CHAPTER TWO
Siora stared at her nemesis lying motionless at her feet. He had once been her employer and unlikely savior, a notorious and dangerous man who’d given her shelter and food, first as thanks, then as wages. To a homeless beggar like her, he had been a dark blessing—fearsome, fascinating, coldly calculating. A roof and regular meals bought a great deal of forgiveness, and she’d not been put off by his notorious reputation as the empress’s cat’s-paw. More fool her.
Some might say she had a choice to make: club him to death while he lay helpless and steal the horse still lingering nearby or render aid. In her mind, the moment she’d whacked him with the stick, she’d chosen to help. Had she wanted him to die, she would have simply stood aside and watched as an invisible and powerful entity of malevolent purpose dragged him through one of Midrigar’s broken gates, never to trouble her again. She knew deep in her bones that what waited on the other side of the city’s walls offered neither a quick death nor a clean one.
Gharek of Cabast had pursued her across the fracturing Krael Empire, an untiring nemesis in his quest to exact revenge on her. A quest that had become the crusade of the devout. He’d held to the snarled promise he’d made months earlier that she’d find no sanctuary in the Empire, no place where he couldn’t track her. For one cold-blooded moment, she’d been tempted to stand by and watch as he was reeled in like a hooked fish, a silent, terrified scream stamped on his features. If he died, she could reclaim her life once more, such as it was. Beggar still and scourge to some, but no longer hunted. Then the image of Estred’s face had risen in her memory.
The young girl, intelligent, sweet, and loving, had inspired the violence of a rock-throwing mob simply for the crime of her appearance. Empire society was merciless to those considered lesser, broken, or strange. She needed a parent as ruthless as Gharek to keep her safe, to guard her. Siora might condemn him for his many heinous acts, but she remained undecided regarding his motivation for them. Parental devotion honed to a lethal edge cut multiple ways, and she’d often pondered whether or not she’d go to the same lengths as him to protect a beloved offspring, especially one as vulnerable as Estred. She’d once told a draga that nobility was the indulgence of those who only had themselves to consider. In that moment she’d embraced the idea as a way to justify her own betrayal of Gharek. The best of intentions sometimes had the sharpest teeth and spilled the most blood.
Gharek was heavier than his slim build led one to believe, and Siora muttered soft curses under her breath as she dragged his limp body through the brush and away from the shadows cast by the city. He’d wear a wealth of welts and scratches by the time she got him a distance she deemed far enough away from whatever foulness had bewitched him and attempted to drag him to an unseen lair.
The invisible tethers binding and pulling him across the ground had snapped when she’d struck him senseless, a sound not heard by the ears but by the soul. It was followed by an enraged howl that nearly sent her fleeing pell-mell in terror in the opposite direction. She planted her feet instead, shivered like a sapling in a storm, and watched as a pulse of muddy yellow light burst from behind the city walls. Shades cast by the trees suddenly bent at strange angles. A low thrum, like the far-off beat of a war drum, vibrated the earth beneath her. The sickly luminescence pulsed to the slow pump of a poisoned heart and for a moment hulked over the battered battlements in twisted shapes carved from malice and ancient night. Even the moon seemed to draw farther away and the stars dimmed, as if repulsed by the sight.
By the time Siora paused from dragging Gharek across the forest floor, her clothes were wet with sweat and he looked as if he’d been mauled by a pair of angry wild cats. Midrigar was no longer visible, and the music of insects and frogs had replaced the funereal silence surrounding the city.
She laid him in a patch of clover. A pair of fireflies flashed bright as tiny lamps over his head, and a spider scuttled across his chest to disappear into the grass. Normal creatures in a normal part of the wood.
Siora leaned against one of the trees to catch her breath and wipe the perspiration from her face with her skirt hem before retrieving the abandoned lantern Gharek had dropped. An inquiring equine nicker sounded close by. His mare ambled toward them. Not a brave horse but a loyal one. She hadn’t gone far when she bolted. With any luck, Siora could coax her close enough to grab the reins. A horse with supplies meant fast travel, something to eat, and maybe a belsha or two.
Her empty stomach rumbled its support of the idea, and Siora clicked her tongue against her teeth to coax the mare closer. Though the wait was excruciating, she stayed in place and let the horse come to her. She didn’t dare leave Gharek unattended, at least not as he was—still unconscious but also unbound.
While the mare took her sweet time reaching her, Siora scanned the blackness that painted the forest and turned the trees into whispering obelisks. Gharek lay as the dead, though there were no ghosts roaming this woodland for now, not even Siora’s father, for which she was profoundly grateful. Coincidences were rarely so in her experience. Gharek’s struggles as he resisted the demand of his invisible captor had been much like the pitiful spirits discovered in the abandoned barn she’d entered two days earlier, the horror etched into his face just like theirs as he tried to grab on to anything for purchase and slow his unwilling journey toward Midrigar.
She had stopped at the farmstead in search of sanctuary and found the monument to a nightmare etched into a plaster wall. The overwhelming sense of something old and avaricious had made her back out of the provender room only to pause as an ethereal swarm of terrified ghosts descended on her. Siora had fled the barn, her own screams trapped in her throat. Hiding in the forest surrounding Midrigar had been a matter of choice driven by desperation. The thing that ate ghosts lingered in the damned city. She felt it in her bones the moment she stepped into the woods. But who was the greater threat? An unseen malice that hunted the dead or a vengeful cat’s-paw who hunted the living? She’d chosen the woodland.
Gharek’s own cries had been no more than feral grunts trapped in a frozen throat. The barn was a distance from Midrigar, but Siora was as certain as the sunrise that she’d witnessed the trapping of another unwary victim by the eater of ghosts. Why and how it had chosen a living man to attack was anyone’s guess, as was her own resistance to its summons. Still, the idea of its power and its reach froze the blood in her veins.
A whuffle and snort sounded close. Gharek’s mare emerged from the deeper darkness, at first a shade of indeterminate shape, then a graceful head, long neck, and slender legs as she picked her way toward her fallen master. Siora casually caught the reins in one hand and patted the mare’s neck. “Hello, love. Kind of you to return.”
The horse stood docile, lowering her head once to nudge Gharek with her nose. He gave a soft groan but didn’t move. Siora spoke softly to the mare as she wound the reins around a low-hanging branch before pillaging the packs tied to the saddle. She found a length of rope as well as a knife, flint, and a lump of tinder fungus. She used the last three to relight the lamp so she could see to bind Gharek’s hands and ankles.