She Who Rides the Storm (The Gods-Touched Duology)
She Who Rides the Storm: Chapter 14

That man killed my brother.” Anwei walked fast between sugarcane stalks, keeping the road in sight. She could feel Knox beside her but couldn’t let herself look at him. She should never have let someone follow her around in the first place. It wasn’t safe for either of them, and not just because of the snake-tooth man. “You’ll be in danger now that I’ve found him. That’s why I want you to go.”

“Your brother?” Knox fought to keep up with her.

Anwei put a hand to her nose. The snake-tooth man had been there. Standing right in full view, smelling like the void he was. Shale had led her right to him. She could still feel Arun’s laugh ringing in her ears. It sounded just the same as hers.

Her whole body ached, as if replaceing Arun’s bloody bed had just happened. Memories of stealing food off his plate and him slapping her hand only to steal off hers; Arun’s fingers gently tying one of her braids in front of the town council when she’d earned it; Arun steadying her when she started crying over a bowl of seeds that wouldn’t grind down fine enough, her father waiting outside for the medicine to be ready. “We were like… one person. I pretended I’d done half the naughty things that were actually him, and he took canings for half of mine. It was the two of us, toeing the line for my father because he wanted us to learn right, Mother drying all our tears when he got frustrated with us.” She took a deep breath, hardly able to glance over at Knox. She felt so, so empty. “He was everything to me. And the snake-tooth man killed him.”

“All those jobs we did.” Knox’s mouth was moving too slow, tasting each word. “All the things we stole. It wasn’t for the money?”

“Some of it was. Gulya doesn’t pay that well.”

Knox was so quiet. The sugarcane swayed in the breeze, and Anwei could hear every soft snick her shoes made against the ground, but even Knox’s feet didn’t make any noise. When he finally spoke, it was low. “You were looking for traces of his smell? And now you’ve found it. Because of this job?” He sped up, darting so he was ahead of her and walking backward, forcing her to meet his eyes. She could see the questions twisting in his mouth, but he kept them inside. No pasts. Only jobs and stupid banter. That was their unspoken agreement.

“I told you I’d bring you your money.” She couldn’t look at him. “More besides. You can head for the border, or…” The “or” came out before Anwei could tug it back.

“You said it was a trap. Someone offers us an obscene amount of money, and this guy you’ve been looking for is there at the middle of it? Anwei, this is not a good idea.”

“The snake-tooth man is working inside the dig, and Shale can help me get inside. He knows who the snake-tooth man is.” Anwei twined a braid around her finger, trying to remember what it had felt like when Arun first tied it, eli flowers tucked into the leather. One herb for each of the hundred braids. She could remember each of their names, but it was getting harder to remember the feel of him there beside her.

Knox switched to walking alongside her again. The lights grew closer, the night colder. “If there are Devoted inside that compound, I won’t be able to help you.”

“I know.” It hurt even when she said it in a whisper. Why did it hurt? Half an hour ago he’d been accusing her of banned magic. Hours before that he’d been holding that abominable sword, and she’d been clutching the packet of calistet. This should be easy.

“And… I explained about auras. Why you being near Devoted isn’t safe. You believe me?”

Anwei shrugged. Then shrugged again, tears burning against her eyelids. After all these years her scars still stung.

“But I want…” Knox tensed, his head jerking toward the edge of the field. “Someone’s coming up the road. It could be Roosters. There were enough of them at that compound.”

He paused long enough to be sure she was following before he melted into the shadows. It was odd, but she could point to where he was even without her eyes, keeping close behind him until he hopped into the ditch on the other side of the sugarcane field. She lowered herself down next to him and sat on the cold ground, surprised when he leaned toward her, his arm and shoulder brushing hers.

“Listen,” he whispered once the hoofbeats had passed. “You’ve found your murderer. What now? You want to get revenge? Turn him in?” Knox paused, a question humming in his voice. “Kill him?”

She stood, dusted herself off, and climbed out of the ditch. “That last one.”

