the significance of him going home…” Nadya trailed off as Malachiasz hesitantly pushed open the doors to the church, a frown forming on his face.
The churchyard was utterly silent.
“We weren’t out there for very long,” Nadya said.
“It’s not that…” he murmured. Then he swore under his breath.
Suddenly he was pressing two bloody fingers against the doorframe, his dark eyebrows furrowed in concentration. He reached for the book at his side, tearing out a page and pressing it against the door. Blood seeped into the paper. The lines of blood formed a three-pronged symbol that spread out over the entire door.
“Stay back,” he said.
“Why?”
“Something’s been cast on the church,” he said slowly. “Someone from Tranavia wants to know who’s here.”
Nadya took a wide step back. “The prince?”
“No. Wrong direction. I don’t suppose you have a god for curse breaking?”
Nadya let out a breathless laugh. She couldn’t ignore the significance of his asking, even if he meant it as a joke. “No, sorry.”
“Shame. I’ll have to do it myself.”
He used his wicked-looking dagger to cut a line down his forearm. Nadya winced. His arms were riddled with scars and half-healed cuts, layers of them arranged in a ridged, messy, cross-hatching pattern.
“Hold this, please?” He handed her his spell book.
She took it, bewildered.
When he stepped away from the page on the door it remained stuck to the wood, the symbol glowing faintly around the edges. He swiped two fingers through the bleeding cut on his arm and moved to the wall next to the door. He scrawled a series of symbols onto the wood with his blood. Suddenly he stopped and something akin to horror crossed his face.
“Oh,” he said. “This is very bad.”
He turned to her, flipping open his spell book while it was still in her hands. She held it up, only moderately disgusted he was using her as a book stand.
“It’s a good thing I have practice at this from my acolyte days,” she muttered.
“I was going to say,” he said absently as he flipped through the pages. “You’re very good.”
“I have many talents.”
His lips quirked into a bare smile.
“Are you going to tell me what’s bad, or…?”
He looked up at her, all color draining from his face.
“You’re Kalyazi.”
“Yes. I am.”
“Nadya,” he breathed out, and there was something in the way he used her name that made her feel too warm and too cold all at once. She blinked up at him, sudden terror gripping her. He looked shaken, and she didn’t really want to contemplate just what could frighten this blood mage.
“It’s the Vultures.”
A chill swept through her. She felt a stirring in the back of her head. The gods were distressed. Her joints locked up and ice wormed its way into her bones. How was this happening? First the High Prince, now the Vultures?
She couldn’t run from the Vultures. She couldn’t run from the darkest nightmares of Tranavia.
Malachiasz tore out multiple pages of his spell book and frantically scrawled blood over the wood and torn pages. “If they come here, you and I won’t be long for this world.”
“Why would you be in danger?” she asked. If she focused on the little things, maybe terror wouldn’t swallow her alive. “Because you defected from the army?”
He stopped writing, closing his eyes and whispering something fast under his breath in Tranavian that Nadya couldn’t catch. He let out a bitter laugh and turned to look at her, his pale eyes full of fear. “Because I defected from them.”
9
SEREFIN
MELESKI
Svoyatovi Roman Luski: Appointed as a bishop in secret by half of the Council of 1213, Luski fought to maintain Kalyazi control of the eastern provinces. It was a losing battle, as Dobromir Tsekhanovetsky gained the votes of the other half and betrayed his country’s trust by handing the provinces to the Tranavian king.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
Three mages against two dozen soldiers, and Serefin only had a bare handful of spells left. The Kalyazi camp was just down the hill, the predawn dim revealing only a few soldiers awake.
Ostyia flipped twin szitelki in her hands, impatient while Serefin carefully shifted through his last five spells. If they ran into any more Kalyazi on their journey home, he would be in trouble.
“What do you have left?” Kacper asked, his voice low. He leaned on his staff. Razor-sharp metal was tied to the tip of it.
Serefin showed Kacper his painfully thin spell book. Kacper selected one of the remaining spells. The chosen spell would burn for a while, creating a sufficient distraction while Ostyia and