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Which explains why Mercury is stupid enough to take a contract on Corayne. He doesn’t know that her ending is his own,she thought.But perhaps he can be made to.

She raised her gaze from her own hands to the scene around her, the crest of the hill slouching over the battlefield below. Batteredmen spread out like fallen snow, propped up against trees or laid flat on the ground. Most of the wounded had been removed from the muck, with only a few too critically injured to move. The dead were dragged away from the fallen corpse army, somewhere down the pilgrim road toward the stream. Oscovko watched over his own dead, attending to the burials as a prince and commander should.

Sorasa was glad she didn’t have to do the same.

Corayne was alive. Dom was alive. Andry and Charlie and Sigil. Valtik was still gods-knew-where, doing gods-knew-what. Sorasa cared little for the witch’s absence. At least the rest had lived to see the Spindle torn, the temple closed. The battle won.

She watched them all through the trees. She felt like a shepherd counting off sheep. Corayne and Andry were fast asleep, curled up together in a way that Dom greatly disliked. He slouched nearby, storm-faced, trying not to glower and failing poorly. Charlie passed through the wounded with his prayers, kneeling to mutter a few words here and there. The people of Trec worshipped Syrek above all, and Charlie obliged, kissing his palms and touching their eyes.

Sigil stalked through the camp, grinning as she approached Sorasa. Her teeth were red, bloody as her ax. She was still flushed with exertion, a sheen of sweat gleaming over her bronze skin. Her nose was horribly broken, the bottom half set at an odd angle. If it bothered her, she didn’t show it.

“Hell of a morning,” she said with a whistle, extending a hand to Sorasa.

The assassin took it without a word, letting the bounty hunter pull her to her feet.

“You should set that,” she muttered, eyeing Sigil’s face.

Sigil blustered and touched her broken nose gingerly. “I think it makes me look interesting.”

“It’s going to make you snore,” Sorasa shot back.

With lightning-quick movements, she put her fingers to either side of Sigil’s nose and snapped, the bone cracking back into place. Sigil grunted once in pain.

“You’re no fun,” she grumbled, testing the skin with a light touch. “And you smell,” she added, nodding at Sorasa’s body.

Indeed, there was muck and bone dust and sweat all over her. Down her collar, in her hair, smeared across her face.

Sorasa shrugged and gestured back, looking Sigil up and down.

“You aren’t so grand yourself,” Sorasa said, and stalked off down the hill in the direction of the stream.

Sigil laughed and followed close behind, her heavy boots crashing through the dead leaves and undergrowth. For all her deadly skill, the bounty hunter had no talent for stealth.

They found a place upstream, out of sight of Oscovko’s burials, where the water was deep enough over the rocky bed. They stripped down to their skin, both women eager to be clean of the battle. Sorasa braced herself for the bitter cold, but Sigil sank into the current up to her neck, letting herself float among the rocks and eddies. She splashed a little, enjoying herself as Sorasa got to work, scrubbing the battle away as quickly as she could.

Sorasa turned her eyes to the sky, hunting the low, gray clouds. “It would be just our luck for a dragon to appear right now,” she grumbled, her teeth chattering against the cold.

“Hold off a little longer, Dragon!” Sigil called, hooting up to the sky. “Wait for me to get my pants back on.”

In spite of herself, Sorasa let out a long, low chuckle. It grew and grew, until her chest heaved with full peals of laughter. Sigil watched, overly pleased, her cheeks going pink with cold.

Then she sat up in the shallows, splashing herself.

“I sent word to Bhur,” she said. Icy water ran from her broad shoulders, working its way down her back carved with hard muscle.

Sorasa paused and blinked at her. “The Emperor?”

“He is my cousin, after all.” Sigil shrugged and slapped at the stream running around her torso. “I dispatched a letter from Volaska, before we left. I figured I might as well, what with Charlie sending scribbles to every man, woman, and child across the Ward. But who knows how long it will take to reach Korbij,” she grumbled.

The Temur capital was many weeks away, over steppes already blanketed in winter.

Her angular eyes tightened, a look of anguish pulling at her wide face. “I wish I could’ve told him about this too. And the dragon, by gods.”

Sorasa shivered in the water. “Whatdidyou tell him?”

“Everything I could,” she answered, ticking off on her fingers. “The oasis Spindle. Corayne’s uncle, Tarry something or other.”

“Taristan,” Sorasa said through clenched teeth.