“You should have told me to bring a bow. He’d already be dead.”

“It isn’t that easy.”

“Why not?”

Anwei stared into the lights until her eyes watered. No questions. No history. No friends. No self. No life. Because she didn’t have one. Not while the snake-tooth man still lived.

That wasn’t what she wanted. To be empty. To constantly feel the raw edges of where Arun was supposed to fit in next to her. This life of chasing and hiding and never letting anyone in because it meant the snake-tooth man might hear she was there looking for him. That he’d do to her what he’d done to her parents, and then…

And then…

Anwei’s face crumpled, and a gasp tore at her throat. She wanted it to be over. And now that the snake-tooth man was there, standing on the wall, real as murder itself, it could be. “An arrow wouldn’t work. He’s a shapeshifter, Knox—he could probably pluck it right out of the air before it got to him.”

Knox stopped halfway out of the ditch, nearly falling back into it. He swore, floundering at the bottom for a moment before climbing out and walking to stand beside her, Jaxom’s red moonlight a halo around his head. He stood very still, solidly there for once.

“My brother is dead because I was too scared to leave a town meeting. I let him hide at home without me, and I’ve spent the last seven years of my life trying to fix it.” Saying the words out loud was a knife to Anwei’s own stomach. “I escaped Beilda on a boat with no food, no clothes, no friends. Barely breath in my lungs.”

“Escaped?” Knox’s outline flinched, his hands opening and closing at his sides. The stillness of him was unnerving. “You mean you ran away from home?”

“No.” Anwei started walking again, deflated, as if the secret had been the only thing holding her spine straight. “Killing my brother wasn’t the only thing the snake-tooth man did.”

Gretis’s blocky buildings beckoned them out of the dark, only a hundred paces down the road. The town square was lit up at the center, people dancing back and forth under the lanterns.

“What more did the shapeshifter do, Anwei?” Knox was suddenly in front of her again, his hand on her arm. “Please, I need you to tell me. What happened?”

She steered him toward the shadows as they entered the town, searching for a red door that would mark an inn. The story bubbled up inside her, the one she could never tell, festering inside her like poison. And here Knox was, asking, as if he really cared.

He did care. Anwei could feel it inside her, like she’d had only two legs to a stool and suddenly Knox had lent her a third. “It was the day Arun was supposed to tie my last braid in front of the town council.”

Knox took her arm and drew it through his as they walked. Maybe he knew she needed steadying even with those first words.

“Everyone was waiting for us, but Arun wouldn’t come. It was like… he knew something was wrong.” She smiled a little, remembering the way he’d tried to pretend that he was bored, that council meetings were a waste of time, that he’d rather go down to the ocean and search for gulls’ eggs. “I got mad at him. I’d worked so hard to earn my last braid—he’d already earned his hundred and was working with my father in the shop—and I thought he didn’t care. So I went without him and it stayed with me like a thundercloud. Hardly anyone came to the ceremony, like most of our town forgot I was finally earning my last braid. My father pulled my hair as he tied it. And as we walked home, I came up with all the awful things I was going to say to Arun for making such an important day a bad one. But when I got to his room, I… I found him. What was left of him.”

Knox tensed beside her, his arm in hers pulling her an inch closer, as if he could hold her there where she couldn’t get lost in such an awful memory. But saying it out loud did feel like losing herself. Anwei could still remember the smell of it: the red all over Arun’s bed, the breeze from the open window, and the man who had been standing there. A sort-of man—hulking in the bright light like a beast startled from its meal, his cheeks streaked with blood. She’d felt something reach out toward her, something hot twisting up inside her brain as he met her eyes, until all she’d been able to do was scream. “I saw him—the snake-tooth man. He ran away from the house and I screamed for my parents, but when they came, they couldn’t understand why I was so upset. They couldn’t remember they had a son.”

