“We’ll be quick,” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as his friend.
“That’s what I told myself right before I cut that purse. The one that earned me this,” Akiil replied, gesturing to his brand. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you can dim those eyes of yours. It’s nice that a goddess fucked your great-great-grandad, but they’re a little obvious.”
“Maybe they’ll scare away whatever needs scaring.”
Akiil snorted.
“All right,” Kaden said, shivering beneath his robe. “You’re Pyrre, a merchant woman from the empire. You leave your perfectly nice monastic cell to skulk off into the rocks. Why?”
Akiil grinned. “I’m hoping to tickle one of these strapping young monks up under that robe of his.”
Kaden considered this. Women never visited the monastery, and there probably were a couple of monks who wouldn’t mind spending a few minutes alone with Pyrre, Akiil chief among them.
“Fine,” he replied, “let’s say it’s a rendezvous. Where do you go?”
“I’m not from here. I go wherever I’m told.”
“All right, then, let’s get into the mind of this hypothetical monk. You want to meet up with Pyrre. Where do you tell her to go?”
“One of the abandoned buildings to the south. The lower meadow, although that’s a little far. Maybe into the dovecote.” Akiil winked. “Someplace with a little romantic character. You got to treat the lady right.”
“I’m sure she’d be flattered to bed you while surrounded by shitting pigeons. What about east?” he asked, gesturing to the rocks in front of them. “That’s the direction you said you saw her going. Would you tell her to meet you up there?”
Akiil hesitated, then shook his head. “Nothing but gullies and fissures. I don’t want to be picking pebbles out of my ass.”
“So she’s on her own,” Kaden concluded. “A monk would have sent her somewhere else.”
“Seems reasonable,” Akiil replied, “but not that helpful.” He gestured to the forbidding labyrinth of rock before them. “You’re her. Where do you go?”
Kaden considered his options by the meager moonlight. There were half a dozen goat tracks leading up into the broken mountain, any one of which the woman could have followed. Most of them were obvious—trails clear as highways to anyone who’d spent time in the mountains—but Pyrre wasn’t from the mountains, at least not these mountains. He tried to look at the land with an unfamiliar eye.
“The streambed,” he said finally. “She’d take the streambed.”
Akiil waved a dismissive hand toward the channel. “What would she want to roll her ankles in the streambed for when there are plenty of good tracks to follow? Doesn’t make any sense.”
“Because,” Kaden replied, “the streambed doesn’t look like a streambed. It’s dry this late in the spring. It’s broad. It’s relatively flat. For someone who didn’t grow up here, it’s the most obvious way through the rocks. She won’t have realized that the rounded stones will make for impossible footing, and she probably didn’t even notice the trails left by the goats. They don’t look like much, if you’ve never tried to follow them.”
Akiil shot him an appraising look. “Have you been tracking women without me all these years? Keeping secrets?”
“Why would I tell you my secrets? You’re a thief.”
“You wound me, brother. You wound me. I’m a humble monk, devoted to my god.”
“Well, devote yourself to this for a few hours instead,” Kaden replied, gesturing toward the stream.
A few dozen paces into the mountains, they came across the first sign of the woman—an overturned rock. Then there was a bootprint in the soft mud. And then another rock kicked out of its divot. They followed the signs for less than a quarter of a mile until Akiil spotted a low pile of stones. They didn’t look like much, just a few cobbles in a world of rock, not something that would draw the untrained eye. But river stones didn’t mound up like that. The spring flood would have washed them right down the drainage.
“Well, look at this,” Akiil said, lifting one of the stones off the pile. “Let’s see what the good merchants have to hide.”
He was grinning, eyes bright in the moonlight. Kaden didn’t share his enthusiasm. The streambed wasn’t very wide, but he felt exposed beneath the lambent stare of the moon, and despite the cool night air, sweat poured down his back. He hefted the stave in his hand, reminded himself that Serkhan had been attacked when he was alone, tried to believe that two young men together, armed with sticks and knives, would be enough to scare it off. When reason failed, he worked through the Shin exercise to slow his pulse, and bent to the cairn of stones only when his breathing was slow and regular once more.
