“Shit,” said the lady Therazine.
The cow that laid at her feet had been dead for hours. Flies covered its rotting carcass, and dotted the wet stains that spread out from its body. Crows had already eaten the eyes from their sockets, jackals had already stripped the bones of all muscle and tendon. Some larger predator—likely the one that had killed the cow—had sundered its belly and devoured everything inside. The hot afternoon sun made its skin flake and peel like paint from an abandoned house. She had to hold a handkerchief to her nose to keep from gagging.
Hours. She’d seen enough corpses in her life to know that this body was alive and walking around before sunrise. Whatever creature was stalking her cattle was still in the area.
She looked up, and out into the distance. The savannah around her wasn’t enough to hide any animals sizable enough to kill her cow. Trees were spread far so as to cover the landscape, but thin so as not to create a canopy. Visibility was high on this cloudless day. If anything were out there, it was possible she could still find it. Perhaps to the rocky formations to the south, or maybe the mountains to the east (but she doubted whatever it was could have traveled that far in only a few hours). In any case, the creature would have to dwell nearby. It had been returning to her herd every day for the last week, killing a cow a day. At this rate her herd would be halved by the sunrise of the following day.
Her horse snorted behind her, drawing her focus away from the landscape and back to the moment at hand. Her herd was still in danger, and unless she did something it would remain so. She walked to back to her horse and pulled her rifle from the sling that hung from her saddle. Settling her eye to the rifle’s telescopic sight, she once again scanned the horizon. Fragile-looking brush and thin trees grew in her view, and the mountains became minutely closer. From north to south she scanned, and again from south to north. She saw nothing that she didn’t see every single day out here.
She lowered the rifle and sighed. Her horse resumed gnawing at the roughgrass. There were only a few hours of light left. She could either check out the rocks to the south and be back before supper, or she could begin an investigation of the mountains to the north and be stuck out in the dark with nothing but her horse and her rifle.
She mounted her horse and made for the rocks.
#
“Glaive cats?” Kohl said. “Are you sure?”
Therazine kneaded together potatoes and herbs in a bowl with her hands, her back to her husband. The ceramic of the bowl—which had been sitting high on the shelf above their counter—was cold to her touch. It reminded her that the warm days of summer were behind them, and that winter just around the bend. Soon it would arrive and strip the life-giving leaves from the trees in her orchard. It would drive her remaining cattle to the hills. It would shackle her family to their house in chains of cold.
“Glaive cats?” Kohl said again.
Therazine sighed. Kohl was never one to take her brooding silence as confirmation. No, he would keep repeating the same inquiry until she relented.
“Yes,” she said, not turning around to him. “Glaive cats.”
“But are you sure?” he said. “No one’s seen glaive cats on Lormian for years. The Minister says they died out.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” she said.
“Did you actually see one? A glaive cat? I mean, a live glaive cat?”
She rung the potatoes between her fingers. “No.”
“Well, then you can’t be sure, honey,” Kohl said. “Not if you didn’t see one.”
She stopped mixing the potatoes, only momentarily, but long enough to block out Kohl’s incessant noise and think. He wasn’t trying to provoke her, she knew. He was only trying to get a clear explanation to something that made no sense to him. He was merely being inquisitive, she told herself. He wasn’t trying to say that he thought she was wrong. She cleared her mind and thought of the cow’s corpse, of the jagged, long cut down its abdomen. She pictured the muscular head of a glaive cat, easily tearing through the cow’s flesh with its mandibular blade and spilling its entrails across the early morning savannah. Even if she’d never seen a glaive cat herself, she could recognize a would like that anywhere. Recognize the kind of weapon that caused it.
Therazine heard Kohl’s knife stop chopping the onions, far too soon for him to be finish with it.
“It was probably just jackals,” Kohl said. “Or dust worms.”
“Dust worms?” Therazine said. She unleashed some of the annoyance hiding behind the wall of her tongue. “You think dust worms could disembowel a fifteen-hundred pound cow?”
“Those little bastards get big,” Kohl said. “And fifteen-hundred pounds? Really? Come on. The biggest of our herd is twelve”
“No,” Therazine said. She dropped the bowl to the counter and turned around to him. “The biggest of our herd was one-thousand, six-hundred and forty pounds. But that cow was killed two days ago, its guts carved out like a damned pumpkin. Our next biggest—at fifteen-fifty— was cut down the very next damn day, Kohl. The biggest of our herd were targeted first, which is exactly how glaive cats hunt. I’ve seen the kills. I’ve followed the trails. I know what I’m talking about when I say they’re Aether-spawned glaive cats.”
