Free Etherwalker by Cameron Dayton

sputtering.
    “I already told Milady that they was royal-trained, and on murback. A normal caravan we could’ve stopped, but they was royal-trained, I tell you!”
    “Two men against six, Nibat. Six! ”
    That did it. With a roar, Nibat lunged at the woman, grabbing for her throat. Enoch shut his eyes, expecting at any time to hear the snapping of slender bones. He felt his captor’s arm grow tight around his middle, and he opened his eyes.
    The woman still lived. She held two slim, silver daggers—pointed down, pinning Nibat’s hands to the table. The large man had been forced to his knees, his eyes staring widely at the blades sprouting from the skin between his fingers. A serpentine smile curled the woman’s lips.
    “Sweet idiots, you plainsmen. I was drinking men’s blood when your mother’s mother first drank milk.”
    Nibat’s eyes slowly lifted from his hands to the woman’s face, and he spat.
    “ Bruja !”
    The woman sighed and leaned back, bored.
    “Now, Nibat, I will tell you what to do and you will listen, or I will find something softer to bury my knives in. Are you listening?”
    Nibat growled and looked down at his bleeding hands. He nodded.
    “Good. You and your band of brigands will remain here. You will not question my authority again. I came here following rumors of a specter, but . . . something else is afoot.”
    Enoch wondered at her strange speech, for the woman’s face was smooth, and she could not have been much more than a decade older than he was. She leaned over and pulled the blades from Nibat’s hands. He fell to the floor groaning.
    “The Serpent has returned to this face of the world, and he works his sweet venom in the southlands. Do you know what that means, Nibat?” From the floor, Nibat’s moan quieted, and Enoch saw him pull a short knife from his boot.
    “It means that the roads will soon be filled with refugees fleeing the storm. Easy prey for you and your vultures. Easy murder, easy money, and young farm girls for your entertainment. And when my sisters return for me, I can make you all captains and generals; no longer cutpurses and rogues, but minions of the Forked Tongue.”
    As the woman spoke, Nibat’s face had switched from a mien of anger into sweaty greed and lust. But those last words gave him pause. Staggering to his feet, at what he presumed a safe distance from those silver daggers, Nibat lifted his knife in a bloody hand and growled.
    “We may be cutpurses as you say, Milady, but a servant of the Snake I’ll never be.”
    The smile on her face broadened almost imperceptibly.
    “So you would die?”
    He roared and leapt, knife raised high. She caught him mid-lunge, daggers flying from her hands to bury themselves in his eyes. His leap carried him over the top of the altar to crash lifelessly at the woman’s feet.
    Nibat’s neck bent at an impossible angle, his face turned toward Enoch. The daggers reflected lamplight from his red-weeping sockets. Enoch shuddered.
    The woman walked around to the side of the altar, retrieved her daggers, and, to Enoch’s horror, licked them clean before hiding them somewhere in her sleeves. The flickering light cast part of her perfect face into shadow, and for a moment Enoch thought he saw a cold blue light shine from her eye.
    The woman motioned for his captor to approach, and with a grunt he carried Enoch into the room. At her signal, he was dumped unceremoniously onto the floor right next to the corpse’s feet. The man then placed Enoch’s swords on the altar and stepped back. She motioned him out without a word.
    Now she was inspecting his master’s swords, a delicate furrow creasing her brow. Enoch dared not move. A woman who killed like this, who could predict what she would do next?
    “You are young to travel the road at night. Why did you come here?”
    Her voice froze Enoch to the ground. This bruja , or whatever she was, would not hesitate to sell him to the monsters who hunted him. Steeling his face