Pyrre had cached two oilcloth bundles under the pile, and Kaden lifted them out carefully, then handed one to Akiil. He fumbled briefly with the ties binding it shut, trying to calculate whether he could retie them if he heard the woman returning. His fingers were clumsy as though with long cold, and by the time he had opened his bag, Akiil had already spread out half the contents of his sack on a flat rock. Kaden paused to look over the things while his friend ticked them off in a whisper.
“Clean tunic. Clean socks. Disappointingly light purse,” he said, tossing the small cloth pouch in the air so that it jingled when he caught it.
Kaden winced.
“Hat,” Akiil continued. “About twenty yards of rope…” The process was nerve-racking, but the results were not. Nothing that a normal merchant wouldn’t carry on a long trip. Nothing to lend heft to Kaden’s vaguely adumbrated suspicions.
Then Akiil found the knives.
Everyone carried a knife, of course, and a merchant would have more need of one than most. There were harnesses to mend along the road, rocks to dig out of the mule’s hoofs, frayed ropes to slice and retie, dried meat to cut for dinner. There were a thousand reasons Kaden could think of for a merchant to carry a good knife. A merchant would not, however, need a dozen of them. Akiil laid them on the stone one by one, six identical eight-inch blades, the kind men fought with in the killing pits of Annur, honed and polished edges glinting in the cold moonlight.
“Brought them along to trade?” he suggested. His voice had lost some of its boyish enthusiasm.
“To a monastery?” Kaden asked.
They gazed at the weapons for a moment before Akiil gestured to the oilcloth bundle that Kaden was still holding.
“What’s in there?”
Kaden managed to untie the last knot, then reached into the sack. His fingers brushed over wood and steel. When he had finally wrestled the thing out of the bag, he found himself holding a crossbow.
“It could all be for protection,” Akiil pointed out. “It’s a dangerous road over the steppe. The Urghul don’t usually molest traders, but you never know when you’re going to end up on the wrong end of a human sacrifice.”
“If it’s all for protection,” Kaden replied, “then what’s it doing hidden in the rocks?”
They considered the weapons for a few more heartbeats and then, as though responding to some silent command, began packing everything back the way they had found it. The jovial, larking expression had left Akiil’s face. He looked angry as he thrust the various items back into the satchel. Within moments they had returned the weapons to the bags and the bags to their hiding spot under the rocks. Akiil was replacing the final stones on the cairn when something clattered farther down the streambed, stone on stone.
Kaden spun to peer into the darkness.
“Did you hear that?” he murmured, trying to sort shadow from shape in the meager light.
Akiil nodded, hefting his stave in front of him. Kaden dropped a hand to his belt knife, then decided against it. He didn’t know much about fighting, but he didn’t like his odds if whatever it was got close enough for him to use a knife.
A cloud passed over the moon, plunging the ravine into even deeper shadow. Kaden could barely make out Akiil standing only a few feet away. Beyond him, the bare shapes of the cliffs and crenellations loomed, more felt than seen. He turned in a slow circle, leveling his staff, searching for light, movement, anything that might give him a warning of danger before it arrived.
“You see anything?” he hissed.
Akiil’s only response was a low umph, like a cough that never made it out of the chest. Kaden spun just in time to watch his friend collapse onto the streambed. Before he could cry out, a strong, implacable hand clamped down on his mouth.
Kaden was not soft. Eight years of hard physical exercise high in the mountains had seen to that. He could carry a quarter of his weight in water up hundreds of steps from the stream or run all night over rocky paths. He should have been able to put up something of a fight, and yet the hand that held him might have been made of granite. As he struggled, his adversary’s other arm closed around his neck, crushing his windpipe. This is the result of bad decisions, thought the part of him that could still think. In desperation, Kaden threw an elbow, hoping to dislodge his opponent. The man’s stomach was as solid as his arm. Kaden screamed silently as his mind failed.