He stared a long time as the others shot questions at him. What did it mean? Were they so lost as that? How can there be mountains so large that they had never heard of them? How could he not have seen them if he had really come this way before? Must they cross them, or go around them, or-

To each he shook his head and repeated, "I do not know these mountains." He glanced at Shen, who was watching him. She was the only one who was unconcerned by the massive barrier facing them. She just cocked her head and smiled, as if untroubled and seemingly ready to carry on.

C HAPTER

He had said her name. Mor. It rolled off his tongue like he knew her, like they were old friends or comrades, like he was a master about to chastise her for slack work, as if he had the right to know her name and to shape it in his mouth. She was not sure which of these she most heard when he spoke, but it included all of them. It was a simple thing, but so unexpected that it ignited more anger in her than she had anticipated. The moment she had waited a lifetime for… the moment when she would spit in the face of an Akaran prince. A vile, contemptible Akaran! A despot. A criminal. An abomination that deserved to live only until it understood the full extent of the crimes done in its name. She had gone to that chamber ready to revel in finally seeing one of these Akarans, one hated more even than the Auldek or the Lothan Aklun or the league.

Instead, she lost control of herself. And why? Maybe, she thought, as she sat in a windowless room in the maze of tunnels below the capital city, it was his accent. His damned Acacian accent! He spoke as they had all once spoken-all of them in some variation or another-before years in Ushen Brae, speaking Acacian secretly while the official language of the Auldek bent and twisted their pronunciation so that they did not recall how they were supposed to sound anymore. The language of defiance that the People spoke to one another was a sad imitation of the language of the ones who had sold them as slaves. It all held a terrible irony. It was that, now that she thought about it, that had driven her to slash him so forcefully.

Or, well, there was another thing. She hated admitting it, but the cadence of his voice shot her through with the memory of her brother. She would never have expected that. A few seconds in his presence. A few words and the weight of longing for Ravi crashed down upon her. It was not a particular memory, just the entirety of awareness of how much she missed him, how incomplete she was without him. The Akaran bastard! To have brought that on her with just a few words… It must have been some sort of Acacian magic. Who could blame her for smashing his head against the wall? He deserved worse. As far as she was concerned, he would receive worse.

She lowered her head farther and tilted the knobby implants that protruded from the tips of her fingers into her scalp, pressing them in until they were painful. She would do better next time she saw him. That was her responsibility. The elders trusted her with this and she would not let them down. Ravi would want better of her; she would not fail him, wherever in Ushen Brae his soul was.

She eased her claws from her scalp, exhaling and drawing herself upright. Her eyes drifted to the small mirror on the table across from her. It was angled away and she could not see her image in it, but she knew what she would see if she turned it toward her: the visage she had come to think of as her own. From her chest and shoulders up across her face and even into her hairline she was spotted like a shivith, ink of black and yellow and shadings in between embedded into her skin, trapped in her living tissue. Shivith. Her current visage would forever be a merging of human features and feline patterning. As with everything in Ushen Brae, the irony was that she could not imagine herself any other way. She did not know herself without the tattoos that defined, placed her, gave her station and marked her as property in this world.

She did remember Ravi as he had been. She had last seen him as a child, unaltered. Everyone had said they wore the same face. So perhaps remembering him was remembering herself as well. His eyes had been deceptively tranquil, with upper eyelids that lay heavy in the Candovian way. Beautiful, she thought. Wise eyes in a wise, rounded face. Ravi… How she had clung to him on the ship that ripped them from the Known World and brought them into slavery.

Even in the hull of the league ship, Ravi had chafed at the injustice. His eyes may have looked tranquil, but the mind behind them was sharp and brave. He had whispered schemes of escape in her ears. First one plan and then another, and revised to yet another as each was proven impossible. He sought to win others over. He left her for short periods and spoke to the other captives at night, when the guards left them alone. He tried to stir their fear and anger into something useful. There had to be a way, he had claimed. Had to be! Remember, they were thousands! Few listened. He had been marked by his outburst on the beach. Though none understood what the leagueman had in store for Ravi, all suspected it was a fate worse than theirs. Hadn't the leagueman said something about being eaten? What monster awaited him, and why let him lead them to a similar fate?

The few who had watched him with nervous eyes, hungry for escape, backed away from him after the leaguemen brought them out of the hold to show them a view of the world that only the league could offer them. The children were led up in groups, gripping one another and afraid of the sea spray and the wind whipping about and the tilting deck. The ship, massive as it was, rose and fell on even more colossal mountains of water. All around them, as far as the eye could see, nothing but the chaos of raging walls of dark gray water, as solid as stone and just as cold. Leaguemen railed at them. They were madmen, perched high up in baskets on the masts. They shouted and flailed their arms and laughed as if nothing in the world was as grand as the fury of the sea. Nothing except their mastery over it. Mor had thought that she would never see a sight more frightening. She was wrong. Horror takes many forms.

It was horror that flowed in her veins when the red-cloaked men returned for them. They came in the morning, striding through the sleeping children spread around belowdecks. They kicked and punched as they went, shouting obscenities and vile threats and finding mirth in every cringing face. They knew where Ravi was, and they came for him. For her. Ravi fought them, but it was not a fight he could win. Watching as he kicked and twisted, and as the soldiers' fists snapped out again and again, Mor wanted to shout. But not just as the vile men. At Ravi, too. Stop fighting them! Stop doing just what they want you to do!

The red-cloaked soldiers pulled Mor and Ravi away from the others, hauled them up onto the deck and shoved them here and there, led them down a long, narrow ramp from the middle of the behemoth hull of the ship to a dock. And then the cloaked men with their elongated heads and fragile bodies were beside them. She remembered that one of them had fingernails several inches long, curving things, curling back on themselves. After that they were on the strangest of boats, sleek and white and propelled by some power within it. The vessel cut against the currents and against the wind. Though she had been at sea for weeks, Mor's stomach churned and spat out her insides, splattering foulness down her front. Ravi clenched her hand all the harder, but it didn't help.

The cloaked men-leaguemen, of course-delivered them into the hands of a woman who waited for them on a stone pier. She was the first woman Mor had seen since they boarded the league ship. She walked toward them like some princess. That's what Mor had thought. Like a princess, she wore a sparkling gown, snug on her slim form, a dress that flared out around her ankles and disguised the motion of her legs. She seemed to be propelled toward them as if on wheels. Her features were delicate, pale. Only when she stopped before them did Mor realize that the shapes beside her head that she had assumed were some sort of hat were actually her ears. On both sides they stretched up into points several inches higher than the norm, curving and twisting so that at their peaks they protruded to the side.