Fireborn Champion (38 page)

“You’re not alone, Sigrid.”

She pressed her lips into a line and stared at the lake. “I have been alone a long time, Iron. Do not pity me. I do not pity myself.”

He couldn’t imagine languishing in this overgrown tomb for nearly twenty years. How she kept her sanity evaded him. Maybe she hadn’t, and one day she’d go full lunatic on him. Iron wouldn’t blame her for it.

“I guess we need to get back to practice,” he said. “My nerves are a little calmer now.”

“Of course. Replace your blindfold.”
 

They turned away from the lake, and Iron secured the fabric over his eyes. He liked the dark-upon-the-darkness it brought. It bestowed a sense of tranquility that often eluded him trapped in the cave with the woman he loved, who just so happened to have nearly slit his throat only a few days prior.

“You’re thinking about her again,” Sigrid said. “I can tell by the way your lips flatten. Think of something else.”

“Fine.”
 

His thoughts drifted elsewhere as he opened his ears to his surroundings. Sigrid’s feet made the barest shuffle against the rock, and Iron began his count.

The Coin Counter’s stance didn’t rely on vision. It relied on trust of the other senses. Vision served an important purpose, but Sigrid said it had a habit of convincing the other senses false truths and illusions were reality. If only he could learn to trust his other senses as well as he trusted his eyes.

He puffed through his lips and hopped into the Curious Count’s starting position. Ayska drifted through his thoughts again.
No. Something else. Anything else
. But what else was there?

One other thought nibbled in her shadow. Namely, the alp who would be coming for them when the storm cleared, and who among Iron’s friends would bring the demon to their doorstep.
 

“None of us are safe here, Sigrid. Caspran’s been on our tail since I left Ormhild. It’s—the timing’s just too convenient. It goes far beyond coincidence into something more like design.”
 

Her fingers rammed against his shoulder. He stumbled back with a silent curse and steadied his feet.
 

“Don’t imagine where I am,” she said. “Listen to my footsteps. Remember my height, weight and relative strength. Let your mind calculate my speed and positioning.” Her feet crunched on the rocks. “It sounds like you have a theory about the alp. Please enlighten me.”

Iron inhaled through his nostrils and began the count again. “I don’t know if he’s tracking us or if…if it’s something else.”

“Betrayal, then. You reason there is a spy among us.”
 

His breath slipped from his lips. He jerked his head to the side, a wind whipping by his ear as her fingers whooshed by.

“Good,” she said. “You’re learning. Now about this betrayal—I don’t suppose a spy is out of the question. And what empirical evidence have you obtained to support this assertion? Have you caught anyone in a lie?”

The only lies I know are the ones I’ve told
, he thought.
 

“No.” He twisted and lashed out. His knuckled fist struck hers.
 

Sigrid’s footfalls shuffled back. Iron grinned.

“Then let’s examine the facts,” she said. “Tell me about each of your companions.”

“Well, there’s Batbayar. He serves the Child. I met him in Athe, Eloia’s military capital. He told me he lived there for years, waiting for me.”

“The tattooed priest of the Child, living under the king’s nose, yet all these years undiscovered? This is quite suspect. Statistically, it is highly improbable he would survive undetected, marked as he is by the Child’s tattoos.”

Iron ducked, catching her furious kick as he fell beneath it. He threw her leg back and resumed his stance. “Nephele, well I found her—or actually she rescued me—from a storm that marooned us on the Rosvoi Islands. She’d escaped the cannibals living there and helped me free my friends.”

“Brave actions from the woman. Yet, I wonder how a priestess of the Gentle Lover, disarmed of her magic, eluded her captors so easily on such a strange and storied chain of islands.”

That fact bugged him about Nephele. She never really explained her escape to him or her time on the island before his arrival. Iron spun and lanced out. He struck Sigrid’s chest, and the woman gasped.

“Sorry,” he said.

“No, this is good. Who next?”

 
“Ayska came to me in a tavern in Ormhild. She told me she made port hunting a man who enslaved one of her crew, and that it was just coincidence Caspran also arrived that day. She offered us a ride out of the city.” He pressed his lips together. “Caspran even boarded her ship. He still let her go. Even gave her a gold coin that guaranteed safe passage through Sol’s lands.”

