"You don't talk much, do you?" Draha said with a small smile as she looked over at their recent addition. Whatever Sorrow's history, the Leyan woman was counting her as safe to have around. She'd defended Beran and Cathasach, and promised her protection to the caravan. There was a fire burning under the surface, but as far as Beran had seen, it extended only to Shrike's men. She sat beside Sorrow on a wagon, the reins of the horses in her hands.

Draha understood, at least to a degree. How willing would she have been to take her own revenge on the Yssan farmers who had done such cruel things and almost burned her, just after it happened? Time and the kindness of her rescuers had faded her anger.

Perhaps it would for Sorrow too.

"Is there something to say?" the armored woman asked. Beran had stitched together the tears in the leather portion of her armor, but he was right that it would need replacement. At least, that was her automatic thought before she remembered that it no longer mattered. Her flesh seemed armor enough with the way it healed, bound to unlife by the will of the divine.

"All kinds of things," Draha said with amusement. They couldn't move too fast for fear of damage from the road, but mostly it was faster than walking unless they stuck in the mud. "The weather would be an obvious start, but there are also stories. What you like to do. Where you're from. What you're going to do in Astarac."

Sorrow looked west, as if trying to conjure Astarac into being before her. "The weather is clear. I used to enjoy some things. I am from somewhere. I am going to search in Astarac."

"For Shrike," Draha murmured. It twisted her heart to hear how empty Sorrow's tone was, not to mention the words themselves. "He's a powerful man in Genev. The right hand of the King."

The revenant wondered briefly if that meant the King knew about Dalle. Surely such a thing would not be hidden if they were that close. It made a ball of rage form in her gut, like a lump of twisting lava. "The King will not save him," she said, the rasp giving her speech a sharp edge.

"I'm sorry they hurt you," Draha murmured.

Sorrow looked over, though her face was the same impassive mask as always. "The fault was not yours," she said almost bluntly. "It was mine."

"How was it yours?"

"I said I would protect them. I failed them."

Draha's brow furrowed, but with worry rather than anger. "That is too much to bear on your shoulders, Sorrow. The men who attacked Dalle were responsible, not you."

As it often was, Sorrow's answer was silence. Her eyes returned to the west, amber in the afternoon's light. The greyish tinge to her skin remained, but the woman had resisted all attempts to see if she had a fever. She looked like death barely warmed over, but did not shiver or perspire like a sick woman. Draha felt terrible for their strange new protector. Whatever had happened at Dalle, she blamed herself and it had exacted a horrible cost.

"Sorrow," Draha prompted carefully after a few minutes had drifted by.

The armored woman turned her gaze back to Draha, waiting patiently for the hedge witch to say what she wanted to say.

"I'm glad you're here," Draha said gently. "Cathasach and Beran would have died, or worse, if you hadn't come along. They're the closest thing to family I've ever had."

"I promised Cathasach I would defend the caravan."

Draha smiled slightly. "That was before you promised."

Sorrow's impassive expression didn't change, offering no warmth or good humor, but Draha didn't mind as much as she had at their first meeting. She could handle an aloof Sorrow. It wasn't as though she didn't care. To Draha, defending her friends was proof enough that the frigid woman felt compassion. "I could not stand by and allow more evil."

"You have a good heart."

Sorrow thought of the withered piece of flesh in her chest, the one whose beat she no longer felt. Then her mind turned towards the relentless hunger, the ravenous desire for the death of those who had wronged her. "You have poor eyesight."

Draha laughed. "I almost didn't think you could make a joke."

"That was not one," Sorrow said with her customary bluntness.

The wagon in front of them came to a stop with a shout. Draha leaned around to see, her good humor slipping away for a moment before relief returned. "A Talinese roadblock. They're much more reasonable. Too much wealth would slip through their fingers otherwise."

They waited patiently as a line of guards came back, checking crates in the back of carts for tariff stamps that proved they had paid taxes. In wartime, they weren't as particular about contraband or things evading their rightful income, if only because they didn't have the manpower to flex their muscles. Each soldier wore the blue and white colors of the Talinese king, rank symbols embroidered onto their chest and back. None were of noble enough status to have their own house.

Their sergeant stopped on Draha's side of the cart, but his eyes focused on Sorrow, who still stared into the western distance. "Do I know you?" he asked.

Sorrow turned to look at him, amber eyes still surrounded by sockets that seemed almost bruised, demanding a rest that she would never enjoy. "No," she rasped.

He hesitated for a long moment, scrutinizing her face and armor. Whatever he saw left him with a conflicted expression.

One of the other soldiers stepped up. "Sergeant, that's Genevais armor," he said urgently.

Sorrow's lips twitched slightly, remembering the ghost of an old expression: a smile without humor. She couldn't quite make her face show such an emotion, however. "By the time our quarrel was through, they no longer needed it."