She saw him staring at her as she started towards him, her hands balled into fists. He was not panicked as she approached, and in fact his eyes held a certain amount of glee. This made the anger in her mind burn bright.
“Glaive cats,” she said, stopping inches from him and holding a potato-lathered finger up to his face, “kill at dawn. They hunt systematically, slowly weakening the herd until it can be overwhelmed completely. They don’t live in the dirt and lay traps for prairie dogs like fucking dust worms.”
She was fuming, and she wanted nothing more than for him to fume back. To scream, to bring about conflict. Escalate this, dammit. Give me a reason.
Instead he simply smiled and touched a hand to her hip. For a moment that bright anger lingered, but as he grabbed her gooey hand and pulled her close she felt that anger dimming. She let out a huge breath which she didn’t even know she had been holding, and she let the tension out of her body. It was such a sudden transition, from rigid and lurid to at ease and calm. But she was used to it. It happened almost every evening after she rode home from the range.
“Alright,” Kohl said, his voice remaining placid and gentle. “It was glaive cats. You’d know better than I would.”
“Shut up,” she said softly.
“In fact, I’ll go tell the Minister right now. I’ll ride out to Nalak this evening and let him know that his administration is wrong, and that the glaive cats still roam these hills and threaten our very way of life.”
“Shut up.”
“Although,” Kohl said, “being the talentless big-city bookworm I am, I probably wouldn’t be able to ride a horse all the way out to Nalak. Hey, honey, which way is forward on those things, again?”
“Shut up,” she said, grabbing his face and smearing potatoes across his cheeks. He laughed and grabbed her hand, pushing it back into her own face and returning her the favor. Against everything that made her who she was, against every rule she had ever been taught, she laughed. She laughed, and he laughed with her. He pushed her, and she pushed him back. They grabbed each other and giggled and drew potatoes from their own faces and flung them at each other. She grabbed him and spun him around, shoving him back into the counter where she had been working. With a smile on his face, Kohl reached into the bowl of potatoes and grabbed a handful of the mash.
Therazine froze. “No. Kohl.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she cursed herself for them not being demanding and urgent enough. All thoughts of fun and games left her immediately, all thoughts of the argument about the glaive cats vanished. A dank fear bled into her heart as she imagined him hurling an entire fistful of potatoes across the kitchen.
Kohl lifted the potatoes high and prepared to throw them.
“No,” she shouted, delivering the level of severity she was striving for. She stood with her legs wide and her head hung.
Kohl froze, and his eyes widened. His arm hung in the air, his palm filled with potatoes.
“Kohl,” Therazine said, her voice low and enunciated. “Do not throw those.”
A faint smile rose again at the corner of his mouth, and she realized with irritation that he still thought they were playing.
“I wasn’t gonna,” he said coyly, raising his arm higher.
“No, Kohl,” she said. “Do. Not. Throw those. Don’t so be so careless as to waste food—good food, that your children need—in such a stupid way.”
She saw Kohl’s expression shift, and she knew what he was thinking about. He was thinking of the work it took to cultivate those few potatoes, and how the winter would prevent them from harvesting any more for many months. She could almost the joy and carelessness drain from his face as he remembered the previous winter, and the sickness that overcame them in the depths of the cold. He lowered his hand slowly, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“We can’t afford to,” she said, and her voice was firm and lecturing, even though she hadn’t meant it to be. She knew that would hit Kohl hardest.
He uncoiled his fingers and let the clenched ball of mashed potatoes settle back into the cold ceramic bowl. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t… I… You’re right. We can’t afford to. I’m sorry, Thera.”
Therazine found herself embattled with conflicting emotions. She’d proven how right she was, which she wanted to shout into his childish face. So much of her felt that that was what mattered: that she’d won. But she also she knew how much he knew she was right, and how much he wished he’d seen that earlier, and how little either of their emotions and desires mattered when the reality of their life was brought to light. If they couldn’t solve the crisis with their cattle, if they couldn’t afford food through the winter, then they’d end up longing for the days when petulant argument seemed important.
She watched him as he stood there, slumping against the counter with his hand in a bowl of potatoes that was only a quarter full. Then she did something that she wouldn’t have done years ago, that she’d never done to anyone in those decades before she met Kohl. She walked up to him and wrapped her arms around his ribs, and she rested her head against his chest. He hugged her back, and ran his hands slowly along her spine. They stood for a moment in the kitchen, silent except for the beating of their hearts.
