“We all bend the knee to someone or something greater than us. To achieve greatness, you have to surrender something of yourself. To a cause. To a passion. To a person.” Grey’s eyes narrowed. “This someone can change things in Lothon. Even Qoth.”
“I’m not banished from Qoth.” Darkness roiled in him. Memories swelled. He relived the ease at which he’d plunged the dagger into Taim’s chest. No hesitation, complete confidence in his dedication to her. “I won my trial on the Sands of Justice. I killed my accuser.”
“And yet you’re here.” Grey took a final puff on his blackroot cigar before dropping it on the ground and stamping it out with his foot. “Think on it.”
“I will,” Ōbhin answered even as his eyes found Avena again.
What sort of path will the Brotherhood have me walk next? One that could let me return to the mountains? His eyes flicked to the Border Fangs. Not his mountains. Not his land. Can any road lead me to Qoth?
Chapter Six
The sun sank lower as Ōbhin dwelled on Grey’s offer counterbalanced with the disgust of Avena’s words. When he’d met Grey in a low tavern in Guirreu, Ondere’s capital, drunk on cheap brandy, he’d latched onto anything that would help him escape the deep, foul rut he’d fallen into. Half a world from home, the one thing he cared about lost to another man’s bed, he’d found the prospect of being useful appealing.
What did he care about such a dirty path? He couldn’t be stained worse.
I fled from killing one man only to kill more. The bloodfire was only the most recent. The last two years had become a hazy blur. There were times he felt divorced from his body. A specter haunting a stumbling automaton, one of those jewelchine toys of the rich that could stumble around the room poorly mimicking a man. He ate because he had to. Killed because he had to. Only Carstin had cared. Only Carstin had pried. He’d coaxed a smile here, a chuckle there.
A reminder of what it meant to live.
There’s no returning to Qoth. Here I stay, but . . . Carstin lay butchered because Ōbhin hadn’t cared. When the bandits attacked, Ōbhin hadn’t bothered to rush in at full speed. Why try? Now he felt awakened. Alive.
While his friend lay dying.
His gaze drifted to Avena. She no longer looked at him but studied the field, the setting sun glinting through the sprouting grass. She had a furrowed brow. The memory of the watching eyes stirred in him. It was probably just some beast, a fox, perhaps, or a capybara slinking through the grass. Did they have wolverines here?
He drifted to her as she raised a hand to shield herself against the setting sun’s glare. “What are you looking at?”
“Not sure,” she murmured, concentrating. “It’s just . . . something. It’s probably just my present circumstances.” She flicked him a distasteful glance, golden-orange painting across her pale-beige features.
Ōbhin accepted the rebuke. Before he’d stepped onto the Sands of Truth and faced Taim, he would never have done any of this. Even after he’d . . . won and thought he’d gained all he craved, he could never imagine the swamp through which his life’s road would lead.
Instead, he faced the field and raised a hand against the sun, shadows falling over his eyes. The grass sharpened. Green stalks were rising towards the first fuzz of seeds. A patch rustled almost dead ahead, not the ripple of wind, but the movement of something slinking through it.
He’d made his first real choice in a long time when he chose to save Carstin’s life. He’d forgotten how good it felt to take control of circumstances. Even a decision as small as uncovering what low creature slinked through an overgrown field felt good.
He marched out with confidence, boots crunching on gravel before it turned into the soft whisk of grass. Stalks brushed his knee-high boots and grazed his hips. As he approached the rustling patch, the grass shook faster. Something dark and lean darted away with a canine lope.
One of the farm dogs gone feral? he wondered as the shape rushed deeper into the field. He jogged after, grass rustling around him. He reached where it lurked.
A foul scent, rotten and putrid, brushed his nose. He froze as a chill swept through him. His nose twitched. Bile burned in the back of his throat. The assaulting stench watered his eyes. His confidence wavered. The temperature plummeted. He almost expected his breath to frost as the hairs on his arms raised, his skin puckering.
“What was that?” Avena asked as she rushed up, skirts rustling through the grass. “Elohm’s Colours, that stench.”
He nodded, feeling the eyes on him. The dog had turned around. It lurked in the brush, watching them with cold eyes. Ōbhin had stalked through mountain snows hunting spotted leopards and didn’t feel this tension crawling across the back of his neck. His booted feet shifted his stance, assuming the footing drilled into his head on the training ground by the weapon master his father had hired.
“Did you get a good look at it?” Avena asked. She stepped up beside him, her neck craning. She rubbed her right hand against her left arm, her skin prickling like his.
“A dog,” Ōbhin muttered. “I think. Black. Lean. Short fur.”
“Was it feasting on carrion?” she asked, peering around. “It smells worse than an abattoir left foul in the summer’s heat.”
“Maybe.”
“Should we . . .” She swallowed. “Should we go back? It’s just a dog. It’s probably not dangerous.”
“You first,” he said. “Slowly.”
“You think it’s going to attack us?”
“Animals react to fear. To prey.”
“Right,” she said.
She withdrew as his eyes flicked around. He searched for where it had retreated. A breeze swept across the field,
