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  She looked at his uglies compared to the one she had taken in the river mud. It had remembered a lot of killing. It had ended all she had known without knowing even for a moment what it was doing. Kill and destroy, that was all it had meant to do. But for it too there were these distant times in a dark hole that felt like love and belonging, purpose and curiosity. They had not always been what they became, but she understood that what they had become must end so that it was not passed on. If they would not end it themselves, then she would have to find a way.

  At the next time they made a stop she pretended she must get a drink and took a skin of water from their supplies. She stood and drank from her hand, though she took nothing in but breathed the memories out and let them run through her fingers. Before the water streams had struck the ground they had dissolved everything into a jumble that was nothing more than moments and soon these would be gone too, soaked into the soil, consumed by the roots and converted into other lives that were much slower and so different they would have no infectious force at all.

  She felt much better without them. She practised the names of the others as she rode, whispering them under her breath until she felt they were right. She didn’t understand anything they were saying but she knew names and her mother was getting a better grasp of everything all the time. Heno. Nedlam. Celestaine. Horse. Bukham. Murti. The Undefeated.

  Murti was strange. He had a life that went all over the place, even into other bodies in other places. She’d never seen anything like him before.

  Then there had been the dark woman with the apple. Joy, she was called, small and bright, the one who had forgotten something. Tricky, she’d said she was, but that wasn’t her real name. She wasn’t human. She wasn’t a demigod. She was Joy. Kula had no other word for what she was.

  Then there was that man with the vibrating box of strings. Ralas. He’d been funny. She had liked him.

  Bukham was funny too, but now he was sad all the time. She caught him looking at her and knew she had caused some of it although many other threads tied him to other people and places. The thread that led to her however, this he had followed and now he wanted to go home but the old man had caught him. He was a fisher, that old man. He was a net. She didn’t mess with that as she didn’t want to be caught.

  BUKHAM TRUDGED AS much as he was able given the pace they were going. He wasn’t sure who he was trying to impress with it but all he could think of was how angry Uncle was going to be when he found out that Bukham wasn’t coming back. And his cousin. She would take the stall. She would ruin the trade because she always gave away free things and didn’t know that not every herb was worth the same. She had no idea about spices either. And she had no idea about how to handle all the fruits and vegetables correctly so they looked their best and didn’t bruise. Some had to be kept warm, others cool. Some must be dry, others moist. She would put them all together and in two days there would be a heap of mush.

  Thinking of mush made him think of soil and digging and his hands hurt with the feel of the spade and then his body hurt with the soft thump of earth landing on a newly dead body, a newly dead face that had, that morning, been glad to be alive with no sense of what was coming. So he looked at the little girl and tried to imagine that at least he’d helped one. One. Strange little thing and seemed to have been alone.

  She smiled at him warily. He tried to smile back but tore his gaze quickly away, feeling his face do it all wrong. He wanted to cry but he didn’t. He wanted his mother but she was gone. He wanted to go away from everywhere but it seemed that this was already what was happening.

  In front of him the old man bounded along while the shock of the morning’s events was frozen in him. They had killed someone. Now that someone was a face down to the earth. And another had faced up to the sky. This was not how business was done. This was not how things should be. You couldn’t simply leave it all hastily, like criminals, and rush off. There were responsibilities to take care of.

  But when he thought he’d ask the blonde woman what was going on her expression made him think better of it. She looked like someone who executed responsibilities. He could have turned and left of course, at any time, just gone home himself. He knew the way. But even though he thought about it every other minute, he didn’t go. His body wouldn’t turn around and take him. He was afraid to, but also he wanted to see where they were going. Going itself was horrible but it had a promise in it that returning didn’t have. It had graves in it, and lies, he felt, but still he was going.

  Behind him he heard the huge monstress with the cudgel whistling a basic but cheery tune. He looked back at her and she grinned at him so that he was amazed by the size and yellowness of her tusks. His people were big but Yorughan were tough and rocky with it. He’d never seen an army like her on the march. He couldn’t imagine standing against even one of her. She had a simplicity about her that promised insufficient imagination for mercy. But in the story told of Celestaine something like mercy, opportunity and other inclinations of rebellion had come Nedlam’s way and she’d taken them and so now they were not at war. Such a turn of tides boggled him, and then he tripped on a root in the road and went flat on his face, burning with embarrassment. The Yorughan laughed and picked him up by the back of his jerkin, letting his feet dangle before she set him back on them. “Mind out,” she said.

  He hurried back to Horse’s side and busied himself with worrying about how they were to get enough supplies for everyone. They were at the end of the meagre load this morning, he noticed. Hopefully as they got closer to the Freeport there would be some chances to trade. He remembered more than ten little settlements that the Post swung past each year and cheered up at the prospect of being able to show his usefulness, given what had happened in the fight. He stayed close to the girl and Lysandra, feeling fraternal and not missing his cousin or his uncle or aunts or any of the many familiar faces of Taib.

