It was greedy of me to want the serpent as well as the owl. Risky, as I look back on it. However, taking the risk, I learned how to expand myself. I was not just one bond. I could be a hub, not a spoke. I can contain a whole ecosystem of balances within myself.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  The soreness beneath the ink took hold. Dragos mixed up some tea to reduce the swelling, plastered the fresh work with a poultice he sealed and bound with moss.

  It was always a struggle to work on himself, but he accomplished it. Meanwhile, Lavinia collected things she would need, custom things made for her hooks, and bound them with some of Dragos's rope.

  Outside, a crack of wood underfoot penetrated the door. The little hut’s aura of sanctuary evaporated.

  Dragos glanced up from his arm and stuffed it back in his shirt. With the deft speed of one used to running, he swept his robe up and shrugged into it, then snatched his cloak from the hook by the door. The peddler’s box found its accustomed spot on his back, and he took up Lavinia’s bundle.

  “Could be a deer,” Lavinia said. The look in her eyes suggested she didn’t believe her own words. Fear glimmered in the whites.

  “Let’s not take the chance.” Dragos paused at the door, leaning his head against the rough wood. It was not a sound but a sense that held him still. An echoing rang in his spirit; spirits moved nearby. Malicious life.

  “Now,” he murmured, and threw the door open.

  Blood thundering in his ears, he slipped out and stepped under the eaves where the night shadowed deepest. Lavinia followed him, easing the door shut.

  The forest was silent, but alive. His skin tingled, as if he could feel something closing in.

  A flicker of orange in the distance flashed between trees.

  Instinct flared, and his imagination filled in expectations. They’d set her house ablaze.

  Lavinia jabbed his side. Together they moved through the woods, picking their way along a deerpath, wincing when bramble caught and rustled, hissing when a twig snapped under a heel.

  It was too close to dawn. If only the tattoo hadn’t taken so long. If only that farmer hadn’t come to save his son. If only.

  If only. Dragos put it out of his mind. Useless thoughts.

  They’d gotten perhaps half a mile before the scent of smoke flowed on the winds. Faint at first, then thicker, until the orange glow filtered through the distance to light the trees nearest the little glade where Lavinia’s home had been.

  She didn’t look back. Dragos spared it a glance and kept moving. The primeval forest went deep and long, but it was unknown to him. He didn’t know where people were, where the road was, but by a vague guess.

  The stars faded into the deep blue of early morning. Birds twittered at each other from their nighttime roosts.

  “I don’t know these woods,” he murmured, by way of apology.

  “We’ve passed where I usually go to harvest mushrooms,” Lavinia replied.

  “No time to stop and call an owl to navigate,” Dragos apologized again, in his own way. Though it hadn’t been his fault, he felt like it was. As if a dark cloud of ill fate followed him, and ruined every good thing he found.

  He knew it didn’t work that way. If anything, he was a storm crow, soaring ahead of the disaster he saw in the patterns of the wind. When he stopped, disaster caught up. Where he traveled, trouble existed. Calruthia was a land born from misery; what else could he expect?

  “We’ll muddle through,” Lavinia replied with muted confidence.

  With dawn, a mist rose, obscuring the ground. The thicket pressed in where the trees thinned, and they skirted those areas to find better passage.

  The sun rose enough to guide Dragos, and he put Fantana Rece firmly at their backs.

  “Did you like wandering?” Lavinia asked, skirts caught neatly in her hooks, legs scratched and bleeding from the numerous bramble patches they’d accidentally stumbled into in the dark.

  Dragos considered the question as he ducked under a sapling’s branch. The peddler’s box scraped, clacking against it. He paused and ducked lower.

  “Eh,” he shrugged. The rich, wild scent of loam and sun-kissed plants filtered through the air. It soothed the tense escape they’d left behind.

  A soft snort of laughter escaped his schoolmate. “I suppose I’m headed for the ‘eh’ life now, too.”

  “There should be one of the big trade roads…” Dragos paused, turning to orient. He pointed, “That way.”

  “Then we go this way,” Lavinia pointed in an adjacent direction.

  It was away from Spineback, away from the Embace.

  The need to go there had dulled while he’d been with Lavinia. Perhaps that ringing bell in his head had been the madness of being away from other humans too long. Sanity may have attempted to lure him back to where things used to make sense, two years and a lifetime ago.

  Dragos veered toward Lavinia’s chosen course and picked his way through the forest toward the older wood, where the understory was easier to pass through. His stomach complained before the sun reached its zenith. He led his schoolmate to an old oak, where he dropped her bundle, shrugged off his pack, and sat.

