Raef lay curled in the dead man’s bedroll, but found himself unable to sleep.
He wrapped a hand around the cuff on his wrist. The shadowknife slept now, but the thrum of it, constant through the battle, echoed in the bones of his arm. It had wanted out, to fight, and did not appreciate being denied.
Knowing only he could see, he risked a look.
The mark had grown. Soon it would be too large for the cuff to cover. The knights would see it then. Seth would see it.
Dawn came too soon.
Raef dragged himself into a sitting position, forcing his stiff body into motion. The knights didn’t seem any better off. They packed their gear slowly and spoke their prayers with dim enthusiasm. They’d won. Most of them had survived, thanks to Seth, but the battle had cost them.
The knights tied two sticks together and stood Dion’s scorched armor atop the cairn that held his ashes.
“Let his spirit rest in the god’s light,” the Bishop prayed. “Let his ashes rest in Rhea’s arms.”
“No shadow shall stand,” the cadre responded as one.
Seth wasn’t among them.
“What now?” Raef asked the Bishop.
“We push east, and retrieve our quarry as Hyperion wills. You will carry Dion’s pack.”
He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off with a glare.
“You have no gear, and clearly need his bedroll. He’d want you to make use of his supplies.”
Raef nodded, and stretched, trying to work out the kinks in his shoulders. He followed the knights down the hill with sluggish steps, trying to grow comfortable with the new weight on his back.
On the ship he’d slept with Kinos, and the nightmares had retreated. Now they came in force.
The giant lingered behind his closed eyes, it and the dead faces along its body. The Ino sank and the tower fell. Fire raged in every scene, lurked in every corner.
Seth reappeared a while later with Argos at his side.
The long night had stripped away the knight’s eager, upbeat nature.
Raef opened his mouth to say hello, but his stomach grumbled before he could greet the pair.
Seth laughed.
“You are always hungry. Turn around.”
Raef obeyed and Seth sifted through the pack.
“Here,” he said, passing Raef a bit of dried meat.
It tasted like salt and leather, but it eased the near constant gnawing in Raef’s belly as Seth fell into walking beside him.
“How are you feeling, Pol?”
“It’s not like I was hurt.”
Raef didn’t mention the dead knight or the cut on Seth’s cheek. It had already faded to a dark pink.
“Still . . . What you saw.” Seth ducked his head, his expression sheepish. “It was a lot.”
Raef bit down on a smile. Here was the awkward man from the prince’s ball.
“Why do you think the spirits here are like this?” Raef asked before biting off another chunk.
“I don’t know.” Seth glared at the ever-present vines. “Perhaps it has something to do with that.”
And the demoness, Raef thought.
That little girl had eyed him with more intelligence than any shade he’d met, even more than Father Polus’s ghost. She’d also screamed. The dead were silent.
He remembered a line from an old hymn that spoke of the silent paths of night, how they made no sound when Phoebe rowed them to the Ebon Sea.
Raef had to step carefully. He did not know how much common folk and pirates were supposed to know about the demons.
They were similar to the gods, immortal, but Raef felt he could understand the gods. They ruled over domains: night and day, earth and sea. They had families. The demons were wilder, ruling over emotions or impulses like greed or pride.
He could not help but wonder about Sati, about what she valued.
He couldn’t understand what the priests of Phoebe had been thinking to summon them, let alone to breed them with people to make children. He needed to know why.
He hoped they’d limited themselves to the lesser demons. The worst of them, the highest, were associated with humanity’s darkest impulses, like murder and rage, and they’d been powerful enough to war with and kill the gods.
The demon who’d attacked them had proven her guile.
She’d commanded an army, been smart enough to wear the knights down before she’d unleashed the giant upon them. Only Seth had saved them.
The vines thickened as they went east. They hadn’t seen the last of her.
“Where are we going?” Raef asked Seth.
“We have a mission,” Seth said.
“Can you tell me more about it?” Raef asked. “The Bishop said you’re hunting someone to the east. Who is he?”
Seth shook his head. “I’m sorry, Pol. It’s not my place. Ask the Bishop. She will tell you if she wants you to know.”
“All right,” Raef groused.
He wouldn’t. He knew better than to risk it.
The spark of hope still danced in his chest.
They were going east, hiking toward cliffs, heading toward Kinos.