In the adjoining room Therazine heard a chair scrape against the wooden floor.
“Kids need dinner,” Kohl said.
Therazine held onto him. “We can’t pay MonDozer with eleven head,” she said.
“That’s a problem for tomorrow.”
“It’s a problem for always. The MonDozers will expect payment whether or not we choose to think about it.”
“We’ve got the money,” Kohl said. “We got it in the bank.”
“We pay them that and we won’t survive the winter.”
“Hey,” Kohl said, placing a gentle finger under her chin and turning her face to his. In any other era of her life, she would have cut that finger off.
“We’ll be okay,” he said to her.
She looked at him for a breath, disbelieving, and then she nodded. She released him and turned back to the bowl and finished mixing the potatoes.
Kohl kissed her on the cheek. “We’ve got until the end of the season to pay them off,” he said. “Tomorrow you and Leshe will go find those glaive cats and wipe them out, and then our cattle will be safe and we’ll be fine.”
“What then?” She knew the answer to this question even before she asked it.
He pressed his cheek against hers and then kissed her again. “One step at a time, girl.”
She smiled, despite the logical inadequacy of his words. She grabbed four smaller ceramic bowls from a cupboard by her knees while Kohl removed a perfectly roasted lenfowl from the stove. It was a large bird, and its meat would last them a better part of the week. She closed her eyes and sniffed the air as he took it out. The scent of the bird filled her and lifted her off her feet, and she remembered yet another reason that she had fallen for the charming Kohl Morlo. No one had ever cooked for her the way he did. No one else had ever cooked for her at all.
In the other room she set the table while Kohl put the finishing touches on the lenfoul. Her two children sat patiently at the table, dressed in their night clothes and smiling as she set up the table. The oldest, whose name was Leshe, had a book sitting on the edge of the table.
“What did we say about books at the table?” Therazine said.
Leshe grabbed the book with both hands, but did not remove it. “Sorry, mama,” he said. “I was just reading it when Bren came and got me.”
“So why didn’t you leave it with you?”
“A’cuz he were readin’ outside, mama,” piped in the smaller child.
Therazine glanced at her youngest boy, and then back at Leshe. “Reading outside? Why not in your room?”
Leshe lifted the book to his chest. “I like reading under the sky.”
“Well, that’s all good and well, but that doesn’t change my opinion about books at the table. Put it away.”
“Yeah, put it ‘way,” said Bren to his older brother.
Leshe held the book close for a moment, seemingly hesitant to relinquish it. Therazine noticed this, and in curiosity she extended her hand to him, expecting him to fork it over. Instead, the boy bent over and placed the book at his feet. Therazine thought for an instant about demanding the book from her son, but then decided against it.
“We eatin’ the lenfoul you an’ Leshe shot, mama?” Bren said.
Therazine glanced at him and smiled. “That we are. Your father’s gone and cooked it up very nice. I hope you boys are hungry.”
“We always hungry, mama,” Bren said.
Therazine’s heart sunk, and she stared at Bren. Had he meant that the way it sounded? Or was it just childhood nonsense? For a very long moment she simply stared at her son, not knowing how to respond. Then Kohl came into the room with the carved up lenfould on a platter and everyone turned their attention to him.
“Here we are,” Kohl said, setting the tender portions of bird in the middle of the table. He paused and locked eyes with his boys. “Dig in.”
Bren grabbed two large handfuls of lenfoul and then immediately snagged the bowl of potatoes. Leshe followed, though at a calmer and more controlled pace than his ravenous brother. Therazine waited for bothe the boys to fill their plates, knowing that Kohl would do the same. Her and Leshe had been out in the bush for nearly a day before they bagged this bird. She knew this was likely the last one they’d all see until the following spring. She was not going to deny her children heaps of this rare and delectable bounty, even if it meant less for her.
Once Bren’s plate was stacked high with carved lenfoul, she reached for her own. She filled a glass with honey wine glanced to her husband. He followed her example and then poured his own. They smiled small and then each took a sip before picking up their forks.
“Wait,” Leshe said.
Therazine looked up, a hunk of lenfoul breast perched on the edge of her fork. Leshe hadn’t taken a knife to his bird yet. His hands were in his lap. She sat up.
“What is it, Leshe?” she said.
Leshe looked up bashfully. “I was… uh…”
“What’s the matter?” Therazine said.
