“Three’s mercy,” Larochette breathed. “What are those things?”

  “If they bleed, they can die,” Faust assured her.

  “Did you see them bleed? I didn’t.” She drew paired blades with a weary sigh.

  “What should we do?” Amber looked like he wanted to run.

  “Don’t run,” Amir suggested. “I hazard the creatures are attracted to motion. Like tics in the grass.”

  “How do you know?” Jade sounded accusing.

  Another of their retinue made a break for it, taking a slightly easterly path, and moments later the sand swallowed him and his camel. Amir drew his sword, pointing with it. “There. That’s how.” He visored his eyes again. Is that the glint of metal there? The tip of a spike, perhaps, or some other ancient device glinted from below the earth. It was, near as Amir could tell, aligned with the spire above and the entrance of the ancient structure. Perhaps there were more beneath the earth?

  Faust looked to the ground beneath him. “So, we shouldn’t move?”

  “Oh, we’ll move all right.” Amir felt perplexed. “How will we slay the beasts if they don’t come for us?”

  Larochette gave him a stare harder than he felt he deserved. “Your plan is to try getting eaten?”

  “The sun’s taken his mind,” Jade whispered. “It happens, even to the strongest.”

  Strongest, hey? Amir liked the sound of that. “I will lead. Faust, behind. Then the merchants, and⁠—”

  “I’m staying here,” Amber declared.

  “Then you’ll die,” Amir said peaceably enough. “Your call.” He turned and set off toward the glinting spire. He sensed Faust behind him, good, reliable Faust who’d been at his back a hundred times before. Larochette, encouraging in her way, then the begrudging resignation of Amber and Jade. All’s well. We are together. Amir stepped with confidence across the sand. A man at arms raced toward them from the ancient structure, then screamed as the sand erupted, and something seized his legs. He went down, armour and all, flailing with it. He tried using his shield as a club, sword lost to the depths, before something with pincers like scythes took his arm.

  Then he was gone. Nothing left but bloody sand, and a shield with an arm still attached. No matter. Amir changed course, gravitating toward the shield. He crouched, examining the churned sand. Aside from the blood, there was little to show a tunnel was here. Amir collected the shield, extracted the still-warm arm, dropped that to the ground, and kept on toward the metal glint.

  “Souvenirs?” Larochette sounded angry.

  “You’ve your two blades,” Amir countered. “Faust, his hammer. I have but a slender slip of metal. Against armoured chitin, I think I need something else.”

  “Fair.” Faust scanned the sands about them. “Your plan, Amir?”

  “I saw a glint.”

  “I see it too.” Jade bit her lip, realising she was agreeing with a crazy person.

  “I believe that is where the Justiciar is. We should help her get clear of the denizens of the deep, then make all haste for the ancient temple. I feel if it were active but recently, there will be a low chance of infestation.”

  Jade huffed. “I don’t want to go⁠—”

  The ground beneath her erupted, a clawed horror like a spider dog bursting forth. Amir felt the pattern come over him, dropping like a light rain on his face. Not chosen by him, but as if it chose for him. He lunged forward, feet light on the sand, eyes half-closed, shield forward. Was it his imagination or did the rim glimmer gold? His blade held high. Shield, dropping down. A crack, the ecstasy of the pattern within him like a prayer answered, as the shield sundered chitin as if it were kindling. His sword, answering the siren’s shriek of death, dealt six swift slices and dismembered the creature.

  He spun, shield in guard, sword ready, blade smoking, a glimmer of red along the edge.

  Silence.

  “Fuck me,” Faust said.

  “Fuck me sideways,” Larochette countered.

  Amber was google-eyed, and Jade’s jaw looked to be going below her knees. Amir swayed a little, the embrace of the Three’s Storm making his teeth itch. He’d only had it for a second, just a tiny moment of time narrower than the gap between a crone’s teeth, but he’d had it. Amir cackled. The sound broke free, a storm of noise and delight he scarce recognised. He capered a jig, raised his arms—shield and sword both—to the heavens, and yelled, “Yes!”

