CHAPTER TWELVE

Do deeds long done really stay in the past?

A secret locked away may seem secured

But time will play its games and play them well

The ticking clock reveals that which endures

A hidden tale is venom in the vein

A leech may bring relief and ease the pain

—THE BOOK OF UNVEILING

Kyara wasn’t enthused about handing over her courier’s license to Darvyn when he asked. They weren’t easy to come by, even for agents of the True Father.

She used the document for the same reason the Keepers wanted it: passing through the gates was hassle free, and the toll takers waved them through without inspection. Since she wore no uniform, no one would give her the travel privileges of the Golden Flames, so she had always made her own way.

But she couldn’t keep the license from him and so begrudgingly gave it up. The upside was, it allowed the caravan of wagons to travel through the night. Though taking the highway after sunset was often an invitation for trouble, blessedly they encountered no one else on the road.

Now dawn lit the bleak landscape in a cheery glow. Kyara rode next to Darvyn in the driver’s seat of the second wagon. He hadn’t told her where they were taking the rescued children. She suspected she had Aggar to thank for that. There wasn’t much she could do about the man’s suspicions—they were well-founded, after all. But his questioning of the nabbers had yielded information on another location where a group of children was being housed. Kyara had been allowed to accompany them to find her supposed sister.

She cringed to think about the lie. Deceit of any kind rankled her. When she walked through a man’s door, after their shock subsided and they figured out who she was, there was no prevarication. They knew they were going to die. It was a dirty business, but all was done in the light. She never took a man’s life without first looking him in the eye.

She’d managed to leave all the nabbers alive when she’d freed the children, thanks only to the presence of a desert sidewinder coiled unnoticed in the corner. Killing the snake with the most precision should could manage in such a short time had sickened the nabbers. But if one of them had died, explaining his black eyes and gums to the Keepers would have been difficult.

She may never truly gain the rebels’ trust, but at least they didn’t mean her any harm. Her Song always surged when danger was near and it was calm now. Enough so that she dozed off once or twice during the journey, much to her surprise.

The wagons clattered into Checkpoint Eight just as the town was waking up for the day. Eight was a large, prosperous town. It benefitted from being close to the Crossroads, where the Great Highway diverged, one branch leading southwest to the Lake Cities and the other continuing due west to the Breach Valley.

A hub for travelers and trade, Eight was still nowhere near the size of Sayya, but it was the closest thing this part of the country had to a genuine city. Even the outer spiral homes were well maintained and attractive. Real glass graced far more windows than not, and the people making their way through the streets in the early morning looked healthy and not half-starved. None of them paid any mind to the convoy of wagons, but as the Keepers approached the town’s market, the reason became apparent. Dozens of vehicles lined the square, carts and wagons pulled by horses or mules and even a few diesel-powered contraptions, all homemade.

The buildings surrounding the market square were mostly inns and boardinghouses, but the curved dome of an Avinid temple was visible at the end of the row. Kyara wondered how much of the town actually lived here and how many were merely passing through.

The two-way radio pack sitting between her and Darvyn on the bench crackled, broadcasting Aggar’s staticky voice. “We’ll resupply here. Stay alert.”

Once they stopped, Darvyn hopped down and was immediately accosted by two teenagers, a boy and a girl, who offered to guard his wagon for two grams. Kyara craned her neck to see that the other wagon drivers were being similarly propositioned by street urchins. Aggar, driving the lead wagon, waved off the children with an angry motion, but Darvyn dropped a gram into the outstretched hand of the girl with a promise of more when he returned.

“The wagon is locked, and there is nothing worth stealing inside,” he told them. “You won’t get the other gram if you try to thieve it.” The teens nodded vigorously, then backed into the shade of the adjacent building to begin their watch.

Kyara did a double take at the girl. She could have been Ahlini’s twin. Dark eyes glittered from a face far too hardened for her years. But Ahlini had smiled every day, including the day she died. This girl would likely never develop laugh lines. She caught Kyara’s stare and scowled before turning away.