Knox’s toe caught on a flagstone, and he barely managed to catch himself, swearing under his breath. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know.” She could hardly whisper it, the memory still too acid to soak in. “It was as if the moment Arun stopped breathing, some god plucked him out of existence. Out of my parents’ minds, from our friends’, our entire village’s memory. No one believed me that Arun had been killed, because no one knew who Arun was anymore. Not even when I showed them his blood, his fingers still scattered under the bed, where they’d been cut off. It was like they couldn’t see any of it. I never even found the rest of his body.”

“What did the snake-tooth man do with him?”

Anwei’s head shook, her thoughts sticky with red. “He had blood on his face. Around his mouth and all across his cheeks. I don’t know what it is shapeshifters have to do to steal…”

“Calsta above.” Knox’s breath was shaky as it went in. “Um… there’s an inn over there.” He pointed to a red door across the brightly lanterned square. It was sandwiched between two malthouses that reeked of dirt and boredom. “Are you all right?”

Anwei shook her head. “No. But I’ve had seven years of not being all right. Now I can finally do something.”

Scrubbing a hand across his face, Knox gave her a gentle pull, leading her across the square and into the light. “Was there a… a weapon? Anything else the shapeshifter left behind?”

“A weapon? No.” Anwei looked over at him, her mind glomming on to the sword. The day her brother was murdered was the day she remembered smelling for the first time. Not the normal scents of toast burning or dirty feet. The world opened up to her like a perfume bottle and presented itself with a curtsy. And all the herbs started shaking in their jars, screaming along with her.… Anwei shook her head now, wishing she could banish it all from her mind. “The shapeshifter left nothing. A trail of it. He was nothing, and he made Arun into nothing. He smelled like your sword.”

Knox flinched, the moment of silence heavy. Anwei stifled her nose, setting aside the strong smells of sugarcane and cotton that blew in from the fields, not sure if Knox’s reaction was because of the mention of her nose or of his sword. There’s something wrong with your aura. Devoted will be able to see what you are.

But she was not what Knox thought she was. Maybe she could have been, but not anymore.

“But why leave?” Knox asked. “Seven years… you couldn’t have been more than… ten?”

Anwei found herself a smile because laughing was always easier. “You don’t know how old I am?”

“Something more happened. What made you run?”

Something more. Every muscle in Anwei’s body seemed to contract. Her scars felt as if they were on fire. Anwei clenched her eyes shut, not wanting to remember. Refusing. “It doesn’t matter.”

“How do you figure that?”

Anwei pressed her lips together and looked at him. “Does it matter?”

Opening his mouth, Knox couldn’t seem to replace words for a moment, then finally cocked his head. “No, not if you don’t want to talk about it. You’ve already had to live through enough memories for one night, I guess. But that was definitely your brother’s murderer up on that wall?” Knox scrubbed a hand through his hair. “What’s the job?”

“The compound is a tomb excavation. Some old shapeshifter king. Shale wants me to take a sword from the burial chamber.” Anwei watched him from the corner of her eye, not sure why he cared. “I recognized Shale’s description of the dig director and came out here to see if I was right. It is definitely him.”

“What could a Trib want with a—” Knox’s voice cracked. “A shapeshifter’s sword?”

“What do you want with yours?”

They’d come to the inn door, and Knox stopped with his hand on the latch, looking down at her, his mouth half-open as if he meant to answer. But then he only pulled open the door.

Anwei bit back a curse. No questions. That was their agreement. Spilling her secrets didn’t mean he was going to reveal his own. He’d called her a dirt witch only a few hours earlier. Maybe this was where they parted ways, not because she told him to go, but because he’d finally want to go himself. She bit back another curse, wishing for the first time in a year that she hadn’t picked Knox and his cursed sword up off the street.

Forcing her back to straighten despite the way her insides were caving in, Anwei followed him into the common room. She didn’t really wish she and Knox had never met. That thought was almost as lonely as the idea of him leaving now.

The main floor was scattered with round tables, one of which hosted a circle of farmers suspiciously eyeing one another over their cards. A raised bar ran the length of the far wall, mismatched stools pushed up under it, staffed by a barkeep with a long, braided mustache who was reading an illustrated version of A Thousand Nights in Urilia.

