He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)

Montanne Keep wasn’t a real keep. Mateo’s first sight of the white house on the lake with its three stories of bright windows sent a burst of energy through him. He brushed a hand down Bella’s neck, the horse patiently standing beside him on the barge. “We’re almost home,” he whispered.

Bella shifted uneasily as the barge glided out of the cave and into the channel that fed the lake, exchanging dank darkness for light. Grabbing hold of Bella’s lead, Mateo moved to the very edge of the barge, ready to run for the bridge that led from the shore to the island’s stone-paved courtyard, suddenly grateful that when his father had rebuilt the house from the old one’s dead ashes, he hadn’t gone for thick walls, slitted windows, and a healthy population of rats under the beds as a true keep deserved.

Mateo didn’t mind the misnomer, of course. “Montanne Keep” sounded quite fancy.

The moment the hostler manning the barge poles nosed the craft onto the channel shore, Mateo was already on Bella’s back, trotting toward the bridge. The carriage was in the rear barge, and he didn’t mean to dawdle until it disembarked. Aria would see him.

Tual had pulled him aside after everyone had gotten to the underground docks and the hostlers had begun readying the two flat barges that were the only safe way to get to the estate. “No, that wagon comes with me on the first barge!” Tual pointed to the wagon carrying the sword when one of the hostlers started pushing it toward the other boat, only turning back to Mateo when the hostler had managed to wrestle it around. “Miss Aria asked if we could ride with her today,” he murmured.

“Miss Aria can stuff it,” Mateo hissed back, doubting Aria had done any such thing.

“She’s scared, Mateo.” Tual put his hands on Mateo’s shoulders, gripping him tight despite the easy smile on his face. “The two of you got on so well back in Chaol—she likes you. If you would just talk to her—”

Maybe Tual didn’t mind that Aria’s very existence in their party was a stain. Aria had a family—two parents, a sister—and somehow she was with Mateo and his father instead? Mateo shook the thought away, spurring Bella faster as Tual manipulated the controls to make the tunnel close off. No one could follow them into the keep through Basist-made traps and tunnels. Except for the people they allowed. Like Lia.

That was the plan, after all. To lure her here using her little sister. It rankled, even the idea of it, despite the fact that Mateo had agreed. Had helped plan the next steps, the ones that would make Lia want to stay once she arrived, would make her trust him again. But taking the first step down that path seemed much harder than writing everything down in nice bullet points with timelines and projected outcomes. Making nice with Aria Seystone would be taking that path at a run.

Clutching the drawing satchel at his side, Mateo tried to smooth out his thoughts, the energy prickling inside him like a thousand needles just waiting to gouge him from the inside out. He was an artist. An archeologist. A student. A scholar.

A shapeshifter.

A murderer?

He held the satchel tight, ducking closer to Bella. It had to be this way, at least if he wanted to live—and he very much did. But Mateo wasn’t naive enough to think he was ready. Not yet.

Bella’s hooves rang against the stone as they went over the bridge toward the tall white house with its red-tile roof. Home. Where everything would be comfortable and make sense again. The lake was an almost-perfect circle, with their island at the south end where the cliffs rose up behind it like a curtain. Ancient towers and long-fallen statues thrust up from the cliff top like fat fingers, each one so covered in vines and moss that it was difficult to tell them from the natural stone formations. A waterfall cut the cliff face in two, making a pretty picture: white house, red roof, gray cliffs, blue water, at least if you didn’t look hard at the holes pockmarking the cliff face or the odd ripples marring the lake’s surface.

Mateo urged Bella faster, flying by the watchtower that bloomed up over the gates at the far side of the bridge, the structure made without seams or mortar as if it had been raised whole from the depths below. Across the courtyard, past the gardens, straight to the newly thatched stables just past the tight U the house made on the south side of the island.

Reveling in the lake’s quiet calm, Mateo dismounted and led Bella to her stall. Until he caught a whiff of decay among his home’s comfortable scents, the ghost watching him from wherever it was she sat.

The rattle of carriage wheels on stone jarred him to action. Pulling Bella’s saddle off, Mateo dumped it in the stable walkway where a hostler would be sure to see it. Waving a quick goodbye to Bella, Mateo sprinted for the house, swearing when the carriage pulled up between him and the grand entrance. Skidding to a stop, Mateo changed directions, praying the back doors were unlocked—and why wouldn’t they be? No one but servants knew how to get to the island, and even they didn’t know how to open and close the channels that led to the lake.

Grabbing hold of the kitchen door latch, Mateo swore when it didn’t open. He went to the courtyard door—also locked. Then he tried his chances on one of the lower atrium windows, sending a prayer of gratitude up toward the sky when it pulled open. Barely managing to stuff himself through, Mateo stumbled through the plants and birds darting around the glassed-in atrium, then out to the servants’ staircase, taking the steps three at a time until he got to the third floor.

His breath didn’t catch. Not once. Not even when his mind went out to touch the unnaturally solid foundations of the place, the stones that made up the courtyard, the ones tiled across the walls. The glass making the atrium a swirl of light…

Mateo bit his lip, giving in to the flash of glory, of unbridled glee, despite the aftertaste of rot in everything his mind touched. No matter what the ghost wanted, his muscles, his body, his magic—they were working. He was somehow all right, as if his father killing the boy in the tomb had jarred something free, making it so his soul wasn’t stretched across two people.

Three, really, Willow whispered. We’re family now, so I don’t mind sharing.

Mateo skidded to a stop at his own rooms, stumbling through the door and slamming it shut behind him. Leaning back against the gilded wood, Mateo breathed in deep, looking up at the familiar high ceiling of his sitting room, the gold trim, his books on archeology, history, and art lining the bookcases by the window. It smelled like home, pigments and resin, charcoal and vellum, like books and…

He swallowed hard. Like rot.

You can’t have this, Mateo thought at the ghost in a panic. This is my home.

I’m so hungry, Mateo, she cried, her words icicles that only grew after they’d been spoken, sharpening like teeth.