The knights paused at a fork in the dirt road, waiting for scouts to look ahead. A cracked, wooden statue marked the spot. It showed a pregnant woman, her hands fixed on her round belly. Raef could just make out her kind smile.
“Rhea,” Seth said. “The Harvest Mother.”
“I know who Rhea is.”
“I would think a pirate would pray to Tethis. She’s the goddess of the sea.”
“I didn’t say I prayed to Rhea. I said I knew who she was.”
“So who do you pray to?”
He didn’t sound judgmental, only curious. He wanted to know, probably so he could try to convince Raef to pray to Hyperion.
“I try not to.” There he went, being honest again.
“Why not?”
“Because the answer is usually no.”
Seth gave a thoughtful nod, but the warmth from their banter faded as they marched.
The other knights had marked the two as outsiders and kept their distance.
Raef knew he did not belong, but wondered what Seth had done to warrant it.
He’d fought bravely at the hill, saved them. He had more power than any of them. Seth had so much of it that he could burn himself. Perhaps he’d put the fear of the fire into the other knights.
Good, Raef thought. Let them know how it feels.
One of the scouts returned to the main column.
“There’s a monastery ahead,” she called.
“And the road?” the Bishop asked.
“It continues east, toward the coast.”
“We go that way then,” the Bishop said. She turned to Seth and nodded toward the other fork in the road. “Go find Lathan.”
“You’re sending him alone?” Raef asked.
“They have their hounds,” the Bishop said. “And they have their faith.”
“Can I go with him?” Raef asked.
She raised an eyebrow, and Raef did not like how long she considered him.
“Fine,” she said.
Seth whistled for Argos. The pup ran toward them with so much energy that Raef thought he’d bowl them over.
“Calm, Argos,” Seth gently chided.
The hound obeyed, content to playfully herd them down the road.
The vines grew thicker as they left the knights behind. The cloying scent of the flowers filled the air. Raef began to wonder if he’d ever taste anything else.
“I didn’t think the Bishop would let me come with you,” he said.
“Why not? You’re not our prisoner.”
“You tied me up,” Raef reminded him, trying to rekindle their earlier camaraderie.
“I am sorry about that. It wasn’t kind of me, but you did knock me down.”
“I did.”
“The Bishop is gentler than she seems. She is hard, but fair.”
“She wasn’t gentle or fair last night, striking you like that.”
“Her anger was warranted. I broke formation. Yes, I saved Lathan, but I could have caused the line to fail. Everyone could have died because of me, including you.”
“But they didn’t, and she cut you. She put you in danger.”
Seth pressed two fingers to his cheek. It had been little more than a scratch. But it had bled.
“A cadre is only as strong as its weakest member, Pol. And that is determined by how well they fall in line.”
“Only you’re not the weakest member. You saved them. You saved me.”
Seth smiled and turned away.
“We should hurry,” he said.
They walked faster, ducking beneath the vines, climbing their roots, being careful to avoid their thorns. Seth did not draw his sword or call his fire. Raef did not know if he was conserving it for the next battle or if he did not want to make Raef afraid of him.
Raef listened, scanned for movement—trying to find anything amiss. Thiva’s silence was helpful as he listened for the clack of sticks. He hoped, surprising himself, that they did not find Lathan dead.
The shades could hide in leaves and mud, which was most of Thiva.
Forcing the shadowsight, Raef examined the vines, and found what he expected. The shades lay curled inside, but they did not sleep. Their eyes followed him. The dead waited, biding their time until dark.
He stretched a hand toward the bark. The wood did not curl or snap toward him, but he could feel the hunger. Just a drop, just a scratch, and all would change.
“Pol,” Seth called, waving for him to catch up.
Lathan stood ahead, staring at a mound of refuse. His hound prowled nearby, ears straight, but she wasn’t aflame.
“What is it?” Seth asked.
Lathan pointed.
Dozens of mounds stretched across the hill.
“Bones,” he said. “They’re all just . . . bones.”
Raef leaned closer.
There were rusted shovels, abandoned carts, some half-dug pits that overflowed with the forgotten dead. It was no way to treat corpses.
“I don’t understand,” Raef said. “Why aren’t they buried? Why weren’t they burned?”
“They’ve been here a long time,” Lathan said. “Probably from before the Grief.”
“We should get back to the cadre,” Seth said. “The Bishop is ready to march.”
“Targ,” Lathan called his hound.
