“Who are you?” Seth demanded.
“There could be more of them.” Raef heaved. “We should get out of here.”
“I asked you a question.”
Seth lifted his sword to better see Raef by its light.
“I was hungry. I thought there might be stores, food.”
“There are better places to find food, but I meant on Thiva. There’s no one alive here.”
“I was shipwrecked.”
The sword sizzled, burning away the ghost’s old, bitter blood.
Raef needed to get Seth away from here, away from the ledgers and the tower.
“Can I tell you the rest outside?” he asked. “The sun will set soon.”
“It is still morning, but you are not wrong.”
Seth gestured toward the stairs.
Seth had been gentle and awkward in his flirting at the prince’s ball. Now he seemed gruff and focused.
“What are you doing here?” Raef repeated.
“We have a mission,” Seth said brusquely. “It’s not your business. You’re just lucky I was here.”
“I could say the same.”
So there were other knights. Not good, not for Raef or the tower.
The heat of the sword warmed the back of Raef’s neck as he climbed the stairs.
Despite the threat, Raef almost laughed.
Seth didn’t recognize him.
He’d worn a mask and a hat to the ball. His scant beard had grown back, his hair longer, and he’d spent day after day in the sun. He looked nothing like the noble he’d posed as when Seth had approached him.
They emerged from the vault.
Seth paused to stare at Phoebe’s statue. He didn’t strike it. He didn’t try to burn it or curse her. He simply looked sad.
“I wish I could forgive you,” he muttered.
Like it was Seth’s place to judge a goddess, to judge his goddess. He was too young to have taken part in the attack on the towers, but he remained a Knight of Hyperion, and the knights had broken the world.
“We need to get out of here,” Raef stressed.
It was not yet noon, but he had to get away, swim back to his rock, any rock, before sunset.
Outside, Seth turned to close the tower doors.
With a long kick, Raef swept his feet out from under him and flew down the steps. Someone had cut a convenient hole in the ring of vines.
A sharp whistle sounded from behind and a golden blur pounced from the trees, tackling Raef, knocking the breath from him.
A Hound of Hyperion, far smaller than the one that had chased him and Kinos in Versinae, pinned Raef to the ground with its body. He stared up into its slobbering mouth as it opened its jaws wide enough to snap his head off. Then the hound licked his face, its broad tongue scratchy across his chin and forehead.
“Eww,” Raef said.
“Argos!” Seth chided the beast, though there was no heat in it. “Bad hound! You’re not supposed to lick him. He’s a bad guy.”
The hound nearly crushed Raef as it rolled off him to run to its master.
Seth glared down at Raef.
“That was foolish. Try it again and I’ll leave you behind.”
“Where are you taking me? We have to get off this island.”
Seth took Raef’s knives and fished a length of rope out of his pack.
“I’ll deliver you to my Bishop. She’ll decide your justice.”
“I’ll have even less of a chance if you tie me up.”
“There’s nothing to threaten you if we stay in the daylight,” Seth said, though he eyed the vines and the shadows with obvious worry. “But you weren’t wrong. We must return to the cadre before dark.”
“We could swim out to one of the rocks,” Raef said. “The shades can’t cross water.”
“I suspect you would know.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“We passed a wreck on the way. She was clearly a pirate. That was your ship?”
“Probably,” Raef said. “I don’t think anyone else made it.”
He hated the obvious grief in his voice, but Seth’s expression softened. He didn’t say anything as he tied Raef’s hands in front of him. Raef considered his options. Shadowknife, a well-placed knee. He could bite, but the matter of the hound remained.
“I’m sorry,” Seth said. “But you should know . . . we found bodies when we landed.”
The heat left Raef’s veins.
He had to know, had to, but could not ask for details, not if Seth was clever enough to connect Raef’s description to Kinos.
“Can you show them to me?” he asked, voice hoarse. “I need to see them.”
“My cadre is there,” Seth said, eyeing the sun’s position in the sky. “But if you try to run again, Argos will catch you, and next time, he will be on fire.”
Raef should have trembled at the threat, but he was too chilled by the idea that Kinos and Cormac might have drowned. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to force away the sight of Kinos’s secret smile, the one in the dark that only Raef got to see. He tried not to picture Cormac’s approving nod when Raef lifted a sword with the right grip.
They’d had so little time together.
To lose both of them now felt cruel, but if the gods had possessed any mercy they’d never have let the towers burn.
