Dragon’s Claw Abbey.

Ryn watched that crouching pile of dark stone rise out of the fog from the ship’s forecastle. 

A tall curtain wall enclosed four acres or more, crowned by a keep that rose twice as high, girded by spruce and pine on a headland that jutted into the Iceberg Sea. A fortress on the edge of nowhere that might have been older than the Kingdoms themselves. A massive grave marker for all consigned to it—the living, the dead, and those whom despair had trapped in between. Weather had blunted the profile of the merlons that cut the top of the wall and ringed the roof of the keep. The moss-eaten teeth of some decrepit grin that mocked any thought of hope or reprieve. 

To the Hells with that—Ryn meant to live long enough to atone in some meager way for his sins, even if it meant doing his eight-year posting twice.

“This place won’t make a difference,” Josalind said from behind.

Ryn glanced back at her, surprised by the sudden comfort he felt to have her near. He wondered if she felt the same, as that hellhole drew closer to swallow them. They hadn’t talked much about what came next, once Ryn assumed his duties there and she became a ward of the cloister. They didn’t have to—they both knew the Claw was a segregated community ruled by discipline and propriety. It had been easier to avoid the topic, to simply exist in the moment and enjoy, while they could, whatever it was that had blossomed between them aboard ship.

And now that time had ended. The realization swamped Ryn with glum discontent. He swallowed against it and forced a light tone. “So, Havlock let you out, did he?” 

She shrugged. “Might as well—we’re here, aren’t we?”

Gulls called from the bay, hopeless and forlorn. The char of wood smoke and a smith’s forge fire carried on the air. “What do you mean, ‘this place won’t make a difference?’” 

Josalind went to the rail, raised her hand, and pinched their new home between thumb and forefinger. “When I was a wee girl, I’d spend bells on this big flat rock, doing this to the ships that passed, to make the world small.”

“I would do the same thing,” Ryn said. “With our lord’s men as they rode by, pretending they were toy soldiers.”

“The other children teased me for being different—my ma thought that’s what drove me to be alone on that rock,” she said. “It wasn’t the taunts, but what I saw beneath. Their fear of me. The day I saw that fear in my ma’s eyes, my da’s too, I knew I had nobody. Nothing I could do anymore could make the world small enough.”

No self-pity in her tone, no wallowing. Just that hard bitterness again. The only shield she had against the world’s judgment. Whatever vulnerability she’d let slip two nights ago while talking about her visions had been buried deep. “How old were you?” he asked.

“Twelve.”

Havlock joined them with something Ryn had missed dearly—his rig with longsword and pistols. He’d put on his armor and lanyards of rank and order earlier for the first time in what seemed like an age, but he still felt like a horse missing a shoe without his rig.

“Time to look respectable again, sir,” the sergeant said. He even had the shiv that Ryn would keep hidden in his boot. 

Ryn inspected a pistol—oiled and buffed and equipped with a freshly knapped flint. “You’re a good man, Sergeant.” He buckled the belts around his waist and massaged the squarish pommel of his sword with its facets of colored quartz—red, blue, green, and white. The colors of the dead gods meant to remind him of his oath to the Clerisy. He no longer cared about the symbolism. The fine Sturvian steel assured that he had a reliable blade. Nothing else mattered.

A swivel gun fired from the main deck. Gulls took wing with startled cries. A moment later, a signal flare responded from the abbey’s wall.

“That’s the all-clear,” Havlock said. “Though in this soup, the grenlich could crawl up to that wall and squat for a shite with none the wiser.”

Hardly fitting talk for mixed company, but Josalind only snorted in amusement. 

After weeks stuck on this ship, Ryn’s blood raced at the prospect of a skirmish with grenlich. He tucked the shiv away and proceeded to prime and load his pistols. “We’d best keep eyes sharp then.”

#

The bay lacked the draft for the ship to dock. Instead, the crew dropped anchor a hundred yards out and lowered a longboat. Ryn, Josalind, and Havlock joined four sailors. Ryn would have gladly taken an oar to stretch his muscles, but given the circumstances, he perched in the bow instead with pistols cocked. Havlock had a pair of muskets, balls wadded with linen patches for greater range and accuracy.