  The ground beneath him surged, and because he was playing the goat and not paying attention, he stumbled. The sword tumbled free, Three knows where that went, and something bit his leg. It wasn’t the gentle nuzzle of a rabid dog, instead delivering the kind of savage pain Amir imagined childbirth to be like. He screamed, lost his footing, and went down. Sand was in his eyes, and he had no balance, no damn ground to balance on, and here he was, the first of his friends to embrace the Storm, but also the first to die. Cophine’s sweet smile, but this was a bitter truth, and it hurt more than his leg.

  Someone grabbed his jerkin and pulled. He emerged into the light, scrabbling sand from his eyes. There, Faust. The giant had him. Beside, Larochette, her blades snick-snicking by his leg, close enough to leave a kiss of air, and he screamed as the weight left him, perhaps with pain, release, or both. It was a complicated time. Faust set him on his feet. “Can you stand, man?”

  “I can stand, brother.” Amir spat sand. Faust released him, at which point he proved himself a liar and toppled to the desert floor. He came eye-to-maybe-that’s-an-eye with the spider dog’s head that Larochette severed. It was a fearsome beast, made more despicable by Amir’s blood coating its maw.

  Faust hauled him back upright. “You’re not doing a good job of standing.”

  “My leg hurts like⁠—”

  “Death hurts more,” Larochette breezed. “Get a grip.”

  “I believe death is the absence of pain, but I take your point.” Amir swayed, but under Faust’s watchful gaze he kept his feet. “Perhaps a sit down?”

  Jade screamed as a harsh boom cracked the air, and the merchant’s sister pointed. Amir whirled with less grace than he’d had moments earlier. The glittering silver spike in the ground was alive with the actinic blue of chained lightning. There was another boom, then a third. The air felt charged, and Amir felt all the hair on his body stand upright. A spider-dog crawled from the earth but a few metres distant and was turned into a scorch mark and drifting ash by an electric release from the ground spike.

  Amir glanced to his leg, ignoring the noise and calamity coming from Jade, the insistent by the gods from Larochette, and the aghast expression of Faust. They could all see what he knew to be true: in moments the ancient device in the ground would erupt and kill them all. Thunder roiled above, clouds filling a once-clear sky in moments. He considered his leg, the bleeding mess that made a pattern near impossible, and took a moment to breathe.

  The High Justiciar is below. The lightning above is the Storm’s will. The Storm is mightier than any ancient device. The trouble comes from the sky, not below.

  Amir fumbled through his memory, seeking a pattern, anything, a brief moment where the shield he still held could be defence against the gods. The lightning glimmered above, a crackle, a torrent, and then he felt the Storm within him answer. He placed but the toes of his mauled leg down, perhaps a third of his weight on that injured limb, the rest as he leaned back. He swept the shield above, the movement he held in his mind made perfect, as he willed his tired body to do what it knew must be done.

  The lightning struck.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The dawn was cold here. Morgan was used to how the cold clung to the walls of her keep, but Ravenswall was protected by warm sea winds despite how far south it was. Here, though? There was no sea breeze. Just the woods, holding the chill right to the ground, protecting the earth from any stray beam of sunlight.

  “It’s brisk, but that’s how a morning should start,” Heser the Cheg proclaimed. “Gets the blood pumping.”

  “It is too cold. Make a fire.” Pakhet lay in a giant curl, tail to nose.

  “There’s a fire right here.” Heser fussed with a pot of coffee over a lick of flame.

  “That is not a fire. If it dreamed big, if its parents believed in it all the way, it still wouldn’t be a blaze.”

  Morgan hid her smile by looking down. The leaf-covered loam beneath her feet was soft and smelled earthy, in a good way. The air here was clean, not plagued by the soot of Ravenswall’s industry. No smell of sea or salt touched her clothes. It wasn’t so bad, perhaps, if they’d had a decent fire.

