I am thrashing, biting, my fingers like claws, my mouth a maw. I am an animal, vicious, tasting blood. The man curses and rips his hand from between my teeth. For a moment, I can breathe again—I turn a shallow breath into a short scream. But the man behind me muffles his own curses and clamps his hand back over my mouth. The lights of the cottage disappear quickly as he pulls me deeper into the wet green.
“Arret,” he growls. “Stop fighting!”
But I don’t—not until another man comes into view, his gun glinting in the dim and dappled moonlight. At the sight of it, I go still. My first thought is that the soldiers have found me. My second thought is that these men aren’t soldiers.
Both are wearing the green uniforms, but they are dirty, disheveled—stained and wrinkled and open at the throat. There is stubble on their chins, which the armée never suffers, and the man before me is wearing leather sandals instead of the armée boots. Deserters—or grave robbers? Defilers of the dead? I don’t know which is worse, or if it matters.
“Qu’est ce que c’est, Jian?” the bootless man whispers—armée words in a Chakran accent. The smell of unwashed flesh scrapes the roof of my mouth. Even more stomach turning is the look on the man’s face: recognition. “What do we have here?”
With a grin, the second man tosses me to the muddy ground. I start to scramble up, but Bootless cocks his gun—a warning. I sink back as Jian gives me a gap-toothed smile. “I know you saw the wagon,” he says to his friend. “A carved roulotte, just like the lieutenant said. And a Chakran girl inside it who might just be wanted for questioning.”
“Sound familiar?” The bootless man squints at me. “Ever had a run-in with Capitaine Legarde?”
I blink at him, wide-eyed in the low light, acting. “Who?”
Bootless hesitates, but Jian lashes out, driving his foot into my stomach. “There’s a recherche for you, girl. It describes your wagon perfectly! And I think the lieutenant will forgive our little leave of absence if we come back bearing gifts.”
Wheezing, I clutch my belly, but my mind is racing. I try to remember the terrain south of Luda. What had Leo said? Three days from the capital? What was nearby? “I don’t know what you mean,” I croak, my weak protest stirring in the damp leaves. “We’ve only just come from Dar Som—”
He kicks me again, this time in my ribs. “Now I know you’re lying,” he says through his teeth. “No one escaped Dar Som.”
“Wh-what?” Blinking away the tears in my eyes, I stare up at him through a haze of pain. Little souls float between us on a night breeze. “What happened at Dar Som?”
Bootless drops to a knee on my chest, pushing me into the sodden earth. I gasp for breath as he takes my wrists and binds them. “Lieutenant Pique.”
Then his hand clamps down over my lips and both men go still. I hear it in the distant dark. Leo’s voice, calling my name. Renewing my struggles, I try to respond, but Jian’s fist collides with my temple in a spray of stars that fades to fuzzy black.
The first thing to break the blackness is not light, but sound. A distant wail—high and familiar and chilling—but it draws me back to the world. When I wake, I almost regret it. My head is throbbing in time with a bruise on my ribs that makes it hard to breathe. My wrists are tied painfully tight, and my fingers are cold and numb. But I am alone—or at least, the soldiers have gone. In the corner, an akela sits, bright gold, playing with a scrap of cloth twisted into a makeshift doll. The arvana of mice scramble in the thatch overhead.
Painfully, I use my knuckles to push myself to my knees—slowly, slowly. A wave of nausea ripples through me and I clamp my lips together, trying to keep from retching, taking deep breaths through my nose. Cold sweat beads on my forehead, but at last the feeling passes enough for me to look around the room.
I am on the packed-earth floor of an empty hut—no, not empty. Abandoned. Unlike the smugglers’ cottage, people left this place in a hurry, unwilling or unable to stop and pack their meager possessions. A thin woven mat makes a humble bed. A faded orchid blossom wilts in a shallow stone cup, the water dark with algae. Coconut-shell bowls are still stacked on a rickety bamboo shelf, along with a metal cooking pot—a prize for a poor family. They wouldn’t have left it behind if they’d had a choice in the matter. My heart sinks as I look back to the akela. Perhaps they didn’t make it far.
Gingerly, I take a deep breath, wincing at the pain in my ribs, at the sour taste of smoke on the air, and something else . . . something sweet: the swampy smell of rot. Then the sound comes again—the one that woke me. High and long, a howling wail. It is answered by another and another; they overlap in a mournful song. It’s the sound of the ke’cherk—I know it well. A pack of them used to roam the mountains above Lak Na. When I was a girl, I found their music beautiful. Then came the Hungry Year, when all the death tempted them into the valleys and they flitted through the fields like white ghosts under the moon.
Everyone said they were afraid of humans, but I saw the aftermath of their scavenging—the opened graves, the carcasses rent and torn—and that year, I became afraid of them too. The howls fade away, but the dread remains, coiled under my tongue like a snake beneath a stone. Death draws them near. I glance once more to the akela in the corner, but she pays me no mind. And then I hear laughter outside—the soldiers’ voices, and they are much closer than the ke’cherk.
