Secret of the Giants' Staircase (Amarias Series). Amy Lynn Green

      Chapter 1

      Demetri was seeking to kill four young people whose names he did not know.

      Yes, he had seen three of them back in Da’armos. The tall, silent archer, the spirited girl and the cripple with the green eyes who would not betray the members of his squad. The fourth, their captain, remained both nameless and faceless in Demetri’s mind.

      Demetri and his companions, Ward and Lillen, referred to the Youth Guard members only as “the Four.” It made Demetri uneasy, knowing so little about them. He was used to having pages of neatly recorded information about the criminals he pursued. He liked knowing exactly who they were, where they lived and what they had done that deserved death.

      But the Four have done nothing to deserve death.

      Demetri ignored the thought. He had gone too far to turn back now. Some choices could never be taken back.

      Still, there was something strange about pursuing a nameless enemy, something almost cowardly.

      Demetri was no coward. Those who resented his high position in the Patrol at such a young age called him many names behind his back, but a coward was never one of them. Back in his days as commander of a desert outpost, he had led charges into rebel camps, pursued outlaws for days with few provisions and rushed into strongholds, even if none of his men followed. It was as if he didn’t care if he lived or died, others said, marveling.

      They couldn’t have known how right they were.

      Never before had Demetri lost to an opponent of any kind. The Four, whatever their names might be, were very clever. Perhaps more than that—they had escaped death countless times. They had help of some kind. Lillen and Ward had mentioned that much at least, though they would tell him little else.

      “Who are they?” he had asked Lillen the night before. “These Four who will not be defeated? Tell me their names.”

      “No,” she insisted. She was brushing out her blonde hair with a silver brush, an action that seemed out of place in their ramshackle camp. “If you hear their names, you will begin to see their faces. Once they have faces, they will haunt your dreams. They will beg you to show mercy, and you will pity them.”

      “Then why do you know their names?”

      Lillen set down her brush but continued to stare blankly into the darkness beyond the camp. “I see no faces,” she said, her own face hard as stone. “I hear no pleading voices. And I feel no pity.”

      It chilled Demetri to hear those words—and from a woman, no less, one who should have a heart of compassion, a mother’s heart.

      Without warning, Demetri saw the face of his own mother in his mind, the way he always remembered her: long, light brown hair, laughing and turning her face toward the light as she watched the sun rise. He had always resented that his brother looked more like his mother than he did.

      Now is not the time, he thought, shaking the memories away. It was dawn, but years had passed since he welcomed the sun with his mother. Now, dawn meant the breaking of camp for a new day of travel.

      There was movement in the camp. Ward was fussing about something, as usual. Lillen, at once beautiful and dangerous, was rolling up her tent with a practiced hand.

      Demetri did not offer to help her, though he had finished packing his own tent. Lillen was independent, and she seemed to resent any offers of help from others.

      “Another wet night,” Ward sighed, hefting up his pack. His slight frame bowed under the weight, but he never asked for help either—only complained about the rigors of travel until they made camp for the night.

      It’s a wonder we are able to maintain any kind of pace with him in our group, Demetri thought.

      “I swear, the extra weight from our soaked canvas will only sink us deeper into the swamps with every passing day,” he declared.

      “Peace, Ward,” Lillen said, standing. Though she too was slender, she bore the weight of her pack without any sign of strain or weakness. “Tomorrow we will enter the swamps to search for the Four. Today, we go to the outlying villages.”

      It was spoken not as a plan, but as a reminder of something they had already discussed. Demetri recalled no such conversation. “And when did we decide this?”

      “I believe it was while you were on your watch last night,” Ward said, giving a casual shrug. Once again, they had kept information from him, just as they did whenever they spoke of the Four, or of the prophecy or any other matter of importance for the Guard Riders.

      They are on my side. We must work together, Demetri reminded himself. He breathed deeply. “And what will we be doing in these outlying villages?”

      “Buying supplies, for one,” Ward said, in that same self-important tone that Demetri had found infuriating after nearly a week of travel. “Describing the Four to the villagers, for another.”

      “They are mostly Kin,” Lillen added. “Slow to get involved in the affairs of outsiders, but responsive to bribes. And they will care little about why we want to kill the Four. That is to our advantage.”

      “Kin?” Demetri asked. Ward gave him a superior look, which Demetri ignored. He was willing to risk looking ignorant by asking questions if the answers were worthwhile.

      “An ethnic group that once lived only in this region of District Two near the swamps, but spread throughout the kingdom,” Ward said, as if he were reciting from a recent census report.

      Which, Demetri thought, he probably is. That sounded like the type of reading Ward might do to relax before going to sleep.

      “They are wanderers, nomads, with a particular talent for acrobatics and other creative endeavors,” Ward continued blandly. “No ties to any one place, but the strongest of ties to each other. Though they live in Amarias

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