She rose to her knees and wriggled free of her jacket, aided as the guards pulled it backward. She felt the fabric scratch the still-searing skin as she got her right arm free. Then the warm air stung the angry raised mark. Meran stood on the platform above, a hand extended to her. Talis clasped it, and Meran lifted her up as easily as if she were a child, settling Talis down beside her.
There was a pulse beneath Dug’s jaw, steady and strong. She exhaled with relief, gripped his face in her hands and raised it up to look at his injuries. His skin was hot, as if with fever, but dry, and his lips were chapped. The blood that ran across them was from his nose, and someone had neatly sliced each of his eyebrows to add to his discomfort.
As Meran untied the bindings at his ankles, Talis became aware of the small bubble of quiet that had surrounded them. No one had tromped up the stairs to the platform to arrest them. Their efforts had gone unchallenged since they gained the raised stage. A prickle started across her shoulders. Almost afraid to look, she set her jaw and turned to the crowd.
The guards below were now using their energy to hold the crowd back, bracing with their arms to keep a clear space in front of the platform. Their upturned faces glowed with adoration, mouths open in wonder, their eyes on Talis.
More specifically: on her arm. On the brand of Onaya Bone.
One of the guards spoke. “We received word from the Temple of the Feathered Stone, from the high priestess.” Her voice was strained as she struggled to force back a man who was attempting to stretch an arm, palm up, toward Talis.
The beseeching hand retracted, and the man tried to duck under the guard’s arm and rush the platform. The guard grabbed him by the collar of his linen shirt and spun him back into the crowd, where he tumbled to the ground amid the press of feet.
Talis looked across the waves of faces. Their eyes were bright, eager. They seethed not with bloodlust—well, a bit of bloodlust—but instead they looked triumphant, enraptured. And they were watching her.
“Illiya said we were coming to get him?” Talis had kept Dug’s presence to herself, expecting him to stay aboard Wind Sabre and remain a non-issue.
“The high priestess told us you were coming to cast the deicidal invaders out of the skies. You may take the man, Hakesha.”
Hells, she was in it. ‘Hakesha’ was a particularly weighty title bestowed upon loads of legendary Bone warriors, all of whom had died very illustrative and painful deaths. What an incredible honor to have such a target painted on her back.
Meran finished untying Dug’s wrists, and he slumped forward. Talis caught him across one shoulder.
“Time to get off this rock,” she said to Meran.
The woman’s bright blue eyes flashed with comprehension but also a challenge. Talis’s will might be influencing Meran through the ring, but it was plain that Meran had her own desires and motivations lurking beneath the surface.
Onaya Bone could deal with her. It truly was time to get a move on.
Talis and Meran half-dragged Dug into the crowd, which parted in reverence, opening a straight line for the city gate leading back to the docks and the sanity of Talis’s ship.
The guard spoke again. “We will wash his offenses from our records here, Hakesha. But other islands may still attempt to carry out his sentence. The scars cannot be washed clean.”
Talis stopped to catch an agonizing breath. Dug’s weight was compressing her posture, making him feel as large as a Breaker man. She nodded and accepted her jacket back from the woman. “I understand,” she said.
Meran shifted, putting all of Dug’s weight onto Talis’s shoulder. Talis’s leg buckled and she nearly went down. The guard stepped in, saving Talis from the scream of pain that she’d held back only by biting down hard on her lip. She backed up a few steps, holding her side with the opposite arm and glared at Meran through the white flashes in her vision.
Reaching out, Meran placed a hand on each of Dug’s shoulder blades. A murmur started in the crowd, rippling outward. Then an eerie hush, as the woman’s hands glowed blue. The crisscrossing lines of Dug’s scars and the blood seeping from his wounds glowed to match. The lines of the veins beneath his skin were dark against the illumination that filled his torso.
When the light faded and Meran lowered her arms, Dug’s back was a smooth, flawless expanse of dark skin over toned muscles. The tattoo on his arm, once deliberately ruined, was reformed, looking as though it had been created with more skill than it originally had.
The silence lasted another pair of heartbeats. Then it was overtaken by a roar. Amazement and awe surged through the crowd, and the press of bodies came at them, fervor renewed. Meran ducked under Dug’s other arm again, and the guards formed a wedge to escort them across the wide expanse of frenzied Bone desperately seeking Meran’s benediction. Words holier than ‘Hakesha’ rose up from the crowd and became a disjointed chant, as arms reached out like tentacles, catching on Talis’s hair and the loose fabric of Meran’s clothes.
The crowd pressed against them from all sides and Dug began to stir. He saw the guard first and struggled against her support. Talis tried to move to calm him, but was jostled off balance and ended up knocking her forehead against Dug’s nose. That got his attention, anyway. He recognized her, his eyes were clear, and he shifted his weight to support himself. The guard looked
