The village elders hurried toward the dirt road, bowing so deeply their foreheads touched the frost. A young man, wrapped in charcoal-colored silken skins and wearing the Provincial Governor’s signet ring, stepped onto the frozen earth. He was no longer the broken child with the rotten thigh; he was a ruler with a gaze as sharp as a winter wind.
“I seek the Blind Saint and her Silent Shadow,” the Governor’s voice rang out, though there was a hint of reverence beneath his authority.
Yusha stood before the clinic door, drying her hands on a stained apron. She didn’t bow at all. She had faced death too many times to be intimidated by a crown.
“The Saint is busy changing a bandage,” Yusha said in a deep voice. And the Shadow is tired. What does the city want from us now?
The governor, named Julian, stepped onto the porch. He stopped three paces away, staring at the man who had once been a ghost.
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