Sleep gums my eyes every time I blink. My feet have turned into lead bricks beneath me, and even my tail feels heavy. The road stretches in front of us, a tree-lined, continuous expanse of nothing that has not changed in the last six hours.

  I almost wish something would burst from the woods. At least then I wouldn’t have Esmira’s eyes finding me every other step, Zaeshala’s entirely un-subtle glances turned my way again and again.

  It’s the second time in almost as many weeks that my dreams have shown me her. For two years I learned to breathe around that wound, to move without ripping it open, so I don’t know what has caused it to fester again. Why she’s decided to plague me now, as if I need any more reminders of why my moms asked me to leave.

  “Vitani?”

  Esmira’s soft voice offers a rope to pull me back to the present. I take it, blinking away the sleepless night as she hurries forward to walk alongside me. Her bow has been strung over her shoulder in case of trouble, the quiver of arrows on her hip uncovered and ready. Even the raven perched on her shoulder seems alert, beady black eyes trained on the trees as we move.

  “You didn’t eat breakfast this morning.” She holds out a ration cloth, the knot loosened at the top. “Are you hungry?”

  I’m not. My stomach churns at the thought of food, but to refuse now, most of the way into the afternoon, would only open the door to a conversation I’m not interested in having.

  I take the cloth. “Thanks.”

  She nods. “See anything?”

  I haven’t, but then again I’m not nearly as comfortable in the open woods as she or Tuuliki. “No. Haven’t felt anything, either, if that’s relevant.”

  “Same. Even Wren’s been quiet.” She indicates the raven with a tilt of her head. “Perhaps we’re too armed.”

  The same thought has floated through my head, that we might be too intimidating a target for whatever seems to be preying on simple travelers and supply caravans. I offer the only solution I’ve been able to come up with between dodging my own thoughts and avoiding the others’ silent questions: “We could hide you and Zaeshala in the cart easily enough. Tuuliki and I don’t need to have weapons to be effective in a fight, and the more helpless we look, the better.”

  Zaeshala turns over her shoulder with a glare that says whatever she is, it will never be helpless. Even if it’s only to set an ambush for whatever haunts these woods.

  Esmira catches the look too. “I suppose we’ll toss that idea, then.”

  I reach into the rations cloth and feel around. Apricots meet my fingers, fuzzy and soft. For a moment, the idea of one sounds pleasant. Then last night’s dinner rises in my throat and I withdraw my hand.

  Esmira’s eyes follow my movements, but she doesn’t say anything. Her lips press into a thin line and she walks a few dozen feet in silence.

  Tuuliki’s head appears over the edge of the cart. She holds her hand out, palm up. “If you’re not going to eat them, give them here.”

  I snort and hand the cloth over.

  “Halt!” Zaeshala’s shout is followed closely by the scrape of armor. She pulls her shield off her back and frees her sword with a slither.

  We freeze.

  At the end of the long stretch of dirt is an upturned cart. One wheel hangs in the air and splintered wood lies scattered through the underbrush. Two lumps huddle on the ground, far too still.

  A sudden cold steals the air from my lungs.

  Esmira shrugs and the raven swoops off her shoulder. It glides up and past the trees, taking shelter where neither arrows nor magic will follow. She unslings her bow, fingers moving nervously over the goose-feather fletching of the arrows at her waist.

  Tuuliki vaults the side of the wagon, landing with little more than a flutter of her red hair. On bare feet she turns in a circle, no doubt looking for assailants waiting for us under the cover of the forest gloom.

  Zaeshala heaves a breath. “Cecil, stay with the cart. Don’t move until we tell you to.”

  Cecil only nods.

  The urge to rush over to the bodies and see if they’re alive burns beneath my skin. Surely they’re not dead. Surely we’re not too late, that whoever loved these people enough to put up missing posters will not receive the worst kind of news.

  “Don’t stand too close together,” Zaeshala murmurs. “And keep your eyes open. This could very well be an ambush.”

  As she takes a step, Tuuliki’s eyes roll back in her head.

  “Zaeshala, wait.” My voice doesn’t tremble. I’m grateful for it, for the illusion of a strength I don’t feel.

  “We have no time to….what in the nine fucking hells is she doing?”

