Wearily, I bade farewell to Bansaerin who’d started unsaddling his horse and made my way back to Aveela’s hut on the far side of the clan. The fog had grown thicker since I’d chased after Bansaerin, and I trusted my feet to find their way along the narrow, rocky path that led back home. Soft murmurs drifted up from the field where Uncle and his team were tending to the Seed. It would be gone by morning, with only a select few of our clan knowing where it had been hidden.

  “It looks as though you’ve had quite the adventure,” Aveela said to me as I returned to her hut. Between the bandages on my arm and side, the tear in my overshawl, or the coating of dirt and grim along my skin from the mournling fight, I wasn’t quite sure what she was commenting on, but she was right, I had.

  “Even more than I had planned on.”

  “I agree, it looks as though something troubles her too.” A figure of swirling smoke hovered beside Aveela with another in the corner. They weren’t as distinct for me as I knew they were for her nor as distinct as the boy’s spirit had been in the forest. Whatever they’d said to her, they’d kept from me.

  I grinned as I carried the box of parchment and inks to her table. I had asked her, when possible, to avoid having conversations about me with the spirits while I was within hearing, but neither Aveela nor the spirits were very mindful about heeding my wishes in such cases. “Maybe the spirits could give us a few moments? There are a few pressing things I need to discuss with you.”

  “Very well, as you wish.” Aveela shooed the spirits away as she shuffled toward the hearth. I ignored her small grunts of effort at moving the kettle over the fire. There were few faster ways for her to become cross with me than to try to help her with something that was possible for her to do herself.

  “Alfonse is here. He’s just held a meeting with the chief.”

  Aveela nodded to herself, hobbling toward the herb cabinet for our tea. I had already gathered the mortar and pestle and bounced on my toes beside the tall table she used to prepare ingredients. “Well go on,” she urged.

  The whole of the day spilled out of me—the king’s proclamation, the Hume spirit, the two brigands who had attacked Eletria and turned their blades on me instead. Aveela received it all with a practiced calm save my revelation of seeing the Hume spirit. At that, her expression flickered, a dark cloud passing over her face. I hadn’t known how troubled I should be by the sighting. Perhaps Aveela had seen Hume spirits in the past and simply hadn’t told me. But her unspoken concern rattled me as greatly as the flat, gnawing teeth of the mournling-sheep.

  “I’m not going,” Aveela announced, nodding once, decisively, before returning to the task of blowing on her tea.

  “What do you mean you’re not going?” I blew my own cloud of steam to the side. “You’d be willing to bow to the Hume’s wishes and pledge yourself to their goddess?”

  “I’m not doing that either.”

  I bit my lower lip between my teeth, unsure of how to proceed. The heat of the mug soothed the chill that had crept over my fingers during the meeting. My mind drifted to how soothing it would feel to slip beneath my quilts for the night, to set the day’s troubling revelations aside. There was no sense pressing Aveela on the matter in this precise moment, certainly not before we’d heard the Hume’s terms in their entirety, if they even meant to give us an option beyond meeting their swords.

  But any promise of peace was quickly dispersed by my memory of the shadows that had crossed Aveela’s face when I mentioned the Hume spirit. She was different from most of the others in our clan—she didn’t begrudge the Hume their mistrust of us, though she wouldn’t excuse outright bigotry either.

  I waited to ask her about it until we had both settled onto our mats, mine on the floor and hers on the raised mattress built into the corner of the hut in deference to her age. “Aveela? Should I be worried that I saw the Hume spirit? If it’s so unusual, what does it mean?”

  “I don’t know how worrying about it will prevent your seeing them. Nor will it alleviate them seeing you out to aid them.”

  I sighed. That didn’t really help or answer my concerns.

  “It is unusual, child. But it will keep until morning.”

  It did keep through the night and into the dawn. The singe of Aveela’s herbs in the iron skillet caught in my nostrils. I grimaced and rolled off my mat, careful of my side as I did so to avoid any swelling around the knife wound from the day before. Strangely, it had healed more than I would have believed possible. Only a thin strip of pink remained raised along my skin. Had the apothecary uncovered a new healing unguent that sped the healing process?

  Experience had taught me better than to ask Aveela questions before she’d had her morning tea, so I fetched my own mug from the shelf and ground the beans for my coffee and checked that the kettle had been pushed over the center of the flames.

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  Before I could go any further in my morning rituals, a horn sounded from atop the wall. I froze between the fire and the stove, the burning herbs and soothing smoke of ground coffee fading from my awareness.

  It wasn’t possible.

  The horn called out again, bidding archers to the walls. “Aveela—”

  “Go child.” She inclined her head to me. “We will speak further upon your return.”

  I grabbed my bow and arrows and the bark armor I possessed and flew out the door. If time allowed, one of the archers on the line would help me don the protective coverings. We were supposed to have days before they arrived.

  A breathless Mirdal was rushing the opposite way along the path toward me.