Seth marched him east, following the coast.
The vines wound everywhere and often blocked the way. Seth used his sword to burn and hack a path. The wood sizzled beneath the blade. Thick sap the color of drying blood oozed from the cuts as the vines uncoiled from the road. The smell was like the shade Seth had destroyed.
“I don’t like the look of that tree,” Raef said.
“It’s more like a grapevine.” Seth prodded the wood with his sword. “But grapes don’t have thorns.”
“How do you know?”
“I lived somewhere they grew.”
Seth smiled, just for a moment. Then it turned sad and vanished, buried in the grim visage of the golden-haired knight.
Raef didn’t challenge him further. He only wanted to get to wherever Seth was taking him, to see what he had to see, the bodies on the beach.
“Will we make it by sunset?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Seth might manage the Grief with his sword’s flame, but if the other shades here were like the one in the undercroft—well Seth couldn’t win against more than a few of them. He’d nearly lost to one.
“What is your name?” Seth asked.
“Why?” Raef asked.
“We’re traveling together. It seems only polite to ask.”
Raef scoffed.
“I’m a prisoner,” he said, lifting his bound hands.
Seth cringed.
“Pol,” Raef lied. “I’m Pol.”
“Pol the Pirate,” Seth intoned. “What kind of life is that?”
He sounded disgusted. Who would have thought that Kinos would have anything in common with a Knight of Hyperion?
“If it’s any consolation, I’ve never killed anyone,” Raef said. “I never really did much of anything.”
“Then why do you carry these?” Seth asked, tapping his free hand on one of Raef’s knives where he’d strapped them to his belt.
“It’s a dangerous world,” Raef said, wiggling his bound hands as proof.
“It is,” Seth agreed. “I’m guessing that blood on your shirt isn’t yours?”
Raef looked to the stain. Thank the moon the sea had washed so much of it out. He’d healed so fast. Was it proof of demon blood?
“We were attacked,” he said. “Tetheans. They killed—well, they killed a lot of us. Most of us, I think.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t think we deserved it? They were pirates. We were pirating.”
Kinos had been right. It didn’t matter that it had been privateering, legal in the mind of the prince. They’d been pirates.
Raef hadn’t known the crew well enough to like them, but to die like that, drowned in a watery grave . . .
“The gods weep for any life unredeemed,” Seth said. “They could have come to the light, had they been given a chance.”
Raef did not answer. He’d seen what Hyperion’s light could do, and he’d burn before he walked that path.
The twisting branches thickened, not quite to a forest, but enough to cast shadows across the rocky hills.
Orchards of pomegranate and apple trees grew inland. There were fields of wheat and thick olive trees. He’d brave the thorns to eat his fill.
“What about you?” Raef asked.
“What about me?”
“You asked my name. What do they call you?”
“Seth.”
“Seth the Knight does not have the same ring as Pol the Pirate,” Raef said.
Seth laughed. He actually laughed. It was a pleasant sound, reminding Raef of the man he’d met at the ball.
Argos stalked through the trees, occasionally wagging his tail and looking to his master when he discovered an interesting smell. Like Seth, the hound was young. Both were less deadly or serious than what Raef had expected. He wondered if Argos could even conjure the fire that had burned Boat Town. Seth had threatened Raef with it, but so far he’d seen no proof. Still, more knights, and probably more hounds, lay ahead.
The path dipped into a valley full of leafy trees. Fruit piled around their trunks.
“Are those apples?” Seth asked, breaking into Raef’s thoughts.
His stomach grumbled.
“Now will you untie me, please?”
“Come here,” Seth said. He obliged, undoing the knots. “Don’t forget about Argos.”
“I got it,” Raef said, making an exploding gesture. “Whoosh.”
“It is noon,” Seth said. “We’ll stop here for a while.”
Rising from where he’d bent to lift an apple, Raef blinked at him.
“Shouldn’t we keep going?”
“It cannot be helped. I must pray and perform my penance.”
Seth turned away from Raef and began to undress, stripping to his smallclothes without a word.
Perching on a boulder, Seth closed his eyes. His sword, loose in its scabbard, lay in reach. Free handed, with a nearly naked captor, Raef was tempted to run.
This might be his only chance, but he knew he wouldn’t try to.
The thought of their faces, blue and lifeless—he forced the image aside and reached for an apple.
