Лэйни Тейлор - Days of Blood & Starlight

“An arm you could cut off and get away,” he’d said. “An arm you could do without.”

Oh.

“ I couldn’t,” Sveva had replied with some superiority. Savages , she remembered thinking, as if perhaps it was a lack of finer feelings that made Dashnag so casual about their limbs.

“That’s because you don’t know what’s waiting for you.”

“And you do?” she’d snapped. She shouldn’t have. Rath could have eaten her face with a bite, but she couldn’t help it. Was he trying to scare her? As if she wasn’t scared enough.

Maybe, she thought, she hadn’t been scared enough. She was now, though. The sweet stink of infection was coming off her sister, and she knew that when she reached out to touch her, she would be hot with fever. The herbs weren’t working.

Sveva had found them—feversbane even. At least, she was almost sure it was feversbane. Half-sure at least. But she could see the wound, Sarazal’s leg lying delicate on its bracken pillow, and it didn’t look any better. She traced her own painful chafe marks with her fingertips and felt the guilty weight of luck she didn’t deserve.

The slavers had bound Sveva around her small waist with an iron manacle probably meant for some giant bull centaur’s legs, but when they’d gotten to Sarazal—she was last; it was only luck, bad luck—they’d found nothing to fit her, and made do with a scrap of iron tightened just above her left fore fetlock. The metal had cut, the cut had swollen, and then the makeshift shackle had done its real damage, slicing further into the swelling, biting deeper with every step. Sarazal’s limping had gotten so bad that the slavers would have had to leave her behind if the revenants hadn’t come. Rath said they would have sooner but that Dama were valuable, and Sveva didn’t need him to tell her that if they did leave Sarazal, or any of them, it wouldn’t be alive.

But the revenants had come—from where, the moons only knew, on wings such as she had never seen, more terrifying than anything out of a nightmare—and just in time. Sarazal could barely walk now, and they hadn’t gotten far, with Sveva too small to be much help supporting her.

She sighed. No more sounds from the shadows, that was good, but the shadows were fading away. It was day. It was time to wake Sarazal. Reluctantly, Sveva touched her shoulder. Her skin was hot, and when she fluttered her eyes open they weren’t right—they had that shine and blear of sickness. Sveva’s guilt churned in her stomach like a live thing. She wanted to pull her sister’s head into her lap, comb out her tangled cinnamon-stick hair with her fingers, and sing to her, not the Warlord’s ballad but something sweet, with no one dying in it. But all she did was murmur, “It’s morning, Sara, time to get up.”

A whimper. “I can’t.”

“You can.” Sveva tried to sound cheerful, but a desperate panic was building in her. Sarazal was really sick. What if she… No . Sveva slammed the thought shut. That couldn’t happen. “Of course you can. Mama will be watching for us.”

But Sarazal only whimpered again and tried to nestle deeper into the bracken, and Sveva didn’t know what to do. Her sister was always the one bossing and planning and coaxing. Maybe she should let her sleep a little longer, she thought, let the feversbane work.

If it was feversbane. What if it wasn’t? What if it was doing more harm than good?

That’s what Sveva was worrying over when the voice came from behind her. No snapping twigs gave warning—it was just there, almost in her ear, stabbing icy jolts of fright all through her. “You have to go.”

Sveva whirled around, brandishing her too-big knife, and there was Rath. The Dashnag boy with his long white fangs, he was half in the shadow and half out, and for all that he was still a boy, he was just so big. Sveva’s gasp was long and unsteady, a reeling drag of terror. Rath gave her a long look, and Sveva could read no expression on his beast face. He had a tiger’s head and cat eyes that caught the light and silvered. He was a hunter, a stalker, an eater of flesh. She could outrun him easily, she knew that… except that she couldn’t, because if she were running, it would mean she had left Sarazal behind.

“What are you doing here?” she cried. “Were you following us?”

Rath’s voice came from low in his throat. “I was looking for the revenants,” he said. “But they’re gone, and I wouldn’t count on them saving you twice.”

Was that a threat? “You leave us alone,” she said, putting herself in front of Sarazal.

Rath made an impatient sound. “Not from me,” he said. “If you were watching the sky, you’d know.”

“What?” Sveva’s heart drummed. “What do you mean?”

“Angels are coming. Soldiers, not slavers. If you want to live, it’s time to go.”

Angels. Sveva’s hatred kindled. “We’re hidden here,” she said. The leaf cover of the damsel canopy would be unbroken green from above, leagues and leagues of it. Two Dama girls were like two acorns. “They’ll never see us.”

“They don’t need to see you to kill you,” said Rath. “Look for yourself.” He indicated an opening in the brush that Sveva knew gave way to a little rise and a ridge, with a view out onto the sweep of the hills. She glanced at Sarazal, who was sleeping again, her lips moving and eyelids fluttering with unhappy dreams. Rath made another impatient sound, and Sveva went. She moved sideways, her cloven hooves dancing and anxious, and when she was past him she burst into speed and leapt up the rise.

She saw smoke.

Across the valley, between themselves and their way home, some half-dozen plumes of ink-black smoke rose from the forest at intervals. Licks of vivid fire were discernible below, and above, shimmering in the air like heat mirages: seraphim.

They were going to burn them out. Burn this land. Burn the world.

Stunned, she came back to Rath. “Did you see?” he asked.

“ Yes ,” she spat, angry. Angry with him , as if it were his fault. Anger was better than the panic that pulsed just beneath it. She stooped to gather her sister to her feet, but Sarazal resisted.

“No,” she said, her voice small as a child’s. “I can’t, I can’t.”

Sveva had never seen her sister like this. She tried to draw her upright. “Come on,” she said. “Sarazal. You can . You have to.”

But Sarazal shook her head. “Svee, please.” Her face crumpled; her eyes squeezed tight. “It hurts.” It was the first time she had admitted the pain, and her voice was a whisper from a deep place, long and pleading. “Go,” she said. “You know I can’t. I won’t blame you. No one will. Svee, Svee, maybe you are the fastest in the world.” She tried to smile. Svee was Sveva’s baby name; it cut her to the heart to hear it. “So run!” Sarazal cried.

And Sveva shook her. “I’ll lie down and die with you, do you hear me? Is that what you want? Mama will be so mad at you!” Her voice sounded shrill, cruel. She just had to get her sister moving. “And don’t even try to say you would leave me. I know you wouldn’t, and I won’t, either!”

And Sarazal did try to rise, but she cried out as soon as she put weight on her swollen leg, and sank back down. “I can’t,” she whispered. Her fevered eyes were wide with terror.

Then Rath sprang. Sveva had half forgotten him. She didn’t see the start of the leap, only its finish, when he came down on the bracken before them, impossibly light for his bulk, and grabbed Sarazal up, one big arm hooked under her sleek deer belly, her human torso pulled tight to his shoulder. Sarazal gasped, going rigid with pain and fear, and Rath said nothing. Another leap and he was moving again, away from the oncoming fire and the shimmer of angels without even a backward glance at Sveva.