Chapter 28: A Different Brand Of Violence.

Ash kept me steady on my feet and I did not resist. The slope was steep. Ash went first, her sword drawn, checking the treeline before each step.

I followed. My legs moved, though my mind was elsewhere. On a silver hand around a throat I hadn’t realized was so fragile. How Ash’s feet had left the ground as if she weighed nothing at all. I had not known Ash’s throat was so fragile. I had not known I would care.

“Stay close,” Ash said without turning.

“I am not the one who needs protecting,” I said. The words came out sharper than I intended.

Ash glanced back once. I saw her register my face and she turned away. We crested the slope and the firelight found us. The camp was still standing, which was almost more than I had expected.

The battle sounds had died some time ago, replaced by men tending to wounds and counting their dead. This was a sight I was almost used to seeing. I had been on many a campaign, and those camps had looked much like this, after the fighting was done. A thousand times larger, but the concept was somewhat the same.

Ash moved ahead of me, her sword now sheathed but her hand still resting on the hilt. She was limping, just slightly, on her left side. I did not think she knew I had noticed, and I had not seen the attack that had injured her so. When had I started watching her so closely?

The clearing came into view. Firelight still burned at the center of the camp, though it had shrunk to embers. Soldiers moved between the tents, carrying bodies. I counted the dead as we approached. Eight men in silver armour that I could see, laid in a row near the center. Their breastplates had been removed, and the wounds beneath them were ugly. Caved in chests, torn off limbs, battered heads. My gaze lingered longer than it once might have.

Further from the fire, in loose heaps, lay the Demonbloods. Their mismatched and dull armor did not catch the light. One of the fallen had hair the color of frost. Another had the faintest nubs of horns at his temples, hidden beneath purple hair. A girl lay among them -she could not have been much older than Sara. There was no green wolf beside her now. I looked at them longer than I looked at the soldiers.

Isabelle’s voice came back to me, unbidden. All people with demon blood are brothers and sisters. Pain makes family of everyone. Did that apply to all of these bodies too? Had they been a family? I crushed the thought before it could take further root.

I looked for Ash. She was speaking to one of the soldiers about the wounded, her back was to me. The marks on her throat were vivid even from here. The Inker stood at the center of what remained of the camp, his robes disheveled. He was speaking to three soldiers in a voice that carried more than he perhaps intended. “Find them! I don’t care if you have to comb every tree in this god damned forest, you will find the Consecrated or so help me I will-”

“We are here,” I said.

The Inker turned. The relief that crossed his face was so naked it was almost offensive. He crossed the distance to us in four strides, his composure reassembling itself with each step, though what the point of that was now, I did not know.

“You’re alive.” He looked us over, and his eyes caught on the dirt on my clothing, on the tear in Ash’s dress. “Are you injured? I have men who can heal. If you need-”

“We need to speak,” I said. The Inker paused. His gaze moved between us again. Whatever he saw in my face, it made the relief curdle into something more cautious. “And you will follow,” I continued. “Now.”

The man stared at me for three seconds. I counted them. Then he turned and gestured toward his tent without a word. Ash fell into step beside me. She waited until the Inker was far enough ahead, then spoke in a murmur only I could hear. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I wish to get answers, that is all.” I said. I took a deep breath, now was not the time to be distracted.

“Will this result in violence? Because I must confess, I do not quite have the strength for it.”

I glanced at her. The red marks on her throat were especially noticeable in the firelight, dark against the pale of her skin. My jaw tightened at the sight of them. “No,” I said. “Though perhaps this is a different kind of violence.”

I stopped walking. Ash took another step before she realized and turned back. “What-”

“Stay still.” I reached for her before the thought had fully formed. My left hand rose to her throat, and the Cradle answered at once. Wisps of white flame poured from my fingers and I felt the damage beneath the skin. The bruising was deeper than it had any right to be. Through the Cradle’s impressions I felt something else -Ash’s confusion, and beneath it, a stillness. Why was she so still?

The bruises lightened under my touch. The angry red faded to pink, and the pink faded to the color of her skin. I traced each mark that Isabelle’s fingers had left, and I erased them one at a time, making absolutely certain nothing remained. It was perhaps an unwise use of the power I still had. “Lys-”

“I said stay still.” My voice came out sharper than I intended. I adjusted my hand and checked the other side of her neck. There was another bruise beneath her jaw, one I had not seen. I pressed Bloom into it and felt it yield. “What about your ribs? Were you struck?”

“They’re fine.”

“Turn around.”

“Lys.”

“Turn. Around.”

Ash turned. I placed my hand flat against her back, between her shoulder blades. She shivered and then her breathing changed. It quickened for a heart beat, and then it slowed. I felt the warmth of her back press against my palm. The Cradle pulsed and I felt along the line of each rib. There was tenderness on her left side. A deep bruise, perhaps a hairline crack beneath. I fed warmth into it. My hand stayed longer than the healing required. I pulled it away.

“There,” I said. “An injured retainer is a useless retainer. I am simply being thorough.”

Ash turned back to face me. Faint color had risen in her neck. She opened her mouth and closed it again. The color deepened, and when she met my eyes, her gaze held something I could not read. I looked away first. That was unusual. Neither of us said anything as we walked to the tent.

The interior of the tent was rather modest for a holy man. There was a single large cot, a folding table with papers, and a small stool. The Inker sat on the stool. He looked rather diminished without the ceremony around him. “What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

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My hands were steady now, I was grateful for this task. “You are going to tell us what you refused to on the road,” I said. “You are going to tell us about Essence and Essence Cores and the stages of cultivation. I have many other questions, and you are going to answer every question I put to you, and you are going to do so completely, without restraint.”

The Inker straightened on his stool even as he sat up straighter. “Those answers are found only at the Academy as I have told you many times. My charge was to escort you, not to instruct you and that boundary exists for-”

“Then let me ask you this,” I cut him off. “The people who attacked us tonight. Did they also attend this Academy of yours?”

The man’s mouth closed. “I felt it on them,” I continued. “The same power you and your men were using. This Essence. It was on every one of those fighters, including the half-demon who led them. They all had elaborate marks, and they certainly seemed well versed in using them. This power of yours does not seem nearly as rare or as sacred as you have been pretending.”

The Inker’s jaw worked. He looked past us, at the tent wall. When he spoke, the words came reluctantly, as if each one had to be pried loose. “In the Kingdom of Arianeth, and the lands around it,” he said slowly, “the Covenant is one of the few organizations authorized to administer the Ink and oversee its cultivation. The primary organization, by far. There are others, and there are some…unofficial ones.”

“One of the few,” Ash stepped in. “But not the only one, as you pretended. You lied to us. You mean to say that these answers exist elsewhere, and you told us they did not.”

The Inker’s face twisted. “Other sacrilegious places,” he snapped. “Run by fools who barely understand what they are handling. Renegades and heretics who-”

“We were attacked,” I said. My voice was not loud. “Your Archon sent you to retrieve us. He will not be pleased to learn that his prize was nearly destroyed on the road.”

The Inker went still. His gaze was drifting between the two of us, though he did not seem to see either. Who was he seeing? His Archon being displeased with him, most likely. I knew this type of worm well.