“And she has been with you since the beginning?”

“Only Sander’s been with me longer. He’s an ass of an old man, but I don’t think he’d spend his life raising me only to make me go through hell and betray me now.”

“You have no solid proof any of them betrayed you. However, the facts of the matter are fairly clear. You know to whom they point. Putting her sword against your throat didn’t help her case much either. The action suggests guilt may be weighing heavily on her conscience, which would make sense if indeed she had allied with the Serpent Sun.”

“But her crew was slaughtered!” Iron ducked one blow. He twirled around another and vaulted backwards from a kick. “Everyone but her sister died, and Kalila only survived because she was with me.”

“So when the attack occurred, Ayska was separated from you? Convenient.”

“Seeing her crew die broke her. She cursed the Six for it, a woman who loved the Loyal Father more than almost anything in the world!”

“A woman who turns from the gods she loved often finds herself bending to another. Her pain might have been a pretext.”

Iron stiffened at the suggestion. He caught Sigrid’s wrist and held it with a stiff grip. “Could she be such a good liar?”

“My words sound cruel, Iron, but facts often are. If she truly has betrayed you to the Serpent Sun, do you think she would mourn the crew she lost or be glad now only she and her sister share in the reward?”

The words chilled his blood. In the distance, a greyhorn brayed. Laughter echoed from the camp across the lake.
 

Ayska couldn’t betray them. She hated Caspran and the serpents more than anyone else among them. Yet, when Caspran attacked them in Athe, she hadn’t charged the alp. She’d stayed back and only put up a meager protest. Ayska
never
stood back.

“We’re all in danger here, Sigrid.” He released her hand and pulled the blindfold down to his collar. “We’ve got to leave whatever this place is. Caspran will come for us when the storm clears.”

“I have an inkling he will make an appearance when the celestial alignment occurs. Something happens then—but what, I cannot say.”
 

Iron crossed his arms and cursed his heart for blinding him to the truth. No wonder Ayska turned from him. She probably felt something—no, he
knew
she felt something—but her guilt wouldn’t allow her heart’s desires. “I haven’t been making any progress. This whole damn journey has been one massive trap, and it’s about to spring. I’m afraid the High King’s already won.”

Sigrid sighed and considered Iron with her keen, sharp eyes. She brushed her thumb lightly over her robe’s collar and flashed an awkward, forced smile. “We have always faced long odds against Sol. When we lost our magic, we became little more than well-spoken cushions for sharpened swords. More than gods fell that night, Iron, and the serpents have worked tirelessly to turn the people against us ever since. The Six have fallen and their faithful are broken.”

More than enough people had suffered because of him. To think Ayska played him, played her own crew for a few coins. She told him she was a pirate. He just didn’t want to see that she was one until now. “I have to talk to her.”

“Be careful. We have examined what data we have, but you have no solid proof. I would suggest keeping your accusations private until you have that evidence.”

“There’s no time left, Sigrid. The constellations are almost in position.”

Ayska, how could you do this?
Iron bowed his head and scowled at the dirt. He loved her. He
had
loved her. Now when he thought of her, he only saw the bloodied corpses of her crew slipping into the sea.

“You must still find the Burning Mother’s disciple. If anything, take comfort in the fact that Caspran won’t kill us until you do.”

“I have a feeling the disciple’s not as far away as you think,” he said.

“Perhaps. Do not give up yet. Do not let your anger and paranoia consume you. There is still hope left in the world. We may as of yet defeat the High King. Have faith.”

“Funny words coming from someone who trusts in data so much.”

“People are funny little contradictions that way. I do not claim to make sense, and I do not wish to. The day we lose our mystery is the day life loses its wonder.” She sighed and clasped her hands behind her. “If only we had our magic. Then, perhaps we could stand against the serpents. We are hopeless without it.”

“Yes. We are.” Iron turned to Sigrid and bowed. “Can we pause practice for the day?”

“We can do more than pause. You no longer need instruction on the Curious Count. I do not know how, but you have done in days what it takes most others years of intense training.”

