At her side, she caught Amris’s smile. “Often that happens.”
Some of my best discoveries came out of drunken wagers, Gerant added.
Darya grinned too. “It’s different for each of us,” she went on. “Almost always changes the way we look, improves our sight and hearing, makes us faster and stronger and quicker to heal. Usually we get a major blessing from one god, and a minor from another. Some get two minor gifts. I think it comes down to how much reshaping you can endure.”
“It sounds a fearsome thing.”
“What isn’t?”
“Well,” said Amris quietly, “there is that view of the matter, yes.” He was silent for a while, as they passed fallen rose petals and crumbling walls. “And one of your gifts was to take no harm from poison.”
“Poram’s blessing, most likely, unless I got two from Sitha—you find poison among the wild as much as among men, and the other way around.” She paused before the other end of the hall, where the midafternoon light streamed through onto tumbled masses of stone. Slowly, patterns resolved themselves, and connections became apparent. “And my second gift means you should follow me.”
“Sitha’s as well, you said?”
“Aye. I can see the safest way to use anything made by man, even if it’s ruined.” Carefully, she climbed onto the first bit of broken masonry. “That’s safest, mark you, not a promise of safety. I can’t make any promises here.”
* * *
Even if Darya hadn’t warned him, Amris would’ve been loath to feel fully confident in the route: her gift showed as the safest path for her. He was taller, likely half again her weight by himself alone, and wearing another stone of beaten steel. Thus, he followed faithfully but slowly, waiting always for the signs the pile would collapse under him, trying never to rest his weight in one place fully or for too long.
Ahead, Darya never paused very long either, but from her, it appeared less a matter of caution and more the innate nimble leaping of a doe. Neither her weapons nor the haversack on her shoulder seemed to impede her. Against the faded, dusty stones, she was a slim patch of darkness, and the sunlight drew bright-green flashes from the emerald set in her sword’s hilt.
Gerant.
He’d talked sometimes of the potential for gems to hold human souls, just as he’d spoken of other forms of magic—spells to shape plants, the nature of divination. With his colleagues, the discussions had been long and theoretical, often verging on argument and sometimes passing that border. To Amris, Gerant had spoken more simply, translating his enthusiasms for a lover who lacked most of the context for them. Just as Amris had talked of new recruits and well-made swords, of the conformation of horses and the weather for planting. When it came to other subjects, they’d met on equal ground.
Tears stung his eyes. He let them fall, blinking them away only when they impeded his climbing. Darya kept her silence, and indeed Amris had no idea whether or not she noticed. She looked back rarely, and his face was wet before long regardless; both the weather and the work were hot.
It was a strange, piebald sort of mourning. Gerant had lived long enough to see theory become practice, and was not wholly gone—but never again would Amris drop a kiss on the back of his neck as he sat bent over his notes, or stretch out in front of a fire at night with his head in Gerant’s lap. That was ended, as done as was the world Amris had known. And if humanity had survived, enough for hunters of the Order to be searching ruined cities, still some of Darya’s speech suggested more danger and less grace in the world that remained.
Gerant, as he existed now, was a creature of that world as much as Darya was: her partner, perhaps her mentor, and certainly, from the way she spoke of him, her friend. Even in mourning, Amris was glad of it. The light in Darya’s verdant eyes reminded him of Gerant’s enthusiasm over a new sculptor’s work, or a well-done landscape, and after their quarrel, she’d spoken with kindness and understanding. Amris didn’t doubt they worked well together.
“There,” said Darya, rousing him from his thoughts. She’d pulled herself out of the hole and up onto the domed roof of the building. As Amris emerged too, she gestured to a nearby rooftop. The bulk of the dome blocked a direct view, which was fortunate. Even so, Amris could see a circle of filth and carrion atop that roof, and the massive scaled bulk upon it, its comb dull red against the gray-black of its coils.
His first battle in a hundred years waited. The danger would almost be a relief.
Chapter 5
There was a rhythm to her kills. There always had been; they were like the dances she’d learned as a girl. If the creature and the situation differed, those were just changes in the tune and the order. The figures stayed the same. Darya had never seen that so clearly until she reached the top of the rubble, saw the cockatrice waiting for her across several hundred yards of stone and air, and felt the comfort of an old pair of boots even as her blood started racing with the nearness of combat.
“I will be careful,” she promised Gerant, as she took her bow and arrows from her back. It was an admission and an apology too; she didn’t know how much of her confidence earlier had actually been the urge to escape from the world-shattering to the familiar, but her thoughts had not been as clear as she’d assumed.
You’ll be effective, he said, doing his part in the language they’d developed over the years. You always are.
Darya smiled and turned to look at Amris, the new element, neither a fellow Sentinel nor a hostage to be rescued. Once in a while, she’d worked with packs of soldiers or guards. He felt different. “You’ll want to duck down once I start shooting. Weapons ready, but generally just try not to be a target.”
“My strength has returned quickly,” he said. “I can yet fight.”
“Your lungs won’t stand up to poison, I bet, and after it breathes, I usually finish too quickly to need help,” said Darya. The string went easily onto her bow and twanged with a rich, supple sound when she tested it. “But if you see a chance and take it, gods know I won’t complain.”
“Can you spare more of…” He gestured to the boot where she’d put her flask. “That substance?”
“Lignath. Or rotgut, as you choose.” Darya passed it over, a little surprised. It wasn’t uncommon to need false courage before a fight, but Amris hadn’t seemed the type. Then again, it was his first battle in a hundred years.
Next, he surprised her more, drawing a faded scrap of cloth out of his belt pouch and pouring the lignath onto it. “It smells somewhat of fish,” said Amris, surprised and not thrilled by his discovery.
“Probably is. Or maybe pelican. Good idea,” Darya added. “I keep forgetting you’ve done this before.”