They walked back in silence, Argos trying to play with his elder, much to her annoyance. He and Seth were well-matched. Raef could not miss how Seth looked to Lathan from the corner of his eye, seeking approval much like Argos did.
Looking away, Raef pondered the mounds of bones. Kinos would have tried to pray for them.
They rejoined the cadre, and Lathan reported what he’d found.
The Bishop said nothing, but her stern face looked troubled. With a wave she led them toward the monastery the other scout had found.
Little houses of piled stone huddled together like bee skeps. Fields and gardens, as overgrown as the rest of Thiva, ran out from them in rings. The vines did not intrude here, and the sight of other flowers should have eased the weight on Raef’s shoulders.
“Rheites,” the Bishop said.
It made sense that Thiva would venerate the Harvest Mother. The entire island was a breadbasket, green and full of fields. Her touch clearly lingered, even through whatever had claimed her people. It had to have been terrible. Rheites would not leave their dead in the air. They would follow their tenets and return the dead to her arms, to the soil—unless they’d been unable to.
The knights fanned out to search.
Seth tried a closed door.
“It’s nailed shut,” he called.
A crude X was painted on it in faded whitewash.
“That’s the sign for plague,” the Bishop said.
Seth staggered away from the door.
“That explains the bodies,” Lathan said. “They were overwhelmed. It killed them too fast to keep up with the burials.”
Raef could picture it, the living, drowning in the dead, weeping as they did what they could, sprinkling a handful of dust to appease the Harvest Mother. He imagined she wept too, grieving her children as she grieved any lost too young.
The Bishop cast a final, sad glance over the huts.
“Let’s keep moving.”
The ground grew rockier as they climbed higher. The sun reached its zenith, and the Bishop commanded they stop for prayers.
Raef closed and opened his fists, frustrated to see them waste this time.
Seth slipped away, but Raef could understand why. He was trying to master the fire, to stop another incident like the beach in Versinae, and it hurt him to do so. Raef had seen the red, angry skin where Seth’s sleeve had burned away. He remembered Seth’s bare skin smoldering when he performed his penance.
Raef finished sifting through the dead man’s pack. He cast aside anything heavy, keeping the blanket, bedroll, the little bit of coin, and the rations. He’d need all of that if he found a way to escape with Kinos.
Seth jogged toward him. Raef tried to ignore the scent of fire.
“How’s your arm?” he asked, nodding to the prior night’s injuries.
“Better.” Seth held it out for inspection.
The flesh was pink, but not raw or scabbed over. Seth may not be immune to the god’s flames, but he didn’t burn as another would.
“I’m glad.” Raef meant it.
He was becoming what, friends, with a Knight of Hyperion?
He had to find Kinos. And he had to figure out how to handle the knights when they found him.
“Let’s catch up.” Raef hoisted the dead man’s pack onto his shoulders. “We have to get there soon.”
“Yes.” Seth sounded worried.
Raef shot him a questioning glance.
“Our power comes from our faith,” Seth whispered. “It is stronger when Hyperion is in the sky. I worry about doubt.”
“Me too,” Raef confided.
He also worried about the demon and what traps she might lay. The shadows grew as the sun began its downward slide and mist pooled in the valleys to the south.
He wasn’t certain the knights could survive another onslaught, and he was ready to find Kinos and escape whatever was happening with him and Seth.
Raef hadn’t trusted anyone for years, extending the minimum he could to Maurin and Eleni. Even then, he’d held back so much, had kept his secrets and not talked about his past. Then, Kinos had come along. Now he felt disarmed, naked to emotion and too trusting.
He had to focus on the demon. Unlike the gods, they were tied to emotions. If she was controlling the shades, and she seemed to be, then deciphering what they felt might tell him more about her.
He’d like to talk it through with Seth, but how could he do that without exposing what he was, how he knew things Pol the Pirate would not?
“The girl—what is she?” he asked. “She’s not a ghost, at least not like the others I’ve seen.”
“I think she’s a demon,” Seth whispered, as if naming what she was might call her forth.
“I thought the gods killed them all.” Raef tried to sound surprised and hoped he wasn’t overselling it.
“Most of them,” Seth said. “You probably know why the knights were commanded to destroy Phoebe’s Towers?”
“No.”
“Her priests consorted with demons, and when the Inquisitors found proof—it left the knights without a choice.”