  Also, none of Ravenswall’s people were about to befoul her fledgling magic. The spark inside her was weak. It couldn’t ever become a flame, not least of which because she had no parents left to believe in her. Heser believed in her though, and she felt that was enough for the morning. Try, Queen Morgan. Try, because your people need you. She reached a tentative finger to the soil. First, a circle. A small one, because she wasn’t sure whether she was doing this right, but she felt it was right. Within the circle, an X for fuel, and vertical lines for the fire. She drew these slowly, carefully, feeling the tip of her finger heat with each one.

  Ritualism wasn’t common. It was a slow magic, uninspiring to some, because it took the time and patience one only mastered while sitting throne in a kingdom wrestled from sycophants when her father died too early. But from small beginnings, great things. Heser’s fire hissed, then surged. He leaned away from it, not jumping or yelping, but measured. A man used to calamity, and an upstart fire was none such in the skein of his life. He eyed her over a fire now a half a metre high. “That was you?”

  “It was.”

  “I like her.”

  “It will burn out too soon, and we won’t have coffee.” The man sighed, a gentle motion full of patience and strength. “I’d best get more wood.”

  “I like you too.”

  “I will get it.” Morgan stood, brushed herself down, and pulled her cloak a little tighter. “I could use a walk.”

  “Perhaps we could both use a walk.”

  “Perhaps you should hurry. The fire will burn down soon.”

  Morgan strode past the fire, gave the giant, grey-striped tiger a pat between her ears, then set out into the trees. Heser was at her side, falling in place, comfortable there, effortless, easy as her shadow. They picked their way through trees, gathering fallen sticks aged enough to hold the flame. Heser had taught her how. So many simple things she hadn’t known how to do, like what wood would burn, or how to break ice on a pond and set a line for fish. Simple things from a life she probably didn’t want, because her father hadn’t raised a peasant girl.

  Yet, doing these things with Heser… They filled a gap.

  “We have enough.” He spoke after minutes or hours, Morgan wasn’t sure. Minutes, it must be, yet the time passed easily between them.

  It cannot be. But it was, and there was no one here to tell her what was right for the Raven Queen. “Do we? Surely a few more logs.” She adjusted her own load, an armful and more.

  He eyed her collection of sticks, awkwardly carried, and withheld comment on the matter. They paced through the trees some more, no longer gathering wood. We’re gathering time. Morgan glanced up, the sun trying its best to make it through the leaves, sifting a meagre, green-filled light to them. His hand found her arm, other across her mouth, lips to her ear. “Quiet.”

  She nodded, surprised he’d managed to put his load down without sound, let alone get to her side without the snapping of a twig. She listened, holding herself still as the trunks about her. I hear it. To the west, a clink of old metal. A hushed whisper of shifting feet. Heser took the branches from her arms, placing them with exquisite care on the ground. They padded to a fallen trunk, crouching behind it.

  Minutes passed. The sound drew nearer. Morgan saw movement through the trees. She caught the shape of a man dappled in shadow. Another one beside the first. But something was wrong with their gait. They didn’t walk like men trying to make no noise, but they were voiceless all the same. They shambled, and although the one closest to her held sword and board, they were loosely clasped, the weapon and shield hanging low.

  She understood when the shambler turned to face her. Sunken flesh, grey and mottled. Eyes of milky white, beset with the verdigris of time. These things were risen, foes from beyond the grave. How did you kill a thing already dead? It pains me to admit, but Evanne would be handy about now. Morgan wondered if her own weak magic could undo the tether binding these creatures here. Some necromancy was at play. She had some fledgling skill with the method and madness of binding. She narrowed her eyes, focusing, and almost fell back as Heser stood, sword in hand. “My queen. Run.”

  “Don’t be a fool.” She stood, the game now up. The creatures saw them. There was no rush, but they pivoted to the queen and her guardsman, iron to their lodestone. “You can’t kill a man who’s dead already.”

  Heser frowned, examining his sword. It was well-made, as all blades given to her guard were. Manufactured by the Feybrind, craftsmen without peer, who had forged them to part humans from their souls. He growled. “I’d like to give it a try.”

  “If it makes you happy.” She crossed her arms.

