My hand instinctively creeps toward my sword. Not even the cottage seems safe now, knowing what the flowers on the table mean: Danger. Deception. Death.
“Master Cymbre was called away this morning, apparently,” Simeon adds from the back of the cottage, striding to the hearth with four steaming mugs of tea clutched in his hands. “Jax and I got a raven last night, telling us to be here at noon. But when we came in, we found a note pinned under her kettle and flowers growing all over the graves—so at least she got the warning, too.” He nods to a scrap of parchment on a nearby table.
I skim the note, hardly taking in a word, crinkling it in my fist as my gaze shifts from the flowers to my friends beside the hearth.
“You’re late, Sparrow.” Jax leans back on his elbows, gazing up at me with his crystal-blue eyes and not even a shadow of his normal grin. He’s warming his bare feet near the flames, his sword balanced on his lap as he stretches across Master Cymbre’s woven carpet. Dressed in his necromancer’s tight black shirt and trousers, his muscles bulging, he looks completely out of place in the dainty white stone cottage. “We were getting worried. If you didn’t show up soon, I’d have started looking for people to kill.”
I shiver. Knowing Jax, he’s not kidding.
Sitting rigidly beside him, Evander accepts a mug of tea from Simeon with a murmured thanks. The sound of his voice, though it’s strained, settles around me like an embrace.
“What kept you?” Evander asks, his words careful. He stares into the dwindling fire, a crease between his brows.
“Just getting something from Kasmira.” Hoping to ease the tension between us, I plop down in the narrow space between Jax and Evander, making a place for myself by forcing them to move or have their legs squished, like I’ve been doing for years. Jax’s familiar grumble and Evander’s familiar light touch on my back help the horrible events of last night seem farther away, like a bad dream, as I crunch down on a few of my ill-gotten goods. “Though even coffee beans aren’t exactly helping—”
“But you always say there’s nothing coffee can’t cure,” Simeon says in slight alarm, handing me a mug and peering into my face, scrutinizing. “Who are you, and what have you done with my sister?”
He tries to hide his pain behind a ghost of a smile, but I recognize the hollowness in his voice and eyes. Where Jax is foul-mouthed and surly, Simeon is always quick to crack a joke or smile.
“That’s what I used to think, too. But after last night, I’m not so sure.” I yank on a lock of his sandy blond hair, one of the many telltale signs we’re not really brother and sister. But after being raised together in Death’s convent from the time we were toddlers, we’re as good as family. “How are you holding up? I’m worried about you . . .”
“Me?” Simeon takes a seat on Jax’s other side, cradling his own tea between his palms. “Whatever for?” The sparkle I’m so used to seeing in his baby-blue eyes has faded, and a knot forms in my chest as he adds softly, “I’m still here.”
Evander blows steam off the top of his mug, gazing deep within it, and says nothing. Jax gulps his scalding tea without hesitation. His thoughts are surely with Master Nicanor, who was like a father to him, trying to understand the extent of his loss.
For a moment, as we sit together in a deep silence broken only by the occasional pop and hiss of the dwindling fire, I wish I could stay in this cottage with my friends forever. We’ve never received a warning from the Deadlands before, and I have no idea if it means we’re up against more than a Shade, or if we can handle it. We’re not exactly seasoned warriors. We’re just three orphans, and one baron’s son who grew up without a father. The king’s ideal necromancers, with no loved ones to distract us in the Deadlands, trying to keep each other sane both in and out of the spirits’ realm.
Jax spills his tea and spits a curse, breaking the silence. Simeon leaps up to help contain the mess.
While they’re busy, Evander and I exchange a look. He catches my fingers in his.
Squeezing his hand, I silently let him know I don’t want to fight anymore. “Where did Cymbre go, anyway?” I ask, her note still clutched in my hand. I could hardly read a word of it—the characters swam together on the page in my shock over the flowers.
“Duchess Bevan needed her help, so she went to Oslea Province,” Jax grunts, wringing tea out of his tight shirt. “Seems the duke’s been missing from their manor in Dyrn City for three days. Went for an afternoon stroll and never came home. If the duchess is lucky, the bastard wound up falling in a frozen lake.”
Simeon shakes his head.
“What?” Jax mutters when no one agrees with him. “Have you met him? He beats his wife. Maybe a few days under the ice will help him rearrange his priorities.”
“I don’t see what Master Cymbre will be able to do, anyway. She’s not a bloodhound.” Evander frowns into his tea. “People seem to think that just because we raise the dead, we can solve all their problems when the Dead don’t act exactly the way they want.”
Everyone nods. It’s not the first time we’ve complained about this.
“So what are we supposed to do about Master Nicanor’s funeral? Delay it until she returns?” I wonder aloud. “And hunting down the Shade that—?”
“Sparrow. We have more to worry about than just some Shade.” Simeon runs a hand through his shaggy hair. The circles under his eyes are dark as the bruises we used to give each other at sword practice.
Even Jax looks ill, almost like he did last winter after beating the black fever. “We went to Master Nicanor’s cottage early this morning, to find something nice to bury him in.” His voice is taut as he fights to keep it from wavering. “The place was wrecked. Papers everywhere. A smashed plate of supper on the floor. Scratch marks on the doorframe.”
I shiver again. “Could it have been a vandal? A farmer’s son?” I have to ask, even if it’s unlikely. After all, Master Nicanor had just started tending the massive graveyard outside Grenwyr City, the one used by merchants and wealthy farmers. “A couple of boys messing around, looking for spare coins when they saw Master Nicanor had gone out for the evening?”
“Nice try, sister.” Simeon leans forward. “But I don’t think so. I can’t think of anything that would cause Master Nicanor to go into the Deadlands alone. I think he was taken against his will.”
“Exactly. Think about it: Who would he have needed to raise so badly that it couldn’t have waited until Cymbre could come with him?” Jax demands. “Why wouldn’t he have just asked us to raise the person for him?”