A Plague of Giants

The plains were silent, though, and having little else to do, I took out my journal and wrote by firelight, hoping that seeing these events put down in words would allow me to understand it all.

I can tell you now: writing didn’t help. I still don’t know why I’m alive.

There is a bloodcat curled up next to the fire directly across from me. A few minutes ago it approached from behind, purring deep in its throat, and when I turned and saw its red eyes glowing, I scrambled around the fire, putting the flames between myself and those teeth.

It was a laughable move. The bloodcat was much faster than me and could easily chase me down from one direction or another. But like the entire nest of them earlier—perhaps it was from the same nest—it had no interest in killing me. It sat down and regarded me with its head canted to one side as I stood on the balls of my feet, knees bent, ready to dodge one way or the other. Not that my injured leg would let me do much but shift a few inches in any direction.

“Don’t eat me,” I said, but the bloodcat only purred louder, then toppled over sideways and writhed in the tamped-down grass where I had been sitting, pawing the air as it scratched its back.

I looked around to see if anyone else was seeing what I was seeing, but of course I was alone. Alone with one of the most feared predators of the plains. Behaving adorably.

Perhaps it was a trick. A distraction. I stared into the darkness of the nughobe forest, but it was impenetrable, especially to my fire-blinded eyes. “Where are your friends?” I asked it. “The rest of your nest?”

The bloodcat stopped wiggling and came to rest right side up, its ears at attention as it looked at me. It swung its head back to the nughobes for a few seconds, returned its eyes to me, then looked away and sneezed.

“You’re here alone? You came to see me all by yourself?” I asked, then wondered why I was bothering to speak. But the cat rolled over, presenting its belly again, and made that low rolling noise of contentment in its throat.

“You are very strange,” I said, and the cat kicked out with its back legs as it stretched, pushing my journal and ink bottle a few inches away. Once I saw that, I wanted the journal in my hands to write this down so that proof would exist somewhere that such an encounter as this was possible. (And if I wake up later and check the journal and see these words in black and cream, I will know it really happened. And if they are not there at all, I will know it was a dream.)

“Hey. Mind if I come over there to pick that up?” I asked, pointing to the journal. The bloodcat righted itself, looked to where I was pointing, then got to its feet and moved a short distance away. Extraordinary. “Thanks,” I said, and cautiously moved around to pick up my journal, ink, and quills. Once they were in hand, I returned to where I’d been standing and sat down, flattening the grass beneath me, sitting with my back to the plains. The bloodcat watched all this, and when I was settled, it moved back to where it had been stretching, curled up, and placed its head on its paws, red eyes watching me. I began to write all this down, and at some point the bloodcat closed its eyes. I am not sure if it sleeps, but I have no desire to rouse it.

I wish that I could sleep so fearlessly out here. I don’t think I will sleep until my body gives me no other choice. We will see at dawn if the bloodcat is hungry.

The fire had burned down to a few red coals, and at some point I must have nodded off for a few minutes or hours. The bloodcat remained. I was still in one piece, felt somewhat better, and miraculously had not woken up covered in insect bites. The sun was not up, but the sky was gray and I could see well enough to move.

“Hey, friend,” I said, and the bloodcat’s eyes opened like two more coals and blinked. “I would like to visit my family now. Would that be all right with you?”

If it wanted to have me for breakfast, it could. But it stuck its rear in the air and stretched. I rose and did the same in a more human fashion. I hoped that if it let me live, I’d find some water; I was parched. That didn’t mean I had nothing in my bladder. I stepped away, turned my back, and took care of it, looking over my shoulder at the bloodcat. It was still occupied with loosening its muscles.

Finding the wreckage of the Khose train wouldn’t be difficult. The path of the kherns was clearly visible as a swath of flattened grasses not far from the nughobes. All I had to do was follow it back to where they’d smashed into the wagon.

When I finished, the bloodcat completed its morning stretch, yawned, and then looked at me almost expectantly, its tail swishing idly in the air. “Well? Shall we go together?” I said, pointing in the general direction of the wagon. “Or is this where we part company?” The bloodcat simply returned my stare, tail moving of its own volition. “All right, I’m going. Come along if you want,” I said.

I turned to the plains and began to walk, muscles tight but not as painful as the night before. I had improved from a lurch to a slight limp, and my arms had their full range of motion with only a few minor stinging complaints. I thought it remarkable to be feeling so well.

After twelve steps or so I heard the bloodcat move, only a whisper but still audible in the silence of the early dawn. An unmistakable hiss of liquid told me the animal had its own bodily functions to complete. What would it do next? Disappear back into the nughobes and rejoin its nest? Sprint at my back and bring me down?

It did neither of those things. Before I had taken another twenty steps I heard a soft whisper of grass grow louder, and then out of the corner of my right eye I spied movement. It was the bloodcat, keeping pace next to me a short distance away, tail held high and head up, sampling the air.

“You are the strangest creature I’ve ever met,” I said, “but I’m glad you’re here. I’d be all alone otherwise.”

It purred, though I don’t know at what. Surely not at my words.

A mess of boards and planks marked the site of my family’s end. The carcasses of the wart yaks lay prone, ribs already exposed to the air after a single afternoon and evening’s rest on the plains. The scavengers had been efficient and thorough. A couple of lingering blackwings crowed a lazy challenge at us, but they were full and had nothing to fight about. They flew away as the bloodcat and I approached.

The wagon had been splintered apart and its contents tumbled across the grass, but the contents hadn’t been completely annihilated. There were colorful pieces of cloth strewn about, wraps that belonged to my mother or aunt or sister. Cooking utensils such as spoons and pots. I found a small knife suitable for peeling roots and palmed it in case I couldn’t find anything better. A minute later I found a spear—my spear, in fact, recognizable by the dyed red leather strips wrapped around the base of the head. When I bent to pick it up, the bloodcat growled. I dropped it immediately, and the bloodcat fell silent. It stared at me, not exactly aggressive but not as relaxed as it had been earlier. Vigilant might be the word.

“Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “I left it behind for a reason. But I need a better knife than this puny thing if I’m going to survive.” Odd, I thought, to be thinking about survival past the next hour or so.

I searched for the box that held our water skins and eventually found it, ruined and splintered but still vaguely boxlike. It must have been tossed in the air when the wagon came apart and never directly trampled, so it had provided just enough protection to the skins inside that they still held water. There were three of them. Not enough to cook or wash with but enough to drink if I did nothing but walk straight back to Khul Bashab. I drank half of one before I felt sated.

Continuing to salvage what I could, I found a field bag in better shape than mine and transferred my few possessions to it, adding in the water skins and a few other items, mostly dry food. The bloodcat sat down and watched me pick through the wreckage.

“You are very patient,” I told it, but it behaved as if I hadn’t spoken at all. The sun had fully risen and warmed the air perceptibly by the time I could no longer delay the ushering of my family to the sky.

Since I had seen the path my parents had taken, I walked in that direction first, locating my father after less than ten lengths. He was nothing but bones and rags and a stain in the grass now, his flesh all pecked and torn away. He’d banished me from the family but hadn’t deserved this in return. Tears in my eyes and then trailing down my face, I tipped my head back until I nearly fell backward, staring straight up at the cloudless blue.

“Kalaad in the sky, I give you my father, who thought his son must hunt if he was to be a good son but who did love me and my family and made sure we prospered for all our days together. He is dead because I distracted him from hunting. Maybe he was right and I am not a good son. But that does not matter so much as that he is blameless and deserves to be at peace.”

I hoped I was doing it right; I’d never been old enough to give anyone to the sky before. I’d seen my parents do it for their parents and my uncle do it for his father, but that was years ago and I could barely remember.

My mother’s tunic had been a bright pink and was easy to find in the grass along with her remains. I cried over her, and when I thought I could keep my voice steady, I looked up to address Kalaad. “I give you my mother, who bore me and fed me and kept me in her heart for all her days. Now I will keep her in my heart for the rest of mine. May you keep her safe and free from pain for all time.”

It was not a day for me to be free from pain. Walking in the other direction and sniffling, I found the rest of my family, cried for them all, gave them all to Kalaad in the sky. My aunt and uncle, my cousins, my sister. None of them survived. I took all their hunting knives and left their spears in the grass. I needed only one knife, but they were made of fine Hathrim steel and I could probably sell the extra ones for necessities if I made it back. The bloodcat accompanied me as I visited each corpse and said the words, and it remained silent when I took the knives and placed them in my field bag.

There was nothing for me to do but return to Khul Bashab and, should I make it there, figure out some way to survive without a family.

I squinted at the bloodcat, which sat on its haunches and waited.

“What do you want?” I asked it. “Don’t you want to be with your nest?”

Standing on all fours, the bloodcat snorted and began to pace back and forth in front of me. Its red-brown fur, perfect for keeping it concealed among the nughobes, stood out against the pale grasses of the plains. It didn’t belong out here. Neither did I.

“I’m going to walk north,” I said, pointing. “Follow in the path of the kherns so long as they go in that direction. I have to make it back to Khul Bashab. It’s probably four days from here depending on how fast I go. You can come if you like, but I have nothing for you to eat and only enough water for me.”

“Murr,” the bloodcat said in his throaty rumble, and began to walk north. I followed after, and I supposed that was my answer, though I still didn’t understand how such behavior was possible. Soon we were walking side by side again, this time with the bloodcat on my left, but thinking of my family and my responsibility for their deaths prevented me from dwelling on the strangeness of it. By the time the sky had arced above us into afternoon, it no longer seemed strange. I had grown used to the creature and began to think perhaps it deserved a more dignified name than “creature.”

Perhaps it already had one.

Feeling absurd, I introduced myself. “I’m Abhinava. What’s your name?”

“Murr,” the bloodcat replied.

“I’m glad to meet you, Murr. Thank you for your company today. Should you become hungry or thirsty, please do whatever you need to do. I’ll just keep walking north and you can catch up easily.”

The bloodcat angled its head to look at me for a few steps, then it uttered a short acknowledging grunt and faced forward again. We walked in silence another quarter hour before Murr’s ears perked up and he darted off to the west after something. I didn’t see him again until evening when I had made my camp for the night in a small thicket of woody shrubs. I had to dismantle one of the shrubs to make a serviceable fire. There were small rodents in the thicket and at least one poisonous viper preying on them, along with a portly tusked boar that seemed content to coexist with me in his neighborhood. He watched me build the fire and didn’t move until Murr showed up, and then he took off with a squeal.

“Welcome back,” I said to the bloodcat. “Did you find something to eat?”

“Murr.” He lay down across from me and began to clean his paws with his tongue.

“Good.”

I didn’t know what else to say. Once he had left that afternoon, I never thought Murr would seek me out to lie by the fire again. It was definitely not natural behavior, and as I munched on a few raw root vegetables, I wondered if he would follow me all the way back to Khul Bashab, and if so, what would happen when we approached the gates.

Murr fell asleep almost immediately, his belly full of something. I frowned and got out my journal again.

Here is a crazy idea: What if I have found the Sixth Kenning? Ha ha! No.

But consider: the first and most basic gift of any kenning is that the blessed person becomes invulnerable to that kenning’s nature. The lavaborn cannot burn. I do not know what the Brynts call their blessed—the soaked? Anyway, they cannot drown. If the Sixth Kenning is related to animals in the way that the Fifth Kenning is related to plants, would that not mean that the blessed would never be eaten by an animal—the way that I have not been eaten by anything so far, starting with the bloodcats, and then moving on to the wheat dogs I heard, the complete lack of insect bites, snake bites, or any number of other hungry things, like flesh eels, that should have finished me off by now? And might not this single bloodcat’s strange and somewhat friendly behavior be explained by the kenning? Murr acts at times as if he understands what I’m saying—what if he does?

Kalaad in the sky, if this is true and I am somehow the first person to discover the Sixth Kenning, what do I call myself? What are my powers? And … does Kalaad have anything to do with this? Why me and why now? So many questions and no one to answer them. I will have to experiment.

A strange thing happened when Fintan banished his seeming: everyone seated on the benches below the wall rose to his or her feet and applauded thunderously. The bard had received loud applause before, of course, but I had never seen Brynts behave this way. What had caused them to erupt from their seats so? The possibility that the Sixth Kenning, long rumored to exist, had finally been found? That must be it. Like them, I had to assume it was the truth—why else would Fintan include this hunter’s story in his tale? Staggering, really, to hear of such a discovery happening in our time, and so recently. A new kenning with animals—that could only benefit everyone, right?

I wondered how the Nentians who disliked the bard’s portrayal of their people would react. Would they finally feel pride in their countryman, or would this enrage them further?

Föstyr found me after the bard’s tale and pressed some coins into my hand as a stipend. “Come to the palace in the morning for breakfast with your old friend,” he said, and then disappeared into the crowd that was streaming off the wall into the city where all the mead and ale was.

I didn’t go back to the Randy Goat or any other inn. I spent my stipend on a new bed frame, or rather a used one with a cracked beam on one side that I chose to regard as charming and well loved rather than poorly made or broken. I spent far more finding a new feather down mattress on the principle that used mattresses are an astoundingly bad idea.

I bought a bottle of spiced Kaurian rum in the marketplace two blocks from my house, a few logs for my fireplace even though it would not be so cold that night, and a small chapbook of ribald poetry by a wit from Sturföd who might or might not still be alive. It was not luxury, but it was warm and gave me a glimpse of what my home might grow to be in the future. It was enough.

Pelenaut Röllend was blessedly not dressed in orange for our meeting in the morning but in a palette of varied greens edged in black.

“Let me guess: The Fornish are coming today?”

“No, I just like green,” he said. “And I’ve discovered that avoiding blue and white helps me stand out in the Wellspring. Lots of military in there these days, and I like to give the idea that someone is still concerned about other matters than active warfare.”

We talked of trifles until breakfast was served and the longshoremen departed to let us speak privately.

“How did the orange meeting go, then?”

“I think the ambassador got the message. He came with a wrapped gift, saw me all in orange, and then said the gift was for someone else and he’d be sending some prized stock of his own tea to me later.”

“Ha! Well done.”

“Yes, but lying about that gift was just the beginning of a strange meeting. I asked him about that Bone Giant prisoner they have in their dungeon—Saviič, right? And he claimed to have no knowledge of it. Either Mistral Kira is keeping her own diplomatic corps in the dungeon on this after all this time or the ambassador was lying about that, too.”

“Again I’m grateful to not have your job.”

The pelenaut snorted. “And how does your job go? What did you learn about the Triune Council?”

“Oh. Yes, I asked Fintan about that. I’d worry about the one named Clodagh.”

“Why?”

“He diplomatically chose to say nothing about her, which I think means he had nothing positive to say.”

Rölly nodded. “That fits with what we’ve heard elsewhere.”

“Do I get to hear it, too?”

The pelenaut inspected a piece of bacon, didn’t appear to like the look of it, but crunched into it anyway. “She’s quick to suggest military solutions to problems. She’s not been able to do much in that regard because the other councillors keep her in check, but we—I mean the Fornish and the Nentians and everyone else—suspect she’s been doing a lot of work in deep waters.”

“Eating away at us in the darkness? Look, if you want to know what the Raelechs are up to, isn’t there a better way to go about it than having me ask the bard roundabout questions?”

“There is, yes. Föstyr knows someone who specializes in that sort of thing. I needed to know where to point that particular weapon, and all the signs are pointing to Clodagh. But I asked you here for a different reason.”

“Oh?”

“This threat on Fintan’s life is real. The Nentians are not playing around. You need to be armed from now on.”

“Armed?”

“Sword or rapier. Something. Maybe wear some chain underneath your tunic.”

“I’m a target now?”

“No, he’s still the target. But you’re with him for much of the day, and you need to be on guard in case they try something.”

“I thought that’s what the mariners were for.”

“They are. But it’s best to be prepared.”

“I’m out of practice.”

“Get into practice again. Föstyr tells me they are looking for an opportunity, Dervan. You can’t be complacent anymore.”

