4

It rained then for the first time in months, beginning as a light shower that quickly erupted into pelting sheets, hard drops that pinged thickly off the stone huts, the last embers of the smothered fires fizzling. Across the lands of the Auye the soil drank greedily. Rivers swelled and surged; trees bent beneath the weight of the storm. The bodies of the kites, waterlogged among the wreckage of the forest just south of the village, bobbed in shallow, murky pools, raindrops filling their sightless eyes, signs of rot starting to fester in the ribbons of leather and flesh floating in the rippling swells around them. Nearby, the downed carrier bird, already too dead to truly die, dissolved under the weight of the deluge, feeling little in the dark passages of its sensory cortex beyond a dim wonder at its inability to move and the whereabouts of the men and women it had transported.

They took shelter in one of the larger huts, since Nadra’s accommodations proved insufficient for both women and the boy, who had to be restrained. The prior inhabitants of the village, which Nadra explained was called Tererinte, had taken only what they could carry when they fled at her urging. Caches of dried food, medicine, tools, and trade goods of varying quality had all been left behind. Eio lay in disastrous discomfort on her right side for hours, tucked under a fine wool blanket (made from the hair of some endemic camel-like domesticate, Nadra said), her collection of hurts thoroughly cleaned and bandaged. The aloe salve slathered across her flank and back leaked and oozed in awkward places. Eio endeavored to squirm as little as possible.

Nadra, her own chest bandaged under a long fringed poncho, stuffed more reeds under the soaked hide door, the knees of her breeches stained wet. Flooding wasn’t yet a concern since Tererinte had been built upon an ancient earthen berm; but the rain fell anyway, as if the earth had begged for a flood, and the sky had relented.

The boy sat in the corner, still wearing his reeking leathers, the chitin plates and helm piled near the door, his arms and legs bound with hempen rope. His eyes never left Eio.

“I’ll pay you back what you deserve,” he seethed. “I swear it. Damn monster. I’ll bleed you yet. You’ll see.”

The women shared a glance.

“We should probably find something to gag him with,” said Nadra.

Eio sighed. “Unless you want to stuff reeds in his mouth there isn’t much in here we could use.”

“I’ll give you something you can stuff in your mouth, heathen wretch.”

The boy groaned as Nadra kicked him in the gut.

“Cowards,” he spat. “You won’t even kill me yourselves. You rip apart my comrades but leave me alive. Feeling guilty? After you murdered all the rest of us?”

After you murdered all the rest of us, Eio repeated to herself.

A peel of thunder shattered across the sky, so loud the chiseled stone of the hut shook. Something large whimpered outside, and they heard claws scratching at the hide door. Nadra leapt to her feet, clutching a spear.

“No, wait,” Eio said, her heart soaring. “Open the door. It’s fine.” She lifted her voice. “Bon, it’s okay! I’m here!”

The sloth bounded through the door, soaked as if she had been swimming, grunting happily. Nadra stumbled backwards, laughing, as Bon’s slobbering maw engulfed Eio’s face.

“You told me to let it in!”

“Gods, the monster even consorts with beasts.”

Bon sneezed and shook the water from her coat, drenching the interior of the hut in seconds.

Night’s blanket draped itself across the rain-swollen land, sightless but for the occasional spiderwebbing of lightning across the sky. The rain continued unabated. It poured relentlessly some moments and sputtered into light drizzles in others. Even inside the hut the fire Nadra had built did little to keep out the chill.

In the darkness Eio lay awake, her head propped up against Bon’s fur, the sloth’s gentle breathing moving up and down ever so slightly. Firelight played across the domed ceiling of the hut, the spaces between the stones daubed with wattle, the dried herbs and wildflowers tied up to oak rafters by the previous inhabitants. She imagined them on the road, as the Talashi had been, fleeing the kites and the shadows of their birds, hunted over hill and river, the searing light of the harrier’s pyre searching hungrily for them. She wondered whether the kites she’d killed, whose throats she’d torn out and whose entrails she’d tasted, had thought of their homes in the end, had seen visions of their own brothers and sisters—

Sisters stalking through the understory concealing them binding them together two saber cats scenting in the sickly warm night birds and insects chattering to one another keeping the whisper of their paws through the ferns a closely held secret the blood in them racing the heat in their bodies rising as their prey defenseless lay dreaming tucked away in a delusion of safety she and Merah approaching silently stalking circling drooling their fangs poised above soft tender flesh waiting to blossom like flames beneath the moon—

Eio found her knife pressed against the boy’s throat. Tears welled in his wild eyes. He was whispering something she couldn’t understand, a whining, pleading appeal to someone far away. Eio’s chest rose and fell in heaving gasps. Drool fell from her lips, teeth bared, and ran down the boy’s armored chest. She stumbled backwards, blinking away her confusion, panic rising until she had to shove her hand between her teeth. The warm tickle of blood on her tongue brought her both peace and revulsion.

