THE PIER CREAKED and sagged as a boat came up alongside it. A man so gaunt he might as well have been naught but bones stood amidst a long, flat boat. He wore a garment I’d never seen before, somewhat like my own tunic, but looser, with a hood that rose to cover his head. Bright eyes peered back at me from deep within sunken sockets, and he flashed a leering smile. “Sin does not satisfy the soul.”

“Who are you?”

“I have never met a blind Cinderborn before. I am the boatman. I work the river.”

I stood, trying to shove the thirst, and the anger, back. “You will carry me across the river?”

“For a price,” the leering jackal answered. He tilted his head. “Yes, I know your type. Your people did not forget the old ways. You yourself left two coins for me, on the day your father died.” He leaned on the long pole he used to drive the boat, and cackled.

When his wheezing mirth was over, I said, “What cost, then?”

“The living pay in coin and iron. But the dead pay in blood.” Now I recognized the fire in his eyes: radiance. I wondered if my own eyes glowed? The Barn’s had, too, I realized, and his hound. I glanced down at the Cindermark. It still shone faintly through my tunic. A brighter yellow than the boatman’s own eyes.

“Very well,” I said, stepping out onto the pier.

“Where is the Baron?” the boatman asked,

“Dead.”

He laughed again. “A fine joke. No Cinderborn come up out of the old church has killed the Baron. Where is he truly?”

I pointed off toward the cliff where the demon had vanished. “At the bottom of the river, I mark. Where he belongs.” The boatman caught sight of the sword on my shoulder, then, and gave me a second look.

“And the Velkyrim? I know there’s one up in the church. The others spoke of her. How beautiful, how wise.” Of Zeniel, I said nothing. I got a glare for my silence, but it wasn’t stories he was after. The boatman held a hand out to me, palm up. He looked at my expectantly.

“Do you want to cross the river, killer? I don’t like being made to wait like a fool. I have other souls to answer, you know!”

Hesitantly, I placed my own hand above his. An arc of light jumped between our hands, radiance flowing from me to him. I felt it go like a whisper of ice: cold creeping into my skin. He grinned at the sight of it, until I snapped my fist shut, cutting off the flow.

“That’s enough, I said.”

Grumbling, the boatman took up his pole again. “So it is, then,” he said. “You dead are a stingy lot, I say.”

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I stepped onto the boat and sat so I could see him. “Across the river,” I said.

“And no delay, my lord.” I ignored the boatman’s sarcasm as he pushed away from the pier and out over the dark waters.

“Sin,” I said. My finger trailed through the cold water, but I did not find it soothing.

“Enough to circle the world. A current strong enough to drown the strongest soul.” The boatman squinted out over the darkness. “You head for the white city?”

“My business is my own,” I said.

“Well, your business will be taking the long route, I mark. The winds say the lift is out. Some damn fool cut the cords, and the white king has ordered it left alone. Perhaps he’s sick of you lot climbing up there to make trouble.”

“Other Cinderborn?”

“Just so.”

I let him pole in silence for a while. “Have you met others?”

“I have.”

“When?” I asked, leaning forward.

“My business is my own,” he sneered. “But I’ll tell you this for free: there’s something in the children’s forest. Something that’s not supposed to be there. And perhaps some others went to find that out, too.” He laughed darkly. “It’s been quiet a long while.”

The children’s forest. I’d heard of that once before, from Zeniel. It lay between the river and the white city on the cliff.

The boatman spoke no more as he poled the little craft across the dark river. Dark forms circled overhead, and once, something massive. At that, he ducked, as if fearing to be snatched up and carried off. Six wings, I counted, large as a galley’s sails, and a tail as long as a field. Fire flowed in its wake, and the boatman muttered a curse or a charm under his breath before he set to poling again.

At last, the boat pushed up against the shore. Black, sodden sands clumped and rolled aside. There was no pier here. No structure as far as I could see, save a hill a mile or so out on with a crown of jutting, broken stone. Something to walk toward, I supposed. Something to orient myself in this dismal, flat place.

“Out,” the boatman said.

I rose and shouldered Bloodfang. I stepped onto the black sands, trying to avoid putting my feet in those dark, oily waters. When I turned to thank the boatman, he was gone. Only the scuffed sand on the beach indicated he’d ever been there at all.

And I was alone.

Not alone. The voice came unbidden from the edge of my mind. Stalking, like a wolf. It was the sword. I felt it, stirring like a shadow at dusk. A dim awareness in the iron. I probed at it, but knew not how to speak to it. Another strangeness born of this strange place. No matter what I said, or how I held the sword, it would not answer.

Failure dampened my curiosity. It made me angry, in fact. Perhaps it was the Baron’s agent, yet, clinging to the memory with some sort of loyalty. Without an answer, I was fumbling in the dark, and so I let it be. I would not get answers from the iron, and I was wasting time besides.

I could see the church far across the dark waters. It might as well have been another world, I thought. And below it, the twisting, sickening warrens that led like roots to the lightless pit. I’d come some ways, but turning, peering out past the hill, I knew that Ulstassi lay much further ahead.

The fighting had certainly brought life back to my stiff, dead flesh, but even as I set forth, I felt the echoes of those old pains, the seeping, icy ache of the grave. But I didn’t let it slow me down. Not even the dark silhouettes that swirled above me could hold me back, now.