“A room?” she called, not looking at Knox. She couldn’t, the weight of her story unbalancing everything between them. She didn’t want to go all the way back to the city alone, though, not with the nothing smell rank in her nose. “Two, if you’ve got them.”

“Only got one that’s clean.” The man hardly looked up from his book.

“We’re not picky.” Anwei jumped when Knox nudged her with his shoulder. “Okay, he is picky. I don’t know why, since he smells like a brickmaker’s armpit.”

The man set his book down. “Three coppers for two rooms. Four if you want dinner.”

The first room smelled clean enough, though the bed linens were stained. The second, however, had a family of rats living in the straw-stuffed mattress and a hole in the floor that had obviously been used as a privy. Anwei looked sideways at Knox. “Just the one room will be fine,” she said.

Once the barkeep left them, Anwei let herself slump down onto the bed. Knox took a spot on the floor and leaned back against the wall, watching her every move as if he thought she might sprout fangs or perhaps an extra set of arms.

“I’m not the one who’s picky.” He said it quietly, carefully.

“Rats spread disease, Knox. You are welcome to sleep in the other room if you want, but you might need healing after, and we both know how you feel about that.” The mattress felt hard, as if it were made from gristle and bones instead of straw.

“Fine.” Knox knit his fingers together, switching to a businessy tone she’d heard him use only with Gulya. “So, we sleep here tonight. In the morning you can show me what Shale’s given you, and we can make a real plan.”

Anwei blinked, something like nausea sloshing through her stomach. And hope. Blasted hope. “We?”

“I’m guessing we have a very limited window to get in? Devoted wouldn’t be here if things weren’t close to being finished. Once the dig closes, you won’t know where your snake-tooth man is anymore, so we have to move fast. He’s staying inside the compound?”

“I don’t know. That’s part of the reason I need to work with Shale. He has a lot of information on the dig I can’t get without spending weeks watching, if at all. Maps, shipment schedules, labor lists. He knows a lot about the archeologists there, where they’re from, where they stay, when they sleep. But he won’t give most of it to me until I’m ready to go over the wall.” Anwei waited until Knox looked at her. “What’s it matter to you? You can’t be a part of this, Knox. You said it yourself.”

“But we can’t trust Shale or this job, so we need to replace out how to get access to the people he stole the information from.” Knox stood, distractedly picking up one of the pillows edged in yellowing lace, then putting it down again. “The governor’s house mark was all over that compound, so that means he’s been the one overseeing it until now. I’ll bet he’s where Shale got all his information.”

“You said you can’t—”

“He’d have maps for certain. Rosters, supplies, guard rotations. Staking things out at the dig isn’t an option, but maybe we could get into the governor’s house? We already know the layout and exactly where he’d be keeping records. Breaking in would probably get us everything you need without having to rely on Shale.”

“Knox.” Anwei sat up, wishing she had the energy to be angry. “Stop. You can’t come.”

He pivoted toward her, his fingernails scrubbing against his scalp. “I… I need the money.”

“You just said I shouldn’t work with Shale. And even if I do, I doubt there is money. He advanced a little, but I’m guessing he means to take it all back the moment this trap, whatever it is, snaps shut.” Anwei leaned back against the wall, crossing her arms. “That’s a good idea about skimming the governor’s records, though.” She pointed at Knox. “Noa said there’s some kind of party up at the governor’s compound in the next few days—she even asked me if I want to come.”

“I hate Noa. She’s all gold and silver with nothing underneath.”

“She has nice things to say about you.”

“If I end up snoring in my dinner after she’s been by, you can remind me why you like her then.” Knox leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor, letting his head hang down. “How come you didn’t tell any wardens what happened to your brother, Anwei? Or a Devoted? That’s what Devoted do. They hunt shapeshifters.” His head came back up, a trace of a smile on his lips. “Seems like a… fifteen-year-old…” He paused, eyeing her. “A fifteen-year-old would have known to ask for help. Am I getting any closer?”

