CHAPTER 1
LIZZAN
Many an innkeeper had woken Lizzan by tossing a bucket of water into her face. This day marked the first time she was doused awake by a tree.
She sat up sputtering and squinting beneath the morning sun. Or perhaps it was the midday sun. The source of the light filtering through the jungle canopy was too high for morning, and far too bright for eyes unshaded by sobriety. Judging by how it blinded her, she was nearly sober.
A sad state that Lizzan would soon remedy.
Of late, her flask was always as near to her hand as her sword. She uncorked the neck and was doused again when another broadleaf overfilled with rain and tipped out its burden.
The deluge poured over the top of her head. Sputtering again, her black hair hanging around her face, Lizzan contemplated the effort of leaving the base of the tree where she’d made her bed. All around her, the canopy dumped water as if making wet war on the world below. She would be no drier if she abandoned this spot.
And she would be no drunker unless she did. Only a few drops remained in her flask—and those tasted of rainwater.
Groaning, she shoved the cork into the neck. A fine day this was. Such a very fine day.
Whatever day it might be. The last she remembered, her flask had been full. Usually at least two or three evenings passed before she had to fill it again.
Head pounding, she unsheathed her sword. Bits of vegetation stuck to the blade, as if she’d hacked her way through the jungle foliage, but no blood stained the shining steel. She had not likely killed anyone in the time unremembered, then, or the blood would still remain. Lizzan was not the tidiest of warriors when drunk.
And now she was here. Beneath a tree. She had the vaguest recollection of a man with a gray curling beard saying that a band of thieves plagued the road between Ebrana and Oana. Perhaps she’d set out to hunt them.
If so, then a fool she was. Gladly would Lizzan collect bandits’ heads. But she had no money and no horse—and now, no drink. Better to have waited until someone offered to pay for those heads.
At least her only foolishness had been chasing after brigands. She was still in possession of her purse—empty though it was—and her sword, which would fill the purse with coins again. She had not sold any more of her armor. Even with the sigil of the Kothan army scratched away, each piece was fine enough to fetch a fair price. Her mail tunic alone could buy a horse and a year’s worth of drink. But she was not yet so desperate. Or so thirsty.
A sniff told her that she also possessed a rather unpleasant odor. But the rain would take care of that.
Mostly.
Her leathers and boots were sodden when the storm finally passed. Made from a northern falt’s water-shedding pelt, her bedroll had been spared the soaking but was so muddied that nothing of the white fur could be seen under the brown. The cursed heat in this realm would dry them all soon enough, but still she stripped down to her underlinens and boots before starting out in search of the road, so that her squelching would not draw predators—whether human or animal—and to spare herself the chafing.
Some days it seemed that everything chafed. Not only what she touched. But all she heard, all she saw. All of it rubbed the wrong way. Yet only her clothes left blisters.
Soon she would remove her boots, too. Wet boots always meant lost toes—in the north, lost to frost; in the jungle, lost to rot. Yet she would wait until the road before taking them off, when she would be less likely to step on a venomous snake or a stinging vine.
Finding the road was a simple matter of following the path she’d slashed through the foliage. She slowed when the sound of voices told her that a group of travelers was already upon it.
Out of sight amid a heavy growth of ferns, Lizzan studied the procession. A few dozen families—men and women, young and old. A handful of carts drawn by oxen carried supplies and the weaker among the travelers, but most walked.
Except for the mounted figure at their head. From this vantage, Lizzan could not see her face, but the red cloak she wore identified her well enough. A Nyrae warrior—or so she would have everyone believe by wearing that