They walked faster, increasing their speed until she and Aramis were half jogging. A breeze caressed their cheeks. Salt water and open air beckoned ahead. They burst from the mine entrance, spilling into a section of Seaswept Ranka didn’t recognize, the palace on the cliffs nothing more than a distant glimmer. A crescent moon gleamed above. Just how long had they been down there?

Something flashed in her periphery. A foot scraped stone. Ranka twisted—and Percy froze, a second away from driving a knife into her throat.

“Oh,” he said awkwardly. “Hi.”

Ranka placed her hands on his narrow chest and shoved him. “What are you doing? You were supposed to be following the other trail!”

“We were,” Foldrey said.

“No, we were following this trail.”

“Ranka,” Aramis said quietly. “Look.”

The bloody footprints Aramis and Ranka had followed were indeed there, slashes of rust against brown and gray—but a second pair met them only several yards away, coming from another direction.

Foldrey’s face turned dead white. “We need to leave. Now.”

“What?” Ranka demanded. “But we just got here—”

Foldrey grabbed her shoulder. He was scared, his eyes stretched wide, his grip so tight it hurt. “Think, Bloodwinn. Sorhee, Forthis? Both dead. There are two sets of prints. There shouldn’t be two of them. Something is wr—”

From the far end of the alley came a moan.

The stench of rotting flesh and fresh blood pulsed forward, so overwhelming it made Ranka’s eyes water.

Two winalin witches limped from the shadows.

Like the others, they were covered in sores, caught between varying cycles of decay. Blood coated their faces. By the sharp, iron tang in the air, it was human. In their hands, they carried small knives, blades gleaming with a strange, oily substance.

The first witch had been sick for quite some time. Her skin drooped from her bones as if it were stretched two sizes too big, and maggots twitched in sores festering along her arms. What was left of her hair hung in filthy clumps, and her green eyes were now dead white. Wooden beads curved the shell of her left ear. She was Kerth, just like the witch in the morgue.

The second witch was younger, maybe twelve or thirteen. A child. Her clothes were little more than tattered, soiled rags made filthy by layers of old blood. Tattoos of cypress roots encircled her wrists. Murknen coven, then. Her sores were smaller, but she was dying all the same.

“Whatever you do,” Foldrey said slowly, “don’t let the knives touch you.”

Ranka, Foldrey, and Percy formed a wall in front of the Sunra twins.

The winalin witches raised their knives—and lunged.

28

SIDE BY SIDE, FOLDREY AND Ranka battled the witches.