The Shadowglass (The Bone Witch, #3)(41)

“Are you suggesting we do nothing?”

“No. I’m suggesting we track sightings of her azi. We need eyes and ears to tell us where the rest of her daeva have gone. Kion was a distraction. Where are the other six? That’s where we must be.” His eyes hardened. “She doesn’t want us in Drycht.”

“For once, I am tempted to agree with her. They don’t call it the desert kingdom for nothing. The only way into the Dry Lands is through the Drycht cities, and we’ll have our hands full there. Even if we are successful, the trek to reach the Ring of Worship will kill our soldiers. I trust you, Fox, but you will forgive me when I say few people have reason to when your sister is involved.”

“We’ll figure that out when the time comes,” Princess Inessa broke in. “Our army is to meet up with Kance in the Hollow Mountains, where he believes Aadil has taken up defenses. From there, only a sea voyage separates us from Drycht. And you know as well as I that the elder asha would have let Fox languish in prison with or without the Veiling. He saved me, and he saved my mother and Hestia. That was what convinced them of his loyalty. If Tea is postponing her quest for shadowglass to hunt down Druj, we have time. We must find him before she does, and it is possible he is still with Aadil.”

The asha scowled. “Very well. We will send scouts for the other daeva. We have far too much to do to argue about a moment long passed. The Yadoshans offer their support, and we are running out of room to house visitors. As for Kance, the King of Odalia is not in his kingdom. The boy has gone off with his army again, and we know how that turned out last time. I am still disappointed in you, Fox. Do not presume that I would have turned down the chance to talk to Tea myself.” Her tone grew mellower, wistful. “I helped raise her too.”

“Your Highness and Empress Alyx were in danger?” I asked the princess quietly after Lady Altaecia had bustled away to address some new concern.

“The Deathseeker, Levi, was not the only casualty of the Blight runes. A sudden spate of blighted folk followed in the days and weeks after Tea and the others had fled. One of—one of my handmaids changed in front of my very eyes in the middle of the throne room, followed quickly by three more courtiers. We were clearly intended to be the targets. But Fox killed them on his own.” A small smile graced her lips. “He was incredible.”

“Inessa,” Lord Fox began, a touch of embarrassment about his person.

She waved him aside. “But Hestia, in a moment of madness, accused him of an assassination attempt and confined him to the dungeons. Word was quick to spread among the soldiers and Deathseekers, and they rallied to his cause. Only Dark asha can complete the Blight spell, and Fox, while a familiar, could not draw in the Dark. Her unjust punishment of him worked to our advantage. Enough people in the city protested—I told you all our charity work was more than show, Fox—and the association was forced to release him. Several weeks ago, there was another wave of blighted, only this time Fox saved Hestia as well.”

Only for the elder to die a horrible death in Daanoris. “But was the Dark asha’s name cleared?”

“In a sense, yes, but so were the elders’. They could not complete the spell on their own. They claimed withholding the forbidden runes was to prevent a wayward Dark asha from getting her hands on them. We could never prove the case for Mykkie’s heartsglass, but even Mykkie thought them innocent. Tea was out of Kion’s borders and too far away to cause mischief. It was an impasse of sorts.”

“But not the murder of her sister?”

The princess’s smile wobbled. “No. Not that. But…Fox was the only witness. Without him, the case against Tea was weak. In the end, that’s what finally convinced the elders that he wasn’t on her side. It was the only charge they could lodge against her that we couldn’t successfully argue against.”

“I had to confess everything to Mykkie, to ensure she had all the resources she needed to defend Tea.” Lord Fox was stony eyed, impassive. “I had to. But that meant informing the elders of what truly happened. In the end, it didn’t matter. One of my sisters is dead. Killed by our own sister. There is no side to take.” He flipped through the rest of the bone witch’s pages. “We’re taking too long,” he snapped at his own impatience. “If there is a clue here, then surely we should see it to the end…”

He stopped and spoke my worst nightmare. “These pages are unfinished. The last page—it breaks off in the middle of a sentence.”

“What?” It was my turn to stand, to rush and scan the pages myself.

He was right. We didn’t have the complete story.





10


“It will do you good to eat,” Likh reminded me, carefully placing perfectly grilled fish before me. Likh, I soon discovered, had packed with the intention of turning every veldt we wandered into a home, to domesticate every plain and mountain we camped on. The food he made was simple but with the same caliber of an Arhen-Kosho chef’s.

In the first hours after our unexpected flight, I also learned that Likh had done my packing for me, that I had no scarcity of zivars and hua. He, Kalen, and Khalad had been planning our escape from the instant they learned of my impending execution. I knew I should be grateful, but part of me wanted to laugh at the insanity of it all. I had killed my own sister—clothes and trinkets were the last things on my mind.