trouble-other than his annoyance-in retrieving him.
Until they’d found Maro’s horse five miles south of the valley, dead, covered in the new scent of death they’d tracked here.
He would have returned for more fighters but he couldn’t afford to lose the new scent-or the chance to learn if the rumored new death was real. With Jonathan’s inauguration days away they couldn’t afford to take chances.
Beyond that, Roland felt a personal responsibility for the hotheaded zealot. If they did salvage his cousin’s life, Roland would personally see that he spent the rest of his days painfully aware of his folly.
“We kill the rest,” Roland said.
“How?”
“I’ll know once I’m inside.”
“You mean ‘we.’ Once
“No, Michael. Not ‘we.’ ”
Michael was in her prime as a fighter, vastly skilled in the blade and bow arts. Last year he’d watched her take on four men at the games and bring each to his knees-three with nicks from her blade just deep enough along their throats to remove any vestige of doubt as to her dominance and precision.
He’d promoted her to his second then, not because she was his sister and bore the same ancient blood of the rulers, but because she could not be matched in battle. And every one of them knew that battle would come.
She turned hazel eyes to him. They had been brown before her Mortality, as had his. Mortals couldn’t smell the emotions and natures of other Mortals-but if he could, Roland was sure, the aroma of loyalty would be seeping from her every pore. She would die for him-not as her brother, but as her prince-as all Nomads had sworn to do.
Which was why he must not give her the opportunity.
“May I ask why?”
“Because I need you to burn that shack to the ground if I fail.”
“Rom is the leader of the Mortals. Over the Keepers and Nomads both.”
He leveled his gaze at her. “Rom’s strong and we serve him, but we serve Jonathan and our people first. Never forget that. One of us must live.”
“Then let me go in first,” she said.
He had to fight the quirk of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “When has any Nomad leader not been the first one in? No. I go first. Alone.”
She acquiesced with a tilt of her head. “My prince.”
“Put up your hood. When I go in, slit the throats of all their horses except one. If things go wrong, return to Rom, give him a full report and lead our people. Am I clear?”
Her jaw was as stiff as her nod.
Roland pulled the horse round and started down the steep embankment, acutely aware of Michael a horse- length behind him.
It was true, what he’d said. The only thought that mattered now was whether they lived or died trying to preserve the life Jonathan had given all Mortals. Jonathan was nine days from his inauguration. And then everything would change.
It was also true that his thoughts were far more complex than he cared to voice, even to Michael.
For twelve years he’d led the Nomads-since the death of his and Michael’s father. He had led them in their rebellion against the Order, living in the wilderness of Europa, north of Byzantium, that city once called Rome in the age of Chaos centuries before.
His people had tenaciously clung to resistance out of a fear of being controlled by the statutes of state religion-a religion that still claimed vast casualties among the Nomads as most caved in to the greater fear of Order’s Maker. And of rules with eternal consequences.
Those Nomads who remained true were the purest of humanity, a fiercely independent people who carried their fighting and survival skills like a badge of unsurpassed honor. They kept to themselves, vagabonds with a long heritage of carving out harsh livings in the hinterlands, dreaming of a day when they would overthrow Order.
Two years after Roland had become ruling prince, word had come that a child once known to them-briefly sheltered among them as a baby-had been confirmed rightful heir to the Sovereign throne. His name was Jonathan.
Jonathan, the prince of life. He had returned to them with Rom Sebastian and the warrior Triphon-two men altered by a vial of blood obtained by the ancient sect of Keepers in anticipation of the day when Jonathan’s blood would ignite a new kingdom.
Mortals, they called themselves.
Roland had offered his full support. Not because he necessarily believed in the sayings about the boy or the Keepers’ history of friendship with the Nomads, but because any rebel who stood against Order was a friend. And so he had welcomed the Mortals and taught them the Nomadic ways of survival and fighting.
Rom Sebastian demonstrated superior skills as a leader. He spoke with strange fire about new emotions unlocked by the blood he’d taken, and of a coming age when all would taste the life he had tasted.
And then the day had come when, five years later, the boy’s blood had changed. The old man who had come with Rom-the last surviving member of the Keepers-had proclaimed it ready to bring others to life. The world of Nomads was in an uproar. Could it be? To be certain his people were not being deceived, Roland had accepted the boy’s blood himself.
That day, injected with a stent directly from Jonathan’s vein, his world had forever changed. Life had come like a tidal wave, sweeping away a death he did not know existed. For the first time he’d felt the arcane emotions of joy and rapture and love. He had raged through camp, delirious. He’d also found the darker emotions-jealousy, sorrow, ambition-and wept as he never had, clawing at his face and cursing his very existence. Whatever challenges this mix of emotions brought, they made him feel utterly beautiful and deplorable in ways he had never fathomed.
Teeming with new, uncaged life, Roland had called for all Nomads to take Jonathan’s blood and serve him in a new mission as the last hope for a dead world. Over the next weeks and months, roughly nine hundred Nomads came to life. In subsequent years, another three hundred common Corpses joined them, each approved by council quorum, before the council called for a moratorium until the full maturing of Jonathan’s blood.
Within a year the first Mortals born of Jonathan’s blood began to note new changes to their senses. They could smell the faintest scents with greater sensitivity than animals. They could perceive swift motion in such detail, all at once, so that the world seemed to slow about them, giving them great advantage in combat. Their senses of touch, taste, and hearing were all heightened-and continued to heighten-to the point of near insatiability.
But perhaps the greatest physical change for any Mortal was the promise of extended life. When the alchemists among them-most notably the old Keeper himself-first noted the change to their metabolism, he calculated a new minimal Mortal lifetime of hundreds of years.
They were a new race, fully deserving of the name
A new era was upon them. Nothing else mattered.
But today there was Maro’s foolishness and this new scent to contend with, this death emanating from the cantina on the ancient riverbed not two hundred paces ahead.
Roland and Michael walked their horses abreast of one another, eyes fixed, arms relaxed. The odor was by now so repulsive it was all he could do not to cover his nose.
“Break right, to the back,” Roland said. “Slowly. All the horses but one. And listen for me.”
“I refuse to lose my prince today, brother.”
“Your prince will live a thousand years.”
“What if this is more than you bargained for?”
“If it is, Rom will need to know. Listen for me. Do as I ask. Go.”
She pressed her horse forward, cutting across his path, angling toward the back of the cantina.
The wood structure was little better than a shack, hastily and poorly built. Roland could see gaps between the wallboards even from here. He drew the hood over his head as the wind kicked up, sending dusty eddies up from the stallion’s hooves. Mortals who rode beyond their home in the Seyala Valley weren’t always immediately recognized by Corpses who didn’t know to look for the unique hazel of their eyes. But Roland sensed that whoever
