LITMIR.BIZ

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light of knowing will shine upon your restless mind, Kuzalem. This world is a constant act of taking, is it not?” Nuhra bent down, tapping a blade-grooved nail against the wooden frame. Then she leveled her gaze on a scroll shelf riddled with gaps. “One may learn the world from what is present, of course, but one stands to gain insight from what has departed.”

      * * * *

      The smoke was rife with charring skin and lavender. It billowed from shallow, corpse-laden pits strewn across the nearby wadi, twisting skyward in thin black columns that resembled poplar trees in the gloom.

      Anna tore off another crust of bread as she examined the northern Falaqor adherents trudging over the road, noting bright splotches upon their gloves and fragrant herb pouches wound into their neck scarves. She was glad for their ways, superstitious or not: None of the Alakeph had been willing to touch the bodies and most of the local fighters—raised in the mires of village rites or Volna’s indifference—had unfurled their bedrolls a full pence-league from the compound. Even Andriv was occupied with arranging patrols through the wadis, sentries upon the flanking hills, searches within the winding canals.

      “Sixteen.” Lukas’s dark form loomed at the edge of her vision, waxing and waning as the wind stirred his cloak. “Nine tomes, seven scrolls.”

      Konrad lifted their iron pot from the coals, his hands wrapped in coarse yellow cloth. “Such impressive arithmetic. You must’ve been one of Malchym’s dobraludz in the academy, no?”

      Lukas did nothing, said nothing.

      It gouged old fears into Anna’s gut.

      “How do you know there weren’t more?” Anna asked.

      “I dunno a lick about it,” Lukas said. “Had a spot of help.”

      Nuhra came crunching over the soil, her hood raised and hands plastered to her sides. Shadows stripped her highborn features of their grace.

      Beyond her slim silhouette, the Cruel Sage’s Maw continued to devour a ruby sky, growing vast and thick and still as it birthed swaths of nebulae in the east. Its ragged tendrils stretched to mountains and gauzy city lights far beyond the flats.

      “Do you fear the darkness, sister?” Her smile was pale, knotted thread in the glow of pulsing coals. Dying wicks glinted in her pupils.

      “Take the rest of the works if you desire them,” she said to Nuhra, turning her attention to the steaming pot. “We should burn whatever remains of this place.”

      Nuhra squatted by the coals, bewitched with a hound’s ignorance by its heat. “Has it not been desecrated enough?”

      “Something lurks here.” Anna glanced up at Lukas. “The wicked never abandon the fields they’ve trampled. We all know the force of rituals.”

      “This presence will not be banished by flames, Kuzalem.”

      “Enough of this haunted speak, eh?” Lukas cut in. “Only spirits I’m after come in flasks.”

      Anna met the trailcarver’s bold, luminous eyes. “What was she after?”

      “Such answers are beyond the realm of fireside talk, are they not?”

      “This is no place for decorum.”

      “Nor for tongues that wraggle on about truths beyond their reach,” Nuhra said, her voice deepening, sharpening in an instant. “This is a matter for those who have given their flesh to the knowledge you seek. But since you lust for the nectar of certainty, sister, know that your answers reside in the cloisters of my lineage.”

      Wind whistled through the encampment. The woman’s words carried a sense of luring, a dreadful prescience that could only lead into the belly of beasts. Years of being used, jostled, beaten, starved—all of it had left bruises that Anna couldn’t ignore, even if she wanted to. Salvation was always one stranger’s promise away, one kindness she was compelled to take and repay in blood.

      Every outstretched hand had been glinting with razors.

      “Settled, then.” Lukas huffed and yanked Nuhra to her feet, honing in on a nearby coalpit and its crowd of drunken northern fighters. His hands roamed her body. “Put some spring in those heels, sister. Had enough of this fucking day.” He led the trailcarver off into a haze of shadows and smoke, his footsteps slithering over baked earth.

      “Do you think she’s holding back?” Konrad asked as he lifted the pot’s lid and shied away from the swell of steam.

      Anna was still watching their dark shapes slink away. “I don’t know.” She breathed in curry and saffron. “You shouldn’t prod at him, Konrad. He’s not the drunken fool you take him to be.”

      “We have enough history to withstand some ribbing.”

      “Something’s different about him,” she said softly. “You felt it when he came to us, didn’t you? He’s empty.”

      “There wasn’t much in there to begin with, was there?”

      “That’s what frightens me.”

      Shaking his head, Konrad set out their clay bowls and began ladling the stew over squares of hardtack. “He’s not the wolf that you knew, Anna. Not anymore. I’m not sure what happened to him, but his claws are chipped.”

      “You also thought he could bring us to Ramyi.”

      Konrad dropped the ladle into the pot. “He’s gotten us closer than anyone else.”

      “Nuhra did his work,” she replied. “There’s nothing safe about this. If Volna’s keeping ties with him, then I can’t turn a blind eye to his role in this. He can’t just be an intermediary, Konrad.”

      “Maybe you have your sight on the wrong threat.”

      “The Breaking did its work.”

      “And what?”

      Anna clung to that long, stagnant silence, glowering over the coals as coyotes whined in distant hills. The Breaking was all she had left. Her hand began to throb, almost as though remembering that old pain, that death of everything she could have been.

      Finally, Konrad sighed. “I’m just asking you to take a wide perspective. Nothing more.”

      “If she can’t be vindicated by the Breaking,” Anna whispered, “then nobody can.”

      “Anna.” Konrad set one of the bowls before her, keeping his eyes tucked to the soil as he did so. “I know how much this means to you. I do. I’ve seen what you’re willing to give for the truth in your heart, time and time again. That’s precisely why you need to sharpen your ears like never before. Because these people know you and they know how far you’ll go, and they’ll take everything from you if you ever stop baring your teeth.”

      Anna nodded. “I won’t.”

      “Not even if it comes down to you and her,” Konrad pressed.

      “Konrad—”

      “That’s how these things go—trust me. You’ll need to look that girl in the eyes, shut out whatever’s inside of you, and run a blade through her.”

      “I’ve known this longer than you can fathom.” As she unrolled her burlap mess kit, digging out a warped spoon and knife and laying them beside the bowl, she wondered who had encountered that truth first. Some fierce notch of the thinking mind was adamant that Ramyi had branded that sentiment upon her very being.

      When the time came, one of them would not hesitate.

      And with that first spoonful, which trembled so fiercely that Anna could hardly bring it to her lips, she understood the divide between the slayer and the slain.

      Chapter 6

      Tormented vessel. Moraharem. Most of its adherents wore their disdain for vessels plainly, marked

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