“I’m telling you, it’s not desertion if you’re in pursuit of the enemy.” Bootless’s voice.
“We weren’t when we deserted,” Jian replies.
“We don’t have to tell him that.”
Slowly, quietly, I creep toward the door on my knees, peeking through the tattered flap of woven reeds hanging over the doorway. Beneath it, I can make out the merry dance of a cookfire, and one of the men . . . Bootless, maybe, though I can only see his back.
I cast about the hut for another way out. The windows are small and high up, near the roof, to let out heat—but this was not a rich family. The walls are not bamboo, but thatch.
First things first. Lifting my hands to my mouth, I pick at the knot with my teeth, but it’s tied tightly, and soon blood fills my mouth from the split on my lip. So I spit on the rope and curl my numb finger to draw the symbol of life on the fiber. The akela wavers briefly, but returns to her doll, uninterested in such humble flesh. Something slips in, though—something small. A vana, maybe a worm. At first it grips me tighter, coiling up in its new skin. The pain makes me gasp, but I stay as still as I can, trying to soothe the little soul. Finally it begins to relax, to twist itself free of its knots. Gently I try to help, to pluck at the rope, and the blood starts returning to my hands.
Outside, the soldiers laugh again at some shared joke. For a moment I go still, but the man I can see doesn’t move, so I redouble my efforts, hoping they both stay there, by the fire. Their voices rise again into the ebb of their laughter.
“The real question is,” Jian says, “do we want to go back?”
“I’m hungry,” Bootless replies. “Not much left to eat around here.”
“We could move on.”
“Where? The jungle? You know what the rebels would do to us?”
“The ones here didn’t have much fight in them.”
“These weren’t rebels, connard. Not all of them.” Bootless spits into the fire, and something cold twists in my stomach. But then the rope falls free from my wrists, twitching and coiling on the ground. I pick it up, winding it around my wrist like a bracelet. “Stay,” I murmur, and it cinches up close. I’ll burn it later, when I’m back safe with my parents around my own cook fire.
Taking one last glance through the door to make sure the soldiers are still there, I crawl across to the opposite wall and push my hands through the palm fronds. They rustle and I freeze again, heart fluttering, but the soldiers don’t stir. Moving more slowly, I slip my arms through the dry leaves in a wedge, letting the crinkle of the grass blend into the crackle of the fire. The edges of the leaves are sharp as razors, drawing little lines of blood where they brush along my bare skin, but I press forward—ducking my head, twisting my shoulders, slow and steady as the arvana scramble closer through the leaves.
But I stop halfway through.
My hands are on the rutted ground behind the hut, where rain drips down from the eaves and scores the earth, looking out on the gutted remains of a village. The smoke I had smelled came not from the cook fire, but from the smoldering ash of burned-out hovels. I am in one of the only ones left standing. Coals still glow dimly in the ashen husks: still-beating hearts in broken rib cages. Wisps of smoke hang in the air like memories, and everywhere I look, there are columns of cold fire: n’akela. The deaths here were not easy.
I know without being told that I am in Dar Som.
But why? Anger roils in my gut along with the bile. These weren’t all rebels—even Bootless had known that. The spirit with her rag doll, the orchid in the bowl—the people who lived here were families like mine. And Jian’s face comes back to me, twisted into a leering grin: No one escaped. As I clench my fists against the rocky earth, the n’akela drift closer, as though they can hear my thoughts. As though they know I am tempted to help them with their vengeance.
Then a gunshot cracks like a whip—once, twice, thrice. I stifle a scream . . . but it came from the jungle on the far side of the hut. Nowhere near me. One of the soldiers is screaming too—Bootless, I think. “They’re in the trees!” Jian shouts, returning fire. “Get inside!”
I hesitate. Who is out there? Rebels? The armée? Am I in more danger out in the open or back in the hut with the soldiers? In the dark, in a firefight, I don’t want to be caught between them. I struggle through the thatch, but I waited too long. As I slip through, a hand shoots out from the hut and wraps around my ankle. I hear Bootless cursing just inside. He pulls me back, but his grip is weak and slick with sweat or blood. “She’s getting away!”
Frantic, I kick back through the thatch. The fronds slice my skin as my heel connects with his shoulder, his head, his jaw. A muffled grunt, and I am free. Scrambling to my feet, I careen toward the jungle—running headfirst into Jian coming around the side of the hovel.
He lunges for me. I spin away. His fingers barely brush my back, but he grabs a fistful of my sarong and nearly jerks me off my feet. I stumble back, close enough to hear him snarl in my ear—no words, just a sound like a beast. He wraps his arm around my neck, so tight I can’t breathe. “Let go of me,” I whisper, clawing at his arm. The n’akela creep closer, hopeful. “I’ll kill you if you don’t.”
He only laughs. “With what?”
My blood and bare hands, I do not say. The souls of the dead and the damned. But the memory of fleeing La Perl, of Eduard’s screams—they still rattle in my head like dust in a dry skull. So instead, I tug the rope from my wrist and whip it back over my shoulder. The vana twists inside the fiber, wrapping tight around his neck.