The sailors leaned into their oars. Dim shapes grew on the shore as the mists parted. A giant skeleton’s dark ribs reared up. Ryn at first thought it the remains of a beached whale, then realized the “bones” were in fact charred and rotting wood. The frames of a ship that must have been fifty yards long—the same size as the Fool’s Fortune. Much of the hull had burned to the waterline, but enough of the keel remained intact to keep most of the frames erect. Perching gulls had crusted the remains with their splattered droppings. 

Ryn looked over his shoulder at the bosun’s mate. “What’s the story with that?”

“Run aground by the Horror.” The man spat over the side. “Poor bastards. Sovaris save their souls.” 

The Horror—a monstrosity that was half-squid, half-crab, and all trouble, or so the stories went. Ryn looked to the dock—a piling made of stone. It only made sense, given how easily the grenlich could scavenge or burn anything of wood. 

Several figures stood on the dock. Two were fully ordained sisters of the cloth with heads shaven to topknots. Their scalps bore tattoos of Aegias’s sigil—a nine-pointed star with a stylized sword in the middle. Both wore the same simple habits of unbleached linen, but the younger and slighter of the two caught Ryn’s attention. Something about her stiff-backed carriage and sharp gaze left him with little doubt she outranked the other.

The last figure, broad and gaunt and armed with no fewer than four pistols, waved them in. A sergeant, perhaps around thirty. He wore kit in good repair, though the brass fittings had been left to tarnish dark. That wasn’t neglect. Only a fool dared to walk in grenlich territory all shiny and spit polished.

Havlock greeted his counterpart and introduced Ryn as they coasted in and a crewman hopped out to secure the lines. The other sergeant snapped to with a crisp salute.

Ryn stowed his pistols and acknowledged it. “Sergeant.”

“Mundar, sir.”

Ryn looked inland as he climbed ashore. A dozen more men with muskets poised held position to safeguard the path back up to the abbey. “I presume Captain Tovald is expecting me?” Messages had been sent ahead by pigeon.

“Yes, sir,” Mundar said. “But there’s a matter at hand. I’m to take you to him.”

Ryn caught the shift in the man’s tone. “Trouble?”

“There’s always trouble of one sort or another, sir.”

“The lieutenant will learn that for himself soon enough, Sergeant,” said the smaller sister whom Ryn had assumed to be in charge. An auburn ponytail cascaded over one shoulder from her top-knot to frame fine-boned features that reminded him of a bird. Hazel eyes fixed on Josalind—a sparrow hawk intent on her prey. “What have we here?” she asked.

Havlock held out a hand to help Josalind step from the boat, but she clambered ashore on her own with no trouble. “Josalind Aumbrae of Pellagos, sister,” she said.

 “Two things, Josalind Aumbrae. First, I am Mother Prioress—Mother Prioress Aelin. Second, you are no longer of anywhere but here. Who you were in the world matters not in the Claw, is that understood?”

Ryn saw something flash in those sea-green eyes, but Josalind only nodded. “Yes, Mother Prioress.”

“Now, girl, what brings you to us?” Aelin asked.

Josalind raised her chin. “I hear voices and have visions, but I’m no witch.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’m just mad. My family didn’t know what else to do with me, so here I am.”

Aelin blinked and regarded her with even more sharp-eyed scrutiny. The other sister turned a shade paler and stepped back. Mundar merely grunted with idle curiosity.

“I expect Abbess Gerta will take a special interest in getting to the root of what devils you, girl,” Aelin said at last. 

Ryn didn’t care for the way she said that, as if Josalind were some deviant creature to be dissected. “If I may, Mother—” 

“No.” Aelin eyed him and Josalind together. “I don’t care how the two of you might have fraternized on that ship. Dragon’s Claw is a world of two solitudes—the Keep and the cloister are off limits to the rank and file. No sister or ward ventures into the garrison’s areas without good reason and an escort. Is that clear?”

The woman looked like a child even beside Josalind, and yet her tone left Ryn feeling as though she had his ear in a pinch. “I look forward to assuming my duties and…adjusting to life here, Mother Prioress,” he said.

