Crowbones

CHAPTER 24

Thaisday, Novembros 1

Her face revealed nothing, but in her very stillness, he could sense her sorrow—and her growing, cataclysmic rage.

He had learned some things about her. She was hunting a contamination. Something sly and insidious had touched Crowgard, had touched Sanguinati, turning them against their own kind in ways the leaders of those terra indigene forms couldn’t detect until it was far too late. She had found and eliminated minions, the ones who were contaminated beyond any undoing, but she hadn’t found the source. She would get close, and the source, a cunning predator in its own right, would slip away—and she would have to wait for the signs of contamination to surface again before she continued her hunt.

Opening the small pouch on her belt, she removed a spool of black thread, bit three lengths of thread off the spool, and used them to secure three feathers in her long black hair. As she returned the spool to her pouch, a light breeze made the feathers in her hair dance.

He looked around, ready to shake the gourd in warning.

No need to warn. No point in warning.

Four Elementals—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—stood nearby, watching her. Watching them.

Maybe information was exchanged between the Elementals and her. Maybe the look in her eyes was all they needed. He didn’t know, couldn’t say.

As one, the Elementals tipped their heads to acknowledge her. Then they looked at him, at the gourd in his hand and the feathered cape around his shoulders—and they disappeared.

“Easy place . . . for police . . . to find,” he said, looking at the Crow.

She nodded, then headed off to look for other signs of the source of contamination.

For a moment, he wondered if he should give the Sanguinati here some warning. Except . . . They would send him away, and he had a purpose here. At least for a little while.

His brain . . . blinked . . . and he looked around, panic rising, not sure where he was or why he was there.

Then he saw her waiting for him—and he remembered. Again.

And he followed.