Chagrin smeared my face into a wince. “I actually don’t have a weapon. Haven’t had one since I was discharged from the mariners.”

“Easily remedied,” Rölly said. “I’ll requisition one for you. And practice, Dervan. I mean it. In fact, go see Mynstad du Möcher at the armory right after this, get your weapon, and arrange to spar with her. She’s excellent with the rapier. Without equal, I suspect. She trains me. She’ll do for you.”

As I walked up to meet Fintan and his mariner escort outside a nondescript chowder house, I covered up an uncomfortable burp with my fist, the ghost of breakfast haunting me with memories of thick sauces on eggs. I had spent a few hours practicing after picking up my weapon, but even that exertion had not been enough to banish the meal completely, though it was now lunchtime.

“Ah, that’s the belch of a man who ate rich food at the palace this morning,” Fintan said.

“You can tell?”

“No, it was just a guess. A good one, apparently. You also look worried. A transfer of the pelenaut’s concerns directly to your face. And a transfer of a weapon from the armory to your hip,” he said, pointedly staring at my new sword.

“Ah, yes. Being seen next to you is a dangerous thing now.”

The interior of the chowder house was poorly lit except for candles in orange glass on the tables, providing pools of light that gave off an air of mystery, an air that Fintan noted with approval.

“I appreciate the atmosphere. A bit spooky, somewhat ominous, makes you wonder if any of this is legal: that’s what good chowder is all about.”

It made for a terrible work environment, though. We had to ask for extra candles so I could see what I was doing. Once I could see a bit better and the place filled up with locals, I relaxed. The chowder was hot and the beer was cold, and no one bothered us. Fintan determined to give them a good report from atop the wall that afternoon.

When we got there, he prefaced his starting song with a few words. “I have learned this morning that the Fornish force coming here to join our counterattack will be primarily composed of grassgliders and thornhands.” That startled everyone, including me, since I had not heard any such news. “You might not be terribly familiar with either or what they’re able to do, but we’ll meet some grassgliders today in Nel Kit ben Sah’s portion of the tale and the thornhands later. In the meantime, I’ll share with you a Raelech song about the First Tree.”

Not blood but sap runs through its limbs,

It has no breath to speak its mind;

Yet if you threaten aught in Forn,

You will very quickly find

The First Tree is the Canopy.

By root and stem it speaks to Fornish,

And if they ever feel the need

To Seek more power than they were born with,

They can always choose to feed

The First Tree of the Canopy.

Perhaps their blood will water the roots,

Perhaps it will reward their nerve

And bless them with the Fifth Kenning,

So that they’ll be bound to serve

The First Tree of the Canopy.

The song made me shudder. The semisentience and hunger of the First Tree always left me feeling vaguely ill whenever I was reminded of its existence. Unlike the sites of the other kennings, where Seekers simply cast themselves into it, the First Tree took people and then decided whether to eat them or bless them. To my admittedly small understanding it seemed more monstrous somehow than the impersonal sites of the other kennings. I know the Fornish argument is that Bryn or Reinei or the other gods of the kennings are making decisions on who to bless every much as the First Tree, but somehow the other sites don’t inspire the same horror; perhaps because it’s not like the wind or water is eating the Seekers.

Fintan smiled after the break and held up his first seeming stone. “Let’s see what Nel is up to, shall we?”

The days after making my report to the Canopy were bittersweet. I missed Yar and deeply regretted his death and the others that happened under my command.

Yet amid the pallor of death a column of sunshine speared through the shadow: the prestige of the White Gossamer Clan improved markedly as a result not only of my efforts on behalf of the Canopy but of the demonstrated success of our net launchers against Hathrim houndsmen. It’s the nets more than the launchers that made the difference, but our clan now has more orders than they can fill and prosperity is blossoming for us. And my influence in the sway has increased significantly, just as Pak Sey ben Kor feared. But it was not at his expense; he and the Black Jaguars are still very much the broad leaves and drink up most of the sun.

The need for more information required a second trip, and I was tasked by the sway to lead a party of grassgliders over the Godsteeth and secure a thorough scouting report. I was to be the only greensleeve this time, which meant leaving Pak Sey ben Kor behind. That suited me perfectly.

The grassgliders entrusted to my command were a picked squad from several clans and cared nothing for politics—even better. They were professional, in fantastic shape, and a pleasure to work with. They met me at the same stand of sentinel trees our first party had left from, and we followed the same route, slowing down and picking our way very carefully through the pass with the bantil plants; they had grown naturally and spread, feasting on new creatures, and we would need to contain the growth soon but let it remain for now as a line of defense against possible Hathrim invasion. On the other side of the pass we kept high up on the mountainside, where the houndsmen were least likely to patrol among the thick stands of trees, and cut straight west on the edge of the Godsteeth until we saw the ocean.

We paused next to a grand moss pine, the sort that the Hathrim were cutting down, and the eldest of the grassgliders, Nef Tam ben Wat, pulled pigments out of his pack and began mixing them to match the pine bark. All the other grassgliders retrieved pots of base coat pigment and stripped down to their dark undergarments. They applied the dark base that would serve as shadow and afterward would apply the lighter bark pigments on top. We had camouflage material to mimic silverbarks and all manner of trees in the Canopy but nothing for these pines, so we would have to take the time to use paint. I simply wore a custom black bodysuit and mask because I couldn’t smear pigment on my silverbark, and the plan was for me to crouch down in the center of them anyway. The other grassgliders helped one another with their backs, and they were so practiced and quick that we were ready to go in an hour.

“Orient yourself on this tree,” I said. “We’ll leave our packs here. Hooks and spikes ready?” They nodded like animate wood, reddish brown bark scales painted on their skin and their hair dyed black like mine. I had my miniature crossbow and a few bolts treated with a paralytic developed by the Red Horse Clan. They were famous abroad for their teas and medicinal herbs, but inside Forn they were known for developing poisons.

The grassgliders formed up around me and then employed their kenning, which allowed them to make no noise when they moved on or through plant life. Since I occupied the space between them and benefited from the cone of silence they projected about themselves, I was completely silent, too. And thanks to Nef’s expert mixing of pigments and the squad’s practice at application, we looked from a distance like a lightning-blasted stump of a grand moss pine as long as we stayed close together.

We moved in complete silence down the mountain. We could still be smelled, still be seen, but could not be heard. Instead, we would hear any Hathrim patrols long before they were in range to see us. No one said a word until we had descended far enough to see the Hathrim encampment through the trees, and it was I who broke the silence.

“May the First Tree shield us,” I whispered when I took in the breadth of the Hathrim city. For that is what it was, a city—not a camp of desperate refugees. They had paid the Raelechs to build high walls, and only our vantage point on the mountainside above allowed us to see what they had going on inside them. They might not have grand buildings erected yet, but they had the sites staked out, tiny fires that would be family hearths someday. They had the beginnings of a smithy going if I wasn’t mistaken, and a long mead hall. It spoke of extensive planning; no one suffers a surprise eruption of his or her home and lays out a new city like this so quickly without thinking about it long beforehand.

The eruption of Mount Thayil might have been a catastrophe for those who couldn’t escape it, but this level of organization made it clear that it was also something for which Gorin Mogen had been waiting.

“We can’t have this here. They can ship all their firelords to this point, walk over the pass, and overwhelm us. Stage timber raids on our hardwoods all along the western coast from the safety of their port. No. We can’t have it.”

It was impossible to tell where Mogen’s personal hearth was; no markers of importance or ostentation separated one fire from another. The giants all dressed alike in leathers, but I had heard that you could tell the lavaborn apart from the rest sometimes by the color of the leather; theirs had to be made out of the fireproof hide of lava dragons, which were gray creatures with black heads and a black spiny ridge all the way down to the tips of their tails, sometimes with a swirl of maroon here and there. Some of the giants had different hair colors, but I had no idea what color Mogen’s was supposed to be.

They had sown crops outside the walls, so they were definitely going to be staying for months. The walls, though, were undeniable proof that they intended to claim the land as their own. One simply didn’t go to the expense or trouble otherwise.

We could ruin their crops without a problem—so could the Raelechs—but they wouldn’t be depending on them for sustenance. They had the sea and a glass fleet. They’d trade with other Hathrim cities for all they needed or simply cast nets off the coast, and no one could stop them. The problem of how we would ever get them to leave without a full-scale war of allied forces grew and grew in my mind until I remembered that it wasn’t a problem I had to solve. I was meant to defend the Canopy, not besiege a Hathrim city on the plains. Let the strategists worry about that. All I had to do was get them the information they needed to do their jobs.

“Count everything,” I said. “We need numbers above all. Look especially for hounds, realizing that some are on patrol, and also see if you can spy any Raelechs milling about; the Triune Council would like to know.”

Silence stretched except for the susurrus of the ocean on our left and the sad sounds of chopping wood to our right. There were thousands of Hathrim below. Nearly ten thousand; when we consulted, the grassgliders’ figures and mine varied somewhat, but we put their numbers between nine thousand two hundred and nine thousand six hundred. And with Hathrim you almost had to count every single one as a potential military threat. Any giant could kick one of us in the chest and break our rib cage.

They had sixty-five hounds, though some of them were pups as tall as me; a protected well inside the walls; and what looked like an extensive cache of grain and other foodstuffs that they had brought with them. We could see the brown bags of it piled underneath a rudimentary shelter from the rain.

I supposed the key figure beyond their raw population would be to estimate how many lavaborn they had and of what strength. Sparkers and firelords were bad enough, but if they had a fury, we might as well give up now. Mere giants could be overcome, but giants made of fire were another thing entirely.

The number of giants wearing gray or black leathers was far too high, approaching a thousand. There was no way they had that many lavaborn. But that also meant we had no way to tell what we were facing.

Nef spotted the Raelechs because of the new construction. The wall was complete—it extended all the way to the shore and enclosed a vast area, so much that I thought it would be difficult to defend, but then I thought that anything besides the Canopy would be difficult to defend. I supposed that if you had lavaborn able to set attackers on fire, that would make it easier. Or spray oil over the walls and ignite that instead; probably less effort involved.

The Raelechs were constructing siege breaks outside the walls. Deep, wide pits that would have to be spanned, and outside of those pits were shorter walls, perhaps five feet tall. A giant could step over them. And a giant could certainly fire down over them from the top of the city walls—they were building this within bowshot. But attackers would have to climb the wall and then fall into a pit that the Hathrim would no doubt fill with a trencher of flaming oil, all the while dealing with the many different ways the lavaborn could make fire rain down from the sky. The Nentians wouldn’t stand a chance without our help and that of other nations. I wondered if other nations would care enough to actually send troops; it wasn’t their country being invaded, after all. I knew, however, that we wouldn’t hesitate. We could not abide having the lavaborn so close. Already their hearths were blazing with the wood of murdered trees.

“I want to know what those Raelechs are thinking,” Nef said. “I’d like to just ask them right now, ‘Do you know that you’re helping the Hathrim invade Ghurana Nent?’ And then, regardless of whether they say yes or no, punch them in their seed pods.”

Snickers and snorts from the others: it was what we were all thinking. “Tricking them was probably the cleverest thing he did,” I said. “Without those walls they wouldn’t be such a threat. You guys have your counts? We should withdraw and get back to the Canopy.”

Affirmatives all around, we made our slow, silent way uphill to our cache of clothes. I was mentally congratulating myself on a smooth operation when Nef heard the hounds coming a split second before the rest of us and said, “Houndsmen.” Grumbly woofs off to the east, not angry or excited, just conversation. A patrol coming our way. The grassgliders looked to me for direction.

“Up the trees,” I whispered. “Quick and silent.”

We knew coming in we couldn’t outrun the hounds, but we could outclimb them. The grassgliders had brought hooks and spikes for their wrists and ankles. My kenning would let me scale the trunks without aid, and I leapt onto the trunk of the nearest moss pine and began to climb as high as I could to get myself out of sight. I wasn’t camouflaged like the grassgliders were and would stick out against the bark. Disappearing into the branches above was my best bet.

Unfortunately, outside the kenning of my companions—unavoidable in this case—I made some noise. The grassgliders rose up the trunks without a sound, visibly jamming hooks and spikes into the bark that should have sounded like chopping, but only my soft scrabbling could be heard, and it attracted the hounds. Their barks grew urgent, inquisitive, and the houndsmen riding them sounded annoyed. They probably thought their hounds had heard a squirrel or something.

I suppose I did qualify as something.

There were two houndsmen, a small patrol, and their hounds snuffled at the ground beneath my tree and the others nearby that the grassgliders had climbed. I could not see my companions at all; they had gone still and blended in perfectly with the bark of the moss pines.

I, too, had gone still, since any movement could be heard and would draw their gazes upward. I did not blend with the bark, though; I was a black blob on the tree with odd gray patches where my silverbark limbs stood out.

The Hathrim riders groused at each other as their hounds inhaled our scents. One of them kept heading uphill, following the path to our cache, and that gave me an idea—if we could get out of these trees. I was counting on the riders to eventually get impatient and pull the hounds away, but a cone fell out of the tree I was clinging to and plopped to the ground behind the closest one. He turned, located the cone, and looked up. And that was when he saw me and shouted at his companion. Within a few seconds I had both houndsmen pointing up at me and shouting. If they wanted me to climb down and be eaten, they had unrealistic expectations regarding my obedience.

It could have been worse: they had axes but no bows, and neither one appeared to be lavaborn. I guessed the latter since I had not already combusted.

But it wasn’t long until one of them yanked his mount downhill toward the city, presumably to get either a bow or one of the lavaborn to smoke me out of the tree. I had a very short window in which to attempt an escape.

And this was why the grassgliders needed a greensleeve to lead them. If I could save them by sacrificing myself, I would. The houndsmen would conclude that I had drawn the hounds and eventually would move off. The grassgliders could wait in silence, camouflaged, and return to Forn without me. The Canopy would be served, and Gorin Mogen would surely be foiled. A worthy trade for my life.

This grand moss pine was not of the Canopy, but it was of Teldwen, and through my kenning I could speak to it and through it. Indeed, I could act through it if I was willing, and I was very willing.

Closing my eyes and sending shoots from my silverbark to merge with the soft woody flesh of the pine, I felt its strength and reach in the earth and its stolid contentment with the sun and the rain here, the birds that built nests in its branches, and the wild hogs that foraged nearby and fertilized its base every so often. I showed it the hound standing at its base, convinced it that it must be destroyed, and triggered the fusing of my impatient mind with its branching patience, catalyzing the channeling of Teldwen’s energy through the earth. It moved up the tree, into me, where it was infused with purpose, and then back into the tree, directed now to spur accelerated growth and then—

—my strong roots burst through the ground, wrapping around limbs and pulling down, down, until bones snapped and a creature cried out, but still I pulled until its limbs tore free and I took my prizes with me into the earth. Another creature landed on the ground, only two legs this time, but they must be taken also. More roots erupt and seek to twine about those limbs, but they are hacked and bitten by a blade, hateful axe hewing my flesh and spilling sap. Bigger roots, then, and more of them, reaching higher: Wrap its limbs, trap the axe, pull all of it down into the earth, where it will be still and silent and feed me its nutrients for seasons to come. Yes! Yes, hush, be quiet now; it’s over.

With some effort, I opened my eyes and broke the link with the grand moss pine, realizing that I was being kept aloft by nothing but the shoots from my silverbark embedded in the tree. Panicking, I lunged forward and grabbed on to the tree, then felt the ache all over and the weakness in my muscles. Melding my consciousness with that tree had drained me significantly. Looking down, however, I saw that it had bought us the opportunity we needed: The hound’s huge limbless body lay still below me, and its rider was nowhere to be seen, though the earth around the trunk was freshly turned.

“Grassgliders, move out!” I called. “We have to go before reinforcements arrive!”

My progress was slow and jerky, and I cared nothing for whatever sound I might make climbing down. I just wanted to make it to the ground without falling on it. I was breathing heavily by the time I got there, and my knees were shaky. The grassgliders were all waiting for me near the corpse of the hound.

