Page 87 of Thornlight

Brier carefully tucked Mazby into her coat pocket and hurried through the rag door.

Outside, Zino and four other stormwitches huddled a few paces away from the house. Zino was hugging a small sobbing stormwitch boy named Erko, whose hair fell down his back in a messy white braid.

Brier couldn’t be sure what these witches really thought of her. Was she a friend, or was she simply a temporary ally? Now that she’d caught her harvester friends for them, would they turn on her?

She stepped forward, through her nerves. “What is it? What’s happened?”

Zino looked over Erko’s shoulders, his face stretched thin. “We found someone.”

He stopped. He glanced at the stormwitch girl with her hair in five messy buns. Talla was her name.

Brier’s stomach dropped at the expressions on their faces,like they’d seen something so terrible they didn’t know what words to use for it.

Mazby poked his head out of her pocket. “Who? Not a stormwitch?”

Zino said nothing and stepped out of the way so Brier could see. All the air left her lungs. Mazby shrank into her pocket, only his eyes and the top of his blanket peeking out.

A few paces away, at the edge of the cliff outside Zino’s home, lay a large pile of bloody rags.

“She used to be a witch,” Zino said, his voice small and strange, “though she doesn’t smell of lightning.”

Erko pressed his face into Zino’s stomach, wailing softly.

“Her magic smells sour. And very old. It almost smells to me like...”

Zino trailed off, jaw clenching. Gently he passed Erko to Talla and approached the pile of rags, arms crossed over his chest.

Brier took a deep breath and followed him. Near the rags, the air smelled sour, yes, and strangely sweet, like rotting flowers. She breathed shallowly and touched the pocket holding Mazby. He nuzzled his head softly against her fingers.

“What does it smell like to you?” Brier asked Zino. If he were a friend, she would have given his shoulder an awkwardpat. That was how she handled such moments, when they happened, which wasn’t often. Thorn had always been better at this sort of thing.

A small pain stretched between Brier’s chest and her gut like a thrumming string.

Oh, Thorn,she thought.I miss you.

“Her magic smells like a tether,” Zino answered. “Like sweat and rot. Like something binding one thing to another.”

Zino didn’t speak for several long moments. Too horribly curious to resist, Brier reached for the rags.

“Let her rest,” Zino said sharply. “We’ve already dragged her all the way back here, to bury her properly. And besides, you don’t want to see. Trust me.”

Brier nodded, stepped back.

“She’d fallen, I think,” said Zino. “From a great height.”

Brier swallowed several times against her rising stomach. Mazby cooed sadly.

“We found this beside her,” Zino added.

From his coat Zino pulled a small bundle wrapped in a tattered rag. With shaking hands, Brier unfolded the fabric, expecting gruesome remains—and saw, instead, a knife.

A lovely one too, despite the blood staining the blade:slender but solid, the hilt inlaid with small pale blue jewels. Carved into the hilt were familiar shapes: a tall tower, five long-tailed mistbirds flying around it.

“I don’t know what those markings mean,” Zino said quietly, “but the knife lay very near the... the body. It had fallen with her, perhaps. And her chest, it... she had a wound...”

Zino’s voice failed him.

Brier considered biting her tongue and saying nothing. She had spent four years as a harvester, as the famous lightning girl of Aeria. For four years she had reported to the castle every week, occasionally even visiting the young queen in her throne room.

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