Gwinny and I passed through the forest without incident, though the same alarming patch of forest got the better of the two of us again. We emerged on the other side of it panting with no outward sign of the threat.

  Once we had recovered, I urged Gwinny on toward Shakerton. I was arriving later than I’d planned. My throat constricted when I reminded myself of why that was the case, easing only slightly when I caught sight of Hytham’s white-tabard-covered form pacing before the stable. He must have been trying to prevent other soldiers from taking advantage of me and Gwinny like the one Gwinny had kicked the day before. I patted the base of her neck.

  Hytham rushed to meet us halfway between the stables and the gate. “I was beginning to despair,” he cajoled. “The herald has been growing most impatient for thy arrival.”

  I swung off of Gwinny and onto the hard-packed earth. “Oof.” I peered around her to meet Hytham’s gaze. “What do you mean? The herald is waiting for me?”

  “Yes, of course. I told him of our meeting yesterday—not the full details of course—and assured him that I’d found someone who could lead us to the isla.”

  I ran my tongue over the front of my teeth, temporarily speechless. What bargains had the overeager adjudicator made on my behalf? I would have less leverage with the herald if he knew from the outset that I could offer exactly what he was looking for, wouldn’t I?

  “Draeza,” Hytham ventured as I tucked Gwinny into her stall. He intercepted the stable boy and insisted on the Order covering Gwinny’s stay and claimed, more loudly than seemed necessary, that she was under the Order’s protection. He switched to the Lifkin tongue, “Are you upset with me?” Hytham murmured, pulling me aside before we left the stables.

  The stable hand contented himself with trying to win Gwinny’s affection with a carrot. Gwinny pretended to be uninterested.

  “I . . . well I thought we would be a bit more secretive, for one.”

  “Secretive.” Hytham’s brow furrowed, and he scratched at the back of his neck. “I understand that desire, I truly do.” He chewed his lower lip, clearly avoiding telling me something.

  Hytham sighed. “I did not intend to break your confidence but . . . the herald had indicated that he meant to set out with the prisoner—I mean, your friend, today. I felt it my duty to give him cause to wait. I couldn’t think of a falsehood in the moment.”

  A chill tightened my shoulders and rippled down my spine. “He was going to send Bansaerin to the baron today?” To be made an example of. Broken. Killed.

  The adjudicator dropped his gaze. “While I was able to delay the trip to Dust, I fear I was not as successful at preventing the herald from being . . . harsh.”

  I forced my shoulders down and clenched my teeth. Any more bad news, any more pain, and I would crumple in on myself, never to recover. “Were you able to see him? To assure him I was coming?” I couldn’t speak above a whisper.

  Hytham wouldn’t look at me. “I’m afraid my irritation with the herald and the resultant outburst prevented such an outcome.” He shuffled a couple steps closer.

  I retreated, accidentally bumping into the stable wall beside me. My shawl snagged in the wood, providing me a convenient excuse to hover away from the adjudicator.

  “The way we’re holding your friend—it isn’t right. It is not Ilona’s will. I said as much to the herald—”

  The color drained from my face, and my mouth hung ajar. It was a wonder that with such a provocation, Bansaerin wasn’t dead already.

  I forced myself to exhale slowly, practicing the presentness Aveela had insisted upon over and over again. Being angry with Hytham wouldn’t help either Bansaerin or my people. I hadn’t planned on the herald knowing I could take him to the isla, but such knowledge couldn’t be too great a disadvantage so long as that was still what he desired and not something he’d worked out how to access on his own.

  I spread composure over my ragged internal state. I could make do with what was before me. “Let’s make our way to the herald.”

  Hytham relaxed, only slightly, and gestured for me to lead the way out of the stables. “I really didn’t mean to let you down,” he confessed as we passed the tavern. Golden light spilled out of the windows and onto the street, and even an hour before midday, soldiers crowded the tables and bar.

  I smiled up at the adjudicator. “I know you didn’t,” I assured him. But the stakes are different for me, for Bansaerin, than they are for you, I wanted to add.

  Maybe he would understand that now. If the herald did agree for me to lead them to the isla, our mutual survival might depend upon it.

  I grew quiet again as we neared the church, a great looming structure with pointed roofs, its mottled windows glowing like the tavern’s, but softer, colder somehow.

  “The herald is eager to meet you, however gruff he may seem.” Hytham offered me a reassuring grin as he swung open the gate to the church yard. The soldiers standing watch inclined their heads to him, waiting until they were sure Hytham had passed before narrowing their eyes to evaluate me.