“Ben Sah, that was incredible—hey. Are you all right?” Nef said. “You look ill.”

“I’m not ill,” I said. “Just older.” He was probably three or four years my senior, but I would not have been surprised if I looked like his elder now.

“Oh.”

“Don’t let the price I paid be in vain,” I said. “Let’s go, back to the cache, quickly!” I pointed uphill. “Move!”

I huffed behind them, barely able to keep pace but unashamed to strain. If we did not strain now, we might not survive.

When we arrived at our cache, I told them to just pick up their stuff and keep running. “No time to dress! Run back along the same way that we came in!”

I trailed behind them as we ran east along the Godsteeth, treacherous footing preventing us from moving much faster than a jog. It would be a troublesome pursuit for the Hathrim as the trees grew close together, but they would still move more quickly than we could and catch up to us long before we made it back to the pass.

But only if we remained on the same track. Keeping my eyes half on the trail and half in the branches above us, I waited until I spied a likely looking stand of pines and cedars stretching uphill.

“Stop here,” I said, and they did and turned to me, wondering if I had given up. I took a few moments to catch my breath and explained. “They will track us via scent. We have established a trail already coming in from the pass. We need to let them think that we stayed on that trail so that they will keep going. But we will not stay on that trail. We are going higher into the Godsteeth, and we will lose them on the Leaf Road.” I pointed up at the mixed canopy above us, which currently had nothing like a Leaf Road.

Their eyes drifted up, confirmed that it was just a random tangle of wood and needles, and then dropped back to me, no doubt wondering if I had succumbed to dementia.

“Ben Sah, your pardon, but I don’t see a Leaf Road.”

“Of course not. I haven’t made it yet.”

I had them jog a bit farther along the trail to strengthen the scent, and then they came back to the tree I had chosen and climbed first. They ascended after me with hook and spike on the side opposite the trail so that their passage might go unnoticed by houndsmen passing by. They leapt as far off the trail as possible first in an effort to leave no trace.

Once again, I sent my shoots into the bark of a grand moss pine, but this time my efforts were not quite so demanding or taxing. I was strengthening and shaping what was already there, and communicating through roots, I coordinated with neighboring trees to form a narrow wooden bridge of branches between our tree and the next.

“Stealthily we go,” I whispered as the distant bark of hounds could be heard now, and the grassgliders engaged their kenning and we tiptoed across a narrow bridge, single file, from tree to tree. The grassglider in front of me and the one behind kept my noise to a minimum, and all the while I kept speaking to the trees through my silverbark so that a walkway formed in front of us and then the branches returned to their normal state after we had passed. In this way we walked uphill, yet above the hill, until we could go no higher: the trees stopped growing, and the bald, ever-snowy peaks of the Godsteeth rose above us, stark crags that might be passed but not without equipment that we didn’t have. As it was, we were very cold and would have to spend a night in it.

But the stratagem had worked. The barking of hounds never grew closer than distant, and they couldn’t follow our scent in the trees or even know where we had gone since we left no visible trail in the canopy. By the time we reached the tree line, it was near dusk and we were all exhausted. I found a place where four trees grew close together and asked them to form a platform of branches for us to rest on. We were only twelve feet off the ground and a houndsman could still reach us there, but I figured it wouldn’t matter—they’d never find us. The grassgliders dressed, pulling layers over their painted bodies. Since we had only enough water to drink, we ate dry rations, and as the sunlight faded, I caught a couple of uncertain glances in my direction as the grassgliders started to think about sleeping arrangements. We were all shivering and would need to huddle together for warmth, but the silverbark on my legs meant I couldn’t have anyone in front of me lest I damage the mushrooms on my legs. It would be best for me to settle the question before it could be asked, and there was no question in my mind who I wanted at my back: Nef.

He was efficient and skilled and possessed a calm charisma, and no, it didn’t hurt at all that I’d met few men as handsome. Dark hair and deep brown eyes and a pleasant curve to his lips. Once night fell, there was little else for us to do at that elevation except survive it, so I pulled a blanket out of my pack and motioned to Nef to grab his.

As I lay on my side, knees drawn up, Nef draped an arm around my belly after asking if it was okay and I laid my arm on top of his. He smelled of cedar and sweat and fit me like the hammock at home. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep after only a few minutes, but I woke an unknown time later with a start, having dreamt I was the houndsman pulled underground by pine roots and torn apart so that my blood would feed the tree.

“What? What is it?” Nef said, keeping his voice low, half rising in the chill to match me, propped up on an elbow. My breath fogged in front of me, pale gasping clouds in the starlight.

“Nothing. Well, not nothing—a nightmare. Probably …” I sighed. “Probably the first of many.”

I hoped I hadn’t woken the others. I lay back down and snuggled up against Nef, placing his arm and mine back where they were. He was warm and safe, and a pleasant weariness returned until I drifted off, only to wake again when images of bantil blossoms eating my face made me cry out.

These were ridiculous nightmares: plant life would never behave that way toward me. But I supposed I must carry these images of death within me now that I had caused the death of others. Nef understood and did not even seem annoyed when I woke for the third time.

“I cannot sleep anymore tonight,” I whispered to him. “Would it be okay if we talked? Perhaps you can project your silence around us and we won’t disturb the others.”

“Of course.” The sound of the night muted somewhat as he employed his kenning.

“Do you ever have nightmares?” I asked him, still keeping my voice low but no longer bothering to whisper.

“Yes. Mostly about me thinking I’m being quiet but everyone can hear me. Like when—well. Promise you won’t tell?”

“I promise.”

“I cannot stand the thought of anyone hearing me relieve myself, so I use my kenning whenever I do. And my nightmares are about people hearing me anyway and making comments.”

For some reason that started me laughing, and then, to my horror, I couldn’t stop. Fortunately, Nef found it funny, too—or perhaps just the sound of me laughing was funny to him—and soon we were both carrying on until our stomachs hurt. It was far better than crying.

Feeling grateful and warm and affectionate and too late to stop myself, I realized that I had caressed the back of his hand with my fingers, an undeniable signal that he couldn’t have missed. I let my fingers go slack and forced myself to relax instead of tense up and said, “Tell me about your clan. You’re from the Brown Marmosets, right?”

I doubted my obvious distraction would make him forget what I had done, but I hoped he wouldn’t return the gesture. Except for the part of me that did. What if he felt nothing like that for me?

He told me about his uncle Vin Tai ben Dar, the greensleeve who took him to his Seeking as a youth, who defended a stretch of the southern coast, and who never lost a single tree to timber pirates for ten years despite their many attempts. He also had a cousin who was an herb culturist, but few others were blessed. Most of his family, and indeed his clan, handled sanctioned timber exports to Hathrir. We traded stories like that until the dawn, and then, reluctantly, we disentangled and let the cold air come between us.

Despite the lack of sleep, I felt better when I rose if a little stiff in the knees. I frowned down at them, dismayed by their betrayal. I asked Nef for an honest assessment. “Tell me in the sun, leave nothing in shadow: How many seasons are written on my face?”

“It’s not bad, ben Sah,” he said, examining my face closely. “There are some new fine lines near the corners of your eyes. Perhaps some heaviness underneath them. But that could be exhaustion as much as anything. You are still very—”

He blinked and stopped abruptly, and I quirked an eyebrow at him. “Still very what?”

Nef looked away to hide a grin, failed miserably at it, then looked down. “Still very much in charge of this mission, ben Sah.”

I had to laugh. “Yes. Very much. An excellent reminder. Thank you, ben Wat. To be continued, perhaps, when we return to the Canopy under less formal circumstances.”

“May the sun shine on the opportunity.”

He was being kind; he had that sort of face. I had to squash the impulse to kiss him, for he was right: it would be inappropriate during a mission while he was temporarily under my command.

Once everyone had risen, I thanked the trees for their comfort and shelter and allowed them to return to their accustomed form, and we descended to the ground. I allowed myself a private smile. We had scouted the Hathrim successfully and lost nothing this time except some ill-defined measure of my life span. But perhaps something new had taken root between me and Nef. Time and sun would tell if anything would grow out of it.

“To the north of the Godsteeth,” Fintan said, “Abhinava Khose also had the opportunity to form a new bond.”

It has been a day of incredible discoveries. First came the realization that all of my bloodcat bites were completely healed, the torn muscles repaired; even the skin was unblemished by scars or scabs. All had healed while I slept. The scratches I’d suffered from the grass puma were likewise healed. I should have had weeks of discomfort ahead of me with injuries like those, but instead it was as if they had never happened.

No: it’s much better than that. I feel better than I ever have. Stronger, faster, more alert. I feel like my senses have improved. And though I cannot confirm it yet, I suspect that I have nothing to fear on the Nentian plains anymore but other humans.

My first order of business upon waking—after stretching and such—was to ask Murr if he could understand me. He just rolled over, presenting his belly.

“Are you asking for a belly rub?” I said. He pawed at the air and said, “Murr,” which was cute but inconclusive. I didn’t move because if I was wrong about that, Murr might become annoyed with me. Even if I was immune to harm from animals now, I didn’t want to offend him.

“If you can understand me, we need to establish a way for you to signal yes and no. That would help immensely. So let’s start with that. Can you nod your head or bob it up and down to say yes?” I began nodding to demonstrate. “Like this?”

Murr righted himself, locked his red eyes on mine, and executed an awkward nod—more of a tossing of his chin than a human movement, but still, it was evidence that he understood me. Or perhaps he was just mimicking me.

“That’s excellent. So let’s say you wish to say no to something. Can you shake your head from side to side, like this, to say no?” I demonstrated again, and Murr watched me for a moment, then copied the movement.

I grinned at him. “Fantastic, Murr! Now, let me ask you that other question again and you answer, yes or no. Do you want a belly rub?”

The bloodcat stared at me for a few beats, then shook his head.

“No? I’m very glad I confirmed that, then. That could have been extremely awkward.”

Murr performed his catlike nod.

“Do you know if I can talk to all animals, or are you special?”

He shook his head, and I realized I hadn’t phrased the question very well. Did he simply not know the answer, or did he mean I couldn’t talk to any other animals? I would have to be more careful with my word choice.

“Can you say anything else besides ‘murr’?” At his nod, I asked him, “What else can you say?”

“Murr,” he said.

“That sounded the same to me. Are you saying different things, perhaps, but my human ears can’t understand the difference?”

He nodded again, and I thought that was interesting. It appeared that the kenning granted me the power to communicate clearly to animals—or at least bloodcats—but not the other way around. It required testing.

“I need to keep walking toward Khul Bashab. I’ll eat something as I go. Still coming with me?” Murr got to his feet by way of answering and took a few steps north before stopping to check if I was moving yet.

“Guess you’re anxious to go! Okay. Same as before: hunt when you feel like it and find me when you want. Let me make sure this fire is out and get my bag.”

We covered a lot of ground that morning; I even jogged for a while since it felt so effortless. I asked Murr only one question before lunch: “Am I the first human to be able to do this—I mean talk to you and not get eaten and all that?”

He nodded, and that gave me plenty to think about. The histories that I’d heard never went into much detail on the lives of the first people to discover the other five kennings except that they had all been discovered by accident by someone ready to die—suicidal, in other words, as I had been.

Their discoveries had necessarily changed their cultures forever. And they had all lived very short lives because of a combination of circumstances. Too many people wanted them dead because of the change they represented, and they were forced to spend so much energy defending themselves that they aged a lifetime in a few months. If I was going to learn from their mistakes and avoid a similar fate, I needed to be smart about this. I stopped running for a moment when I realized that I no longer wished to die.

Looking up at the sky, I asked the silence, “What do you have planned for me, Kalaad? Is this part of a plan at all, or are you just watching an accident unfold?”

No answer, of course. I would have to continue and look back at this moment sometime in the future, assigning meaning when I had the benefit of a window to the past.

I didn’t know how to use my powers yet or even what they were beyond the passive benefits that I had to admit were glorious. To walk anywhere in the plains, unafraid of predators? That’s a dream practically every Nentian shared, and the wonder of it made me smile. In fact, much of the prestige of hunting families like mine came from the fact that we walked the plains and faced those predators and wore khernhide boots that only the wealthiest could afford. Any prestige I might earn because of this kenning, though, came at the cost of my family’s lives. I would not have been in that nughobe grove otherwise.

That put a spear through my smile. I’d gladly give up this sense of physical well-being to have them back. I resumed my northward march, and it was some time and distance before I returned to thoughts of how to proceed.

The immediate conflict I saw was a religious one. The cultures of the other five kennings have the old gods, sons and daughters of Teldwen, to guide them in the use of their powers and order their societies. Thurik the lavaborn was first; Reinei was the wind, the peaceful counter to his brother’s flame yet sometimes the goad; the triple goddesses of Rael were born of earth; and Bryn of the sea. We Nentians have Kalaad in the sky, lover of Teldwen and father of the gods, but he is not especially concerned with the Sixth Kenning or with watching over animals. What shall I do, then? Go up to the gates of Khul Bashab with Murr by my side and laugh, shouting, “Ha! That Kalaad business was a pile of yak shit all along”? That would get me feathered with arrows in no time. And it is not what I feel; I just sent my family to Kalaad in the sky, and I know they are at peace there. But there will be questions of my faith when I lay claim to the Sixth Kenning. People will question priests about what my appearance might mean, priests will question me, and I could just as easily be branded as unholy as a gift from Kalaad if I wasn’t careful.

The Fornish are different; they worship no god but rather the source of the Fifth Kenning at Selt, which they call the First Tree. They do protect their Canopy with religious zeal, though. I don’t think that’s a path I should try to walk. I do not think I can (or should even try to) persuade people to worship a pack of bloodcats in the southern plains.

The government of Ghurana Nent will probably despise me as well. Or at least seek to control me. “Look,” they will say, “we can’t have you controlling animals unless it’s for our benefit.” I remember asking Father why the blessed simply don’t run everything with all their powers.

“Because, Abhi,” he said, “to seek a kenning you have to be willing to gamble with your own life. And if someone is willing to throw away their own life, then they won’t hesitate to throw away others. Who would want to follow that kind of leader?”

I couldn’t argue with that. But I wasn’t gambling when I ran into the nughobe grove, was I? I was simply grief-stricken. That might be a meaningless distinction to most people; I don’t know. But I think Father might have been generalizing there.

Outside of Ghurana Nent, the blessed do sometimes rule. Quite often, in fact. Never in Rael, but in Brynlön and Kauria they elect blessed rulers from time to time; I think their current leaders happen to be blessed. The Hathrim say that anyone can be a Hearthfire of one of their cities, but they haven’t elected anyone who wasn’t lavaborn for centuries.

It is a giddy, drunken thought to think of myself ruling a city or even a country. I am sure everyone would think I am too young, and they would be right. I am not wise enough to rule. I am a son who got his family killed because he never had the courage to speak up about his selfish desires until his family was in danger. But I do think life in Ghurana Nent could and should be better for its people. I don’t have to be old and wise to recognize that.

That reminds me: the king has a whole wagon full of stupid policies that he says are “for our protection” since we are a country without a kenning. Will he simply abolish them once we do have a kenning? Or would he instead rather keep those policies and see if maybe he could make this kenning disappear by making me disappear? After my death he would say, “What? That Khose boy? He wasn’t blessed. He was insane. There’s no Sixth Kenning here.”

The viceroy of Khul Bashab might think along similar lines. If I want to make sure I can’t simply disappear, I need as many people as possible to know about the Sixth Kenning before the viceroy does. A very public demonstration would need to be made.

I didn’t stop but did slow down to eat a lunch of vegetables at a walk. Murr slinked off through the grasses in search of his own meal, and I used his absence to experiment.

