Page 6 of Fate Unchained

Otherwise … Kyril’s hands fisted, his claws biting into his palms. They needed to know what was in the damn grimoire.

He reached the river, a rime of ice along its banks. The water flowed swift and silent, a dark stream heading south. He turned north and frowned. He better not have to enter the human town.

Baba Yaga would be hunkering down for the storm too, so he would search for her afterward when he could track with the snow. If she went into the town … he’d deal with it.

He bared his teeth and grabbed a few large branches from the ground. He was going to need some firewood. As he hiked them over his shoulder, he froze. A booted footprint lay in the softer ground near the bank where the dirt hadn’t frozen for winter yet. This print was fresh.

He inhaled deeply and searched the forest. The only large animal he scented was a deer, maybe a quarter mile to the east. The stink from the village drifted south on the wind, and the heavy weight of the coming snow lurked on the edges of every breath. Where had the human gone?

Laying his firewood down, he growled and followed the tracks. They stopped near the cave, then headed for higher ground and turned back north. Along the frozen earth, it was tougher to track. Only when he put his face to the ground could he catch the faint traces of shoe leather, and man. Kyril wasn’t a tracker, one of the vulk with specialized senses, but he should have smelled that a man had walked this way recently before now.

The path wove back toward the village. As he reached the road into Eroica and its southern gate, Kyril stopped. A newly cut branch of a pine tree with long sweeping green needles lay on the ground. He picked it up and sniffed the end. The same man had held this.

Had he tried to sweep his tracks?

Kyril’s eyes narrowed, and he scanned the village. The squat houses looked like squashed mushrooms that had been rained on for too long until they swelled in unpleasant ways. So ugly. The villagers clearly never bothered to put down sawdust on the street, leaving the road rutted and uneven from the thawing and freezing as winter came on. The entire place had a temporary feel to it. A place where people put up a camp, expecting to leave in a few months. Except they hadn’t left, and hadn’t bothered to improve anything when they stayed.

Why had someone swept their scent away? A small frisson of unease trickled down his back, and his hackles rose.

Kyril studied the clouds overhead. Already they’d become a low sheet of gray in the sky, like they were slowly pressing downward to snuff out the life below. He wasn’t worried about some human mucking about—what was a human compared to a vulk?—but something was odd. Maybe he should change his mind and head for the vulk den upriver.

He stood for another long moment, then stepped back into the forest, letting it hide him from the rest of the world.

3

Her father sat puffing on his corncob pipe in his favorite chair, the familiar shroud of silence wreathing them both. The reason for her presence loomed as a third visitor in the room, a hulking specter neither of them dared mention aloud.

She sighed. She needed her father’s help to track down a vulk, but afterward, she didn’t want him involved, and telling him that wouldn’t go over well.

Their house was embellished with what her mother had purchased when she’d moved to marry her father. The cozy living area boasted a plaid-knit couch and matching chair, the chair permanently indented from molding itself to her father’s frame. In one corner was a three-legged corner desk, where her mother had perhaps expected to sit to write letters back to her sister, who remained behind in their home at Coromesto.

There hadn’t been much time for that. Her mother passed away giving birth to Lilah.

Lilah leaned back on the couch, enjoying the familiar whiff of pipe tobacco. Every summer, she visited her father in Eroica, and many nights the two of them sat on the back porch, her father with his pipe and her with a book and candle. Her book would lie forgotten next to her as her father pointed out the stars and the constellations. He’d taught her how to always find her way.

Funny, she hadn’t looked at the stars in a long time.

Lilah leaned forward to get a little closer to the fire and rubbed her arms. She still felt chilled from her journey. She couldn’t afford a hired coach and had traveled by general stagecoach, so instead of magically infused coals for warmth, heated bricks were placed at her feet with each change of horses. Their heat didn’t last long in winter.

She’d managed the normal four-day trip to Eroica in three by traveling during the night, which made the cold worse, and sleep impossible.

“How’s the library treating you?”

Lilah jumped. She’d almost dozed off. “Oh, the same as usual. The King’s exchequer gives me less and less of a pittance to run it each year, but on the other hand, no one really bothers me too much.” The library had no staff other than her, and no one paid her much attention. Except Boris. “I was able to scrape up a bit of extra money and added a few things to make it more comfortable, so that was nice.” This year she’d spent a large portion of her annual funding to purchase magic-powered lanterns—not a hint of real fire would ever enter her hallowed ground—to cut through the gloom of the room, and their gold bases and elegant sweeping green shades brought a sense of serious study to the space.

“With your aunt’s connections, I’m sure you could work somewhere else.”

Lilah sighed. Yes, she had received offers after her aunt’s death, but she liked her quiet library, even if another job might give her more money to help with her debt problem. And only in her library could she continue her secret research.

It wasn’t just about unlocking books. It was also about unlocking the past.

Besides, over the past few years, her library had become a haven for human students, which made her happy. Human students, and their education, didn’t have the same resources as the magicwielders did on the other side of Coromesto, where Herskala Magical Academy, with its towering spires, dominated the sky.

Coromesto was the sparkling jewel of Ulterra but was known as the Divided City. Many years ago, the powerful sorcerer Herskala had taken over. He ruled the city on behalf of the magicwielders, pushing the human king to the side until he was the leader in name only. Magic added luxuries like horseless carriages and flameless lighting, but those who wielded it had never relinquished their control of the city, with the human citizens an afterthought. Even now, many centuries since Herskala’s death, the two types of citizens kept to their sides of the city, with humans and non-immortals living on one side, and magicwielders and demi-immortals living on the other.

Her father got up, picked up a stack of the Ulterran Chronicle newspapers, then walked toward the fireplace.

“Since when do you get the paper?” she asked.

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