Nasan turned Omair’s map over in her hands. She frowned and squinted at it.
“It works better if you look at it right side up,” Lu told her, fighting to keep the impatience from her voice.
“The route you two chose was pretty inefficient,” Nasan replied, ignoring the comment. “You must have walked east for three days straight at the Keian Bend, then doubled back again. Stupid.” She folded the map up and handed it back.
Lu slid the folded paper into her satchel and tried not to bristle. “We had to stay off the main roads,” she pointed out. “We chose safety over speed.”
“Should’ve shot for a little less of one, a little more of the other,” Nasan said. “All in all, it looks like you added a good week or more to your travels.”
Lu bit her tongue. They’d done what they had to do, but she couldn’t argue that they were making slower progress than she’d like. As it was, they’d had to spend two extra nights at the Gifted camp to let Nok heal and rest.
They had set out three—maybe four?—days ago from Nasan’s camp. Lu frowned. Time was running together in her head, blurred by the monotony of the trail they struck. Lu had started out the journey trying to track the roundabout route Nasan led them on, but with no way to write it down, she found herself forgetting more and more of where they had begun. It worried her a bit. She didn’t think the girl would betray them—she was Nokhai’s sister, after all—but she didn’t like the loss of control.
Each morning, the three of them rose early, fetched water if a creek was nearby, or otherwise took tiny sips from their skins until they found one. After an all-too brief breakfast of smoked squirrel and stale hotcakes, they were on the road again.
At night, they kept their fires small and discreet and took turns keeping watch in rotation: Lu, then Nok, then Nasan. They slept little, no more than they strictly needed. Most of their time was spent walking.
It was dull going, Lu thought as they trekked down yet another nondescript hillside scattered with stands of towering pines and eucalyptus. An old, narrow goat path—probably created by a Gifted Kith for their livestock long ago—helped them to pick their way through the parched, tall yellow grass here.
Lu spotted a rust-colored rodent darting in and out from one of the burrows that dotted the path like pockmarks. It was slight, no longer than her forearm, with a sweet face like a kitten’s, but it followed them so persistently and with such keen, brazen eyes that she started pulling out her bow until Nok assured her it meant them no harm.
“Just a weasel. They’re curious is all,” he told her.
She frowned doubtfully but re-slung her bow and asked, “Did it dig all these holes by itself?”
“These holes?” He pointed to where the little creature had disappeared. “No, those are from ground squirrels. The weasels move into the abandoned burrows.”
“How do you know so much about the animals around here?” she asked, falling into step beside him.
“I don’t know much about this particular kind of weasel,” Nok replied. “But there were similar ones along the autumn route our Kith took, through the steppe.”
It was the first time she had heard him speak so freely about his childhood home, and his words conjured a memory of her own: “You told me,” she said. “When we were children, you told me about those weasels. You said sometimes the older children would make a game of catching them with their cauls.”
To her astonishment, a smile split across his face. “I remember that,” he exclaimed. “You asked if they were good eating, and I said I didn’t know, because no one ever caught one, far as I saw.”
His words flooded her with effervescent warmth. It churned in her, then burst forth as a laugh. It wasn’t funny, but that didn’t matter. It felt like weeks since she’d had anything to smile about.
“Ay, lovebirds! Keep it down!” Nasan’s voice came unexpectedly close and loud. Lu jumped as the other girl cackled in her ear. “Thought you were supposed to be a skilled hunter, Princess,” Nasan said smugly. “That’s twice I’ve snuck up on you.”
Lu huffed in annoyance. “I was distracted.”
“Yes,” Nasan agreed. “By my brother.”
“If you tried even a little, Nasan, I bet you could be less of a pain,” Nok muttered, face flushing.
“I’m sure I could,” Nasan agreed amiably. “But what would be the fun in that?”
Lu took the first watch that night, sword unsheathed across her lap. Sleep came reluctantly to her lately, and when it came at all it was marred with dark, bloody dreams.
The wood was silent save for the even breathing of her sleeping companions, and the whine of the occasional mosquito. As they drew higher into the Yunian foothills the air had grown chillier—hard on their fingers and toes, but making for far fewer insects. It was an exchange Lu was glad to make, at least for now. She might be less glad of it if it got any colder.
“Hey.”
