How lovely his face grew when he was angry, Maeva thought. She watched Nath’s eyes flash and the lines around his mouth deepen. Just one look transformed his long, serious face to something fierce and dangerous. Unbidden, she remembered the feel of his hot breath on her neck.

A mage does not wear their thoughts.

Maeva turned her attention to the buried effigies. She guessed some two hundred sat in the shallow grave. One for each man who should have been in a tent there, she guessed. Maeva lifted a few dolls from the pit, pinching their spines between her fingers. Bits of ash stuck to her skin.

Recently made, she thought. Each was roughly the same size and shape, likely made by the same hand. She set the dolls back in their place and touched the torn ground where a shovel had pulled up the earth to make the grave. Unable to help herself, she looked up at Nath again.

She saw her own consternation mirrored in his face, and spoke to it: “Someone planned this knowing how many to make. Shall we count them?”

Nath shook his head and made a Bastard’s Hook with his fingers, one of few ancient signs Ammar kept for itself when they broke from the old faith. Maeva obeyed the silent request implied with the gesture and dropped the doll back into the pile. She wished for some salt to pour over the false resting place. A scrying bowl would have been better, but with so many fates tied to one place, she was not sure the Sight would be able to show her anything useful. Death confounded Ny, rendering Her gifts useless.

Could it be that the death-witch came here, Maeva wondered.

“Two hundred,” Nath grumbled. “There were two hundred men with me… and another forty who went on ahead of us.”

Maeva looked down at the sticks. Out of respect for Nath’s superstition, she counted with her eyes instead of her fingers. “Not that many here. Maybe a hundred and fifty? Some at least may have escaped. You did.”

“Fuck me,” Nath muttered.

I would have if you’d let me. Maeva kept the thought to herself while she stood and went to search the trees for more signs of witchcraft. With iron discipline she kept her senses on the world around her and away from the man who watched her. She looked for signs of death: drag marks on the ground or bits of rope dangling from tree branches. When the death-witch had been brought to the Dome, they said he killed his victims with fever — an entire village brought down by the plague he breathed into their mouths. She sniffed the air for the telltale odor of pus.

Something clung to the trees there, but it was not quite death. Oddly enough, Maeva smelled flowers and fresh grass. She pushed at the ground with her feet, stirring dead leaves until she found a bright spray of green underneath. Maeva called Nath to her again, silently this time. When he came to stand near her, she took both his hands in hers and closed her eyes.

The Sight poured across her vision, angled by the shape of Nath's memory. Maeva studied the ground from behind her closed eyelids. With the Sight, she beheld the ground in two places at once. First the grass beneath their feet as they stood together. Then a second time through Nath’s eyes as he’d last seen it -- damp and flattened by hundreds of boots and horse hooves.

Maeva frowned and let go of his hands. Only a faint ripple beneath the grass remained from the ground that Nath saw. As if a season had passed over the ground in only a day.

It was like no spell she’d ever seen.

Maeva nearly forgot Nath standing there beside her until suddenly he swore. She stumbled as he suddenly thrust her behind a tree. Alarmed, she dropped to one knee and grabbed for the crescent at her side. Nath drew his sword and brandished it at the trees.

“Come out of there and fight like you want to die!” he challenged.

A moment passed, and then a voice answered: “Is that you, liege?”

Nath lowered his blade. “Gruffydd, you dumb prick. The king expected you three days ago!”

“Oh… did he now?”

A man strode from the trees, lowering a straight yew bow. Maeva peeked from behind the trees and fought the urge to hurl herself at the archer with the crescent in her hands. Even after all this time, the sight of an Ammarish longbow filled her with anger. She’d dug hundreds of their arrows from the corpers of the honored dead. She pushed the blade back into her belt and pulled the wolf pelt down to cover up the hilt.

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This one was one of Nath’s, she guessed. He was tall and square-jawed with the same thick black hair as Nath’s, shaven close at the sides and grown long and braided along his crown. When he came close to claps Nath’s hand, Maeva caught the scent of vanilla wafting from his tabard quartered in black and green — practical colors for skulking about the forest.

