“You escape it by sheltering on warded ground, like this road.” I closed my fingers over the stone and, ignoring her protest, tucked it into a pocket sewn on the inside hem of my jacket. “Although that doesn’t explain how we escaped being swept away at the river—”
“Cat.”
A sound like the rushing of river water swelled behind us. I turned. Out of the walled town, human-like creatures rose in a tide of dark wings.
Bee said, “Blessed Tanit protect us!”
A mob circled above us. Their vast wingspans half blotted out the sky. They swept down over us, claws gleaming.
“Down!” I snapped.
Bee dropped, and I straddled her back, feet braced on either side of her. My sword blazed with an icy light so bright it burned. I slashed and stabbed as they attacked. Where my blade nicked flesh, they shrieked, scattering in all directions.
“Cat, what are they?”
“Don’t move.” I shifted so my skirts belled over her. “They don’t like my sword.”
The mob resumed its circling above us. One landed out of reach of my blade.
Tall, broad-shouldered, and powerfully built, she looked much like a human. Her short black hair stuck up in spikes. Her narrow face was as translucently pale as watered-down milk, and she had the stark blue eyes we in the north called “the mark of the ice.” A line of purple-blue tattoos like falling feathers spun down the right side of her face and neck. She wore a sleeveless calf-length tunic covered with amulets sewn onto the fabric much as hunters fixed such talismans onto their clothing to protect them in the bush. Her wings certainly amazed me. But it was the third eye in the center of her forehead that riveted my attention.
“You are an eru,” I said, choosing offense over defense. “My greetings to you and your people. May we be at peace rather than at odds. I ask for guest rights, if such can be offered to peaceful strangers who have stumbled here by accident.”
She spoke in a voice like a bell. “You are well come here, Cousin. Our hearth is open to you. All we have is yours. All we are is at your service. But we have to kill the servant of the enemy. That is the law.”
“Cat,” Bee whispered from under my skirts, “I think they mean me.”
The eru cried out the same way the great bells of Adurnam cried out the alarm when the city was threatened. “It speaks! Beware!”
I shifted my sword’s angle; the eru took a step back. “She is not my enemy, and therefore she is not yours.”
More eru landed out of my reach, ranging in a circle around us. The tall ones had third eyes as bright as gems. The shorter bore marks on their foreheads like a mass of cloudy veins, and I had the oddest feeling they could see with those blinded, blinkered third eyes onto sights invisible to me. It was very disturbing. Worse, it seemed likely these eru could rip us to pieces in short order with their claws. And how could I predict what damage they could do with their magic, for weren’t eru fabled as the masters of storm and wind?
“Never mind,” I said. “We’ll just go on our way.”
“She must be sacrificed,” said the eru who had spoken before. “As a courtesy to you, if it is your wish, we will kill her and eat her at the welcoming feast, all except her head. Her head we will cast in the well to give strength to our water. Out of respect for you, our guest, we will show her this honor.”
Bee’s choked exclamation hit me in a wave of fear. I swept my blade in a slow circle, to mark each eru, ten in all. “I will take as many of you with me as I can, before I let you touch her.”
A melody like words flowed around the circle, then ceased when the first eru raised an arm. “Do you serve her, who is a servant of the enemy?”
“Why do you believe her to be your enemy?”
“Did she not come to seek a serpent’s nest? Do you not feel the enemy turning and turning again? Doesn’t this rising tide aid their servant because it forces us, who would drive her away, to hide within our wards rather than pursue her?”
“I think you are a servant of the night court,” I said, remembering the eru who had pretended to be a footman in the service of Four Moons House and what she had told me when we had stopped at Brigands’ Beacon so Andevai could make an offering. “Because servants of the night court have to answer questions with questions.”
She nodded in the manner of an opponent acknowledging a hit. “I am she who speaks for this hearth when the night court commands.”
Black wings fluttered. Out of the sky dropped a crow. No ordinary crow could cause such a reaction among fearsome eru. They took flight in a cacophony of wings until only the speaker remained. With a self-satisfied air, the crow folded its wings and cocked its head to consider me. A smear of dried blood mottled the tip of its scabrous bill. I was sure the blood was mine.