“Nothing is the matter,” Leshe said. “I was just wondering if I could—Well, the boys at the abbey, we did this thing last week where we… uh…”
Therazine’s mind began to race. What was happening, right here? What could Leshe have to say that would stay his appetite? What had he done that he was admitting? What did the other boys do to him? She suddenly felt her blood beginning to boil, and that bright anger returned.
“What, Leshe?” she said, her voice resuming that gravely tone she’d used with Kohl earlier.
Leshe sat up straight and looked down at his plate. “I—I… It’s nothing, I just wanted to, maybe—”
“Spit it out, Leshe!” Bren said, who was literally spitting mouthfuls of lenfoul out. He started to giggle.
“Bren,” Therazine said, and Bren went quiet. She set her fork and knife down and turned completely to her oldest son. “Leshe, tell me what happened.”
“Nothing,” Leshe said. “I was just—I thought we could maybe say a prayer before we eat.” He glanced up at Bren who still had a mouthful of bird.
Therazine blinked. “What?” She leaned back and furrowed her brow. What? “No,” she said abruptly.
Leshe’s face immediately turned beat red and his eyes shot down to his plate.
“No,” Therazine said. She scoffed. “Of course not.”
“Thera,” Kohl said.
Therazine ignored him. “Who would you—What would you pray for?”
Leshe spoke quietly. “Well, I just, I had a… the boys at the abbey and I—”
“No,” Therazine said, her voice rising. “No, we will not say a prayer. Not now, not ever.”
“Thera,” Kohl said again.
“Is this what they’re teaching you at that abbey?” Therazine said. “Are they teaching you that we should pray? This is not what we—Kohl, this is not what we send him there for. This isn’t—” He chair scraped against the wooden floor. “Leshe, you do not say prayers here. Do you hear me? None of us do. Now don’t you go and—”
“Thera,” Kohl said loudly.
Therazine shut her mouth and looked down at her husband. He had not shouted her name. He was not angry. But she realized now that she had stood up. She looked over at her oldest son, whose face was red as the sunset and who was shaking ever so slightly. Bren, meanwhile, was quiet as the grave and had sunken down into his chair below the table. She realized that she had stood up to yell at her child.
“Thera, sit down, please,” Kohl said.
Quietly Therazine lowered herself into her chair, all the while keeping her eyes on Leshe. The boy didn’t return her gaze
“Thera,” Kohl said to her, placing both his hands on her forearm. “Listen to me. Hey. Look.”
She looked over at her husband and saw that same tranquilizing expression that he had before.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You’re right. We don’t send him to the abbey to learn prayer.”
“Damn right we—”
“Listen to me,” Kohl said.
Therazine pursed her lips and bit her tongue. She hated when Kohl was the rational one.
“We send him to the abbey,” Kohl said, “to learn. And that’s it. He’s there because we want him to experience the world and grow. We want him to develop his own thoughts and his own way of viewing the world. We talked about this. Do we agree on that?”
Therazine nodded.
“What he learns, what he absorbs, is entirely dependent on him,” Kohl said. “We teach him what we know, and the abbey teaches him what they know. We can’t tell him what he can or can’t learn. That’s his choice. He is the only one who can piece all that and this together and make his own truth.”
Therazine knew he was wrong. At the abbey they knew how to mold and manipulate young minds into whatever they wanted. They had training to do so. They had books to show Leshe, and eloquent words with which they could form seemingly impregnable points of view. She was only a mother, with only her life experience to give him. In the war for her son’s conscience, she was facing an army that was significantly better armed.
But she could never convince Kohl of that. Kohl had gone to an abbey himself as a child, and he saw himself as much better for it. She’d never convince him that she could do a better job educating her child than the scholarly monks in Nalak.
It ate at her inside, but she relented. She’d let Kohl and his precious abbey win this battle, but tomorrow she’d take Leshe out to hunt the glaive cats, and she’d have all day to mend her boy’s wounded mind.
She leaned back into her chair, and Kohl patted her on the arm. He smiled, and then turned to the table.
“What prayer were you thinking of, Leshe?”
Leshe looked up at his mother. Therazine said nothing.
“I learned… There’s one from Canon and History that I learned,” Leshe said.
Kohl nodded. “I remember that series. Let’s hear it, son. Lead us.”
Therazine winced at the way Kohl said ‘lead us.’ He stressed the first syllable, as if a command. She knew he didn’t mean it in the way it sounded. It was just an artifact from another time. She had plenty of her own.