Dusting it on his shirt, he ate and reached for another.
Seth’s murmured prayers sounded like confessions, like pleas for forgiveness. Warmth filled the air.
The muscles did not surprise Raef. He’d seen those thick arms in motion, but he blinked at the pale lines running across Seth’s back. The knight had been lashed, often enough to leave many, many stripes against his skin. They reddened from the heat he’d summoned.
Chewing, Raef circled, trying to get a better look.
Seth had a scar on his chest, right over his heart, like a burn mark.
Argos let out a small growl, warning Raef to move no closer. He lifted a hand to assure the hound.
The tone of Seth’s prayer did not change, but he began to sweat, to steam as the heat rose.
His skin smoldered.
Raef waited for the taste of roasted flesh, but it didn’t come, not even when Seth’s breathing grew ragged and pinpricks of blood welled across his skin. Argos gave a little whine.
Raef froze in place. He shouldn’t care. Seth was a Knight of Hyperion and his captor. Raef should wish him pain, but could not.
Seth finished his prayer and opened eyes full of sparks.
Raef stared, not even trying to hide that he’d watched.
“What was that about?” he asked.
He’d known the knights were zealous, but this—self-torture—it was so much worse than he could have imagined.
“Penance,” Seth said.
He stood, somewhat stiffly, and began to dress.
“Burning yourself?”
Raef hadn’t realized the knights could be burned. He’d thought them fireproof, like the hounds.
“The likes of you would not understand.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re a pirate.” Seth drew his tunic over his head.
“So?” Raef asked.
“You’re a thief. You steal from people. You live a life without remorse.”
“What are you going to do, burn me?”
Seth blanched. He looked wounded, like Raef had slapped him.
“Why would I do that? Didn’t I save your life?”
“Oh,” Raef paused. Seth had, hadn’t he?
“Wait, didn’t I save yours?”
Seth considered it for a moment then smiled.
“I suppose you did.”
He doesn’t know who you are, Raef reminded himself. He doesn’t know what you are.
Then again, Raef wasn’t so sure about those things himself. Not anymore.
An oblate, sure, of a sort, but also a demon, a half-demon. Did that explain the shadowknife? He’d assumed it had come from Phoebe. That’s what the priests had told him about the shadowsight, that it was a gift from the goddess. Maybe both were from his mother, the mysterious Sati.
Raef had assumed it was Phoebe’s voice he’d heard in the crypt, her that he’d seen from time to time. What if it was someone else? What if it was his mother?
He’d met Cormac, liked the man well enough, but didn’t expect a reunion with a demoness to go as smoothly.
“Hold out your hands,” Seth said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
Raef scowled but offered his wrists.
Thiva, so much greener than Versinae’s lands, unfolded around them. Everywhere the vines did not grow fields and fruit trees sprouted. Rhea had clearly blessed this land. In another time, with better company, this could have been a pleasant walk along the coast.
Raef wondered if Eastlight were like this, or if it were all rocky and stale. He wished for Kinos’s company, not a knight’s.
“Where did Argos go?” he asked, realizing the hound had disappeared.
“I don’t command him,” Seth said a little defensively. “At least not fully.”
“Does he always lick people like that?” Raef remembered the scrape of the hound’s tongue along his cheek.
“I do not know. We haven’t been paired very long.”
“I never had a dog myself.” Raef tried to sound sympathetic.
“Me either.”
The rush of the waves came and went as they skirted the shore. Raef had lived his entire life beside the sea. The idea that he could go inland where the water and the freedom it represented wasn’t in sight left him feeling strangely caged.
Aegea was a continent, but Raef had never thought to explore it. When the knights came for Kinos, he hadn’t considered running that way.
In a way, as awful as the tower’s fall had been, it had freed him. He hadn’t had to stay in Versinae, and yet he’d never wanted to leave, not until the box, not until Kinos.
Kinos or no Kinos, Raef had to go to Eastlight. He had to try that door. It had to be intact. It had to be. If it failed he’d try again, every sunset, until the Day of the Black Sun.
If it didn’t open—then he didn’t know what he’d do.
He covered the crescent of hope in his chest that finding Kinos had brought, shielding it from the breeze of his doubts. It hung entirely on the door and what he’d find on Kinos’s little island. If it died, he wasn’t certain what would remain of his heart.
Something clicked in the hollows between the trees, bringing Raef out of his thoughts.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Don’t try to trick me again,” Seth warned.