Pushing off the door, Mateo darted into his sleeping chamber, almost tripping on the edge of the green Palashian carpet to land on his knees by the grand four-poster draped in salmon and cream. Mateo dove under the bed, rolled onto his back, and stared at the underside of the frame, the wood carved with trees and snakes.

This had always been his safe place when he was young, under this bed with his drawing pencils or a book. Lying under it was one of his first memories of the house. One of his first memories of Tual because his father had come in to hide with him, though Mateo couldn’t remember what he’d been hiding from.

Maybe his family. The ones who had cut off his fingers, then nearly bled the life from his body. The sister who’d finally come after him, perhaps to finish the job?

Lia’s with your sister, the ghost had said. How would that change their plans? Tual hadn’t accounted for the murderous figment of Mateo’s past tagging along with the murderous girl who was supposed to be his future.

Mateo glanced down at his fingers, whole and unmarked inside his riding gloves. They cut off your fingers, Tual had said, and yet there they were, whole and slim. Ready to draw as if Mateo had blinked into existence after his family had tried to murder him, nothing left in his mind of who he had been before.

He’d always believed it was because Tual had brought him to Montanne Keep as a young child—too young, too traumatized to remember. But it wasn’t true. He’d watched Tual count on his fingers, lips pursed as he added up years that were all Mateo had left of his life. Eight. Eight years at Montanne Keep. Leaving the eleven years previous smudged and obscured.

Closing his eyes, Mateo tried to look into that dismal darkness, the before he didn’t know he’d had. The ghost—Willow?—began to crackle and spit like a fire doused with oil, and something sliced through the black, sharp as broken glass.

A girl.

She was laughing. In her hands were a mortar and pestle. Her hair was an odd mix of coarse waves and braids. Half a Beildan.

Mateo’s eyes burst open, and he couldn’t breathe, the broken edges of the memory cutting him up and down. Gasping for air, he clutched the drawing satchel to his chest, curling around it as if somehow it could anchor him to the life he knew. The memory didn’t fade as he hoped, only morphed into a taller girl. A girl with a full head of uneven Beildan coils, her expression murderous. Dark hair, tawny skin, the very freckles across her nose—it was like looking in a warped mirror.

Maybe I should have taken you both. Tual had said it in the carriage. She’s had a difficult life, Mateo.

She’d been trying to save the other boy. The one Tual had killed in the tomb.

She’s his family now! Willow rasped in an explosion of mental sound that had Mateo scrambling to cover his ears, as if it would block it out. But the ghost didn’t scream again, the feel of her slamming shut inside his head, as if she were in a huff about something.

Mateo waited a moment. Had Willow gone? He breathed in slowly only to taste her death on his tongue.

“Mateo!” Tual’s voice echoed outside in the hall. The door to his room opened and footsteps approached, stopping next to the bed. “What were you hoping to find under there?”

“Some dignity. Maybe a future that doesn’t involve kidnapping or murder—”

“Miss Aria is sick to death of me, so coming out of hiding would serve that second goal.” Tual bent down, his face appearing in the gap between the bed and the floor. “Our plan is going to work.” He scratched at his beard. “Provided Aria doesn’t strangle me with a hair ribbon or something. You trust me, don’t you? You are my life, Mateo. I am going to set you right if it’s the last thing I do.”

Mateo stared at the underside of the bed, wondering at the shape of that sentence. His father had let him believe all sorts of things about himself, his life. None of those things had been true. But Tual had proved over and over again that what mattered most to him was Mateo. Letting his head turn so his cheek touched the floor, Mateo allowed himself to look at his father. “Harlan told me about the bodies. Why didn’t you say something?”

Tual eased down to sit on the ground, silent for a moment. Finally, he sighed. “I guess I can’t always keep the bad things away from you.” He laughed, one helpless chuckle that was all the sadder for its attempt at cheer. “I’ve always tried to pretend that our lives are made from licorice and spun sugar.”

“I don’t like licorice.” Mateo scrunched his eyes tight. “Are they auroshe kills? And if they are… what should I be worried about? Lia? Or…?”

“I hope it is Lia.” Tual cleared his throat, pulling a thin roll of vellum tied with a velvet ribbon from his coat. “My aurasight reaches farther than yours—when we’ve finished fixing you up, you won’t only be able to see gods-touched. I can see every insignificant energy spark from here to the edge of the lake, and whoever it is out there is taking great care to stay out of range.”

“You can see all auras, not just gods-touched?” Mateo thought back to the auras he’d seen—hundreds of different Devoted, Lia’s, Ewan’s, each somehow distinct and imprinted on his brain even more deeply than their individual names.

“People I know, yes. Instantly recognizing someone without knowing them is spiriter stuff, and I’ve never tried to develop that side of my abilities—Lia would have been able to do it. But I worry this is a more likely explanation for the attacks.” He waved the roll of vellum. “It arrived in Kingsol by post this morning.”

Mateo took the letter and untied the ribbon. Hastily glancing through the text, he skipped to the signature and sigil down at the bottom, two auroshes with their horns crossed. The Warlord was asking after her cure. Mateo let his head sink back down to the ground, pushing the roll of vellum back toward his father. “You think she followed us here and is… killing things and leaving them for us as a threat?”

“Maybe.”

“How does she know where we live? How would she even go about getting here? No one knows how—”

“I wouldn’t underestimate the Warlord. What happened at the tomb was a bit too dramatic for her to look the other direction any longer.” Tual sat back on his haunches, clutching that ridiculous sun hat of his as he made room for Mateo to come out from under the bed. It wasn’t actually ridiculous because Mateo had the same one, only in a tomatoey shade that brought out the warm undertones of his skin. He just wasn’t feeling very kind. “Hiring an aukincer to cure her army was a stretch, even after she saw the results.”

“A larger stretch than she realizes, considering you were the one causing the Devoted to get sick and lose their energy in the first place.”