The sergeant looked over at Draha, expression stern. "I will ask you once, good lady," he said firmly. "The punishment for harboring a spy is imprisonment. Is this woman friend or foe to Talin?"

"She'd be a poor spy, gallivanting around in the enemy's armor," Draha said. "On every occasion, she's cut down Shrike's men like wheat. You can ask anyone in the caravan about it. I don't reckon if she's all friendly with Talin, but she's got less than no love for the Genevais."

The sergeant's expression softened, though he glanced at Sorrow's face one last time like a man struggling for recall. "Good enough. Have a fine day, ladies."

Draha waited until the men were two wagons away before she looked over at Sorrow. "He thought he knew you."

"He was mistaken," Sorrow said bluntly. Whoever she had been before was a world away from who she was now. His face was not even familiar to her. "Everyone I know died at Dalle."

Cathasach and Beran had mentioned that Sorrow's memories were not intact. "Maybe you were in the army," she suggested.

"I am not now," Sorrow said. Her tone was icy, but no more so than usual. She looked back at Draha, amber eyes burning like coals as she thought of Shrike, Lord Protector of Genev. "May nobles and kings rot on their crumbling thrones if they allow the destruction of villages, of towns."

Stolen novel; please report.

It was impossible to look into the intensity of those eyes. Draha tried her best not to shudder with fear, but the predatory gleam there was unsettling. She figured it was time to change the subject. "Alright," she said gently, partly to acknowledge and partly to apologize for pressing. "Are you hungry?"

"No." The revenant looked back to the west towards their destination. Soon the wagons would all pass inspection, they weren't a large caravan, and then she would be on her way again towards Astarac. The thought of plunging her blade through Shrike's twisted heart was a balm to the anger. It soothed the most damaged parts of her.

"You should eat something," Draha pressed carefully. She fished an oatcake out of the small basket beside her and held it out to the armored woman.

Sorrow took it. She had no desire for food, no need, but the consequences of this woman realizing she was an undead horror would be problematic, at the very least. She bit into the honeyed oatcake.

The pleasant smell became ashes in her mouth, gritty and bitter enough that she almost spat it out. Instead, Sorrow forced herself to swallow and counted on her mask-like expression to hide her revulsion. She felt a twinge of loss then, as if food had been something she enjoyed in her life before her punishment. She ate the rest of the oatcake in as few bites as possible, anything to make it more bearable.

She looked up at Draha's smile when it was all gone. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" the woman prodded gently.

Sorrow turned her eyes again to the west. "It was sufficient." She was not looking forward to trying to eat again.

The Talinese guards sent them on their way, a few coins changing hands when Cathasach's "private reserve" of ice-wine from the northern reaches of Yssa came to light. The exchange was amicable enough, though Sorrow made certain she knew exactly where her sword was in case that changed. The blade from one soldier she'd killed defending Beran and Cathasach suited her far, far better than the falchion had. It was an estoc, blade as long as a longsword, but tapered and with a ridged blade more suited to driving through armor than lacerating. She knew from the moment that she picked it up, fitting so familiarly in her hands, that this was a weapon she had trained with often.

She didn't remember her combat lessons. They were expressions of muscle memory and subconscious calculation. She stepped in patterns designed to deceive and evade without knowing why she stepped. There were no memories of some gruff warrior imparting grand lessons about technique or philosophy. There was only the twitch, the strike, the brutality that came naturally to her after what must have been a life spent at war.

Sorrow had little to say, sitting in silence beside Draha for a long time. It probably would have been more prudent to ask the woman questions about her life, as Draha had tried to worm answers out of her, but that would have required altogether much more care than the revenant felt at the moment. What did any of that matter, as long as she kept Draha alive and well?

The hedge witch tried to fill the silence, but this time instead of pressing into Sorrow's history—a lost cause if ever there was one—she started elaborating on their destination. It was a subject that interested Sorrow, judging by how she shifted in her seat and turned her attention away from the horizon.

"It's not a vast town, Astarac. Not a Sarom or Zaeylael, not without a port for trade across the sea," Draha explained, "but it's a big hub of trade between Genev and Talin, even when a war's on. Not to mention traders coming with goods up from Ethilir and even sometimes down from Ash Kordh. I think I've even seen an orc or two about the place, though they stick to their own around humans."

"Who holds it?"

"Well, maybe fifteen years ago, it was held by the Ember Queen," Draha said, a soft sigh slipping from her lips at the thought. "That was before King Alesander and Queen Katalin ascended to the throne. Now it's held by Duke Petri Elkano. He's a good man, a rare sort, probably because of who put him there."

"The Ember Queen?" Sorrow asked.

"Sorne Fire-Heart, Champion of Death herself. She was a human who joined the orcs for a long time and bound herself to the goddess Nessa, if you believe the stories," Draha explained. "My mother fought alongside her...and against her."

Sorrow could read things that were not being said. "She killed your mother."

