She bolted into a sitting position, all scowls and thin-lipped annoyance. “I’m not a necromancer. There’s a difference.”
He’d hit a nerve. Delighted by the discovery, he tucked away that small weapon for future use and arched an eyebrow. “Indeed. An important distinction if you want to survive in the Empire. One is true magic and the other mere bullshit. It’s the only reason your kind aren’t outlawed like others who possess magic; no one really believes you.”
A soft breeze rose suddenly to tumble the stifling air and provide welcome relief to the oppressive heat. It stirred tendrils of hair that escaped Siora’s braid and coiled around her slender neck. She plucked them away to rest behind her ears. Her scowl didn’t lessen. “If no one believed us, they wouldn’t pay for our services. More believe than you think. They’re just afraid to say so because of ridicule or pity from others. And no, there are no ghosts lingering among us at the moment.”
“Was that thing pulling me toward Midrigar a ghost?” He shuddered inwardly at the memory of whatever foul bewitchment had managed to sink its claws into him and drag him toward the cursed city’s tumbled walls and the dark silhouettes of its ruined towers. He was used to being a puppet to a power greater and far more vicious than he, but Dalvila had been human—or at least wore the façade of a human—while whatever dragged him through the forest had been something so otherworldly, his very spirit shied away from dwelling on it for too long.
Siora’s gaze bore deep holes into him before she finally answered in a flat voice, “No.”
He’d half expected just that answer, but it still took him by surprise. And scared him. Wandering spirits didn’t scare him. Confused ghosts who didn’t know they’d worn out their welcome were harmless. Whatever the entity was that captured him in its grip wasn’t harmless. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Quite. Whatever it is—was—it devours spirits. Swallowing whole crowds of the dead like a leviathan of the deep might swallow a ship.” The idea of this unseen, ravenous adversary obviously frightened her. She didn’t bother to hide her shudder as Gharek did.
He pondered her words, recalling his sojourn across empty, moonlit pastures; the wild, silent wood that ran along one side; a dark, mysterious wall. “When you were running from me, did you stay in an abandoned barn near a circle of stone?”
Her round eyes rounded even more. “Yes. Did you go in there?” She scooted a little closer to him at his nod.
“I thought you might have taken shelter under its roof,” he said. “One wall of the barn had a mural. A grotesque painting.” Beyond grotesque. Nightmarish, and Gharek had seen many things in his time as the empress’s cat’s-paw to understand the true meaning of both words.
Siora nodded. “Many faces. All screaming.” The breeze brought another cooling exhalation. She shivered.
“Yes. At the time I wondered who would paint such a thing,” he said.
“It isn’t a painting.” Her voice, already soft, had taken on a more hushed quality, as if she feared that what they spoke of was listening and might come calling to join the conversation.
Her words revealed some things but puzzled him even more concerning others. He might be dead inside, but he was still a living, breathing man. “If it only eats spirits, how was it able to bewitch me? And me but not you?” He’d wondered about the second while he worked free of the knots she’d made in the rope she’d used to bind him so she could steal his horse. Gharek decided he was thoroughly sick of being tied up by one person or another.
Siora offered a shrug, making him wince at the reminder of his aching shoulders. “I don’t know. It’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you. I only first encountered it in the barn when I saw ghosts struggling and fighting against whatever captured them. I felt none of what they did, or you, for that matter. No compulsion to turn toward the cursed city.” She hugged herself as if the gentle breeze was a winter gale that cut through clothing and stripped warmth from her very bones. “Everyone knows that city is more than a mass grave, that those who risk going in for treasure or artifacts don’t always come out. If any place should have been destroyed by god-fire, it was that place, and I say that as a woman who was set to burn in the Pit as a Flower of Spring.”
Gharek started. Of the revelations she’d treated him to since he found her in Wellspring Holt, this surprised him most. In the months she’d served in his household as Estred’s nurse, she’d never once mentioned it, and he couldn’t imagine how she’d survived to tell of the ordeal. Flowers of Spring were burned alive in Kraelag’s arena as sacrificial tithes to the gods for good luck and a bountiful harvest, and the Empire brooked no disobedience from those towns and villages forced to give over a woman for the great burning. A long-dead emperor had made a lasting example of Midrigar forshowing such resistance. Punishment had been swift, monstrously cruel, and eternal.
“How did you...” he began, only to be interrupted by the arrival of a different soldier this time.
“Finish up,” that one said, his leer intensifying as he ran his gaze over Siora from head to foot. “You’re through chatting.”
Gharek watched, fascinated as her features changed, adopting an expression that made him slide back a little and made the soldier retreat a step even as his leer faded.
“Your sister Fan asks that you remember her tears.” She looked directly at the man, though her gaze saw through him to something—or someone—else only she could see.
Even in the torch-lit gloom, Gharek saw the soldier blanch before his face took on an ugly look that made Gharek’s hackles instinctively rise. “I have to piss,” Gharek said in a loud voice, and either his tone or his volume distracted the other man from making a lunge at Siora, who still looked beyond him, seemingly uncaring that she’d just narrowly avoided an attack.
The soldier remained dead-man pale, and he shivered before looking over his shoulder at those of his comrades still seated around the fire. “Keep an eye on her,” he called to them. “I’ll be back.” A few sour mutters and nods were his reward, and he hauled Gharek to his feet, ignoring his captive’s pained hiss.
Siora rested her hand briefly on Gharek’s leg just before the soldier dragged him a short distance. The pleading in her gaze had replaced that far-horizon stare. “Don’t run. Please.”
He would have taunted her if his guard hadn’t nearly yanked his arm out of its socket pulling him in the direction of a cluster ofshrubs at the camp’s perimeter. A few humiliating moments later and he was hauled unceremoniously back to his spot next to Siora, where the soldier shoved him down and walked away with the command to shut up and go to sleep or end up gagged.
His companion lay on her side, bound hands folded together under her chin like bruised wings. Gharek lay down next to her, facing her, trying his best to balance on his side and not roll to his back. Grass blades partially obscured Siora’s features as she watched him struggle to get comfortable.
“Thank you for not running,” she whispered.
He glanced at the cluster of soldiers nearby. None of them turned their way. “Did you see a ghost when you spoke of that man’s sister?”
She nodded. “His younger sister, defiled by a neighbor’s son. She died the following year of a fever.”
The matter-of-fact tone in her voice lent truth to her statement. She’d answered his odd question without embellishment, as if chatting up the dead was a thing she did all the time. “How do you know this?”
Siora shrugged. “Her spirit told me. The dead are willing to talk if one is willing to listen.”