Tual chuckled. “Well, I don’t think there’s going to be any more stretching now that she thinks we’ve got what she wants. We’ll either have to hand something over that looks like it can cure an entire religious order of terrible wasting sickness or be gutted in our sleep. She’ll be here in the next few days.”

“She’ll lose half her company just getting here. Unless the forest is kinder to Devoted than the rest of us?” Mateo poked his head out from under the bed, then made himself slide the rest of the way out, leaving his safe haven for the cold air in the room. Most people who walked into the forest didn’t come back out, eaten by snakes or other animals or falling into the underground channels made by long-dead Basists. “And it doesn’t make sense that it would be one of her auroshes harrying us if she’s days out. The first body was a Devoted.”

“True.” Tual hopped up from the floor. “Just in case some rogue predator has managed to follow us all the way here, would you keep an eye on Miss Aria? Show her the ropes, the lay of the land—”

“I don’t want to get the lay of the land.”

Mateo flinched at the sound of the girl’s voice coming from his sitting room. He turned, wishing to Calsta herself that Aria was across the country, over the border in Lasei, on a pirate’s ship—anywhere but glowering from his sleeping chamber door.

“I’m not going to be a good prisoner at all.” Aria tipped up her chin as if she were going to snoot her way right out of the difficult situation she’d found herself in. Her freckles stood out against her pale cheeks like dirt, and beads of sweat dripped down her temples.

It must have been awful in the carriage. The heat. Wondering what had happened to her family…

“Why, Miss Aria, we were just talking about you.” Tual smiled.

“I know. I heard you.” The fact that she was standing there with bared fists instead of tears made her Lia’s sister more than red hair and freckles ever could have. Mateo swallowed, looking away. She really did look just like her older sister, only more murderous, if that were possible. “I hope you know my sister is going to kill you,” the little girl informed his father. “If I don’t manage it before she gets here, anyway.”

“As you’ve mentioned several times.” Tual’s smile only grew. “It was Lia herself who asked us to keep you safe after the Warlord—”

“That is a load of silenbahk dung. Lia had a plan to get us out. You were half the reason we had to go. You took me away from her and my mother and my father—”

“I don’t know how to put this delicately, but Devoted came to your house not moments after I got you away and—”

“I don’t think there’s any reason to argue,” Mateo interrupted, more for himself than for Aria’s benefit. He didn’t know what his father had or hadn’t done to Lia’s family. Lia’s father may have even deserved a nasty end, what with his illegal shipments of salpowder going to foreign leaders and assassination plots and whatnot, but Mateo wanted to exist in ignorance. “You can murder me later for practice, Aria. My father will take a little more work, so you’ll need it.”

Aria leaned to the side to get a good look at him. “I’m going to find a sword and stab you.”

“Get Harlan to show you to the armory. Only the Devoted are allowed to have swords, but you’ll be able to find a nice machete, at least.” Mateo gave her a ponderous bow from the ground, which took her scowl from murderous to positively genocidal. “That’ll give me time to take a nap before you come for me. Otherwise I might faint in this heat, and then stabbing me wouldn’t be nearly so satisfying.”

“You’re just as wimpy as Lia said.”

Mateo nodded. “Absolutely, I am. Now go away. Last I checked, kidnapped girls were supposed to be shut up in their rooms.”

“Not kidnapped. We are trying to help.” Tual gestured grandly toward the doorway. “Let me show you to the gold room, Aria. I believe it will suit your taste. It’s just next to Mateo’s, so if you decide to kill him in his sleep, it will be quite convenient. There’s even a rumor that there are secret passageways from this wing that lead all the way to the catacombs….”

Aria didn’t fight Tual, sticking her nose in the air and giving Mateo one last glare before allowing herself to be shepherded back into the hall. Mateo waited until his father’s voice had faded before picking himself up from the ground to stare at the door after her, carved snakes curling up both sides of the frame.

Snakes like the one carved into his father’s tooth. Mateo had never asked about it—it had always just been a part of Tual, same as his smile, his beard, the mischievous look in his eyes. But now, after everything, Mateo had questions.

He walked out into the hall, catching the tail end of something about where the poison was kept in the kitchen as Aria’s flaming curls disappeared into her room. She slammed the door in Tual’s face before he could follow her. Tual chuckled the whole way back to Mateo, rubbing a hand across his cheek to wipe away a tear of mirth. “I like her. I like the whole family. Now—” He clapped his hands together, rubbing them with gleeful anticipation. “We have some strategizing to do. Meet me in my office once you’ve had a chance to bathe?”

“We have more to plan? Because of the Warlord?”

“The Warlord will be easy to deal with. Unless she sees Aria.”

Mateo stopped, turning to face him. “Because she’ll realize Aria is Lia’s sister? That Lia, the spiriter she’s been trying to get her hands on for weeks now—”

“—disappeared the same time we arrived?” Tual nodded. “I have no doubt that if she puts the right pieces together, there will be more questions than we can answer comfortably, and I’ve grown a little too attached to this house over the years to just abandon it so I can spend the rest of my life running from gods-touched warriors.”

“So what are we going to do? Drain them all down so far that they can’t hurt us?” Looking out at the lake through the wavy glass made Mateo want to jump in and sink until all he could feel was water pressing in on him. Of course, he couldn’t actually do that any more than Tual could drain a whole company of Devoted—the whole household knew better than to dangle so much as a toe in that lake without proper precautions. “You keep warning me that I might do it myself by accident—and that the energy I steal will just siphon down the hole I have where my soul is supposed to be.”

Tual led Mateo down the stairs, heading for his office next to the atrium on the first floor. “Haven’t you been feeling better? I didn’t think killing off that boy would completely fix things, but you’ve been so healthy—”

“That’s not what it is,” Mateo grumped, opening his mouth to say something about ghosts. Voices. Power. The taste of death on his tongue… Slowly, he shut his mouth again, not wanting to make things worse by saying them out loud.

