I glanced over my shoulder. I couldn’t see the pirate—the forest was still, the only movement distant and fleeting—but that was no comfort. My skin crawled.
“Mary? Mary!”
I spun at the sound of Grant’s voice, slipped, and hit the ground with a painful thud. I wheezed and tried to stand up, but I’d wandered onto a frozen river, hidden beneath the fresh snow. I went back down.
Grant skidded into sight. He poised for an instant on the ice to find his balance, arms outstretched, then gave a hoarse laugh and skated towards me.
Relief made me wobbly. I shifted onto my knees and, finding a knot of roots on the riverbank, managed to pull myself upright.
“There you are! You’re going the wrong way.” He spoke with forced cheer. His face was deathly pale, making his scarred cheeks stand out even more amid his blond stubble. His cutlass was still at his belt but he’d lost his gun.
His crew of makeshift highwayfolk were nowhere in sight, but I didn’t let myself think of what had happened to them, or my mother, or Rosser, or Demery or anyone else. If I did I’d lose all nerve, and we had to get to Harpy.
“Lirr’s behind me. Not wrong way.” I coughed, still trying to find my breath. I glanced in the direction I’d been running. Still no sign of Lirr. I was sure I’d been heading the right direction. I hadn’t really thought about it; I was relying on Tane’s senses and memory of the Wold.
He’s lying, the ghisting whispered.
Lying. Not wrong, lying. My relationship with Grant may have started badly, but he’d proven himself since. And I hadn’t forgotten the way he looked at me earlier. Whether or not I reciprocated his feelings, they should protect me. For the most part.
“No, this is the way.” I nodded in the direction I’d been heading. “Follow me.”
At that moment, more cannon fire echoed through the Wold. I flinched and Grant threw his arms over his head, shouting some profanity that was drowned by the guns.
“What the hell was that?” I asked, overloud in the silence.
“Lirr’s ship.” Grant grabbed my hand, and even through layers of wool and leather, I felt him shaking. “Please, Mary, follow me.”
“How…” I drew back, though his fingers remained fast around mine. The situation pulled me back to the gallows, when I’d grasped his hand in the maelstrom and trusted him to lead me out of danger.
But he hadn’t, had he?
“Charles, how do you know that’s Lirr’s ship?” I asked, very carefully.
“The guns sound too deep,” Grant tried, but there was a weakness in his voice. He stared at me for a round-eyed, frustrated instant, dropped my hand. “Saint’s blood… Mary…” He stepped back, pushing his hat off his forehead.
“Grant,” I snapped, his name an accusation and a demand. “What’s wrong with you? We don’t have time—”
“It was because of him, Mary.”
“What?”
“Kaspin. My debt was paid, but I would never have been free of him. I needed a way out of Aeadine, so I tried to join Lirr’s crew in Whallum. Kaspin sent me to invite him to the auction and when I saw the ship…” Grant shakily brushed at a scarred cheek. “I thought it was my way out. But Lirr laughed at me, Mary. Laughed and said I’d no idea what I was asking. He said he’d only take me if I proved myself worthy, and my pride was up and… I agreed without even knowing what I’d have to do. Stealing, I thought, or maybe a murder. How could I have known he’d ask me to spy on Demery?”
I knew distantly that we should be running, but I was momentarily blinded by rage and shock. “What?”
“I think he meant it as a joke,” Grant mumbled, flinching under my stare. “A foolish gamble, a way to drive me off or get me killed by my own stupidity. But I was so angry by then, so determined to prove myself. I thought, hell, why not be the best damn spy the murderous bastard has ever had?”
“What have you done, Charles?” I demanded. The wind began to move around us at the sound of my voice, whisking snow across the ice under our feet.
“Too much. Not enough.” Grant’s eyes softened, near pleading. “I’d no idea what he was, Mary, you must believe that! And I warned Randalf, to protect you in Whallum.”
“Did you do this?” I stabbed a finger in the direction of Lirr’s waiting ship, beyond the Wold. My heart hammered in my throat. “Did you betray Demery? You’ve killed them all!”
“Mary, please—”
“Are you going to hand me over to him? To be butchered?”
“No!” He shouted the word, his voice breaking halfway through into an agonized whisper. “I warned Lirr, yes. His… That creature of his found me last night, Mary, the ghisting, and I told him about Harpy. But I’m not taking you to him. I’m saving you.”
“Saving me?” It took all my strength not to scream the words back. “How?”
Sister, run, Tane warned.
“You said you walked through the Stormwall.” Grant stepped towards me, his expression, his posture—all of it sincerity and guilt and urgency. “You’re a Stormsinger. You can get us back south. We can walk away from all this, leave them to kill one another. You and me.”
I couldn’t move. My muscles had turned to stone and my head felt as though it were underwater.
Sister! Tane hissed.
Hoten stepped around the trunk of the nearest tree. I’d barely registered the long shard of wood in his hand before he drove it into Grant’s neck.
I did scream then. I lunged forward, tried to save Grant despite what he’d admitted, but strong arms locked around me. Grant fell to his knees, clutching the wooden dagger in his flesh in terror and confusion and hopelessness, and all I could do was scream.
The wind shuddered and branches clattered overhead.
“There now, Tane,” Lirr whispered into my ear, his voice thick with sorcery and his breath the only warm thing in my icy, terrible world. “It’s time to go home.”
AN EXCERPT FROM:
A HISTORY OF GHISTLORE AND THE BLESSED; THOSE BOUND TO THE SECOND WORLD AND THE POWER THEREIN
THE SUMMONER ADJACENT remains one of the rarest abilities associated with the Sooth. As an overflow of their preternatural connection to the Other and their ability to traverse its waters, Summoners may attract the attention of Other-born beasts such as morgories, dittama and huden, which can do them grave physical harm. The dittama remain the most dangerous of these, encompassing a larger subcategory of beasts which are too numerous, and too difficult to study, to be effectively rendered here.
The more these beasts are attracted to a Sooth in the Other, the greater the likelihood that the Sooth is, indeed, a Summoner; one who may command the loyalty and favor of such beasts, though at great peril.
FORTY-FIVE
The Summoner Adjacent
SAMUEL
A pirate thrust me to my knees beside a bonfire. The small flame Mary and her mother used to lure Lirr’s pirates was gone, built into a hellish blaze at the foot of the larch’s rock. It filled the Wold with light and heat and roaring flames, and turned everything beyond its reach into pure, impenetrable darkness.
Penn huddled beside me. The tops of his ears were white with frostbite but he was oblivious, long past pain. “They’re bringin’ in more prisoners, sir.”