Anji had thought of running again—of throwing the canteen at the Ox and sprinting for the nearest town. But while the Hawk had been gruff, the Ox’s near-fanatic adherence to her tenets and faith made Anji too nervous to ask again. Anji wasn’t a person to the Ox—just a doomed bit of walking flesh, fixed on a track and barreling toward an end already designed by the god she worshipped. She’d swallowed whatever nonsense the Sun Wardens believed like a piece of charred fish, bones and all.

And even if Anji did somehow get away, what then? She had no food, no weapons, and no money. Manacled as they were, her hands served no function past lifting a canteen to drink and holding herself straight in a saddle. Her only possessions were a dead man’s boots on her feet, the ragged clothes on her back, and the trinkets locked away in a bag still tied to the Goat’s horse, wherever that was now.

This is the most thoroughly fucked I’ve ever been, she’d thought, and climbed back onto the saddle. She’d entertained the idea of throwing herself from the horse while they rode. I could break my neck and end it all on my terms. No crowds, no torture, just a crack and then … hopefully, nothing at all. The notion had scared her into silence and dread, the heavy, clawing hopelessness of it all galloping at her side like a ghost over the rolling terrain.

The Ox pushed them hard until Sheertop had crept into view over a shallow rise, the sun falling to the west as they approached the abandoned cathedral and its town. Even from this distance, Anji could tell the cathedral’s construction matched the one she’d frequented as a girl.

“The holy houses of fools,” said the Ox at Anji’s back. “But beautiful in their own way, I’ll admit. Such devotion to build so high, as though in the unknown depths of their hearts they were reaching for the One’s grace.”

Anji shared the awe she heard in the Ox’s voice, though the way the woman spoke raised the hair on her skin. She craned her neck as the horse took the slope, the giant structure looming overhead like a raven over her eggs. The Ox led them through the detritus of a long-forgotten village, its empty lanes caked over with dust and weeds. Wooden houses drooped on their cracked brick footings, overgrown with mold and moss. A wind-beaten cluster of gravestones stood on a plateau overtaken by brush. Anji wondered what the ruins would have looked like in their prime, why they’d been abandoned at all, and why here in the cold and unforgiving north, where resources like wood and metal were likely prized, nobody had thought to scavenge the place.