She jumped as the knife dropped from her hand, then turned and met Nadra’s eyes, their sunset bands frozen, flashing like fresh blood, awoken not from slumber but into the world. Eio knew those eyes reached far, pierced concealment, tore back the shrouds she had so desperately tried to cover herself with all her life. Her insides curdled. Nadra’s face betrayed no emotion; she just watched from where she sat leaning against the far wall, her legs drawn up, arms across her knees. Trembling, Eio wriggled back to Bon, the only one who hadn’t woken up, and curled against her, leaving Nadra and the boy to the night.

The storm broke at sunrise. Eio awoke shivering, head pounding, after a few hours of uneasy sleep. Nadra was reaching up into the net strung among the rafters, handing down a piece of dried meat to her. She offered another to Cyric, who took a strip between his teeth and chewed miserably. To Bon, Nadra threw an old pawpaw, which the sloth promptly devoured. They ate in silence.

“We should leave as soon as we can,” said Nadra eventually, moving to stand. “They’ll be back on the wing now that the skies are clear. They have to be nearby, and they’ll know something is wrong soon if they don’t already.”

Eio forced down the last of her jerky. “How long do you think we have?” she asked, wiping her mouth.

“Not long enough,” said the boy. “For you.”

Eio walked to the boy and squatted down, eye level with him. He wouldn’t avert his eyes. “You really would prefer death, wouldn’t you, kid?”

The boy grimaced. “I would choose death a thousand times over the dishonor of captivity. This state you keep me in is nothing but mockery.” He leaned in close, his voice lowering. “You are too weak to do what is necessary. You know what must be done yet you balk from it. Either you leave me here to bite my way out of my bounds, to rejoin my harrier and be granted death, or you finish what you started and kill me now.”

Eio stayed in the boy’s words for a long time. Eventually she stood. “I suppose it’s to be expected for a boy who only knows how to kill to have such a small imagination.” She turned to Nadra, gesturing out the door to the village. “Do you think they’d mind if I borrowed some clothes?”

Nadra shrugged. “Take whatever you can find that fits. Most of the women here weren’t as tall as you.”

Eio returned after combing through the majority of the buildings; most of what had been left behind was indeed too small, excepting the fur breeches and grass cloak she now wore, along with the kestrel’s soiled boots and a durable hide pack she slung over her shoulder. She tossed a small bundle at the boy’s feet.

“You’re going to change,” she said. “Your armor reeks, and we’ll blend in far better without a boy dressed as a soldier in tow.”

The boy scoffed. “We?”

“This isn’t wise,” Nadra said coolly. “For you or for him.”

Thick veins crawled along the boy’s temples. “Do you think me so deluded as to follow you—”

“Yes, yes, you’d choose death, right?” Eio’s shadow filled the doorway. “You would, if you could. But your life belongs to me now. You know it without a shadow of a doubt. After your usefulness to me has ended, I will grant you death.” She crossed the floor of the hut, knife in hand. “I’m going to untie you, then Bon is going to watch you as you change. If you try to escape, we won’t stop you. But whatever righteous death you seek at the hands of your harrier, know well that between you and her lies one ignoble death after another. One step too close to a cave bear’s den and you’re dinner. One foot stuck in a sucking bog and you’re trapped forever. One drink from the wrong stream and you die shitting yourself in the forest, alone.”

The boy sat still as Eio cut his bonds. She watched as a shadow of the night’s fear fell over him. “Since you’ll be traveling with us,” she said, casting a glance back at Nadra. “I would like to know your name.”

He sniffled once, his shame and his pride congealing into tears. “I am Kite Cyric, of the Second Flight of Istrel. A hunter of monsters.”

“A hunter of monsters.” Eio stood over him and tucked the knife into her bag, then lifted him to his feet. “Remember this, Cyric of Istrel: I am the only one who can give you a good death. Until then, you’ll have to live, same as us.” She motioned to Bon, who approached and reared back on her hind legs, standing nearly as tall as Cyric. Eio left them and joined Nadra outside.