“I couldn’t drain more than one Devoted in a day—at least enough to incapacitate them. For all the stories of shapeshifters, I don’t know how they grew to be so much larger than life.” They passed the antiquities room, artifacts Tual had found over the years and a few from Mateo on display, along with some of Mateo’s sketches from inside tombs. Mateo caught a glimpse of something new through the glass door, the sight making his stomach curdle. A box.

The box. With Patenga’s sword. The one he was supposed to use to kill Lia. After so many weeks of hiding it in the wagon, Tual was just going to put it out like a trophy for everyone to see?

“….I’m stronger than I ever have been before,” Tual was musing. “But if the reliefs in Patenga’s tomb are to be believed, he could suck the energy from an entire assembled gathering. I don’t know where he put it all. There’s no place for the energy to go.” He opened his office door and hung up his coat just inside the doorway, his shelves of pots and jars, bowls and books built in against the window wall shared with the atrium. He sat down at his desk, brow furrowed. “There’s a reason I’ve stayed away from all the various Warlords and Devoted cronies up until these last few years. Getting help from them wasn’t worth the risk that I’d catch their attention. I could fight one, like I said. Two, maybe even three…” He trailed off, kicking himself around in a circle on the stool. “Ten? Twenty? Not so much. I don’t know the whys or hows or anything useful about magic. I’ve only been able to take care of myself. And you, now that you’ve come along, but only barely.”

“And you’re not worried about the Warlord tracking us here and bringing Calsta knows how many swords with her?”

“Not yet.” Tual kicked himself in one last circle before standing up. “Hiding is much easier than trying to fight an army when you’ve only one sword. We can still hide.”

Anger boiled up inside Mateo at the idea. Hiding because of what he was, punishment looming for what he might do, not what he’d already done. Not for what he thought, what he wanted, but what he could be. What would they think of him once he became a true shapeshifter? he wondered.

We’ll be immeasurable. Larger than any storm, deeper than any sea. Your father doesn’t know what he could do. But I do. Willow’s voice grew darker. We need the sword.

Mateo swallowed, the imprint of Patenga’s sword at the back of his mind like a knife waiting to stab him. “I’m worried. I’m not any of the things I need to be, Father,” he whispered.

“You don’t need to be anything but—”

“I don’t even know what’s true and what’s not. I didn’t know why we were at the tomb. I didn’t know about being a sky-cursed shapeshifter. I didn’t know I had a whole life before…” Mateo wrung his hands through his hair. “And a sister! What about her?”

“I didn’t lie to you, Mateo.” Tual’s voice came out a little pinched, lines worrying his forehead. “I didn’t want the burden to be on you. All of it—your sickness, everything, is my fault. I wanted to fix it without you having to shoulder the trauma of why it had to happen. Or how it had to be done.”

Mateo paced across the room. “More sheltering? I’m the one who is supposed to stab the person I love most. Unless you were planning an elaborate sleepwalk, I think I would have figured it out eventually.”

“And I’m going to be here, right by your side.” Tual stood, easing around the books and papers already piled on his desk from their luggage. A bird chirped in the atrium, a flicker of life just on the other side of the glass. “We’re going to do this together.”

Mateo looked up at the little bird flitting from branch to branch.

“I didn’t intend for you to find out the way you did. But would you have done anything differently now that you know?” Tual came up behind Mateo to grip his shoulders. “You want to live? This is how it happens. This is how everything changes.”

“Everyone wants to live,” Mateo breathed, full of angry words, but they wouldn’t come. They stuck inside him like mud dried over the years of bitterness and anger at what he was: broken. Hunted. Condemned for no reason. Of course Mateo wanted to live. Maybe this was just how life was. If you had money, someone else didn’t. If you had food, it had probably come from someone else’s mouth. If you made decisions in your own favor, they were most likely hurting others.

Was this any different? Maybe there was a finite amount of life in the world, and he had the advantage of knowing how to secure his share.

He turned, brushing Tual’s hand off his shoulders. This wasn’t fair. He hadn’t chosen to have a hole punched in his soul.

Not a thing or a hole, Willow growled.

Nor am I, he thought back. I didn’t ask for any of this. Don’t I deserve to live?

I did, I think. And I do still.

But I didn’t do any of this, so why should I be punished for it? The thought was to himself, the edges tinged with decay. No different from the rage that had followed him throughout his whole life.

Tual stayed by the glass, back to the light as he looked up at the shelves of books and papers, the years of searching, digging, drawing, begging for information. “I can’t lose you, Mateo. Not now. Are you having second thoughts about our plan?”

“No.” Mateo slumped onto the sofa across from the desk. “I just need a stiff malt. And something impossibly scrumptious from Hilaria’s kitchen.” He deserved that much, at least.

Tual shook his head, spreading his hands wide. “There, I cannot help you. That woman terrifies me.”

Altahn’s voice outside the tent was muffled, Noa straining to hear as she sat down at the table in his tent. His riders were running helter-skelter in response to his careful instructions to pack up their belongings. When he finally came gusting through the tent flap, Galerey hissing on his shoulder like the little fusspot she was, Noa couldn’t help but be a little impressed at the picture. Not too impressed, of course. Altahn was impressed enough with himself that he didn’t need her.

“Where is our dear patron goddess of thieves? She hops into our wagon as wild-eyed as the nameless god himself, tells us we’ve found what we need, won’t say a single word except to shout at the horses to go faster… and now that we’re here, she disappears.” Altahn sank down in the seat across the table, his customary smile gone, as if it were suddenly time to be serious.

“She’s fine. I think they chased her out of the library, is all.” Noa sat forward, wondering if the truth of him behind the smiles would now come crawling out.

“They almost chased us out, but my eyes weren’t all red, and I didn’t smell like death.”

Noa shrugged. “Matter of opinion, I guess.” She cleared her throat when Altahn cocked his head, not sure if she was insulting him. Which she had been. “Those herbs she rubbed all over her clothes got rid of it quick enough.”

“Right.” He grinned, but then it wilted into that same careful smile, as if Altahn realized he’d forgotten himself and needed to pretend that he was pleasant but not too pleasant. It was easy to see the game he thought he was playing with Anwei, but Noa loved the moments he slipped with her. “It was pretty close. That scholar saw me touching that awful glass.”

