Page 32 of To Touch A Silent Fury (The Bride of Eavenfold #1)

Tani

I stood some distance from the squat stone towers, hoping I’d finally found my answer.

I was underfed, too consumed by the hunt to have any patience for foraging or fishing, and overtired, my nights spent listening for heavy wings in the sky.

The Euphons had set fires across Gossamir since Ergreen began.

The tribes must have come together to organise it, because the plumes stretched to the very edges of Gossamir, some a full day and night’s hike from the very midst of it where my pit lay.

Nothing like the hatred of the Dragon Prince to bring the forest’s tribes to a mutual understanding.

For the first week, I had panicked, running after the first plume I saw.

When I reached it and narrowly dodged a well trap, I found the prince’s army had come across the spot long before me and had already dismissed it.

When I returned that night, I chastised myself for being so stupid.

I was thinking like a Sightlander, seeing smoke and chasing it with no other thought.

I hadn’t stopped to really think. If Vellintris had landed that same day, on the other side of the forest, I wouldn’t have known.

The prince’s army could station their men all around the forest. I would never beat them to the fires, and so I could not rely on that.

But what I could use was my knowledge of the Euphons.

The information I had learnt from Yvon over the years, information no cacof should have.

Information she regretted ever letting slip, and likely hoped I had let go.

But if the Brothers had taught me anything, it was that knowledge could be power.

So, instead of chasing down every fire, I searched for the Sons of Amune.

And now, a little over five weeks into Ergreen, standing two pines deep in the tree line, maybe I had succeeded.

The wind streamed past me as I stood as still as a rooted oak and quieter yet, no hulking branches to whistle against. Vines grew on seven short towers formed of hauled flat river stones, roofed simply with mud and reed thatch.

From the silence and the emptiness, it was clearly meant to be seen as abandoned.

But for all their talent at keeping quiet, the inhabitants had left signs: a covered mess trench, boot prints, crumbs, and a scrap of torn fabric. Someone was in there.

I camped out most of the day, waiting for movement, using the daylight to forage some cloudberries long past their prime, but not yet rotted, before getting lucky and finding two healthy munka tubers.

This time, when she found me, she did not break a branch.

It was deep into twilight, and the faintest noises of life had begun to sound from the towers when a hand clamped down heavy on my shoulder.

I spun around as another gloved hand slapped across my mouth and pushed my back against the tree .

Yvon pulled her faceguard down, dark blue eyes blazing. With the hand not on my mouth, she signalled to me. I picked up what I could. ‘ You. Here. Bad. Why?’

I blinked rapidly as she breathed over me, her blonde hair falling in my face. I hadn’t seen her since her first warning, and the last span of weeks hadn’t treated her kindly. She was clearly exhausted.

There was little hope in lying when she’d caught me right outside my quest. I signalled back. ‘ Seek. Amune. Children.’

I didn’t know the sign for the Sons, so I just flicked my head back and hoped she would understand.

She narrowed her eyes. ‘ Impossible. Not for you. Bad for you.’

I sighed. ‘ Worship dragon. They lead.’

Yvon stumbled back a step, her hand falling from me and her eyes opening in shock as she shook her head. ‘ You leave here. Now.’

I pointed out into the forest, away from the towers. ‘ Come. Talk.’

Yvon’s anger flared back, and then she turned from me, stalking back into the woods the way I had come that very morning.

She didn’t stop for some time, and I nearly turned back, thinking she meant to lead me away from the towers altogether. Then she whirled around.

“What are you doing?” she whispered. “There is nothing there for you.”

“How did you find me?” I replied, checking the space for my boot prints. I’d been careful in the muddy ground to smudge over any obvious tracks, but I must have left one. “Do others know I’m here?”

Yvon glared at me. “You were careful enough. My tribe have seen a strange girl in the forest, but they do not suspect you to be cacof yet. You are safe for now.”

“How, then?” I asked. “Did I make noise?”

“I taught you, didn’t I? You are quiet enough,” she said. “It is your shadow I found.”

My shadow? I didn’t understand what she meant, nor the signal she gave. My confusion must have been painted across my face, because she knelt down and pointed.

Instead of a boot print, she pointed to another print. A large paw, deep into the mud.

“Only one, from the tracks,” she said, giving me a meaningful look.

I scanned the trees around us but saw no sign of it.

A wolf, alone in the forest. It had to be the same one, the one who had been circling my pit all season.

Yvon had clearly reached the same conclusion.

At least, if this was the source of my discovery, Yvon was the only one who could think to tie the beast to me.

I had left him to his devices, only spotting him by his trails and the scraps he left behind from his hunts. Why he kept close to my pit, I could not say. Why was he following me now?

“You must leave here,” Yvon said.

“Are the Sons there?”

“Do not speak of them. Never,” Yvon replied, still keeping her words as clipped as possible, her face white. “Not safe for you. You will not be free.”

That was an understatement. It was a death sentence; everyone knew the stories.

These Sons must be connected with the barbaric practice, for Yvon to be so concerned.

But I could protect myself, and they might be my only route to the egg.

“You said once they led the pilgrimage for Vellintris’ last egg. Is that what they prepare for now?”

