Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis Page A

I’ll need a moment. Oh,
curse
the ministers!”
    The breeze carried more of the burning-flesh stink. Amara fought back a gag. She approached, anyway, climbing over a fallen tree, hiding behind another one. If the mage was against the ministers, maybe she’d be safe to talk to. Amara hadn’t been sure. The Dunelands ministers had roots in every corner of the world, but the Dit were their strongest supporters—more out of spite against the Alineans than anything else. Jorn was an exception.
    She’d always thought so, anyway.
    The Dit mage disappeared from the windows. Amara peeked around the tree. A moment later, the mage stood inthe pried-open train doors, stunned, looking exactly at where Amara hid.
    â€œA spirit. You’re a
spirit
.” The mage stepped from the train. The earth squelched underfoot.
    Amara should pull back. Run. Anything but stand here, half-hidden behind a tree, watching that mage with a single eye. If Jorn knew …
    The mage went on. “No. You used to be? Were you possessed by one? But there’s still … There’s a presence …”
    A presence.
Ruudde’s words echoed:
Whoever’s causing this will catch on and try again.
    â€œCan we talk?”
    A passenger stumbling from the train drew the mage’s attention, but only for a moment, as if afraid Amara would disappear if she looked away for too long.
    Amara’s signing would give her away. If the mage didn’t rat her out, the airtrain’s passengers might. This had been a stupid idea, stupid and dangerous.
    And that stink of flesh was so, so intense.
    She pressed a hand to her mouth, turned, ran, left the mage’s shouts behind, forgot all about stealth and silence. The mage wouldn’t follow—she wouldn’t abandon the injured passengers—but Amara couldn’t slow. The smell stuck to her hands. Stuck to everything.
    She only had to return to Jorn and pretend nothing happened, and …
    That’d get her nowhere.
    She stopped. Took a quarter turn. Stormed through a layer of wet leaves. Thorns and burrs clung to her winterwear. She found the temple within a minute, spotting faded stone that blended perfectly into the colorless, storm-drenched woods; if she hadn’t known it was there, she’d have looked right past it.
    She’d always thought that if she prayed at a true temple, perhaps the spirits would forgive Jorn’s magic use and prevent accidents like the airtrain’s. He never prayed, to the point that Amara wondered if he’d ever sworn a mage’s oath in the first place. She’d asked him about it, back when he’d allowed questions, when sometimes he’d even smiled and indulged her. He didn’t pray at temples, he’d explained, because hired mages like the knifewielder might set a trap for him. He didn’t need to pray, besides: temple or no temple, the spirits understood why he called on them so often.
    Amara always suspected it was nonsense, but that hadn’t stopped her from hoping that, if the spirits listened no matter what, sketching misshapen buildings in the dirt still stood a chance of catching their attention.
    She crouched, steadying herself with one hand on the temple’s stone. She’d never touched a temple before. It felt icy cold.
Let this work
, she thought.
Let the mage come back.
    She searched around half-rotted leaves for a chalky piece of stone, and slowly, carefully, drew it against the temple. Even with ink she struggled to mimic Cilla’s letters, let alone with arock this blunt, but she remembered the basics.
    Mage
, she wrote blockily, the chalk cold in her hands. Then,
Spirit airtrain. Need talk.
She’d probably misspelled it. The mage would understand, though, wouldn’t she?
Market
, she wrote next. Maart had a trip scheduled tomorrow. Market stallkeepers were so busy that you could get away with pointing and never speaking a word.
    She’d find a way to go in