The four of them shared out cold rice balls wrapped in leaves and cold red-bean buns. As they were about to leave, Rosethorn trotted her pony by the open windows and tossed two of her thorn balls inside. Vines began to sprout through the doors and windows as she joined the other three on the road. Chickens erupted from their side of the house, squawking in alarm.

As they moved on, Briar tossed a thorn ball of his own onto the road behind them. In the house, spiked vines were shooting out of the upper windows. Those vines that grew from where dead men lay now crawled over the ground, snake-like, bound to meet their friends in the guardhouse. There was no sign of bodies anywhere. The vines had spread to cover them all.

“They’ll know we were here,” Parahan said.

“Too bad,” Briar and Rosethorn said at the same time.

“I was tired of sneaking around anyway,” Briar added. “Let’s teach Weishu to keep his greedy hands to himself.”

SNOW SERPENT PASS

They trotted forward as the mules complained. “I don’t see what you’re whining about,” Evvy told them. “You just stood around while we did all the work.” She had put her rice ball half eaten and her bun untouched back into the cloth sling over her chest. Though she had done her part without flinching earlier, the memory of the man whose throat she’d cut kept rising past any other thoughts or pictures in her head. He joined her vivid memories of a handful of people she had killed, trying to survive before she had met Briar and Rosethorn and in bandit attacks on the road to Gyongxe. It never got easier.

When the road curved around the edge of a hill, she looked back. Thick green thorn vines covered everything between the tumbling river and the fence behind the guardhouse. The chickens and the horses that had grazed inside the fence had gotten away, the chickens to huddle on the bridge, the horses to gallop through the fields.

Someone would notice the problem sooner or later, but by the time anyone came to look, the thorns would have reached the water’s edge, blocking the road completely. They could try to go behind the guardhouse to get at the road, Evvy supposed. She wasn’t really sure when the thorns would stop growing. Rosethorn and Briar created very determined magic.

She looked ahead once more. At least the dead men were covered. That was something, since they hadn’t had time to give them a burial or prayers.

They trotted a mile before the jolting and the image got to Evvy. She cried for a halt. She dashed behind a boulder on the hillside and lost what food she’d eaten. Once she’d covered that mess, she heard Rosethorn call, “I’m coming up. Nobody watch.”

Since that meant Rosethorn needed to take care of business, Evvy thought she might as well do the same. She had her complaints about dried grass, but it was what was available. She was tugging at the ties on her breeches when Rosethorn asked quietly, “Are you all right?”

“It’s just … I don’t like killing people,” Evvy whispered, ashamed of her weakness.

“None of us likes it. There would be something wrong with you — with us — if you did. You know Briar jokes to cover it up sometimes. You know he also has nightmares.”

“Oh,” Evvy breathed. She had been so caught up in the picture of the dead man that she had forgotten all the times she had been roused in the night by Briar — and Rosethorn — crying out in their dreams.

“Parahan will be different. He’s a soldier. We saw that today. It wasn’t just bragging from him. It may not bother him as it does us. But you aren’t weak because you threw up, girl. You’re human.”

“Thank you,” Evvy whispered. Feeling less like slime, she scrambled down the hillside to wash her hands. They went numb as soon as she dipped them in the icy brown torrent. She got to her feet and tucked her fingers into her armpits to warm them, glaring at Briar and Parahan as she walked over to the mules. It wasn’t fair that men didn’t have to twist themselves into knots to pee!

Rosethorn looked up the gorge, her eyes narrow. “My boy’s restless. Not you, Briar, my mount. I don’t think he likes what he smells on the wind.”

Evvy gulped. Their long travels from Chammur had taught them respect for the animals that worked the trade roads. She went to her pack and searched for the bag that held her exploding quartz balls.

“We have no choice but to ride on,” Parahan replied. “Wait here.” Without stopping for anyone’s reply, he hung his sling of spears from his saddle horn, taking only one as he climbed the dip between two hills to their right. Evvy could see him long after she stopped hearing him. Her respect for the big man went up several more notches. It took plenty of skill to move so silently over loose gravel and long grass.

She, Briar, and Rosethorn continued to load their ponies with the magical weapons they might need for another, perhaps bigger, battle. She and Briar had their daggers as well. Evvy wore two blades inside and two outside her belt in addition to one at the back of her neck inside her jacket. She didn’t know where all of Briar’s were except for the obvious ones.

As far as Evvy knew, Rosethorn didn’t carry extra weapons. A kit with blades in it hung at her waist, but they were supposed to be used with plants. The only non-plant use Rosethorn had for her belt knife was to cut her meat. Of course, Rosethorn could turn most plants into something nasty. Evvy hoped that would be enough.

She feared that it would not be. Here in this steep gorge with its single road, she could not forget that for her entire life the one fixed idea in her world was that the emperor of Yanjing was as powerful as any god and more powerful than some of them. She had seen nothing at the Winter Palace to teach her any different. When they had destroyed the guard station, they had declared their own war against the Yanjing empire. All she could do was pray that Gyongxe could somehow do what no other country had managed to do when the imperial armies marched: defeat them.