Her pace never broke, even in the crowds. She walked like something might catch her if she stopped. She looked back at the port a few times, her depthless eyes hunting.
No one followed us, Dom wanted to say, if it would quiet her mind. But even he knew better. The Tempestborn is here. Her mother’s ship, her mother’s crew. Every piece of her life until the moment I found her.
He might have suggested lingering a moment if there had been time, if the realm had not been relying on their next steps. Too many ifs to count. An overwhelming prospect for an immortal, whose entire life stretched into centuries of unchosen paths. Dom had enough ifs of his own to weather. He could not stomach Corayne’s as well.
Charlon and Sorasa were in the yard outside the Priest’s Hand when they arrived, surrounded by their horses and one very grumpy mule. The long-eared beast curled its lip as Charlon adjusted its saddlebags, shoving another sheaf of parchment into place.
“I expected more of a fight from you,” Dom said to him, “if the danger is as you say.”
The danger, of course, being just punishment for what seems like a great many crimes against a great many kingdoms.
Charlon grinned in return, patting the mule. “Got the feeling Sarn would slit my throat if I argued too much. And if Sigil does decide to come hunting, I wouldn’t mind seeing the pair of them try to kill each other. Neither would you, I wager, eh, Elder? Or do you prefer Veder? That’s what you call yourselves, don’t you?”
“I have little preference,” Dom replied in a brittle voice. He imagined leaving Sarn behind at almost every turn, but found he could not picture her battling a bounty hunter to death, and certainly not over someone as unimportant as Charlon Armont.
The forger was built like a young man squashed, with short legs and a round belly, his arms oddly long for his frame. Among the bags of parchment, quills, seals, and stamps, Dom didn’t miss the flash of a hand ax and a shortsword. Not to mention a wicked-looking hook on a loop of rope. For someone who seemed like an afterthought in a quest to save the world, he was certainly equipped to do it.
“I like to be prepared,” Charlon offered, following Dom’s eye.
“Good,” Dom replied. “But every turn of this path has been less than predictable.”
Every step from Iona, since the Monarch sent me forth into the harbinger shadows of coming doom. Dom nearly threw himself into the saddle to keep the memories at bay, jolting the horse beneath him. The cloak fell around his shoulders. It no longer smells like home, like clean rain and old stone.
The yard of the Priest’s Hand used to be a cemetery, but most of the gravestones had been torn up like rotten teeth. Now it served as a meeting square outside the market, teeming with traffic. Still Dom heard Corayne’s voice, low as it was.
She stood by the crooked fence, staring up at Sorasa, who was already in the saddle.
“The second Spindle is in Ibal,” she whispered.
The assassin leaned down to meet her. To Dom’s confusion, Sarn did not smile or even seem pleased. Her copper eyes clouded. She set her teeth. “How can you be sure?”
“I’m sure” was all Corayne said in reply, her voice like iron.
With her back to him and hood raised, Dom could not see her face. He judged Sarn instead, as her brow furrowed, her eyes downcast and searching. She faltered, looking for any misgiving in Corayne. Dom did not trust Sorasa Sarn, with his life or anyone else’s. But he trusted the assassin with her own survival. Sarn would not risk herself, not without cause.
“Fine,” she muttered, tightening the reins in hand until her horse tossed. “We’ll ride west, stop at the crossroads before finding passage over the Long Sea.”
Dom winced at the thought of another voyage, let alone one in such close proximity with this steadily growing band of shabby travelers. At least I won’t spend this one shoved below deck like a corpse in a steadily rocking tomb, he thought.
“We should get passage here,” Corayne hissed back. She glared over her shoulder for a second, once again looking toward the port. Her eyes flared. “There are ships enough.”
“You said before, you trust my judgment. Trust it again. We’ll head south within a few days, be on the sands as fast as the winds can carry us.”
There was something in Sarn’s voice that Dom had not heard before. In the many long days since he’d found her in Byllskos, she’d been frustrated, annoyed, weary, enraged, and mostly bored. Never desperate. She is desperate now, he realized, reading the carefully masked motions of her face. In spite of himself, the immortal knew her enough to note the pull of her lips, the hard clench of her jaw, the minuscule narrowing of her tiger’s eyes.