The dark man drew an amethyst gem from the pockets of his clothing. The purple gem was cut with strange, asymmetrical angles and possessed no wires wrapped around it. Not a jewelchine, yet the man held it with a strange sense of confidence like he wielded a powerful weapon.
Magic isn’t real, Ōbhin thought.
The dog advanced at a slow stalk, lips curling back to bare yellowed fangs. The horses neighed and whinnied louder. Another loud crash echoed through the barn. The fetid stench cloyed at Ōbhin’s nose. Bile rose in his throat while his eyes watered from the reek.
“Do you know what I can do to you with this?” the dark-skinned man asked in his hissing, almost slurred accent. He smeared a drop of the blood onto the amethyst. The gem drank it. “Do you have any idea?”
“I know what I can do with this,” Ōbhin said, raising his blade from a low guard to a raised stance, prepared to deliver a slashing attack with his vibrating tulwar, the emerald light bathing across his set face.
The sorcerer smiled, dead and full of promise all at the same time. He stepped off the back of the wagon and landed with a light thud on the ground. The strange, black dog approached the man with the familiarity of a hunting hound returning to its master.
Avena squeaked and pressed into his back. His hackles rose as he felt a second dog stalking up behind him. His left hand moved with deadly care to his belt knife. He drew it with a steely rasp, his attention divided between the man and the first hound before him.
“Here,” Ōbhin said, passing the dagger behind him.
Avena grabbed it, her dress rustling.
“You have no idea, do you?” the man said, advancing. “You have all forgotten the true power held in the gems. You work them in only the crudest of fashion.”
The hound’s lean body tensed, ready to spring at its master’s command. Ōbhin braced himself for the attack. The amethyst flickered with a violet flame in its interior, sparked to life in some manner.
Gibbering terror rippled through Ōbhin. Something alien and terrible stood before him. Gems should not do that without being cut and properly wrapped in a precise manner by a wire to channel the Tones. That was how jewels worked. How the emerald set in the pommel of his sword or the ruby that activated Grey’s igniter.
The man pointed his wand at Ōbhin. Both dogs tensed to—
“Dje’awsa,” a feminine voice spoke, “what is this?”
*
The dagger quivered in Avena’s trembling grip.
The white-haired lady casually strolled around the dark, lean hound like it were no more than a friendly mutt who lounged by the fire and not some darkling cur who’d clawed out of the bowels of the earth. Her words resonated through the barn, bright and light.
“You have upset our guest’s companions,” the woman continued, her snowy hair falling about her fair, youthful cheeks. She looked not much older than Avena, and yet those pale-yellow eyes held wisdom that left Avena reeling. “That is impolite.”
“My apologies, my lady,” the man said.
Avena turned to follow the woman as she almost floated past. She approached the dark man, Dje’awsa, without a hint of fear; a deva facing a darkling. Her presence seemed to drive back that deathly chill, if not the stench, permeating the barn. The horses’ neighing died down, their whinnies only nervous nickers instead of frightened screams.
“The man neared death. I sought only to ease his passage.” The wand the sorcerer held vanished into a deep pocket. His hand emerged dripping with blood. “They objected.”
“So you sought to unleash your jackals upon them?” Amusement tinged the woman’s voice. “They are our friends.”
Dje’awsa shrugged, his face flat.
“Oh, my,” Dualayn said from the entrance. “The stench . . . Has your hound been rolling in a carnal pit?”
Avena whirled to see her employer holding a white handkerchief to his nose, his face paler than usual as he edged around the strange dog standing in the doorway.
“I have agreed to aid this man,” the white-haired lady continued. “Do not be so quick to deal death, Dje’awsa. It is irreversible.”
“Malleable,” the man said, his words stiff like he’d received a harsh rebuke instead of her mild admonishment. The amethyst he held vanished into another pocket. He glanced at the hound by his side. It turned and padded off into the dark. The second rushed back to the field, the putrid rot fading to a memory in the air.
Avena glanced at Dje’awsa. A vein throbbed in his forehead as he stared at Ōbhin and his sword. Avena gripped the dagger tighter at the naked hatred shining in Dje’awsa’s eyes. The intensity slammed into her like an icy punch. It was worse than her mother’s eyes.
Odium brimmed in that look. A hatred pure and distilled like the back alley whiskey.
The man strode by, hardly caring that Ōbhin tracked his progress with the buzzing point of his blade. Avena wanted to flinch as the man passed her.
“Who . . . who is that man?” Avena croaked once he’d left.
“Useful,” said the white-haired lady. Her skirts swished as she climbed up onto the wagon bed.
“It’s okay, child,” Dualayn said, coming up beside her. He lowered his handkerchief. “Just take a few deep breaths.”
She nodded, the shakes besetting her. She forced down that terrible memory of her mother’s wild eyes while her throat felt choked, wanting to strangle her words again. She gasped as Dualayn took the