“It happened seven years ago. You think I’m twenty-two?” Anwei’s real smile sparked through her lead coating.

“How did you live?”

Anwei held up a fistful of braids.

“You healed people?”

“Not at first.” Knox’s face was so impassive; nothing was enough to shake him. Except for the mention of her brother and the shapeshifter. Anwei watched his face as if she could catch him feeling something. “Why does it matter to you?”

“It’s nice to have a setting to put you in.”

That wasn’t enough, and suspicion began to prickle inside her. “Where’s your setting?” Anwei couldn’t look at him, saying it to the ceiling.

“Before we get into that, we need to talk about this shapeshifter—”

Anwei shook her head, staring at the water stains marking the wood panels. “This is my war. You’re not invited.”

“I’m inviting myself.” Knox moved, and Anwei jerked her head down to look at him. He knelt on the floor right next to the bed, the light soft on his face. “You’re my friend, Anwei.”

The light didn’t feel soft on her. It felt like a thousand beetles crawling all over her body. Deciding to risk your life because of friendship didn’t make sense. And it hadn’t made sense to him, either, not until Anwei told him about the shapeshifter. She rolled over and perched her chin on her hands, their faces even. He didn’t blink, the almost-black irises more distracting than his ridiculous guesses at her age—she’d sailed away from Beilda into that storm just before her twelfth birthday. The seven years since might as well have counted as double. But she couldn’t afford to pay attention to Knox’s eyes, not when they distracted her from the truth.

And the truth was that Knox hunted shapeshifters, had stuck with her for the last year, then done something unnatural to her head. She could literally smell the discomfort squirming through him even now, when she’d never smelled a single feeling on anyone until that day. Anwei hadn’t remembered until telling her story, but that was what the shapeshifter had done too. He’d messed with all their heads, and it had changed everyone in her family, in her town. But not her. “Tell me the real reason,” she said.

Knox’s mouth pinched into a straight line, and for a moment Anwei didn’t want to hear the answer, not if it made him look as if he were about to kill someone.

But she had to know, no matter how much she didn’t want to.

Knox looked down at his hands, clenched so the scars on his knuckles stretched. “We have more in common than you think.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” His words came out clipped. “My sister was murdered before I went to the seclusion. My parents, too. About six years ago.” He glanced up, not quite meeting her eyes. “When I was eleven, just so we’re clear on ages.”

“What happened?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. I wasn’t there.” Knox’s face seemed to be leaking color, his fingers flexing and unflexing. He slipped them into his pockets, as if that would make them stop, but then his hands just balled into fists inside. “I found her dead. Holding the sword.”

Anwei couldn’t breathe for a second, the scales between them sliding back toward something equal. “You think a shapeshifter did it. My shapeshifter?”

“Your story and my story are a little too similar for it not to be.”

“They aren’t similar. Not really.”

“But how many shapeshifters are capable of… of…” Knox half turned, his eyes pointing toward Chaol. “Of making something like that sword? It takes a long time to learn any kind of magic, shapeshifting included. I’d be much more inclined to believe one very powerful shapeshifter has been able to survive rather than two or ten. They can’t hide from Devoted.”

Anwei shivered when he turned back to look her up and down, his eyes pausing on something over her head and shoulders that she couldn’t see.

“You say I can’t hide from Devoted, but I’ve never had problems.”

“Your aura is small, and Devoted haven’t been searching as far out as they used to. I guess it could be two separate shapeshifters. But the sword has been different over the last little bit.” He faltered, his voice falling. “Stronger. What if it’s because she recognizes her maker is near? What if it… feeds her?”