“You sound sad about it.”
“I am.” Seth looked ahead, but whether to their destination or to where the moon would have arisen, Raef did not know.
“But yes, there are demons in the world still.”
“Is that why the girl can control the ghosts?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Seth said. “But I don’t know everything about them. They prey on people’s emotions.”
Right, Raef thought, feigning patience. Put it together . . .
“She must have some hold on them, some feeling to get them to obey her,” Seth mused. “She’d have to promise them something. In the stories there’s always a bargain, deal.”
“Fear,” Raef said. “These shades are willful, solid. She’s keeping them from falling into Grief. That’s the bargain they made when the plague came.”
“You are very clever, Pol.”
“I—I’m sorry,” Raef said.
“Don’t be. I like clever men.”
Seth flushed, and they walked on.
Raef was soon winded. The weight of the pack did not help.
The vines here grew thicker than houses. They burst from the ground like arching bridges, leaving space enough for the cadre to pass beneath them.
Ahead stood a broken castle, its walls riven with cracks.
The vines flowed from there.
Behind them, in the twilight, the mist had thickened into a lake.
The scent of the flowers was a miasma, but blood and rot rode the air too.
“Our quarry lies within,” the Bishop said.
She sounded so certain, but how did she know? An Oracle had sent them here, but why hadn’t it warned her about Raef, the night child—the demon—in their midst?
“You will remain here, Pol.”
Her bronze eyes were hard.
“What?”
“No.”
“It will not be safe for you. You have no faith, no fire.”
“I won’t be any safer here,” he said, gesturing at the mist below.
He could see faces in it. The shades were gathering.
The knights began to shed their packs and gear, keeping only their swords and shields.
“Argos will guard you.”
“No!” Raef said. “I won’t let you leave me behind!”
“Tie him to a tree, Seth.”
“Yes, Bishop.”
Seth crouched to take a length of rope from his pack.
The other knights started marching toward the castle, leaving Seth behind despite his power. Raef almost felt as though they deserved what they were about to face.
“Don’t do this. Please, Seth.”
“I have to. I’m sorry.”
He put a hand to Raef’s chest and nudged him until his back met bark.
“Why?”
“You’ll be safer here.” Seth wound the rope around Raef’s chest. “I would not see you come to harm.”
“You’re not like the others.” Raef squirmed but found no slack as Seth knelt to pet Argos. “You don’t have to be like them.”
“But I want to. They’re what I strive to be.”
“Why risk yourself for them? They treat you like shit.”
“The others have a right to be wary of me.”
“You keep saying that.” Raef heard his own desperation. “But why, because of your flames?”
“No.”
Seth stepped closer.
Raef could see the spark of fire in his eyes and feel the heat of what ran beneath his skin, but didn’t flinch. Seth would not hurt him. Raef knew that. Even this, tying him up, was a misguided attempt at protecting him.
“Because you’re right, Pol. I’m not like them. I grew up somewhere else.”
“A monastery,” Raef said. “You told me.”
“No.” Seth shook his head. He looked so sad. He trembled. Afraid. “Before that.”
“What could be so bad that they’d treat you like they do?”
“If I tell you, you won’t want to be friends with me. You won’t want to know me at all.”
He sounded so young, and Raef wondered if he’d ever had a friend, had ever been close to anyone in his life.
“That won’t happen. I promise.”
And he meant it. Lady Moon, he meant it.
Seth chewed his lip, took a breath, and said, “I was raised in the tower, Phoebe’s Tower, in Dodona.”
“You were a neophyte?” Raef asked. “An orphan?”
He almost couldn’t get the questions out.
Seth folded in on himself. Despite his broad shoulders and greater height, he seemed smaller than Raef in that moment.
“No. They made me, and others like me, from the demons. I’m impure. That’s why I burn. An Inquisitor found me, took me away. He brought me to the Hierarch as proof of what Phoebe’s priests had done.”
“They didn’t burn you?”
“The Hierarch showed me mercy.” Seth looked to the gathering mist and the sprawling vines. “Until now, until he sent me here.”
“Do the knights know?”
“Yes. It’s why they act as they do toward me. I’ll understand if, well, if you do too.”
Raef’s world tilted as Seth turned and ran away. Raef might have fallen over had the ropes not bound him upright.
Oh, Mother Moon, he thought. Oh, Phoebe. He’s like me.