Days of Blood & Starlight(35)

She smiled to herself. It was funny, she thought, but her smile turned wistful because she had nobody to tell. In the court, the soldiers were still laughing, and she was in the shadows and no part of it.

Ixander was moving with much more ease now, and it took her a moment to understand why—it was because he wasn’t trying so hard. He was moving as bodies are meant to move, without thought. She experienced a surge of pride, seeing the bear heft of him snap to a smooth glide. Ziri’s taunting had provoked him to forget his self-consciousness—which Karou guessed was Ziri’s plan—and Ziri paid the price for it now as Ixander caught him around the neck and fake-throttled him before tossing him right out of the air. Ziri hit the ground at a reeling run and skidded to a halt on his cloven hooves practically nose-to-nose with Balieros, the big bull centaur who was his patrol leader.

Balieros shook his head, his shoulders shaking with laughter, and, putting an arm around Ziri’s shoulder, walked back with him to watch Ixander fly.

Karou got a lump in her throat. How easy they all were with each other, and quick to laugh. Once she had been part of their soldiers’ closeness, sharing barracks and battle camps, meals and songs. She had saved lives and gleaned souls; she had been one of them.

But she’d made her choices, and now she had to live with them.

When the laughter abruptly ceased, Karou gave a start, thinking the soldiers had seen her spying, but they weren’t looking in her direction. A beat later, Thiago strode into view. Karou recalled that she had been going to demand her crossbar back, but now her outrage-courage left her. It wasn’t just him, though the Wolf certainly had an effect on her courage. It was whom he was with.

The Shadows That Live.

They were beautiful in their way, and sinuous in their stride. Tangris and Bashees were identical: sphinxlike panther creatures of dusky black, fine-boned and softly furred, with the heads of women and wings of dark owl feathers that were perfectly silent in flight. They weren’t large, or terrible, but Thiago treated them with a deference he showed no other soldiers, and it was no wonder. No one else could do what they did. Karou’s hands turned clammy. Was he sending them on a mission?

He was.

This time she couldn’t wonder dumbly what nature of mission, or pretend not to understand. The Shadows That Live were legend, and they were… special… and so their mission must be special, too.

They lifted away and flew, leaving silence behind them. No one called good-bye or wished them luck. They didn’t need luck. Somewhere in Eretz, some angels needed it badly, but they wouldn’t get it. Whoever they were, they were as good as dead already.





31


TALLY


Akiva could have done without fire that night at camp. He’d had enough fire for one day: the sky was still curdled with smoke from the blazes they’d set to herd fugitive chimaera out of the safety of the forest. When he looked up, he couldn’t see a single star. But fire was a camp fixture and focal point. Soldiers were gathered around it to clean their blades and eat and drink, and though he had no appetite, he did have a thirst. He was on his third flagon of water, sunk in thoughts as murky as the sky, when a voice caught his attention.

“What are you doing?”

It was a sharp demand, and it came from Liraz. Akiva looked up. His sister was on the far side of the fire, lit lurid by its glow.

“What does it look like?” This from a Second Legion soldier Akiva didn’t know. He was sitting with two others, and when Akiva saw what it was they held—what they were about to do—his fists clenched.

Tattoo tools, such as they were. A knife and ink stick were all it took to record kills on flesh.

“It looks like you’re about to add to your tally,” said Liraz, “but that can’t be, can it, because no self-respecting soldier would ink today onto their hands.”

Today. Today. What had Liraz’s patrol done today? Akiva didn’t know. Her look, when he and Hazael had found her after their own bleak day, had seemed to dare him to ask her, but he didn’t want to know. Injuries had been sustained by some in her group—whiplashes, some bite wounds. None serious, but telling enough. Akiva hadn’t offered up what he had done, either, hours earlier in that gully to the south and east. He and Hazael hadn’t even talked about it, had barely exchanged a glance to acknowledge that it had happened at all.

The point was that the tally was for battle kills, for soldiers slain. Not fleeing folk.

“They were armed,” the soldier said with a shrug.

“Oh, is that all it takes in the common army?” asked Liraz. “Give a slave a knife and it becomes a worthy opponent?” She gestured to his hands, to all the black marks already ticked onto his fingers. “How many of those fought back? Any of them?”

The soldier rose suddenly to his feet. He was a foot taller than Liraz, though if he imagined that gave him an advantage, he would learn his mistake. Akiva rose, too—not because he thought his sister was going to need his help, but more out of surprise at the nature of her anger.

“I earned my marks,” said the soldier, looming over her.

Liraz didn’t back down. Through clenched teeth, and with acid contempt, she said, “Not today you didn’t.”

“And who are you to decide?”

Her lips drew up over her clamped teeth in a vicious smile. “Ask around.”