She paced into the forest, away from the roar of the Minara. Her boots sank into loam. It smelled the way Seiiki did after the plum rain. Rich and earthy. Comforting.
Her body was a half-drawn knife. Despite the familiar scent, the first steps were the hardest she had ever taken. She walked light-footed as a crane. When a twig snapped beneath her, birds of many colors took off from the trees. Before long, she found the damage to the canopy. Something large had fallen nearby. A few steps more, and her torch revealed a pool of silver blood.
Dragon blood.
The forest seemed set on hampering her progress. Hidden roots snared at her ankles. Once a branch crumbled beneath her, and she found herself up to her waist in swamp. She only just kept her grip on the torch, and it took far too long to prize herself free.
Her hand shook as she limped onward, following the trail of blood. From the amount that had been shed, Nayimathun was injured, but not badly enough to kill her. Her blood might still entice predators. The thought made Tané break into a run. In the East, tigers were sometimes bold enough to attack dragons, but the scent of Nayimathun would be strange to the animals of this forest. She prayed that would be enough to keep them at bay.
When she heard voices, she smothered the torch. An unfamiliar language. Not Lasian. She held her knife between her teeth and climbed a nearby tree.
Nayimathun was lying in a clearing. An arrow was embedded in her crown—the part of her that gave her the means to fly. Six figures were gathered around her, all in scarlet cloaks.
Tané tensed. One of the strangers was handling her bow, running her fingers over its limb. These must be the Red Damsels, the warriors of the Priory—and now they knew a dragonrider was close.
At any moment, one of them could plunge a sword into Nayimathun. She would be no match for them in this state.
After what seemed like hours, all but two of the Red Damsels disappeared into the trees. Now they were hunters, and Tané was their prey. Their sorcery might put her at a disadvantage, but even that did not make them all-powerful.
She dropped in silence from the tree. Her best weapon now was the element of surprise. She would get Nayimathun to safety, and then she would track one of the Red Damsels to the Priory.
Nayimathun opened one eye, and Tané knew that she had seen her. The dragon waited for her to creep nearer before she lashed her tail. In the precious moments the Red Damsels were distracted, Tané moved like a shadow toward them. She caught sight of dark eyes beneath a hood—eyes as dark as her own—and for the strangest moment, she felt as if the sun was on her face.
The feeling died as soon as she got close. She attacked with every drop of her strength. The first swing of her wheel nicked skin, but a blade snapped up to deflect the second, jarring her arm to the shoulder. The force of the collision rang through her teeth. As the hunters circled her, cloaks spinning around them, she fended them off with a wheel in each hand. They were quick as two fish eluding the hook, but it was clear that they had never encountered bladed wheels. Tané gave herself over to the fight.
The fleeting calm soon fled from her. As she swerved away from their swords, she had the chilling realization that she had never been in a fight to the death. The Western pirates had been easy—brutal, but undisciplined. She had scrapped with other apprentices as a child, trained with them when she was older, but her knowledge of battle was little practice and no end of theory. These mages had been locked in a war for most of their lives, and they moved like partners in a dance. A warrior forged in the schoolroom, alone and wounded, would be no match for them. She should never have confronted them in the open.
Thirst and exhaustion made her slow. With every step, their swords flashed closer to her skin, while her wheels were nowhere near theirs.
Her steps grew drunken. Her arms ached. She hissed as a blade sliced her shoulder, then her jaw. Two more scars for her collection. The next blow set fire to her waist. Blood soaked into her tunic. When the Red Damsels attacked together, she only just lifted the wheels in time to parry.
She was going to lose this fight.
A feint caught her off-guard. Metal bit open her thigh. One knee gave way, and she dropped the wheels.
That was when Nayimathun reared her head. With a roar, she clamped one of the mages between her teeth and hurled her across the clearing.
The other woman turned so quickly that Tané almost missed it. Her palms were full of flame.
