Reaper

Chapter 2: Five Runes

Ava hunched inside her coat; scanned the wet darkness that engulfed her. Moonlight snaked alongside the swamp punt's stern as black water and trees crawled past.

There were parts of the Glades she'd never seen before—and didn't want to see.

Five Runes was one of those places.

A towering ghost, the first of the carved pillars of an old, sunken temple, emerged from the night's murk: stone tangled with vines and feathered with ferns and moss. The moon's dull light and its reflection off the water caught the edges of an engraving as the boat skimmed past. A star formed by three crossed lines.

The element of spirit ether.

The faded echo of magic hummed beneath the song of toads and the drone of beetles, old power that dried the tongue. But newer magic also tainted the breeze: the peppery bite of domestic wards to repel wildlife—mosquitoes and snakes—and sicklier blessings aiming to bring luck and wealth. Abandoned to the swamp centuries ago, the temple had recently been reclaimed. Whym homes formed and faded in the darkness, black growths strung with rope walkways, clinging to the ruins like fungi. Hundreds of homes. Thousands of enchantments.

Enough power to stir the hair at her nape—if every fibre of her being hadn't already been standing at attention.

"The dock's just ahead," Tythorn Sol broke the throbbing quiet. "The body's at the local shrine. A short walk. But at this tide, we'll be wading some of the way."

Ava dug her nails into the leather of her coat, unformed, undirected power making her flesh itch. The half-blood's magical aura wasn't as potent as a full-blooded elf's, but was still enough to raise the heartbeat—and bad memories.

Easing forward to check her boots' thigh-high lacings, she eyed the inquisitor from behind the dark fall of her hair. The elf's silhouette merged with the wooded dark, his pale, sun-streaked hair hidden by his cloak's hood. But his Whym blood was evident as he moved bow to stern and back, driving pole to river bed in a smooth rhythm, gliding the craft forward. Competent. Elegant.

He'd hired the craft, but chosen to man the punt himself, leaving the owner to crawl back onto his bed mat. Not what she'd expected from someone clothed neck to shin in silk.

But then, she'd expected nothing but a quick death.

In the three weeks he'd been in the Crux, the inquisitor had crossed her path often in the night. Each time, his keen gaze had locked onto her hooded form—not onto any grisly corpse she might have been carting. Anything from a scowl to a mordant smile had accompanied those looks, but the constant had been that, unlike so many others she met, he noticed her. Always.

He'd requested her presence that night. That, she was sure of. But so far, there'd been no loaded questions about her past, no accusations, no judgement delivered in a blaze of Whym fire. Whatever the elf did or didn't know, whatever he did or didn't sense, he clearly had other priorities. He'd hardly spoken in the hour since his jibe about the pleasure of having humans beg for his mercy, his silence stretching from the Crux's seaward docks out into the estuary's weed-clogged arteries.

Grasping the stern's board seat, Ava tried to block her awareness of the chills chasing across her skin. If this wasn't an inquisition, if she was simply there to do her job, she'd get it done and get gone. "Tell me about the dead Whym," she broke her own silence.

Tythorn dug the punt pole deep for a burst of speed. "His name is Columbine Sol-Sky. A First Son of the Sky Branch of House Sol."

Ava winced. Sol—Tythorn answered to and carried the Root Name of that particular Whym House. Having trained in Whymmyrah, the inquisitor had likely known the dead Whym. And while not actual royalty, the dead elf had only been a rung down from it as a Branch First Son. It was no wonder the Whym Queen had dispatched her pet inquisitors. "May I ask what your House brother was doing this far from court?"