“Do you think they’ll try to break in?” Kyara asked Darvyn.

A smile played upon his lips. “Lizana is in the back with the children. If those two try anything, they’ll meet quite a surprise. She has an odd sense of humor.” He motioned for Kyara to walk with him as he headed toward the outer market stalls.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never seen anyone use their Song quite so creatively for retribution as Lizana. I still get a pain on my— Never mind.” He dropped his head, embarrassed, but still smiling.

A pang of jealousy shot through Kyara as she imagined the end of his story. It was a totally irrational reaction, and she tried to shake it away. Lizana was a stunning warrior with a deep, throaty laugh that had helped put the children at ease last night. She was in her early thirties and now on Kyara’s shortlist of Shadowfox candidates. That wasn’t the jealousy talking; it was just good sense.

Though the stories had always rendered the Shadowfox as male, he could just as easily be a she as no one actually knew the powerful Keeper’s identity.

Farron and Darvyn had admitted to having their Songs, but the Shadowfox must be older than both of them. The rumors of his or her exploits had been rolling around since the Sixth Breach, the year Kyara was born. Darvyn would have been just a toddler and Farron not even a gleam in his mother’s eye.

Back then, the stories were of miraculous mass healings of villages that had been suffering from the plague. Women in her cabal of the vast harem had entertained the children with tales of strange occurrences in towns in the west. Lightning storms that created artistic designs in the sky. Dozens of tornadoes dancing in time to drumbeats in the bush. The normally destructive forces of nature being tamed into spectacles of great beauty. Nothing like that had been seen for years, and many didn’t believe they’d ever happened. But no one could deny the Shadowfox’s more recent exploits. Overnight a patch of sandy soil, from which nothing could be coaxed to grow, would be transformed into a field full of wheat or barley, ready to harvest.

Enforcers regularly roamed the bush, searching for illegal farms to salt and burn. But another would spring up somewhere else a few days or weeks later. The Keepers—and the Shadowfox by extension—opposed the True Father’s ration laws and made it their mission to feed the near-starving Lagrimari people. That, plus their charge to save children from nabbing and tribute, caused another pang to go through Kyara. This one of regret. Yes, the Keepers were doing good for the people, more good than Kyara had ever done, but they were still delusional. They’d been fighting this fight for hundreds of years, and the True Father was no closer to losing power. In fact, he was very close to destroying the most powerful symbol of rebellion in Lagrimar.

The fact that she would be the one to bring down the mighty Shadowfox left her cold.

She rubbed the front of her tunic, skating over the wound that lay there. The bandages protected it from the fabric of her clothing. The wound did not bleed or fester, but it was a raw reminder of the power that controlled her. What could she do to fight against it? Her earlier thoughts of redemption were blasted away by a swift kick from reality. She would always be a monster, and capturing the Shadowfox would only cement that fact.

She and Darvyn met the other Keepers who gathered at the side of a row of vendors. Aggar stood tall, regarding the scene from beneath his furrowed brow. She suspected he wasn’t as old as he appeared; the lines on his face were from frowning too much. Though he was in charge, his bitter reaction to being accused of having a Song had crossed him off her list of Shadowfox candidates.

The largest man, Zango, was still a possibility, but she had no idea if he still sang. Three other men and one woman completed the party. All were old enough, but flat-out asking them all if they had their Songs would be incredibly rude and raise even more suspicion.

Aggar shot a withering look in her direction before turning away. He spoke commands to the gathered Keepers too softly for her to hear and then they all split up. Again, she was left with Darvyn.

“Am I allowed to know what we’re here to get?” she asked.

Darvyn’s grin had her fighting to tear her gaze away from his lips once again. “My assignment is shoes. The children will need them.”

Her next question died on her lips as she spotted a man walking through the market a few dozen paces ahead. Her Song surged, causing her to stumble to keep it leashed. Darvyn reached out to steady her. Even the tingle of his touch on her hand was not enough to warm her blood this time.

