Brot’ân’duivé steered his opponent’s arm upward and rammed his second stiletto through the man’s wrist.
It happened so fast that his opponent did not even cry out. The only sound was the wet crackle of cartilage.
“And another hobbled,” Brot’ân’duivé whispered, jerking his blade out.
“Break off!” someone shouted.
Brot’ân’duivé slapped the anmaglâhk away and turned to find that the one who had held Leanâlhâm was limping backward up the shore. Osha had retreated to the water’s edge and was holding the girl behind him.
The one with the scar struggled up as well, shaking his head to clear it. Blood ran freely from his mouth and down his chin. Teeth lay in the sand at his feet.
“Go!” the tall one shouted again.
The short-haired one backed rapidly away, clutching his maimed and bleeding wrist. As all three fled, they did not take their eyes off of Brot’ân’duivé until they had to scurry over the rock slope like so many gray rats. They rushed for the city and vanished between the buildings and into the forest beyond.
Brot’ân’duivé let them go for now.
Let them run in fear, wondering when he would come again. Let them whisper that fear to Most Aged Father. In this, Brot’ân’duivé purchased Cuirin’nên’a time ... until the loyalists learned too late that he was gone. And then would Most Aged Father truly know the worst of fear.
Brot’ân’duivé—the Dog in the Dark—hunted those that the worm had sent out into the world.
He turned to the young pair staring at him, one with fearful green eyes and the other with spiteful hate he did not yet understand. He pointed toward the far pier and the midsized ship that he had sought.
“Go and board. Tell the hkomas there that I sent you. Wait below deck until I come.”
“I am not going anywhere with you,” Osha hissed. “I have lost everything, so it costs me nothing to be rid of you as well.”
Brot’ân’duivé had no notion what this meant. The mere look of Osha—from the young one’s plain attire to his missing weapons and the strange parcel on his back—raised a dozen questions leading to a dozen more.
Brot’ân’duivé did not entertain even one.
“Then you will be dead, if you wish it,” he returned, pointing with his blade at the girl cowering behind Osha. “You will be hunted as much as she is ... more so for having been seen with me. You will be pursued as much as any true dissident.”
That final word did not appear to register at first. Confusion certainly filled the girl’s green eyes. But finally Osha’s features went slack as realization appeared to sink in.
“Yes, I am one,” Brot’ân’duivé confirmed, “and now I am more than that, a traitor. So there is nothing left here for either of you, so long as Most Aged Father lives.”
Osha looked him up and down. “What have you done?”
Brot’ân’duivé closed on him. “Get to the ship—now!”
The girl shrank back.
He had no authority over her. She was not and never had been anmaglâhk, dissident, or loyalist. But she was no longer innocent, whether she wished to be or not. He had done difficult things in recent days, but he could not force her on this journey ... overtly.
“It would be dangerous for you here,” he said to her. “You may stay if you wish to risk it.”
The very words implied that she would be a fool to do so. He could only hope that after all she had been through, she could take the pain of such a hard choice.
She looked up at Osha. “I would go if you will.”
Osha hung his head, and Brot’ân’duivé knew he had them both, whether he wanted them or not. Though a burden to him, they would be safer abroad than they would be remaining here.
Osha turned away, grabbing Leanâlhâm’s hand as he headed toward the piers.
“The rest you know,” Brot’ân’duivé finished, looking at Magiere. “We followed the team hunting you. Once they reached this continent, I began eliminating them at any opportunity until I tracked them to you in Calm Seatt.”
“That’s everything?” Léshil asked.
Before Brot’ân’duivé could reply with a nod—a lie—Magiere came at him.
“No, it isn’t!” she insisted. “What about Osha? In all this time you must have learned something. Why did he run into you at the port? What did they—the Burning Ones—do to him? And why did you cast him out of ... your caste?”
“I did not cast him out,” Brot’ân’duivé answered.
“Then what?” Léshil asked.
“I know far less of what happened to him than you wish,” Brot’ân’duivé replied, “so it is his to tell. I will say no more on that.”
If either Léshil or Magiere thought of forcing the issue, neither did so. What he had said was the truth for the most part. There was much concerning Osha that he did not know or understand. But at least those here were distracted from what more he had left out. He had given only the details that served him and not what had come next.
He did not tell them that he had waited until Osha and Leanâlhâm were safely aboard the ship and then changed his mind concerning one thing. He did not tell them that he had turned his eyes upon the forest as he had run through Ghoivne Ajhâjhe.
Only one survivor need reach Most Aged Father.
The old worm would hear but one voice carrying the fear of three after watching the other two die in the dark. It would be—had been—a long while before anyone knew that Brot’ân’duivé left his people’s land.
Most Aged Father would have a new fear to grow into a new paranoia. But long before that, Cuirin’nên’a would be in hiding with the others.
In silence and in shadow, fear was a weapon of the Anmaglâhk, though none had ever wielded it against their own until Brot’ân’duivé.
Leesil was quiet as every word spoken about his mother stuck in his head. That world was no part of his. He understood it a little because of her, what she had taught him in his youth, and how she had trained him. But he’d never understood her ways, her people, and didn’t want to.
Just the same, he couldn’t stop the guilt over what had happened to Leanâlhâm.
Another innocent was caught in the middle. How many others had suffered because he, Chap, and Magiere—and even Wynn—had passed through their lives? Then it struck him that Chap had been quiet during this entire exchange.
—The girl—went—for—name-taking—
Chap’s sudden words made Leesil feel as if he’d been punched.
“What?” he exhaled, turning on the dog.
—Before—she went to—Edge of the Deep—
It took a moment before that last part made sense; it was the meaning of the name for the an’Cróan’s one city by the bay.
Facing the serpent, the “Father of Poison” guarding the burial grounds, had been a terrifying moment for him—mostly because Magiere’s life had depended on his not failing to get in there.
He turned to the girl. “Leanâlhâm, you went to your ancestors?”
With a sudden expression of horror, she quickly looked at Chap. Then came the panicked anger of her fast breaths.
“What?” Magiere whispered, and then louder, “When?”
Still breathing too hard, the girl looked from Chap to Brot’an, who said nothing. Magiere closed on the girl.
“What were you thinking? Your uncle had his reasons, Leanâl—”
“Do not call me that!” the girl shouted, and backed away. “Do not call me anything. I want no more names!”
Leesil was at a loss as the girl glared at Chap, and there was no awe for him in her face this time. There was only panic amid accusation—but for what? Perhaps all this brought back too many memories from which she’d been hiding. Something had driven her to leave her people after the death of Gleann, her grandfather.