Noa propped up her chin on both hands. “And that’s how she’ll always remember you. I know it’s the picture of you I’ll have lodged in my head: your hands full of someone just a little too manly for you to—”

“You can stop anytime now.” Altahn laughed. Galerey scuttled down his arm to sit on the table in front of him. He had a nice laugh. “I shouldn’t complain, I suppose. Yaru managed to pull it off in her typical singed hair, good-thing-no-one-thought-to-stab-us fashion like a true goddess.”

“You don’t like working with Anwei?” Noa extended a finger to Galerey, still delighted at the notion that Anwei had made up a goddess as a front to help her steal things and poison people. “She gets what she wants in the end.”

“The problem is that I’m not sure she minds a few broken bones and lost limbs along the way.” Altahn sighed, drawing a fanciful line across the little collapsible table, then frowning when Galerey sparked and licked at the spot, leaving whorls of ash in her wake.

Noa couldn’t argue with that. She leaned forward to squint at the little burn marks the lizard had left on the table surface. It was the one concession to normal furniture in the whole camp. For all that Altahn’s tent was the largest, it was simple, divided into a main receiving area and a personal area at the back with a canvas wall separating them. She’d never seen him go into his sleeping area, more often finding him sleeping under the stars with the other riders. The floor of the tent was strewn with carpets and pillows, giving them all places to sit as they talked and planned. There wasn’t a single chair, no beds, not even proper silverware. Trib lived in their saddles, it seemed, needing nothing but a bedroll and a bit of canvas over their heads when it got too cold or too hot or too wet. It was a stark difference from the times Noa had traveled with her father over land, the trade caravan almost as opulent as her glittering rooms in Chaol with couches and screens, beds and a bathtub, along with people and wagons enough to carry them. That was only when her father couldn’t justify traveling with his beloved riverboat fleet, goods taking up the space he and she should have on board.

Galerey’s eyes narrowed on Noa’s fingers extended toward her, little sparks igniting at her mouth when her tongue came flicking out. The little creature twisted to look up at her master. Altahn’s brow furrowed, but then he nodded toward Noa. The lizard swiveled back, darting to nuzzle Noa’s outstretched fingers.

Noa gasped, jerking away only to have Galerey follow her. The little lizard nestled in the cup of her hand, snuffling her knuckles, then nosed her hand over and sat on top like a falcon on her keeper’s wrist.

“She likes you,” Altahn said, a hint of annoyance flashing past the easy smile.

“She has good taste.” Noa grinned, brushing her other hand down the lizard’s crest and neck as she’d seen Altahn do, the creature closing her eyes, a soft rumble coming from her long torso like a cat’s purr.

Altahn’s fingers drummed relentlessly against the table. “You know Yaru better than I do. What did she need from the library, and why wouldn’t she tell us? I can’t work with a ‘goddess’ who only shares information she feels the rest of us mere mortals deserve. Tual Montanne already killed my father. I can’t—”

“Anwei is no goddess. She’s smart enough not to share everything when it means someone might run off with it all and leave the rest of us behind.” Noa grinned when he looked up at her, the vague smile flagging a tiny bit. “You can’t fault her after you stole all her information and tried to use her as a scapegoat in Chaol.”

“She didn’t tell you what we were after in Chaol any more than she’s telling us now. She didn’t even try to warn you that there was a full-fledged shapeshifter involved. Not until we were all neck-deep in vines.”

“I wasn’t down in the tomb.” Noa looked toward the door, the flash she’d seen of Lia out in the training circle, sword raised, teeth bared, bringing back the awful memory of the last time she’d seen the girl’s face before it was hidden under a veil. A hulking Devoted creeping toward her, awful desperation wearing Lia like a worn-out coat. Noa’s fingers strayed up to touch Falan’s flower at the end of the hair stick in her bun, the sharp prongs still feeling dirty, though it had been weeks since she’d cleaned the blood from them. “Lia should be coming in too, shouldn’t she? Did you see where she went?”

“You mean after she riled up all my riders into shouting across the training circle like spectators at an auroshe fight?” He chuckled, covering his face with both hands. “We’re supposed to be hiding.”

“Some of us aren’t suited for hiding.” Noa looked back at the tent flap, wondering if she should go look for Lia. Something had happened while they were gone, but Lia didn’t like being coddled and hugged. She would come to them. So Noa tickled Galerey’s eye ridge, shrieking with delight when the lizard started climbing her sleeve. “Anwei’s sorting it all out. You saw—her belanvian is feeling better.” Normally, Noa started by liking people, because liking people was more fun than hating everyone and sitting alone at dinner. But she’d never quite warmed to Knox. Calling him a belanvian was the closest she could come to describing what she felt when she looked at him. Belanvian were legends of shadow in Elantia that waited under docks and in dark alleys to pull unsuspecting victims into their realm. No one who had actually seen one had survived to tell the tale, so far as Noa knew. Knox left her with that same feeling, that if she dug below the shadows that clung to him, she might not live to tell about it.

She had never seen anything like it before him, almost as if he were wearing a costume for everyone else. Falan saw through liars and bad actors clear as glass, and Noa was certain that seeing Knox’s shadows was some kind of help from her goddess, no matter what all the priests said about lower gods not sharing power. Unfortunately, when she had explained her misgivings about Knox to Anwei, the healer had only giggled as if Noa were telling a joke.

Anwei had sat by Knox’s bedside every night since the tomb, one hand around his wrist as if she thought letting go would mean his blood would stop pulsing, not a care about what would happen if his hands suddenly clutched back. He’d been pale under the light brown cast to his skin, barely breathing.

And now he was awake.

“What was wrong with him?” Altahn’s voice broke through her thoughts. “Yaru wouldn’t say a single word about it, only that he was injured in the tomb but he’s important to what she’s planning. Maybe… because Tual will trip over his limp body?”