The man wore an orange tunic that fell to his knees with orange trousers underneath. The round cap perched on his head marked his profession as a physician. Unusual eyes of mossy green scanned the street in front of him as he approached. The urge to hide was strong within her, but she couldn’t have moved her limbs if she tried. Her Song protested, thrashing, demanding release. She clamped down on it hard, afraid, for the first time in a decade, of truly losing control.

“Kyara, what’s wrong?” she heard Darvyn ask, probably not for the first time.

Somehow her feet unlocked, and she turned toward him, keeping the physician in her peripheral vision. He had stopped at a stall and stood talking with the merchant. Her mouth opened and closed but no sound came out.

She focused on the feeling of Darvyn’s hand in hers as he led her to a space between the market stalls where she could sit down on a discarded crate.

“I’ll get you some water,” he said and jogged away.

The physician’s face was forever etched into her mind. She would never forget him or what he had done, even though she had not been able to prove it and no one had believed her.

Darvyn returned with a full canteen. She drank down the water quickly. He regarded her with concerned eyes while she struggled to get her breathing back under control.

“I’m sorry … I thought I saw someone.” She shook her head, unable to think of what to say.

“Where? Who?” Darvyn’s gaze roamed the area. His body was tense, as if ready to fight.

“The man at the cutler’s stall. The physician,” she said, keeping her gaze on Darvyn, unwilling to turn her head to see if the man in question was still within eyesight. “Though I’m not even sure if it was him, it’s been a very long time. Sorry if I scared you.” Her fear had been replaced by embarrassment at her reaction. It’s not as if the physician could kill her right here in the middle of the market, could he? If he tried anything, she could defend herself. She had been given no orders to the contrary. In such a crowd, using her Song would be out of the question but she was still a Golden Flame and had trained in many forms of combat.

She chanced a glance to the vendor diagonally across from her. The merchant handed over a handful of grams to the physician, who pocketed them and walked away whistling, disappearing into the growing crowd.

Kyara sagged with relief. “We have shoes to purchase, right?” She tried to inject brightness into her tone, but by Darvyn’s expression she wasn’t doing a good job.

“What makes this physician so bad?”

Her mind raced to come up with a story, but in the end, the truth could do no harm. And she owed it to Nerys not to sully her memory with lies. “When I was a girl, I—I met a woman who was very kind to me.” A weak smile creased her face as Kyara recalled. “The entire town thought she was crazy. She lived at the very edge of the spiral and often shouted nonsense in the streets about men made of light, but … when I needed help, she was there for me.”

She took a deep breath as old pain squeezed her chest. “She was crippled from an old injury and walking was very painful. One day the physician came to town.” Kyara froze at the memory of his bright-green eyes peering down at her. The only soul she’d ever encountered with eyes of that color had been Ydaris. But the physician’s smile had been kind, not cruel like the Cantor’s.

“He had a way about him. A talent for making everyone in town fall under his spell. He was charming, mesmerizing. This woman, my friend, accepted his offer of aid gratefully. But I wasn’t so sure—I didn’t trust him.” In fact, her Song had surged warning of danger once he began his “healing.”

“He had a little wooden box carved with strange symbols I’d never seen before. Inside the box lay a thin glass tube and a long needle with a plunger in the back. The box also held a vial of amber liquid that he drew into the tube.”

That’s when Kyara’s Song had begun buzzing in her chest. By then she had learned what it meant and ran out of the little cottage into the cold night to hover in the doorway. She’d wanted to be able to run off into the bush quickly in case she lost control.

“He injected the liquid into her body and the stuff did what he said. She walked pain-free almost immediately.” Kyara’s eyes focused; she looked up at Darvyn. “Though within a week, she was vomiting black bile and shivering with the chills.”

“Plague?” he asked, voice pitched with alarm.

Kyara nodded. “Not just her. Everyone the physician visited and injected with his device was struck down. They died in days.”