  Around Lysandra’s ankles he saw the bright red fabric of her underdress, muddy and torn, and the threads where gemstones had been plucked away. He thought of the fire of the Draeyads, soul-burning, fire in another world, and then he looked at her ordinary ankle and her foot in its ornate sandal, scraped of gold and the blue metal named Tarenid, the trader’s curse, so-called because a desire to own a coin or ring of it was the death of many and as soon as one had it luck turned away. But it had been everywhere. The Binder’s Burden, Uncle had said it was, because they used it to shackle prisoners who were masters of any kind of art beyond the ordinary, to prevent their escape.

  She’d been covered in it, in little sigils, scales, threads. All undone now.

  Lysandra hung onto the strap of Horse’s bandolier as she rode, drinking in everything with boundless interest. Kula lolled in front of her, braiding the centaur’s long hair with a ribbon of bright fabric, pulling it out, doing it again.

  They passed onwards, a steady procession of the outlandish. Travellers on the road stared or gave them a wide berth and Bukham’s unease grew. He watched Murti hurdling along with his game leg, he watched the stride and brace of the Heart Taker that led them, the blonde captain that was their leader, and he wondered at the strangeness they must seem to others. He looked at his mottled hands, with nothing to hold but thin air.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE ROUTE TO the river was mostly a matter of taking the road, then a tiny fork that led East once you reached Pauper’s Bridge, but even that was too much for Celestaine’s nerve after she saw the second rider make them from a point near the horizon, then ride off quickly back the way they had come. They may not be wanted for themselves in particular but the centaur plus the Yorughan might be too much of a talking point somewhere, and her general unease about minding the non-combatants started to take an ugly turn towards dread. Riding with warriors with only their skins to worry about was easy compared to this, and it could only get worse as they came to more populated areas.

  Once they had paused for a rest beyond noon she took them away from the obviou
s route and on a line that ought to bring them to the riverbank by nightfall, south of the Islets Dock. The lands between them and their goal were hunting country, sparsely wooded with many thickets, rocky slopes and broad rolling hills. There were few settlements and nothing notable. As soon as they were out of sight of the road she felt better. But they had only been going a half hour when Heno whistled from the front of the line.

  She moved up and fell into step with him.

  “Look,” he pointed at the ground. There were many prints of people and animals, the ruts of some wheels that had passed across their way, moving in the same general direction.

  She studied them for a moment. “These are only a day or two old. They’ve gone, anyway. Looks like two carts.”

  “Going quick,” he said and she found she had to agree. The gaps between strides, the depth and angle of the divots all said the same. She kept their course and was glad when it deviated from the fleeing trackway, but as they crested a hill and began to descend between two scrubby strips of woodland she felt the hair on her neck prickle and then smelled something burnt as the wind came their way from the north. The woods looked suddenly like a canyon but to alter course would only take them miles out of the way and it was getting late. The river was down one more and one more again small valley by her reckoning. They could easily make it in an hour. If they made it at all.

  “Go look,” she said to Heno. “I will keep on this way. Rejoin as soon as you can.”

  He nodded and swung off to their left, his stride lengthening out into the true Yorughan fast march that was almost the running speed of an average human. Within a few moments he had vanished into the shadows beneath the trees.

  “Where is he going?” asked Horse.

  “Scouting,” Celestaine replied, trying to sound light about it so she didn’t scare the little one. “We’ll go on to the river.”

  The centaur, a creature of few words, said nothing. On her back Kula yawned. Bukham, the trader, asked, “What’s he looking for? Do you think there’s trouble?”

  “I don’t like to be surprised,” Celestaine said. “But no trouble.”

  “If he’s not here won’t we struggle if someone, you know, if they come like this morning?”

  “No,” Celestaine said. “We’ve got Nedlam. And I haven’t lost the use of my arms yet.”

  “What happened to that man, though, that wasn’t either of you,” he continued, not taking any hint to let it drop so that she fizzed with annoyance, and the urge to hit him ran suddenly through her in a way that meant she had to wait before she spoke again.

  “He had a change of heart, that’s all that matters. If he hadn’t then they’d all be dead by now. Is that a better outcome for you?”

  “But how do you know they’d be dead and not us? You don’t know that. I mean, to start with it wasn’t like we were all winning straight out. It looked quite outnumbered. In a way.”

  “Quiet,” Nedlam growled from the back of the line, though her voice had a carry to it that suggested large bears had been in mind when she was made. “You talk too much.”

  Celestaine was grateful when he did stop, though she heard him muttering to Murti afterwards. She didn’t want to explain that it was actually harder not to kill them. She and her friends were a warband, when you came down to it. If they hadn’t got a job to do, they’d be a lot of trouble themselves. The itch that had made her take to the road in the first place was gone now, but it would be back after a week on her arse in a chair. Now, on the other hand, she was full of herself and alive in a way that she knew would never come without some danger and some difficulty. Her only problem was that she wasn’t sure any more whether she was to protect Lysandra and Kula from others or the rest of the world from them. She had a strange feeling it was the latter and that Wanderer had known this from the start; why else would he put a flea in Deffo’s ear? And why would Deffo, most keen of all not to see battle, be so delighted to recruit her? Not that she’d seen much of him since the bush incident… not that…

  She became aware of a figure walking on a parallel course to them which trotted forwards as soon as she noticed it, huffing and bent over like an old man on his last legs—the sickly twin to Murti’s able vigor.

