Asha took the fastest route to the north gate: through the new quarter, past the temple. She moved quickly through the narrow streets. After Kozu’s attack, when this quarter burned for three days straight, her father ordered it rebuilt. The effort took almost six years and the labor of thousands of slaves.
Now, as Asha walked, a sea of green surrounded her. Green, the color of renewal. Slaves painted the walls green as a tribute to those who’d died in the flames.
The streets were no wider than a donkey cart, and while she was nowhere near the city’s largest market, merchants’ stalls clustered along the walls. Mountains of saffron, anise, and paprika rose out of rough canvas bags. The pungent smell of leather wafted from sandal stalls. Brightly colored sabra silk rippled in the breeze.
At the end of it all the white walls of the temple stretched toward a blue sky. Asha was halfway to it when a woman stepped in front of her and fell to her knees, blocking her way. The tang of iron hung around her, and from the way soot gathered in the creases of her skin and the edges of her fingernails, Asha guessed she was a blacksmith.
“I-Iskari.” Her head bowed low. Thick, blackened hands trembled as they clutched a long bundle of dyed cloth to her chest. “Th-these are for you.”
Slaves running errands for their masters slowed all around her. Asha felt their watching eyes. The blacksmith kneeling in the middle of the street drew too much attention.
“Get up.”
The blacksmith shook her head and raised her hands higher.
“Please take them.”
Asha glanced from the top of the blacksmith’s head to the shape of the long bundle wrapped in soot-smudged linen and secured with rope. A familiar shape. The hair on the back of her neck rose.
Asha took the bundle, burned hand and all. The moment the weight of it sank into her palms, she knew exactly what lay within.
“I worked through the night and finished at dawn,” the blacksmith said. “The Old One himself told me how to fashion them.”
Asha went rigid. She looked to the doorways and second-story terraces on the walls around them. When her gaze fell on any watchers, they withdrew behind teal or yellow curtains or wooden lattices.
Asha pulled the bundle close to her chest. “Did anyone hear you forge them?”
The blacksmith kept her eyes on the cobbles. “I often work through the night, Iskari. If they heard, it would not seem unusual.”
“Don’t speak of this to anyone.”
Without raising her eyes, the blacksmith nodded. Stepping around her, Asha left the woman kneeling behind her and clutched the bundle tight all the way to the gates.
The soldats at the gate didn’t give her trouble, but Asha heard their grumbled words as they unlocked the heavy iron door.
Where were her slaves? they wondered. And hadn’t she just returned from a hunt?
The Iskari always hunted with an entourage of slaves. Today, though, she was alone and heavily armored, with her hunting axe at her hip. Going into the Rift on her own, merely a day after her return, sparked suspicion.
They may have wondered where she was going, but the soldats didn’t stop her. Because Asha was the Iskari.
That wouldn’t keep the news from reaching Jarek, though.
Let it. Asha hardened against the thought of him as she moved deeper into the trees, following the hunting paths. When I return with Kozu’s head, Jarek will no longer be my concern.
Still, she moved quickly. In case anyone meant to follow her.
Asha hurried through the rattling esparto grass. The cedars croaked and hushed around her. If she was going to call a dragon—if she was going to call the most dangerous dragon—she needed to put as much space as possible between her and the city. She needed to right the wrongs she’d committed, not repeat them.
In the late afternoon, she climbed the sun-bleached cliffs of the lower Rift, looking back the way she’d come, ensuring the walls of the city were far and small in the distance. She laid the blacksmith’s bundle on the rock before her, untying the cords and pushing back the fabric.
Twin blades greeted her: black as night, elegant as slivered moons. Their hilts were made of bone inlaid with iron and gold. And there was a second bundle. Asha unwrapped it to find a shoulder belt and scabbards. She strapped on the belt and sheathed each slayer, one after the other, so they crisscrossed against her back.
Now for the treacherous part. She had only six days to track and kill Kozu. Asha couldn’t afford to waste time. Kozu had been seen in the Rift. If she told an old story here, it might draw him to her.