  A sudden wind tears at us, pulling at hair and clothes and rattling the arrows in Esmira’s quiver. Tuuliki’s fingers move in jagged patterns, drawing manic shapes in the air. She mutters to herself, the language far beyond one I can understand, then light flares from her staff. I shut my eyes against the glare, aware only of the flutter of wings and a screech and the primal instinct of a predator nearby.

  The owl’s talons pass so close I have to duck to avoid one snagging in my hair. The others reel too, and though I want to stand there and blink spots from my eyes with them, I keep going because Tuuliki is crumpling, her body going limp as she occupies the feathery familiar instead.

  I get there in time. She lands in my arms, and I lower her gently to the ground. She’s light, almost impossibly so, and it’s an easy thing to set her against the wheel of the cart.

  “What the fuck was that?” Zaeshala demands.

  I tip Tuuliki’s head back so it doesn’t loll against her chest. “The owl has better senses than we do. More importantly, it won’t die if it runs into something unexpected.”

  Zaeshala looks back to the bird. She watches it soar up, then swoop down to the cart, perching on a canted wheel. It swivels its head, peers down at one of the lumps on the road, flutters its way to a low branch.

  “Can she hear us?”

  “She won’t be able to speak until she comes back, but if you have something to tell her, go ahead.”

  “Have the owl go deeper into the woods. I want to be sure there aren’t brigands waiting for whatever rescue party the Guild would have sent.”

  In other words, for us.

  The bird spreads its wings and dives into the trees. It disappears into the gloom, its flight eerily silent.

  We wait for a long time.

  The bird makes no other appearance before Tuuliki comes back to herself with a gasp. She catapults upright, her brown clear and occupied once more.

  I crouch beside her. “Anything?”

  She shakes her head. “It’s abandoned. Whoever did that, they’re gone.”

  Relief brings shame hot on its heels. I shouldn’t feel happy that whoever did this got away. Shouldn’t breathe easier knowing I won’t need to find out whether I’m capable of taking lives the way Mom and Mama did for years, even if it would bring some justice into the world to do so.

  “We need to get closer,” Zaeshala says. “See if we can figure out what happened.”

  Tuuliki lifts a hand, and I haul her to her feet.

  Zaeshala goes first. She holds her shield high, her steps wary even with Tuuliki’s declaration that we’re alone. I follow, my skin buzzing with a live current I haven’t felt in too long. The air itself feels electric, static pricking my mind as some sixth sense searches for a place to land.

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  But, true to Tuuliki’s word, there’s nothing.

  We reach the cart. It must have overturned at speed, the front end splintered where it lies against the ground. The long handles where a horse or donkey would have been tethered are gone completely. Supplies have scattered, several crates tossed into the trees. Orange fruits spill from one, cloth from another.

  And there, in the middle of all of it, are three dead men.

  The mortality of living creatures is not a foreign concept to me. I’ve attended funerals and helped clean out houses, comforted family members and offered what words of advice I’ve been able to muster. I’ve seen what death does to those unready to meet it, remember long nights of Mama crying by the fire and the years Auntie Grogg spent nursing her hurts in some far-off corner that involved none of us.

  But I’ve never seen murder.

  Blood covers all three men. One wears a metal helmet caved on one side. Dried, bloody rivers run over his temple and neck, staining the collar of his shirt. His empty eyes stare at nothing, his mouth twisted like perhaps he tried to call out.

  The second lies sprawled across a dip beside the road. He’s even redder, big splotches covering him like multiple sharp somethings fell upon him in a flurry. His fingers reach for his sword, a foot away in the grass.

  The third wears nothing but simple clothes. He cannot have been a soldier, no weapons near him and no scars that would speak to a life of violence. Still red flowers bloom across his chest and arms, dozens of points of pain driven into him over and over again.

  Bile rises and I clamp my teeth to stop it. These are not men who got sick. They did not live full lives and pass in a room surrounded by family. They didn’t even disappear one day and simply not come back. They did nothing more than their jobs, and they were fell upon by creatures willing to use steel to take what they wanted.

  Zaeshala shoulders past me. She kneels in the dirt and sets her shield within easy reach, then hauls the nearest dead man closer to her.