“The stocks and the whipping post ensure it’s a quick adjustment, for wards and palatars alike,” Aelin said. “Remember that.”

#

“I think she likes you, sir,” Mundar said with dust-dry humor. He led Ryn around the flank of the abbey’s curtain wall. The sisters had shepherded Josalind through the main gate. Havlock and his men were helping to ferry supplies from the ship.

Ryn snorted and made a point of hitching up his belt. “I’ll be sure to keep the door locked in case she comes looking to rub my wood.” He eyed the mists that concealed the forest’s depths. The garrison kept the ground barren within musket range of the wall. Swivel guns and sharpshooters were stationed on the ramparts above. Still, he didn’t feel comfortable being out here when he didn’t yet have a sense of the place. Mundar didn’t appear concerned, but Ryn kept his hand on a pistol all the same.

They rounded the curve of a tower, the largest in the wall. Ryn caught that rare stink—stale skunk mixed with moldering compost.

Grenlich musk.

He drew pistol and sword in a blink. Blood roared in his ears. Were the idiots on the wall blind? 

“Mundar?” called a man’s voice from the other side of the tower. It sounded mildly annoyed. 

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.

“Is he with you?”

“He’s not sure he wants to be,” Mundar said with a hint of a smile.

“Well, come on then.”

Feeling the fool, Ryn stowed his weapons and strode around the tower.

He found half a dozen palatars, armed and ready for all Hells. Bound in their midst were two grenlich, wearing nothing but loincloths. Where the clans near Sablewood resembled men crossed with boars, this pair had the look of mongrel hounds, with big dark noses, sharp-pointed ears, and a surplus of hair covering their sinewy bodies. A mess of fresh bruises and crusted blood left them even uglier. They sniffed the air and regarded him with hungry wolf eyes. One bared his teeth to display oversized canines. Ryn stared right back and treated him to a lazy smile: I’m ready to go a round when you are, cur.

“There you are, Lieutenant. I thought you might miss the party.” That came from the man who wore the lanyard of a captain.

Ryn tore his attention from the grenlich and snapped to with an efficient salute. “Reporting for duty, sir.”

Captain Segas Tovald was a dark-haired man past forty, with flint in his honey-brown eyes and silver at his temples. A fleshy nose anchored heavy features. Extra pounds padded a big frame and blurred the lines of the man’s jaw, but Ryn knew a bear when he saw one—the puff of Tovald’s broad chest and the pull of his thick shoulders left little doubt that a mass of fit muscle lay beneath. An officer turned lazy and run to fat wouldn’t last long in this place. 

Tovald offered his hand. “Consider your duties assumed, Ruscroft.”

The captain’s grip was light a pinky and a ring finger, but Ryn didn’t acknowledge the fact. Most fighting men found it hard, if not impossible, to adapt to such a loss. “What do we have here, sir?” he asked.

“Prisoner exchange,” Tovald said. “You’re on point with me.” He started off toward the misty woods and beckoned the men to follow. The grenlich got their feet moving with little prompting and no complaint. Ryn wouldn’t have expected captive grenlich to be so compliant. Not that he had much experience with grenlich as prisoners. Mundar gave a salute and turned back to the abbey.

“Posture like you’re spoiling for a fight, but do not touch your weapons,” Tovald said.

Ryn matched his stride and leaned close. “They have our men captive?”

“It’s almost a game to them,” Tovald said. “They grab one of ours and if we can grab one of theirs fast enough, we might get him back with his skin still attached.”

Isn’t that just grand. Ryn probed the forest’s dim underbelly, trying to distinguish a hostile from the bushes of scrub cedar that marked its edge. Ranks of blue spruce and north pine fit for the masts of the largest ships towered high. Their upper reaches tangled in such a dense shroud the forest floor lay in a perpetual twilight, carpeted in fallen needles and largely bare of other vegetation. 

The sun chose that moment to peek through the clouds. Ryn caught a glint of metal, shadows that moved contrary to each other, in that twilight not fifty yards away. His hand twitched with the need to draw a weapon, but he followed the captain’s lead. “I assume this is usually not a task for the garrison commander.”

