“I said quiet!” the Hawk hissed, gathering up her mask. She slipped it on and rose to her feet, her hand still squeezed around her sword’s hilt. “Someone’s coming.”

Anji narrowed her eyes. She heard nothing save for the clap of water on the shore and the ever-present wind.

But no, the bump and thud of wagon wheels became barely discernable over the breeze, bringing with it the sound of low voices.

Without thought, Anji bounded across the camp, putting herself between Molli’s flank and the Hawk’s back. “Who is it?”

“Quiet,” said the Hawk.

A heartbeat later, the wagon crested over the slight rise ahead. It gleamed brilliant white, its gigantic golden wheels flashing in the sun. Anji’s mouth fell open at the sight of what drove the wagon toward her.

A pair of monstrous black birds pulled against their tack, their hooked, pale yellow beaks the length of Anji’s arm. Their heads bobbed with every step, white irises with pits of black holding Anji in their gaze, studying her with an eerie intelligence. Taller than any horse, they strode on slender, scaled legs, three-toed feet digging grooves in the earth. A squawk issued from one of them, echoing over the low-lying hills.

On the wagon’s flatbed sat a cage made of iron and dark wood.

Though Anji couldn’t quite tell what lay inside the cage, she could make out the figure sitting on the wagon’s box. A bent old woman in plush robes of purest yellow.

A Sun Warden.

Chapter 8

8

The wagon trundled down the slope, rocking side to side. Whatever lay in the cage shookwith the motion, piled like a mound of filthy rags. Something hairy and gangly draped through the gap between two of the bars.

“Not a word,” murmured the Hawk. But for the first time in days, Anji didn’t feel much like talking.

Her only true brush with religion had been born out of necessity. In exchange for a bit of food, she’d attended sermons given by the poor priests of the Order of Inheritance in their dusty cathedral. The Order’s weekly allowance of potato bread had kept her from starving as a street urchin more than once. But where those priests had kind, jovial faces, the woman approaching now could have melted a candle without flame just by looking at it.

The Sun Warden hunched forward, her face pallid and fixed in a heavy frown, cheeks and lips sagging with wrinkles. Dark sacks welled under each heavy-lidded eye, contrasted with thinning snow-white hair she’d pulled back in a tight bun. She hunched forward, neck outstretched, elbows perched on her knees, the oversized robe swallowing the subtler angles of her body. Her gray eyes narrowed as the wagon drew within twenty strides, darting from Molli to the tent to the half-open bags at the Hawk’s feet, then finally snapping to Anji.