  Words stick in my throat. Questions, wondering what in the gods’ names she thinks she’s doing. They tangle together as Zaeshala shoves her hands in pockets and traces the line of a shirt’s neck and even rolls up one sleeve.

  When she finds nothing, she sits back on her heels and sighs. “I don’t suppose you would know them?”

  I can only shake my head.

  “See if there’s anything in the cart to identify them. They’re likely from the shipment Garant told us about, but we should be sure.”

  Her calm feels wrong. There’s an ease to it, a surety that says this is not her first encounter with death, nor the instruments which cause it. I wonder again where she came from, what she’s doing here. Why, by her own words, she’s been sent by larger forces to this tiny corner of the world.

  I trip towards the cart, which appears more suddenly than I expect. I stare and stare and stare, but I find all the wrong details. A whirl in the wood. The metal band of a barrel, popped open and bent. A wayward orange fruit, a single fly crawling over it as if looking for the best place to stay.

  “See anything?”

  I shake my head.

  Zaeshala mutters under her breath, the tongue far too familiar. The language of our parentage, fires and sharp words and lies behind every agreement. She stands and moves to the second body, kneeling beside it, too. With sure movements, she completes the same searching circuit on this man, pockets and neck and sleeve.

  She stops at his hand. Metal glints in the sunlight, a simple band around his finger. Zaehsala pauses, her lips pressed thin, before sliding the ring off.

  I stare. Surely the question screams from my face.

  Zaeshala rolls her eyes, as if I’m being ridiculous. “I’m sure his wife will want to know what happened to him.”

  I wouldn’t have thought of it. That Zaeshala did comforts some lingering feeling still floating in my chest.

  She stands and walks back to her shield. “These men have been dead at least a few days. Their assailants could be anywhere by now, which means it may be best to go back to the Guild and report it. Let them know whoever was being escorted to Whirris is gone, either taken or fled into the woods, and most of the shipment with it.”

  I nod slowly. Tuuliki meanders by the overturned cart, muttering to herself, and Esmira stands stock-still on the edge of the trees.

  “Esmira?” I call.

  She doesn’t answer. Her eyes move rapidly, finding what I don’t know, but the tightness in her jaw tells me she’s not ready to leave yet.

  We watch as she takes a few steps forwards. Crouches, her fingers tracing the dirt. She looks up, then down, then walks a few more steps.

  “Esmira?”

  “I think they went this way. A band of them, six or seven strong at least. With a halfling in tow.”

  I think of the manifest Garant gave us. “One of the people on the cart was a halfling. A musician, it said.”

  Like me. How easily could the places have been exchanged? For me to be dragged into the woods towards who-knows-what?

  Esmira reaches into a dense fern bush. She twists back to us with the neck of a stringed instrument. A lute, given the shape of the wood and the coiled mess of cord.

  Lights dance in Zaeshala’s black eyes. Hope, perhaps. Or something much, much more sinister. “How long ago were they taken?”

  Esmira considers the ground before her. “Less than two days. I can’t tell you the state of them now, but I can say that when these tracks were made, both hostages were well enough to walk.”

  Her voice hitches on the last word. She looks to the trees, her eyes distant. No doubt seeing the same someone that came to mind when we found the missing posters.

  “We have a chance, then.” My own hope gives the words levity. “If we hurry, we might reach them in time.”

  Esmira nods once. She levels a searching look first at Zaeshala and then Tuuliki. “The Guild isn’t paying either of you to risk your life in the woods hunting whoever is responsible for this scene. If you’re unwilling to go, there will be no lost feelings.”

  Zaeshala hefts her shield higher. “The Crimson Raven will deliver justice where it is needed.”

  Tuuliki lifts her nose like a dog scenting prey. “The wind says this presence in the woods is unnatural. The trees would like to be rid of it.”

  Esmira’s cheeks redden. “Thank you, all of you.”

  I turn over my shoulder. “What do we tell Cecil?”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  Zaeshala moves quickly towards the body lying in the ditch. She picks up the discarded sword then hurries across the road to where Cecil remains in the cart, waiting like she told him to. She stops close enough to hand the sword and two javelins up to him, her mouth moving as she does. At this distance, I can’t hear the words, but Cecil’s head nods with rapt attention. Finally, Zaeshala points back the way we came, her expression stern.