"If things had been different, Mother would have joined her side in a heartbeat," the hedge witch said. "But...the evil king who held Genev had a curse over her that forced her to do his bidding. That's why my mother told me to flee to the borderlands when I was a girl. Better to die to a Yssan pyre than live a slave, she said. It hurts to know evil forced her to fight against a cause she would have died to protect."

It would have been the right thing to do to offer comfort, but Sorrow didn't move to do so. Her expression stayed aloof, even as she spoke. "That was the King before Alesander?"

"His father," Draha said with a nod. "Following the Ember Queen, Alesander and Katalin married to unite the two sides of the civil war and took Fire-Heart's place after she vanished. They say the Goddess of Death returned to the world then. A mage who gave me a little training whispered that her powers would be felt until the end of time now that she has returned."

Sorrow at least now had a good inclination of who was responsible for her resurrection. "And Shrike?"

"A viper wrapped around the tree of Genev," Draha said, lips thinning with disapproval. "They say the Genevais army needs him for protection, but I think truly they need protection from him and granting him lordship is all that prevents him from ripping them apart in another civil war." She shuddered slightly. "A demon's bargain for Genev."

"He is a lord. Where is his holding?" Sorrow asked bluntly.

"As Lord Protector, he has many scattered throughout Genev, but most often he spends his time in Soule. He goes to Mauléon too. Stories say he wants the Ember Queen's power, and that was her birthplace. If he's found that power, he hasn't shown it."

Sorrow sorted through her tangled web of memories, hunting for the most burning of all of them, her own personal torment at Shrike's hands. Horror burned his visage into her soul like a wanted poster given by Hell itself. She would never forget that scarred face, those cold eyes, that twisted laugh. But in that memory, she found the truth to Draha's words: Shrike had used no magic, no extraordinary power. It was only the might of numbers, his sword arm, and his body over hers.

She lapsed into silence again, this time Draha joining her in it. It was comfortable enough, the armored woman granting her companion a sense of safety if nothing else.

The wagons pulled circled again into a stop as night fell. People chattered left and right as they laid out bedrolls and started fires to cook and warm themselves. Sorrow drifted aimlessly at first until Cathasach called out to her to help him with a heavy tarp. She moved it as if it weighed nothing.

"Dunno what they've been feeding you, gel," Cathasach said cheerfully, slapping her on the back in gratitude. "Works something fierce. Best get it up before the rain hits."

Sorrow nodded, working in silence as she anchored the canvas into a large tent. They'd barely finished before the rain started.

"Be hard to keep watch in this," Beran observed as he made space next to the fire for Sorrow. Their little caravan had about fourteen people in it, most of whom only spoke Leyan. They had come from Zaeylael, making Cathasach and Beran the odd ones out. Draha bridged the gap, though both Beran and Cathasach spoke the language.

Sorrow could only follow some rapid patter. Most of her vocabulary revolved around war. She could demand they halt, threaten them into dropping their weapons or fleeing, challenge them to combat, or offer mercy. None of those were a good foundation for a friendship.

The traders watched her with careful eyes, though they were warm enough in gestures, offering her food and other brief expressions of goodwill for saving Cathasach and Beran, who were vital to getting them safely through Talin.

"Soldiers ain't gonna cause a ruckus with all this," Cathasach said with amusement. "'Specially not Shrike's lot. They'll drown if they look up."

Beran chuckled slightly at that, glancing towards Sorrow. No humor flashed across her face. He wasn't certain if she realized it was a joke or if she really had no sense of humor.

Inside, Sorrow smiled faintly, but her face showed nothing of the sort. "A watch would be wise, whatever the weather," she rasped. "I do not mind the cold and wet."

"It'd be better to keep you by the fire," Draha said authoritatively. "You're already cold enough as it is. You'd freeze solid out there."

"A woolen cloak treated with beeswax would keep the worst off," Cathasach said. He could already imagine the argument from Sorrow. She seemed to take her promise of protection seriously. "We've some of those. Just wake Beran or I when you need relief."

Draha scowled at the two men. "She needs rest, the both of you."

Sorrow's rebuttal was blunt. "I am capable of the task."

The hedge witch tried to meet Sorrow's eyes, to stare her into submission, but it was like trying to intimidate a hellhound. "Alright," she said, defeated. "But if you get as much as a sniffle, you'll not do it again."

"Agreed," Sorrow said. She was confident that head colds were not something she would need to worry about any more than stab wounds. As soon as Cathasach found her a cloak, she pulled it on and stepped out into the rain. It was turning from a nice drizzle to a downpour, every droplet wicking away heat even with the insulation of the cloak. Sorrow felt only the cold of the grave, inescapable and agonizing. The rain had no effect.

She vanished from the torchlights, climbing up onto the top of the tallest wagon where she would have an excellent view of the surroundings. She had no intention of waking Beran or Cathasach. At least this would give her something to do in her sleepless night rather than tossing and turning, reliving her nightmares without need of sleep, each one ending in that burning hatred and devouring hunger for blood.