“Poisoned …,” he breathed.
Mia and the stranger were circling each other, blades clutched in knife-fighter grips. They moved like first-time lovers—hesitant at first, drifting closer until finally they fell into each other’s arms, fists and elbows and knees, block and counters and strikes. The sigh of steel in the air. The wet percussion of flesh and bone. Having never really seen her matched against a human opponent, Tric slowly realized Mia was no slouch with a blade—well honed and seemingly fearless. She fought left-handed, her fighting style unorthodox, moving swift. But for all Mia’s skill, the thin woman seemed her match. Her every strike was foiled. Every advance countered.
After a few minutes of spectating, the feeling was returning to Tric’s feet. Mia was panting with exertion, crow-black hair clinging to her skin like weed. The stranger wasn’t pressing the attack; simply defending silently. Mia was circling, trying to get the sun behind her, but her foe was clever enough to avoid getting Saan in her eyes. And so at last, with a small sigh as if admitting defeat, Mia moved her shadow so the stranger would be ankle-deep in it anyway.
The woman hissed in alarm, trying to sidestep, but the shadows moved quick as silver. Tric watched her fall still, as if her feet were glued to the spot. Mia stepped up and struck at the woman’s throat, blade whistling as it came. But instead of dying, the stranger tangled up Mia’s forearm, twisted her knife free, and flipped the girl onto her bruised backside, swift as a just soul flying to the Hearth.6
Mia’s blade quivered in the sand between Tric’s legs, two inches shy of a very unhappy accident. The boy blinked at the gravebone, trying to focus. He felt as if he should give it back—that seemed important—but the warmth at his neck bid him sit awhile longer.
Mia rolled to her feet, red-faced with fury. Snatching the knife from the sand, she turned back to the woman, teeth bared in a snarl.
“Let’s try that again, shall we?” the girl wheezed.
“Darkin,” said the strange woman, only slightly out of breath. “Darkin fool.”
“… What?”
“She calls the Dark here? In the deep wastes?”
“… Who are you?”
“Naev,” she slurred. “Only Naev.”
“That’s an Ashkahi word. It means ‘nothing.’”
“A learned fool, then.”
Mia motioned to Tric. “What did you do to my friend?”
“Ink.” The woman displayed a barbed ring on her finger. “A small dose.”7
“Why did you attack us?”
“If Naev had attacked her, the sands would be redder. Naev asked why they followed her. And now Naev knows. Naev wonders at the girl’s skill. And now Naev sees.” The veiled woman looked back and forth between them, made a slurping sound. “Sees a pair of fools.”
Tric rose on wobbly feet, leaning against the stone at his back. His head was clearing, anger replacing the haze. He drew his scimitar and glared at the three little women blurred before him, his pride stung to bleeding.
“Who are you calling fool, shorty?”
The woman glanced in his direction. “The boy whose throat Naev could have cut.”
“You snuck on me while I was sleeping.”
“The boy who sleeps when he should be watching.”
“How about you watch while I hand you your—”
“Tric,” Mia said. “Calm down.”
“Mia, this skinny streak of shit had a knife to my throat.”
“She’s testing you. Testing us. Everything she says and does. Look at her.”
Naev still held Mia’s gaze, eyes like black lamps burning in her skull. Mia had seen a stare like that before—the stare of a person who’d looked the end in the face so many times she considered death a friend. Old Mercurio had the same look in his eyes. And at last she knew the stranger for what she was.
The moment was nothing like she’d practiced in the mirror. And yet Mia still felt a sense of relief as she took the purse of teeth from her belt and tossed it to the thin woman. As if six years had been lifted from her chest.
“My tithe,” she said. “For the Maw.”
The woman hefted the bag in her hand. “Naev has no need of it.”
“But you’re from the Red Church …”
“It is Naev’s honor to serve in the House of Our Lady of Blessed Murder, yes. For the next few minutes at least.”
“Few minutes? What do you—”
The ground beneath them trembled. A faint tremor at first, felt at the small of her back. Rising every second.
“… Is that what I think it is?” Tric asked.
“Kraken,” Naev sighed. “They hear when she calls the Dark. A fool, as I said.”
Mia and Tric glanced at each other, spoke simultaneously. “O, shit …”
“Didn’t you know that?” Tric asked.
“Four Daughters, how was I supposed to know that? I’ve never been to Ashkah!”
“The kraken who attacked us before lost its bottle when you did your cloaky thing!”
“‘Cloaky thing’? Are you five years old?”
“Well, whatever it’s called, maybe you should stop it?” Tric pointed to the shadows around Naev’s feet. “Before it brings more?”
Mia’s shadow slithered back across the dust, took up its regular shape again. She kept a wary eye on Naev, but the woman simply sheathed her blade, head tilted.
“There are two,” she slurped. “Very large.”
“What do we do?” Mia asked.
“Run?” Naev shrugged. “Die?”
“Running sounds grand to me. Tric?”
Tric was already on Flowers’s back, the horse rearing to go. “Waiting on you, now.”
Mia vaulted into the saddle, offered a hand to the thin woman. “Ride with me.”
Naev hesitated a moment, tilting her head and fixing Mia in that black stare.
“Look, you’re welcome to stay here if you like …”
Naev stepped closer and the ground trembled. Bastard raised up on his hind legs, kicking at the air. Mia glanced behind to see a trail of churning earth approaching—as if something massive swum beneath the sand.
Right toward them.
As the stallion set his hooves back on the ground, she called the shadows again, fixing him in place long enough for Naev to scramble up behind her. A bellowing roar sounded under the earth, as if the things were also answering her summons. As Naev put her arms around Mia’s waist, she caught a whiff of spice and smoke. Something rotten beneath.
“She is making them angry,” the woman said.
“Let’s go!” Tric shouted.
Mia released Bastard’s hooves and kicked hard, the stallion bolting into a fast gallop. The ground behind exploded, tentacles bursting from the sand and cracking like hooked bullwhips. Mia heard a gut-watering bellow, glimpsed a beak that could swallow Bastard whole. She saw a second runnel rumbling toward them from the west. Thundering hooves and roars filled her ears.
“Two of them, just like you said!” Mia yelled.
The veiled woman pointed north. “Ride for the wagons. We have ironsong to keep the kraken at bay.”
“What’s ironsong?”
“Ride!”
And so they did. A furious gallop over an ocean of blood-red sand. Glancing behind, she saw the two runnels converging, closing swift. She wondered how the beasts were tracking her. How they knew it was her who’d called the Dark. A tentacle broke the surface, two stories tall, set with hooks of blackened bone. Angry roars filled the air as it slammed back down to earth.
Dust whipping her eyes. Bastard snorting beneath her, hoof beats thudding in her chest. Mia held the reins hard, riding harder, grateful that though the stallion hated her like poison, he seemed to hate the thought of being eaten even more.
“Look out!” cried Tric.
Mia looked ahead, saw another runnel approaching from the north. Bigger, moving faster, shaking the earth beneath her. Flowers let out a terrified whinny.
“It seems there are three,” Naev said. “Apologies …”