“Thank you, Sigrid.” Iron turned to the shore and jogged toward the camp. He hadn’t spoken with Ayska since she pressed her blade against his throat. Days passed since then, and Iron needed the truth before the sandstorm settled.

Iron found Ayska on a flat rock jutting over the placid water. She huddled over Kalila, carefully cutting the woman’s matted hair. Over their long and arduous trip across Urum, Kalila’s hair had grown long and tangled and cried out for a good trim. Clumps of black fell like ash around the women and piled on the ledge.

Iron’s approach didn’t go unnoticed. The last of Kalila’s hair wafted to the ground. Her dull eyes fixed on him but didn’t reveal a hint of recognition. As he always did, he smiled, pausing where the ledge melted into the rocky shoreline.
 

The long walk there left him to his angry thoughts, each step he took cementing Ayska’s betrayal. His blood boiled even as he wiped his clammy palms against his chest and committed to his course.

Ayska glanced at him from the corner of her eye while she softly hummed. Iron swallowed and strolled toward them. “Your hair looks much better,” he told Kalila.
 

She blinked and looked away, eyes focused on the lake’s calm waters. Ayska’s gentle hum died, and she stood. She wiped Kalila’s errant hairs clinging to her skin and fixed a hard gaze on him. “My sister’s not stupid. She knows there’s something wrong between us and doesn’t like it.”

As soon as she finished speaking, Kalila slid from her spot and wandered from the rock. The woman held her hands against her chest and headed into the dark, making her way for the titan bones piled nearby. Iron and Ayska watched silently as Kalila vanished into the pale maze.
 

“Do you ever wonder how they died?” Ayska asked.

“They died in the war, like all the other titans.”

“No, not that. I mean, how they died here. What killed them?”

“Oh. Honestly, not really.”

“Their faith killed them. Look at those bodies, how they’re all piled up around that shrine of…of you. They huddled around it. I imagine they were praying when whatever took their lives did they deed.”
 

Don’t let her distract you. You know who she really is now. Just find a way to make her admit it so this can all be over.

“I know I hurt you,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was doing, Iron. Forgive me.”

He flinched at her words. “You’re forgiven.”

“So easily?”

“What else could I have expected? I’ve been hiding the truth from you all this time even as I told you I love you. You hate the Serpent and the Six. Isn’t that right?”

Her brows formed a wrinkled wedge. “Yes…”
 

Iron headed to the shore and paused on the loose rocks. “Walk with me.”

Stones clacked, rubbing together beneath their footsteps. Iron stared at the shadows swallowing the cavern’s ceiling. Not even Sigrid knew its height. Maybe the entire mountain was little more than a worn shell.
 

 
“How’s your training going?” she asked.

“Sigrid says I’ve mastered the Curious Count.”

Ayska’s eyes widened. “Even more quickly than you learned the Shining Step? You really are something.”

He smirked. Enough of the pleasantries. They only made their conversation more torturous. “Sigrid thinks the sandstorm will end soon. The alignment happens in a few days. I’ve got a feeling Caspran will be standing outside when it does, probably with the Mother’s priest as a hostage. I’m convinced he needs all of them gathered. That’s why we’ve survived this long. Isn’t it?”

Tension swamped the air, carried on his question. Iron slowed. Ayska stiffened. Her hand went to a braid swinging over her chest. “I don’t know, does he need us all?”

“He’s always on our trail. On Spineshell, he kept you and me and Sander alive and killed everyone else. He let us leave Athe. Don’t try and convince me otherwise because I know Batbayar’s explosive wouldn’t have killed that demon. Each time we stray or slow from our path, he shows up to prod us on like we’re a fucking greyhorn herd and he’s the shepherd. It’s like he knows just when to show up so he can keep us on schedule for the alignment. Don’t you think that’s just a little odd?”

A slip of her white teeth appeared as she bit her lower lip. Either she rummaged for a lie, or the realization of betrayal had dawned on her.
 

Giving her the benefit of the doubt? You already know it’s her
. He wished that stupid voice would just shut the hells up.

“Someone we know serves the Serpent Sun.” Her eyes searched the ground. “I’d never thought it could be true. Who would betray us? It makes no sense.”