The voice came soft beside her. Instinctively, her grip tightened on the hilt of her sword, but her fingers fell away when she looked through the dark and saw Nokhai’s face, wan and starkly shadowed in the moonlight. The worry of danger passed, but her heart quickened anyway.
He closed the distance between them and sat, near enough that she could feel the warmth of him radiating through his wool tunic. “You should sleep,” she whispered.
“Can’t.” He didn’t sound too concerned, though.
“Not surprising,” she said carefully. “You must have a lot on your mind.”
It was hard to know how far she could wander into his thoughts before he pushed her back out, but tonight he just shrugged. Let her stay.
“That’s one way to put it,” he said.
A pale slash of his face was visible in the moonlight, just enough that she saw the smile quirk quick across his mouth.
“I can’t help but feel like all of this means something, you know?” she said. “You finding your sister like this. It feels like . . .”
“Fate?” he said.
She looked sharply at him to see if he was mocking her, but the black pools of his eyes were wide and open. Earnest.
“Yes,” she said, her mouth dry. “Fate.”
She moved closer. He watched her with quiet interest but didn’t object, so she pressed her shoulder to his. She felt his breath puff against her cheek, in the shell of her ear, waiting for her lips to seek his. She didn’t make him wait long.
He kissed her back. She pulled him closer, surprised at the hunger with which he met her. He touched her, just below her ribs, then his hand jerked away when he realized what he’d done.
“Sorry,” he whispered, the words warm against her lips.
She shook her head, making a wordless sound of frustration as she guided his hand back to where it had been. He opened his mouth in surprise and she covered it with her own.
A ways off, Nasan snorted and mumbled something blearily. They froze, but she lapsed back into deep, even breaths.
“Do you think she’s really asleep?” Lu murmured.
“Nasan?” He pulled back and made a face. “Do we have to talk about my sister right now?”
Lu laughed, nudging his chin with her nose before burying her face against the heat of his neck. “She doesn’t seem to like me much.”
He stiffened. “Did she say something?”
Damn. “No,” Lu said quickly. “No, of course not.”
“Not everything is about you,” he told her. He pulled back, the cold of the night air quickly filling the void left by his body. “Nasan’s been through a lot.”
“I know—”
“You don’t,” he cut her off. “You can’t.”
Lu pursed her mouth and stared at him, but he either didn’t notice her gaze through the dark or refused to meet it.
Later, bedded down sleepless on the cold ground, she would think: He is a boy covered in hidden wounds. Each time she thought she had figured out how to safely embrace him, her fingers probed across his skin and found a new break.
Two days later, Nasan halted their trek to tell them unceremoniously, “There’s a lake over the next ridge. The gate is along its shore.”
“You’re certain?” Lu pressed.
“Of course,” Nasan retorted, clearly offended. “I know where I’m going, Princess. Don’t expect to see much, though. Like I said, Yunis only appears when it wants to.”
Lu rolled her eyes. “So you’ve mentioned a few hundred times.”
Nok interrupted before Nasan could respond, as though sensing a spat coming on. “Maybe we should stop here and one of us can go scout to make sure the way is clear.”
“I’ll go,” Lu and Nasan said immediately, in unison. Then they turned to one another and glared.
“You’re not going together.” Nok shook his head. “You’ll kill each other before you even get to the top.”
“There’s no way I’m not going—no one is as familiar with imperial scouts as I am,” Lu said at the same time that she heard Nasan protest, “I’m the only one who’s been here before, you wouldn’t even know what to look for!”
Nok put his face in his hands.
“Forget it,” Lu said. “Let’s all just go.”
Nasan frowned grudgingly. “Fine by me,” she said.
The trees had become sparse and thin as the days passed—staggering pines transitioning into bent scrub trees, until those too became few and far between. As they scaled the ridge, whatever remained of the forest fell away into a jagged landscape of barren foothills.
“It’s very desolate,” Lu said.
Nasan smirked and bumped Nokhai’s shoulder with her own. “I think it’s homey, don’t you, brother?”
But Nokhai’s eyes were far away. He was chewing on his lip so hard it looked like he might draw blood.
“Are you all right?” Lu whispered, touching his arm. He started, as though he had forgotten she was there.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Just . . . feels strange here.”
“Well,” she said carefully. “Lot of memories for you, probably.”