“I’m not. It could be the wind, knocking branches together.”
“There is no wind.”
Seth lifted his sword, called its flame, and took a fighting stance.
The familiar smell of chalk and sour blood rose around them. The clacking sound increased.
“Whatever they are, they’re getting closer,” Raef warned.
“We’ve nothing to fear during the day. Hyperion protects us from the dead.”
“I don’t think these shades share your faith,” Raef said.
Several shapes lurched out of the woods.
They looked like people made of wood. Mud oozed between the woven branches. Leaves clothed them in random patterns. Their faces were empty masks. Their limbs were coiled twists of the thorny vines. The red flowers jutted and sprouted everywhere along their bodies.
Raef forced the shadowsight, trying to see deeper, like he had in the fog. There. They were spirits, the same kind that Seth had destroyed in the undercroft, wrapped inside the plants to hide from the sun.
“Cut me free.” Raef lifted his bound hands toward Seth.
“No.”
“I don’t want to die here, Sir Knight. I won’t run. I swear.”
Seth held out the sword’s edge. Raef ran the rope over it, holding his hands as far apart as he could to avoid the burning metal.
“Can I have my knives back?”
“What good would they do?” Seth asked.
“You have a point,” Raef conceded.
There was nothing alive here, nothing to stab. It wasn’t like the shades to approach the living, not if they weren’t bleeding.
“That’s why there are no animals,” Raef said. “No birds.”
“What?” Seth asked, turning back and forth, looking for an angle of attack.
“The shades here are awake. They’ve eaten them all.”
Here, the dead hunted the living.
“We need to run,” Raef said as one of the makeshift figures creaked and clacked toward them.
Seth cast about, but the ring of figures, more than a dozen, was closing in from all directions.
“I don’t think we can.”
“They’re using the sticks and leaves as shields,” Raef said. “Can you burn them?”
The shape nearest to Raef’s right lurched forward with unexpected speed. Seth shouldered him aside.
Raef slammed into the ground as Seth spliced the thing in two. The moldy scent of burning leaves and old blood filled the air. Exposed, the spirit dissolved.
“Yes,” Seth said with grim satisfaction. “Yes, I can.”
There wasn’t time to thank him. More of the things came on.
Raef found his feet but had nowhere to run. The ring was closing, a barbed fence they couldn’t leap.
Seth stepped toward Raef, turning his sword left to right, trying to shield him. It was a noble, stupid gesture.
The day was too bright for the shadowknife, and Raef wasn’t certain it would help.
Seth whispered a prayer. The air warmed. Raef stood trapped between the fire and the closing ring of thorns and spirits. Seth might burn many of them, but not all.
One of the things lashed out, the vines reaching like a whip. Raef caught it between the thorns and twisted, breaking it off. Exposed to the sun, the spirit inside sizzled. The thing remained where it stood, wounded but undeterred.
“That was too close,” he said.
Another slash of Seth’s sword cut away another whip.
The ring closed.
A wall of fire appeared a toe’s length from Raef’s boot. He fell back against Seth, interrupting the knight’s prayer. Centered on them, the circle of flames burst outward, burning leaves and twigs. The spirits made no sound as their cover dissolved. They burned away, leaving only ashes and the wet stink of singed vegetation. Black marred the ground in a perfect circle around Raef and Seth’s position.
“Your faith is strong, Seth,” a new voice said as Raef struggled to get his shuddering under control. “But you lack wisdom. These spirits aren’t like the others we’ve encountered.”
“No,” he agreed. Dousing his sword, he sheathed it and fell to his knees at the sight of the approaching woman. “No, they are not.”
She stood a little shorter than Raef, with hard lines on her arms.
She wasn’t large, but she carried herself proudly. Her long hair was woven into braids. She’d seen battle. Dimples and smudges scored her brazen armor. Her heavy mace was dented from much use.
Reaching them, she knelt over one of the smoldering piles.
“Rise, Seth,” she commanded. “Who have you found here?”
“Pol, a pirate.”
“Shipwrecked,” Raef interjected. He could speak for himself, but it might be wise to let Seth do the talking. He’d come to think of Seth as almost friendly, but this woman radiated strength, and she clearly showed a mastery of the god’s fire his companion didn’t possess.
“Come then,” she said, slinging the strap of her mace over her shoulder. “We may have found some of your fellows.”