Leshe picked up the blue book from the floor and opened it on the table in front of him. He flipped through pages and the ran his finger along the same line a few times before speaking.
“Stay far, dark Aether,” Leshe read. “Come not to this house of order and peace. Sully not our doorstep with your Pale Light, and touch not our walls with your claws of ice. Tread not beyond the threshold which bars you from the Real, and keep your jackal’s eyes from the warmth that beats within our breasts. Should we pass in the quiet of sleep or the violence of day, you shall not sunder the silk which ties our spirits to the Real. Stay far, dark Aether, and come not upon those who dwell in this house, lest you bring upon yourself the wrath of Man. By faith I am strong. Soru.”
“Soru,” Kohl echoed.
Leshe looked up slowly, not to Kohl, but to his mother. Therazine said nothing, and merely began eating.
A knock on the door.
Therazine’s eyes snapped open, and her left hand immediately shot to her thigh. It was a reflex, another artifact from a time long gone.
“I wonder who that could be,” Kohl said. “This far out and this late at night.”
Therazine let her hands unclench. She wiped her mouth and set her fork down, standing up. “I’ll go check. Please excuse me.”
“Maybe its the Minister,” Kohl called after her as she left the room. “Maybe he heard about our magical glaive cats already.”
She smiled slightly as she stepped into the entryway, but as she approached the front door any feelings of joy and ease vanished into the fog of an ancient, deep-seated fear. That fear of what—or who—might be waiting beyond a shut door, or lurking in the rafters with a knife, or hiding in the sewers with parasitic madness burning away at their brain. Behind this door was uncertainty, and with uncertainty came danger. How many doorways had she stepped through in her life with this sort of cautious fear filling her mind? How many times had that paranoia saved her life?
She hesitated at the door for a moment, her hand hovering over the doorknob as she thrice scanned her surroundings. The hallway behind her hooked sharply, which could provide her quick and ample cover. A coatrack was to her left—a suitable makeshift club. She could, with a quick swipe, douse the electric lights in her entryway, plunging her and whatever was beyond the door into darkness. The nearest gun, though, was in the closet to her right, and that closet door was closed. The split-second it would take to open that door could cost her her life.
The knock on the door came again, right in front of her face. She held her breath in an effort to mask her presence, and then she twisted the handle of the closet door and let it swing slightly ajar. The rifle was leaned up against the door jam. She let her eyes settle on it, let them find the gun’s trigger. Then she breathed out and opened the door to her home.
A man stood on her porch. He was tall, easily a head taller than her. He was clothed in a fine hatch mark suit with its collar and cuffs extended in the fashion of the elite of Celadin. A curious mustache pulled itself away from his nose and lips, in a style that Therazine also didn’t recognize. His long hair was greased back over his head, and as soon as she opened the door he smiled, exposing the perfect teeth of a politician.
She kept her right arm behind the door, within reach of the rifle.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Good evening,” the man said. “I’m wishing to speak with… Apologies, ma’am, may I ask your name?”
“What are you doing at my home?”
“Ah, excuse me, ma’am,” the man said. “I’ve come traveled very far and I must have lost my manners somewhere along the way.” He extended a hand. “My name is Veelus Arkide. I represent a Mr. K from Celedin. And you are?”
She let his hand hang in the air between them. After a moment he cleared his throat let his hand fall back to his side.
“What do you want from us?” she said.
The man raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘well I never,’ but then continued to speak politely. “I’ve come with a job offer for Ms. Therazine. Am I by chance speaking to her?”
Therazine’s felt her chest tighten. She grabbed the barrel of the rifle in her right hand, but kept it behind the door.
“I don’t take jobs anymore,” she said.
The man twitched his nose and smiled wide. “Ms. Therazine, it is a pleasure to finally meet you in the flesh—”
“It’s Mrs. Morlo,” Therazine said.
The man paused. “I’m sorry, I think I may have mis—”
“Thera?” Therazine heard Kohl’s voice behind her. “Who is it?” She felt him place his left hand on her shoulder, and then subtly and softly take the rifle from her right and place it back in the closet. The instant the gun left her fingers, Therazine felt a cold terror run down her spine.
“Kohl,” she whispered to him.
“Hello,” Kohl said, extending his hand to the man in the doorway. “Name’s Kohl. Kohl Morlo.”
