11

Their trip to Byzantium was unsettlingly calm. No matter how many times Dalibor looked behind them, no matter how intently he glared at the other travelers sharing the Old Roads with them, he never managed to find anybody who was chasing them. He never even managed to find a single person who knew who they were. The entire thing had him on edge. The Star Cult had identified them, right? He remembered that happening? So why wasn't anybody coming? Had they really managed to escape unnoticed? When were the emperor's spies going to reveal themselves? When were the luminaries going to appear and blast him with red lightning without any warning like he had seen Myrddin do to the beasts in Daras during their excavation of the crater?

If such worries occupied his thoughts during the day, a different set occupied him at night. Early on, they had joined a trade caravan heading east to Byzantium and, by posing as a pair of traveling bards, earned their spot at the communal meal by performing nightly for the other travelers. Dalibor played his lute, Sara sang and danced—mostly stately dances, Dalibor noted, though the audiences didn't seem to mind—and they both ate and drank with the rest of the caravan. Then, as the night wore down, the two of them would retire to their tent. Their shared tent.

It was getting too cold at night to sleep alone, and far too cold for him to sleep out in the open and let Sara have the tent to herself. Besides, it would rouse suspicions among the rest of the caravan if the performer couple was not, in fact, sleeping together. So every night they'd set up their tent, roll out their bedrolls next to each other's, get as close as they could, and bury themselves in blankets. It was uncomfortable sleeping with Sara at first, but Dalibor begrudgingly admitted that it was pleasant to have somebody else to share warmth with. Even if that somebody didn't have fur of her own to keep her warm and would often latch on to him in the middle of the night after he'd rolled away. Unlike Rasha, Sara was a restless sleeper. It took Dalibor quite some time to get used to her tossing and turning next to him or tackling him outright in her sleep.

But all the same, by the middle of the second week of the trip to Byzantium, he almost looked forward to having her next to him. He still missed Rasha. Desperately sometimes, and Sara was certainly no Rasha. But during those cold nights when she'd fallen asleep with his shoulder as her pillow, his arm tucked under her and her arm draped across his chest, he could almost feel the same peace and comfort he'd always felt when he'd shared the same tent with Rasha.

Neither he nor Sara slept naked, though. Not a fucking chance.

"Do you know the Ballad of the Butcher?" a traveling buck asked them one evening.

Dalibor and Sara exchanged a glance. It was one of both of their favorites, but the version they enjoyed together wasn't the one most people were familiar with. "We do," Dalibor said. "But it may be different than you're used to."

"What do you mean?" asked a one-horned bull.

"We know an older version of the story," Sara said. She used her performer's voice, so Dalibor began to strum the chords of the mournful Draigic tune that Sara had learned from Myrddin back at the imperial villa. The show had already started. "The original story. The true story, from before the other bards took it and exaggerated it and turned it into the fairy story you know today. We know the story of the true Butcher who raged through the villages of Italia, murdering and kidnapping as he went. Is that the story you want to hear?" She gestured a tune change at Dalibor, and he switched to the upbeat chords of the most familiar tune played to the ballad. "Or do you want the familiar version where everything is set right in the end?"

"The other one! The other one!" called their fellow travelers.

Dalibor changed back to the Draigic tune without prompting, and Sara did not miss a beat. "Are you certain? It is much shorter than you might be accustomed to. Certainly no Iliad, this story."

"Yes! Yes!"

"There is no happy ending."

"Sing! Sing the story!"

And Sara sang. She stalked among the travelers, in and out of the light of the fire. Every eye was fixed upon her. Dalibor's too. She was spellbinding. Almost otherworldly.

Come gather round, my dearest friends, to hear a tale so true.

A song of fear and grisly ends that might happen to you!

For Butchers stalk among us still and good folk they will kill.

One winter's eve, so dreary dark, a father woke in fright,

And from without a fiery spark bathed all in deadly light.

"The Butcher!" rang the frightened cries. "The Butcher seeks his prize!"

The father braved that blazing doom to save his joy and pride.

But in his daughter's vacant room, he tore his clothes and cried:

"The Butcher stole her from her bed. Now I will have his head!"

Into the night he chased his prey armed with his torch and spear.

Once at the beast's den of decay, he called out without fear.

"You, Butcher, I will plant in mud. Your crimes are paid in blood!"

But naught within was left behind but blood and bone and hair,

And of his daughter he could find no body anywhere.

