Yerin clearly wasn’t here, and he had wasted most of the night already. On top of which, he was now faced with a twenty-foot climb back up.
Well, although Suriel had promised him great opportunities outside of Sacred Valley, she had never said they would be easy. A great sacred artist wouldn’t complain about something like this, he reminded himself, and steeled his body for the climb.
A cold point pressed against the underside of his chin, and he dropped his pack onto the snow. “I’d bet my soul against a rat’s tail that I never told you my name,” a girl said.
He’d never heard an accent like hers before, which was further proof that she was really from beyond Sacred Valley. Though he had a sword at his throat, Lindon still felt relief. He’d actually found her. “Yerin?”
“Your elders never asked my name, and I’d contend that you and I never crossed eyes before now. How do you know me?”
Lindon had considered several lies on the way here, but he needed Yerin to guide him voluntarily. He needed her on his side. Which meant he had to rely on the truth, such as it was.
“The heavens showed me,” he said.
The wind whistled over the chasm until the quiet became painful. Finally, she leaned around to get a peek at his face, though he couldn’t see much of an expression through her black hair.
“…you chipped in the head?”
“It sounds like I’m spinning you a story, I understand that. We don’t know each other, you’ve never met me. You don’t trust me, and that’s wise. Why should you?”
He took a risk and started to turn, but stopped when the point stuck deeper into his skin. Lindon swallowed. Nothing like a sword to the neck to keep a man honest. “Let me tell you why you should. How else did I know you? How did I know you were here? If I were trying to kill you, would I come out here shouting your name? A name the school elders don’t even know, so how would I get it? It’s impossible.”
She didn’t say anything and she didn’t kill him, so he took that as encouragement. “An immortal descended from heaven and told me your name, showed me this place. You were backed up against the wall, fighting a group of Heaven’s Glory Irons.”
Yerin’s sword ran lightly down his throat to the silk around his neck. It tugged upwards, drawing his badge out of his clothes. “So you were with the last bunch that tracked me down. That’s a pill I can swallow. They never made it to this place, but there was a group of Strikers in the back that I never…”
The badge emerged, but instead of an iron arrow, it displayed a single character carved in wood.
“Unsouled?”
“See? Not a Striker.” Lindon took a moment to slide away from the sword, which was now pointed at his chest.
“Did you whittle a fake badge just to pull this trick on me?” She didn’t sound convinced, and Lindon took the risk of letting out a small laugh.
“I tried to carve a fake badge once. It’s harder than you think. I cut my thumb so deep they had to stitch it closed.”
The sword moved away from his chest, and Lindon slowly turned around. For the second time that night, he was hit with the cold-water shock of coming face-to-face with something that Suriel had shown him.
Yerin was just as he’d seen her in the vision—a ragged warrior with shredded black robes and blade-straight hair. This close, he could see the hair-thin scars crossing her face, the threads in the blood-red rope tied around her waist like a thick belt. She held a long sword as though she’d forgotten it was in her hand.
All the details were the same, but she looked like a girl on the edge of death. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, her lips cracked, her cheeks purpled with bruises, her robes caked with dirt. Her sword was steady, but her knuckles were white on the hilt, as though she strained with her entire being to keep from dropping it.
She looked, in short, like a young woman who had spent the last weeks on the run in the wilderness. He should have expected it, but she had seemed healthy in the vision, and nothing in her voice had led him to expect this.
Something in his gaze must have given him away, because she tilted her sword up. “I’m not so weak I can’t kill a man on his own, even if you are a Jade.”
Lindon spread his palms, showing them empty. “You could be fast asleep and kill me. I have no strength to hide.” He glanced up at the sky over the chasm, where Samara’s ring had begun to fade. “They’ll be sending more disciples after you today, and this time I think they’re finally done underestimating you. Let’s work together.”
Her expression darkened as she looked at his disciple’s robes, and she held the sword so steady that it unnerved him. “I don’t hold deals with the Heaven’s Glory School.”
Lindon hurried to clarify. “I’ve only made some arrangements with them myself, I wouldn’t call them deals. Maybe dealings. But that’s over now, I’m done, I’ve gotten what I can out of them. Time to leave them behind.”
She squinted at him, her weapon wavering.
“Let me paint this scene for you: I need to get out of Sacred Valley, and you need to get away from Heaven’s Glory. We can help each other get what we want.”
She sheathed the sword in one smooth motion, but kept her hand resting on the hilt. “First off, tell me straight. Are you a disciple of the Heaven’s Glory School?”
“I tricked my way in,” he said. “It’s only been two days, and they’ve tried to kick me out at least three times.”
“What about the badge?”
“It’s real. Too real. I only wanted in this school to find you. The…celestial messenger…said that you had a way out.” He felt a little foolish saying it out loud like that, but it was the truth.
She drummed her fingers on her sword, then added, “I’ll be cutting through Heaven’s Glory until I get what I want or they’ve run out of blood. That bother you any?”
“Do you have a grudge against the Wei clan?”
“Who?”
He gave her a friendly smile, hoping it looked sincere. “Then we have no grudges between us. I owe Heaven’s Glory nothing. Burn them down and scrub the mountain clean, it has nothing to do with me.” She looked into his eyes for what felt like a long time, and then she relaxed.
Rather than relaxed, it was as though every muscle in her body gave up at the same moment. She slumped down onto a patch of snow, leaning up against the chasm wall. The dark bruises on her face stood out in stark contrast to the mesh of silken scars. “It’s plain you’re lying, but I don’t know how or why. This would be the worst possible trap Heaven’s Glory could set.”
“Apologies, but let me reassure you that this is not a trap. I want us to work together, and I wouldn’t start a bond like that with a lie.”
With her eyes closed, she stuck out a hand. Even that was covered in a network of scars, from wrist to fingertips.
“Swear on your soul.”
He froze as though the hand itself were a trap. “I’m sorry?”
“We both swear on our souls, and we can trust each other. Maybe you’re lying and maybe you’re not, but once we both swear, then we’re hitched to the same wagon.”
Lindon wasn’t clear about what would happen if he violated an oath on his soul, because no one spoke about it. He’d only heard rumors of sacred artists swearing such vows, and normally only in legends. Still, the rumors agreed on one thing: the more powerful your spirit, the more binding the oath. At the Foundation level, he might escape with only minor damage to his core.