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“Perhaps your obsession is making it seem like my errand has something to do with your quest,” Remy said. “I don’t see it.”

“Would you like to turn around and go home now, Remy?” Biri-Daar asked.

Yes, Remy wanted to say. I would like to turn around and go home and forget that any of this ever happened.…

Except that wasn’t true. All his life he had dreamed of adventure. He had looked at the ships docked in Quayside and imagined going all the places they had gone … all the places his father had gone. Remy had insatiably devoured every tale of heroism and magic, of questing and exploration, that he could find. He had learned to read solely so he could follow the stories told in the one book his mother had—her great-uncle’s memoirs about his time at sea in the waters far beyond the Dragondown Coast, waters beset with floating ice or great mats of living vines that grew up from the depths to ensnare and destroy unwary mariners …

He had memorized the names of every city and town on the coast and determined to visit each and every one, swearing to himself that he would make his name in the world and leave behind stories that other men would write.

“No,” he said to Biri-Daar. “I don’t want to go home.”

“Wise,” said the paladin.

“We both know I can’t go home anyway. It’s not wise to accept that which cannot be changed.”

“Perhaps not,” Biri-Daar said. “But it is certainly unwise not to. You are good company, Remy. And you have the makings of a fine warrior, it seems to me. But you are with us because … I must be honest here. You are with us because I trust nothing that has any taint of the vizier,” Biri-Daar said. “And that includes you.”

The Crow Road wound like a snake through swamp and jungle after descending along the flanks of the last northeastern range of the Draco Serrata. The earth itself turned first to mud and then seemingly to a slippery tangle of root and rotten leaf, as if they walked on a pad of floating plant matter under which there was nothing but dark water all the way to the center of the earth. That was what it felt like when the skies lowered, and through the midday semidarkness they tried to keep to the road, feeling its algae-slicked stones under their feet until inevitably they stepped off and began to slide into the depthless muck. Biri-Daar nearly roped them all together, but at the last minute thought better of it; the threat was a little too real that they might all be reeled downward like a stringer of fish.

“Hey, Lucan, what do the crows have to say?” Kithri asked on their second day out of the mountains. The entire world was the drip, drip of water in the overhanging trees and the softly terrifying sounds of creatures unseen moving in the shadows.

“These are the Raven Queen’s watchers here,” Lucan said, looking up into the tangled canopy. Remy couldn’t even see the birds he was seeing, and even if he could have seen them, he wasn’t entirely sure about the differences between crows and ravens. “They are less willing to speak to me. The Queen, they think, is unhappy with our errand.”

“Why would that old bitch care about what we do?” Paelias spat off the road into still black water. “She’ll get her share of dead whether we ever see Karga Kul or not.”

“The Raven Queen has never concerned herself with getting enough,” Biri-Daar said. “For her, the only enough is everything. Every life we save is an affront to her.”

“Then let’s make sure we do enough killing to keep her happy before we start saving all those lives,” Kithri said, so brightly her voice was almost a chirp.

“The ravens say one thing,” Lucan added. “Ahead, the dead things buried under the road are not always dead.” He paused, listening. “And the live things are in commerce with the dead.”

Keverel, in a humorless mood, made a warding gesture. “Must the crows speak in riddles?”

The ravens cawed back and forth to each other. “Ravens speak the way ravens speak,” Lucan said with a shrug. “You don’t have to listen. They also said that in another mile or so, we were going to have to learn to swim. Then they laughed.”