Chapter One

Mirei felt something nudge her shoulder.

She blinked out of the warm, muzzy darkness, then blinked a few more times in the dazzling glimmer of sunlight on ocean waves.

“You dozed off,” Rima said. Her amber eyes narrowed, and she snorted, giving her huge head a shake, blue spines rattling. “I hate it when you come out of dreams smelling like that.”

“Smelling like what?” Mirei asked, though she knew. She scooted away from the base of the palm tree and rubbed at her bare back. The bark had left itchy indentations in her skin.

“Ugh.” Rima’s claws rubbed at the end of her scaly nose. “Memories—the sort that aren’t even yours. Buried, half-alive things. All sandy and crusted over. Muddy blue and dull gray.” The Nahrzai snuffed, then arched her neck over Mirei. The sunlight through the fronds made criss-crossed patterns over her red scales. “Do I have to throw you in a tide pool to get the smell off? I will.”

Mirei laughed as she adjusted her top and smoothed back her hair. “I know you will.” She reached for her spear and used it to steady herself as she stood, brushing sand from the back of her wrap skirt. “Whatever you’re smelling should be fading now, right?”

“More or less.”

Rima’s tail flicked as she left the shade of the palms. She picked up her spear with one hand and a large basket with the other. “Mother wants foamflower. We’re running low.”

Mirei stepped into the sun and eyed the basket, then looked up at Rima. “You’re coming, too?”

“Of course.”

Mirei’s arm gave Rima’s side an affectionate nudge as she walked past her. “I know you hate the meadow.”

“It’s inland.” Rima’s dewlap expanded. “But someone’s gotta watch your squishy back.”

Mirei laughed. “Well, the sooner we get there, the sooner we can leave.”

The path through the cypress forest was soft beneath their feet—springy and warm, dotted with fallen pods and curling vines. Gray ghostlace hung from every branch, swaying in the breeze. Rima’s claws left scores in the mud next to Mirei’s lighter tracks. Birds twittered to each other; somewhere, a squirrel chattered. Sunlight glinted through the golden web of an orb weaver in the branches high above.

“Mother told me we should take extra care while we’re out today,” Rima said.

“Mother always says that.”

“Yes, well. Mother seemed extra trepidatious this time.”

Mirei slowed, then grinned. “‘Trepidatious’? Now that’s a big word.”

“I know big words. I just don’t like the way they feel in my teeth.”

They came to the spot where several trees grew together over the path, forming an arch heavy with ghostlace. Mirei paused and poked at some with her spear. She snagged a curling garland with the flint spearhead and tugged, but it wouldn’t quite come loose.

Rima rolled her eyes but grasped several bunches of ghostlace in her claws. “I know we have enough of this,” she said as she dropped them into Mirei’s basket.

“We can always use more,” Mirei said. “Anyway, you like showing off how tall you are.”

Rima gave her shoulder a shove, though not hard. “You shouldn’t have been born a Velka if you didn’t want to be short.”

Mirei laughed and passed through the arch. She didn’t have to duck; Rima did, her head-spines brushing the lowest branches.

“Do you really think something’s wrong?” Mirei asked as they went on. Her voice was soft now, not teasing.

Rima didn’t answer right away. “I think…” She frowned. “I think it’s one of those times. When Mother knows the feel of things, and maybe a faint smell of things—but not the exact shape.”

Mirei couldn’t think of anything to say to that. The air here felt closer, warmer. She paused and fished in a pocket on her skirt, pulled out her ribbon, and began to tie back her hair.

“Let me do it.” Rima leaned her spear against a tree trunk and took a few locks of Mirei’s long white hair. “Still say you should cut it off,” she muttered as she began to braid. Her claws moved with the easy grace of years of practice.

Mirei gave a lopsided smile. “You’d cry if I ever did cut it.”

“Would not.” Rima’s claws gently nudged Mirei’s hand. “Give me that.”

Mirei passed her the well-loved strip of blue cloth. “Then what would I wear your ribbon in?” she asked.

Rima snorted again. “I can’t believe you even still have this thing. It’s all faded and frayed.”

“I love it.”

Rima secured the ribbon at the end of the braid, where Mirei’s hair darkened to black. “Just a dumb ribbon, hairball,” she muttered, but when Mirei turned to look at her, she was smiling.

They walked in silence after that, until the trees thinned.

“There.” Rima gestured with her spear, pointing ahead to the gentle hills beyond the woods, green grass covered with a patchwork of white blossoms. “Lousy with foamflower. That should be plenty.”