But which one would the oldest and wickedest of dragons want to hear? One about himself? One about Elorma, the First Namsara?
Asha broke away from the hunting paths, heading into the pines and hacking at clinging vines that blocked her way. As she pressed on, Asha drew a story up from her depths. Like a bucket hoisted from a well full of poison instead of water.
Asha opened her mouth to tell it when she stumbled out of the trees and onto a rocky outcropping.
A lean beige dragon lay curled around itself, blending into the shale as it soaked up the heat of the sun. Beyond it, the Rift dipped into a valley of lush green growth around the river snaking through it.
Asha froze as the dragon swung its head to look at her. The smoky stench of it hit her in the face. Its horns had barely come in, making it an adolescent. Judging by its muted coloring, it was female.
This dragon clicked dangerously as it curled its body around to face her. Younger dragons were more prone to aggression. More prone to fighting than fleeing. This dragon was no exception.
It spread its wings wide, like a fowl displaying its plumage to appear bigger and more frightening in the face of an enemy. Its wings cast a shadow over Asha. The sunlight sifted through the translucent membranes, revealing interlocking bones that worked to keep its huge body in flight.
The dragon hissed.
Asha’s fingers wrapped around the handle of her axe. On any other day, stumbling across a dragon would have thrilled her.
Asha gritted her teeth. The sooner I slay it, the sooner I can summon Kozu.
Slamming her helmet down over her head, Asha gripped her axe, then changed her mind.
Using her unburned hand, she tucked her axe back into her belt and drew one of the slayers from the scabbards at her back. The moment her palm connected with the hilt, her blood hummed.
These slayers can only be used to make wrongs right, a warning clanged inside her.
I am righting a wrong, she thought.
Asha swung the sacred blade, throwing sunlight into the dragon’s eyes, and then lunged. The dragon slithered out of her way, circling back around her. Its scales whispered against the rock. Asha barely had time to duck and roll before it could slam its spiked tail into her back. This was a hunting lesson Asha learned early: always know exactly where a dragon’s tail is.
Before Asha could climb to her feet, the dragon lunged, its venom fangs out and ready to bite. Asha rolled again just as it struck, missing her by a fingerbreadth. She rolled again, right beneath it, her back to the cracked rock, her face to an underbelly as pale as an egg.
Asha thrust her slayer up into soft flesh.
Two things happened. First, the dragon shrieked, flapping its thin wings, trying to scramble away. Second, pain like no other raced up Asha’s arm and her screams joined the dragon’s.
She let go of the hilt. The dragon broke free, dragging itself toward the cliff edge.
Asha sat up. Her arm hung limp at her side. Her breathing came sharp and fast. The pain had vanished, replaced by a horrible numbness.
She couldn’t feel her arm. Couldn’t flex the fingers of her hand. It was as if the limb didn’t exist.
These slayers can only be used to make wrongs right.
Again, she tried to move her arm. Again, it didn’t respond.
Elorma had deceived her.
Enraged, Asha screamed her hate at the Old One. “Deceiver!” The word echoed all across the cliffs until the wind whisked the sound of it away.
Asha looked to the cliff edge, where the young dragon lay silent and still. Maybe it wasn’t dead. Maybe she’d just injured it.
Maybe she could fix this.
“Please be alive,” Asha whispered, moving toward it. But when she grabbed the hilt with her scorched hand and pulled the weapon out, blood pooled around her boots.
Asha sank to her knees before the dead dragon’s head, resting on the rock, its eyes closed.
Her left arm was useless, her right hand burned. How was she supposed to hunt Kozu now?
The bloodied black blade lay across her knees. Asha wanted to throw it off the cliff.
If the Old One thought he could stop her through trickery, then the Old One had underestimated her. It was Asha who, at the age of ten, summoned the most wicked of dragons and nearly destroyed an entire city. It was Asha who had more kills to her name than any other hunter.
Asha was dangerous. She was not to be trifled with. Because, maimed or not, she was hunting Kozu down and bringing her father his head. She was putting an end to the old ways forever—if it was the last thing she did.