After the third, she jerked, taking her weight from Fess’s arms to sit on her own. “Where are we?”
“Four outposts east of yours, Brekana,” Toria said.
Brekana smiled, wolfish, beneath her veil. “So you’ve decided to call me by my name.” Her hands shifted. “But you’ve taken my weapons.”
Toria nodded. “I thought it best, since you tried to kill me.”
She inched closer, but Lelwin stood and moved back. “What do you want?”
“The same thing as you, to fight those that come from the Darkwater,” Toria said.
Brekana laughed. “You think that’s what I want? So old and so ignorant. I don’t want to just fight, I want to bathe in the blood of men until I can paint the world with it.”
Toria had expected no less. “All men? What of Fess or Mark or Rory?”
“Boys,” Brekana said. “It would be a mercy to kill them before time and opportunity turn them into men.”
There would be no reasoning with Brekana, and every moment they allowed her personality ascendancy, Lelwin suffered. “What happened last night?” Toria asked.
But Lelwin shook her head. “If you want knowledge, Toria Deel, you must be prepared to pay for it.”
Toria took a step closer, but Lelwin retreated, maintaining their distance. “Every moment you are free is by my sufferance, Brekana.”
“You let them have me,” Brekana snarled. “They forced themselves on me, and you gave me useless mind tricks. When I close my eyes, I can hear them. I can smell them.” She lifted her hands toward her veil. “The men of the forest are coming for you, Toria Deel, as they did for me. I would rather return Lelwin to you than help you.”
Brekana paused, her smile of triumph still baring her teeth.
“Now, Fess.”
Brekana lifted her hands to remove her veil, but Fess closed the distance, moving so quickly from one moment to the next that he seemed to disappear then reappear at Brekana’s side, his hands holding hers, keeping her veiled and her vault open.
She flailed, kicking, working to scratch or bite him, but he dodged, keeping her at bay. “Hurry, Toria Deel,” he said.
She ran, her hands extended as Brekana threw her head back and forth, working to shed the strips of cloth that bound her eyes. Toria reached out, her hand covering Brekana’s as Fess held it still. The world disappeared as she fell into the open vault that defined Brekana’s personality.
Memories of nights filled with darkness and blood flooded through her. She hunted by the dimmest light of the moon, killing the unsuspecting from the forest, reveling in their surprise and death as they died, pierced by arrows they never saw.
Light flared in Toria’s vision, and the sun canted wildly until she hit the ground, retching.
A few feet away from her, Lelwin sobbed softly, her brown hair once more unbound. Fess stood, holding the ruins of the veil he’d used to open her vault.
“My apologies, Toria Deel,” he said. “Her kicks had been aimed at me, and I failed to prevent her from striking at you.”
Toria clutched at her stomach, fighting the urge to vomit. Gingerly, she waved his concerns away with one hand. “It’s alright.”
She replayed Brekana’s most recent hunt in her mind, counting, and found herself echoing Timbriend’s disbelief. She worked to sit up, then fumbled through her cloak for a shard of diamond wrapped in cloth. “I have to contact Rymark.” She looked at Fess. “The inner cordon has been wiped out, and the timing is beyond coincidence.”
Chapter 44
We traveled to the farm where Gehata had hidden the witnesses. It was four days away—far enough to keep them secluded, but close enough for him to visit if he needed additional information. Mirren filled the journey’s silences with questions about the Vigil. Custos would answer first, drawing on the information he’d gleaned from the Vigil library. Mirren would pause, her gaze fixed on a spot somewhere just over the top of her horse’s head, before asking me the same question.
After two days of travel, during which she endured my confessions of ignorance more than half the time, she turned to me wearing an expression of disbelief. “You don’t really know much.”
I glanced at Gael, but she showed no inclination to come to my defense. “I’ve been a little busy for the traditional apprenticeship.”
“That’s one possibility,” Bolt muttered.
My answer didn’t seem to satisfy her. “The implications of domere are beyond imagining. How did you survive?”
I winced, certain there was no way Bolt would let a question like that pass without comment. I wasn’t disappointed.
“Luck,” he said. “Lots of it.”
Rory gaped at him. “Luck is a roll of fives a few times in a row. This is divine intervention, yah?”
“You and your companions are strange to me, Lord Dura,” Mirren said. “Do they jest?”
I shrugged. “They think so.”
On the fourth day, we rode through fields filled with orchards and well-tended vegetable gardens, where we saw men and women of the church watching over those whose penance mandated labor and seclusion.
“I need to delve the witnesses to the attack on Chora,” I said, “but I think I’m starting to understand what’s happening.”
Bolt shook his head in disgust. “But you’re not going to tell us just yet, of course.”
From Gehata’s mind I knew what the witnesses looked like, but dozens, even hundreds of people worked the fields. “I hadn’t counted on so many,” I said as our horses plodded through an orchard of orange trees heavy with fruit.
We came to the top of a gentle rise, the walled quarters of the farm still five hundred paces distant. Rory turned his horse, searching, his gaze clear and intent. “There,” he said, pointing to four people near the southern wall.
“Your eyes must be better than mine,” Bolt said. “What makes you think that’s them?”
“They’re