“Hard words,” she mused. “I wonder if you’ll keep to them.”

Eio nodded, hoping none of them had noticed her heat beating wildly out of her chest or the sweat drenching the back of her neck. “I wonder the same.” She gazed over the dead kites and kestrel, bloated with rain around the center of the village. “We probably don’t have enough time to bury them, do we?”

“You’re awfully considerate to them now that they’re dead.”

“It would be a bad omen for their corpses to remain when the villagers return. I’ve left too many corpses unburied, besides.”

Nadra approached the body of the kestrel, barefoot and nearly faceless. “My old man used to say that in times like these unburied corpses may stretch for leagues,” she said. “Or pile so high as to touch the sun. No, we can’t bury them, but you aren’t wrong. It would stick in my side if we left them, too.”

At midmorning Cyric and Bon found the women dragging the last of the kites beyond Tererinte’s southern edge, where the rest had been laid down in a row, side by side, as many reed blankets and rushes covering them as they could find. They piled the ceramic weapons nearby, most of the blades chipped beyond repair.

“Wish I had my old kit,” Eio sighed, handing Nadra a knife and taking a spear for herself. “The Auye can rework the same weapons for years. Easy to keep an obsidian edge sharp.”

“There’s a trading post a few days west,” said Nadra. “We can find you some obsidian there. Then, between the information we gather there and what the kite deigns to tell us, we can piece together where the Istrelans are set up. We’ll know where to avoid.”

“And where to go next. So you’re settled on traveling together?”

Nadra kicked her sandal off, picking a small mud-covered rock from between her toes. “Not settled, no. Between you and the kite one of us is bound to wake up dead one night.” Her eyes met Eio’s. “But we’re both being hunted. Our chances are higher if we stick together, and I’d feel bad if you just went off into the woods by yourself again, all covered in shit and twigs.”

“I wouldn’t be by myself,” Eio said, frowning. “I’ve got Bon with me.”

“Bon, right.” Nadra glanced over her shoulder at the sloth, scraping in the fresh mud after a fat toad. “I suppose Bon can teach you about these changes you’re experiencing, then.”

Nadra turned and left Eio at the edge of the village, stunned for a moment, before she caught up with her. “Are you saying you can teach me?” she asked, trying to contain her bewilderment.

“It’s no guarantee. Your case seems to be different. In my experience most have a single form they change into. You seem to be manifesting different traits on the fly.” Nadra stumbled, slipping in the washed-out depression of one of the giant footprints. They stopped as they reached Cyric and Bon, the former standing uncomfortably in a loose-fitting tunic and breeches, the latter burping up the remains of the toad. “I’ll share with you what I know, since we seem to be kindred of a sort, but we’ll both have to learn as we go.”

Eio paused as grackles called to each other in the trees above them. “If I can,” she said, looking beyond Nadra and Cyric, seeing Merah. “I’d like to be free of this affliction.”

Nadra shook her head. “You may try. To my knowledge, none among the people who’ve developed this power have ever lost it, for it is no disease nor affliction. That’s what the Istrelans call it, to be sure. I couldn’t tell you the word in Auyecha, but in Nema it’s called erishan dautha. The Old Shape.”

“I thought all you heathens could do that,” Cyric said, then yelped as Bon bit him hard on his hand.

They departed Tererinte under a ceiling of mossy boughs sunkissed and dripping, accompanied by the grackles’ fanfare. After walking barely ten minutes they were soaked through. Bon led the way at the beginning but her wandering nose led them too far off the path Nadra had chosen, once to a cluster of morels, which Eio cheered, and once more towards the fly-claimed remnants of a ringtail, mostly scraps of fur clinging to a clutch of dainty bones, which Eio had to pull Bon from. Nadra led them then, pushing through the sumac and holly that choked the path. Cyric followed; where Nadra stepped deftly he stumbled, jamming his toes on logs and stones, walking blindly into thorns. Eio walked in the rear, her hungry soul placated, her eyes often alighting on the back of Nadra’s head and the dappled sunlight that made its home in her hair. Winding between the trees on either side of them, crossing the path when one traveler or the other least expected it, disappearing for odd lengths of time and reappearing just when Eio began to worry, was Bon. She ambled at a clip Eio hadn’t expected from a sloth, her amiable trot almost doglike.

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