Had he been able to spare even a bit of water, the winter man might have wept.
He staggered toward Li, but did not dare go too near to the Guardian of Fire while the other Borderkind’s hands and eyes still burned. Li looked pale as ash, and his flesh was spotted with places where the skin glowed like fireplace embers. Something had happened when his tiger had died, changing Li and the fire inside him, weakening both flame and flesh.
Even so, the heat from within him rippled from his flesh in waves, shimmering in the air, and the winter man kept his distance. He’d had enough of heat.
When night fell, Frost would be better. The sun plagued him. The river water would be cool and could replenish him for a time, but not yet.
A small blue bird flew down from the sky and alighted by his feet. For a moment it hesitated as though wishing it might rest, but then the bird spun into a blue-streaked cyclone and, a moment later, Blue Jay stood beside Frost. The trickster gave him a mournful look and then slipped his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“You’ll be all right?” Blue Jay asked, glancing down at Frost’s shattered hands.
The winter man nodded.
One by one, the surviving Borderkind began to walk toward the pyramid, while the silent Minata-Karaia watched, the air filled with the quiet whistle of the wind through their hollow heads. The pyramid was not their destination, however.
At the base of the pyramid’s steps-steps high enough that they must have been built to be scaled by a god-a ball of black flame burned. The ebon fire flickered in the air, tendrils rising a dozen feet from the ground. Within the black flames, two figures stood rigid as flies trapped in amber.
Frost and Blue Jay reached the sphere of darkness only a moment before Grin and Cheval stepped up to it on the other side. Li joined them an instant later, the flames around his hands having subsided, though fire still danced in his furious eyes, and those ember patches still flared upon his pale skin.
Black as it was, enough light passed through the circle of flames that they could identify the figures within. The Mazikeen had his long, slender fingers wrapped around the throat of the witch, Jezi-Baba. Her neck was broken and her head lolled to one side, yet even in death she killed him, her blue-skinned hands buried to the wrist in his chest. A rictus grin split her features, showing pitted stone teeth and a lunatic’s amusement.
“He lives,” Blue Jay said, voice low.
They all moved nearer the flames. Though the black fire hissed and crackled like the blaze in a hearth, no heat came from it. Rather, it felt cold as the first snow of winter.
The Mazikeen’s eyes moved. The sorcerer glanced at each of them in turn, even as the black flame began to consume his flesh. His robes burned with it.
“Go,” the Mazikeen said. “My brothers will find you.”
Yet, even with his urging, they stood and watched him burn. Frost had begun to think that the black fire had been Jezi-Baba’s magic, but the moment the fire engulfed the Mazikeen’s face, the witch’s entire body disintegrated, crumbling to blue-black ash.
For a long moment he said nothing. At length he turned and surveyed the grim, mournful faces of his comrades, his kin.
“We must head for Palenque with all speed. Other Hunters will come soon.”
Cheval stared at him, shaking her head. “No. Can’t you see that you’re only leading us all to our deaths? This is madness. We cannot hope to succeed when so many stand against us.”
Her hands trembled and she cast her gaze downward, swiping at the tears that began to slip down her face. “You’re only killing us faster than the Hunters would have. There’s nothing left now. We should find somewhere to hide. Let someone else fight them-”
Frost did not take a step nearer or make a gesture. He only spoke one word.
“Who?”
Cheval flinched, raised her chin, and stared at him defiantly. Her features were taut with sorrow. “We cannot-”
“If not us, then who?” the winter man demanded. “I know you mourn, Cheval. Perhaps you do not have it within your heart to continue. You wish, now, to do nothing but crawl into a cave and hide, but I tell you this: the Hunters will not stop. You might live longer in hiding, but when the rest of us have fallen, they will come for you, too. And then Chorti will have died for nothing.”
Cheval glared at him.
Frost turned and strode toward the river, needing the cool water to sustain himself. It would not return him to his full strength, but it was the best he could hope for here.
One by one, the surviving Borderkind followed, their fallen comrades still burning on the battlefield behind them. Cheval Bayard came last, but then hurried to catch up to the others.
The bloodred birds descended.
The Borderkind did not look back.
Oliver could not breathe. The ambassador’s daughter slept on in her floral canopy bed. The two-year-old’s gentle breathing was the only sound in the room save for the eerie scratch of sand eddying across the floor in an unnatural breeze. Kitsune’s body stretched languorously against his, warm and pulsing with the beat of her heart, but he sensed that even she now held her breath.
In the center of the room stood a tall figure in a black bowler hat and a dark woven greatcoat with a high collar. Its hem nearly reached the floor. The figure had tombstone-gray flesh and a thick, drooping mustache. There was about him the sense that this was a man from another age, a time past. His hands were overlarge, the fingers long and slender and somehow wrong. When he moved them, as he did now, raising one to point a stern finger at them, grains of dust sifted off his hands, falling to the ground.
“You are trespassing,” the Dustman said, his voice deep and sonorous, with an edge of gravel.
Oliver swallowed, his throat dry and tight. “Yes, we know. But with good reason.”
He would have gone on, but Kitsune held up a hand to silence him. She turned, slowly pulling her legs beneath her, and bowed low in a manner more customary in the land of her own legend than in that of the Dustman. His English accent was clear.
“We beg your pardon, sir,” Kitsune said. “We do not wish to incur your wrath, only to have a few moments’ discourse.”
Beneath the rim of his bowler, the Dustman’s eyes glittered like stars; pinpoint white amidst deepest black. He raised both hands and dust sprinkled to the floor, where it began to swirl upward, raising a cloud that reached toward them as though he were a puppeteer holding its strings.
“Wait. Stop!” Oliver said, voice rasping in panic even as he tried not to wake the little girl. “Just talk to us. What harm will it do? The Borderkind are being slaughtered. She’s here as your kin, not your enemy. Do you really want to help the Hunters finish the job?”
The Dustman cocked his head to one side and regarded them both. Cold radiated from him, and Oliver shivered.
On her bed, the ambassador’s daughter began to stir. She reached a tiny hand up to rub the sleep grit from her yet unopened eyes. Oliver and Kitsune fell completely still, but the Dustman gestured toward her and a tendril of the dust that swirled around his feet reached out toward her, breezed past her face, and the girl’s arm slid down. She did not stir again, and her breathing grew deeper.
“Continue,” the Dustman said. He slid his hands into the pockets of his jacket, an oddly human gesture. But the more Oliver looked at him, the less human he seemed. The Dustman did not breathe. The air that he expelled with his words was a breeze through a hollow cavern, and when he turned his head, the substance of him, flesh and mustache and hat and coat, shifted like sand.
“May we rise?” Kitsune asked.
Oliver studied her. The subservient tone was quite unlike her, but he saw the spark of something in her gleaming jade eyes, a dark, calculating intelligence. It ought not have surprised him. She was a trickster and had a great deal at stake here-not only on Oliver’s behalf, but her own as well. When Collette had been rescued, the Dustman might make a powerful ally in the war against the Hunters.