Mirei brightened and hurried forward, out of the trees and to the first patch of long stalks topped with their clusters of tiny white flowers. The ground was wet and spongy from the morning’s rain, soaking her skirt as she knelt, but Mirei barely noticed. She pulled her knife and began to harvest.

Rima stayed upright, her eyes scanning the woods, then the field to the horizon. The breeze had stilled.

“Do you smell that?” she asked.

Mirei glanced up. “Smell what?”

“Like blood. And metal.”

“Are you being trepidatious now?”

Rima didn’t smile. “It's gone all red and black over there, beyond that hill.” She stepped forward, tail raised. “Hurry it up.”

“Basket’s nowhere near full.”

“Hurry faster.”

Mirei was no longer smiling as she looked up at Rima again. “I'm going as fast as I can. What's got your spines up all of a sudden?”

A low growl rose in Rima's throat. “I can't believe even you can't smell that.”

Before Mirei could respond, a roar shattered the morning—deep, ugly, like nothing she had ever heard. It vibrated through her, setting her teeth on edge, twisting her insides. Mirei dropped her knife with a yelp and covered her ears. Rima snarled and grabbed her shoulder, hauling her to her feet and pushing her back. The ground shook.

It came over the next hill—a beast as tall as Rima and many times her bulk. Cloven hooves kicked up clods of dirt as it barreled down the slope. Bushes exploded into clouds of leaves as the curved horns on its nose crashed through them; foam flew from around its tusks. It paused at the base of the hill and gave another bellow. From the hump of its back, in its coarse and bristling hair, a number of arrows protruded, swaying like harmless pins.

“Thavok!” Rima shouted.

The huge head swung toward them. The eyes were red, wild. Its nostrils flared. It seemed to consider them for a moment; then it charged.

“Run!” Rima gave Mirei a shove toward the trees.

Mirei bolted. She realized, too late, that she had left everything—basket, knife, spear. The hooves pounded behind her, louder and louder; she could hear the thavok’s breath, could almost feel it. She wasn’t fast enough; she wasn’t going to make it—

The world spun as Rima’s claws wrapped around her waist. Mirei’s feet left the damp grass, and in the next moment she was rolling, her face pressed against Rima’s scaly chest. She felt the rushing wind of the thavok’s passing, the salt-and-iron smell of its hide and blood. She hit the ground with a whoosh of breath. Rima twisted upright in an instant. Mirei glanced up to see the scraps of her basket, bits of ghostlace and foamflower fluttering to the ground where the thavok had run over it.

Rima’s hand fell to the crown of her head. “Stay down,” she snapped. “I’ll lead it away—” Her jaw went slack, amber eyes widening.

Mirei followed her gaze to the hill, where several figures had appeared.

Three were Velka, like her. Two had long black hair, braids whipping behind them as they ran; the hair of the third was short, unbound. There was a Nahrzai—a looming reptilian shape as big as Rima. Two more brought up the rear—cloaked, indistinct. Mirei squinted. For a moment, she thought she saw a tufted tail…

And then Rima shoved her down again. The grass in front of her face trembled as the thavok thundered past again.

There was a thud. A girl’s scream. “Soru!” a man’s voice shouted.

Rima let go of her, and Mirei raised up. Her eyes widened in horror; a cold weight dropped in her stomach as one of the long-haired Velka—a giant of a man—was impaled on the thavok’s foremost horn. The beast roared and thrashed, tossing the man aside like a doll. He hit the ground and rolled once, twice, before he came to rest on his back, close enough to Mirei for her to see blood smearing the grass around him.

Mirei felt her legs moving before her mind caught up.

“What are you doing?” came Rima’s shout behind her, but already she sounded far away. Mirei dropped to her knees beside the unconscious man. She had a moment to take in his clothes—red and black cloth covering him from neck to toe, leather gloves, leather boots.

She didn’t want to look at his wound. Mirei forced herself, and a wave of nausea roiled through her. This was bad. Worse than an eel bite, worse than a fall. She did her best to ignore the shaking in her limbs, the panic that threatened to take hold. No, no, focus. His blood was seeping into the dirt around her knees. No ghostlace would staunch it. No elixir could help.

There was nothing else for it. Mirei took a deep breath and hovered her hands over the wound. The sounds of the world faded to a distant hum as she increased her focus. Come on… back together…

Rima snarled and whirled away, gripping her spear in both hands. “Fine.”

The two remaining Velka had flanked the thavok. One was a heavyset man, his long hair dressed in a number of braids. Wielding two curving blades, he lunged, stumbled, and barely dodged as the creature tossed its head. The short-haired Velka, a reed-thin girl, aimed a bow and loosed an arrow. It lodged in the beast’s thick hide, quivering with the others. The thavok snorted and swung toward her.