If my blessing followed the pattern of others, I would have the strongest powers possible and would take a title in keeping with it. The lavaborn have furies who can become fire and burn anything, the Kaurians have tempests who become the wind, the Raelechs have their juggernauts, the Fornish have greensleeves, and the Brynts have tidal mariners. And when they use the full power of their kenning, it ages them perceptibly. I am still as young as ever I was, I think, though I have no looking glass to see my face. My hands and skin still seem young, and my back is straight and strong. So I have yet to discover what I can do.

The Fornish are sometimes called Tree Speakers for their root and stem communication. I can sort of speak to Murr, but it’s not the same thing as what the Fornish are doing at all. And calling myself a Beast Speaker sounds … gross.

Beast Caller, perhaps?

Wondering if I could, in fact, call a beast, I attempted to do so. I surveyed the plains around me, stretching unbroken to the horizon, and saw nothing nearby. Any animals that might be within my sight were keeping out of it under the tops of the grasses. It was universal camouflage available to all.

Picturing a bluetip prairie pheasant in my mind and feeling somewhat foolish, I said aloud, “Are there any bluetips nearby? If there are, please come to say hello. I mean you no harm. I merely wish to greet you.”

Bluetips were notoriously difficult to scare up. They knew how well the grass concealed them and would fly only at the approach of four-footed predators. All swishes in the grass sounded alike, but they flushed at the sound of paws in the dirt. We’d have to practically step on them before they broke cover for us, and it was always accidental. That’s why someone always had a bow ready when we hunted; you never knew when a bluetip would take to the sky.

Too late, I remembered why they didn’t take to the sky if they could help it; there were also stalk hawks hiding in the grass, waiting for bluetips or other birds to reveal their whereabouts. Three bluetips erupted out of the grass to my left and banked in my direction, and before they had flown ten lengths, a stalk hawk shot out of the grass below them and took one of them down.

“Oh, no!” I gasped, recognizing that my request had exposed them to danger. I might have meant the bluetips no harm, but almost everything else in the plains did. Perhaps I could have protected it had I thought ahead. Would a shepherd with this kenning be able to protect his flock from predators, never lose a sheep, that kind of thing?

I held out my arms to either side, inviting the remaining bluetips to perch there if they wished. They did, but they looked nervous about it and minced awkwardly on my forearms, trying not to dig into my skin with their talons. They were right; it was a terrible idea.

“Go and be safe in the grass,” I told them. “Thank you for saying hello.”

They chirped, hopped into the grass near my feet, and waddled away. A grin spread across my face until I recalled that there should have been three of them walking around. My family should still be walking around, too. My primary talent so far was not thinking through the possible consequences of my actions. Even when I tried to think ahead, events never turned out the way I thought they would.

Perhaps calling something smaller would be better. Could I call insects? “Are there any bugs nearby?” I asked. I knew that there were, of course; I’d seen a few zipping around here and there. But after I made that general query, a dense cloud of buzzing, thrumming insects rose all around me, blocking out the sun. “Ahh! Silly question! Never mind! As you were!” The swarm of assorted flying creatures dropped back into the grasses to eat and be eaten, and I shuddered even though it wasn’t cold. If the smaller creatures of the world ever organized to wipe out the larger ones, they would most definitely win.

It would be useful to know what kind of animals there were in an area—and how many—without calling them individually with a demand to show themselves. Far less annoying to the animals as well. But did I possess that ability? If so, how would I access it? The information wasn’t readily available in my consciousness. I had to do something.

My thoughts before had focused on specific animals. What if instead I focused on an area?

I visualized myself in the middle of an area a hundred lengths square, focused my thoughts, and wondered how many creatures of any kind might exist in that space. My reward was an instant, staggering headache that made me clutch my head.

“Ahh. Okay, too much,” I said aloud. The sheer number of insects in such an area would be too many to count. I tried again: a smaller area, only fifty lengths square, and a query about mammals only. The images came quickly and were blessedly pain-free: A family of prairie voles to my right. Barley shrews behind me to my left. Ahead on my left, a ratcatcher sniffing out the voles but waiting for me to pass by. Nothing else.

I tried birds in the same area next. The bluetips and the stalk hawk were there, but also a pair of gharel hens bedded down for the day off to my right and about twenty tiny fly fishers that would flock at night, skimming the grass tips for insects. I repeated the process for snakes and lizards, then spiders, and didn’t ask about insects again.

There was so much hidden on the plains that I could uncover now. Of great use to me would be discovering a source of water: these animals must be drinking something.

Focusing on the stalk hawk, which was still filling its belly on the bluetip, I asked it, “Where can I find water near here?” It screeched at me, annoyed at being interrupted, but they were fast eaters and I imagined it had eaten quite enough already. “Please show me where,” I said. Another screech, and the stalk hawk took wing, circled around me once, and flew to the northwest. I began to jog in that direction, and it wasn’t long before the stalk hawk swooped and climbed and swooped again at a point ahead of me. I saw nothing special there until I fell into a small pond that had been completely hidden by the tops of the grasses. It was not huge—the size of my bedroom at home—but it held plenty of water that I could boil to remove any plagues that might be living in it.

I smiled and thanked the stalk hawk. My water problem was solved, and I probably had enough dry food to last to Khul Bashab. Nothing would eat me on the way there. I would live!

Until I got there, I supposed. Then what? How would I announce to the city—and thus the world—that I had discovered the Sixth Kenning? How would I do it without immediately placing myself in jeopardy? And when they asked me what underneath the sky possessed me to wander unarmed into a nughobe grove in the first place, what would I tell them about my family?

I didn’t get a chance to think about it right then since the stalk hawk flew tight circles about my head and screeched.

“What? You’re free to go if you wish,” I said. “I’m grateful to you.” I waited a few moments to see if he would react, but his behavior continued. “Would you like to stay with me?” I asked. “I am going to fill some empty water skins, and then I’ll keep walking. You can wait for me there if you like,” I said, pointing to the nearest lip of the pond.

The stalk hawk screeched once more and spiraled down to settle on the edge of the pond. He—she?—was a beautiful creature, tall legs for walking in the grass and her feathers all wheat colored, so that if you did not see the black eyes floating above the ground or the sharp yellow beak, you would have difficulty seeing her in the grass for most of the year. There were green-colored birds who took advantage of the spring and summer camouflage, but I had always preferred the coloration and build of stalk hawks, graceful both on land and in the air.

Drawing out an empty water skin, I continued to speak to her as I filled it. “I’ll assume you’re female until you tell me otherwise. What’s your name?”

She didn’t screech this time, merely made a short, high-pitched declaration: “Eep.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Eep. I’m Abhi.”

I taught her to nod and shake her head for yes and no, though she didn’t have the same muscles and couldn’t really shake her head. Instead she had to rotate it or twist it, which was disconcerting to watch but a clear difference from a nod.

“I’m going to a human city a couple of days’ walk to the north. If you’d like to join me, you are welcome. I should warn you that there’s a bloodcat who’s been tagging along. He’s not here right now, but he might show up later. I’ll make sure he doesn’t bother you, though. Want to come along for a while?”

She nodded, and I grinned. I made friends much faster out here than I did among humans.

My empty skins filled, I sloshed out of the hidden pond and took my bearings. I’d left the wake of the kherns that had killed my family since they had veered west; I was traveling across trackless grass now, but I couldn’t get too lost. If I simply kept heading north, I would eventually run into the wide Banighel River, and Khul Bashab was situated on its bank.

Eep sometimes walked through the grass with me and sometimes flew. Murr rejoined me in midafternoon while she happened to be airborne, and she screeched at his appearance.

“Hello, Murr. I’ve made a new friend. I want you to be friends, too. Murr, meet Eep. Please don’t eat her. Eep, this is Murr. He won’t eat you. Right, Murr?”

The bloodcat tossed its chin upward. “Excellent. You see, Eep? We can travel together in peace.”

The stalk hawk screeched once more: She was doubtful. But soon she spiraled down on my left, keeping me between her and Murr, and walked along, her head twisted to watch him. He watched her. And eventually they faced forward and ignored each other. With sunset perhaps an hour away, I mentioned to both of them that I would need to make camp soon. I had water to boil and needed a fire, and for that I needed wood.

“Eep, would you mind looking for some shrubs or trees that I might use for a campsite and then direct me there if you find some? If we’re lucky we can find something to make a perch for you also. Then you can rest above the grass and see well.”

She took wing, circled above us once, then flew northeast. I turned that way, and after about ten minutes she returned, calling down to me that she had found something. She banked and flew over my head in a straight line to point the way, and I picked up my pace. The sun was sinking, and our shadows stretched out for lengths on the grass.

Soon I saw what she had found: a nughobe grove, smaller than the one in which I found Murr but with plenty of dead branches for my fire and a broad, shallow stream that I thought I recognized by the color of the bed; the mud was reddish. We had forded a red muddy streambed near the end of our first day out from Khul Bashab. If this was the same one, then I was getting close. I didn’t remember seeing this nughobe grove, however, so if it was in fact the same stream, I was significantly up- or downstream from where my family had crossed it; the amount of water here attested to that as well. I must have wandered significantly off true north somehow. That meant Khul Bashab was either northwest or northeast of me. When I reached the Banighel River, I would have to decide which way to turn.

But the stream water was cleaner than the pond water, and Murr sounded pleased that he would have a nughobe tree to sleep in that night. I let him pick a tree and then made my fire nearby, dumping out the pond water, boiling plenty of stream water, and refilling all my skins before getting out my journal and setting some beans and potatoes in the pot.

My basic needs are met for today. But I still don’t know what I will do when I get to Khul Bashab. I worry about my ability to make plans since my last one wound up getting my family killed and I’m clearly not good at anticipating consequences. I’m afraid that Murr and Eep might suffer for accompanying me. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be as safe again as I am right now.

“More Abhi tomorrow! And more of everyone’s favorite Nentian viceroy as well.” The bard got some wry chuckles out of that, but he was goading the Nentians. He might have a poorly developed instinct for self-preservation.

I slept hardly at all because I was so nervous about my first lesson or sparring session or whatever my training was to be called with Mynstad du Möcher. When I had met her the previous day to acquire my requisitioned rapier and mail shirt, I was surprised by her beauty and I think my mouth might have dropped open. One does not expect, in a storehouse of tools for causing violent death, to find a face that makes one want to live.

She saw my reaction, which inspired a scowl, and then I felt like an idiot. My first thought was that she must have to fight men off, and then I realized immediately that she not only could but had. She would not be personally training Rölly in warfare otherwise.

She was taller than me. Long arms and fingers. Narrow waist, muscular thighs, a physically intimidating person even without a weapon in her hand. She had grown her hair out and gathered it in back with a tie, confident that no one would ever get close enough to grab it. Her complexion was darker than mine, dark enough to be Kaurian, but if that was her heritage, she clearly did not hold with their pacifist theology.

She barely spoke to me and avoided eye contact when I presented Pelenaut Röllend’s requisition along with his request that she assess and train me to standard. She must have thought that I would try to flirt with her after my embarrassing display of surprise. She snatched the paper from my hand, read it, and then turned into the armory, expecting me to follow. She pulled out a rapier and a mail shirt from storage, thrust them at me, and then said only, “Be here at 0800 tomorrow for assessment, sir. I have much to do before then. Excuse me.”

The Mynstad pivoted on her heel and left me there, clutching a mail shirt and awkwardly holding a rapier and its carriage. “Oh,” I said, and then, realizing that was inadequate, added, “I’ll see you then!” She made no answer but kept walking out of sight around a corner of shelved cuirasses, her boots making crisp claps on the stone floor. I sighed and shook my head; I hadn’t felt so inept since my school days. I spent some time in the morning working off my embarrassment with old forms before meeting Fintan at the chowder house, and after arriving home subsequent to Fintan’s evening tales, I spent more time in my bare parlor practicing. I took the forms slowly and thought I remembered the dance at least, but I felt sure my technique was rusty, not to mention my speed. My knee injury would prevent me executing the necessary footwork for some moves.

After a long time staring into darkness from my bed, I must have caught a bare hour or so of sleep before waking up to the same impenetrable gloom and mincing gingerly across the floor to light a candle by touch alone. I dropped the box of matches and gave them a good cursing. Once I finally got some light going, I practiced again until dawn. A light breakfast of fish and rice and then a limping march to the armory for me, determined to make a decent second impression since the first had been so awful.

I nodded at Mynstad du Möcher when I arrived, keeping my mouth closed. She waited for me to say something, and when I failed to say or do anything damning, she returned the nod.

“Welcome, Master du Alöbar. Please follow me to the courtyard in back.”

I remembered the courtyard from my early days of service. On the other side of it was the training barracks for new recruits, which meant it was nearly always hosting exercises of one kind or another during daylight hours, and one could count on always having an audience of judging eyes.

“Did you ever serve in the military?” the Mynstad asked once we emerged into sunlight on cobbled stones.

“I did. Under Pelenaut Hönig.”

“I see. Did you earn that limp in his service?”

I winced. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice that. But yes.”

She faced me and for the first time looked interested in my existence. “Mind telling me how if it’s not painful to recall?”

“Not at all. Time has weathered away the sharp edge of the pain. I was stationed in Grynek, manning the wall during a night watch. There was a trading wagon approaching the gate on the eastern side—carpet merchants. A pretty safe trade: nobody gets really excited about robbing them because they’re bloody awkward to haul around without the wagon and bandits don’t like wagons; carpets just aren’t products you can turn into easy money.”

She gestured with her hand to indicate that I should speed forward. I was babbling.

“Right. Well, it was a family, you see. Young children with adults. But they were happy at seeing the lights on the walls and were singing quite loudly about the good times they’d have in town. It drew the attention of a hungry gravemaw on the other side of the river.”

“No,” the Mynstad said, already horrified.

I nodded. “It crossed the river, mostly in a single massive leap across the deep channel, and then it walked out the rest of the way. I called for help, and everyone within hearing rushed down and out the gate to defend the family, pikes in hand. We shouted at them to run, leave the wagon behind, but the distance was too great and the gravemaw too fast. Bryn save me, the teeth—it was … well. It ate them. The kids first. The parents followed. And that’s when we got there with our pikes—only five of us.”

“It had to be hard to see.”

“Yes, but it was a full moon that night and cloudless. Torches from the wagon might have helped. The gravemaw was thinking about maybe eating one of the horses and was not truly worried about us. It was attracted to their fear and their neighing while we were simply running toward it. But it was taking its time, snaking that massive tongue across them, tasting them, I suppose. The huge mouth was open, in other words. I was first, and I had a shot at a killing blow—right through the upper palate and into the brain, past all that natural armor, and it wouldn’t be hunting along our riverbanks again. I was focused, I was ready, I envisioned what I wanted, and none of it mattered because one of the horses knocked me over in its fear just as I was about to strike. I tumbled, rolled with the hit, ready to regain my feet and try again, except that the gravemaw had spotted me, a nice delicious human, easier to eat in one go than a horse, and its tongue whipped out and wrapped around my right leg at the knee. It yanked me into the air that way, above its head, where I could fall into its mouth, and I felt the tissues around my knee tear right then. They never healed right, and I’ve limped ever since.”

Mynstad du Möcher gaped. “But how are you alive?”

“Oh! My fellows saved me. The gravemaw opened wide for his dessert, and they had been right behind me. They took the opportunity to ram their pikes up into his brain through the upper palate, and I fell to the ground next to it. Broke a bone in my forearm coming down, but that healed properly.”

“So it’s true what they say about their natural armor? Impenetrable, so you have to kill them from the inside?”

“Absolutely true. And it’s why they don’t run from anything, since they’re so hard to kill.”

“That was good service.”

I snorted. “Hardly. I couldn’t save anyone, didn’t kill the gravemaw, and I got injured. In fact, I got dismissed as soon as I could walk again.”

“That was a poor decision by your superiors, if I may say so. You saw the danger. You called the alarm. You charged in first. That deserved commendation. Battles rarely work out the way we wish them to, so it is quick thinking and good judgment that matter outside of physical prowess. What was your rank?”