A sword that recognized things. She? Feeds? Anwei eased back from him a few inches, wondering how it was she’d lived so long next to Knox and not seen any of this. Her skin prickled as she remembered his empty obsidian stare from earlier that day, the sword in his arms. It was easy to set aside ghosts, wreaths of bael, and Calsta, the goddess who conveniently hadn’t shown her face since the first Warlord began killing shapeshifters five hundred years earlier. But the sword? She’d seen what it could do. Gods and goddesses were only made of stone, their altars on the Temple Cay covered in flowers and offerings, devotees with wide eyes and open hearts wasting prayers on their empty stone ears. Magic, though… Anwei knew to believe in that.

“Two murders. My brother, your sister.” She counted them on her fingers. “Four if he killed your parents.”

“I don’t know if he did. She might have done it,” Knox whispered. “She might have… sucked them dry.”

Somehow this was worse than anything else he’d said. Words caught in Anwei’s throat at the expression that flicked across his face before it disappeared. “I’m so sorry, Knox, but you talk about… her, and I don’t know if you mean your sister or the sword.”

He pulled one of the lace-edged pillows to rest under his chin. “They’re the same. Willow is in there. It was… a trap, maybe? A soul catcher.”

“She’s trapped? Inside the sword?” Anwei’s stomach wrenched, the memory of that nothing scent still burning in her nose.

It made her wonder just for a moment: If shapeshifters stored souls once they stole them, was there a chance that Arun’s was still somewhere? Trapped in something stupid like a ring or a cup or a butter knife, turning the air around him empty?

She looked at Knox. “What would replaceing the shapeshifter do to help you?”

“I don’t know. If he’s the one who did it, then maybe killing him would undo it. If not… he might know how to let her go. Let her die peacefully instead of…” Something pained flicked across Knox’s face.

Anwei sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed next to him. “You were set to enter the seclusion. And you came with a sword instead of a sister. Both your parents were dead. No one asked questions? You didn’t tell anyone?”

“I hid the sword. And…” Knox’s mouth hung open a moment, his eyes flicking back and forth, focused on something in the past. “No one remembered. Calsta told me not to say anything, and no one ever asked.”

Anwei closed her eyes. No one remembered.

“I… I was so upset at the time, I didn’t even think about it. Not until now.” He hunched around the pillow, the yellowed lace brushing his chin. “Anwei, this is an answer. There has never been anything but questions until now. All she wanted was to become a tailor like my mother and maybe kiss the cobbler’s son, if she could get away with it. And now she’s… something else. A ghost? It was my fault for not being there.”

Anwei licked her lips, staring at him. The little bit of him that had burrowed into her head that morning seemed to be off, as if there were some kind of weight pulling it into the wrong shape. A ghost on Knox’s shoulder that he couldn’t help but reach for.

She grabbed the other pillow and lay down on it, closing her eyes, the cool fabric soothing against her cheek. Do I look the way he does? She wondered if she looked misshapen too. What has this life of hunting made of me?

“How have we taken this long to talk?” Knox tried to smile, as if he could cover up everything he’d said. He never had been much good at pretending.

Anwei snorted. “I was worried if I told you anything about myself, you’d realize how much older I am than you.”

When she opened her eyes, the light in Knox’s eyes was suddenly familiar again, the smirk on his lips the one she’d grown so used to. “I was just being nice before. We both know you’re well into middle age. That’s why you and Gulya get on so well.”

She laughed, hugging her pillow so close, she could feel each goose feather inside it. Knox pulled himself up from the floor, letting his pillow fall next to her. The muscles in his arms slid smoothly under the skin as he reached over her to gather up the extra blanket lying next to her. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

Anwei shut her eyes, her breath catching in her throat at the way he brushed against her. “You can sleep up here. Just keep on your side. If you kick me in the middle of the night, I’ll probably shapeshift and eat your soul.” Not everything was resolved between them.

Knox’s brows twitched together, his fingers digging into the scratchy quilt’s fabric, but he only walked around to the other side of the bed in answer, the pallet dipping toward him when he sat down. It was only after the candle was out that Knox whispered, “I told you I hunted Basists, Anwei.”

She bit her lip.

“Killed them.”

