“It’s disgusting,” Kyne grumbled as they walked through the grass beyond the village. “It’s not right.”
Po was silent.
“Kiva should have killed them when she had the chance,” Kyne muttered. “She should have had you and the Forsaken murder them where they stood. Instead she brings them to the village? To the Sisters’ camp?” She shook her head as a guttural sound rose up from the back of her throat.
Kyne was talking to herself, but Po couldn’t stop himself from speaking up.
“The Vagra, you mean,” he said.
Kyne wheeled around and looked at him with rage in her eyes.
“You called her Kiva,” Po said, his voice more timid now. “But she’s the Vagra now. She can do as she pleases.”
Kyne turned away and kept on walking. “She’s no Vagra of mine. Not after what she did. Endangering the village like that. Now the Sisters must see I was right about her.”
Po was silent. He hadn’t told her about what happened at the Strangers’ ship. If Kyne knew that he had nearly killed one of the Strangers, but that Kiva stopped him and performed a healing ritual over him—well, it could only make matters worse.
“And the way she was looking at him. At that creature.” Kyne shook her head. “It makes me sick to think about it.”
As much as he hated to admit it, there was a sick feeling in the pit of Po’s stomach, as well—but it wasn’t disgust he was feeling. It was something else. Anger, perhaps. Po had seen what Kyne saw, what everyone saw—the way that Kiva and the Stranger looked at each other, how close together they walked, the way their hands brushed together. Po felt certain that Kiva, the Vagra, wasn’t capable of what Kyne was suggesting. Still, it was painful for him to watch, and when he’d followed the Stranger around the Sisters’ village as Kiva had commanded him to, he’d begun to feel as though he was invisible.
So, when he’d felt Kyne’s hand on his elbow, pulling him away to her hut, he’d gone willingly.
“You have to take me,” she’d said in the hut. “You have to take me to see Xendr Chathe.”
Po squinted and shook his head. “No. I don’t have to do anything you say. I answer to Xendr now. And he’s loyal to the Vagra.”
“Really?” Kyne asked, her lip curling into a sneer. “And what will he say when he learns that his precious Vagra has used his men not to kill the Strangers, but to bring them into the village? The Vagra isn’t the only one who has visions, you know. I see things as well. When you gave me the maiora at the pit, I saw a vision of the Strangers bringing death to the Vagri.”
“So that was real?” Po said. “I thought you were making that up to get the Sisters on your side.”
Kyne gave Po a poisonous look. “It was real. And it’s still coming for us. What Kiva’s doing is only making it worse. Xendr needs to hear about it. We can still prevent it from happening.”
Finally, Po had agreed to bring her—but not before leaving a sign for Kiva, an arrow placed on the ground, the chiseled, bloodstained head pointing in the direction that Kyne was forcing him to take her. Pointing in the direction of the Forsaken camp.
Now, as they crested the last hill and came in view of the Forsaken camp, Kyne drew in a sharp breath.
The camp itself was not much to look at. Nestled into a low place on the grasslands, it was dominated on its far end by a single hut, where Xendr Chathe lived. Closer to where Po and Kyne stood were dozens of small tents made of woven grass. This was where the Forsaken slept, one to a tent. To someone who’d heard stories about the Forsaken camp her entire life, like Kyne, the sight must have been a disappointment.
No, if Kyne was gasping at her first sight of where the Forsaken lived, Po guessed it wasn’t the camp itself that shocked her. It was the chaos that reigned there.
Just beyond the tents, a group of Forsaken clustered in a circle, roaring at the top of their lungs.
“What are they doing?” Kyne asked.
“Watching a sparring match. The Forsaken haven’t been in any battles for the past ten seasons. So they fight to keep their skills up.”
As they came close, the mob parted and two men came bursting out. Po and Kyne leapt back as the two men flew past them, one staggering back on his heels, the other lunging forward with fists clenched. The staggering man had a knife in one hand; when he’d regained his footing he made a wild swipe in the air. But the other man ducked, then struck his opponent’s wrist with the flat of his hand. The knife fell into the grass. Then, the man who’d knocked the knife away continued his attack, knocking his opponent down with a kick to the chest. He dove on top of him and punched him in the head with his fists, over and over again until the crowd rushed in and pulled him away.
Po and Kyne walked on as some of the men dragged the loser’s limp body away and tried to sit him up, slap him back to consciousness.
“Have you ever done that?” Kyne asked. She looked at his face. “Is that what happened to your cheek?”
She reached toward the gash on Po’s face, but he jerked his head back and looked away. The gash had been given to him on his first night—all new Forsaken were required to win a fight before they’d be let in the camp. His first fight had lasted only ten seconds, and the man who’d subdued him—a huge beast of a warrior with scars notched all the way up and down his arms—had marked Po’s face with a dagger to celebrate his win. That night, Po slept alone on the plain, shivering and crying and wishing that he could go back to the village.
But he didn’t. The next day he returned to the Forsaken camp and fought again—only this time, he kept running away from his opponent until the man got exhausted and showed Po his back. Then Po dove on him, wrapped his arms around the man’s neck, and squeezed until he fell down, unconscious. Po was ashamed to have won in such a cowardly way. But when he pulled himself off the ground, his opponent still lying limp beneath him, the Forsaken men all slapped his back and congratulated him—and Po, in spite of himself, had smiled, pride blooming in his chest and making his whole body feel bigger.
“I’ve done it before,” Po said now. “Everyone in the camp has to.”
They moved past the crowd watching the sparring matches and into the Forsaken camp—and here they came upon another strange scene. Men were clustered around a rectangular structure that had purple-gray smoke pouring through the door and a hole in the roof. From time to time, they’d reach for a pipe, smoke it lazily, then set it down again, propping their elbows on the ground. Nearly half the camp seemed to be there.
“What’s going on here?” Kyne asked.
Po sighed and answered with a single word: “Maiora.” He didn’t offer any other explanation.
Xendr Chathe had been the one to discover maiora on a scouting party. But he couldn’t have anticipated how the substance, a downy, sticky white webbing that brought powerful hallucinations when ingested or smoked, would spread through the Forsaken camp like wildfire. The maiora now had enthusiasts, fanatics. The rectangular building on the edge of the camp was a maiora den; the building was usually so full that those who couldn’t fit inside clustered outside the door and smoked their pipes on mats set under the sky. The camp was now evenly split between those who thought the maiora should be forbidden—that it would make the Forsaken weak and vulnerable to attack—and those who thought that it was a link to a higher consciousness, to the Ancestors, that it could give each of them the power of the Sisters and the Vagra.
Kyne followed Po as he cut a path between the tents that steered wide of the maiora den. He stopped at the door to Xendr Chathe’s hut.
“Wait here,” he said in a low voice. “I’ll tell you when you can come in.”
Kyne’s eyes flashed. “But—”
“Just wait,” Po insisted. “In the village, the Sisters are in charge—but things are different here. There hasn’t been a girl in the camp for … well, for a long time. You can’t just walk into Xendr Chathe’s hut like it’s nothing. Wait here. I’ll tell you when to come in.”
Po waited for Kyne to nod her assent, then lifted the veil over the door and walked inside to speak with the leader of the Forsaken.