“He wasn’t so limp out there on the practice yard.” Noa couldn’t be surprised that Anwei’s grumpy shadow friend had woken up with a weapon in his hand. “You’ll see why Anwei wants to keep him around.”

Altahn’s fingers began to drum faster. “Oh, I’ve seen.”

Pursing her lips, Noa brushed her hand down Galerey’s scaly side, the lizard pulsing with internal heat that came out in little whisps of smoke from her nostrils. “We need him as much as we need you.” She looked up, her smile stretching to a grin, trying to think how best to poke him out from that aggressively even keel. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”

“We?” Altahn’s fingers stopped drumming, and he spread his hands forward across the table, stretching like a cat. “What are you doing with someone like Anwei, anyway?”

“Me?” Galerey darted up from Noa’s shoulder into her hair, a laugh bursting from Noa’s lips. “Why wouldn’t I be with Anwei?”

“You think I don’t know who you are?”

Noa frowned, but before she could respond, Bane—a favorite of Noa’s among the riders—stuck his head in the tent flap. He shot Noa a grin that she returned in earnest despite the worry sinking through her humors. “We’ll be ready to move out in an hour, like you asked, Altahn.”

What did Altahn mean, he knew who she was? The thoughts swirled quicker and quicker as Noa listened to the Trib deliver his report. Had Altahn meant to accuse her of something? To threaten her? Noa hadn’t left her father and his trading empire with permission, exactly. It was likely he was throwing open theaters and malthouses all across Chaol in search of the precious bauble he’d sold to the governor. Or perhaps he wasn’t looking for her, fed up once and for all with Noa and the fact that she didn’t act like a crate of goods. Noa wasn’t sure which was worse.

“Are we going to stay off main roads as we have been up until now?” Bane took another step into the tent. “Because Mari’s got her maps out and—”

“We’re still discussing destinations.” Altahn nodded to the canvas wall that divided the tent’s gathering area from his bed and belongings. “Most of my things are still on the wagon, so you don’t need to load them for me.”

Noa glanced toward the divider. He hadn’t even unpacked? The words he’d said about the shapeshifter came back to her: he already killed my father. Galerey twitched in the little spot she’d hidden at the nape of Noa’s neck, the feel of her claws suddenly sharp.

This tent and all the things in that little room had probably belonged to Altahn’s father. The former clan kynate. Was that why he wouldn’t sleep back there?

Before she could think much more about it, Altahn continued. “We can start taking this tent down once I’ve had a chance to speak with our guests.”

Bane hesitated a moment, but then flipped his hand up in a jaunty version of a Trib salute and backed out of the tent.

Galerey clambered up the side of Noa’s head, her claws pulling on Noa’s khonin knots to gain purchase. When Noa looked back at Altahn, he was watching her, not the firekey. “Are you going to answer my question? What are you doing here sleeping on dirt next to a thief instead of sitting on the governor’s balcony letting your fiancé feed you grapes?”

Noa laughed, leaning into the table. “Why are you here, Altahn? Kynate of a Trib clan. Hundreds of miles from your own land, chasing after a meaningless—”

“My father died trying to return Patenga’s sword to our family.” He licked his lips, then pressed them together, something in his face hardening. The bland smile had somehow faded, looking more like regret. “And I’m the one who told him we needed to go after it.”

“You…” Noa’s smile ebbed, and she couldn’t help but sit up a little straighter. “Why?”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it? But you could see, maybe, why I’d be a little concerned that the daughter of a very powerful man who deals in rare antiquities suddenly appeared among the thieves I paid to steal this sword?”

Noa’s skin pebbled, Galerey’s long tail slipping around to encircle her neck. “You spent all morning teasing me. You helped me hang a mostly naked man in a library for an old lady who is absolutely not going to appreciate the favor. And this is what you’ve been thinking the whole time? That I’m here”—laughter bubbled up from deep inside her—“I’m here to betray all of you?” She curved forward, hands to her stomach, the laugh biting as it came out. “Just to get my father a pretty sword?”

Altahn’s brow furrowed, and she put up a hand in apology, trying to get the words out. “No, wait. Don’t get angry.” She reached up to extract Galerey from her hair, the lizard looking around wildly at the sudden movement and sound. Her belly warmed Noa’s fingers as Noa set her gently on the table—she was too warm, as if those flames she could spark lived inside her all the time. Mirth still pulled Noa’s mouth into a bitter grin. Unfortunate, because she loved to laugh, but some things were funny for the wrong reasons. “You’ve never met my father, have you?”

Anwei bustled through the tent flaps before Altahn could respond, the leather-bound folio she’d taken from the library in her hands. She was moving too fast and bumped into the table, jerking it forward a few inches. Just as fast, she pulled it back into place and set the folio down. “Where’s Lia?” she asked, looking around. “We need to go through all this as quickly as we can.”

“Weren’t you bringing Knox?” Altahn asked. “He seemed much better.”

Anwei pulled the folio open and began to spread the papers out. “It’ll be better for him to rest—we can fill him in once we’re on the road.”

Noa eyed her friend. Anwei had spent almost every night since the tomb sitting up with Knox’s still body, hollow-eyed and grim. But now that he was awake, the healer wore a sparkling smile that was so fake it hurt Noa to look at. Something was wrong. Anwei pushed the pages toward Noa. “I think I’ve managed to read through most of it.”

Completely oblivious, Altahn sat forward, craning his neck to get a look at the top pages, all of them spotted with age and worn so thin that Noa could see through each one to the writing on its opposite side. It was all classical Elantin, the old script from before Elantia had joined the first Warlord to destroy shapeshifter kings. Focusing on the looping script, Noa picked up a sheet of vellum, her brain twisting to translate. She frowned, looking over the top of it at Anwei. “Are these… household records? Because that would be quite a story. The first shapeshifter in centuries, and the key to his downfall has something to do with hundred-year-old underclothing in need of a scrub.”

