Lain sank onto the flat stone, clutching her arms around her ankles. Her legs still trembled, each muscle sore from moving through the snow. Her breath smoked in thin ribbons and vanished quickly in the wind. The quiet after flight was unbearable; it pressed against her skull. The silence of the dead Brighthand was still in her ears, the way the bells had stopped. She hadn’t realized until now how much comfort their rhythm had given her.
She thought she should pray, but the words of the litany wouldn’t come. They caught in her throat, meaningless syllables. Perhaps the Underserpent did not follow this far north. Perhaps it had turned its face when she failed to die as she was meant to.
The cold gnawed through her robes, but she didn’t complain. She was afraid that if she spoke, she’d say something that would free all the parts she couldn’t look at, and she’d fall to pieces.
After a time, she said, “You said those things were related to the Veinwright.”
He was checking the edge of his sword, wiping off any remaining blood or moisture with the cloth he kept the scabbard wrapped in. “So the stories go. Came out of the same old experiments, before the Dagorlind took hold of what was left.”
“They made things like that on purpose?”
“Always on purpose,” he said. “That’s how the Veinwrights worked, binding blood to blood, seeing what lived. Most of it went bad. Some of it kept breeding. The Dagorlind use the Brighthand to kill them, when their numbers get too large in an area.”
Lain stared at the snow between her hips, trying not to picture the bodies. “So I was bait, as well.”
Her voice cracked on the last word. For a heartbeat she thought he’d deny it, but he only breathed out through his nose and kept cleaning his blade. That silence was worse than confirmation. She saw again Darrin’s face, not cruel, just resolved, and Thomas’s hand hovering at his sword. They’d spoken of her death as though it were an errand to be crossed off a list.
Mallow glanced at her, then away, saying nothing.
She went quiet. The wind filled the space where her voice should have been. After a while, she said softly, “Thank you.”
Mallow carried on wiping down his sword. “Forgive me, Sister, you’ll have to be more specific.”
She looked up, startled. “Pardon?”
“Well, by my count, I just stayed your execution, dispatched your erstwhile captors, saved you from the bewitching bite of a bloodwyrm, and had to take your damn shoes off for you as a bonus. So if you’re thanking me, I just need to know what for, so as I can accept your thanks with the requisite humility.”
Lain was too stunned to respond immediately, but then she couldn’t help herself.
“Perhaps you don’t need my thanks after all, since you have such a clear vision of your own greatness.”
Mallow gave a quiet huff that might have been a laugh. “Saints, you’re quick when you’ve got your breath back.” He sheathed his sword, settling onto the rock opposite her. “I don’t recall asking for thanks, mind. Just didn’t expect to be scolded for it.”
“I’m not scolding you,” she said, though it sounded unconvincing to her own ears.
“Then we’ll call it gratitude with teeth.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You’re welcome, Sister. May all your rescuers be so lucky.”
She frowned at that, studying him. His tone carried something slippery. Not arrogance exactly, but self-assurance, as if he were long accustomed to talking his way out of debts and danger alike. “Lucky doesn’t seem your style,” she said.
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“Style’s for men who can afford it,” he said. “I’m more of a ‘walk in the right direction and hope the road doesn’t fall out beneath me’ sort.”
She almost smiled despite herself. The cold wind pressed her hood back from her head, baring the curve of her antlers and the soft angle of her deerlike ears.
Mallow’s gaze flicked to her, quick and instinctive, and held a moment longer above her eyes than it should have. Not cruelly, or with revulsion, but with the scrutiny of someone taking in a truth he understood but hadn’t seen with his own eyes until now.
Lain’s hands rose automatically to adjust the hood, too late. A flush rose to her cheeks, sudden and hot.
He looked away first.
“And which direction is that?” she asked, voice sharper than before.
He tilted his head toward the north, where the mountains rose in a pale wall of stone and snow. “The Cloudspine.”
Her stomach turned cold. “You’re heading for the Cloudspine?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Why?”
He reached for his coat and drew out a small, leather-bound book, its spine cracked, its pages edged with smudges of soil. “Client of mine,” he said. “A collector, fancies himself a healer. Offered more gold than sense to fetch him something that doesn’t grow south of those peaks.”
“What something?”
He opened the book to a drawing of a flower, yellow petals fading to purple. “Starbloom.”
Lain’s throat went dry. “You can’t,” she said.
“I can, for the right price.”
“You don’t understand. It’s poison. It kills anything that touches it – anything not Tuned.”
Mallow looked up at her, one brow lifting. “That so?”
“You can’t even breathe near it without feeling a little sick. The only reason I survived the ritual –” she paused, realizing she’d said too much, a path she wasn’t willing to walk yet.
“Ritual?” he asked, after a moment.
“Nevermind,” she muttered. “What matters is, you’d never be able to take one. It wilts and dies in the hands of all but the Tuned.”
He studied her for a moment, the faintest grin curving his mouth. “Then it’s a good thing I found you.”
She blinked. “What?”
“If this stuff only kills the untuned,” he said, “and you’re the other sort – well, that saves me a fair bit of trouble dying, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not helping you,” she said quickly. “I have my own purpose for being here.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Didn’t say you were helping. Just said we might be walking the same way for a while. Assuming you’re headed for the Cloudspine?”
Her tail flicked once against the snow. There was no point in lying to him now. “You expect me to believe you followed two armed Brighthand into the hills for company?”
“I followed them,” he said evenly, “because I needed a way through the passes, and they were headed in the right direction. I didn’t expect to find you strung up like a spring lamb in the fog.” His gaze softened a little. “But I’ll take the miracle as it comes.”
Lain looked away, staring at the whitened slope. The idea of following him, of trusting him at all, felt absurd. Yet she had no pack, no medicine, no other choice. The path ahead was as cold and silent as the sky.
Mallow brushed snow from his coat and stood. “You don’t have to decide now,” he said. “Just keep moving. We’ll freeze if we sit much longer.”
She rose reluctantly, her legs stiff. “You said your employer was a collector?”
“That’s what he called himself.”
“What did you call him?”
He adjusted the straps of his pack, the corner of his mouth twitching. “A fool with too much faith in the wrong kind of miracles.”
He started up the slope. Lain hesitated, the cold biting at her through the fabric of her robes, her ears tingling with it. Then she followed, the crunch of her hooves behind him loud in the emptiness. The mountains loomed ahead, a jagged wall of white. Somewhere beyond, she knew, the Starbloom waited.