“I was a Mynstad, like you.”

Mynstad du Möcher straightened and gave me the veteran’s salute. “Since it seems no one has bothered to thank you for your actions, let me thank you now, years too late and far, far away.”

I smiled. “That’s very kind.”

She flashed a grin at me, a brilliant, dazzling thing. “The only kindness you’ll get from me, I’m afraid. Because now I must assess your physical prowess, Mynstad.”

“I stopped using my military rank long ago. You can call me Dervan.”

“Very well, Dervan. Let us review the basic forms. Side by side, we will step through them.”

It was so very fine at first. My fervent practice allowed me to look respectable until it was time to lunge. I couldn’t fake that or go halfway, and my knee buckled under the strain. I collapsed but didn’t cry out.

“Master Dervan! Are you all right?”

“Eghh. Embarrassed but not hurt. That’s a resounding no from my knee concerning lunges.”

“Is there any pain?”

“Not much. But not much strength, either.” She extended a hand, and I grabbed it, allowing her to pull me upright again.

“It’s an interesting challenge,” she said. “With that lack of mobility you will be hard pressed. Let us see what we can do.”

We worked on upper body moves only, quick parries and thrusts or slashes to end the fight as quickly as possible. Mynstad du Möcher dismissed me after a couple of hours, enjoining me to return for additional practice for an hour whenever I had the time. I saluted her and thanked her for her time and pivoted smartly on my good leg to go meet Fintan. I was exhausted and my hand throbbed with forming blisters, but I didn’t care. At least I wasn’t an utter failure.

Some hours later, our work finished and energized by a mediocre lunch not worth remembering, Fintan took to the wall and greeted his audience with a strum of his harp.

“Today we’ll hear all about events in the west. But first, at risk of putting you to sleep, a Hathrim lullaby—specifically one from Harthrad, as you will note from the mention of Mount Thayil. I know it’s strange to think of giants cooing their children to sleep, but that’s why I think such songs are fascinating.”

Another strum of the harp and then:

Hush now, heart of my hearth,

Bank your fire for the night,

I will keep the coals bright

Until you wake at dawn.

Hush now, heart of my hearth,

It is time for us to rest,

The bellows in our chests

Are making us both yawn.

Tomorrow we will be stronger

While Thayil sleeps a bit longer,

But now you need to close your eyes

And dream of summer berry pies.

There were titters in the audience at the end, and Fintan chuckled with them. “I have no idea where those pies came from,” he said, and the laughter grew louder in response. We’d all been thinking the same thing. “Get ready, everybody; the tales begin soon!” His first seeming transformed him into Gorin Mogen.

Fire blast the Fornish! We lost six houndsmen and very nearly lost my son to some slithering flesh-eating plant! And because the Fornish lived to report our presence here, we are getting attention earlier than I would have wished, but the essential plan remains the same. We will lie, delay, and build our defenses until we are unshakable, and the city of Baghra Khek will stand long after I am ashes. But we must clearly devise a countermeasure to the Fornish net launchers. That tactic was both unexpected and successful. We have been conducting timber raids on their southern coast for generations now and never saw them. And maybe we should worry more about the greensleeves. A hound on patrol had its legs completely torn off, and its rider disappeared while his partner came to report one of the Fornish in the pines.

Volund has sailed to Tharsif with our first shipment of timber and should return with food and good news soon. For my ease of mind, he cannot return soon enough.

Sefir came to me with less pleasing news from the shore. A Nentian transport had arrived with one of the houndsmen whom Volund had left behind in Hashan Khek—Lanner Burgan, a stout red-bearded lad nearly my size.

“The word is that the viceroy is keeping Korda hostage,” Sefir said, arriving fresh from the new docks.

“The viceroy used that word?”

“No, he’s a ‘guest,’ but it’s clear.”

“How many Nentians are here?”

“Twenty or so.”

“Armed?”

“Yes.”

“And their ship?”

Sefir smirked in satisfaction. “Very flammable.”

“Good. You know it can’t ever leave.”

“I do. I’ll see to it on your signal. One of the Nentians wishes to talk. He has a message from the viceroy.”

“Let’s hear it, then, and find out what they know. But before you bring them to me, make sure the Raelechs don’t get to see them or even hear about them. Find some excuse to get them on the far side of the city until it’s over. Oh—and send La Mastik here right away if you can.”

My hearth frowned. “The flame priestess? Why?”

“I want her head to be on fire when the Nentians get here.”

“We could set our own heads on fire.”

“I know, but her shaved head really makes it look more impressive than it is. Basic intimidation.”

Sefir nodded, her lips curling up in a smile, and leaned forward to kiss me. “Merciless and a sense of theatre. I married almost as well as you did.” I smiled and agreed.

A half hour later a Nentian with a dark oiled beard and long straight hair draped over a pale yellow tunic was ushered to my hearth in the company of several small men. I’ve been told that I could learn quite a bit about any given Nentian by examining his boots, but I’ve never cared enough to absorb their status markers. Lanner trailed behind and gave me a nod of respect but kept silent, taking up a position off to the side and behind the Nentians. Like the leader, they were all dressed in light-colored linens or soft cottons; I get them mixed up and cannot tell the difference. No Hathrim would ever wear such materials when there was leather to be had.

I had to suppress a smile when their eyes drifted to La Mastik, who had arrived a few minutes earlier and was standing behind me and to my right. The bearded Nentian’s mouth dropped open for a moment before he remembered he was supposed to behave as if ten-foot-tall women dressed in spined lava dragon hide and with their heads on fire were commonplace.

“Welcome to my hearth,” I said. “May you be warmed and nourished by it. What is your name, sir?”

“Please call me Dhingra, Hearthfire. Thank you for seeing me. I am the chamberlain of Viceroy Melishev Lohmet in Hashan Khek.”

He wasted little time after that, asking questions about the walls we built with their Raelech stonecutters. “Such defenses are not usually the priority of refugees who seek temporary relief,” he remarked.

“I’m merely protecting my surviving citizens from the infamous savage creatures of the Nentian plains. My understanding is that you build walls for the same reason.”

There was more back-and-forth like that, his questions revealing what the viceroy most dearly wished to know: how many of us were here and how long we planned to stay. And eventually he gave us an ultimatum. We were to be guests for two months, and after that we would be trespassing.

I laughed in his face, and he scowled, taking offense.

“Two months is more than I need. Who is your god? Kalaad, is it?”

His eyes narrowed. “Yes … why do you ask?”

“Make your peace with him.” And then with a word and a small expenditure of effort I set him and his companions on fire, head to toe. They screamed, and Dhingra at least had the sense to drop to the ground in an attempt to smother the flames. I lunged forward and stomped down hard on his head, enjoying the crunch beneath my boot. Halsten and Lanner killed the others with axe and fist except for one we let burn and scream until he dropped.

La Mastik cleared her throat as their fluids watered the earth. “Hearthfire, please help me understand why you just did that.”

“Certainly. We are still not ready for an assault. Nor are we in a position to negotiate from strength. Until we are, we have to prevent the Nentians from learning our numbers and defenses.”

“So it’s true. You’re not merely staying the season but claiming this land as your own.”

“I am.”

“And all your talk of living in peace with the Nentians was a slick of sand badger shit. The other nations won’t allow it to stand.”

“They won’t be able to put together a force strong enough to defeat us now. The Kaurians and the Brynts are too far away to care, and we can handle the Fornish and Nentians and, yes, even the Raelechs.”

“Perhaps. This method, though, is distasteful. It’s murder.”

“All great cities are born in fire and blood,” I said, quoting the words of Thurik to her. “What did you think it was going to look like?”

“You are adept at quoting Thurik for someone who doesn’t tend his flame.”

“My father taught me that words shape people as the hammer shapes iron. Leaders bend religions to their purposes, and religions in turn bend the people who believe in them. I’m sure you already knew that last part, but if you were unaware of the former point, then you haven’t examined your histories.”

“Do you even believe in Thurik, Hearthfire? Tell me true.”

Stepping close to her and keeping my voice low so that only she could hear, I said, “I believe in fire and in the craft of my mind and in the strength of my people. I’m told that Thurik believes the same. And in case you were unaware, I sent all six of my children to the boil at Olenik and your patroness is marrying the only one who survived. Remember that before you question my beliefs.”

She pursed her thin lips, disliking my answer, but broke eye contact and passed a hand over her skull, snuffing out the flames, before excusing herself. She would move against me soon if she hadn’t begun to do so already in secret. I would have to consult Sefir on the matter and prepare countermeasures.

Halsten said, “Lots of fresh meat on the ground. May I feed it to the hounds, Hearthfire?”

“Absolutely, Houndmaster. I was just going to suggest it. And Lanner, please let the Hearth know it’s time to scuttle that ship. This Nentian delegation was tragically lost at sea, and we never saw them, understood?”

“Understood, Hearthfire,” he said, grim satisfaction evident on his face.

“Before you go, Lanner—any chance of getting Korda out of Hashan Khek?”

He shook his head. “They have him in the viceroy’s compound surrounded by a whole lot of crossbowmen.”

“We’d pay a steep toll in lives, then, to save his life. We can’t afford it.”

“He’s at peace with it, Hearthfire. He’s bought us time, and he knows it. He may yet escape on his own. And if not, then we have already avenged him here tonight. My only hope is that we’ll get a chance at the viceroy sometime. I’d enjoy killing him more than most.”

“We will get to him eventually,” I assured him. “He’ll send more like this first. When they realize that pretty words on paper mean nothing, we will laugh in their faces, too. We will burn and grind them all until they agree—or the survivors agree—that Baghra Khek is our city and this is Hathrim land.”

Once Fintan had dismissed the form of Gorin Mogen he chuckled as he imprinted his next stone. “The viceroy, as you may well imagine, was not ready to agree.” He threw down the sphere and took on the scowling visage of Melishev Lohmet.

Chumat and Dhingra are long overdue, and I know they’re not coming back because Gorin Mogen has made them vanish. The Fornish ambassador reports that there are closer to ten thousand Hathrim by the Godsteeth than one thousand, and that was excuse enough to float my brain in alcohol last night and enjoy the company of a professional sexitrist. After taking the most painful morning piss I can remember and staggering around my chambers with a thunderous headache, I’m ready to kill some people. Since doing so will hasten the day I can get out of Hashan Khek and see a Brynt hygienist, I take to the task with relish. Pulling on my black shitsnake boots—if ever there was a day to wear them, it’s this one—I stomp over to the barracks and rouse my senior tactician, Moshenoh Ghuyedai.

He’s a tough old piece of leather with salt in his queued hair and two missing teeth in the front, the result of a bar fight in which he killed three men with his bare hands. He’s losing some of his muscle to fat as he ages, but there’s still plenty there, and his ruthlessness is at peak.

His office is strewn with maps and empty bottles and little chapbooks of erotic poetry, half-eaten sausages, and volumes of military history written by Raelech and Nentian scholars.

“Moshenoh. That possible Hathrim invasion is confirmed. Time to round up some disposable meat.”

“You mean my regulars or some fresh blood?”

“Mostly the latter. I’m going to throw open the coffers for a onetime march. Go recruit every sponging, no-good, borchatta-smelling dock rat you can. Promise them meals, prestige, and a steady income every month. Then take them down to the Godsteeth and make damn sure the giants kill them all. We’ll clean up the city and trigger the Sovereignty Accords at the same time.”

My killer tactician actually flinches. “That’s …”

“An efficient use of funds, I believe, and a move that doesn’t cost you any of your trained regulars. Are you the man for the job?”

His eyebrows jump briefly but settle down, and then his shoulders lift. “I guess I am.”

“Good. The treasurer is expecting you. See him and follow his instructions precisely. Recruit today and tomorrow, march the day after tomorrow.”

“Very well, Viceroy.”

“Right now I need two dozen crossbowmen and some horses. I have to take a trip outside the walls.”

I leave Ghuyedai to his work and brief the crossbowmen on what needs to happen. Twelve of the men remain at the stables to get horses ready for the rest of us, and the other twelve accompany me to the quarters of Korda, my Hathrim guest. The giant is in the middle of inhaling a box of Fornish candied figs when I enter, and I sling a winning smile at him.

“I trust everything is to your satisfaction?”

“Mmf. Yes. I cannot complain about the accommodations, Viceroy. Though I’d like to get out more.”

“Perfect! That’s just what I was about to suggest. I’ve been told that there’s a rare skulk of khek foxes near our walls right now, attracted by an unusually large company of harrow moles, and thought you might enjoy seeing them. What say you to a walk on the famed Nentian plains? It’s a beautiful day to be outside.”

“Isn’t it dangerous to walk out there? I’ve been told everything on the plains is meat for something bigger and hungrier.”

“We’ll have plenty of protection. I go out there all the time. Besides, you’re lavaborn, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Ah! Well, no matter. As I said, we’ll be perfectly safe.”

“All right. Thank you for the invitation.”

“Not at all!” I point at the half-empty box in Korda’s hand. “Friendly warning: eat too many of those figs and you won’t stop shitting for a week. Though maybe Hathrim can handle more of them than Nentians can. For me, it’s one and I’m done.”

Korda looks down at the box, counts, and realizes he’s eaten ten. “I may be in trouble.”

“We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, let’s go see the skulk before they’re gone.” We walk to the stables, chatting amiably as people like to do about other people being killed by wild animals. He tells me about a friend he lost to sand badgers back home, an uncle who lost an eye to an angry scold of knife jays, and how his sister lost her foot to the bite of a Narvikian acid roach.

At the stables, the crossbowmen all mount up and so do I, and once we get to the gates, they load up and prepare to shoot anything hungry enough to attack. They form a protective circle around the two of us, he walking and I riding. Korda has no trouble keeping pace.

We strike directly for Kalaad’s Posts, eight tall lodgepoles placed in the ground with rawhide strips dangling from them. They’re only four hundred lengths or so from the gates, spaced two lengths apart from one another.

Korda notices them early on, but we are so involved in trading stories about the wild beasts of Hathrir and Ghurana Nent that he says nothing until we draw close to them. “What are those, if I may ask?”

“They’re boundary markers. The plains become significantly more dangerous once you pass them.”

“Are we going to pass them? Is that skulk nearby?”

“I was told the skulk is visible from the boundary, so it’s not far now.”

“Ah! Good.”

When we reach the posts, I direct my horse to the left side of the circle. Korda calls after me, bewildered: “Where are you—?” But then he cuts off as he realizes something has changed about the ambient noise. The horses behind him and to the right have stopped. As he turns to look, he sees that the crossbowmen have leveled their weapons at his torso an instant before they fire. Ten bolts hit him, mostly in the chest, though one pierces his neck and one sails wide but doesn’t hit anyone else. Korda topples backward like a fallen tree and makes a couple of gurgling noises before falling silent.

“Check him,” I tell the crossbowmen next to me. “Finish him if he’s alive, then strap him to a post once he’s dead.”

If Gorin Mogen wants to make my chamberlain disappear, I can play the same game. Poor Korda must have wandered into the plains and been eaten by something. All of which will be true: scavengers will pick his bones clean in a day or two.

Once he’s strapped somewhat upright, bolts removed, we hurry back to the gates. The smell of blood will be bringing teeth in our direction. Before we reach the gates, a cry comes from behind. Something’s coming fast—and it turns out to be three Raelechs. One of them is a courier—an attractive one.

A brief tingle thrills up my spine, and I have to suppress a shudder. The Triune Council has dispatched a courier to me, not the king! She introduces herself as Numa, and she’s accompanied by an absolutely useless beak-nosed bard named Fintan, who turns out, in one of life’s inexplicable tragedies, to be her husband, but this disappointment is salved by her other companion, a fantastically welcome juggernaut named Tarrech, who might be able to wipe out the Hathrim by himself.

“I’m grateful to the Triune for sending you,” I tell them. “My tactician will be riding south to meet this Hathrim invasion the day after tomorrow. Will you join him?”

