Ronan nodded soberly. Moria reached for her dagger, but Tyrus was cleaning it and ignored her.
“You think that beast was infected?” Ronan asked Tyrus as he scrubbed the dagger with a cloth and wine from an open skin.
“Either that or it ate far too much.”
Ronan exchanged a look with Moria. He was thinking what she had been, and while she wanted to see that as proof that her imagination wasn’t taking liberties with her common sense, she knew that, like her, he was probably overly quick to blame sorcery. They’d seen too much of it, in too short a time.
“We should take the corpse,” she said. “For study. Ronan can do that.”
“No, Ronan cannot,” Ronan said. “Because he isn’t under your command, my lady. That thing will not walk away. Leave it for the warriors to collect. I have found something more interesting. A survivor.”
Tyrus and Moria hurried through Fairview, with only Daigo accompanying them. Ronan had given them directions and then slipped off.
He’d said he’d spotted a woman darting across a road, while Ashyn was still in the town hall. Had Ronan been keeping an eye on her? Moria hoped he wasn’t playing with her sister’s heart, as he determined his own feelings. She’d let it happen once with no repercussions. It would not happen again.
When they neared the house the woman had entered, Moria noted movement beyond a half-closed shutter. Across the road, a pair of guards searched. They all made enough noise that any able-bodied survivors should be dashing from their homes.
“But how would they know we’re rescuers?” Tyrus said. “She may have heard me identify myself. She may have seen me and recognized my armbands. Yet even if she knows who I am…?” He shrugged. “Would you come out so quickly?”
After being beset by bandits and shadow stalkers, one might not trust the emperor himself if he appeared and offered sanctuary. And given what Moria had seen, if someone had been trapped in this town for almost a fortnight, it was entirely possible she was not in her proper mind.
“In here,” she said, motioning to a house across the road.
From inside, they watched the house where the woman hid. Finally, the front door opened. A woman peeked out. She was younger than Moria expected, no older than Tyrus. She looked one direction and then the other, and, once convinced the way was clear, the young woman darted out and slipped into another house farther down.
“Avoiding the search,” Tyrus said. “She does not want to be found.”
“Well, she will be,” Ronan said, appearing as if he’d come in through a window. “Do we have a plan?”
SIXTEEN
Tyrus’s plan was neither complicated nor contentious. There truly was only one solution – confront the young woman while blocking her escape routes. Moria went through the front door, presuming a young woman around the girl’s age would be less intimidating. She even concealed her daggers. At the door, she turned to Daigo.
“Will you stay here? In case she runs past me. And so you don’t spook her.”
He grumbled but planted himself in front of the entrance. Moria went inside.
“I saw you come in here,” she called. “My name is Moria, Keeper…” She trailed off as the hairs on her neck rose. The shutters were drawn, the room dim and cool, and she peered about it. Something was not right here. It plucked at her memory, telling her she’d sensed this before. Similar yet different.
After a slow look around, she began again. “I’m Moria, Keeper of Edgewood. I come from the emperor, with his son, Prince Tyrus. I was here a fortnight ago. Perhaps you saw me with my sister, the Seeker.”
Silence.
“We were held captive here, before being sent to the imperial city with a message. I was supposed to negotiate the terms of your release – you and the other townspeople. I suspect we did not make it far before —”
“The shadow stalkers came.”
The voice sounded so suddenly that Moria started. She turned to see the young woman in the doorway of a bedchamber. She was empire-born, somewhere between plain and pretty, a thin girl wearing a simple dress. She had long, dark hair and dark eyes. “It was the first night after you left. The shadow stalkers came.”
“You knew what they were?”
The young woman laughed, the sound so jarring in light of the tragedy that the hairs on Moria’s neck rose again. She looked at the girl, who stood in the doorway as if greeting an unexpected visitor.
She’s not… right. Because of what she witnessed?
The girl continued, “I may never have seen a shadow stalker, but I’d certainly heard of them. It would’ve been difficult to mistake those creatures for anything else.”
“What happened?”
Behind the girl, Ronan had slipped through a window into the bedchamber. Now he stopped, his forehead creasing, perhaps wondering why she’d ask such a question. This was hardly the time for an interrogation.
The girl didn’t seem to think the question odd, though. She said, “They came as black smoke and possessed the men, who turned on the women. During the slaughter, the mercenaries took the children. The shadow stalkers did not seem to bother them – the mercenaries or the children.”
“And your family?”
“My father was possessed like the other men. He killed my mother and my older sister.”
“I am sorry for your loss.”
A pause. Then panic lit the girl’s eyes as she must have realized how dispassionate her account sounded. Her town had been massacred. Her mother and sister were murdered by her father. Yet she recited the events as if they were facts in a history book.