“Good to see something other than a bear’s arse out here, Griffy,” Nath reached to clasp the other man’s forearm in a soldier's greeting. “Ten days out from Thornhaven, we were expecting snow, not an ambush. His Majesty thought it best to lay low.”

“Hm. Maybe His Majesty should look at a map now and again. Thornhaven’s five days south of here.” The man, Gruffydd, kept hold of Nath’s arm while he tossed a suspicious glance at Maeva. She saw his eyes were more green than Nath’s, and his nose flattened at the bridge.

To her shame, Maeva didn’t recognize the family name he used. Once, she would have known the names of all Ammar’s great lords and what territories they governed. They each had their own colors and symbols that mages learned to recognize so they could guess the price of a ransom. She guessed from his manner that Gruffydd would’ve fetched a fortune, if he were a lord or a first son.

She caught herself before the thought could continue. That was her life before when she sought her fortune, her life before when the High Court collected taxes on ransoms. Now Maeva kept her eyes down, unsure of what to say or do in the presence of two men whose fathers might’ve been dragged before her in chains only a dozen years ago. If they still had their writs of release, her name might even be signed there.

Nath followed his companion’s gaze. “This is… the lady Eva. I met her a day’s ride from here.”

Now Maeva made herself look up and offered a polite nod of her head. She thought of bowing like a servant — but it had been so long since she wore the cuff of an Unfinished, she’d lost the habit of obeisance.

“My Lady, any friend of my friend is also a friend,” Gruffydd offered. The small pull at the corner of his mouth told Maeva he did not believe what he said. He looked around the clearing and then back at Nath. “How did you manage to get lost?”

“I’m not lost. Everyone else is,” Nath said. “An attack, two nights ago. If not for Lady Eva, I might be dead.”

At this, Gruffydd offered Maeva a more careful look. He reached into a pouch he wore on his belt and dug out two coins. The lordling held them out to her.

“Our thanks, my lady. I think it’s best if you go back where you came from,” he said.

Nath flared. “She’s coming with us. Something stalks these woods — neither man, nor woman is safe from it. I’ll see this woman safe and the man who drove her out here hanged.”

Maeva glanced away from the argument, baffled by whatever trick of Nature made Ammarish men more attractive in anger. Nath took Gruffydd by the arm and pulled him to one side, shielding her from the other man’s gaze with his body. Maeva did not hear what passed between them in low, furious murmurs, but she saw Gruffydd put the coins back in his purse.

What sort of twit carries coins around out here, she thought. Is there a market?

At last, Nath glanced back at her. No word passed between them but she knew from the twitch of his shoulder that he fought the urge to reach out a hand to her. Maeva nodded reassurance to him. She’d pronounced: three times, he’d asked and a Child of Ny had given him a final answer: She would go with him.

Gruffydd led them from the clearing along a deer trail that cut northwest at a shallow angle. Maeva guessed they would pass within ten miles of the Sight Pool. It reassured her to think that they could run there if they had to. Nath’s wound didn’t seem to trouble him much at all as he matched pace with Gruffydd’s long stride. The two seemed close, walking easily beside one another, speaking in easy tones. She trailed behind and watched the dip of their shoulders, the swing of their long legs. They moved with an easy grace that came from long years of hunting, running, swimming — likely together. The thought of Nath as a boy came to her unbidden and Maeva again found herself grappling with a dull pulse of desire.

She stopped in her tracks. Ny taught all Her children lessons through their senses but only mages had the discipline to find meaning within sensations. She felt her heartbeat, steady and strong. It fed a hunger somewhere below her belly that had been there since the moment when Nath kissed her. A trickle of sweat ran down her back, sliding between the lines of her scars.

The witch stole death from me, not life. I desire him because living things have desire. Maeva dug deeper into her thoughts. The spell of her tree circle was meant to trap the death witch, but it brought her Nath instead. Could this be a sign from Ny, and her heavenly consort Mat, that she sought salvation in the wrong place?

When she swore to help him find his traitor, the portend of the falling star sealed her pact with him. Clearly something more than a carnal urge had drawn them together.

Either I am an apostate and he is my punishment… or I am still the Seer of the Great Dome who must bring the death-with there at all cost — and he will lead me to him.

She took her hand from the bag at her throat and hurried to catch up to the Ammarish knights as they led her deeper into their country.