The courier replies, “We would be pleased to do so provided that you understand that we do not guarantee our military involvement, nor do we place ourselves under your command. We will go with your forces independently as an ally to make Rael’s interests plain to Hearthfire Mogen.”

“What interests are those?” I ask.

“We wish to safely extricate our stonecutters who have been duped into this situation and to remind him that the Sovereignty Accords will be enforced. The first consideration may not matter to you, but we have a duty to our citizens. But we also have a duty to our friends, and the second consideration should be your wish as well.”

“Indeed it is,” I say, nodding, and I invite them to be my guests until Ghuyedai is ready to march.

In a couple of days they all ride out of town with a trumpet or two, families bidding them farewell and a safe return. Two thousand of the regular garrison—leaving only a soggy sponge of a force behind—and two thousand more hastily conscripted desperate people who looked upon army rations as fine cuisine. We didn’t tell them they were going after ten thousand giants behind a wall. They were told they just had to kick some refugees back into the ocean.

After some wasted breath trying to get Mogen to leave peacefully, Ghuyedai would spend the conscripts freely and then withdraw. And then we could say to the world, Look, Gorin Mogen slew our people when we rightfully and lawfully tried to force him to leave our lands. He is a would-be usurper. And invader. Help us crush him now as you promised to do in that treaty you signed long ago.

I give the Hearthfire credit. He has maneuvered well to this point, but soon he will have nowhere else to move. He will either leave—highly unlikely—or defend himself and bring the world down upon his back, because we have always feared the unchecked fire of the Hathrim. Either way, Ghurana Nent wins.

When Fintan took on the seeming of Abhinava Khose next, he had a fresh set of clothes on, the tatters all gone.

I thought the walls of Khul Bashab would be a welcome sight—or at least welcoming. But after my initial joy at spying them from a distance, they took on a different character as I drew closer until I felt something like dread.

They weren’t what kept me safe inside anymore. Those walls now looked like they were made to keep me out. I felt like I had more in common with the freedom of the plains than with the structure of the city.

I didn’t need the protection those walls were built to provide. Neither would anyone else if the Sixth Kenning became common. With Beast Callers among us, Nentians could farm in the open. Start new cities outside the king’s protection. Though I suppose he would just hire more men to run those new towns—more men like the viceroys.

Murr and Eep agreed to stay outside the city and not harass each other. “Avoid other humans,” I said. “Don’t let them see you. They might try to harm you.”

It was near sundown after a day of travel, and the guards at the gate wanted to know why I was all alone.

“My family died in a khern stampede,” I explained, my voice dull. “I’m the only survivor.”

“Which family?”

“Khose.” The guard looked at his checklist and found my name. They kept track of all who left and entered the Hunter Gate as a way of tracking who was alive or dead.

“Says here there were eight of you. Big wagon.”

I nodded, said nothing, and stared straight ahead at the gate until they opened it.

My empty house was not truly empty but haunted with reminders. My father’s fine knives. My mother’s leatherwork—she made our clothes from our own kills rather than paying to have them made; we’d always take our own cuts from the tanner. My sister’s carvings of blurwings and flowers. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I took fresh field bags and began filling them.

Clothes. Leather scraps and cord and needles and fabric strips. Cotton batting. Two slim notched and buckled belts of my sister’s. The cache of coins my father thought he’d hidden. Lots of beans and root vegetables. Nothing in the way of personal items. None of it mattered now, somehow. Word would trickle through the city that the Khose family was no more, and the house would be looted soon. I left the door open: I’d had to break in myself, and there was no use making anyone else work that hard for what I was giving away.

I kept to the soft shadows of the night streets on the way to the house of my father’s friend, the chaktu butcher. He would want to know. And I wanted to see his son once more before I left the city.

The butcher’s son answered the door, a quizzical look on his face. His skin, a smooth orange-brown just a shade deeper than mine, glowed warmly by the light of the candelabra he held in his left hand, and cold blue highlights shone in the sleek black hair falling to his collarbone. I liked the broad curve of his jaw and cheeks, the tighter curl of his mouth, the simple light blue tunic he wore. My breath hitched for a moment to have his attention focused solely on me, but then I coughed and spoke: “Hello. I’m not sure we’ve ever formally met, but our fathers are friends. I’m Abhinava Khose.”

Recognition lit his eyes, and he smiled pleasantly. “Ah, yes, I’ve seen you before. I’m Tamhan Khatri. Good to meet you finally. Did you need to see my father? He’s out at the moment.”

“Oh. Well, I suppose I could leave a message, then. It’s just … well.” I swallowed, and my throat grew tight. “His old friend is gone,” I said. “A boil of kherns in the south.”

Tamhan’s mouth dropped open. “You lost your father?”

“My whole family, actually.”

“What?” Shock blanketed his features. “Come in. Come in, please. You have burdens there; put them down and rest for a while. I will fix us some tea.”

Grateful for the invitation, I stepped into his home, which smelled of anise and cardamom. I left my field bags by the door and followed him into the kitchen. He pumped some water into a pot—they had their own well!—stoked the hearth, and set the water to boil.

“Do you wish to talk or simply be warm and welcome? I will give what comfort I can.”

“Where is your family?” I asked, noticing that the house was silent except for us.

“Dinner with Viceroy Bhamet Senesh.”

I felt my eyebrows climb. “Fancy.”

“Deathly boring,” he corrected me. “And more than a little undignified. The pressing of lips against the viceroy’s buttocks and the loud smacking noises are enough to ruin one’s appetite. And pride.”

“What? This is something that actually happens?”

“No.” He grinned at me and waved away his sarcasm. “A figure of speech. But if one wants to supply the army with all things chaktu, as my father does, then one must smile and nod and gain the favor of the viceroy. His posterior must be blistered raw by now from all the kissing it receives.”

Handsome and considerate on the one hand but a wicked wit on the other. I had impeccable taste in crushes. And since he was so willing to listen, I talked over a clay mug of tea about what happened to my family but left out my experiences in the nughobe grove. That gave him the impression that I survived three days out on the plains by sheer luck.

“So what will you do now?” Tamhan asked when I finished. “You can do anything you want.”

“So can you.”

He snorted. “I wish. My father expects me to be a chaktu butcher like him. Or at least a chaktu herder who will supply him cheaply.”

“Don’t you want to be?”

“I would rather do almost anything else,” he said, and his voice dropped to a whisper to voice his secret thoughts. “I am sick of chaktu. The smell of it, the taste of it, everything disgusts me. And it’s boring. I’d like to go to university, but my father says there’s no money that way, no future in what you can read out of a book. He thinks my only chance at prosperity is to deal with the same few families he does, engage in the same kinds of corrupt practices, to be just like him, and that’s not what I want.” I knew exactly how he felt.

“Maybe seek a kenning?”

“Where? Rael? I’d never make it there.”

“Not Rael. Three days’ walk south of here.”

“What?”

“It’s difficult to explain. But pretend for a moment that there is a kenning within reach. Would you want it?”

“Three days’ walk on the plains isn’t within reach. That’s suicide.”

“I just did it.”

“Right. Sorry. Still hard to believe that. But seeking a kenning is also suicide.”

“Maybe. But you didn’t answer. If it was within reach, would you do it?”

Tamhan sighed. “I don’t know. Probably not. When you put it like that, I don’t think I’m desperate enough to face death, or desire power that much. But I know a lot of people are.”

“Who?”

My new friend scowled. “What do you mean, who? I was speaking in general. Lots of people are barely getting by and figure either death or a boat’s the only way out of here. When they get tired of it, they just walk alone into the plains until something’s jaws tear their meat from their spirits.”

“What if people didn’t have to fear the animals on the plains? Do you think that would change things?”

He laughed at me. “You’re asking the strangest questions. We’ll always have to fear them.”

“Not if someone found the Sixth Kenning.”

Tamhan sobered. “All right, you’re starting to worry me.”

“I’m being serious. But just supposing: If the Sixth Kenning was found and we could control animals, wouldn’t that change things? We could go anywhere, right? What would happen?”

“So this is like a mental exercise, or …?”

“Sure. Think it through with me.”

“Well, I think people would be getting out of these sky-damned walls and starting their own farms and maybe other villages all over the place, like you see in Rael.”

That was a worrisome point. What was good for the people wasn’t necessarily good for the animals. People would spread out and take over the plains. Not all at once but gradually.

“Go on,” I said.

“Well, it means more prosperity for everyone. Except maybe the riverboat captains, who won’t be able to charge such prices for transport when people can travel by land.”

“Oh, good point. The river traders wouldn’t like that. Who else would be against it?”

“Anybody who profits from the way things are now and who couldn’t profit from changing things up,” Tamhan said, shrugging.

“The church,” I said, and when Tamhan asked why, I explained that a kenning related to animals might cast doubt on the worthiness of worshipping Kalaad in the sky.

“Bones and dust, you’re right. Well, that means you’d have the government against it.”

“Why? Wouldn’t they continue to be the government regardless of kenning or whether people lived inside city walls or not? Or regardless of what god they worship?”

“Yes, but I’ve been listening to my father enough to know this: the country is built on the river trade and the church. Those are the pincers of control. When those pincers have a hard time squeezing regular people, they’re going to start squeezing the government instead—”

“And then the government will be squeezing the specific people who are upsetting the pincers. Got it.”

“Hah! Got what? This is all dream stuff, Abhi.”

“No,” I said, smiling at him. “Not really.”

He didn’t smile back. “Tell me what you mean.”

“The Sixth Kenning is real. But you can’t simply be told, right? You need to be shown.”

“Pfft. Of course. I can’t simply take anyone’s word for it.”

“That’s fair. Understandable. I’ll show you in the morning if you want. And anyone else who wants to escape the city.”

His parents returned home then, flushed with drink and apparent success; they believed a fat contract with the army was practically in hand. But that meant I had to tell my story again—the part about my family, I mean. They wouldn’t hear of me sleeping alone in my house and I had no intention of doing that anyway, so I slept in their guest room and wondered, as I drifted off in comfort, if Murr and Eep were still safe.

Tamhan didn’t forget our conversation and wanted to know what I was talking about, so after a solemn breakfast with his parents and after I sold my family’s knives and my father’s collection of finer ones, I used the coin to buy a small cart, a horse, a brush, and some feed and apples. I piled everything into the cart along with my few belongings in the field bags and bought more food and also a canvas tent, a bed-roll, and blankets. Tamhan accompanied me, asked what I was doing, and looked progressively more worried when I kept putting him off but promising a full explanation soon.

We lied to the guards at the Hunter Gate and said we were a party of two looking for bluetips and gharel hens. Once out of their earshot and safe in the grass, I undid the horse’s bit but left her tied to the cart.

“Hello, my name’s Abhi,” I told her. She turned her head to look at me, somewhat startled to be addressed. “I won’t make you wear a bridle anymore or whip you or anything. I’ll just ask you to walk or stop and feed you apples whenever I can. I’ll also make sure nothing hurts you. You have to believe me when I say that, okay, because there’s going to be a bloodcat coming along soon, but he will definitely not hurt you.”

“Look, Abhi, I understand that the loss of your family has been hard on you, but you’re starting to sound less than sane here,” Tamhan said.

“Walk on, please,” I told the horse, and she did. I mentally searched for bloodcats in the area and saw that Murr was nearby, less than a hundred lengths away. Eep was somewhat more distant but would be able to make it in a couple of minutes. I called them both and told them not to worry or bother the man and the horse with me.

“All right, Abhi, seriously, you need to stop,” he said. “Let’s go back before something has us for lunch.”

“Nothing will harm us, Tamhan. I found the Sixth Kenning. Didn’t you see me ask the horse to walk on?”

“Yes, but horses are trained to do that all the time.”

“Have you ever seen a bloodcat or a stalk hawk come when called?”

“No, of course not, but—”

“If a bloodcat and a stalk hawk appear here and walk along with us through the grass, will you believe that I have found the Sixth Kenning?”

Tamhan rolled his eyes. “Okay, sure, but that’s—holy Kalaad, that’s a bloodcat!” He pulled out his belt knife, and Murr, who had just appeared to Tamhan’s left, laid his ears back and hissed at him.

“No, no, it’s fine, put that away!” I told Tamhan, grabbing his shoulder to hold him. “Murr, stay back until I can get this guy to calm down.” The horse did well; she shied and looked nervous but didn’t bolt. She simply kept walking. “Tamhan, he’s not going to hurt you; I already told you. Murr, you’re not going to attack, right? Shake your head and say no.”

Murr did so, and Tamhan’s eyes changed from panic to wonder. “You really control animals?”

“I don’t know if control is the right word, but they don’t eat me and so far they don’t eat other animals that hang out with me if I ask them not to.”

“But you can talk to them. You called him a name.”

“Yes. Now put away the knife; you’re being rude.”

“You’re sure it’s safe?”

“Very.”

He sheathed his blade, and Murr’s ears popped back up.

“Amazing,” Tamhan said. “And there’s a stalk hawk, too?”

I turned to the east, where I’d felt Eep’s presence, and spied her in the air. “Yes. She’s right there.” I pointed. “Land on the cart if you don’t mind, Eep,” I called. We had to catch up a bit because the horse had never stopped walking, and Murr kept pace to the left. Once Eep backwinged and landed on the front edge of the cart and gave us a greeting chirp, Tamhan began to laugh.

“You really did it? You found the Sixth Kenning, and it’s three days south of here?”

“Yes. In a nughobe grove. A pack of bloodcats will either give you the blessing or tear you up.”

The bloodcat spoke up, as if to comment on that. “Murr.” And for the first time that communicated something to me—not language so much as a fact that appeared in my head, like something I had always known and merely forgotten until that moment.

“For another week,” I added. “After that, it … moves.”

“What do you mean? The pack moves?”

“No, the kenning does. Different animals act as the source of the kenning, and it jumps around.”

“How do you know?”

“Not sure how, but I know it.”

“Huh. That would explain why nobody found it until now. You’d have to be attacked by the right animals at the right time. You were extremely fortunate.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that,” I said, shaking my head and thinking of why I’d been in that grove.

“Oh. Kalaad, I keep saying the wrong thing. I’m sorry.”

“Never mind. I understood what you meant.”

“Where’s it going to be next?”

I shook my head. “Don’t think you want to know.”

“Try me.”

“Farther south, down the Khek River. You’ve heard about that famous pool where the pink sunfish spawn? It’s supposed to be magnificent.”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a colony of huge fish spiders down there, bigger than your head, and they dangle down from the tree branches hanging over the river to catch them, and so you would have to—”

“Ugh, never mind. You were right; I don’t want to know.”

“But what we spoke of last night, Tamhan, it could happen. Everyone could be free of the cities if we had enough Beast Callers.”

“That’s what you call it?”

“I don’t know. Best I could come up with. You have anything better?”

“No, no. I like how it sounds—very intimidating. Like you would only call large animals, never songbirds or squishy caterpillars.”

“But I can call anything. We could change the country. Maybe the world. Nentians don’t have to be the poorest people in the world with a huge untamed land they can’t use.”

“Starting to think you’re right. It’s hard not to get excited about the thought of it. I might not want to risk a kenning myself, but I would love to live out here.” He looked up at the blue and slowly turned in a circle. “The sky is so much bigger when you don’t have walls around you. I could get used to this.” With an effort he tore his gaze from the vastness and locked his eyes with mine. “We should go shout it in the square.”

“I think it would end badly. I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot. This kenning is different from the other ones. We can’t point to a spot on the map and say if you want the kenning, here it is, because the location changes. That means if the viceroy or the church or the river traders want to get rid of this threat to their power, all they have to do is get rid of the blessed.”

“Oh. Because no one else will know where the next kenning source will be.”

“Exactly. So we need to somehow get lots of people blessed without the people in authority knowing about it.”

“That’s going to be impossible.”

“Why?”

“Because people talk. But you can probably get a few blessed without them knowing. If you give me some time to get some people together, we can start out tonight. This afternoon even.”