  We passed a clearing not too far back, and I wonder if she means for him to pull the cart off the road and wait for us.

  They finish speaking. Zaeshala walks to the back of the cart, setting her shield down against the wheel. With an easy grace, she vaults herself up and begins collecting our bags. As soon as she’s done, Cecil flicks the reins. Maurice makes a slow, dodding turn, then they rumble back to the south, where hopefully he will be out of the way of whatever we hunt.

  Zaeshala returns to us. She drops the bags at our feet. “He has enough food to last him a week. I don’t expect us to be that long, but if something happens, he has instructions to go back to Whirris on the eighth morning.”

  I take Mama’s bag and sling it over my shoulders. For once, the weight is comforting, a purpose in the burden. Three men still lie dead on the road, but two more exist who might have a chance. To turn our backs on them now would make us no better than whatever ambushed them in the first place.

  The others strap into their traveling bags. Zaeshala frees her sword and Esmira readies an arrow. Tuuliki levels a grin my way, and something in the expression settles beneath my skin like a burr.

  Once we’re ready, Esmira dives into the trees without a backward glance. I follow, Tuuliki close behind. Zaeshala brings up our rear, her armor broadcasting our position to anyone who dares to listen.

  The trees blur, morphing into nothing more than a dozen shades of green and brown. Leaves whip my face and Esmira changes direction so often that more than once I nearly crash into a low branch, but I do not falter. My body hums with the thrill of chase, a lightness to my feet that says, for the first time in two years, I might be doing something worthwhile.

  Eventually Esmira slows. Her head lifts, her eyes wary as they search the trees. “We’re close.”

  We pause, each of us straining to listen. Both elves freeze, heads tilted at the same intense angle. Were it not for the very real prospect of a fight lurking on the other side of their impressive senses, the sight would almost be funny.

  Achingly slowly, Esmira lifts her hand to point. I squint through the trees, eyes straining. A glimpse of orange streaks through the green.

  The arrow flies before I have a chance to understand what I’ve seen. Esmira’s shot lands true, sending a squeal erupting from the brush. It scrapes like nails across stone, a noise that cannot belong to anything human.

  Esmira nocks another arrow, her bow aimed and ready. I scramble to find what she hit, but a dense ash and thick underbrush prevent me from seeing it. I can only listen as the wailing turns to a whimper and finally dies.

  Tuuliki pushes forward. I hurry to follow, the trees giving way to a small meadow. Wildflowers dot the grass, arnica and valerian and violet lupine. Not blue, the way it is beneath the shade of home. Thank the gods for small blessings.

  Quickly bleeding into the flowers is a small, scaled creature.

  “Lizardling,” Esmira says. She kneels beside it and works her arrow free, wiping it in the grass before returning it to her quiver. “It must have a den nearby.”

  I’ve never heard of something called a lizardling, but the name is apt. Though the creature sports arms and legs and a head in the same arrangement any humanoid would, the similarities end there. Everything else about it is reptilian, from the toothed snout to the vertically-slit pupils to the clawed hands.

  “They travel in packs,” Zaeshala growls. “So there will be more. Keep your heads up.”

  Tuuliki stiffins. She points at a cluster of towering pines at the far side of the clearing. “That tree is wrong.”

  A beat of silence follows.

  It’s Zaeshala who answers. “It looks like every other three we’ve seen so far.”

  Tuuliki doesn’t respond. She traipses across the clearing, skipping as if we’re dropping off a delivery and not hunting hostages taken off the roads by strange reptilian creatures.

  A growl leaves Zaeshala’s chest. “She’s going to get herself killed and I’m not going to feel bad about it.”

  I shake my head. In most cases, I would agree with her. In Tuuliki’s, it’s just kind of something you get used to.

  Tuuliki stops at the foot of the massive pine. She peers up, into the leaves that sway with the breeze she carries alongside her. Then down, to her bare feet, and finally to the great trunk forming the head of the cluster of trees. With slow steps, she tiptoes closer, and closer still, until she’s nose-to-nose with the tree.

  Then, all at once, she’s gone.