Rima’s eyes narrowed at the strange Nahrzai. Armed with a spear of her own, she had a streak of black in her scent, but only a streak. Rima hissed at the colorful wrap around her waist and over one shoulder. Inland. Riverstyle. Useless.

Rima launched herself forward, her teeth bared, knuckles standing out as she gripped her spear. The Velka girl tumbled this way and that, always just out of range of the thavok’s horns. Another of her arrows thudded into the beast’s neck. The man dashed in and dealt two slashes along the thavok’s side. It let out a bellow and, for a second, reared on its hind legs, front hooves slashing the air.

A second was all Rima needed. She dropped to her side in mid-sprint and let the momentum carry her in a skid through the wet grass. She saw the thavok loom above her, all bristly hair and stony hide, saw the soft belly underneath. Its red-orange rage nearly overwhelmed her, but Rima clamped her mouth shut, closed her eyes, and thrust her spear.

The beast screamed as hot blood sprayed over Rima, into her eyes and mouth. She gritted her teeth and shoved the spear in deeper, deep as it would go. When her hands slipped from the spear shaft, she whipped her neck around, opened her jaws, and bit. Her teeth found flesh, tough, thick, but not thick enough. She bore down; her claws found purchase in the folds of hide as she bit, ripped, bit again. Black flooded her nostrils—her own scent now: killing, killing. The thavok thrashed, crushed her into the ground, but still Rima’s teeth held, jaws tightening, grinding.

At last, she felt something snap. There was one final scream that set her ears ringing before the thavok collapsed to its side on top of her. Its short legs kicked long after its breathing stopped.

Rima spat blood as she wriggled out from under the still-warm carcass. She tried to pull her spear free, but her hands were too slick with gore to grip. With a snarl, she swiped her claws at the wiry fur. She turned to find several pairs of eyes trained on her.

The Velka man and the girl were breathing hard as they stared at her. Behind them, the Inland Nahrzai gaped. Rima glowered as she heaved herself up to stand on top of the fallen thavok. “What are you looking at?” she yelled. “Did those fancy trimmings leech all the fight out of you?” Her tail thumped over the beast’s flank and snapped some arrow shafts.

Beyond the others, she spotted the two cloaked figures. Hooded, they faced each other for a moment, then turned away and started back up the hill. Two tails, covered in tawny fur, flicked under the cloaks. Rima’s eyes narrowed. Amid the red and black and yellow that choked the field, she caught a whiff of dull brown indifference. Vaskari. She wasn’t sorry to see them go.

The Velka man stiffened. There were patches of gray in his beard. He sheathed his swords as he cast a frantic look around. “Soru!” he said.

“Soru!” the girl piped, and the two of them bolted toward where Mirei still knelt with the fallen Velka man.

Rima cast a final disdainful glance at the Nahrzai stranger. There were a few knives and metal tools strapped to her belt, and she still had that smudge of black in her scent. From Shurgan’s Hold, probably. She at least had the decency to lower her head as Rima stalked past her.

The bearded man had reached Mirei. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Leave her alone,” Rima snapped. There was too much red in the man's scent for her liking—if he so much as touched Mirei, smelling like that, she would take his arm off. “You want that one to live, or not?”

The girl with him turned huge, dark eyes up to Rima. Moon and tides, she was short. Rima had enough trouble judging Velka ages already. Was this one still a child?

“What is she doing?” the girl asked.

The tension in Rima’s jaws loosened slightly as she looked at Mirei. Too gentle, she thought, not for the first time. Too soft. Always too soft. Mirei’s eyes were closed, her hands held over the man’s midsection. As Rima watched, they began to shake. Mirei's scent had turned the dark purple of clouds that no longer reflect the sunset.

“It’s just a thing she does,” Rima muttered. She stretched out a hand, hesitated, then brushed the curve of one claw over Mirei’s hair. It left a red smear on her white fringe. “Hey. That’s enough.”

Mirei’s eyes blinked open. She pulled her hands into her lap as she slumped back on her heels. “The bleeding… I think it stopped.” Her voice was faint.

Rima looked at the unconscious man on the ground. He didn’t have a beard like the other one. She thought he was younger. The thavok’s horn had pierced him. His insides should have been spilling out, but they weren’t. And he was breathing. There was a darker black than the smell of killing—death itself. It rolled off the thavok behind her, but Rima did not smell it on this man.

“You did enough,” she said to Mirei. “Come on.”

Mirei blinked at her. She seemed dizzy, disoriented; Rima didn’t like how pale she looked. “Rima… we can’t.”