  “Aveela,” I called to him.

  “I’ll see to her,” he promised as he rushed past me but then slid to a stop, doubling back. I turned toward him in time for Mirdal to lock me into an embrace. “Be careful. Tell me everything.”

  “I will.” I stepped back and smiled at my friend. Whatever transpired in the world around us, he was my constant. “Aveela’s making her tea.”

  “Ah, perfect. While you defend the clan, I’ll be just in time for her to scold me about how I’ll never make it as well as you and am hundreds of years away from making it as well as her, all of which should cheer her greatly.”

  Always there when I needed him. “I’ll see you soon.” I resumed my sprint to the walls, grateful that there would be some sort of defense near Aveela should the worst occur. The Hume knew of our traditions and social structure. Unless they meant to eradicate us entirely, they wouldn’t harm her, but they had taken spiritspeakers captive in the past.

  For me it would be different. I was the daughter of revolutionaries. Hume-killers.Even though Uncle had changed our last name, they knew we were here. The day the Hume soldiers raided our homes, bashing in doors with sword hilts and running down on horseback anyone with the temerity to try to flee, they’d taken Uncle in for questioning.

  Three nights and three days they held him while Aunt Rugan sheltered me, Iredella, and Eletria in the woods. The only reason she’d been spared arrest was the late stage of her pregnancy—such cruelty was beyond even their stomachs, though we’d heard of other raids in the aftermath that hadn’t been so discerning.

  Uncle never told me the details of his arrest and their questions. He returned bruised but not broken. In a low, grave voice, bruises swollen beneath both of his eyes, he told me and Iredella that our father had been taken captive and that the Hume had ordered our removal to the north.

  Flashes of that day came back to me as I peered over the wall. Though they were still miles away, the light of one of the heralds’ lanterns shone through the gloom of the forest, illuminating a cloud of dust around it.

  “A scout spotted them at first light and sprinted down mountain to raise the alarm,” an archer told me, holding out one of our few precious spyglasses. “By the time she made it back, they’d traveled four times the distance they should have been able to. Even the best horses in the world—” He shook his head.

  I focused the spyglass on the lantern and caught glimpses of its riders’ face as they approached. He had dressed all in black, a lantern emblazoned across his chest—a Herald of the Order of Ilona. There was a grim set to the line of his mouth, and I imagined a fierce, gray glow about his eyes. Where the Hume of Shakerton would see someone come to restore their fields and bless their crops, we saw a bringer of death.

  By the size of their cloud they might be as many as thirty, so not the raiding force we had feared, not yet, but dangerous all the same. I thanked the archer and returned the spyglass so that he might inform others along our line. I would be stationed along the wall beside Uncle having proven my skill with the bow years ago.

  Before I settled into my place, I searched the archers gathered around the ramparts—no Bansaerin in sight. Chest tight, I dropped my gear at my position along the wall and flew back down the stairs to the stables.

  Bansaerin’s horse was gone.

  I stood there, head lowered and tears prickling my eyes. Gwinny whinnied to me and I ambled across the stable to her stall. She leaned out over the door and I traced my fingers down the soft fuzz of her nose.

  I wasn’t ready for this—that was all I could think, over and over again. If something happened to Bansaerin, or if something happened to us—he could return to the clan with the Umbral Wolves behind him and find our homes torched, our bodies burned and strewn about, left for the mournlings and the ravens to devour.

  “I have to return to the wall,” I murmured to Gwinny. She nickered again, her way of reassuring me. The other horses flicked their tails, their ears flipping about, attuned to the strange activity outside. “You’ll be safe here,” I promised her. I placed a light kiss on the end of her nose and strode out of the stable, only running once more after I was out of sight of the horses.

  Uncle was waiting atop the wall as I returned. He waved me forward, holding my armor, and helped me affix the straps. We didn’t say anything to one another—no word of the night before. I still had to tell him and Aunt Rugan about Eletria, but this was not the time for such news.

  “I had no idea it was possible to travel so quickly,” I remarked to Uncle as we turned out to face the oncoming forces. Their numbers were more visible now—they would be upon us within a quarter of an hour. By the banners, they were soldiers of the baron and the Order.

  I shivered at seeing the two together again. Uncle reached over and squeezed my hand. He was thinking of Iredella too.

  “If they meant to eradicate us, they would have come in greater numbers,” Uncle said. The gold of his irises caught against his dark eyelashes. As a child, I had marveled at the same effect in my mother’s eyes.

  “Will there be more behind them?”

  “Yes.” Uncle’s voice was grave. “If the reinforcements remain in Shakerton, we will stand a chance.”

  Within a fortnight of our arrival here, the Hume had come for Eletria. They knew where Uncle and I were, and I had no doubt that the Night of One Thousand Fires still burned brightly in the Hume’s memory. So long as we lived, we would be a liability to our people, an excuse for the Hume to lead with aggression. I hoped Uncle was right about what their numbers signified.