Balendin smirked as Valyn’s Wing was bound. “Well, just think about it, Valyn. I know we’ve had our differences, but . . .” He shrugged, the movement cut short by his cords, “I think we could get past all that.”

17

Over and over, day after day, like the chorus to a desperate song, the words revolved in Adare’s mind: It can’t be true. It can’t be true. It can’t be true. When the song stopped, however, when the tune fell off, she heard a different voice, cold and rational: Yes. It can.

The history of the Atmani was ancient, to be sure, but though the wounds to the cities and land had long healed, the scars remained. Certainly, the accounts were fresh enough. Adare had read dozens of them as a child, tales penned by people who were there, who saw what happened. The chronicles didn’t agree on much, but the basics were clear: the Atmani kings and queens, six immortal leach-lords, ruled Eridroa well and justly for close to five hundred years. Then they went mad.

When three decades of civil war were finally over, they had destroyed half the world in fire, famine, and war. It was true that Roshin and Rishinira hadn’t been quite as brutal as the others, disappearing entirely before the last spasms of slaughter began, but that didn’t mean much. If Nira and Oshi were the last of the leach-lords, they had the blood of thousands on their hands, tens of thousands. It was almost impossible to believe, but Adare had seen the hovering net of flame, had heard Oshi’s ranting. He’d been ready to kill her, to murder her for destroying a tower that had collapsed centuries earlier.

Adare glanced over at the old man. He sat on the bank of the canal, on a wide, flat stone where Nira had put him while they ate their lunch, comfortably away from the other pilgrims. Since the terrifying scene in the old tower, he had returned to his quiet, gentle madness, but Nira never let him wander from her sight. She was always there with the bottle when he grew puzzled or distressed, helping him to tip it up while the pungent spirits dribbled down his chin. There were dozens of bottles of the stuff clinking softly in the bottom of the wagon. What it was, Adare still had no idea, but it seemed to work. At the moment Oshi was gazing down the steep bank, singing a soft, incomprehensible song to the rising carp.