“I don’t care about—”
“Ben,” Atcitty says gently. “We should find out.”
Ben stares at him as if he’s betrayed her, but she quiets anyway.
“You seek the White Locust,” the archer says, her voice ringing, “but he is gone. You will get nothing from me.”
“Break her wing,” I instruct Atcitty.
The archer makes a strangled cry and Atcitty glares at me. I shrug, unimpressed with his disapproval. “It’s either that or I just kill her outright,” I tell him, “but if you want her to talk . . .”
Atcitty twists the thin wire at the top of the membrane, and the archer’s wing crumbles. She screams and buckles, folding her body over her right shoulder as if she could protect it. We wait until she calms, her breath coming in slow, painful pants.
The other Thirsty Boy, Curley, curses darkly and walks away. Fucking cowards, all of them.
“You won’t find him!” the archer says, barely above a whisper. Her face is slick and fevered with sweat. “You’re too late. You can torture me, but it won’t matter. He’s gone!”
“Gone where?” I ask.
“To call for a reckoning. To cleanse the unworthy from this world.”
“Original,” I say.
“She’s not going to—” Atcitty begins, and then cuts off abruptly as Ben rushes forward.
“Do you know who this is?” Ben screams in the archer’s face, spittle flying. She thrusts a finger in my direction. “She’s the Monsterslayer,” Ben hisses. “Have you heard of her? If you’ve heard of her, then you should be afraid.”
I stare at Ben. What exactly did Hastiin tell her? Do I even want to know? I want to tell her I’m not some sort of boogeyman, no matter what her uncle said.
But Hastiin’s niece won’t look at me. Her eyes bore into the woman kneeling in front of her. “She slit the throat of Coyote because he double-crossed her, and she buried alive Naayéé’ Neizghání, the hero of Dinétah, even though she really loved him. She shot a powerful medicine man through the heart. So, who are you? Who are you that she won’t slit your throat? That she won’t bury you alive? Or slice off your wings inch by inch? Or cut out your tongue out to make sure you never sing again!”
Holy fucking hell.
The woman looks at me, eyes huge. She mouths something I can’t quite follow. Again, less than a whisper. Again, growing louder until I can make out what she is saying.
“Godslayer.”
“Godslayer,” she says again, louder, as she starts to tremble.
“Godslayer!” she screams. She shakes, spasms of fear juddering through her body. She shrieks the word again, bending in half and convulsing painfully. Her good wing flares, and she jerks forward. Ben stumbles back, thrown off-balance.
The archer wrenches away from Atcitty. And for a moment she’s free.
Ben surges forward to meet her, something in her hand. She thrusts her arm forward. Blood sprays, hitting me in the face. The archer falls.
The knife, the flimsy little knife the archer had before, is planted in her lower torso. The woman gasps, hands grasping for the hilt. But Ben falls on her, grabbing the knife and stabbing her again. Twice more until the knife breaks off at the handle. And then Ben starts beating her with her bare hands.
“That’s enough!” I yell, dragging her off. “Stop it, Ben! Enough!”
I shake her until she stops struggling. Her hands tremble, palms coated in blood. Her face is drained of color, and she looks at me with huge lost eyes.
Dammit.
Atcitty’s eyes meet mine, and he glances down at the archer. Shrugs. Not dead, despite Ben’s best efforts. A belly wound with a knife like that may cause a lot of blood, but it will take more than that to kill.
“I never killed anyone before,” Ben whispers, head against my chest.
“Of course you haven’t killed anyone,” I tell Ben, trying to sound soothing. I don’t have the heart to tell Ben that the archer will probably live if the Boys can get her medical care in time. I nod to Atcitty, who nods back in understanding.
I wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead Ben away, down the mountain, careful to keep her turned until we’re far enough away that she can’t look back.
“I—I was just so angry,” she sobs. “And she was going to get away. I—I had to kill her, didn’t I? I had to.”
Probably not, to both of those, but no need to tell Ben that now.
“My uncle’s going to be so mad.”
I close my eyes. “Ben . . .”
“Oh.” She nods. “Right. He’s dead.”
Her knees give. I catch her just before she hits the ground.
Chapter 8
We don’t speak on the drive home. Ben curls up in the passenger’s seat of the jeep, a small ball of grief. I keep my eyes on the road, try to avoid the worst of the potholes and keep the jostling to a minimum. We get back to my trailer with the setting sun, the vehicle rattling over the cattle grate. The noise wakes Ben from her stupor. She looks around, confused.
“We’re at your place?” she asks, as I guide the vehicle up the sloping hill to my house. The lights are on above the porch, and in the front window, a warm glow that tells me Tah is in there making an early dinner or afternoon tea. At the thought, my muscles slide loose and some of the horror of the afternoon fades. I decide right then and there to clear the air with Tah and fix the rift I’ve let fester. If that means talking about Kai, so be it. It’s time I made things right between us.
But that vow holds only until Tah opens the door, a cup of broth in his hands. He doesn’t say anything, just takes one look at Ben, wrung-out and blood-spattered, and hustles her into the house. I can hear him fussing, probably getting her out of those bloody clothes and making her wash up before he puts her to bed.
I collapse on the couch, mindful of my own bloody face and clothes, but too tired to do much about it. Dealing with a shell-shocked teenager seems to have compounded my fatigue.
Confident Tah’s got Ben in hand, I close my eyes. Just a moment of rest before I figure out what comes next.
I wake up to Tah standing over me, holding out a cup of broth. I take it, grateful and silent, and we sit together, stealing a moment of peace. He waits until I’ve finished my broth to ask what happened.
“Hastiin’s dead.” I don’t equivocate. “Arrow through the throat. The brain. She saw it all.”
Tah sighs, long and heavy. “He was a good man.”
“No, he was a complete ass,” I say, tired, “but he was my friend in the end. And I don’t have many of those.”
Tah nods. “And who is the girl?”
“His niece. A tracker with clan powers.”
Tah’s eyes are tired. “So she’s a bit like you, then, Maggie.”
“I hope not.” He looks surprised at my vehemence. “I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through, Tah. It would be better to be dead. I mean it.”
“But she’s already come into her clan powers. So she’s already suffered. And her clans aren’t . . . She’s not . . .”
He’s trying to say she’s not K’aahanáanii, so she won’t suffer the same blood lust as me. She won’t become a killer.
“She’s Foot Path, born for Deer People, or something like that,” I acknowledge. “But she did try to kill that woman today, up on the ridge. The one who killed Hastiin.” And she said some awful things about me, but I don’t tell Tah that.
“Ah . . . ,” Tah says, sounding disappointed. Weary. “Ah.”
“There’s something else. Before Hastiin died, he asked me to watch after her.”
Tah fiddles with a silver ring, a habit Kai had too. It makes me smile. And then it makes me unconscionably sad.