Something in Yvon’s expression changed. She looked at me differently, the anger faltering. “Why do you seek the dragon?”

“I have to, it is the only way,” I said. Ersimmon’s words flitted back into my head. I could hardly remember his voice now, but the words were etched like upon a headstone. Become something he needs, the bride he cannot refuse.

Yvon’s eyes went wide. “You aren’t Broken. Your Fate still calls you, brings you here.”

I swallowed. Then I nodded.

Yvon’s hand clapped over her own mouth this time. She muttered against it, something I had no chance of hearing. Her body shook.

I edged towards her. “Yvon—”

She skittered three steps back, looking at me as if she’d never seen me before.

“I’m sorry I lied,” I said. “But I must find the dragon if I am to complete my Fate.”

She was silent for a long time, her body quaking. Then she made a sign I’d never seen before.

“What?”

She repeated it. It was a two-handed sign, the fingertips of each hand meeting before her body. “Fate.”

“Yes,” I said, confused.

Yvon nodded and then took another step back. “If this is your Fate, you must claim it, I measure. She has landed, and they will lead you to her. Stay out of sight.”

I sucked in a breath. Vellintris was already down? “Come with me?”

Yvon shook her head, still looking at me as if I was a stranger. “I cannot. It is… forbidden for me. I should never have trained you as I did. I should—Forgive me.”

I studied her quizzically even as she backed away even more. “You did more than I could have ever asked for. You kept me alive, Yvon.”

She only pulled up her faceguard and repeated her words. But this time she added two signs at the end. ‘ Amune. Mother. ’

I knew Yvon would run now, as she always had when I pushed her too far. But there was another question I had to ask. “Your Sollie,” I asked, and saw the ripple of hurt cross Yvon’s face. I swallowed. “Is she…?”

I paused, my hands before me, caught between two signs.

Yvon flicked her hands, her voice accompanying it. “Alive. But I do not see her much.”

Alive. Sollie was alive? By Amune, they had escaped that night. “Where is she?”

‘ Alone .’ I could tell the word—signalled with one pointer finger circling the other—pained her.

I waited, and she expanded, which was rare enough that I felt a strange surge of belonging.

“When she was young, her eyes were bright. Like you.” She signed ‘Fate’ again.

“But her hair is sable, and her eyes grey, not your white. She hears too much, and it causes her fits. It was worse on your island.”

Scary Sollie, chained to the wall in her room.

She was a child, maybe four years younger than me and looking forward to her eighth year.

I remembered her uncertain smile, and how she told me that she didn’t like the boys because they all smelled bad.

And then, only a few short weeks later, Skirmtold destroyed the West Wing.

They had come back here. She was a grown woman. An adult. I couldn’t picture her, I found. I could only see the girl, her face strained as she tried to escape from an unknown horror.

“I remember,” I whispered.

“She lives alone. It is easier.”

I thought Yvon was done then, and I nodded, despite the sadness on her face. This ease she spoke of, it was clearly not her own.

Yvon’s face crumpled with grief. “She still hears too much. It is as if a gentle breeze is a storm, or like someone screams at her, someone no one else can sense. ”

“I am sorry.”

Yvon waved my apology away, and I knew the conversation was over. Sollie. Alone somewhere in these woods. Her mother was now almost a mother to me, too.

I wondered if her music box still sat in that same room in the Wing. I wondered if she thought of it. Then Yvon ran off into the forest and left me standing alone.

It was another frustrating hour before anyone moved from the stone towers. It was even more painful now, with the burden of Yvon’s information. Vellintris was here, on the forest floor, and I had to wait on the whim of some barbaric cult of men, yet again.

There was no sign of my wolfish ‘shadow’, and the weight of Yvon’s strange words weighed on my mind.

The part that kept replaying was her discussion of my Fate.

She signed the word with the same reverence she signed ‘Amune’ , or any of the dragons.

And yet she’d never used the word before, never spoken of it.

What did the Euphons care for the Fates of the Brotherhood? They hated the Brotherhood and killed all the moon’s offspring.

Finally, sound. Footsteps, and shuffling fabric. They were on the move.

I pressed my body against the tree, peering around.

It was only Yvon’s careful training that kept me from choking on my exhalation.

The men, for they were all men, had begun their procession. In slow steps, some thirty people, aged from three to fifteen spans old, moved out into the forest. They made next to no sound, but enough that I picked up the faint rustling of their green cloaks.

It was not their silence, nor their maleness that surprised me.

All of them had a head of shockingly white hair.

The Sons of Amune were not killing the infantile Brothers of Eavenfold.

They were Brothers. Hidden, deep in Gossamir.

I pressed back against the tree, touching my hand to where the moonstone lay warm against my chest, stunned by the revelation.

Once more, my first thought was wishing Seth was here.

He’d resented his servitude to the Thread of Knowledge, but I knew he would be in awe of this information.

Where was he now? He must have completed his Service and been granted his Mark.

What did it look like? Had he gone home to Droundhaven?

I longed to tell him everything that had come to pass. Everything I had learnt, everything I had survived. There was a mystery here, one long sown and kept by hundreds. But it would have to wait. Now, I needed to follow them. It was time to find the dragon.