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Fallen, Forsaken, Broken.All meant the same, all were uttered with the deepest and most vicious disgust.Osara, in her language, which stung worst of all. Lord Mercury had declared it in front of all the Guild, with every eye upon the fresh mark still bleeding on her ribs. Cruder than the rest, only a few lines of stick and poke, given without thought to her pain. She never made a sound while they did it, branding her forever, casting her from the ranks of the Amhara. Even Sorasa admitted the punishment fit the crime.

“I suspected as much,” Corayne murmured, dropping her voice. It would not stop the immortal from hearing their conversation. Sorasa only wished he could hear all the times she cursed him in her head. “Dom didn’t know, when he found you in Byllskos. When he contracted you to find me.”

“I was simply the first Amhara to cross his path, the easiest to find, the only one no longer shielded by the strength of the Guild.” She glanced across the clearing, a flat surrounded by thick forest. The border was close, the trees pressing in as they could not in the valley. Sorasa moved into the eaves of the wood and Corayne followed without question. “He doesn’t know how money works, or much of the world, for that matter. Of course I took the contract, even if the Guild no longer allows me to.”

Corayne narrowed her eyes, and Sorasa braced herself for the inevitable question. The why. The reason for the words cut and inked into her flesh.

But it did not come.

“What are you going to do with the money?”

“What does anyone do with money?”

“Most get old and fat in comfort.” Her gaze lingered on the assassin’s tattooed fingers. They were crooked, scarred beneath the ink, callused by bow and blade. “I don’t think that’s what you want.”

Her scrutiny rankled. Sorasa gave her a sneer sharp enough to cut flesh. “You think smuggling steel and charting trade routes for a ship you’ve never sailed on gives you the faintest idea what I want?”

“I think growing up with a pirate for a mother, a woman with all the money she could ever want, a daughter she claims to love, who will never turn from the risk and reward of the sea, gives me some idea,” she said coolly, folding her arms. “I know he offered you something more than money. Something more valuable than all the gold in the vaults of Iona. I just couldn’t figure out what.”

Until now.

“Well, Corayne an-Amarat. Impress me with what youthinkyou know,” Sorasa hissed. She felt like a lonely traveler facing a mountain lion, spreading her arms wide in an attempt to scare it off. An odd thing for an assassin to feel against a young girl, even one as keen and clear-eyed as Corayne.

“You need a way back in, and you can’t buy it, or you would have already.”

Sorasa had never met Meliz an-Amarat, Hell Mel, captain of theTempestborn, the furious and fierce mistress of the Long Sea. And if Taristan’s face was any indication, her daughter did not take after her mother’s line. But her mother was in her all the same, in the set of her voice, the steel resolve, the dogged and unyielding pursuit. For Meliz, that meant treasure, bounty, a profit. For Corayne, it was truth. She hunted it like a hound.

“Assassins love gold,” she pressed on. Her eyes took on a distant look as she spoke, sifting through her own thoughts. “But they love blood more. The Amhara Guild is famed for their skill. And what could be more skillful than killing an Elder?”

I asked for gold and he paid it. I set a higher price than any before. All the wealth of Iona, an immortal queen’s treasure laid at my feet. He promised it without thought.

And when I asked for his life, for his throat cut by my own hand, in a place of my choosing, before the eyes I wanted... he didn’t hesitate to promise me that too.

There was no use in denial. Corayne would see through it. She wouldn’t push, but she would know.And what do I care? I’ve done worse to better, and for less in return.

One insufferable immortal life is worth the Guild. It is a cost I am happy to pay.

“If you’re worrying about Domacridhan’s gigantichead, don’t bother,” Sorasa answered. They were closer to the water now, Mirror Bay only a few miles south. A breeze blew cool through the trees, smelling of rain somewhere far off. She inhaled greedily. Still, the scent of rain was a novelty to her. “The road is long before us.”

Corayne’s throat bobbed. The stars were in her eyes. “And at the end?”

“If we survive, you mean?”A rather large if.“Let’s think about that bridge when we cross it.”

“I’d like to know that bridge isn’t going to be cut in half.”

The constellation of the Unicorn shone brightly overhead, said to be a good omen. A sign of luck. Sorasa believed in neither, but it was still a comfort. There were unicorns in her homelands, among the famed Shiran herds of the sand dunes. Black with onyx horns, white with pearl, brown with bronze. She had seen them with her own eyes, more than once. They were gone in most of the north, fading with the years, but the south knew how to protect its wonders. Sorasa longed to see one again, a wonder made of flesh instead of starlight.

She took a step away from Corayne, drawing her stolen coat closer. Summer still ruled, but Sorasa felt a chill sink into her desert blood.

“Ask the witch, if you want the future. ‘So the bone tells,’” she chuckled, rolling her eyes.

Corayne’s expression soured. “I don’t think it works like that.”

“If it works at all,” Sorasa replied. “She might be Spindlerotten, but she’s not exactly helping us along, is she? Or, at least, she only helps when she feels like it.”

“I think they prefer the termSpindletouched. And sheishelping.”

“Calling us names and speaking in riddles isn’t the kind of help we need.” Once again, the witch was nowhere in sight. She could be hiding three steps away or three miles, for all Sorasa knew. It was frustrating; it was unnerving. There was no urgency to the old woman, even with all her warnings about the realm and its doom. “She says there’s another Spindle torn, fine. Where is it? What is it doing? What are we supposed to face, and how? Does she expect us to ride into hell and fight What Waits ourselves?”