Her scars burned, her silence burning too. He would have killed her, had they met at a different time in his life. Even though she was broken. Not a Basist. Not a threat. “Children?” she asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Devoted children start to see auras when they’re young, but it goes away if they don’t make any oaths, even the aftersparks in their auras. It must be the same with Basists. I’d like to think if a Devoted saw someone manifest young, they could… take them into hand. Watch them. Stop them from going any further.”

“But that isn’t what Devoted do?”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. “I never hurt a child. But if I hadn’t gone after the Basists who did make oaths, they could have… I don’t know, drained their villages. Started stealing souls. Set up new shapeshifter kingdoms again. That’s what history says. What Calsta says.” But then he was quiet, as if perhaps he’d heard the Warlord say it and he wasn’t sure if that was the same thing as a goddess.

“You’ve fought a shapeshifter?” Anwei asked. “Someone who had actually gotten that far?”

“No.” He drew breath again. “It was always a fight, though. They would have killed me.”

“Was it always a fight because they wanted to kill you, or because they knew you’d come to kill them?” she whispered.

He shifted, the pallet dipping and dragging her toward him an inch. But she stayed on her side, clinging for dear life. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “I don’t know. I wish I did.”

“Do you? Or would that make it worse?”

“Worse isn’t bad if it means knowing the truth.” Knox shifted again, and she could feel his breath against her shoulder. Anwei’s whole back tensed, waiting for him to touch her. But instead he said, “It seems like it should be easy to know what is right and what is wrong. But I spent my whole life thinking anyone with a shade of darkness in their aura was evil, until I met you. And even until… well, now, I was worried about what that darkness meant, even when I’ve never once seen you use it to hurt someone.”

Anwei made herself breathe. He was so close. “No?”

“You’ve hurt people before, I suppose. But usually only to stop them hurting you. And you’ve never used your aura to do it. It makes me wonder how many of the Basists I located over the years were just trying to live. Until I found them.”

Anwei let her eyes open and stared at the yellowed lace.

“Do you think it will even be possible to get this shapeshifter to talk to me about the sword? I’m a Devoted. He’s going to fight.”

She looked over her shoulder to replace him looking up at the ceiling, a hand across his forehead. “Is that what you are? Devoted?”

“Yes. Calsta is the only reason I’m still here.”

Anwei turned onto her back, staring up at the ceiling too. She wasn’t sure what it meant to be Devoted, other than what Knox had said. That people like him killed people like her to protect the Commonwealth. But he hadn’t done it. What did that mean? Anwei let out a ragged breath, hugging her arms around her ribs. “I think I can persuade him to talk to you.” Her mind flew to the jar under the floorboards in the apothecary herb room. Gamtooth venom made people spill truths at random, but if mixed with some other ingredients into a serum, it could force much more targeted truths from the person who drank it. She didn’t mind forcing a few secrets from the shapeshifter before he died. “Yes, I think so. With some help.”

“How were you planning to do it?” She felt him turn toward her, the empty space between them tingling. “Kill a shapeshifter? If stories are true, they can take the energy straight from people around them to keep themselves from dying. That’s why they shift, I thought. Because when you take from someone else, you become less tied to your own aura. They’re… distorted. Corrupted. Not quite human anymore.”

Anwei turned onto her stomach, burrowing her head between her arms. That was one flaw she’d never been able to see past in her years of replaceing. The first Warlord had found a way to kill the old kings when no one else had been able to. Whatever she’d done hadn’t been shared with the rest of the Commonwealth. Everywhere Anwei had gone in search of the snake-tooth man, she’d searched for an answer—sometimes bribing the university library attendants with love potions and itching powder just to get into the sections that talked about the shapeshifter wars. But in all her years in searching the Commonwealth—down in Elantia, Corosoy, and Prith; to the east in Chiantan and Forge; and even up past the border into Trib lands—all Anwei had ever learned were new words.

Anwei clutched her pillow tighter. “I expect even gods die when you stab them in the heart.”