I’d tampered with too many of her things, skirting too close to discovery. Did she notice a difference between this blade and the one she’d found? And the flask was still jammed between her mattress and the wall. I’d have to come back for it.

But then she stood. “This is the sword I found. Does it look like the one Kaphra had?”

I took it from her hands, a ringing in my ears. Could a person die of their heart beating too quickly? I willed my hands to stillness, my breath to evenness, and thought about the attack at Kaphra’s house. He’d lifted the bindings at the hilt to peer at something.

“Do you have a knife?”

She didn’t ask me why, and I suppose that was a measure of her trust in me. She pulled a knife free from her sash and tossed it to me. I caught it, dug the point beneath the wrappings and tore them free. They were old and frayed already, so it didn’t take much.

The hilt beneath was smooth and white as the blade. But it was not unmarred. Something was carved into its surface.

My blood ran cold. It was writing – the kind I’d seen in the Alanga book.

I held the blade out to her, my lips numb. “Look at this.” My tongue didn’t feel my own.

She frowned at me, stepped to my side, and took the sword. She held it up to the light. “It’s a command.”

“What does it say?”

Her gaze met mine, her eyes wide and frightened. “Die.”

35

Nisong

An island east of Luangon

Light bled red through Nisong’s eyelids. She cracked an eye open. Her nose and throat stung, her arms felt raw and her left ankle throbbed. Pain meant she was still alive.

She hadn’t expected to still be alive.

She cracked the other eye open, feeling the crustiness of salt upon her cheeks. Experimentally, she moved a hand and found wet sand beneath her fingertips. How long had she been out for? Where was the ship? Where was Leaf?

It was the last thought that brought her fully to her senses. The smells of smoke and seawater washed over her. She pushed herself to a sitting position and found the world had turned into a nightmare. A dark cloud hung where Luangon had once been. Around her, the beach was littered with scraps of wood, sundry household items – both broken and whole, torn sails and bodies. So many bodies. They dotted the shore, lumps amid the sand, the waves gently licking at their limbs, carrying some in and out of the shallows.

There were fish among the bodies, farm animals, sea creatures caught in the last throes of a sinking island. The whole beach would begin to stink the next day. Already there were gulls, picking at remains.