and I can’t feel my face. It’s been a lifetime since I’ve breathed. “Stay together until we’re safe in the Boneyard,” I whisper.
But the sight of safety is too much.
With a hysterical whine, the youngest boy in the center of the pack surges past me, and the rest of the group bolts after him—like horses at the start of a race. As if the rocks will conceal them better than my darkness.
They burst from beneath my blanket of night, and I have to throw my bad arm up to catch it. The pain is so blinding, I nearly fall to my knees. The effort leaves me sick and shaking and for an instant I have no control. My Kalima