“No—and sometimes it doesn’t go as planned—hence the new career opportunity for you,” Tovald said.

Ryn wondered how quick or slow his predecessor’s death might have been. The twitch in his hand grew more insistent as figures emerged from the mist at the forest’s edge. Six grenlich clad in furs and buckskin and two palatars. The latter had been stripped of their gear and showed obvious signs of rough treatment, but no worse than the garrison’s prisoners. They had all their skin, at least. 

Tovald brought them all to a halt with an upright fist. Ryn stepped offside, conscious of leaving a clean shot for their sharpshooters on the wall. Grouped as they were, covering fire from such a distance had equal chance of hitting the wrong target.

“Ogagoth,” the captain said with a nod. 

A grenlich as big as Tovald stepped to the fore. A chief for certain, given the mantle he wore of fine deerskin trimmed in ermine, secured by a heavy silver brooch. Silver charms pierced his ears. He sported not one, but two palatar swords. One was an officer’s longsword akin to Ryn’s own.

The big brute noted Ryn’s attention, and Ryn himself, with a snort of disdain. “Fresh meat, Tovald?”

Ryn let his hand hover over his pistol until the gesture couldn’t be missed. “That longsword does not belong to you, Tar-vrul.” Addressing him with the title used by his people conveyed the notion of respect. A tactic meant to blunt Ryn’s words just enough so they wouldn’t be taken as an open challenge.

Ogagoth rumbled deep in his throat. “Its man didn’t protest much when I took it.” He pointed to Ryn’s lanyard of rank. “He wore that pretty twist, too.”

The other palatars grumbled and muttered amongst themselves. Their grenlich counterparts spat in reply.

Tovald took a step to put himself before Ryn. “This isn’t why we are here.”

Ogagoth grunted. “A day yet to come, strappling.” 

Ryn didn’t so much as blink. He took the nickname to be a play on the word strapping and couldn’t tell if the tar-vrul meant it as an insult.

Ogagoth snapped his fingers. Two of his vruls nudged their prisoners forward. Tovald gave the order to do the same.

Ryn caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, back in the shadows beneath the trees. The distinct “whu, whu, whu” of a throwing axe cut the air.

He threw himself at Tovald and struck the captain in the ribs but lacked the mass or leverage to do more than knock him offside a step. The axe bit into the thick leather pauldron on Tovald’s shoulder and stayed there. He ducked down with a grunt. 

Man and grenlich cursed in equal measure. Blades hissed from their scabbards. Firearms cocked.

“Weapons down.” Ryn yanked the axe from Tovald’s shoulder. No blood stained the blade. The captain’s mail hauberk had stopped it from cutting any deeper. He cast the axe at Ogagoth’s feet. “Your vruls betray a parley for their own glory—has your clan no honor?”

Ogagoth snarled, clawed hands poised over his swords. Ryn kept hands clear of his own weapons despite the burning need to draw.

“Raise that pistol and I’ll gut you myself,” Tovald said from behind to one of their men. 

Ogagoth stepped back and barked an order in the grenlich’s guttural language. Three of his vruls took off into the wood. 

They waited in silence. No one moved, man and half-man alike trapped in the moment. Ryn kept his attention fixed on Ogagoth as he would any mad dog that threatened to bite. The tar-vrul’s sneer suggested that he gave the idea serious consideration. Ryn may have just arrived, but if not for the parley in force, he would have gladly called Ogagoth out to reclaim those swords in memory of their fallen owners. He couldn’t deny a thirst to spill grenlich blood for the sake of a mother and daughter left dead in the crimson snow. It didn’t much matter if these grenlich had never heard of Sablewood.

A commotion arose back under the trees. Ogagoth’s vruls returned, dragging another of their kind between them, not much more than a pup, so far as Ryn could tell.

Ogagoth grabbed the pup by the scruff, hauled him up onto his toes, and barked at him in their language.

The pup faced his tar-vrul, chin thrust in defiance, eyes wide with fear, and spat out a breathless response.

