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When Vi was fifteen, her master, the wetboy Hu Gibbet, had taken her to a country estate for a job The deader was some lord’s bastard who’d made himself a successful spice é investors The estate was covered with old, carpeted with red-gold leaves, the very air awash in color As she stood over the corpse, she had lorious cri arterial blood Hu beat her for it, of course, and to those beatings Vi had mentally acquiesced A distracted wetboy is a dead wetboy A wetboy knows no beauty
The howl ripped through the wood again, freezing her bones Moving fast, terribly fast, it changed pitch higher and then lower and then higher, all in the space of two seconds, as if it were flying to and fro faster than anything could possibly move Everywhere it went, it was followed by the faint, tinny sound of rending metal Then came a man’s scream More followed
There was a battle in the wood No, a ic The flareen of vitality, the scent of new grass, fresh flowers
"Kylar has given it new life," Vi said aloud She didn’t kno she knew, but she knew Kylar had put so the entire forest Kylar hiorated, well in a way he hadn’t felt in the week she’d shared the bond with hi behind her Her hands flashed to the daggers at her belt Then she was on her back Even as air whooshed froy hissed and spat through the air where she’d been standing ato catch her wind It was several blind seconds before she could sit up
Before her, a man wrapped in dark brown leather put his foot on a corpse’s face and wrenched a dagger fro the robes of a Khalidoran V&uu under the surface of his skin Vi’s savior cleaned his dagger and turned His feet made no sound A multitude of cloaks, vests, pocketed shirts, and pouches of all sizes covered the man, all of them horsehide, all tanned the sa use Twin forward-curving kukris were tucked into the back of his belt, an unstrung scri over his back, and Vi could see nuarments He unlaced a brown mask that concealed all but his eyes and pulled it back around his shoulders He had an affable face; wry, almond-shaped brown eyes; loose black hair; and broad, flat features with high cheekbones He could only be a Yreatest hunters of all the Ymmuri horse lords They were said to be invisible in the forests or on the grassy steppes in the east where the Y or on the wing And they were all Talented In other words, they were grassland wetboys Unlike wetboys, they didn’t kill for pay but for honor
And fuck me if there isn’t more truth to the stories about them than there is to the ones about us
The stalker folded his hands behind his back and bowed "I am Dehvirahaman ko Bruhrowing up speaking a tonal language "You may hearken? call, yes, callThis round easily, and now he stood s a blue ball of death pass inches from her face
"Come," Dehvi said "This place is safe noabout?" Vi asked
"Magic calls to? asks to? hearkens to? the demon of the Wood" Dehvi wrinkled his nose Vi knehat hefor
"Beckons!" he said, finding it "That beckon ether slowly Magic called the Hunter The V&uuic, and Vi was Talented The Hunter iveme?" Vi asked And do I have any choice? Her body relaxed to Alathea’s Waking and her fingers dipped casually to check her daggers on their way to brush the dirt froarded her coolly Clearly she hadn’t checked casually enough "To Chantry"
He turned and knelt beside the corpse, nize He spat on thehi the o?" Dehvi asked, offering her the daggers
"Yes," Vi said, taking theerly "Please"