Veelus Arkide opened his mouth as if to say something, and then shut it into a tight smile. “Mr. Morlo? You’ve taken a husband, Therazine? And his name?” He met Kohl’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Morlo. I am Veerus Arkide. I’ve traveled quite a long ways to speak with your lady here.”
“Oh really?” Kohl said, glancing down at Therazine. “Old friends?”
“Not such,” Arkide said. “We’ve never had the occasion to meet before. I’ve come purely on business.”
“Business?” Kohl said. “Do you work for the MonDozers?”
Therazine kept her eyes on the man in the suit. “Kohl, go back inside.”
“I know of no ‘MonDozer,’” Arkide said. “I’m inquiring about our lady’s particular skill set. You see, I—”
“Skill set?” Kohl said. “What?”
“Kohl,” Therazine said. “I need you to go back inside right now. See to the boys. I need to talk to this man alone.”
She met Kohl’s eyes and saw him resist. He was clearly perturbed by this strange man showing up at night, and he wanted to understand why. Kohl was every bit as protective and concerned with the safety of their family and their home as she was.
“I’ll just be a moment,” Therazine said.
Kohl looked about to say something, and then frowned. He looked up at Arkide.
“Okay. Nice to meet you, I guess.”
Kohl turned back into the house, and Therazine immediately retrieved the rifle and stepped out onto the porch with it. Veelus Arkide took a reflexive step back.
“This is the last time I’ll ask you,” Therazine said, flipping the wheel on the rifle’s receiver. The perpendicular clip chimed and locked into place, extending out of the left side of the rifle like a wing. “What do you want?”
“I’m offering you a job,” Arkide said.
“I said I don’t take jobs anymore.”
“Yes, so I’ve heard.” Arkide licked his dry lips. “You’re out of the business. But I was told by he who I represent to find you specifically, for he believes you are the only one who can do this job he wants. You were the best. He believes you still are.”
“No,” Therazine said. “I left that life behind me and I never looked back.”
“My employer hopes that you will look back. He is offering a very sizable payment for this job. I might add that I told him it was far too much, but he insisted that your skills would not come cheap.”
“I’m not that person anymore.”
Arkide chuckled slightly. “Oh, my dear Therazine. No amount of distance can erase the past. Especially not one as bloody as yours. You will always be that person.”
Therazine lifted the rifle to Arkide’s chest.
“Get off my property,” she demanded.
Arkide took a step back, and Therazine followed him.
“Are you playing straight?” he said. “You haven’t even heard my employer’s offer.”
“I don’t want your offer. I don’t want your job. All I want is you off of my land, now.” She jabbed him in the sternum, and Arkide stumbled back off the porch with a yelp. He looked up at her, simultaneously angry and afraid. She kept her left eye closed and her right looking down the barrel of her gun.
Arkide put up a hand and stood straight. “Have it your way, then.” He brushed himself off and turned away from her, heading in the direction of a stagecoach that Therazine only now noticed down her road. She kept the gun trained on him as he walked.
Arkide stopped and turned back. “Nine figures,” he called to her. “Enough to buy your own barren little world. No one in the Real could tell you what your business is.”
“Five,” Therazine called back.
“What?” Arkide said abruptly.
Therazine swallowed. “Four.”
Arkide suddenly resumed his gait towards the stagecoach. “Nine figures, ma’am.”
“Three.”
“If you should change your mind, find me in Celadin. Seek out a tavern called The Raven and The Cobbler. Don’t ask your Society about my contract. They are not involved.”
“Two.”
Arkide threw up his hands in some gesture that Therazine didn’t recognize, and then stepped into the stagecoach. Its door shut, and its twin horses took it off into the darkness.
Therazine kept her rifle up until she could no longer hear the clop of the horses’ hooves in the distance. Then she lowered it slowly, and listened to the sounds of the desert insects. The sky was cloudless, and full of stars. She looked up at these stars. These stars, which were so different from the stars that she remembered on Celedin. Celadin’s constellations were all gone: Great Ogadran didn’t race across the horizon in the winter; the Bloody Rat didn’t hold the North Star in its tiny paws; Churket and his Little Brother didn’t dance with each other by the light of the moon. Here on Lormian the stars were untraced, and bisected by a huge blanket of colors and and sparkles. It was the surest sign that she was truly on a different world.
Therazine the farmer lived on Lormian. Therazine the rancher, Therazine the landowner and wife. Therazine the mother.
On the world of Celadin, far in the forgotten land of the past, lived only Therazine the assassin.
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