breath against his ear.
He was in the fire, cradling her. She was still in his arms, and he thought—as he always did in this part—that she was safe. That he’d saved her. This time, he’d saved her, and when he woke, she would be alive because of it. And then he understood. The grief was wider than oceans. He screamed out for a vengeance that he’d taken almost a decade before.
The burned child in his arms was Merian, but it was also Cithrin. He didn’t put her down, but in the logic of dreams he was also drawing the venomed blade. He felt himself running, and this time the speed was like falling. He would take his revenge.
He woke up trying to bring the blade down.
The stars of the Keshet glowed above him, a vast and milky horde. He muttered an obscenity and rolled to his side. His body ached like someone had beaten him, but at least he wasn’t dreaming anymore. Long experience had taught him that he could. If he closed his eyes again now, it would all begin again from the start. He’d known men with fevers that let them be for months or even years at a time, and then descended again, pulling them into delirium and illness for weeks. This wasn’t so different. Except that it was his, so he had to suffer it.
He sat up, yawned. The sky was clear, but the air smelled like rain. There would be a storm by midday. They’d stop and try to gather some drinking water from it. Not that they needed it. The dragon’s road they were following would meet another in a day or so, and there’d be a few semipermanent buildings there. A trader, a well, a place to sleep with a roof. The height of civilization.
“You’re awake,” Kit said. He was sitting by the dim embers of the last night’s cookfire, the blanket from his bedroll over his shoulders. His expression in the starlight seemed distant. Maybe sad.
“I guess that makes it my watch,” Marcus said.
“If you’d like,” the old actor said, shrugging.
“Doesn’t make sense both of us staying awake.”
“I find myself needing less sleep,” Kit said.
“You find yourself sleeping less than you need to,” Marcus said. “Not the same.”
“I suppose that’s true. Good night, then.”
Kit shifted from sitting down to a curled heap on the ground without actually seeming to move very much. Marcus stood, stretched, tried to decide whether he needed to piss. The mule woke enough to flick a wide ear, then went back to ignoring the men. Near the southern horizon, a plume of smoke stood dark against the dark sky, so dim and subtle that Marcus could only see it in the corner of his eye. A caravan or one of the nomadic cities. They’d have news, perhaps. They’d have something more convincing to eat than the two-days-dead rabbit that was his planned breakfast. Under other circumstances, he’d have discussed the possibility with Kit, come to an agreement. But he didn’t want to spend the time, and Kit didn’t care.
Kit didn’t care about much of anything, it seemed.
“You’re not sleeping,” Marcus said.
“I’m not.”
“Any particular reason for that?”
“Not that I’m aware of. Only I close my eyes, and then they seem to open again.”
“Well, a fine pair we are.”
Kit rose, taking his old position as if he’d never lain down. Marcus scratched at his shoulder. The place where the sword rode against him had a strange burned feel, and every few days a layer of grey skin would flake off. In truth, they were making good progress. They were two men accustomed to travel, carrying only what they needed and perhaps a bit less. If one of them grew sick or stepped on a snake, it would be a bad day, but they were going quickly. They’d be out of the Keshet and into Elassae well before the season turned. He was looking forward to it, and he wasn’t.
“I was a fool,” Kit said. “I feel I’ve wasted my life.”
“If you feel like that, you probably are a fool,” Marcus said.
“I thought of myself as wise,” Kit said. “I carried the secrets of the world with me like a bag of pretty stones. I knew of the goddess, which was a secret held by only a few. And I knew her madness. Her weakness. Her confusion of certainty and truth. And for that I was singular. The only man in the world who saw it all for what it was. I am astounded I could carry that arrogance so long and not notice the burden.”
“Arrogance doesn’t weigh much,” Marcus said. “No heft to it.”
Kit chuckled. “I suppose not. Still, I am ashamed.”
“You should get over that,” Marcus said.
“I appreciate that,” Kit said, “but I think you don’t understand.”
“Might. You thought you were some kind of God-touched cunning man because you had your spider tricks, only it turned out you were more like the rest of us than not. I was the greatest general in an age, determining who sat what throne and shaping the world with my will and a few thousand sharp blades. Only it turned out we were both men, and we both made mistakes. Yours set us off through some of the least pleasant terrain I’ve ever had the poor fortune to walk through and ended with me trying to hack a hunk of stone to death with a magic sword. Mine ended with a couple graves and a lot of bad dreams.”
Kit was silent for a moment. Something scuttled through the grass off to his right, but it didn’t sound big enough that Marcus cared.
“I believe I see your point, and I apologize. I didn’t intend to make light of your loss.”
“You don’t see my point, then. My loss doesn’t matter. Alys. Merian. They don’t care that I failed them. They haven’t cared for a long time now. I care, but I can’t do anything. I carry it because it’s mine. You lived your life either in service to or revolt against something that turns out not to be real. I can see that’s embarrassing.”
“It’s more than that,” Kit said. “It leaves me unsure whether my life has had any meaning at all.”
“While you figure that out, you’ll need to get some rest. And start eating enough. And stop trying to take half of my watch along with yours. We have a job to do, and you need to be in a condition to do it.”
“I’m the one that brought you the job,” Kit said. “You recall, don’t you? You were the chosen one because I chose you. And if I was wrong …”
“It doesn’t matter where the job came from,” Marcus said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s something we can do. It’s the job. And you only get to pity yourself and sulk when it doesn’t get in the way of it.”
“And you feel it’s begun to?”
“Yes,” Marcus said. And then, “This is why you picked me, you know. Apart from needing someone to haul this damned uncomfortable hunk of metal, you knew at some point you might fall down and not want to get back up. I’m here to kick your ass.”
“Your job.”
“Part of it.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Kit said. “Thank you, Marcus.”
“Anytime, Kit. I’m pleased I can help. Now, honestly? Go the hell to sleep.”
The Keshet in the falling days of summer had a severe kind of beauty. The white morning sky carried shades of yellow and pink. The blue of midday served as backdrop for towering clouds that reached up a hundred times higher than mountains, white as sunlight at the top and angry grey blue at the base. At the day’s end, the slow sun would seem to linger on the horizon, red and swollen. The moon waxed and then waned. Before it waxed full again, they would be in Elassae. In Suddapal.
By choice, they met few other travelers. Sometimes Kit would spend the day singing, and his years on the boards gave his voice a range from barrel-deep to sweetly high, depending upon the song. Marcus didn’t object. Sometimes he even joined his voice with Kit’s. But beneath that, he felt himself growing narrow. Sharp. Focused. The anticipation was like being on a hunt, but it lasted for weeks. He was preparing himself. It was a sensation he’d had before, once, and it brought the nightmares.
There was no single moment when the western edge of the Keshet became the eastern reaches of Suddapal. No garrison marked the border, no tax man squatted by the side of the road. The oases and crossroads only became a little larger, a little more permanent, until at last they were villages. The dragon’s road became better traveled, and then thick. The flood of war refugees was mostly Timzinae, but Jasuru and Tralgu and Firstblood families were among them in numbers enough that Marcus and Kit could fold themselves in among them unremarked.
They approached the fivefold city from the east, passing through farmlands and pastures Marcus had never