“No,” he said quickly. “I mean, yes, but it’s not that . . . it’s physical. Like . . . like, there’s something humming just below my feet. Like it’s shooting straight up into my bones.”
“I feel it, too.” Nasan was looking over her shoulder. “Happens every time we get this far north. It’s the ghost of the Pact, brother. The land, or rather, the magic in the land. We might’ve lost our cauls, but a trace of it will be in us always. Our blood remembers.”
Nok shivered. Lu saw in his eyes that he still hadn’t told his sister about his Gifting Dream—none of it.
Well. That was his business.
They fell into silence as they approached the top of the ridge, the ground now so steep that they were forced to their hands and knees. Lu thanked the heavens she’d held on to her leather hunting gloves as she searched for handholds in the rocky earth. She was panting now, her breath ragged.
Beside her, Nok seemed to grow stronger and surer the higher they climbed. At one point, she slipped in the dirt, and his hand shot out to grab hers before she had scarcely fallen at all.
She gave him a questioning look and he shrugged, looking just as surprised. “Maybe Nasan is right . . . something in the earth makes us stronger. Like it recognizes us.”
For her part, Nasan barely seemed to register the change in their surroundings. She reached the top first, to Lu’s chagrin, casting a wink back at them before peeking over the other side.
Immediately, her face changed. Gone was the glib amusement, replaced by fear. She ducked back and put a finger to her lips, then motioned them forward. Lu glanced at Nok, who shrugged, his face taut and dark with worry.
When they reached the top, Lu peered over.
There was the promised lake, placid and eerily blue as the sky. A mirrored bowl set in the center of the dry valley. And along its shore, a writhing mass of metal.
Soldiers. Hundreds of them.
In their gleaming steel-plated armor, they looked like a stream of glittering beetles amassing on a corpse. Close enough that she could nearly make out the faces beneath their helmets.
Then she noticed the tents, and the central flagpole flying the flag of the Hu Empire—and just below that, the blue banner of the Family Li. Set’s men.
“Gods,” Nok breathed beside her.
In unison, they ducked back down and turned to Nasan.
“I thought you said this gate was unguarded!” Lu hissed, just as Nok growled, “What is this, Nasan?”
“Keep it down,” the other girl snapped, but her dark eyes gleamed uncertainly. “Obviously something changed. You think I just overlooked a thousand imperials the last time I was here?”
Lu bit back a retort and instead peered over the ridge again. “The far side of the slope is more densely wooded. Do you think we could make it down that way?”
Nasan frowned. “There’s some cover down at the shore . . . but I don’t think we can make it undetected.”
Lu nodded reluctantly. “Maybe we could go one at a time. They’d be less likely to see us if—”
The blast of a horn rang out from below.
Lu knew the sound right away: a military scout. It took her a moment to realize it had come from the wrong side of the ridge—back from the direction they had come. She whipped around.
“Watch out!” Nokhai hissed, grabbing Lu’s arm.
Before she could respond, the first of the crossbow bolts whipped past her ear, where her face had been a moment earlier. She turned in the direction it had come from and saw them: five imperial scouts in blue.
“Get down!” she bellowed as the riders unleashed another round of bolts. Nasan and Nok were already scrambling back in the direction they’d come, but two of the riders broke off, forcing them back up the ridge, toward the valley. Cornered, they leaped over the side, tumbling and scrabbling for purchase.
Lu half crawled and half fell after them, her knees scraping against the hard earth. She came to a rough stop a short drop below.
“We’ve got to get back—”
But Nasan grabbed her wrist.
“What—?”
Before their eyes, Nok seemed to grow. One moment, he was scrabbling down the ridge on hands and knees, and the next there were claws springing from his fingers, thick blue-gray fur sweeping easy as a wind across his face and back.
“Nokhai!” the cry tore from her, but the wolf that had been Nokhai was hurtling away from them, impossibly fast.
Lu saw the glittering blue and chrome armor of near a dozen mounted Hana soldiers cut through the scrub trees below, their swords flashing in the eerie northern light. Then she caught a blur of gray-blue fur knifing through them, lightning quick, leaving a wake of bucking horses.
“He’s not . . . this can’t be,” Nasan whispered. She was still clutching Lu’s arm as if she were set to wrench it off. “It’s not possible. The Pact was broken—”
“He’s done it before,” Lu admitted. “When I first met him in the forest, he was like that. He hasn’t been able to do it again since then, though. He can’t control it yet, but—”
“Gods,” Nasan breathed, dropping Lu’s wrist. “My brother is a Pactmaker.”