  “I take it we’re stopping,” Lavinia’s dry tone drew Dragos's gaze up from the bladder he’d just unstoppered. Water sloshed as he shifted.

  “For a bit.” It seemed safe enough. They’d walked hours and heard no bay of hounds or other signs of pursuit.

  Lavinia flopped to the ground, then tapped at her thighs with the wooden cap of one of her prosthetics. “It has been a while since I walked so far, for so long.”

  They had a bundle of dried mushrooms for food. Dragos put one on his tongue and sucked at the earthy, wooden flavor until it softened. “Rest when you can, yeah? The way of the serpent?”

  “Shut up,” Lavinia scoffed. Fear still lurked in the corner of her eye, a too-bright sparkle fixed in the direction of where they’d left.

  Birds cheeped, wind rustled leaves above, and the air was sweet, belying any dangers. Dragos thought of Zgavra, then.

  Would it find him? It always had before. Should he care?

  Should or not, he did.

  He’d glanced up into the tree, head rocked against it, legs thrust out, ankles crossed. Comfortable. It felt like a good spot to nap. They hadn’t slept, spent the night awake, working the binding spell.

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  “Does this happen to you often?” Lavinia asked.

  “What do you consider often? If you mean, every time I stop for long, then, yes.”

  She let a soft, thoughtful hum escape, then lay back, pausing to scrape a branch out from beneath her before lying back down again. “That’s unpleasant. I like a quiet, safe life.”

  “Nothing stays safe or quiet, forever,” Dragos murmured, eyes slipping closed.

  He woke with a start.

  Long, drawn-out bays echoed through the forest.

  “Futui!” Dragos lurched up, scrambled to grab his box and Lavinia’s bundle of tools, and to his feet. “Lavinia! Time to go!”

  The woman rolled, sleepy face morphing into shocked horror. Struggling to her feet, she faced the forest, shaking her head. Like a rabbit flushed from a bush, she turned toward Dragos and bolted past him. He followed, letting her manic pace set his.

  It was well past noon. The sun sank, glimmering brilliantly between the trees. Soon, it would fall behind the mountains behind them.

  Despite her fear, Dragos knew they’d outpace their pursuers. Men wouldn’t run. If they let their dogs off their leashes, he and Lavinia could turn them away.

  Still, he let her run for a little before catching up to her. He rattled and clanked as he loped along, his traveling box not conducive to flight. “Lavinia, slow down.”

  “Why?” She gasped, shooting him a wild-eyed glance.

  “They won’t catch up to us. We can’t just run randomly…”

  Another chorus of baying rose from the north silenced him. A rumble of frustration erupted from his chest. A realization tingled over his scalp.

  “They’re trying to herd us.”

  “Can’t we climb a tree?” Lavinia coughed. She’d slowed to a jog, knotted, tangled hair bouncing.

  “The dogs likely have our scent. You’ve bled over half the forest, and I reek of medicinal herbs and wounded flesh. They’ll find us, unless we can find a river and fling ourselves into it, ride the current a few miles.”

  She didn’t ask the question he felt in the air around them.

  Inevitability pressed its claws into the back of his neck and squeezed. He glanced at Lavinia. They’d kill her for a witch. No. They’d kill both of them.

  “Zgavra,” Dragos murmured.

  He’d never called it before, didn’t know how, or even if he could. It lurked invisibly often enough, he knew. Watching him like some lord at a tragic play, amused and invested in his character.

  His lope slowed as he gathered his breath and called out, “Zgavra!”

  Lavinia bounded past him, scrambling down a steep slope, vanishing from sight. Dragos burst forward again, hurrying after her. He slid, elbow gouging into earth, heel catching on a root, nearly pitching forward face-first into the tiny streamlet at the bottom. Lavinia hopped over the water and laughed like a maniac.

  “There! We’ll just float down that!” She cackled as she climbed the incline, hauling herself up by root and will.

  Dragos followed, pitching her bundle of tools up. It barely made the edge of the little ridge and teetered on the edge. Lavinia appeared at the top and stomped down on it to keep it from sliding back into the little ravine. He clambered up, swift as a squirrel, and grabbed her tools back under his arm.

  “I don’t like your life, Dragos,” she commented as she struggled along, picking her way around a thicket.

  “It could be better,” he agreed, nudging brush back. A bee bumbled away, buzzing past his nose.

  The baying did not grow, but neither did it stop. Through hill and dale they moved, alternating between a lope and a walk. They tried a parallel path to the road, to the south, but a third set of dogs barking turned them east again.

