Before Valyn could cut in, two more Urghul shoved their way out of the crowd, dragging Balendin between them. The leach didn’t resist, not even when they tossed him to the ground at Huutsuu’s feet, but Valyn saw the way the taabe watched him, eyes wary, almost frightened.

“Ah. Valyn,” the leach said, elbowing his way to his knees. “I’ve missed your playful banter each evening.” The words were light, but Balendin smelled weary, wary.

“I’m glad the Urghul didn’t kill you,” Valyn replied.

Balendin raised an eyebrow. “Reconsidering my offer of cooperation?”

“Not at all. It’s just that I’m planning to put the blade in you myself.”

“An easy thing to say when there are no blades around.”

“Just wait,” Valyn replied. “Just wait.”

Huutsuu was shaking her head. “Civilized people. This is how you speak to one another?”

Valyn turned back to the woman. “Where are we?” he asked again. “What is this?”

The Urghul woman gazed over the encampment, as though considering the question herself. Thousands of fires smudged the sky with their smoke. Valyn could smell burning dung and burning meat, horse shit and human, turned-up earth and wet hides. Thousands of voices murmured in his ears, so many he could never hope to untangle them. He hadn’t been around so many people for years, not since leaving Annur.

He turned back to the Urghul woman. “What are you planning?”

“I will let Long Fist explain,” she replied. “He is eager to look upon you.”

“And just who in Hull’s sweet dark is Long Fist?”

Huutsuu remained silent a moment, as though there were no easy answer to the question. “A priest. A shaman. The one who binds us together,” she replied finally.

“And what does he want with me?”

“He is curious about the Kettral, about the Skullsworn, and about you, Valyn hui’Malkeenian. It is not often the son of an Annurian emperor comes among us. Long Fist would witness this for himself.”

22

Adare woke on a lumpy bed in a chilly room. At first she thought it was night, then realized the darkness in the sky was storm. Someone had tried to pull a scrap of oilcloth over the window, but the wind had torn it free at two corners, and it thrashed madly against the sill while rain spattered on the floor with each gust.

The room was unfamiliar. When she tried to probe her memory, she found a wide, bright blank. The last thing she recalled was arriving on the bridge at Olon, pilgrims at her back, and even that memory felt blurry and inchoate, like something she had dreamed rather than lived. Thought came slowly, reluctantly, and when she tried to think about what happened after the bridge, about how she had come to the small, stone room, she could hear only a voice, the echo of immensity, singing in her ear.

Win.