A shriek drew Lu’s eyes away.
Below them, two soldiers were on the ground, one very still and seeping red-black out of his eyes; the other screaming horribly, dark blood making a geyser from his arm. Something glinted in the sun—the fallen man’s sword. Still clutched in his severed hand, yards away.
Nokhai, Lu thought, seeing the jagged edges of the man’s torn arm. No weapon had done that.
She fit an arrow into her bow. Beside her, Nasan hefted her staff in both hands.
Lu’s first shot took a soldier in the side. He flew from his horse. Another shot back at her, but she ducked. The arrow thunked hard into a narrow little scrub tree behind her. She ran, heart slamming in her chest, but before her assailant could follow, she caught a blur of gray and the man was torn from his saddle. Nok’s massive wolf clutched him by the throat, gave him a single hard shake, throwing the mangled body to the ground. The other soldiers circled the wolf warily as the creature bared its teeth.
Lu started toward him, but Nok cried out to her in thought-speak.
Don’t. I can distract them. Get to safety—both of you.
There was no safety.
An arrow speared the dry earth just to Lu’s right. Another one flew at her face . . .
Nasan knocked it from the air with her staff. Behind her, Lu saw a horse that had lost its rider. The creature reared, and Lu darted forward, seizing the reins and whispering rapid nonsense until it stilled. She spun toward Nasan. “Can you ride?”
Nasan stared. “Ride?”
“A horse!” Lu shouted. “Can you ride a horse?”
“How hard can it be? Try not to fall off, right?”
“Ride down to the copse of trees we saw over the ridge,” she yelled. “Find the Yunians and tell them to open the gate. Nokhai and I will meet you.”
Doubt rippled across Nasan’s face, but she was already scrambling into the saddle. “There’s no guarantee they’ll answer my call.”
“We’re all guaranteed to die if we stay here.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Nasan said, and then she was gone.
Lu!
She spun at the sound of Nok’s thought-speak. The boy’s wolf was surging toward her. Lu’s heart dropped; its long gray fur was streaked dark with blood. Behind it, a tangle of soldiers lay on the ground, their throats a hopeless seeping mess of red gore. Three were still on their horses, though, closing in behind him.
Lu nocked an arrow and took one of the men in the throat, striking him clear from his horse, but not before a second loosed a crossbow bolt straight into the wolf’s ribs. It hit home with a hollow thunk. Nokhai jerked hard at the impact, letting off a yowl of pain.
“Nok!” Lu screamed, but he was still coming toward her, determined.
Get on! he shouted at her.
Madness. He would collapse with the added burden of her weight. But he was approaching fast. Madness, she thought again as she seized a hank of fur about his ruff and swung a leg over the beast’s broad back.
“I sent Nasan ahead,” she gasped out, then bore down close against his back as a crossbow bolt whizzed past her ear. “Trees by the lake. Meet her there.”
Nasan—he repeated, breaking off as another crossbow bolt narrowly missed his flank and embedded itself in the dirt where a moment ago his paws had been pounding.
“She’s fine,” Lu panted, hoping it was true. “She’ll be fine.”
The short blat of a scout’s horn came from behind them.
“There’s only one of them now,” she said. “Where did the others go?”
To get reinforcements?
She groaned. “Most likely. If that’s the case . . .”
We only counted about a thousand soldiers, he cut in, pain pulling taut at the edges of his words.
They broke over the ridge and plunged into the paltry trees spangling its face. Nokhai cut through them, wending a deft, jagged path, trying to shake their attackers. The scout’s horn blasted again, but this time it came from farther away, as if he were losing ground.
Listen, Nok said, and she was alarmed to hear how ragged he sounded. If I can’t make it all the way with you, you have to go on, all right?
“Shut up!” she snapped.
No, he said, and his voice was coming thin and terse now. You have to protect Nasan, and you need to keep your promise to her, and all those kids of hers. And you have to get Omair—
“Shut up!” she repeated.
Please promise me, Lu. Omair. Do you promise?
They were so close. “Shut up, or I swear I’ll—”
The wolf’s legs gave out.
