Worse, the horror of the nightly sacrifices was only a prelude to what would happen on a much broader scale during any actual invasion. If the Urghul broke across the frontier, there’d be a lot more screaming on a lot more altars all across northern Annur. The nightmares woke Gwenna at night, her blacks drenched in a heavy sweat. She’d wanted to try to break free as soon as she realized the army was moving, but Pyrre had talked her down. The assassin’s attitude toward her captivity had soured significantly after the Kwihna Saapi began—evidently she preferred to murder on her own schedule—but she pointed out, to Gwenna’s frustration, that any escape on the steppe would be short-lived. No trees meant no cover, and no cover meant that the Urghul could ride them down like dogs. Now that they were past the river and starting to move south, however, Gwenna was about finished waiting.

“That,” she said, stabbing a finger past the tent wall, past the Urghul camp beyond, over the wet broken ground and the dark trees fringing the horizon to the west, “is the start of the Thousand Lakes. Annur.”

“It’s not Annur,” Pyrre corrected her, picking flakes of dried blood off her hands and flicking them into the fire. The evening’s sacrifices had only just ended, and while Gwenna wished she could swim herself clean in the ocean, the assassin treated the human blood on her hands the same way she might a little honest mud. “It’s not Annur until south of the Black. This is just . . .” She frowned with distaste. “. . . buggy. But,” she continued, raising her hands to forestall Gwenna’s boiling objection, “we finally have some trees. I’d say that some point in the next few days would be a good time to bid our farewells, before we outlast our welcome and Long Fist decides to dispose of us more thoroughly.”

The Skullsworn’s words made Gwenna queasy. They were prisoners inside the api, inside the camp, but for some reason, Long Fist and Balendin continued to allow them their own tent, to speak to them with mock solicitude. The whole thing seemed like a trap, but Gwenna couldn’t see any point to it, not when the Urghul already had them trapped.

“Why hasn’t he done it already?” she demanded, grinding her knuckles into her palm. “We’re the most dangerous prisoners he has. Why aren’t we tied up like the rest?” She gestured vaguely to the comforts of the api. “Why aren’t we dead?”

“A hedge,” Annick suggested, not looking up from the bison haunch she was busy butchering. “In case Valyn comes back. Or in case he decides we might be useful.”