The older man knelt and opened the fallen man’s shirt, revealing a gash. It was ugly, certainly, and there was blood, but even without her nose, Rima could tell that it wasn’t life-threatening. Not anymore.

The small Velka girl crouched down and turned her too-large eyes on Mirei. “How? I mean… this is still bad, but… I saw the horn go through!” She looked at the older man. “Didn’t you, Atren? I wasn’t just seeing that, right?”

“He should be dead,” the older man said. He gazed at Mirei, too intently for Rima’s liking, and now a soft orange wonder overtook the red as he looked at her.

Rima took Mirei’s arm and tried to tug her up. “He’ll live now. I’m sure you can patch him up on your own from here.”

The girl turned a worried look on the older man. “How far is our camp, Atren? How long were we chasing the thavok?”

“Long way,” the man muttered.

“Come to our village,” Mirei blurted.

Rima stiffened; her grip tightened on Mirei’s arm. “Mirei!”

Mirei pulled her arm free and gestured toward the cypress woods. “Rima, our village is right there. Mother can help. I can help some more.”

“You can’t even stand,” Rima growled. “Don’t think I can’t smell it. You did too much again, you idiot.”

The small girl shuffled forward on her knees. “Don’t talk to Atra like that!”

Rima squinted at her. “...What?”

“My name is Mirei,” Mirei said to the girl, her brows knitted.

“Atra Mirei!” The girl clasped Mirei’s hands in hers. “I’m Saya. You saved Soru!”

Mirei frowned at the young man. “He still needs help.” She turned her eyes up to Rima. “Rima… please!”

Rima’s dorsal spines bristled. She looked over at the Nahrzai stranger. The stranger lowered her head and didn’t meet Rima’s eyes. Any predator’s black in her scent had faded to a muted gray banded with pale yellow. She didn’t want any trouble.

“I’ll head to the road,” the Nahrzai stranger said. “There’s bound to be an outpost where I can send a hawk.”

A brighter yellow flashed through the small Velka girl’s scent. “Ragri, don’t go!”

“I need to inform the trading company,” the one called Ragri answered. “They’ll want to know the thavok is dead.”

“We have hawks,” Mirei said.

Rima actually snarled now. “Mirei!”

A hint of warm gold flooded Ragri’s scent as her shoulders relaxed. She shook her head. “It’s all right. I’ll want to catch up with Sheska and Thrish, anyway, see what they’re up to.” She leaned close and brushed her muzzle over the Velka girl’s tousled hair. “I’ll come back if I can.” A thread of soft peach wound through her scent as she tilted her head toward Rima. I’m a friend. These are friends. I mean you no harm.

Almost against her will, the black began to fade from Rima’s scent. Her spines lowered a fraction.

The older Velka man got to his feet. Rima realized he was really quite tall, for a Velka. She still towered over him, but his bearing, she had to admit, was impressive. “We’ve got to get more help for Soru.”

He looked at Ragri. “Go report back, then. And send a hawk to Nerra, too. Tell her what happened.” He turned to Rima. “This village of yours got a name?”

“Teyaka,” Mirei said before Rima could so much as growl.

The man gave a nod and turned to Ragri. “Tell Nerra we’re going to Teyaka Village and that I’ll be in touch soon.”

“Lean on me, Atra Mirei.” The girl—Saya—pulled Mirei’s arm over her shoulders.

“It’s just Mirei—oh!” In a moment, Mirei was standing, leaning on the smaller girl. She focused on Rima again. Curse it all, she was making those eyes. Those pleading, blue-green, “I’m about to cry” eyes.

“Rima, please,” she said again. “Please, we have to help.”

Rima clenched her jaw. We most certainly do not. She opened her mouth to say it. What came out was “Fine.”

The older man knelt again. He slipped his hands under the younger man’s arms and raised him to a sitting position. The wounded man’s head lolled forward, chin resting on his chest.

The older man looked up at Rima. Saya and Mirei also looked at Rima.

Rima returned their gaze for several seconds before her spines rose again. “No. I draw the line at that!”

“If you don’t, I’ll tell Mother,” Mirei said. Some color was returning to her cheeks.

Rima stared at her for a moment longer. “I’ll remember this treachery,” she growled. She grabbed the young man by one arm and the opposite leg.

“Easy!” Mirei said. “He’s still hurt, Rima!”

“You wanna do this, or you wanna let me do it?”

Even so, Rima shifted her hold. She slid one hand under the man’s back and the other under his knees. With a grunt, she lifted him. He was even bigger than the older man, but his weight was nothing to her.

“This is stupid,” she muttered. “I’m going to regret everything about this.”