They skidded hard down the remaining distance of the slope, carried by its momentum, kicking up stones as big and hard as fists. Clouds of yellow-gray dirt blew across Lu’s face, stinging her eyes shut. Distantly, she felt the flesh of her left forearm split like wet paper, but she felt no pain. Not yet.
They jolted to a stop in a settling cloud of dust and gravel. Lu swiped at her face to clear it and felt wetness in its wake. Blood from her mangled palms. She smelled copper, smelled salt. Someone was moaning, low and ragged, and she recognized her own voice. She blinked hard, forced her swollen eyes to open.
They were at the edge of the lakeshore. Another thirty feet and they would be in the water.
A dark violet-gray fog rolled in over the lake, curling and swelling toward them. The ghostly form of Nok’s wolf loped down the shore into it, paws skimming the surface of the open water.
Lu squinted her dust-stung eyes, trying to focus, but they welled with tears. When she managed to open them again the wolf was gone, but the fog remained.
Then she saw the boy’s body lying on the shore. His broken, all-too-human body.
“Nokhai!” She flew down toward him. He was still moving, but his breath was ragged, and she saw that every wound and mark carved into the wolf was now left upon his own skin. The shaft of the crossbow bolt had snapped clean off in the fall, leaving only the ragged point lodged into his ribs.
His eyes were distant, but they focused on her when she touched him.
“Go,” he rasped. “Get out of here.”
“I am not leaving you,” she hissed. His eyes . . . he was having trouble focusing, but they fluttered at the blast of the scout’s horn, much closer now. Another horn responded in kind. Then another. Close. She heard the hard clip of a thousand hooves on stone, rippling toward them like a wave. She looked for them—the soldiers—but the fog had grown too dense around them.
All she could see were her own bloodied hands, clutching at Nokhai’s pallid face, smearing red across his skin.
“You have to go,” he told her.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“They’re coming.” And beneath the pain, the fear, she felt his iron, his mettle. “Go now.”
“Not without you,” she said. She hauled him up onto her back, struggling to stand. She made it to a crouch before her knees buckled and she fell back against the stones.
The soldiers were upon them. She could hear the shouts of men over the slamming hooves against rock, the labored huff of the beasts.
“Over there!”
The call came behind them, unexpected, from the direction of the water. Lu half rose, her hand poised on the hilt of her sword. But then she recognized the voice.
“Nasan?” she cried out, her voice cracking with hope and disbelief. “Nasan!”
Something large cut through the smoke-gray fog over the lake, as if it were pushing its way through a curtain: a scow with a hull carved into the likeness of a dragon, painted ivory-white. Then, no—it was a blushing fuchsia, then the palest blue. Impossible. Lu drew in a sharp breath. The boat was hewn entirely from crystal, scintillating in the low light.
A hooded figure was poling the boat along. Nasan waved frantically from its prow.
The blast of the Hana scout’s trumpet came again, and it should have been close, closer, but it sounded impossibly far away. The air was oddly still. Something had changed.
The horses, Lu realized. The thundering of hooves had disappeared.
“Nokhai,” Lu whispered, bending to pull at his shoulders. His eyelids fluttered but did not open. “Nokhai?” She shook him, frantic now. “We’re here. We’re saved. Please . . .”
The boat bumped against the edge of the shore, and the tall, hooded figure within emerged. They walked strong and upright, but as they advanced, Lu glimpsed beneath their cowl the face of a very old man, his skin spotted with age, eyes and mouth drooping not unpleasantly at the corners.
“Please!” she called out to him. “My friend . . .”
The man bent over Nokhai swiftly, touched his throat, his temple, his chest. “He lives,” he assured her. “We must hurry—bring him to my sister. But he lives.”
He withdrew the cloak from his shoulders and wrapped it around Nokhai’s limp frame. Lu looked up to thank him—but the face she had glimpsed before was gone, replaced by that of a young man no more than two or three years her senior. He stood, lifting Nokhai in his arms as though he weighed no more than a cat.
“Princess Lu?” the young man said politely, his eyes searching her face with a curious, almost boyish wonder.
“Yes, I . . .” She blinked, baffled at the sight of his dark, unhooded eyes, and soft, affable features where the old man had been moments earlier. “And you are . . . ?”
“My name is Prince Jin,” the young man said. “Welcome to Yunis.”