She is not well accustomed to traveling on horseback, Dom realized, his gut twisting. It will make the journey all the slower.

“We’ll take our chances in Lecorra,” Corayne said, gathering the reins in one hand. “The capital port is ten times the size of this harbor.” She looked back over her shoulder, glaring at Lemarta. “And I’m not known there as I am here.”

Sarn’s voice was a hiss. “I prefer horses to boats anyway.”

“By the Spindles,” Corayne cursed, startling as Sorasa stalked out of the tree line.

Dom was not so affected. He knew Sarn was following them all the way from the city gate, where she’d split off to “avoid problems” with the soldiers guarding the city. It felt silly to him. The assassin scaled the walls and kept to the shadows where, Dom had to assume, no mortals could see her. To his eye, she stood out sharply among the leaves and tree trunks, as obvious as a second sun in the sky. At least she moved well in the woods, stepping lightly instead of crashing through the undergrowth with the usual mortal grace of a broken-legged cow. Her silence was her best quality. Perhaps her only good one.

“You needn’t come if it’s such an inconvenience,” Dom said, both sets of reins still clasped firmly in his hands. “I’ve found Lady Corayne. Our quest is our own. You’ll have payment when it is finished; on this I give my word.”

Beneath her hood, Sorasa curled her full lips.

That is a scowl, Dom thought.

“I learned long ago not to trust the promises of men. Even immortal ones,” she said. “I have an investment to protect, and I intend to see it through. The deal was to Ascal. I’ll give you no reason to go back on our bargain.”

Dom wanted no more deadweight to slow their progress, not to mention threat to their lives. Sorasa Sarn was worse than a mercenary, bought at the highest price, with no allegiance or care for Corayne or the Ward. It would be best to leave her behind. Better yet, to kill her where she stands. The realm would not mourn the loss of an assassin. And the day will come when it is my head or hers, if we are not dead already.

She stared back at him, her vibrant copper eyes pinning him in place. He held his ground and her gaze. He did not doubt she knew his mind.

“Very well,” Dom snapped, breaking first. He tossed the reins in her direction.

She caught them and swung into the saddle, at ease on horseback. She sneered at the stallion beneath her, looking over its flanks with the air of a butcher inspecting a bad cut of meat.

“You’ll lead, Sarn. I presume you know the way to Lecorra.” Dom hardly liked calling the Amhara assassin by anything other than what she was, but it felt rude to do so now.

To his surprise, she did not argue, and maneuvered her horse onto the road with a twitch of her heels. At least horsemanship is well taught in the Amhara Guild. Corayne fell in behind her, giving her mare a few tentative kicks to get her moving at a decent trot. With a sigh, Dom brought up the rear of their strange company, a mismatched trio the likes of which the Ward had never seen.

This is how all our troubles began. A line of horses on the road, a quest ahead, with Allward hanging in the balance. He shoved the grief away and leveled his eyes on the girl riding ahead of him. Her body swayed in time with the horse, finding a rhythm. From this angle he could not see her eyes, nor her father’s stern face. She was black-haired and small, as far from Cortael as a person could be. She will not share her father’s fate. That was a promise, to the Ward, to Glorian Lost, to Corayne—and to himself.

But then she turned her head to look out to the Long Sea. The sun put her features in silhouette, and there he was again, a ghost Dom could not believe in. Cortael. He was in her eyes, in the way she raised her face to the wind and searched the horizon. There was movement in her always, constant as the waves and the stars wheeling through the sky.

Dom bowed his head. He tried to think of his cousin Ridha, riding through the enclaves. Of Taristan and his horrendous wizard, their army spewing from a Spindle. His aunt, cowering in her great halls. Anything but Cortael’s gray corpse, skewered alongside his daughter.

It did not work.

By nightfall, they were so far inland Dom could barely hear the waves. At least Sarn isn’t a nuisance, he thought. The assassin rode on in blissful silence, never turning back, never lowering her hood. Occasionally her hand darted into one of her many hidden pouches or pockets, and then he could hear her crunching on something, perhaps nuts or seeds. A good meal for a mortal traveling light and fast, Dom knew. Corayne dipped a hand into her saddlebags in the same manner, helping herself to a dinner of flatbread, a smear of cheese, and thin, cured meats. She was also well prepared for their journey.

Dom felt no such urge to eat. The Vedera did not hunger so often.

Nor did they need half as much sleep as mortals.

Soon Corayne drooped in the saddle, her breath slowing to a deep and steady rhythm. With a nudge, Dom urged his horse alongside hers, ready to catch her should she fall from the saddle. Once or twice her lids fluttered, her eyes twitching through a dream.

“We should make camp so she can rest properly,” Sarn muttered, her voice barely a whisper to mortal ears. “The horses too.”

Dom frowned, pulling at the scarred side of his face. It stung. “She’s resting now. The horses we can push,” he said. “Or is it you who would prefer to stop? I confess, I have no intention of keeping you upright too.”

“Touch me and I’ll cut your hands off,” she said dryly, keeping her face to the road.

“You mortals have such a different sense of humor than we do.”

She threw a dark look over her shoulder, one he recognized from Byllskos. When she nearly put a blade through his shoulder. When she loosed a herd of half-mad bulls on him.

“I will be requiring my hands for the time being,” he whispered back.

Corayne snuffled in her sleep, her full weight balancing on his arm. In the weak light, with her hood raised, Dom saw her father in her face. He thought of Cortael at seventeen, back in Iona, when he insisted he needed only as much rest as an immortal. In the following weeks, he wavered between menacing his tutors and falling asleep in the training yard, a sword still in hand. It fell to Dom to wake him, because he weathered the ensuing outbursts best.

The memory turned bitter. The boy he taught was a man dead. A seed that grew and died in full bloom. Thinking of him was like picking at a barely healed scab, scraping dried blood away to bleed anew.

“We’ll stop before that rise,” he said sharply, pointing to a hill hunching black against the deep blue night. Will that shut your viper mouth?

“We’ll stop at the top,” she shot back. The bitter ache of memory gave way to frustration. “I’m not getting caught on the low ground.”

“You won’t be caught by anything,” Dom whispered in annoyance.

But the edge of his mind itched with doubt. Certainly no one will pursue us. The cursed mortal and his red priest do not know of Corayne, nor can they scour the Ward looking for every branch of the Corblood tree. He glanced at the cypress forest, reading the shadows. I hope.

“I’ll keep watch,” he said.

Her bright eyes flared again, flame in the starlight.

“That isn’t a comfort to me.”

On that we can agree.

Again Dom thought he ought to forsake an oath just this once and leave Sorasa Sarn dead in a ditch.