  “When they catch us…”

  “ZGAVRA!” Dragos bellowed, letting go of trepidation. He had the bond of a bloody zmeu, and for what? So it could turn a blind eye and a deaf ear?

  Sweat stung his eyes, and he slowed his pace. “Lavinia, hold.”

  The woman slowed to a stop and turned. She looked more beast than woman, twigs in her hair, sleeves bloodied and torn from thorny trees, eyes glittering with a feral light.

  Her chest heaved, and on an exhale she gasped, “Why?”

  “We can’t let them drive us,” Dragos said, bending to rest his elbows on his knees, gasping. “Better—better to face—a smaller group than what—they’ve got waiting for us. We’ll charm the dogs. Terrify the men.”

  Her arms fell to her sides, shoulders slumping. The way her eyes darted, searching for another course, and, finding none, flattened. Her lips thinned.

  Dragos straightened, listened. They all sounded the same. He couldn’t pick out which group would be weaker by the sound of their dogs. “The ones from Fantana Rece will be most tired. We go back east.”

  Lavinia jabbed an arm at the ravine. “You couldn’t decide that before we did all the climbing?”

  A weary smile twitched on Dragos's lips. “I enjoyed it enough to want to do it again.”

  “You would,” she grinned. It was genuine, despite the peril they faced.

  When they got to the steep gulch with the trickle of spring water, they saw their pursuers for the first time. A dozen men and three dogs were preparing to pick their way down to the stream. Dragos recoiled at the sight of them and backed around a tree. Lavinia spun around and did the same, behind an adjacent maple.

  The black and tan dogs barked furiously. He peered around to see them all straining at their leashes, mouths foaming with excitement. The handlers murmured amongst each other, and one by one, unfastened the tethers.

  They were too far away to hear more than a low hum of human voices, but he could imagine what they said. The dogs scrambled along the ridge until they found a slope gentle enough to cross and tore straight for the two.

  Hiding places meant little to their honed noses.

  Men climbed down the ridge. Dragos calmed his breathing, forced his racing heart to slow. When the dogs tore around the tree, he smiled.

  “Hello, boys,” he said, summoning the correct tone, hoping the stink of stress didn’t interfere. He dropped to a knee and dared to put his arms out in a welcoming gesture.

  The snarling faces became lolling tongues and happy, wagging tails. The three crashed into him. His back struck the tree where he crouched. He chuckled, patting them all.

  Lavinia stayed pressed where she was. Dragos glanced at her, his smile faltering at her wide eyes and clenched jaw. She shook her head. It wouldn’t be enough. Three handlers. If nothing else, as soon as they attacked him, the dogs would protect their men and forgo the tenuous friendship.

  “Zgavra, this is your last chance,” Dragos whispered as the dogs, one by one, left him to visit with Lavinia in her hiding spot.

  It was a doomed plan. More men appeared, trailing the handlers. Why were there so many coming up the ravine?

  Bronze and leather.

  The first man to climb up wore armor he’d only ever seen at a distance. He drew a sword as soon as he gained his footing and stepped aside for the next. Lavinia, hedged in by dogs, was unable to run, even if she wanted to.

  The mix of farmers from town, the cavalerul in their armor, followed by a Luminari in his monkish hemp robes, hadn’t yet all gained the rise.

  Part of Dragos couldn’t stop analyzing, re-planning the scenario in his head; what could have been done better, where they might’ve run, instead.

  Before they were all across, all there, he had to do something.

  His heart despaired. They did not have the upper hand, couldn’t induce fear with the numbers they faced, despite the sun sitting on the mountain’s snowy crests, casting the forest in deep shadows. His only hope lay in a zemu that wandered off when he really needed it.

  The knights moved forward with caution, swords drawn. One demanded, “Come out!”

  Dragos motioned for Lavinia to run. As if she could move past the wiggling bodies of three dogs that pressed her against the tree.

  He jerked his chin at her, towards the woods away from the oncoming mob, and stepped out from his concealment.

  “And?” Dragos asked, tugging at his pouch to free his iron-clawed gloves.

  “And hold your position!” The leader barked.

  “Why?” Dragos slid his gloves on, working the buckles tight, defiance in his deceptively easy step toward them. He’d buy Lavinia a chance to run. Distract them.

  “Striga, you don’t get to question. You only obey.” The cavaler spoke with an authority he was clearly used to wielding.

  “I’m just a peddler, and I’m not good with obedience. Much like your dogs,” Dragos smirked, fists clenching around the metal braces encased in leather.

  “Stop,” Lavinia shouted, stepping around the tree, dogs dancing around her with panting joy.

  Dragos choked on the lump in his throat and whispered, “No.”

  (STREE-guh): Witch