  He hardly noticed the deference they paid him while I couldn’t help but wonder what other doors might be open to me with Hytham nearby if he held such a high status in Hume society.

  I slowed as we passed through the yard. The closest I’d ever come to the church was my conversation with Hytham the day before.

  He frowned at my reluctance. “It’s a pleasant enough space, however modest it may be. Have you frequented the church on many occasions?”

  The impossibility of his question shook me from my fears. “This is my fourth time within the walls of Shakerton in the fourteen years since the Great Displacement when we were sent north to Twisted River.” The corner of my lip upturned. “The only time I’ve come close to entering the church was yesterday when you snuck me in through the side entrance.”

  His cheeks flushed at the memory of our breaking into the prisons the day before. The ancient Lifkin hadn’t held our holy places quite as separate as the Hume did, and I’d never found a record of them hiding a prison beneath a sacred site though, to be fair, our sacred sites were more flexible than the Hume’s as well. The preservation of the Cycle—life, death, and spirit—was what the ancients and we, their inheritors, held most dear.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  A twin pair of giant oak doors surrounded by squares of mottled glass loomed at the top of the hewn stone steps. Hytham bounded up the stairs, fully at ease, and swung open one of the doors, gesturing me inside.

  One deep breath and I mounted the stairs, a second, I paused before the threshold, the rumbling sounds of male voices reverberating inside the church. A final breath, and I was through the door.

  I stopped a foot inside, causing Hytham to have to dart around me to avoid the door bumping against him.

  The church was easily the largest structure I’d ever set foot within. Whitewashed walls stretched up to evenly carved wooden slats, golden brown, with darker, thick beams running perpendicular to their carefully arranged heights. Giant metal candelabra hung from the central ceiling beam, casting their undulating glow up overhead, the shadows softened by thin metal pillars with smaller candelabra arranged along the edges of the church. The metal used to illuminate the church was easily more than we had access to in the whole of the Twisted River clan, including the weapons passed down through the generations, scrounged from the ruins of the Fall.

  “The herald is just ahead,” Hytham murmured, gently tugging me from my reverie.

  I would have known the Hume who had arrived at our gates to announce yet another removal amid a forest of Hume faces, even without the long black robes that spoke of his rank as a herald.

  He stood at the front of the church behind an altar table covered in parchment scrolls and wrinkled sheets. Nervous priests clucked around him, and even the soldiers who stood statue-like on the periphery of the sanctuary—I thought that’s what Hytham said it was called—kept him in their sights, their gazes darting toward him every few moments.

  There was a second herald, also clad in black, and a second adjudicator, with a tabard similar to Hytham’s in the opposite front corner of the sanctuary. But it was hard to keep my eyes from the broad-chested herald, his black hair mottled with gray.

  I started forward again at Hytham’s urging, moving slowly so as not to startle the Hume soldiers who had turned their attention from the herald to me. Would they think me a threat, or would Hytham’s presence beside me protect me here as well?

  All conversation in the sanctuary ceased.

  The herald placed a second hand on the table and lifted his head. His dark gaze met mine.

  I watched the herald carefully as I approached, forcing myself not to flinch at his unwavering study of my person. I stopped half a dozen paces from the table, certain that all the Hume gathered nearby could hear the pounding of my pulse beneath my shawls.

  Hytham’s hand hovered behind me, his shoulders a half-shield between me and the curious stares of the Hume scattered across the sanctuary. “Herald Devrim, someone to speak with you. The guide I told you about.” We shuffled a few steps closer, near enough that I could reach the table if I chose. “Herald Devrim, this is Draeza Lif-sai’Lune. Draeza, Herald Devrim.”

  Clutching at the ends of my scarves, I bowed my head to the herald without fully removing him from my gaze. This was the man tormenting Bansaerin. The one enforcing my people’s displacement.

  “Mistress Lif-sai’Lune.” Herald Devrim answered my bow with one of his own. “Tell me, why have you requested this audience?”

  I saw again Aveela’s closed eyes, the wrinkles softening upon her lined face. Bansaerin’s swollen eye, shadowed by his iron cell. “I would like to make an arrangement with you,” I answered. Since interacting with Hytham and the Hume more frequently, I could already sense the softening of my Lifkin accent in Breolish. “I believe we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement.” I swallowed the fear clogging my throat. “I can lead you to the isla you seek in the north. With my help, you’ll reach it far more quickly than you could on your own.”

