Kaden nodded, warming to the idea. “That’s strange. So where does she go?”
“No idea,” Akiil replied. “I haven’t had a chance to follow her—I’ve been shoveling out a new channel for a branch of the White River the past three days. Tonight, however…” He grinned. “I thought maybe we might put some of our Shin tracking skills to work.”
Beshra’an, the “Thrown Mind,” had originated as a way to trail lost livestock or to hunt down predators; it was, in fact, the way Kaden had tracked down the slaughtered goat two months earlier. Following prints in the earth was all well and good, but most of the land around Ashk’lan was rock, not earth. When the prints disappeared, as they inevitably did in the granite peaks, the monks needed another method.
The goal of beshra’an was to slip outside one’s own head, to throw one’s mind into another creature, to think, not like a man following a goat, but like the goat itself. The monks who were good at it could follow animals over blank stone with uncanny success, abandoning their own humanity to sniff out the scent of fresh grass, to tread the fine gravel that the goats favored, to move into the lee of a massive boulder when the storms came. Kaden had had some luck with it, even a few times where he felt as though he really had “thrown” his mind into the head of his quarry. Unfortunately, he’d never tried following a human.
“All right,” he whispered to Akiil once they’d slipped from the monastery proper and out toward the broken land to the east. A gibbous moon hung low in the sky, and once his eyes adjusted, there was enough light to see by. Rock slabs and boulders leaned against one another, casting dark shadows beneath the argent glow of the moon. Crooked branches of the junipers, twisted by the wind, reached toward them, threatening to snatch a robe or scratch an eye. The evening sounds of the monastery were barely audible above the light breeze.
“This seemed like a better idea when we were inside,” Akiil said. His voice was sarcastic, but his eyes flitted from rock to rock, quick and alert. Kaden didn’t have to remind him that whatever killed Serkhan was still out there, still waiting. They had to hope that the staves they’d taken from the goats pens along with the knives at their belts would be enough to discourage it. After all, Kaden reasoned with himself, Pyrre is sneaking around out here every night, and she hasn’t been killed yet.
“We’ll be quick,” he said, trying to reassure himself as much as his friend.
“That’s what I told myself right before I cut that purse. The one that earned me this,” Akiil replied, gesturing to his brand. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you can dim those eyes of yours. It’s nice that a goddess fucked your great-great-grandad, but they’re a little obvious.”
“Maybe they’ll scare away whatever needs scaring.”
Akiil snorted.
“All right,” Kaden said, shivering beneath his robe. “You’re Pyrre, a merchant woman from the empire. You leave your perfectly nice monastic cell to skulk off into the rocks. Why?”
Akiil grinned. “I’m hoping to tickle one of these strapping young monks up under that robe of his.”
Kaden considered this. Women never visited the monastery, and there probably were a couple of monks who wouldn’t mind spending a few minutes alone with Pyrre, Akiil chief among them.
“Fine,” he replied, “let’s say it’s a rendezvous. Where do you go?”
“I’m not from here. I go wherever I’m told.”
“All right, then, let’s get into the mind of this hypothetical monk. You want to meet up with Pyrre. Where do you tell her to go?”
“One of the abandoned buildings to the south. The lower meadow, although that’s a little far. Maybe into the dovecote.” Akiil winked. “Someplace with a little romantic character. You got to treat the lady right.”
“I’m sure she’d be flattered to bed you while surrounded by shitting pigeons. What about east?” he asked, gesturing to the rocks in front of them. “That’s the direction you said you saw her going. Would you tell her to meet you up there?”
Akiil hesitated, then shook his head. “Nothing but gullies and fissures. I don’t want to be picking pebbles out of my ass.”
“So she’s on her own,” Kaden concluded. “A monk would have sent her somewhere else.”
“Seems reasonable,” Akiil replied, “but not that helpful.” He gestured to the forbidding labyrinth of rock before them. “You’re her. Where do you go?”
Kaden considered his options by the meager moonlight. There were half a dozen goat tracks leading up into the broken mountain, any one of which the woman could have followed. Most of them were obvious—trails clear as highways to anyone who’d spent time in the mountains—but Pyrre wasn’t from the mountains, at least not these mountains. He tried to look at the land with an unfamiliar eye.