Altahn stood, startling Galerey into scuttling up his sleeve in a shower of sparks. Swearing, he brushed at the little black marks on his hand and shirt where her fire had touched him before squeezing in next to Anwei, his arm carefully nudging Noa aside to make room. “You told us we were stealing information critical to locating and stealing the sword from this shapeshifter.”

Noa nudged him back, knocking his shoulder into Anwei, who didn’t seem to notice, just moving down the table to give him space. “I said it was critical information about Tual Montanne. I’ve been hunting him for eight years. One of the first things I did was go looking for a house that used a snake for its mark. The only place I found any hint the information existed was Castor’s temple. When I went in, this old scholar pushed the lady helping me out of the way and dragged me off to a little room—said he knew exactly what I was looking for.” She blinked twice. “I was thirteen and had spent enough time on the streets to know most people who say they want to help don’t mean that at all, but I had to find the snake-tooth man. So, I sat there and he… started talking. Said something about a fire seventy-five years ago, and not to move, and kept starting and stopping and getting confused. At the time I just thought he was putting me off, so I stole two of his rings and ran off. I came back a few times, but it was always that same scholar, and he always seemed to find me. And I knew…” Anwei’s voice cracked, and her eyes went down to the table. She pushed the top few papers back, looking for something. “I already knew the snake-tooth man could do things to people’s memories.”

“Anwei, what does this have to do with getting Patenga’s sword?” Altahn said very, very calmly.

“You’re saying Tual Montanne knew there were records at the library that could lead back to him somehow. And he set scholars on anyone who came looking?” Noa held up the household account. “Like, he thought it was important to hide… how many silver rounds he spends on blueberry scones?” She went to the next paper and the next, spreading them out in front of her, trying to piece together the old words. “Why is any of this in the restricted stacks anyway? It’s just really old records from a particular estate like they have for all the old houses in the Commonwealth—it’s all stored in Rentara. Names, birth dates, death dates. Gods-touched…” Noa shuffled through a few more papers. “I mean, this house changed hands a few times over the years, which isn’t typical for an estate this size, I suppose. Most high khonin claimed their land at the end of the shapeshifter wars and haven’t let it go. Still, it’s not the kind of thing that scholars would lock away, is it?”

“How about an address?” Altahn looked over Noa’s shoulder. “Do we even know this is Tual’s house? Or that he’s headed there now?”

“It’s his.” Anwei reached out for a sheet of vellum folded in half. Opening it, she smoothed out the outline of an island on a lake inked in blue. “And it’s in the restricted stacks because Tual Montanne lives on the cursed bones of an old Basist fort.”

“Cursed?” Noa eagerly pulled the map closer, the edges creased and fragile. “What do you mean?”

“He’s an archeologist, so destroying the records wasn’t a comfortable option. According to Lia, Mateo was livid at the idea of records featuring anything to do with the nameless god being destroyed—”

“Curse,” Noa interjected. “Tell me about the curse!”

“But I’m guessing he left the documents there because it makes for a good trap. Anyone who knows enough to go looking in the restricted stacks for information about his house is someone Tual would want to know about. And there were certainly precautions in place.” Anwei pointed to the pretty calligraphy on the map. “It was a Basist stronghold until the very end of the shapeshifter wars. By that time, Devoted were targeting them just as much as the shapeshifters. If you look at the map and the notes attached to it, there are apparently extensive and extremely dangerous defense systems that the Basists built around the entire lake, including into the back sides of these cliffs where most of them lived. And something about ‘ways,’ but it doesn’t say what that is supposed to mean, only that people got killed in them if they didn’t know how to use them properly.”

Altahn looked up at that. “Where? Does it show any of it on the map?”

“No. A shapeshifter moved in at the end of the wars and killed everyone in the fort, so the people who knew didn’t survive long enough to tell Devoted. Even in later documents it just says that the ways are closed and marks safe areas for roads to be built out past the estate’s borders.”

Noa pushed the papers away. “Anwei, I’m going to shrivel up and die if you don’t get to the curse part immediately.”

Anwei didn’t break eye contact with Altahn. “Even Devoted couldn’t crack whatever the Basists built around the fort. This shapeshifter was one of the last to fall at the end of the wars. All the records are here, the date the Warlord set out, the food requisitions, the number of horses and auroshes, the Roosters who walked on foot.”

Huffing out an exasperated breath, Noa threw up her hands. “Okay, so they went, they got in somehow, and we can use the same way because they took meticulous records.” She waved her hands. “Back to the curse, Anwei, before I light you on fire!”

Anwei snorted, pulling out a very old and cracked sheet of vellum. On it, there was a painting of a woman. Noa caught her breath at the sight, a delightful prickling of goose bumps breaking out across her arms at the sight of the woman’s hollow eyes, her hair swirling around her like snakes and her teeth sharp. One hand held a long sword, little rusted pockmarks drawn down the length of the blade. The other hand held a shorter dagger, both tinged a burnt, venomous red. Below her feet there was an inscription surrounded by more weapons, each tinged with blood: This world is cursed to bleed, and I am the sword.

“Who is this? That’s Knox’s sword in her hand, isn’t it?” Noa breathed. She couldn’t help the trill of excitement at the idea of breaking into a place where such a person could have lived. “This is what they found when they attacked her?” Eagerly flipping the page, Noa only found blank vellum. The next record was an official deed signed by someone named Emi De Lion, a single khonin knot marked in the record alongside the names of his family members. Daniel. Sofia. Isabella. Andre. Untouched by gods. Under that was an order for trees to be cut and paving stones to be laid as a new road.

“Where’s the rest of it?” She looked across the littering of papers. “There was an actual shapeshifter king haunting the island and the next thing we get is some boring family’s renovation orders? If there are notations about how many latrines they had to dig, there must be a record of the battle that happened before they moved in, right? All the clever things the Devoted did to get past the defenses and how they slit her throat—I’ve seen records like it before where the winners are all patting themselves on the back for a job well done. So where are they?”

“They’re not here,” Anwei said quietly.