“You know some people willing to seek a kenning?”

“It’ll be easy,” he assured me, and looked down at my khernhide boots. “Judging by your feet, you’re even more well off than I am. Hunters always have the pick of leathers, I guess. You don’t know how good you have it. But I’ve delivered chaktu all over the city, I’ve seen poverty up close, and I know that there are plenty of desperate people who would jump at the chance to improve their lives. Can you just wait a few hours? You’ll be safe, right?”

I couldn’t say no to him. If he came back with people, fine. If not, that was fine, too. I had much more to learn about my blessing, and my vague idea was to follow the river downstream all the way to Batana Mar Din before trying to recruit anyone.

“Tell them they need to bring six days’ food and water.”

Tamhan laughed and shook his head. “You really don’t know. A lot of people in this city aren’t sure where they’re going to find their supper. But I’ll bring along plenty of chaktu jerky. I know a guy.” He winked at me. “And besides, if this kenning works like the others, they won’t all need six days’ worth, will they?”

Looking down at Murr and remembering what it had felt like to be attacked by his nest, I said, “No, they won’t.”

While I waited for Tamhan’s return, I worked on a personal project. I wrapped two fingerlengths of sticks in cotton batting and covered both sides in leather and sewed them together, forming a small padded pillow with wooden ribs inside. The leather on the top was boiled hard, and the scrap on the bottom was soft and pliable. I rested this on my left shoulder and began to experiment with different ways to affix one of my sister’s belts to the bottom of the pad and strap it on my body. I cut two slits in the bottom of the pad, and that allowed me to string the belt through it. By looping it underneath my left armpit, I was able to buckle the belt on the front side of my shoulder.

“Hey, Eep,” I said. “Look what I just made. You can perch on my shoulder without scratching me now. Want to try it?”

She cocked her head at it in several different angles, checking it out before flapping over from the lip of the cart to give it a try. Her talons definitely exerted a pressure on my shoulder but didn’t pierce my skin.

“Not bad, is it? You like the view?”

“Eep.” She nodded to make sure I knew I had done well.

“Excellent. So what do you say, Murr? Ready for that belly rub?”

The bloodcat, who’d been watching all this with bemusement, shook his head.

Tamhan’s natural charm worked well. He returned with thirty-two Seekers after only a couple of hours. They were mostly our age give or take a year, poor and clearly used to missing meals, the third or fourth children of large families if I had to guess or perhaps without parents at all. Theirs were the mouths that didn’t get fed all that often. Their hair was tangled and dull, and patches of skin bore visible signs of dirt. What they considered clothing was that which provided them modesty and little else. Some were barefoot.

With Murr and Eep’s help I convinced them that the Sixth Kenning was real and recounted my discovery of it and the decision to give up hunting beforehand.

“I’m not sure whether it’s required to forswear killing animals before you seek the kenning, but it might help,” I said. I also emphasized that I wasn’t sure of the full range of my powers yet. But I knew that I could live in harmony with the animals of the plains and that that spelled a different life not only for me but for all Nentians if enough people became blessed.

“What’s the success rate, sir?” a boy asked; he was perhaps only fifteen years old. His name was Madhep.

“A hundred percent so far, since I’m the first one,” I said. “I honestly don’t know. It could be near fifty-fifty like the Fornish, or much better odds like in Rael, or lower like in Hathrir, Brynlön, and Kauria. You’re risking your life for sure—let’s be clear about that. It’s no small risk, but I can’t tell you exactly how big or small of a risk it is.”

“Doesn’t really matter how small the chances are,” a girl said. “At least it’s a chance. I have no chance of living to see twenty if I keep going the way I’m going. Better to go out with some hope, I’m thinking.”

Grunts of assent met this declaration, and all thirty-two of them followed me south. We weren’t speedy, but we traveled faster than my family’s wagon. The Seekers had almost nothing in the way of burdens, and my horse with its small cart was nearly brisk compared with the wart yaks. And for a night and a day it was a hopeful journey for us all. Tamhan was liked and admired by everyone, and I envied his easy way with people.

But unlike the Seekers—unlike myself—Tamhan had a family. One that had just enjoyed dinner with Viceroy Bhamet Senesh and had his ear. One that could check the records at the Hunter Gate, see that their son had left the city walls in the company of what they would consider river vermin, and force the viceroy to act.

So just after sunset on the second day I wasn’t surprised to hear the rolling drumbeat of approaching hooves. With my new senses I could tell that they were horses and not some other herd of animals. Our campfires were lit—we had six—and I had looked into the blaze of ours, and so my vision had to adjust to the darkness before I could see them. I asked Murr and Eep to stay out of sight, and they melted into the darkness. My eyes shifted more quickly than they usually would, owing no doubt to my kenning, and I spied the small company of city cavalry approaching. I knew before they reined in and spoke to us why they had come: they were there for Tamhan, and it made me sad. Not sad that he was cared for—it was perfect and wonderful and right that he should be—but that the rest of us were somehow less than he, unworthy of being saved because our parents were either dead or poor. The viceroy would feed and supply and risk these cavalrymen for Tamhan, the son of his crony, but not do anything to make sure the rest of us had food.

The cavalrymen sorted themselves into an arrowhead formation. A wedge, I guess, but with nothing filling the center. They had crossbows and looked like they were searching for an excuse to use them.

The leader, in the front of the wedge, barked out a query, staring directly at our fire: “Which one of you is Tamhan Khatri?” And I wanted to shout back at him, “You already know he’s the one with nice clothes!” but it wouldn’t have made my life any better, so I bit back my reply.

Tamhan volunteered that he was himself, and the mounted soldier said, “We’re here to escort you back to the city.”

Tamhan shrugged. “That’s kind of you, but I don’t wish to go back to the city.”

The soldier’s voice dripped with condescension as he explained, “It’s dangerous out here, son.”

“I assure you that I’m in no danger at all and I am here of my own free will. Everyone is, in fact.” He spread his hands to the seekers. “If any of you are here against your will and wish for the soldiers to take you back to Khul Bashab, please speak up now.”

There was absolute silence apart from the crackle of fires and the snorting of winded horses.

“The rest of these can get eaten if they want,” the soldier said, a captain if I was reading his shoulder markings correctly, “but I’ve been ordered by the viceroy to bring you back safely.”

“Fine. I’ll be heading back in a few days, and you can ride along if you want.”

“Your parents—and the viceroy—want you back now.”

“I don’t particularly care what they want. The plains are open for everyone to walk in.”

“That’s true except when it’s my job to bring you back. Discuss it with them.”

“Let them discuss it in a few days,” I said, breaking in. “Protect him if you must, and we’ll return with you when we’re finished. Everyone’s happy that way.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Abhinava Khose.”

“Oh, so you’re the one who started all this. Viceroy Senesh orders you back to the city for questioning.”

Snorting, I said, “About what? I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“You’ve persuaded a lot of children to abandon their families, and that is worth questioning at least and sinister at worst.”

“Can you name any of their families besides Tamhan’s? No? I thought not. Many of them don’t have a family anymore. Madhep here has been on his own for three years, and it’s a rough life when you don’t have a father who can send out soldiers to look after you. They want to seek a kenning of their own free will, and I’m taking them there. You can come, too, if you want.”

“I’m not a gullible child. Your claims of a kenning are ridiculous, and you need to come with us now.”

“Sorry, I’m not going to do that. I’ve broken no laws, and you have no authority to take me anywhere.”

“Our authority comes from the viceroy.” He raised his crossbow and pointed it at my chest, a ridiculous escalation in response to my pointing out the truth.

“But mostly from that weapon, since the viceroy isn’t here.”

“Come with us now.”

“You speak patiently with Tamhan Khatri because his parents are privileged to know the viceroy personally, but I am immediately threatened with violence? We are supposed to be equal citizens and we are equally walking in the plains, harming no one. What are you thinking?”

“I’m following my orders, and I will bring you both back. How you go is up to you.”

Tamhan spoke up. “We have already stated that we will gladly return with you after the Seeking. The Sixth Kenning is real.”

“Let me give you a completely harmless demonstration of my abilities,” I said before the captain could reply. “I will ask your horse to take two steps backward.”

“Don’t do that,” the captain said.

“It will put your doubts to rest, and we can be more productive if we are working from the same facts.” I dropped my eyes to his horse and asked it to please take two slow steps backward. It’s not something a horse would think to do on its own without prodding or a fright, and the soldiers all knew that much even if the rest of the Seekers didn’t. The horse obeyed, and the captain lowered his crossbow to grab its reins in a futile attempt to stop it from moving after it already had moved. The other soldiers’ eyes widened, and a few of them muttered mild oaths of surprise. Unfortunately, the captain did not view this with the sense of wonder and excitement I had hoped for. He pointed his crossbow at me again.

“That’s enough. Start walking back to the city now.”

“Think about it, please, Captain. I might look unarmed, but you’re in the Nentian plains, surrounded by animals. And as you just saw, those animals tend to do what I say.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

I spread my arms wide, palms up. “Who is pointing a weapon right now? You are threatening me when I have done nothing wrong. You should be ashamed.”

“Last chance. You can agree to walk or I’ll drop you.”

There was no getting through to this man. His stubbornness reminded me of my father, as did that ultimatum. And I knew what he would do when I said, “No,” and I said it anyway, ready for what would come next.

The captain tensed and pulled the trigger in a syrupy slowness that was actually my quickened speed and senses. I was already moving out of the way of the shot. But as I was moving out of the way, Madhep and Tamhan were moving in, waving their hands and shouting for him to wait, and my panicked “No!” was much louder than my calm refusal to the captain. I had not been ready at all for their interference. The bolt launched and sank deep into Madhep’s chest with a sickening, juicy crunch and knocked him back into Tamhan and then me. We tumbled backward together, and he coughed blood and groaned. Tamhan and I knelt over him, and I cradled his neck in my arms, searching for life in his eyes. He was still there. He looked at the bolt shaft sticking out of his chest and then up at me.

“I just wanted …” he said, blood bubbling on his lips, a wet cough splattering us, “… wanted to talk to animals,” and then his eyes lost focus.

“No no no no no, not again,” I murmured. Why did I never see this coming? The captain was reloading. His soldiers were bringing their crossbows to bear, pointing them in the general direction of the Seekers as an unspoken warning, and I could see the others cowering already at the display of force. And I had never wanted anyone dead so much as those uniformed men at that moment. The captain had killed Madhep, who had done nothing to deserve a quarrel in his chest, and would have killed me for refusing to submit to his authority.

“Stand ready,” the captain was saying to his men. “If anyone resists, shoot them. You, Khose. You know I’m serious now. Come along for questioning or you’ll be meat.”

“No, I rather think you’ll be the meat here,” I said, laying Madhep’s head down gently and rising to my feet, fists clenched and trembling at my sides. I felt the rage building in my head so intensely that my ears buzzed with it, the air chopped with pressure, and I felt somewhat dizzy.

The captain smirked at me, utterly confident that he could casually kill us all and get away with it. “How? I don’t think so.”

A burrow wasp flying at top speed smacked audibly into his right check and stung him. He winced and cursed, slapping at it. Another followed, and a few more annoyed the other soldiers, and the buzzing sound in the night grew louder. The horrifying source of it flowed out of the black, a dark seething mass of wasps and other insects, glinting in places from firelight on wings or reflective carapaces, and they engulfed the soldiers like gloves made of tar. Screams ripped out of their mouths, and then they were choked off—perhaps with a flood of insects flying and crawling down their throats and up their noses. They dropped their crossbows in an effort to bat away the bugs, and the horses bucked and ran even though they were not specifically targeted. Every one of the riders fell off his horse, and the cloud of insects followed them to the ground, and seconds later the men stopped their thrashing and lay still. The horses were never bitten, only scared, and the same held true for everyone else. The Seekers scattered into the darkness with the horses, afraid that the swarms would come after them next. But I took a couple of deep breaths to calm myself and said, “Enough, be at peace,” and the insects lifted away from the bodies of the soldiers and dispersed into the night. I called the soldiers’ horses to come back and gather near my horse and cart and then stepped forward to examine the body of the captain, a bit tired and unsteady on my feet.

The captain’s face was a swollen mass of stings, a misshapen lump of inflamed tissue. His mouth was open and filled with dead bugs, and spindly sawtoothed legs stuck out of his nostrils. “I guess that’s how I’ll kill you,” I said, surprised more than anything else. I hadn’t consciously summoned the swarms to do my bidding; in the aftermath of Madhep’s murder I just wanted the viceroy’s men dead, and it happened. But I supposed that made me a murderer, too. And Madhep was still gone.

Somebody made retching noises in the darkness, and I looked around. A few of the Seekers were coming back into the firelight now that the swarms had departed and discovering the ruin the insects had left behind. Their eyes swept over the bodies of the soldiers and then flicked to my face, wide and fearful, clearly wondering if they would suffer a similar fate.

“It’s safe,” I announced. “Nothing will hurt you.”

“Abhi? You look a bit taller,” Tamhan said. “And older.”

I looked down at my hands as if they would reflect my accurate age. They looked no different. “I do?”

“He’s right,” a girl said. “You’ve aged a little. You’re bigger.”

That explained my dizziness and weariness. And it settled the question of what the Sixth Kenning could do. My earlier reflections on the potential strength of the insect world came back to me.

“You’ve all seen the power of the Sixth Kenning now,” I said. “I am the world’s first plaguebringer.”

The assembled refugees on Survivor Field stood and roared their approval, giving the Raelech bard his second standing ovation. I noted that both times this had followed some adventure of Abhinava’s. I hoped that this obvious delight in a Nentian hero would quell the unrest among the expatriates living in Pelemyn.

Fintan’s tale of Abhi coming into his full powers along with the portrayal of one of their viceroys as a ruthless murderer certainly entertained the refugees and the citizens of Pelemyn, but it sent the local Nentians into a fit, dashing my hopes that our obvious high regard for Abhi would soothe their wounded egos. A longshoreman sent by the pelenaut’s Lung picked me up at home and recounted the night’s tumult as he escorted me to meet Fintan.

“We had to move him twice in the night, and him complaining the entire time about ruining what little sleep he can get. The Nentians are paying for information on his whereabouts and sending in hired fish heads to gut him. I see you have your sword. Good.”

“What? We’re going to be in danger?”

“Almost certainly. You’ll be delighted to hear we have a plan, though.”

“Oh, indeed! My delight is boundless. So vast that I cannot think how best to express it. Do I get to hear the plan?”

“We’re taking you back to the chowder house you visited a couple of days ago. It’s quite busy now thanks to the bard telling everyone about it.”

“It will be a terrible place to work, then.”

“But a great place to be seen and attacked.”

“What? I guess I should have asked if your plan was a good one. This does not sound good.”

The longshoreman grinned at me. “It’s going to be fine as long as you don’t get killed.”

“Look, that could just as easily be said of pudding or sex or life itself. It’s not the hallmark of a good plan.”

“It’s the pelenaut’s plan, all right? He wants you to live, believe me. Just have some lunch and write your story. But keep an eye on your surroundings. You wouldn’t want a dagger slipped between your ribs when you’re not looking.”

“This is not comforting.”

“Don’t worry; you’ll have some company keeping a closer eye on you than normal. You’ll be totally safe. Probably.”

“You’re kind of a rotten whale dong, you know that?”

The longshoreman threw his head back and laughed. “Yes, I know.” He pointed out a pair of extra mariners loitering inside the doors of the High Tide Chowder House and two more sitting at a table closer to the kitchen. There were few seats available and a line that threatened to extend outside very soon. Fintan already was seated in the far corner across from a young woman and smiled as he waved me over. It was a larger table with benches for seats, graced with two orange candles instead of one. I approved of the location and took my seat next to him with our backs to the wall; no one would be able to sneak up behind us.

