She found herself at the edge of the clearing. The red-stained birch tree rose above her, its bark bleached white as bone left in the sun. She leaned against it, feeling her forehead tingle. Had the White Lady done something to her? Was that why she dreamed about the enigmatic woman’s past? How she’d glimpsed the loved one that Raya wished to save, and why she would work with dark people like Dje’awsa and Grey?
Like Dualayn?
“He understands what it means to strive to reclaim what was lost and fix past mistakes,” the White Lady had once said about the man.
“Avena,” Ōbhin whispered.
She whirled around. The sight of Ōbhin lit by the Virtue’s red moonlight struck her. The scar on his right cheek gleamed crimson against his brown skin. He wore a linen shirt and clean pants, his hair no longer a tangle of filth. She threw herself at him.
Beneath the birch tree, away from the others, she poured out what she’d dreamed, what she knew of the White Lady, that she might have been alive since the Shattering, and that the man she wanted to save was trapped in a healing wound, surrounded by darkness.
“I don’t know what will happen if she frees her lover from the weaving,” Avena whispered, “but it can’t be good for the world. She’s working with the Brotherhood. With that pus-filled roach Dualayn. And Dje’awsa. What will his magic do?”
“Don’t know,” Ōbhin said. “Something to worry about tomorrow.”
She bit her lip. She held back about Carstin. It would only cause the man she loved more pain if he knew what had happened to his friend’s body. That thing, No One, wasn’t Carstin any longer. It was a mirror reflecting the last person it had killed, stealing their truth. One day, Ōbhin might have to fight No One.
He couldn’t be distracted. He couldn’t hesitate. Not if it would cost him his life.
“There’s something Dualayn told me,” Ōbhin said. His arm tightened around her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Avena.”
“What else did he do?” she demanded. “Did he replace the baby growing in Jilly’s womb with a darkling or a grumliicho?”
Ōbhin took a deep breath. “When Chames was sick, Dualayn spent days trying to heal him, right?”
“No,” she croaked as the weight of his words fell on her. She gripped his shirt. “He didn’t. Don’t say that. Chames died of spring fever.”
“Dualayn called it a mistake. The arrogant roach thought his experiment would work. He tested on his son.”
Avena kept finding new reasons to hate Dualayn. She sobbed against Ōbhin’s chest as she remembered her last dream of Chames. If it had been his spirit she’d dreamed, he had tried to tell her. Warn her. She just hadn’t understood.
She clutched to Ōbhin and longed for the end of pain.
*
Twentieth Day of Patience, 755 EU
No One kept his distance on the return to Kash. Ōbhin knew it was pointless to think it had been trapped in the ruins. The thing would have found a way to claw out of the darkness. But it was a problem for the future. He wasn’t looking forward to the steps he’d have to take to ensure those around him weren’t replaced.
After three days in the ruins, he found it strange to be in the summer heat. No clouds marred the blue skies. The drought worsened. The fields they passed on the four-day trip back to Kash were wilted and browned. Farmers drained streams and ponds for water to keep their crops alive. They simmered in the heat, displaying defiance against the king. Green adorned every last hamlet they passed. Soldiers moved in platoons. Knights rode in companies.
Lothon boiled.
Finally, their wagon reached the outskirts of Kash. They passed the village of Reed Bend and took the turnoff at the Porcelain. The city’s walls formed a dark haze on the horizon while belching smoke from the factories stained the blue sky a leaden shade. Lake Ophavin’s waters had retreated even farther, exposing more drying mud.
Ōbhin rode on the wagon beside Avena and Miguil. Dualayn sat in the back. He had behaved the last few days, lost in his writing. No one talked to him. Fingers and Dajouth rode on their horses. Bran’s spare mount trotted behind the wagon, looking forlorn without its rider.
Cerdyn manned the gate. The burly man pushed out of the shadows. His eyes flicked over them and a tightness increased in his face. “It didn’t go well?”
“No,” Ōbhin said. “We lost Bran.”
“And Smiles? He went with you, right?”
Ōbhin hesitated. He glanced at Avena.
“Yeah,” Avena said. “They’re both dead.”
Cerdyn spat to the side, his dark brows furrowing. “Elohm polish their souls and lift them to the light.”
Avena nodded, her back straight, shoulders bristling. Ōbhin recognized the tension, and the anger, in her expression. Her brown hair fluttered loose about her face. It was longer, brushing the edges of her shoulders now.
He missed her braid. He almost regretted taking her to Dualayn, but she would be dead if he hadn’t. Her brain might reside in a glass jar, but at least she still lived. Was still herself. The obsidian mind hadn’t done anything to her personality.
It just stopped working sometimes. Twice on the journey, she’d slipped into strange dreams of the distant past. Of the Shattering. It stunned him to think that the White Lady, who looked no older than Avena, was thousands of years old. That she had witnessed the mythical cataclysm. Maybe even helped to cause it.
The wagon