Despite the heat of the day, a chill ran through her, pebbling the skin on her arms. Darvyn stood straight, looking into the crowded marketplace, searching for the physician.

“He told us him name was Raal. He spoke like no one I’d ever met, with a strange way of phrasing his words. Even afterward, after he was gone and so many were dead, no one in the town believed he’d caused the plague. It’s like he’d hypnotized everyone.”

“Everyone but you.” Darvyn’s words snapped Kyara back to the present.

“Like I said, I’m not even sure it was him.” She took a deep breath to calm her still-racing heart. “We had better get what’s needed. I’m sure Aggar-mideni will want to be on his way again.”

Darvyn smiled a fraction at her teasing use of the honorific, which perfectly matched Aggar’s sense of self-aggrandizement. But he still looked around uneasily. “I’ll go. Wait for me here. I’ll see if I can find him again.”

Raal had disappeared into the crowd and she had no desire to run into him. “All right, but don’t—” She cleared her throat and looked away. “If it’s him, he’s very dangerous.” She told herself that Darvyn’s well-being was not her concern, but the idea of him coming to harm made her breath catch.

“I’ll be careful,” he said, a corner of his mouth raised in a grim half-smile. “You’ll stay here and not go wandering?”

She nodded solemnly. “I promise.”

Darvyn gave her an assessing look before turning and walking away.

Kyara dropped her head into her hands. She knew how little her promises were worth. The wound on her chest had stolen her will, but that was not why the vow she’d made to Nerys on her deathbed had gone unfilled. But that was long ago and there was nothing to be done about it now.

She counted to one hundred before standing and peering over at the stall the physician had vacated. Kyara may have broken her promise to a dead woman—but perhaps she could bring her some justice.

She crossed the row to approach the merchant. Technically she wasn’t wandering, it was just a dozen paces or so from where she’d been sitting.

The cutler’s table had finely crafted knives of all sizes on display. She examined the arrangement, and although she loved a good blade, the exhibit reminded her too much of the bench in the Cantor’s library. Swallowing, she looked up to find a pair of hard eyes glittering at her from within a craggy face.

“Looking for something?” The vendor’s voice was gruff. He crossed his arms in front of him as if annoyed. A thick scar encircled his neck and his hands were covered in tinier scars, each one sparkling in the light. A former miner, then. The miners kept their Songs during their service so they could use Earthsong to dig for the precious jewels lining the eastern mountains. They were chained while working and collared during downtime, and they were never able to get the glittery dust completely out of their skin—or lungs—no matter how long it had been. The merchant was old and must have survived three rounds of service in order to be released. That was quite a feat, and Kyara’s heart softened a bit, forgiving his caustic attitude.

“The man who was just here. What did he sell?”

He raised an eyebrow before surveying the table and picking up a well-worn leather sheath. The knife was half the length of her forearm with a leather-wrapped handle. The vendor’s twinkling hands pulled it from the sheath revealing a blade of white bone, with strange characters engraved into it. It was primitive but wicked looking, and the longer she stared at it, the more she wanted to run away.

“What kind of bone?” she whispered.

“Eh? What was that?”

She cleared her throat. “What kind of bone is it?” she asked louder.

The vendor scratched his head. “I didn’t ask. Not sure I wanted to know. Though he was a nice fella, that one.”

She picked up the knife and quieted the quivering of her Song. It warned her of danger, but she already knew.

The knife in her hands was familiar. Ydaris used one just like it in her blood spells, but hers bore different symbols. Kyara wasn’t certain if it was her Song or some other inner knowledge that informed her, but she felt strongly that both knives were made from human bone.

“You interested?” the vendor asked, his tone skeptical.

She dropped the blade back onto the cutler’s table, her fingers stinging from the contact.

“No,” she said around the growing tightness in her throat and headed back across the way to wait for Darvyn.

She cursed herself for the fear spiking through her when she’d seen Raal. She was not that eleven-year-old girl any longer. She was the Poison Flame, and the next time she saw the physician, she would kill him.