North Star Guide Me Home by Jo Spurrier

her mental voice. Her heart had quickened its pace, and she remembered calling for him like this back in the deep winter, the first time she’d voluntarily called to him for help. She scarcely felt any less nervous now — something had gone wrong. Since Kell died, he had been as brittle as spun glass … but he should have been fine. All he had to do was hole up here with Isidro and keep the both of them safe.
    Black Sun, please let him be alright. I should never have left him alone … But what choice had she had?
    After a moment, Cam murmured something to Delphine and came to join Sierra. ‘Where else could he be?’ Cam said.
    Not back towards the other camp. Rasten hated crowds, he hated the way they stared at him, thinking of all the things he’d done, all the things that were rumoured to have been done to him. ‘This way,’ she said, and set out in the other direction.
    They’d gone only a hundred or so strides when Sierra saw an odd shape lying on the stones. It took her a long moment to recognise it as a human figure, naked and curled into a lax ball under the drawn-out shadows of the afternoon. Their skin was streaked with blood, thick rivulets that left their hide striped like a tiger’s pelt.
    Sierra broke into a run, pebbles rolling and sliding under her feet.
    It was a woman, clothed in nothing but matted black hair and drying blood. Sierra threw herself down beside the girl as a swift, hot stream of power rushed through her, making her gasp and shiver. It had been so long since she’d laid hands on anyone but Rasten or Isidro, she’d forgotten to be mindful of her touch. As the power flowed, the deep, burning throb that had spread throughout her body began to abate. By the Black Sun herself, Sierra thought. I must be exhausted if I couldn’t tell it was coming from someone else, instead of my own flesh. The girl’s skin was cool, and a pulse thrummed steadily beneath her fingertips. ‘She’s alive,’ she said to Cam as he crouched by her side.
    ‘What in the Fires Below has he done? Where’s she hurt? I can’t see any wounds …’
    ‘She’s not,’ Sierra said. The girl’s skin was unbroken.
    ‘But there’s blood everywhere! Where has it come from?’
    ‘I’m not sure … but she hasn’t been cut, Cam. She doesn’t seem to be injured at all.’ There were no signs of beating or rape, nothing but that deep, scorched feeling that Sierra’s touch had banished. ‘Let’s get her back to the shelter.’
    Delphine bit her lip as she watched the pair go, but then she turned to Isidro, blinking back tears.
    He was shockingly pale, his lips tinged blue and circles dark as bruises beneath his eyes. Hesitantly, she lifted the blankets again to peer at the bandages wrapped across his chest, afraid to imagine what had caused wounds that ran from his collarbone to the opposite hip.
    Beneath the blanket, she caught another glimpse of the bandaged stump, and the vacant space where his forearm should have been. Delphine’s stomach lurched, and she laid the blanket down again and reached for his good hand, cradling it to her. ‘Oh, Issey,’ she murmured. ‘I was so afraid I’d never see you again …’ His fingernails were blue too.
    ‘He’s lost a lot of blood.’
    The voice came from behind her, and Delphine froze. Her muscles turned to ice, and it took an effort to force herself to turn.
    He stood a few feet away, gazing down at her with his hands restlessly clenching and unclenching.
    It had to be Rasten. She’d spoken to him a few times, but she’d never laid eyes on the man who had tormented and tortured the man she loved. He was so young! Little more than a boy. He was handsome, too, with dark eyes and gently curling hair. Something in his eyes reminded her of Isidro, back when she had first seen him chained like a wild beast in the Battle-Mages’ tent. She’d read the pain in his eyes, the desperation, and to her shame she recalled how she’d shoved it aside, refusing to