But then she turned her head to look out to the Long Sea. The sun put her features in silhouette, and there he was again, a ghost Dom could not believe in. Cortael. He was in her eyes, in the way she raised her face to the wind and searched the horizon. There was movement in her always, constant as the waves and the stars wheeling through the sky.
Dom bowed his head. He tried to think of his cousin Ridha, riding through the enclaves. Of Taristan and his horrendous wizard, their army spewing from a Spindle. His aunt, cowering in her great halls. Anything but Cortael’s gray corpse, skewered alongside his daughter.
It did not work.
By nightfall, they were so far inland Dom could barely hear the waves. At least Sarn isn’t a nuisance, he thought. The assassin rode on in blissful silence, never turning back, never lowering her hood. Occasionally her hand darted into one of her many hidden pouches or pockets, and then he could hear her crunching on something, perhaps nuts or seeds. A good meal for a mortal traveling light and fast, Dom knew. Corayne dipped a hand into her saddlebags in the same manner, helping herself to a dinner of flatbread, a smear of cheese, and thin, cured meats. She was also well prepared for their journey.
Dom felt no such urge to eat. The Vedera did not hunger so often.
Nor did they need half as much sleep as mortals.
Soon Corayne drooped in the saddle, her breath slowing to a deep and steady rhythm. With a nudge, Dom urged his horse alongside hers, ready to catch her should she fall from the saddle. Once or twice her lids fluttered, her eyes twitching through a dream.
“We should make camp so she can rest properly,” Sarn muttered, her voice barely a whisper to mortal ears. “The horses too.”
Dom frowned, pulling at the scarred side of his face. It stung. “She’s resting now. The horses we can push,” he said. “Or is it you who would prefer to stop? I confess, I have no intention of keeping you upright too.”
“Touch me and I’ll cut your hands off,” she said dryly, keeping her face to the road.
“You mortals have such a different sense of humor than we do.”
She threw a dark look over her shoulder, one he recognized from Byllskos. When she nearly put a blade through his shoulder. When she loosed a herd of half-mad bulls on him.
“I will be requiring my hands for the time being,” he whispered back.
Corayne snuffled in her sleep, her full weight balancing on his arm. In the weak light, with her hood raised, Dom saw her father in her face. He thought of Cortael at seventeen, back in Iona, when he insisted he needed only as much rest as an immortal. In the following weeks, he wavered between menacing his tutors and falling asleep in the training yard, a sword still in hand. It fell to Dom to wake him, because he weathered the ensuing outbursts best.
The memory turned bitter. The boy he taught was a man dead. A seed that grew and died in full bloom. Thinking of him was like picking at a barely healed scab, scraping dried blood away to bleed anew.
“We’ll stop before that rise,” he said sharply, pointing to a hill hunching black against the deep blue night. Will that shut your viper mouth?
“We’ll stop at the top,” she shot back. The bitter ache of memory gave way to frustration. “I’m not getting caught on the low ground.”
“You won’t be caught by anything,” Dom whispered in annoyance.
But the edge of his mind itched with doubt. Certainly no one will pursue us. The cursed mortal and his red priest do not know of Corayne, nor can they scour the Ward looking for every branch of the Corblood tree. He glanced at the cypress forest, reading the shadows. I hope.
“I’ll keep watch,” he said.
Her bright eyes flared again, flame in the starlight.
“That isn’t a comfort to me.”
On that we can agree.
Again Dom thought he ought to forsake an oath just this once and leave Sorasa Sarn dead in a ditch.
To the north, the Corteth Mountains were a jagged dark haze, even to his eye. Snow clung only to the highest peaks this deep into summer. The Corteth, the Teeth of Cor, were dozens of miles away, on the other side of the Impera, the Emperor’s River. It wove through the valley, making its way west to Lecorra and the Long Sea. They would reach it soon and cross the river from which Old Cor had sprung. Dom did not know what legends the mortals kept or if there was even a grain of truth left in their histories, but in Iona, things were more certain. The Corborn mortals of another realm had first come to Allward somewhere in this golden valley, stepping through a Spindle to build their empire.
Trees grew over the rise, good camouflage from the road below. There was no campfire—Sarn would not allow it—but the air was warm enough. The Amhara slept strangely, her back propped up against the roots of a tree, her face forward, so she might only need to open her eyes to spot Dom at the far side of their meager camp. She did just that every twenty minutes, eyes glowing like hot coals before they closed again. Dom shook his head at her every time.