rose to his feet, light-headed.
“My lady?”
“That is all, Dominic,” she said, retrieving her goblet from the side table.
He backed a step and bowed his head. “Thank you, my lady.”
Dominic made his way across the thick carpet to the double doors. This time, when he laid his hand on the image of the compass-the same one emblazoned on the other side-he drew a long, slow breath. Cleared his head.
He knew two things now: That the Maker was known by his Order. And that Feyn was the voice of that Order. He was devout. He would follow. And Bliss would come in its wake.
“Ah, Dominic?”
“My lady?” he said, turning back.
She was standing behind her desk, a pillar of velvet, candlelight warming her ivory skin.
“You should know one thing before you leave.”
“Yes?”
She lowered herself into her chair, gaze riveted on him. “I will not betray my brother.”
Feyn stared at the heavy bronze doors long after the senate leader had left.
Long after she had drained the goblet dry in one long draw. Even as the hand descended on her shoulder.
As she knew it would.
She turned her head as Saric leaned down and kissed her gently. But not so gently that she didn’t feel the bruise on her cheek.
“You did well, my love.”
Her need for him swelled. To hear those words, as though they were the very blood he had given her. He’d been watching her the whole time. She had known about the small corridor beyond the curtained wall behind the desk since she was a child. Her own father, Vorrin, had instructed her to stand in the corridor on many state visits to observe negotiations through the years of her training for this very office.
“You were pleased?” she said.
“How beautifully… how effortlessly, you dominate him with talk of loyalty to the Maker.”
“Yes,” she said, gazing ahead of her, somehow wishing that the curtains were open, even to the night. She would see to that.
“And who is that Maker?”
“You are, my Lord.”
“That’s right. I’m impressed by your skill. Let those who come to ply you think you have played into their hands. And ply them instead.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, turning her cheek into his hand.
“You see? You’re a natural, my love. And one day, he will be of great use to us.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded, then sat on the edge of the desk, sliding the empty goblet away. “I have something I must talk to you about.”
“Yes?”
“The Mortals came into the city from the north.”
She blinked. “Then we will search north.”
He lifted his head and gazed past her. “It seems they can smell our blood.”
Smell it? Was it even possible? And then she remembered the way the Nomad, Roland, had drawn back and turned his head as though to lessen some reek. The way Rom had steeled himself when he had first come close.
“My Dark Bloods have a disadvantage in scouting. There was an incident at an outpost… one body missing among the charred remains. A child of mine taken, I assume, by the Mortals. Any information he gave them would be false-my children are carefully trained and utterly loyal. But that he could be taken at all concerns me.”
When Saric looked back down at her, his eyes flashed with a terrifying intensity that brought to mind his harshest rebuke.
“You will dispatch five hundred of your men to the north. Guards, dressed as vagrants. They will scour the wastelands and canyons for any sign of the Nomads. At first sighting they will report back. We must find them. Is this clear?”
“As you wish, brother.”
Saric stared at her for the space of several breaths. Then he lifted his hand and stroked the fading bruise on her cheek with his thumb.
“Call me your Maker when we are alone. It pleases me more.”
“As you wish, my Maker.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
JORDIN WAS UP EARLY by Nomadic standards. Early, and troubled.
Dawn had drifted to the valley hours ago, illuminating the foothills, spreading out along the valley floor. Sunlight dappled the water of the shallow river before spreading across the round tops of yurts and creeping up the great stair of the Bahar ruins against the eastern wall. If the sun held long enough, the marble steps would gleam white by noon. And if the sky remained cloudless through the afternoon, gold light would reach past the columns of the ancient basilica and illuminate the ancient stained glass with colorful fire.
The day was full of life.
But Jonathan was missing.
She never failed to find him somewhere-downriver, where he sometimes went to bathe, or with the horses, where he spent hours plaiting the mane and tail of his stallion, fixing them with the ornaments given to him in such abundance that he couldn’t possibly wear them all himself. Sometimes she found him in the foothills, carving, alone, or sleeping, having gone to the high knolls sometime during the wild revelry of the night before.
But this morning, he was nowhere to be found. Adah, who rose early to cook for him and Rom, had come to Jordin asking where he was. She’d gone looking in his small yurt at the center of camp, but there was no sign that he’d been there at all during the night. When she got to the pen she learned that his horse was gone.
So then where? If she could not locate him soon, she would have to tell Rom, which would cast a shadow on her role as his protector. It was one thing for the others not to know his whereabouts, but not her.
She strode along the edge of the western cliff, north of the camp, high above the foothills. Drawing a slow breath, she willed back the first fingers of panic and forced herself to
Jonathan had been silent since their return from Byzantium, the day before yesterday. She knew he was haunted by the doomed girl, Kaya. And by the Corpses they’d seen outside the city. One look in his eyes and she knew he was deeply troubled in ways that no one-perhaps not even Jordin herself-could understand. He’d worn loneliness like a mantle since their return.
Jordin jogged along the cliff edge, fighting back fear-an emotion unusual to her in the years of her Mortality, but an easily recalled nightmare from her years as a Corpse. She had feared abandonment most of her life, until the day she met Jonathan. Now the thing she feared most was simply living without him.
She scanned the valley north to south from the horse pen on the northernmost edge of camp. Along the river to the broadening valley, out toward the main river which ran all the way from the wilderness to the western coast, out to sea.
She was about to head back to the south side when she saw the dark spot askance through the sunlight, far south, riding up the distant wash. She shielded her eyes from the glare of the sun and squinted to focus.
A rider. A mile out, traveling at a walk as though having covered hours of terrain. Then she recognized the height and color of the dun horse, the posture of the rider…
Jonathan.
She stood fixed for a full second, heart hammering in her ears. Her first thought was that he was safe. Thank
