Her initial count had been wrong; there were six Tranavians now scattering into the forest. The boy dropped his crossbow with a bewildered look up into the sky, startling when Nadya touched his shoulder.
There was no way he could see in this darkness, but she could. When he whirled, a curved sword in his hand, Nadya sidestepped. His swing went wide and she shoved him in the direction of a fleeing Tranavian, anticipating their collision.
“Find the rest,” Marzenya hissed. “Kill them all.”
Complete and total dedication.
She caught up to one of the figures, stabbing her voryen into his skull just underneath his ear.
Not so difficult this time, she thought. But the knowledge was a distant thing.
Blood sprayed, splattering a second Tranavian, who cried out in alarm. Before the second man could figure out what had happened to his companion, she lashed out her heel, catching him squarely on the jaw and knocking him off his feet. She slit his throat.
Three more. They couldn’t have moved far. Nadya took up Bozidarka’s bead again. The goddess of vision revealed where the last Tranavians were located. The boy with the sword had managed to kill two in the dark. Nadya couldn’t actually see the last one, just felt him nearby, very much alive.
Something slammed into Nadya’s back and suddenly the chilling bite of a blade was pressed against her throat. The boy appeared in front of her, his crossbow back in his hands, thankfully not pointed at Nadya. It was clear he could only barely see her. He wasn’t Kalyazi, but Akolan.
A fair number of Akolans had taken advantage of the war between their neighbors, hiring out their swords for profit on both sides. They were known for favoring Tranavia simply because of the warmer climate. It was rare to find a creature of the desert willingly stumbling through Kalyazin’s snow.
He spoke a fluid string of words she didn’t understand. His posture was languid, as if he hadn’t nearly been torn to pieces by blood mages. The blade against Nadya’s throat pressed harder. A colder voice responded to him, the foreign language scratched uncomfortably at her ears.
Nadya only knew the three primary languages of Kalyazin and passing Tranavian. If she wasn’t going to be able to communicate with them …
The boy said something else and Nadya heard the girl sigh before she felt the blade slip away. “What’s a little Kalyazi assassin doing out in the middle of the mountains?” he asked, switching to perfect Kalyazi.
Nadya was very aware of the boy’s friend at her back. “I could ask the same of you.”
She shifted Bozidarka’s spell, sharpening her vision further. The boy had skin like molten bronze and long hair with gold chains threaded through his loose curls.
He grinned.
A thud sounded nearby, startling him, but it was the recognizable sound of someone slamming face-first into a tree. Anna’s muffled swearing followed. Nadya rolled her eyes and sent up an apology to the heavens. The stars and moons relit in the sky, making the world seem three times brighter.
“We’ll be hearing prophesies about the end of the world for the next twenty years now!” Anna cried. She had her venyiashk drawn, her gaze wary as she looked just past Nadya’s shoulder.
Nadya crouched, stabbing her bloody voryen into the snow. She looked up at the Akolan boy, lifting her hands as she straightened. Caution was necessary, they were in the middle of a war zone, but she had just saved their lives. He eyed her before letting out the tension on the crossbow.
She glanced behind her to see a tall Akolan girl sheathing her curved dagger. Her thick, dark hair fell in waves around her shoulders and she wore old, weather-beaten Kalyazi clothes, but her gold nose ring glinted new in the moonlight.
When Nadya turned to shoot Anna a pointed look, the priestess sighed and dropped her blade as well.
“Who are you?” Nadya asked.
The boy ignored her. “Did you do that?” he asked, pointing at the sky.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped.
“Ridiculous, as you say. My name is Rashid Khajouti, and my lovely companion—”
“Can speak perfectly well for herself,” the Akolan girl said, sounding amused. Her hand no longer lingered near the hilt of her dagger and she moved away from Nadya to show she meant no harm. “My name is Parijahan Siroosi. I suppose we should be thanking you, not threatening you.” She glanced at Rashid. “There were more Tranavians than we initially thought.”
They had made quick work of them, regardless. Nadya’s gaze landed on a crossbow, dropped by a Tranavian soldier, near her feet. She picked it up. The image of Kostya flashed in her vision. It took everything she had to not smash the weapon to pieces.
“Why were two Akolans planning on taking down a group of Tranavians in the middle of the night?” she asked, running her fingers over the wood of the crossbow, trying to dispel the image of her dead friend.
“I could ask the same,” Parijahan said.
“We have a clear and obvious reason to be killing Tranavians, in general,” Nadya pointed out.
Rashid chuckled. Parijahan shot him a look and he fell silent.
Something felt off, but Nadya couldn’t place what it was. The way the Akolans had relaxed after initially being so aggressive, the stillness of the night air around them: the pieces weren’t lining up right.
Horz?
“Yes, love?”
That wasn’t all of the Tranavians, was it?
“I thought you knew.”
She cranked the crossbow to set the bolt and turned it on the Akolan boy. Anna moved at the same instant, her venyiashk drawn against Parijahan’s neck. There was no possible way she could have known the reason for Nadya’s sudden defense, but she trusted Nadya enough to move without question.
It was that kind of blind trust that made Nadya uncomfortable.
“You’re our voice to the people, love,” Horz said. “You’d best get used to blind adoration.”
“There are more Tranavians nearby,” Nadya said to Anna.
The Akolans just exchanged a knowing glance. There was something else going on here.
But before she could think of what to do, Rashid hefted his own crossbow and fired.
She ducked instinctively, in an attempt to knock the bolt into her shoulder or arm, somewhere less deadly than her heart.
But she heard the thud of the bolt hitting flesh and a strangled cry and it took her brain a handful of painful seconds to catch up. It hadn’t been her. She hadn’t been hit.
“You missed.” A new voice spoke, this one rich with a thick Tranavian accent.
A chill dragged down Nadya’s spine. Tranavian words bouncing off the walls of a dark cavern as her home burned above. Was the voice the same? It sounded the same. The same lilt—even though the words were Kalyazi this time—and a distinct presence of authority.
How had the prince caught up already? It was too late, it was over.
She turned.
There was a Tranavian soldier on his knees in the snow, a crossbow bolt sticking out of his shoulder. His face was expressionless, his eyes glassy. Behind him stood a tall, wiry boy with sharp, wild features and long black hair. The boy’s hands were covered in blood, a crumpled spell book page in one, the other held outstretched toward the soldier in the snow.
“I go and find the one you let get away and you don’t even have the decency to kill him,” the boy said, and tutted at Rashid.