It was time to hunt.
Rachelle took off running along the ridgepole. Ahead of her, the roof came to an end, and she leaped. For one moment she sliced, weightless, through the air and darkness; then her feet hit the next roof and skidded. In a heartbeat she had her balance back and was running again.
East of the cathedral, there was a neighborhood that had suffered five woodspawn attacks in the last two weeks. That wasn’t just a series of random incursions; that was a pack, returning again and again to the place where they had found prey.
They were not going to hunt anyone else tonight.
Another roof, and another. Then Rachelle reached the wide, paved expanse of the Place du Gloire. She ran straight across, dropping from the rooftops to the ground.
At the center of the square stood two bronze statues of Tyr and Zisa holding the swords Joyeuse and Durendal. The bases of the statues were papered over with broadsheets—more dissidents asking how the King could dare to raise taxes when crops were failing because of the shortening days. To resist naming an heir when rumor said his health was ailing. To let the bloodbound live when everybody knew the Forest was growing stronger.
She’d been seeing a lot of broadsheets lately. Soon there would be another set of fools trying to attack the King’s bloodbound. And another round of arrests.
Rachelle swarmed straight up the face of the building on the other side of the square, and put both King and rebels out of her head. Everything was simpler on the roofs. She ran and leaped, nothing to push her back but the wind itself, until she reached the neighborhood where the woodspawn kept attacking. Then she settled herself on a ridgepole to watch and wait.
And wait.
The night slowly wore on. The fire that had burned in her veins as she raced across the city was gone. Now she was cold and stiff; her eyes throbbed from lack of sleep and her fingers, still clutching the hilt of her sword, were almost completely numb. But she had promised herself she wouldn’t sleep until she took care of this pack.
To keep herself awake, she stared at the glowing red string that was tied to her finger and trailed away off the roof. The string—invisible to everyone but her—was a reminder of why she couldn’t stop hunting. If she looked at it long enough, she knew the scar on her right palm would start aching. That, too, was a reminder.
She would never deserve to stop hunting.
As if in answer to the thought, she heard a chorus of soft, almost musical moans.
Then she saw them on the street below: five doglike woodspawn, whippet-thin, their white bodies translucent, their muzzles bloodred. They looked like the ghosts of a court lady’s lapdogs, but Rachelle had seen them tear a man to pieces in minutes.
One of the hounds slowed, lagging behind the others, and tilted its head up to sniff the air.
Rachelle drew her sword and flung herself down.
The hound had dodged before her feet hit the mud. But it didn’t move fast enough to escape her sword. The blade cut through translucent flesh and bone; blood spurted, suddenly vivid and corporeal, but by the time the body hit the ground, it was already turning to mud.
The other hounds had wheeled to face her. They growled, lips curling as they faced the obscene enigma of a creature who was filled with the power of the Great Forest and yet turned against them. Then they sprang.
Rachelle grinned. Rain and wind and blood flung against her face as she whirled among them, her blade slicing. Moments later she was alone, the bodies of the woodspawn melting into the mud around her.
Gasping for breath, she listened: nothing but the patter of the rain, the whispers of the wind, the faint shouts and clatters that filled the city air even at night. She couldn’t sense anything, either.
The hunt was over, and as she realized that, all her earlier exhaustion washed back over her.
She also realized that the hunt had ended in front of a place where she could get a hot drink. Two doors down, light spilled from the windows of a coffeehouse; its wooden sign rocked in the wind. Rachelle strode through the puddles. As she reached for the door, the wind whirled up again behind her back and shoved her forward. She clattered into the coffeehouse on her toes.
Rachelle squinted against the sudden glare of the oil lamps. She’d never been in this coffeehouse before—it was well away from her normal territory—but it seemed pleasant enough. The air was warm, thick with the scent of coffee. Despite the hour, there were still eight men sitting at the tables. After the cold loneliness of the night, their presence crowded the room: the stubble on their chins, the trim on their coats, the little human noises they made as they breathed and muttered. Behind them, an artist more willing than skilled had painted a swirling promenade of figures from history and legend. By the counter hung a bronze foot enameled red at the ankle-stump: the Dayspring’s left foot, the common devotion for tradesmen.
Glances drifted up to her and stopped. Voices fell silent. It was unusual for a young woman to walk into a coffeehouse alone—especially this late at night—but they didn’t care a whit about that. They didn’t even care that she was one of the rare women with permission from the King to carry a sword and a dispensation from the Church to wear men’s clothing. Not when her red coat was embroidered on each shoulder with a black fleur-de-lis, symbol of the Royal Order of Penitents. The King’s bloodbound.
The King’s pet murderers. That was what the illegal broadsheets plastered on the alley walls called them, and all the people who met her knew it. Rachelle had long since stopped choking when she saw that name in their eyes.
But this time there was more fear than usual. And hatred. These people had probably marched in penitential processions and pasted up broadsheets that all but called for rebellion. They thought that the growing darkness was the judgment of God, brought down by the King’s willingness to make use of the bloodbound’s unholy powers.