Ostyia took a step back as the younger boy fell over, dead.
Serefin left just as the Kalyazi monk’s shock was beginning to wear off—just as the screams of rage began.
Ostyia shut the door, muffling them. “I will have someone collect the body,” she said.
“Thank you.” Serefin glanced at Ostyia. “I’ll have to ask that you convince me not to get drunk again.”
“Anything for you, Serefin.”
As they entered the sanctuary, Serefin paused in front of the ornate altar. He skimmed his hand over a carving of a forest that covered the top.
Pain suddenly lanced through his skull as if spikes were being driven through his eyes. He clutched his head with one hand, fingers fumbling for his spell book and razor. He fell to the ground.
“Serefin!” Ostyia cried, dropping to her knees.
He held out a hand. The pain was already dissipating, ebbing away like a trickling stream. He leaned back, expelling a long breath of air.
“What was that?”
He internally accounted for all the threads of magic he had active. The spell he had cast to track the cleric had been severed. He scrambled for it, his index finger sliding over the razor in his sleeve, but even with fresh blood he couldn’t reconnect it. He had her name but it wouldn’t help if he lost the trail.
She’d found his spell, broken it, and kept him from bringing it back. And last night she had taken the stars from the sky. She was more powerful than he’d thought.
He had to find her. He had to take her power for his own.
“Have Teodore placed in charge of the company,” Serefin said slowly. “You, Kacper, and I are going after the girl. Now.”
6
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
Though Bozetjeh is the god of the wind, he is considered to be the essence of speed and of time itself. He is everywhere and nowhere all at once.
—Codex of the Divine, 10:114
Sweat beaded at Nadya’s temples but relief flooded her as the prince’s spell snapped away. She let out a hiss of a breath, the odd sense of something wrong leaving her.
Up ahead the Tranavian boy paused. He looked back at her, a frown creasing the tattoos at his forehead.
He shouldn’t have been able to sense that, Nadya thought.
“No … he shouldn’t have,” Marzenya agreed. She sounded curious. “You will dispose of him soon, yes?”
He’s Tranavian, Nadya replied. The answer was obvious.
Nadya was disconcerted Marzenya had to tell her the prince was tracking her every move, that she hadn’t felt the taint of his blood magic. There were still too many things Nadya didn’t know how to do on her own.
After Parijahan had offered them a place to hide, they had swiftly caught up with the two boys. Rashid grinned at Nadya, whereas Malachiasz eyed her silently before turning away.
They arrived at a large, ramshackle church that sprawled down across a valley. It looked like whoever built it had planned for it to rival the Church of Adrian, the Martyr in Khavirsk, but got distracted. It was made entirely of wood—even the round onion domes—and there was unfinished red paint peeling from the bottom of the walls. Carvings over the doorway revealed a dedication to the goddess of the sun, Alena.
This is yours? Nadya asked, thumbing the appropriate bead on her necklace.
She felt amusement in return. “It was never truly dedicated.”
Nadya eyed the church. She could fix that. She wondered how these refugees would take to having their space suddenly inhabited by a goddess. If they were refugees. She wasn’t sure what other word to use to describe them, all three foreigners and one of them the enemy, no less.
Rashid shoved open the door. It was dark in the foyer, the stumps of half-used torches unlit in their sconces, only one of them left burning. The inside of the building looked nothing like a church. There were three long hallways that were utterly black, two on either side of the entrance, and one down the middle. Nadya had to assume the middle one led to the sanctuary—the church would have been built around an intended sanctuary space—but the rest of the building had clearly been repurposed somewhere along the line.
“It was like this when we found it,” Parijahan said.
The dark hall opened up into a large, airy nave that had been gutted. There were piles of weapons against the far wall, clearly picked off Tranavian companies. The room was cut by a chill draft from a hole in the ceiling, but there was a fire smoldering in a makeshift fireplace at the far end of the sanctuary that likely worked to combat it. At the opposite end of the room was a pile of worn pillows and blankets that Rashid immediately sprawled on top of. He pulled the crossbow onto his lap and began meticulously going over it. Beside him was a long table with benches that appeared as though they had been dragged in from the church’s kitchens. A few ragged maps rested atop them.
The wall between the nave and the sanctuary had been torn down and the only thing that remained of the original space was the icon of Alena that hung over the fireplace—where the altar would have been. It was a lovely piece. It would have been worth thousands of kopecks. Anna shot Nadya a wide-eyed look.
The icon was by Kalyazin’s most beloved iconographer, Probka Vilenova. She was a saint now, martyred by Tranavians. Her fingers had been cut off and her eyes gouged out before they finally tied rocks to her ankles and drowned her in one of their hundreds of lakes. These three probably had no idea just how much the icon was worth.
“Are you sure this will be safe?” Anna asked. “It feels … conspicuous.”
“Did it look like there was anyone in here from the outside?” Rashid said.
It had not. In fact, it looked like the church had been long forgotten by the world.
“We’re not staying for long,” Nadya said. “Just a day or so.” She had cut the prince’s spell when they were still far from the church so she had to hope they were safe, but they had to keep moving. They had to get to Tvir.
“No?” Rashid asked, sounding vaguely disappointed. “Didn’t Parijahan explain the situation?”
“Situation?” Anna asked.
“Until they trust us, nothing I say will matter,” Parijahan said. She hopped up onto the table. “But, I suppose knowing our intentions would be a start. We want to stop the war.”
“Oh, something as simple as that?” Nadya asked, breathing out a startled laugh. “It’s been nearly a century, and you think you can stop it? You’re right. There’s no trust here.”
“She has a point,” Malachiasz said. He leaned back against the table next to Parijahan. “But we are the ones with the nasty heretic in our midst. I think, first, we should find out just who is the one with magic.” His eyes lingered on Nadya, a smile flickering at the corners of his lips, before cutting to Anna.
He wore the uniform of a Tranavian military blood mage, though his black jacket was ragged, fraying at the sleeves and hem. There was a patch sewn onto the elbow and the silver epaulets at his shoulders looked like they had seen better days.
Rashid looked expectantly at Anna and Nadya.
Neither of them spoke. Nadya chewed her lower lip. If the layout of this church was anything traditional, there would be multiple exits. It would only be a matter of finding the right door and the right hallway and getting out. But Nadya couldn’t let her driving reaction to every situation be acting upon the desire to flee. There was a reason two Akolans and a Tranavian were camped out in the Kalyazi mountains. There was a reason they were speaking cryptically, why the Tranavian seemed unsettled. There was a reason for all of this and Nadya had to believe the gods had thrown her path against these foreigners for a reason, whatever it might be.