“Seth told me.”
“Then you know that they were all drowned. We brought the bodies ashore.”
“You did not leave them to the sea?”
The Bishop cocked her head.
“The gods wish us buried in Rhea’s arms. We will burn them so they do not add to the Grief.”
“Show me. Please.”
She began to march.
Head bowed, Raef followed.
Seth didn’t tie Raef’s hands again.
“What else did you find?” the Bishop asked. “Aside from—”
She gestured toward Raef.
“Pol,” Raef whispered.
“The town is empty. No people. No animals.”
Seth didn’t mention the tower. He didn’t mention the undercroft or the very flammable, intact library.
“But as you said, the spirits here are not like others. They attacked me, even by daylight. Pol saved me.”
The Bishop raised an eyebrow in Raef’s direction. He shrugged in response.
She led them to a rise. Below, on the beach, another ten knights had laid out a line of bodies.
A full cadre, and it would take only one of them to see the mark on Raef’s wrist to recognize what he was. Then it would all end in fire.
“Pol?” Seth asked, laying a hand to his shoulder. Raef did not miss the look of disgust one of the other knights, an auburn-haired man, threw Seth’s way. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I just . . .”
“Make your peace with the dead,” the Bishop said.
“Then what will you do with me?”
He didn’t know how to read her grim expression. Did she mean to burn him, to leave him here with the others?
Seth hadn’t seemed to think so, and his expression was kind now, concerned even.
“We will keep you with us,” the Bishop said. “You would not survive without our protection.”
Raef exhaled, letting out all of his breath. He couldn’t put it off any longer and looked to where he did not want to.
The knights had laid the bodies faceup. Raef walked the line of familiar, waterlogged corpses, tensed for the inevitable blow, the sight of the face he loved, and for the man he could have called father if given time.
The cabbage-eared drunk.
A tattooed man who’d sung beautifully.
Other faces he knew.
But he’d learned none of their names.
No Cormac.
No Kinos.
They could both still be out there. They could both still be alive.
“Do you know them?” the Bishop asked.
“Yes. Thank you for bringing them ashore.”
Their faces were blank, their eyes closed. Sand-brushed and sodden, but not anything like the bodies the Tetheans had left in the sea as bait.
Raef hadn’t known these people well or even really liked them, but no one deserved that fate.
“Of course,” the Bishop said with a little softness. “If you tell us their names, we will pray for them.”
“We were on the same ship. That is about all I can tell you.”
She cocked her head at him.
“I wasn’t there long,” he said. “Hadn’t been to sea long.”
Maurin would have slapped him for admitting it. He wasn’t thinking right.
How could he?
He felt scraped raw, inside and out.
Perhaps he simply no longer wanted to hold his tongue, though he had to. For Phoebe. For Kinos.
He might still be alive.
“You said you hadn’t killed anyone?” Seth asked.
“I haven’t,” Raef said. It was true. He hadn’t even killed Zale, the knight in the crypt and counted himself beyond lucky that the grizzled veteran was not among the cadre.
Raef had to focus, to step carefully, and avoid anything that might give him away. He’d let Seth’s unassuming nature distract him. The Bishop would not be easy to fool.
“What are you even doing here?” Raef said. “Why stay here?”
“We’re searching for someone,” she said.
“Who?”
“A black-haired man,” Seth said. “At first, I thought you might be him, but his eyes are green. Yours are black.”
“Sorry to disappoint you.” A scream of something, hope or joy, bubbled in his throat and had to be swallowed down. He couldn’t trust it, and he could not reveal it.
“How do you know he’s here?” he asked.
“An Oracle,” the Bishop said. “She sent us here, to search the eastern side of the island.”
“Why are you on the north shore?”
“The cliffs and brambles make it impossible to land to the east,” the Bishop said. “We must march overland. Our ship will return for us.”
“And you’ll be coming with us,” Seth said.
He grinned, like it was a jaunt, like it wasn’t a hike across a haunted island where the shades were hunting them.
Still, they were here for Kinos. He was on Thiva. If this Oracle of Hyperion could be trusted then there was a chance, and it was everything.
Despite Raef’s best efforts, the hope in his chest waxed brighter.
The knights had shown up unexpectedly, impossibly.
He could have laughed. The Bishop was right. He needed their protection.
The Knights of Hyperion were his only chance to find Kinos alive.