  “Hullo, Deffo.”

  “Avast. Doing well. Came to tell you I’ve got a boat but you’re too far south. It can’t come to the banks down here, they’re too shallow and reedy. You’ll have a time getting bogged down. Need to make it a bit north and then it’s all good.”

  “I’ll turn once we reach Lampwold Chase. We can stay on the hillside.”

  “Good. Good good good. Just, close to the treeline.”

  “The chase is open land, easy to cross. What’s wrong with it?” She had a sinking sensation that almost instantly became anger. “Deffo, what are you not telling me?”

  “Nothing. Nothing. Probably nothing. Let’s keep a good jog up. Doing nicely.” He kept up with them at the back, last but Nedlam.

  Celestaine sighed and her hands automatically checked her sword and daggers. The afternoon was pleasant, but it had become grey and misty and visibility was shortening all the time. They reached the end of the woodland on the right and beyond it she saw only grassy and rocky hillocks rising slowly into the murk. The sun was a flat disc in a flat sky. As she glanced at it there was a flicker, as though a large leaf had blown past it high in the air and blotted it out for a moment. She looked again. Nothing.

  They walked on. After a few more minutes Heno returned at a jog. He gave Deffo a scornful glance and then said.

  “I found the carts. Broken, burned. Couple of dead men, all burned, no weapons. Oxen and those long-leg goat things, lunnoxes—nothing left, only blood. Lots of scorching. Looks like about ten people including at least one child escaped. Headed to the road and up that way. Dropped a few things.”

  “Deffo?” She turned accusingly, but there was nobody there. Of course there wasn’t. “Dammit.” She thought for a moment. “Burned like your magic?”

  Heno shook his heavy head. “Burned like fire.”

  She felt a draught of air against her cheek, cool and light with mist.

  “Analysis?” Because she had to ask. Even though she knew of only one thing that flew and used fire and ate large ground animals she was fairly sure that the five dragons the Kinslayer had concocted were dead. Vermarod the Invincible had died by her hand at Bladno and was now a wayside tavern called the Skull Cup. Another had joined a Kelicerati colony and was out of the dragon business for all intents and purposes. She remembered the parasitic grubs that had replaced its eye with a shudder of revulsion. Other monsters had roamed the world before and after, of course, but it was rare to see one near the Middle Kingdoms, of any kind. Bounty hunting had taken them all to adorn the walls of wealthy patrons.

  Heno shrugged. “Better take cover.”

  “I don’t think there is any,” she replied. The woods were a death trap, even when damp; the open land doubly so. They were miles short of the river and even if they did reach it, bogs notwithstanding, there was nothing about a riverboat that was easier to defend. The mist made it impossible to see—but that went both ways, she thought, wondering. She turned back to walk beside Horse and ask her advice only to find her scanning the skies, tulip ears wobbling all around at the sides of her head, spear already hefted for casting in her hand. Lysandra and Kula were on foot, walking behind her with Murti and Bukham, Nedlam walking backwards to be a set of eyes facing the way they came but keeping the pace even as they went downslope into the scrubland of the valley.

  “What is it?” Celestaine called up to the centaur.

  “Some kind of Ur-beast,” she said, using the word for the first creations that had come into the world, when it was new. “It is not hungry, just curious.”

  A little of the tension went out of Celestaine’s shoulders. “We need to get away from it.”

  “Big hunting territory,” Horse said. “You will not avoid it any time soon.”

  �
�Is it going to attack us?”

  “Depends if we go close to the nest.”

  Suddenly Celest found herself with a small girl attached to one leg. She looked down at Kula, halted in place by the light weight, the tight grip and the intent look in the child’s face, eyes like dark saucers beaming up at her with excitement and more animation than she’d ever shown. “Not now,” Celestaine began to say, realising it was useless, wondering how to deal with a deaf child, when Lysandra came forward and took Kula’s hand. Kula abandoned Celestaine promptly and gazed trustingly up at Lysandra. Lysandra looked Celestaine in the eye and said in faultless Traveller, “She can see it. She wants to lead the way.”

  A whoosh of air interrupted them. Splatters of water struck Celestaine’s cheek and forehead. The tip of a leathery, part-feathered wing, black and brown, sliced down from the cloud bank and cut a short swathe through the mist overhead before it slid upwards into the grey. Two slow whirls of fog spiralled in its wake. Celestaine wiped her face off with her fingers. A faint scent of charred meat came in on the breeze and her stomach growled. You’ll lead it here in a minute, Ralas would have said, but he wasn’t here.

  That thing had to be huge, as far as she counted sizes anyway. She looked down at Kula, dancing with eagerness in a way that seemed completely at odds with the circumstances but it was that which convinced her. “Lead on.”

  “Can you eat ’em?” Nedlam wondered aloud, obviously following Celestaine’s gut thoughts.

  “The meat of the Utbeast is poisonous to man,” Horse said. “And most things, except other Utbeast.”

  Nedlam snorted in disappointment. “Are you one?”

  “I suppose I am,” Horse said.