The Butcher and his prey were gone, lost in the bleeding dawn.

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That father, grief- and anger-wild, never gave up his search.

For years and years he sought his child, but he's now boxed in birch.

The Butcher had eluded him, which leaves our futures grim.

So heed me now, my dearest friends! I do not mean to scare,

But if you'd 'scape from early ends, you must always take care.

The Butcher stalks among us still and good folk he will kill.

The audience was rapt for the entire performance. Dalibor let the final chord ring and fade slowly away as Sara returned to his side from just outside the firelight. She put a hand on his arm, and they bowed for the travelers. The applause then came suddenly and furiously, and some of the travelers threw actual coins at them for the first time.

"That was way better than the normal version," the one-horned bull said.

"Matron keep me, that was so good I'm going to have nightmares," said a wide-eyed doe.

Dalibor stooped to pick up the coins, and Sara graciously accepted the compliments of the people who came up to fawn over her. They were still going when Dalibor was done, so he sat on the ground by her feet, idly strumming his lute. She was an excellent storyteller. Easily one of the most natural he'd seen, especially for one so young. He could get used to performing alongside her. There really was nothing like performing for people, and music was always better shared.

That night, in their tent, Sara was still buzzing slightly from their performance. "Something about the Ballad of the Butcher in particular always gets to me," she said while they lay curled up beside each other. "I don't know what it is."

"You perform it very well," Dalibor told her.

"We perform everything very well," she said. "This one's different for some reason, and I don't understand why."

A day or two later, just before they passed from Illyricum into Thracia, they encountered a pack of wolves. The first night the howls sounded around them, neither Dalibor nor Sara got any sleep at all. Dalibor made Sara stay in the tent while he went outside to stand watch with the caravan's official guards. "Do you know how to use that sword?" a gruff, fully-antlered buck asked him.

"I have novice training with the Verdant Blade," he said. "My swordplay is much better than my skills as a warlord, though."

"Those are odd skills for a bard," the buck said.

Dalibor looked the man up and down. The gray in his muzzle suggested he was closer to Rasha's age than Dalibor's. He bore a standard legionary spear and shield and was armored in unmarked studded leathers. "My companion is also a novice Sanguine dancer," Dalibor told him. "Everybody has a history, centurion."

The buck snorted. "I was only ever a legionary before the bastards kicked the non-Homin Aspects out of the Legion," he said. "They were never going to let someone with a tail lead a century."

Dalibor spent the night with the guards, all of them listening to the howls of the wolves hidden in the woods around them. Though he kept a close watch on the trees, Dalibor never once saw the tell-tale gleam of a radiant beast's burning eyes. He wasn't certain if that meant they were dealing with normal wolves or if the radiant ones were farther off.

The next day, the caravan kept close together. Nobody wandered ahead or off into the woods to forage or hunt. During the day, Dalibor managed to spot a wolf or two watching them from a distance, but each time, it was only a normal wolf. The wolves watched. They did not approach. The wolves sang to them that night also, but both Dalibor and Sara were so exhausted from staying up the night before that they banked their campfire and collapsed in their tent together. The day after that, the wolves were gone.

"It must not be normal wolves my… the emperor is worried about," Sara mused as they rode behind the caravan. "That pack behaved the way I'd expect. They don't want a fight with a group of humans any more than we want a fight with them."

"If it's radiant wolves he's worried about, then whatever he's doing must be working," Dalibor said. "We've walked pretty much the entire length of the Illyrian wilds at this point, and we haven't seen a single trace of them."

"Nor any other radiant beasts," Sara noted. "Is that odd? The way my father talked, this entire province was swarming with monsters out to kill everybody."

"The roads are generally safe," Dalibor said. "It's a little odd we haven't seen any, yes, but most caravans have trained soldiers to fight off radiant beasts. That helps keep the population in check along the trade routes. And there's always bounty hunters out scouting for nests to make a huge payday. And, apparently, the Legion is out here searching too. Thank the gods we didn't see them."

Just over a week later, the two of them left the caravan behind and set up a longer-term campsite just within the tree line before the first of Byzantium's outlying farms. "We'll camp here for just a few days," Dalibor said as he started their fire. "I don't want to spend any more time in Byzantium than we have to."

"We'd probably be safe," Sara said. She continued to unpack their things and set up the tent. "My father always hated Byzantium. It marked the end of his empire."

