The ironsong did eventually scare off the krakens.
Or so Tric insisted, at any rate. He’d spent four hours beating the xylophone as if it owed him coin, and Mia supposed he needed some kind of vindication. As the pursuers dropped off one by one, Mister Kindly suggested the ground was growing harder as the caravan galloped closer to the mountains. Mia was reasonably certain the beasts simply grew bored and pissed off to eat someone easier. Naev ventured no opinion at all, instead lying in a pool of coagulating blood and doing her best not to die.
Truthfully, Mia wasn’t certain she’d pull it off.
Tric took the reins at her insistence. In the merciful quiet after the boy abandoned his percussionist duties, Mia knelt beside the unconscious woman and wondered where to begin.
Naev’s guts had been minced by kraken hooks, and the reek of bowel and vomit hung in the air—Four Daughters only knew how Tric was handling it with that knife-keen nose of his. Knowing the smell of shit and death well enough, Mia simply tried to make the woman comfortable. There was nothing she could really do; sepsis would finish the job if blood loss didn’t. Knowing the end awaiting Naev, Mia realized it’d be a mercy to end her.
Peeling the cloth back from Naev’s ravaged belly, Mia looked for something to bind the wounds with, settling at last on the fabric about the woman’s face. And as she peeled the veil from Naev’s head, she felt Mister Kindly swell and sigh, drinking the surge of sickening terror that would’ve otherwise made her scream.
Even still, it was a close thing.
“’Byss and blood …,” she breathed.
“What?” Tric glanced over his shoulder, almost falling off the driver’s seat. “Black Mother of Night … her face …”
Daughters, such a face …
To call her disfigured would be to call a knife to the heart “mildly inconvenient.” Naev’s flesh was stretched and twisted into a knot in the place her nose might have been. Her bottom lip sagged like a beaten stepchild, top lip snarled back from her teeth. Five deep runnels were carved into her flesh—as if her face were clay, and someone had grabbed a fistful and squeezed. And yet the hideousness was framed by beautiful curls of strawberry blond.
“What could have done that?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Love,” the woman whispered, spit dribbling over mangled lips. “Only love.”
“Naev …,” Mia began. “Your wounds …”
“Bad.”
“It’s a far cry from good.”
“Get Naev to the Church. She has much to do before she meets her Blessed Lady.”
“We’re two turns from the mountains,” Tric said. “Maybe more. Even if we get there, you’re in no condition to climb.”
The woman slurped, coughed bloody. Reaching to her neck, she snapped a leather cord, drew out a silver phial. She tried sitting up, groaned in agony. Mia pushed her back down.
“You mustn’t—”
“Get off her!” Naev snarled. “Help her up. Drag her.” She waved to the back of the wagon. “Out of this blood, where the wood is clean.”
Mia had no idea what the woman was about, but she obeyed, hauling Naev through the congealing puddle to the wagon’s rear. And there the woman pulled out the phial’s stopper with her teeth and upended the contents onto the unfinished boards.
More blood.
Bright red, as if from a fresh-cut wound. Mia frowned as Mister Kindly coiled up on her shoulder, peering through her curtain of hair. And as Naev dragged her fingers through the puddle, the cat who was shadows did his best to purr, sending a shiver down Mia’s spine.
“… interesting …”
Naev was writing, Mia realized. As if the puddle were a tablet and her finger the brush. The letters were Ashkahi—she recognized them from her studies, but the ritual itself …
“That’s blood sorcery,” she breathed.
But that was impossible. The magik of the Ashkahi had been extinguished when the empire fell. Nobody had seen real blood werking in …
“How do you know how to do that? Those arts have been dead for a hundred years.”
“Not all the dead truly die,” Naev rasped. “The Mother keeps … only what she needs.”
The woman rolled onto her back, clutching her butchered belly.
“Ride for the mountains … the simplest of them all.” Mia swore she could see tears in the woman’s eyes. “Do not end her, girl. Set mercy aside. If the Blessed Lady … takes her, so be it. But do not help Naev on her way. Does she hear?”
“… I hear you.”
Naev clutched her hand. Squeezed. And then she slipped back into darkness.
Mia bound the wounds as best she could, wrist-deep in gore, fetching her cloak from Bastard’s saddlebag (he tried to bite her) and rolling it beneath Naev’s head. Joining Tric on the driver’s seat, she peered at the mountains ahead. A range of great black spurs stretched north and south, a few high enough to be tipped with snow. One looked almost like a scowling face, just as Naev described. Another long range might’ve been the broken wall she mentioned. And nestled beside a spur resembling a sad old man, Mia saw a peak that fit the bill.
It was entirely average, as far as mighty spires of prehistoric granite went. Not quite high enough to be frost-clad, not really conjuring any comparisons to faces or figures. Just a regular lump of ancient rock out here in this blood-red desert. The kind you wouldn’t look twice at.
“There,” Tric said, pointing to the spur.
“Aye.”
“You think they’d have picked something a touch more dramatic.”
“I think that’s the point. Anyone looking for a nest of assassins isn’t likely to start at the most boring mountain in all creation.”
Tric nodded. Gifted her a smile. “Wisdom, Pale Daughter.”
“Fear not, Don Tric.” She smiled back. “I won’t let it go to my head.”
They rode another two turns, with Tric in the driver’s seat and Mia by Naev’s side. She wet a cloth, moistened those malformed lips, wondering who or what could have mutilated the woman’s face like that. Naev talked as if in a fever, speaking to some phantom, asking it to wait. She reached out to thin air once, as if to caress it. And as she did so, those lips twisted into a hideous parody of a smile. Mister Kindly sat beside her the entire time.
Purring.
Flowers and Bastard were both exhausted, and Mia feared either might go lame at any moment. It seemed cruel (even to Bastard) to make them run beside the wagon needlessly. Tric and Mia had passed the point of no return; they’d either make the Red Church or die now. She’d seen wild horses roaming the broken foothills, supposed there must be water someplace near. And so, reluctantly, she suggested they let the pair go.
Tric seemed saddened, but he saw the wisdom of it. They pulled the wagon to a stop and the boy untied Flowers, letting the stallion drink deep from his waterskin. He ran a fond hand over the horse’s neck, whispering softly.
“You were a loyal friend. I’ll trust you’ll find another. Watch out for the kraken.”
He slapped the horse on its hindquarters, and the beast galloped east along the range. Mia untied Bastard, the stallion glaring even as she emptied an entire waterskin into his gullet. She reached into her saddlebag, offered him the last sugar cube on an upturned palm.
“You’ve earned it. I suppose you can head back to Last Hope now if you like.”
The stallion lowered his head, gently nibbled the cube from her palm. He nickered, tossing his mane, nuzzling his nose to her shoulder. And, as Mia smiled and patted his cheek, Bastard opened his mouth and bit her hard just above the left breast.
“You son of a motherless—”
The stallion bolted across the wastes as Mia hopped about, clutching her chest and cursing the horse by the Three Suns and Four Daughters and anyone else who happened to be listening. Bastard followed Flowers east, disappearing into the dusty haze.