  He looked to her, his sword, to her, then to the creature hunching toward them. A grunt, and he vaulted the log. The guardsman roared, charged, and swung. The dead man didn’t raise his shield to block, just took the blow centre mass, staggered, spun, then righted itself. It lifted its own sword and gave a vicious slash. Heser took the swing on the edge of his steel, kicked the things legs from under it, and retreated.

  A few moments, and he was by her side. “It appears tricky to kill those already dead.”

  “Hmm.” Morgan’s tone was noncommittal.

  Sensing a trap, Heser straightened. “I’ve another thought.”

  “Be quick about it.” But he was gone already, vaulting the log once more—she did love to watch him work—and charging the creature again. He lunged past it this time, his blade hungering for its neck. There was a wet pop as blade parted flesh, and its head spun into the air, hit the ground, and rolled downslope.

  The creature didn’t slow—not that it moved fast in the first place. It turned to ‘face’ Heser and swung again. He removed its arm with the sword, at which point it came for him with the shield. Another roar, a slash, and shield and rotted arm hit the ground.

  The now armless, headless corpse lunged, trying to chest-barge him. Heser the Cheg sidestepped easily, then loped back to the safety of the log. “Some foul magic animates their very bones.”

  “Hmm.” Morgan turned back toward their camp. “Should we hurry? I think we must find Evanne.”

  “To see if she’s alright?”

  “To see if she can save us.” The words didn’t taste as bitter as Morgan expected. “She has some skill with the weaving of the dead.”

  “Hmm.” It was Heser’s turn to look at her as if playing poker.

  “I know that tone.”

  “There was no tone.” But a smile crept into his voice. “Come, my queen. We must get you to safety.”

  There would be no fire. But perhaps a run would get the blood pumping all the same.

  This is too much running.

  Morgan panted, breath hot and sharp in her throat, pulse knocking away right alongside. Her time on the throne hadn’t given her the fitness of a warrior, nor that of a giant tiger. Pakhet bounded ahead, returning often, only to leave again after a “Hurry” or “How did your species survive so long” tossed over the shoulder. The dead who pursued them weren’t in a rush, but they’d swelled in number. Bodies of the restless dead, but mindless, without soul or cause other than what they were given. Morgan saw no necromancer, felt no magic, and yet the dead continued on.

  So, they ran. And despite the dead not being in a hurry, it felt like those with souls still inside them made no ground. The monsters had no need to rest, to get their bearings, or to find higher ground. They were drawn to Morgan, Heser, and Pakhet wherever they went. Heser tried to lead them away, despite Morgan feeling her heart trip at the idea, a hard No! leaving her lips, but it didn’t matter. The creatures split up, a mass following him, the remainder on Morgan.

  They thought of that trick already.

  Who was ‘they’, though? Morgan felt the answer was out of reach. They’d put the vampire to sun and stake, freed a village, and left no enemies in their wake. They’d overthrown shaman, knocked aside warlords, and helped all they came across. Yet someone still hungered for them.

  I’d bet Evanne’s done something. I can’t be the only one she pisses off.

  “Stop woolgathering!” Heser’s tone was short of a bark, but not by much.

  Morgan felt her own retort, crushed it down. His face was a mask of worry, his eyes wide, always looking to her, past her, beyond her. He wasn’t coddling her. The man was terrified. For me. She caught up with him, put a steading hand on his arm. “Heser the Cheg, we have a few moments.”

  “And what if we twist an ankle? What if the cat falls in a hole? What if⁠—”

  “I will not fall in a hole.” Pakhet perched atop a rock, the magical, worthless armour Evanne was so concerned about lashed to her back. “I am very good at not falling over. It’s the tail, you see. It helps me⁠—”

  “I hear you, Heser.” Morgan left her hand on his arm. “You have taken care of me for so very long. You have ever been at my side.”

  “My queen.” His voice was rough.

  “I have not deserved the gifts I have been given.” She straightened, turned to look back, and frowned. Coming through the trees, hundreds of shapes. Shambling, soundless, tireless. “I do not deserve you.”

  “Touching as this is, I think⁠—”