  Calculation flashed behind the herald’s cool gray gaze. “A curious and intriguing offer. Tell me, how is it you learned of our aims?” The herald looked over my head, the corner of his mouth tightening as he studied his adjudicator.

  “It is, well, somewhat complicated.”

  The herald nodded. “Go on.”

  I played with the fringe of my shawl, trying to remember the specifics of what Hytham had said he’d divulged to the herald. “Umm, the captain stationed at Twisted River informed us of Bansaerin’s arrest and the charges against him.” I bit my lower lip. How to reveal the steps that had led me here without involving Hytham? “I knew these had to be false and decided to investigate the attack in the forest for myself.”

  The herald’s eye twitched, but he said nothing.

  “I found the sheriff’s spirit.”

  Herald Devrim grew more still but betrayed no additional reaction to the news of his ally’s death.

  The guards gathered around him were less subtle. One gasped and another glared at me.

  “Leave us,” Devrim commanded without looking at them. Their chainmail jangled in their rush to comply.

  Had the herald known already that the sheriff was dead? Or at least suspected? But why he had forced Bansaerin to confess still made no sense to me.

  I forced my hands to unclench and raised my gaze to meet the herald’s. “Sheriff Calvert told me of your aims concerning the isla. As I said, I knew that the accusations against Bansaerin had to be false. The spirit confirmed my suspicions.” Another omission on my behalf—I couldn’t tell him I’d spoken to Bansaerin without risking the Hume causing him more harm. “So I’ve come to make an arrangement with you.”

  Tension radiated off the herald, but there was something else burbling just behind it. “I assume you have demands to make in exchange for this aid.”

  “I do.”

  Devrim nodded for me to continue.

  I drew myself up taller. “If I lead you to the isla, you will allow my people to pass safely to the north as we have planned. You will not interfere with their journey and will, instead, protect them from any Hume political threat that might emerge.”

  “An intriguing demand.” Devrim’s gaze narrowed. “A portion of what you ask extends beyond my power. I speak for the Order and can promise that we will not interfere with your people’s journey north. I do not speak for the king.”

  I glanced back at Hytham who was watching me worriedly. These distinctions in Hume politics had never seemed of great significance to me. “I thought they king and the Order were united in their ordering of our removal.”

  “We work closely together. My aim is to distinguish between what I can promise you and what I cannot.”

  There seemed to be more behind what the herald was telling me, but whatever nuances were there, I couldn’t fully tease out. Hytham could help me later.

  “Well enough, then you will promise me on the Order’s behalf to do what you can and to declare my people under the protection of the Order.” It was clear that we meant little enough to the Hume, but the king’s soldiers would respect the wishes of the Order. “And you will release Bansaerin from his imprisonment and allow him to go free.”

  The herald scowled at this but didn’t protest. “Once we reach the isla, I will send word for the prisoner to be freed.”

  I scowled back. “Fine,” I snapped. “But he is not to be mistreated while he remains here. No more questioning, no more beating, and under no circumstances will he be handed over to the baron.” My hands clenched into fists as I delivered these last two demands. The captain’s threat to Bansaerin’s life, his impossible claims of Bansaerin’s crime, still echoed in my ears.

  “Agreed.” Devrim conceded this point more quickly than I’d thought he would, serving only to deepen my confusion as to why he’d imprisoned and mistreated Bansaerin in the first place if he was going to so quickly relinquish him, not to mention his existing knowledge of the sheriff’s death.

  Before I could press my curiosity further, a familiar structure caught my attention on the table before me. A recreation of an isla sketched upon parchment. I tilted my head to the side and crossed to the corner of the table so the image would not be upside down.

  Devrim straightened, surprised by my approach, but he did not stop me.

  “May I?” I stepped closer before gaining his assent, the intricacies of the drawing pulling me nearer.

  I cleared a few of the scrolls away from on top of the isla map and lifted its edges to peer more closely. “Do you have any—” The stack of sketches below the first isla map answered my question before I’d finished voicing it. “Oh good.” I smiled at Hytham and glanced at the herald who was watching me closely.

  “I thought I would have to draw up my own approximation of the isla we’re traveling to so you could prepare the soldiers for the journey. But I think a combination of the sketches you have here will suffice.”

  They both stared back at me wordlessly.

  “I couldn’t travel in very far,” I clarified. “A mournling attacked me, and I didn’t want to risk further altercation.” I looked between them. “The soldiers should be prepared,” I clarified.

  Finally, the undercurrent I had sensed from Devrim rose to the surface. Curiosity, I recognized. It shone beneath his stern gaze.

  “Please,” he answered, “go on.”