Jian’s hands fly to his throat, and I am free. He reels sideways, falling against the wall of the hut, eyes bulging, struggling to breathe. His fingers gouge at the soft skin of his neck as he sinks to his knees. In my chest there is a feeling, distantly familiar, like the applause after a show, like the thrill of having all eyes on me. It is power.
All around me, n’akela gather, a rapt audience. But this is not a shadow play—death is not a puppet, here. Still, something dark tempts me . . . could I play this role? Doesn’t he deserve it?
I am caught between shadow and flame, hesitating, but the rope only wraps itself tighter. Jian’s lips turn blue, and the n’akela drift closer still, waiting for the vengeance that is their final purpose. If Jian dies now, what color will his soul be? Will I be watching over my own shoulder for a flash of blue light?
“Stop,” I whisper to the spirit in the rope, and just like that, it falls away. I snatch it back as Jian drags a single breath—ragged, desperate, eager. Then another shot rings out from the jungle, and a spray of red explodes across the wall of the hut.
With a strangled scream, I turn away—but not before the image is pressed into my mind in shards of bone and teeth all red with blood. Jian’s body slides sideways to lie against the rutted earth. Nausea hits me again like a punch to the gut, too fast to fight. This time I retch, tottering away from the body, spitting, gasping, gagging. A man crashes out of the tangled greenery behind the hut, a gun in his fist. “Jetta?”
“Leo!” I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, stifling a sob—relief, and dread. I want to run to him, I want to run away. Instead I try to breathe. His hair and eyes are a little wild and his shirt is in tatters under his jacket, but otherwise he seems unhurt. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to save you,” he says—an echo of Maman’s words. I’m always trying to save you. Where is she now?
I look behind him, toward the trees, but all I see are the n’akela, drifting away; the show is over. “Are my parents with you?”
“I made them stay with the roulotte, in case . . .” He doesn’t finish his sentence—and I don’t want him to. His lip curls as he glances over my shoulder, at the soldier slumped on the ground. I do not turn; I do not follow his gaze. I do not want to see Jian’s body or his soul. “Did they hurt you?”
“A bad headache,” I say. “But nothing worse. They were going to bring me to their lieutenant. They said I’m wanted for questioning on a . . . a recherche.”
Leo frowns, pushing past me; out of the corner of my eye, I see him crouch beside Jian’s prone body. He rifles through the dead man’s pockets, drawing out a few étoiles, some cigarettes, a crumpled piece of paper. Then another howl cuts through the night—much closer.
“We should go,” I murmur, winding the rope back around my wrist for safekeeping, but Leo’s still staring at the page, swearing softly. “What is that?”
“The recherche, like you said.” He looks up at me, almost hesitant. “They have a description of you, and of the roulotte.”
I suck air through my teeth—a description printed on paper? I’ve only ever seen those for the Tiger. How much of the armée is looking for us? Has word reached Nokhor Khat? But before I can ask, the palm thatch rustles, and the tip of a bayonet slides through the wall of the hut. Leo twists away—too late. The bright blade lays open his jacket and cuts a scarlet line across his chest. With a grimace, he raises his gun and fires back through the thatch; inside, Bootless’s scream cuts off in a gurgling sigh.
Wincing, I turn away. All I can smell is blood and smoke and bile. But another howl floats through the air along with the smoke. I see her then—the ke’cherk, standing in the village square, pale as bone. Her sleek muzzle is raised toward the night sky, the white fur stained red. The silvery scales on her slender legs gleam in the moonlight. Can she smell Leo’s blood above the rest?
My heart pounding, I pull him toward the trees, plunging into the jungle along a muddy track. Leo’s face is pale; he presses his fist against the jacket, over the wound, trying to stanch the bleeding. Another howl floats through the air—but surrounded by thick greenery on both sides, I cannot tell if it comes from behind us or up ahead. I stop to get my bearings, but Leo keeps going. He is only maybe a wagon’s length away from me when I hear him yelp.
“Leo!” I whirl, but he has vanished . . . though ahead, there is splashing and cursing in Chakran and Aquitan. I take a step toward the sound, and the smell of blood grows stronger, mixed with the sweet taint of rot. There, where he disappeared—the track ends suddenly in a deep shadow before a wall of jungle. “Are you all right?”
“Don’t come any closer!”
“What’s wrong?” I say, my heart pounding in response to the panic in his voice. I take another step. Where is he?
“Stay back!” he calls, but I ignore him. As I approach, the shadow on the track resolves itself into a hole dug in the earth—as wide as the roulotte, and several times as long. He must have slid down the side.
“Leo!” My heart drops as I teeter on the edge of the pit. I think I see him then, lying in the mud, half submerged by the rainwater that fills the bottom of the ditch, but I’m wrong, so wrong. It isn’t him at all.
Leo is scrambling up the side of the gully, clawing at the white roots that worm through the fresh-cut earth, eyes wide and shoulder bloody, but alive. And at the bottom of the ditch, a body. And another, and another, stacked like cane—men and women and children and even babies, the whole village, sinking in the muck, a mire of the dead.