20

Odenite camp, outside Kirlan

KNOT HELD ASTRID’S VOIDSTONE, running one thumb across the rune, blood-red and jagged, etched into the rock.

It’s always blood, he could hear her say.

He reconsidered what he was about to do, and not for the first time. Thought it might help him forgive her. Might help him help her. But these memories had tortured Astrid for centuries. Did he really want to uncover them?

Knot took a deep breath, and extended a tendron into the voidstone. His remaining tendra were small in number, two or three at the most, and incredibly weak. But he could access them nonetheless, and this seemed about the only thing they might be good for.

As soon as his tendron made contact, Knot felt the stone open up to him. Not physically; it remained between his thumb and forefinger, solid and unyielding, but at the same time Knot felt the shell of it open, and while he had not returned to the Void since Wyle put him there to stabilize his sifts—as a telenic he could not access the Void himself—he felt the residue of it, could almost see the tiny star-lights shining around him. The voidstone he held in his hand was almost one of these lights, but not quite. It blinked in and out of darkness. Knot focused on the shadow of it, until the voidstone’s light expanded into dozens of smaller, multicolored lights. Knot was not sure whether the light representing the voidstone expanded, or he moved into it. The latter seemed more likely, despite the fact that he knew, deep down, he was still just sitting on his cot, in his tent, in the Odenite camp, holding a stone in his hands.

Stood to reason that each of these lights represented a memory Astrid had lost. The fact that there were dozens of them made him wonder exactly how many things she had done that she wanted to forget. There was no semblance of order among the memories, no way to intuit when it was from or what occurred in it.

“Might as well start with the closest one,” Knot said to himself, and with another tendron—his first was still connected to the voidstone itself—he dove into the closest memory.

* * *

Knot watched as Astrid walked through the darkest forest he had ever seen, her green eyes glowing brightly. She moved with purpose but not secrecy. Before Knot’s eyes, Astrid’s appearance shifted. Her claws and fangs disappeared, and the glow of her eyes faded until it was hardly noticeable at all, even in the dark forest. Her clothing looked nicer, her hair well kempt and tied neatly behind her head. She had told him she could use something called a glamour to change her appearance at night, but he had never actually seen her do it.

Soon, she came upon a group of four men, heavily armed, conversing together.

“You’ve brought them?” Astrid asked.

The four men stared at Astrid for a moment, and then three of them burst out laughing. The fourth stared at Astrid, eyes narrow.

“This some kind of joke?” one of the laughing men asked.

Astrid held up a large purse, jingling it before her. “No joke. I have your payment. Where are they?”

The laughing men sobered at the sight of the coin purse, and one of them pointed at it. “That real money, girl?”

“Either way, we’ve struck a vein of luck today, boys. I say we take what she has, add her to the package, and sell it to the next bidder.”

Two of the other men nodded, while the serious one stayed quiet.

“I recommend you take the money,” Astrid said. “It’ll go better for you.”

The same three men chuckled again, but each drew their weapons and started to fan out around Astrid.

“I think we should listen to her,” the serious man said, hanging back. His sword remained in its sheath.

“Don’t be a fool, Hedro,” one of the others said. “We’ve got money just asking to be taken, right in front of us. We both know we can’t afford to pass it up.”

The men closed in on Astrid, but she did not give any ground. One of the men lunged forward, reaching for the coin purse, but Astrid whipped the purse away while simultaneously slapping the man hard on the face. He stumbled away at the force of the blow.

The other two men laughed, and Knot pitied them. They had no idea what was about to happen.

“You just got knocked around by a little girl,” one of the men laughed. “I can’t wait to tell everyone what happened to…”

The man’s voice trailed off as Astrid’s glamour faded. Fingers formed into claws, teeth into fangs, and her eyes began to glow the eerie bright green color Knot had grown so used to.

“I tried to give you a chance,” Astrid said, “but you had to be greedy.”

She leapt onto the man who’d just spoken, her claws tearing into his chest. A bright spurt of blood arced through the night.

She moved, a band of green light against the darkness, and slammed into the man she’d slapped, crushing him into a large tree. Bone snapped, wood cracked, and Astrid, now covered in blood, turned on the third man. He looked at her, eyes wide, his entire body trembling.

“Please—”

Astrid ripped the man’s arm off with a scream so horrific Knot could not tell whether it was Astrid’s, the man’s, or a combination of both. She did not stop there, but proceeded to tear the man limb from limb until he lay in pieces on the blood-soaked ground.

Only Hedro, the serious man, remained, his face white as he stared at Astrid in the darkness.

“Where are they?” Astrid asked again.

Hedro swallowed, hands raised. “I’ll get them,” he said, retreating slowly into the forest.

Looking up, Knot realized why everything seemed so dark here. The tree trunks and leaves were all dark grays, browns, and blacks. Blackbarks. This must be the dark forest, Takk Dusia. Above, the leaves and branches were so thick they almost seemed to weave together, creating an unbroken canopy above. Not even starlight streamed through.

Hedro emerged, chains clanking behind him. Four children, all more or less Astrid’s age—or the age she looked, anyway—trudged behind him. Gaunt faces looked up at Astrid with horror.

“Can’t imagine they’ll make much of a meal,” Hedro said.

Knot’s stomach churned. This could not be what it seemed.

“They aren’t for me,” Astrid replied. She walked around the chained children. Was she… inspecting them? The children cringed away from Astrid as she approached. Knot didn’t blame them; between her glowing green eyes, claws, and the fact that she was covered in blood, Astrid was a fearsome sight.

“They’re for my employer.”

Knot wondered who that could be. Cabral? Another vampire Astrid had served as thrall? He did not know when this took place.

“We aren’t for anybody,” one of the children, a little boy with black hair and black eyes, said defiantly.

“That’s Jidri,” Hedro muttered. “The other three’ll do as you ask, but he’ll give you some trouble.”

“He won’t give me trouble,” Astrid said, glaring at the little boy. The boy, cowed, stepped back in line.

Hedro shivered visibly, and then tossed the chain toward Astrid.

“I don’t need payment—”

Astrid threw him the coin purse. It landed at his feet.

“There’s more where that came from, if you can find more where these came from,” Astrid said, nodding at the children. “Now leave, before I change my mind.”

Without another word, Hedro scooped up the purse and sprinted away from Astrid like a deer that had just spotted a hunter.

“Follow me,” she said, grabbing the chain. The children, eyes wide and shaking, had no choice but to obey.

* * *

As the image faded into blackness, Knot detached his tendron from the voidstone. He was back in his tent, in the Odenite camp, alone.

Knot’s stomach still squirmed at the violence he had just witnessed. The men might have been trafficking children, but Knot wouldn’t wish their fate on anyone. And the children… Astrid had been leading them somewhere. To someone, and it hadn’t sounded good. Knot didn’t think he’d wish the fate of those children on anyone, either.

A scream in the distance, loud enough to be in the camp, interrupted his thoughts. He swore, slipping the voidstone into the most secure place he could think of—a small hidden pocket sewn into the inside of his trousers—and rushed outside to see what had happened.