Nayimathun flinched from the light. As the woman walked toward her, she recoiled, snapping. Tané aimed true and plunged her knife through red brocade, between two struts of rib. When the woman fell, Tané stepped around her and went to her dragon.
Once it would have shamed her that Nayimathun had seen her kill. It was against the way—but her life had been in danger. Both of their lives. Now she had killed for Nayimathun, and Nayimathun had killed for her. After all they had survived already, she had no regrets.
“Tané.” Nayimathun lowered her head. “The arrow.”
Even looking at it made Tané feel queasy. As gently as she could, she reached up and eased the arrow from the yielding flesh. It took enough force to make her arms shake.
Nayimathun shuddered as it came free. Blood dribbled down her snout. Tané placed a hand on her jaw.
“Can you fly?”
“Not while this heals,” Nayimathun panted. “They were from the Priory. Follow the others. Find the fruit.”
“No,” Tané said at once, chest tight. “No. I will not leave you again.”
“Do as I say.” The dragon bared her teeth. They were tipped with blood. “I will fly again, but I will not be able to reach Inys yet. Find another way. Save this Lady Nurtha. Carry the message to Queen Sabran.”
“And leave you here alone?”
“I will follow the river to the sea and heal. When I can fly again, I will find you.”
Days after their reunion, and now they had to part again. “How will I reach Inys without you?” Tané said thickly.
“You will make a path,” Nayimathun said, gentler. “Water always does.” She gave Tané a soft nudge. “We will see each other again soon.”
Tané shivered. She clung to her dragon for as long as she dared, face pressed into her scales.
“Go, Nayimathun. Go now,” she whispered, and made for the trees.
The other Red Damsels had gone north. Tané kept low as she chased their footprints. There was no time to make a torch, but her eyes were used to the darkness now.
Even when she lost the trail, she knew where the women had gone. She was following a feeling. It was as if her quarry had left warmth in their wake, a warmth that called to her very blood.
It ended in another clearing. She paused for breath, holding her damp side. There was nothing here. Just trees, countless trees.
Her eyelids grew heavy. She swayed on her feet. Now a woman in white was standing before her, and the sun was shining from her fingers.
That was the last that she remembered of the forest.
65
South
They had taken the rising jewel. It was the first thing she knew when she woke: the empty feeling of its absence. She was lying in a room of salmon-colored stone, and her hands were tied behind her back.
A woman with a shaved head and warm brown skin stood in the doorway.
“Who are you?”
She spoke in Ersyri. Tané knew a little of the language, but said nothing.
The woman watched her. “You were carrying a ring belonging to Queen Sabran of Inys,” she said. “I would like to know if she sent you here.” When Tané only looked away, her lips tightened. “You were also carrying a blue jewel. Where did you find it?”
She knew how to withstand interrogation. Pirates would do all manner of things to their enemies to bleed them of their secrets. To prepare for the worst, all apprentices had to prove that they could suffer a beating from a soldier without revealing their name.
Tané had not made a sound in hers.
When no reply was forthcoming, the woman changed her tone. “You and your sea beast injured one of our sisters and slew another,” she said. “If you cannot give some justification for your crime, we will have no choice but to execute you. Even if you had not spilled our blood, consorting with a wyrm is punishable by death.”
She could not reveal the truth. They would never yield a fruit from their sacred tree to a dragonrider.
“At least tell me who you are,” the woman said, softer. “Save yourself, child.”
“I will speak to Chassar uq-Ispad,” Tané said. “No one else.”
With a small frown, the woman left.
Tané tried to clear her head. From the light, it would not be long until sunset. She fought to stay awake, but she found herself drifting as her body chased the rest she had denied it.
Nayimathun would get away. She could swim downriver faster than any human could run.
A man entered her prison, jolting her from a doze. A knife was tucked into a crimson sash around his middle. A robe of purple brocade, embellished with silverwork, crossed over his massive chest.