"I don't really know anything about the city," Dalibor said. "I've never been this far east."

"Aren't you from Armenia, though?" Sara asked. "That's farther east than Phrygia."

Dalibor considered his story carefully before continuing. There were still things he didn't want the princess knowing, but sharing some details was probably safe. "I don't know where either of those places are," Dalibor said. "Papa's from Armenia, but I was born in Mauritania. I grew up riding camels in caravans along the north edge of Sahara through Numidia and Aegyptus."

"That sounds dangerous," Sara said. She sat down beside the fire with him once the tent was up and their bags stowed. "Aren't the winds of Sahara radiance-cursed and lethal?"

"They are, yes, so no, it wasn't great," he told her. "But you were telling me about Byzantium."

"Like I said, it's the edge of the New Roman Empire," she said, warming her hands. "There's a strait that runs right through the middle of an isthmus that would otherwise connect Thracia and Phrygia. Byzantium sits on the western side of the strait, and its twin, the city of Chalcedon, sits on the eastern side. My tutors said they're both old cities too, so they're lucky they didn't sink entirely during the Fall of the Star. The strait's the only access into the Sunken Sea from the eastern half of the Internal Sea. Thracia and Phrygia both claim the strait as their own, so there's a massive amount of paperwork that has to be filled out in both cities before anybody can use it. Which is a problem, because almost everybody going to Sarmatia or Armenia wants to go this way instead of through the Pillars of the Hero out west and then back around the entire length of the Ring."

"It's a major trade port then?" Dalibor asked.

"Almost everything passes through Byzantium at some point," Sara told him.

"Then why would you think we'd be safe there?"

"Phrygia is controlled by the deer," she said. "So Chalcedon is Geykli territory. If we cross the straits, we're not in the New Roman Empire anymore. My father wouldn't have nearly as much power there."

"Hmm…" Dalibor mused. "That's probably what our long-term goal should be, you know? Leave the Empire entirely."

"You want to live together in Phrygia or Armenia?" Sara asked.

"I really don't," Dalibor said. "But it sounds like we could find a ship to Aegyptus out of Byzantium. Alexandria's not a bad place to live." He gave her a sidelong glance. "Especially if you're partial to jackals."

She arched an eyebrow at him but did not deign to respond to his jab. "Is that the Alexandria with the Pharos?" she asked instead.

"It is actually, yes," Dalibor said. "Tallest building in the world. How'd you know that?"

"Expensive tutors," she said. "Lessons about the glory of Rome and the pre-Astral world. Oh! What about the Great Pyramid? Can we see the pyramids too?"

Dalibor wrinkled his nose, which caused his lip to get stuck. He didn't bother to fix it, even knowing the look that came to Sara's eyes every time it happened. "Memphis is kind of a pit, but I guess we can visit if you want. Don't expect great accommodations there. It's mostly just a staging point for people stupid enough to try and sail past Sahara along the Nilus."

"People do that?"

"Not smart people," Dalibor said. "It's possible, sure, but you have to use the winds off of Sahara to sail your boat, and the winds off of Sahara are very lethal."

"Oh, Sahara's another thing I want to see someday," Sara said. She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "I used to dream about this, you know? I'd stare out over the parapet of my balcony at the villa and just wish I could visit all of the places my tutors were teaching me about. The deserts of Aegyptus. The mountains of Aquitania. The forests of Illyricum. The wonders of the pre-Astral world, like the Pharos, the Pyramid, the Mausoleum. And now I'm seeing them! Or might get to see them. It's exciting. I know that there are people out to kill us and all, but I can't think about that all the time, or I'll be too scared to do anything at all. So I want to think about all the things I want to do. That I want, not that other people want for me. And I think I want to travel. See the world. Perform for people!" She looked over at him for the first time since she started talking. Her face was more open and happier than he'd seen during the entire time he'd known her. She looked hopeful. His tail began to wag on the ground behind him. "Do you think we could do that? Someday?"

He flashed his own crooked smile back at her. "I think I'd enjoy seeing the world with you," he said. And he honestly thought he would. Regardless of whatever else might or might not happen between them, he could easily see himself wandering the world with her as a pair of itinerant bards, seeing the sights, performing for strangers, always on the move to somewhere new. Somewhere exciting. She had cost him so much, but what he had gained was turning out to be worth it. She was no Rasha, certainly, but she felt as much like family as the bear did.

She was more than enough for him, and he was certain that feeling would never change.