Ogagoth looked to the palatars. “He sought honor in killing a great battle-chief.” He flung the pup down into the dirt and kicked him in the ribs. “No vrul betrays my word. Dagrauth’s life becomes yours, Tovald.”

Nursing his side, Dagrauth hauled himself up to his knees and stayed there when Ogagoth growled at him. Tovald stepped past Ryn and eyed the pup. He rubbed the stumps of his missing fingers idly across the palm of his other hand. Ryn might have wanted grenlich blood, but earned honest in fair battle, not like this. 

Tovald drew his dagger with his left hand, caught the end of Dagrauth’s ear with his right, and sliced off an inch. Ryn didn’t expect such quick precision. The pup flinched but endured his punishment without so much as a whimper. He settled for glaring and ignored the flow of blood.

Tovald tossed the bit of flesh away. “I have no use for his life. A scar will serve.”

Ogagoth nodded and ordered Dagrauth out of his sight with another kick. The prisoner exchange concluded without further threat of butchery. Tovald didn’t say a word until they were almost back to the abbey. 

“You’ll do, Ruscroft.”

Ryn figured that to be as much thanks as he could expect for getting between Tovald and that axe. He found himself looking forward to earning this man’s trust and couldn’t help but grin. There just might be a chance he could find some peace with himself here. 

“You’re welcome, sir.”

#

“We fight the grenlich when we must, parley when it can spare a life, even barter if it buys us some grace to forage and hunt beyond the wall,” Tovald said as they walked the ramparts.

 Below, crews worked to prune anything that might provide cover to an enemy, under the watchful eyes of their brothers on sentry duty. The mists had cleared, giving a clear view of the forest’s edge where even now the scrub cedar likely concealed equally watchful grenlich scouts.

Ryn pulled aside an oiled leather cover to inspect the lock of a large-bore swivel gun mounted on the wall. Spotless, like all the rest. Tight-packed canvas bags of grapeshot and powder charges were stored nearby in a watertight oak cabinet. “In my experience, the beast is most likely to bite after he’s tricked you into thinking he’s tamed.”

“The abbess and I are under no illusion about the precariousness of it all, Lieutenant,” Tovald said. “We just work for a balance that will ensure as many men as possible live to finish their eight while keeping us all true to the Clerisy.” They took the stairs down to the common. Tovald thumbed the file Havlock had brought. “You’re quite versed about grenlich for the boy of a genteel landowner from the River Lands.”

“My commanding officer in Sablewood had established a . . . dialogue with an outcast from one of the clans,” Ryn said. That grenlich’s name had been Ostath. Quintan had hoped to gather intelligence on clan activities, to better keep the community safe. Ryn had never been able to bring himself to trust a creature willing to betray his own kind.

Tovald paused to take a closer look at the file. “Yes . . . I see.”

Ryn had no idea what the captain saw, but he didn’t doubt the reports in that file documented the whole sorry chain of events that had brought him here with terse precision. The sudden sympathy in Tovald’s tone rubbed like salt on a blister. “It’s done,” Ryn said.

“Those sorts of things are never done, son. We wear them always.”

Ryn dug his nails into his palms. “Your point, sir?”

“We are all stuck here for one poor reason or another,” Tovald said. “That disgrace unites us in a way, even more than the brotherhood that comes of being sworn to the Order.” He leaned close and raised the file under Ryn’s nose. “But a man who denies how his past has changed him, how it colors his judgment—that man is a liability.”

A deep and shuddering breath fought its way out. “I deny nothing, sir.” Ryn couldn’t begrudge Tovald his concerns. He’d have them, too, in the captain’s boots.

“And when you punched the grand inquisitar, what was that about?”

Ryn looked him in the eye. “It was bad enough that I killed my friend. I wouldn’t stand for that woman tarnishing his memory, too.”

There was more to it, of course, but it wouldn’t help to confess his bitterness toward the Clerisy. All that mattered was giving service to the other lost souls consigned to this place and honoring the Virtues as he believed Aegias had intended, regardless of the Clerisy’s interpretations. If thinking that way made him a blasphemer, so be it. He could live with that.

Tovald clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s have a drink, it’s already been a day that warrants one.”