“Because… the Warlord got rid of all the records about shapeshifters? What they could do, how they fought, how they were made?” Altahn stood, pacing along the back side of the tent. “They can’t have purged everything if Noa’s seen battle stories before.” He pointed to the painting of the woman. I am the sword. “They didn’t destroy that.”

“Correct.” Anwei nodded. “I think these records are complete. Unpurged.”

“And unhelpful.” An edge crept into Altahn’s voice. “Calsta above, it doesn’t matter. This is the Felac River, far enough south that the land is swampy with tributaries. We can find the location. That’s good enough.”

“It’s not good enough. There’s something abnormal about this place.” Anwei reached out to touch the picture of the woman with her empty eyes. “Starting with the lack of records detailing the Warlord going after this shapeshifter. I don’t think they found her. They couldn’t get in.” Her fingers touched the letters below the woman again. “And every family that has lived there since has lost someone. Once a generation. That’s the curse.”

Noa’s neck prickled. “No one knows what happened to the shapeshifter. And people who live there keep mysteriously dying?”

Altahn looked up. “So… Tual is this same shapeshifter? He’s just been sitting up there living off high-khonin souls?”

“No. I don’t know about the deaths, but what shapeshifter would allow some puffed-up first khonin to carve a snake into his tooth?” Anwei shrugged after a moment. “And he isn’t a very good shapeshifter. All he’s done is exist for Calsta only knows how long, then burn the family he was supposed to be serving—yes, I think the fire was his fault. The deed doesn’t go over to Montanne until about ten years ago. The roads De Lion built—which, if you look at the records, collapsed regularly, like there was something wrong with the ground—were already completely destroyed by the time Tual bought the estate. Accessing the place is just about impossible.” Anwei shook her head. “If Tual Montanne had the power to destroy an entire fortress full of Basists, he wouldn’t have had to wait. He wouldn’t have to live in a cursed ruin, hiding so that the Warlord wouldn’t discover what he is and come to stop him. He wouldn’t be scrambling to collect everything about old magic he can find and digging up shapeshifter bodies with his son.” Her lips grew thin as she pressed them together.

Noa put a hand over Anwei’s, the angry haze that had hovered around her friend since she went into the tomb sharpening. She wasn’t sure exactly what Tual had done other than take her brother, but whatever it was had been curing too long inside her friend to be neutralized, like salpowder distilled to its most potent, and a single spark would be all it took for Anwei to explode. “We’ll find him, Anwei.”

Anwei swallowed, looking away. It wasn’t the right thing to say, for some reason.

“Well, Yaru.” Altahn finished scrawling and put down his quill. “These maps are from before the fire. You say there are Basist defenses and that the roads are gone, but at least we know where he’ll be and sort of what we’re up against. If there were no roads until high khonins bought the land, that means there’s another way in. We’ll have to find it—through the forest or the cliffs….”

“Tual wants us to follow him. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have kidnapped Lia’s sister. We’re going to have to approach this in a way that keeps him from finding us before we find a way to him. I think if we move quickly, we have two pathways forward: surveilling the area to find out how Tual gets in and out, then attacking him when he least expects it. That still puts us at a disadvantage because we’ll be in his space and we have no idea what we’ll find in there.” Anwei tapped the map again. “Second pathway, we draw him out of the fort. Make him come to us.”

“How?” Altahn’s eyes glossed over the map again.

“My brother.”

Noa sat back in her chair, the edge to Anwei’s voice cutting deep. “What use would Mateo be?” she asked carefully.

“We have three goals.” Anwei put up three fingers, ticking them off as she went. “You want Patenga’s sword.” Anwei pointed at Altahn. “Lia wants her sister back.” The second finger went down. “I want Tual dead” The third finger went down, making a fist of Anwei’s hand. “My brother is the one thing Tual has consistently shown interest in, so if we kidnap him, Tual will come out of his fortress to save him, no?”

“Yes, but… isn’t Mateo a shapeshifter as well?” Noa asked.

Anwei waved her hand dismissively. “Not a good one. I can make sure he won’t hurt any of us while we keep him prisoner.”

Altahn flinched, and Noa had to try very hard not to giggle. The time he’d spent tied up under Anwei’s temple apparently still stung.

“If worst comes to worst, Mateo knows how to get into his own house.” Anwei continued, and Noa couldn’t help the trill of worry at the ice in her voice. “He’ll know where Aria is. He’ll know where the sword is being kept. Making people tell the truth isn’t so hard.”

“You have more gamtooth venom?” Noa sat forward when Anwei shook her head, discomfort an odd thing inside her. By Lia’s account, Mateo Montanne was harmless, not interested in doing much but digging up old bones. Was there something more to him Anwei wasn’t saying out loud because of Altahn? “Well, I have always wanted to throw a coat over someone’s head and kidnap them,” Noa said slowly, not sure if she should try to dig deeper or be distracting enough to keep Altahn from doing it.

Altahn’s look of concern was reward enough regardless of what Anwei wanted. Whatever her friend’s feelings toward Mateo, Noa suddenly wasn’t sure Anwei’s plan included him still breathing at the end of it. She’d thought of Anwei as a puppeteer, twitching the world to fit her favor like any good goddess would, but this was different. Anwei wasn’t usually so cold.

“The tributaries coming off the river means it’s probably near where the Felac empties into the ocean,” Altahn interrupted her thoughts, Noa looking away from her friend’s face to follow his fingers walking down to the edge of the map. By the time she turned back to Anwei, her friend had bent down to examine the stretch of river he was pointing to. “There’s a town right on the river there, I think.”

“Kingsol,” Anwei supplied, her brow crinkling for some reason.

Noa cleared her throat, ready to play her role. The distraction. “Perfect. Didn’t Lia say that Mateo likes sweets?” Rubbing her hands together, Noa gave an excited squeal. “We’ll stake out every bakery in town.”

“Did Lia say that?” Anwei went back to looking at the papers, her hand settled next to the shapeshifter’s portrait, finger’s resting beside the words under her feet: I am the sword.