Djola stroked silky ears. “Standing still on the road, I feel like a target too, but nobody ambushes us now. Just ornery weeds seizing an opportunity.” He drew the thin blade with a diamond tip from his boot and hacked at thorny stalks and creepers. “We need to reach the highest ground no matter how far. The other horses followed our scent through the wise-woman corridor. They track us still.”

“Kurakao!” The transgressor girl perked up.

“You give praises for an ambush?”

“Reunion. My friends galloped off on Fannie’s friends. Those horses would follow her into fire—”

“Fannie?” A cloud burst overhead and fist-sized hail battered them. Freed from barbed vines, the warhorse charged up the almost vertical road as if she hadn’t already carried them too many leagues. “Good girl,” he said as the road wound through a thicket of bushes and boulders and levelled off. “The weather is wrong in the valley, but here—”

Supple young trees swayed in the storm. Seedpods waved a welcome. The warhorse slowed to a walk under whispering branches. An umbrella canopy of elephant leaves, nut vines, and weaver-ant nests kept the rain and hail out. The air was oily and warm. The warhorse snorted relief but wouldn’t go much farther. Crows circled above them and cackled joy. He cackled back.

“Your friends?” the girl asked as the crows disappeared behind leaves. “Not my favorite birds.”

He chuckled, his chin grazing her head. “They always know something we don’t.”

“Crows make me think of death.”

“We all live by death,” he sang, “yet we hold hope for the lives to come.”

“You’re not making fun, are you? Of The Songs, I mean.”

“What you say you become.” Without thinking, he stroked her head.

“You sound like a Green Elder.”

“I was never much more than a Garden Sprite like you.” He scanned for a campsite.

“Do you believe we all cast a spell with our words?” She was earnest, like Tessa.

“I did once. I believed all The Songs, all the old ways.” He closed his eyes. “Today forgotten Elder words return to me.” He shivered at visions of his youth with Yari then opened his eyes. “Conjure is a long game. Maybe if I chant the verses, I’ll believe again.”

“What twisted you into a monster?” The girl bit her bottom lip.

“Sometimes monster is the only choice,” he whispered.

She whispered also. “Many times in the huts, I came to a life-and-death crossroads and chose monster too.”

“I don’t believe that,” he said. “Take better measure of yourself.”

She spluttered. “Yari speaks through you.”

“The famed griot? No. Yari speaks no more.” Grain reported this in his last letter. Djola got this news just after he started for Holy City. Grief laid him up for days. “Vie is lost to us.”

“Dead?” The girl squirmed. “Are you sure? Did you see a body?”