“I’ve already ordered you a bowl and a beer,” he said, and then nodded toward the woman, who had her hair cropped short around her skull and appeared to be amused. I wondered what Fintan had told her about me before I joined them. “Master Dervan du Alöbar, I present to you Gerstad Nara du Fesset. She’s part of the story, actually. You’ll be hearing of her adventures later.” She snorted in response to this, then smiled at me, dimples on either side of a wide mouth, pearls in her ears gleaming by candlelight.

“He’s exaggerating. Eating this chowder is going to be the most adventure I’ve had in months.”

“Nice to meet you. A gerstad, eh? We rate an officer now?”

“For today, anyway,” she said.

“Why aren’t you in uniform?”

Her eyes shifted around, and then she put a hand to the side of her mouth as if someone might be lip-reading. “We’re being clever,” she said in a loud, dramatic whisper. “They’ll never know what hit them.”

“Who are they, exactly?”

“If they show up, we expect most of them will be dockside fish heads desperate for coin. But one of them should be a Nentian bruiser the Lung has identified as the tip of the harpoon on these attacks. He’s a semiretired caravan guard from Ar Balesh, and it’s his former employers who are financing this.”

“Old, rich expatriates of Ghurana Nent who live here for the clean water and access to hygienists?” Fintan asked.

“Precisely. He’s been either spotted or reported to be involved in the attempts to assassinate you, but we haven’t been able to isolate him yet.”

“Why not go after the money?” I asked.

She paused while a server deposited bowls of chowder in front of us and returned with beers and a board of bread and butter. “The pelenaut likes taxes,” she said, “especially right now, and the Nentian expatriates pay plenty of them. So the objective is to go after the errand boy. If the elderly have no one to do their dirty work, then it won’t get done.”

“But why not put pressure on these Nentians to stop seeking my death?” Fintan asked.

“They’re so obvious and loud about what they’re doing that it’s pointing us to criminals that the constabulary has been seeking out for a long while. They’re leading us to some truly dangerous fish heads, so we don’t want them to stop. But don’t worry: the Lung is positioning someone to take over operations once we eliminate their current man. The Nentians will pay him to hunt you down, and he will pass on the money and information to us and do nothing. The pelenaut looks at it as a tax on their stupidity.” We shared a laugh at that, and she asked to be excused for a moment. “I’d like to wash up before eating. Would that be okay?”

Fintan shrugged. “Sure.”

“We Brynts can get obsessive about hygiene. Sorry. I’ll be right back.”

The gerstad left us, and Fintan and I clinked glasses and sampled the beer while we waited for her return. The noise drew eyes in our direction from the line, and someone near us recognized Fintan. “Hey! It’s the bard!” a boy said, pointing with one hand and tugging on his mother’s sleeve with the other, and I realized that the gerstad had been blocking Fintan from view until she rose from the table. At that point in Pelemyn, Fintan was the bard—the kid couldn’t be talking about anyone else—so there were assorted gasps and tiny exclamations at spotting a famous person doing something normal, such as eating and drinking.

Fintan grinned at the boy and then the room. “The chowder’s so good here, I came back for more!” he announced. He held aloft his drink and wished them good health, and many glasses were raised in return. It was very warm and congenial for a few seconds there. Then my eyes drifted to the entrance, at the back of the line, where a group of men looked less than pleased. They looked instead like predators that had just spotted their prey, brows hooding their eyes and muscles tensing along their shoulders. And when they stepped out of line and began to push past people, drawing blades of varying lengths out of their belts, I chucked Fintan on the shoulder.

“Incoming fish heads!”

I rose and drew my steel, all merriment gone, and that alerted everyone that something serious was happening, including the mariners who were supposed to protect us sitting at the neighboring table. They sprang up to intercept the fish heads, and the other two mariners stationed at the door fell in from behind. Four on four—trained soldiers against undisciplined meat. Inwardly I was relieved. They’d probably never reach us, and if they did, their numbers would at least be reduced. As the hired men and the mariners fell to it—a quick flurry of blows and grunts and howls of pain accompanied by a chorus of alarm from the lunchtime crowd that scrambled to both get away and get a better view—I noted that none of the attackers was Nentian. They were unwashed types who took on dirty jobs for quick profit, and there was an abundance of them to be found these days. And because I was riveted to the brawl at the front of the house, I completely missed seeing the man with the axe until the blade sank into the table where Fintan had been leaning forward. The axe already had been employed judging by the blood on the blade, and if I had to guess, I’d say someone in the kitchen was dead since this stout, grizzled man hadn’t come through the mariners. He was definitely the Nentian bruiser we’d been warned about, his coppery skin and straight dark hair giving away his homeland. He had sent the fish heads in the front door to absorb the brunt of resistance, leaving him a clear shot at Fintan.

The bard, fortunately more aware than I, had jerked back to avoid the axe and drew a dagger from his belt. He threw it inexpertly at the Nentian, and the handle bounced off the man’s chest. I swung at him, and he ducked underneath it, drawing his sword. I had nowhere to run. I was effectively trapped where I was in a terrible stance, and my swing had made it clear to the Nentian that he had to go through me if he wanted another shot at Fintan—and he did.

I batted aside his first strike but fell for a feint on his next pass as he twisted his wrist and thrust at my belly. When did other people get so bloody fast? I tried to dodge out of the way, but we were in close quarters and I felt the cold steel shiver through my left side, followed by white-hot pain. I cried out, and he yanked the blade, slicing me open further, and I toppled sideways onto the bench as my knee buckled. Fintan was wide open and defenseless now, and the Nentian raised his sword. I weakly threw mine at him; that made him flinch and pause but did nothing else. The mariners were still occupied with the fish heads. It was two against one now instead of four on four, but regardless, we’d have no help from them.

“Under the table,” I said to Fintan, but I might not have enunciated well; it might have come out as more of a constipated grunt. I clutched my wound with my left hand and tried to push myself up with my right, thinking that a hot bowl of chowder in the genitals might slow the Nentian down if I could throw it in time. But I couldn’t.

As the assassin’s muscles bunched for a killing blow, his right ear fairly exploded with a gout of blood and then bits of brain, and he collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.

“Oh! Gah! Wait! What just happened?” Fintan said.

“I happened,” the gerstad said, stepping into view, her mouth set in a tight line. Her clothes were spattered with the Nentian’s blood.

“You did that? How?” Fintan asked.

“I’m a rapid,” she explained. “I pulled all the water in his head to me through his ear. Tends to destroy the brain on its way out.”

“Brain chowder,” I mumbled, treading water in shock and edging toward delirium.

“Sorry I wasn’t here to catch him before you got hurt, Dervan,” she said, and her eyes trailed to the carnage near the front. “Or before I lost those men. If you can walk, we should get you to a hygienist to clean that up.”

Only one of the mariners survived the encounter, though he was wounded as well. The sword hadn’t punctured my stomach or guts, so it was just a painful muscle tear I’d have to live through. And stitches. And Fintan’s guilt.

“I didn’t mean for those men to die,” he said as we limped to the hygienist’s hall. “Or for you to get hurt.”

“There’s not a bit of blame for you here,” I replied. “Or anywhere.”

“I can’t help feeling responsible, though.”

“Nonsense. We’re all Seekers of one kind or another,” I said. “If it’s not a kenning, then it’s something else we seek. And there are thousands of people who seek to hear your story for these few who seek to silence you. I think you should grant the wishes of the thousands.”

“Oh, I’m going to keep doing my job. I’m just thinking about how our causes have trouble seeing their effects until it’s too late to do anything but mourn them.”

Gerstad du Fesset, helping the wounded mariner to the hygienist alongside us, looked haunted by that already, lips still pressed together in regret.

“You’re not the cause of this. Reactionaries from Ghurana Nent are the cause, and we are faultless.” That was aimed more at the gerstad than the bard, but I’m not sure if it helped. She probably was locked in a cycle of guilt about how much better everything would have turned out if she hadn’t felt the need to wash her hands, imagining scenarios in which none of the mariners was killed, ignoring the great possibility that it could have gone much worse if they had had a chance to get closer before attacking.

The hygienist we visited, an elderly lady with gray hair and bright eyes, examined my wound and ensured through her kenning that it wouldn’t get infected before sewing me up. I would be in pain for a while but not bedridden. Gerstad du Fesset accompanied the bard and me to a quieter locale and guarded us on high alert while he dictated yesterday’s tale to me and I wrote as quickly as possible. We had to hurry to the wall after that, and the bard began by getting them all to stomp their feet and clap on alternate beats. He was determined to lighten everyone’s mood with the day’s song.

You can collect a troubled bag of burdens and brood upon them long

You can dwell upon the woes that curdle in your sour mind

But instead of wasting precious time on things I cannot change

I’d rather gather up my joys and leave my sorrows far behind

(Chorus)

I’d rather gather up my blessings and my love and all my wealth

And share them with my family and friends and wish them health

I’d rather gather all the people I respect and I admire

I’d rather gather you in my arms and hold you close beside the fire

You can store up your resentment cold or feed a yearlong grudge

You can cower in your room a prisoner to childish fears

You can sulk and fret away your life and I’m not going to judge

I’d rather gather with my mates down at the pub and have some beers

(Chorus)

“We haven’t heard from our Kaurian scholar in a while, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t busy. Today I’d like to share with you the many discoveries he made about the enemy in that uncomfortable, windless dungeon.”

Fintan took the seeming of Gondel Vedd, who appeared this time with a clean set of clothes.

For want of a better name, we have taken to calling Saviič and his people Bone Giants. They are certainly not Hathrim or even related to them. They have no kenning of fire, though they have heard of it. They have heard of all the kennings, including one we have not found and another that remains a mystery.

I have made excellent progress in working out Saviič’s language, but it is not fast enough to satisfy anyone, least of all myself. We moved rapidly through children’s language cards that taught me the words for basic nouns and verbs. Most abstract concepts are still difficult to grasp, however, and I am often thrown off by the syntax of his language. He loads up the front ends of his sentences with nouns and objects and modifiers, and they seem to hang there, suspended and inanimate, until the verb and its modifiers are tacked on to the end. I find myself waiting for the verb so much that I lose much of what went before and have to ask him to repeat: Who died again? Where and how?

Today I thought I had learned enough to speak of where Saviič had come from. Instead of bringing Zanata Sedam with me into the dungeon, I brought a map of Teldwen. An incomplete map, apparently, that I was very anxious to fill in. Not least because I have been asked every day by Teela Parr where his home might be. I wonder what will consume the court’s curiosity after Saviič points off the edge of the map and says, “I live over there somewhere.”

For that is essentially what he did. I showed him the map and pointed to Linlauen so that he could see where he was, and after reviewing the words for directions and distances, he estimated that his country was roughly due east of Keft and off the edge of the map, far past the point where creatures of the deep would pull ships down into the dark and snack on the sailors before they had a chance to drown.

It is called Ecula, and his people are Eculans. (That being said, I doubt the “Bone Giant” nickname will go away anytime soon since the court has spoken of little else for days. It is difficult to look at him and think of anything but his stature and starved appearance. After his first gluttonous meal, his food intake has shrunk to birdlike levels.)

Saviič pointed to the archipelago between Forn and Kauria and indicated that Ecula was much like that: a series of islands with no overwhelmingly large landmass. He drew a tight cluster of five islands, named each, and claimed that there were floating bridges spanning the straits and nets at either end to keep man-eaters out of their “civil waters.”

“What are the man-eaters?” I asked. He sketched pictures of bladefins and longarms and two different monstrosities that could only be classified as krakens, and I nodded, grinning.

A whole new country! Islands connected with floating bridges and protected waterways! What a sight that must be! Obviously they had a rich religious life, so think of what else they must have to offer. What did Eculan art look like? What did their music sound like? And how would we ever enjoy these things if we couldn’t cross the ocean?

That inspired a new host of questions for Saviič. How did he survive the crossing? Why did he dare it, and why dare it alone?

His answer to the first question was rather flip: he survived because nothing ate him. But his answer to why stretched the limits of credibility. He claimed to be a merchant interested in trade. That would bring joy to the monied interests in the court, no doubt, but Saviič did not dress or behave like any merchant I have ever seen. For one thing, he still preferred near nudity. The merchants I know like to be dressed head to toe in the finest clothing they can afford, which is a public projection of their success as much as it is a taste for luxury. And most merchants tend not to be starved and sunburned skeletons but rather fleshy, sedentary things with jowls and wattles and jiggling bellies. They also have actual goods to sell or are willing to spin tales of what they can bring you in exchange for a bag of coin. Saviič, however, feigned weariness when I asked for details of his trade and asked to be left alone until the morrow.

I’d been expecting him to say he was the lone survivor of a larger ship pulled down by a longarm or something like that—some kind of plausible lost-at-sea story—but instead he claimed to be seeking new business all by himself across the ocean. I was beginning to think Saviič imagined me to be infinitely gullible.

Since I had the name and approximate location of his country, which was all the court really cared about, I was willing to let the matter drop. I wanted to consult with Teela Parr in any case on how I should proceed in the face of Saviič’s bald lies. If he wasn’t a merchant or a refugee, we had to wonder at his true purpose. I didn’t wish to leap to conclusions, but here is what I had noted to that point: he was a desperate man with a deep and abiding love for his religious text. Hunger and zealotry are dangerous on their own, but combine them? Reinei bring us peace!

On a completely different note, I discovered during a lunch break that Saviič doesn’t care for mustard. We may not get along very well much longer.

There is so much to learn, and it is difficult to suppress my academic urges in favor of a cold political goal. I wish to map out the morphological drift between the ancient language and modern Eculan, but I can only do bits and pieces while doggedly trying to eke out some answers from Saviič.

Teela Parr took my map and a summary of my discoveries to the mistral and I assume a coterie of assorted courtiers, all brightly dyed and coiffed and brimful of sage advice. And I must chastise myself for mocking them, for what came back was not an immediate call to send out boats or even a tempest to find the island nation of Ecula but a reasoned request for more information and some pointed and relevant questions to put to Saviič as soon as possible. Teela Parr invited me back to the posh Silverbark Room to discuss it.

“There’s no reason we should discuss such things in a windless dungeon,” she said, and I couldn’t agree more. Someone from the palace kitchens came in with tea—our native leaf from the Teabush Range; no exotic Fornish blends served here. I actually preferred it. There were also some cakes glazed with sugar frosting drizzled with an orange clove sauce that nearly made me swoon.

“Oh,” I said around a mouthful. “Mm. If this is my reward for my work, I consider myself well paid.”

Teela smiled. “I’ll be sure to pass on your compliments to the chef. I’m sure we can convince her to make them again.”

“Please do. Her work makes me glad to be alive.”

“And your work is very important, too. Mistral Kira asked me to relay her personal thanks for your efforts.”

“I’m grateful she trusted me with such a project. What news from the court?”

“Anyone who’s seen the Bone Gi—I mean Eculan—knows he must be lying about being a merchant. That’s agreed. But the reactions to the lie are mixed. The merchant families now have serious doubts that Ecula has anything to offer. If Saviič thought we would believe he’s a merchant—if being naked and destitute is a representative sample of their merchant class—then there’s not much opportunity there.”

I snorted. “The opportunities are endless! Why, we could start out by selling them pants. Are you telling me no one wants to become the Pants Baron of Ecula?”

She indulged me with a polite smile at my joke but pressed on. “I think the greedy lights in their eyes snuffed out once the military minds spoke up. They wondered aloud what he’s really hiding. It’s most likely not something we would welcome. You don’t lie that badly when you want to be friends.”

“No, Saviič is certainly not a trained diplomat.”

“Precisely. The question is what he is trained for.”

“So I need to get him to admit he lied and tell the truth? I’m not sure we could trust anything he says.”

“Agreed. Direct confrontation on that point probably won’t work. The mistral suggests that you delve into his religion since he seems so fervent about it. His zealotry may make him reveal quite a bit, and he may be less likely to lie about it. And of course we would all like to know more about the Sixth and Seventh Kennings.”

Those were my orders, but Teela reassured me that they weren’t going to rely on me alone thanks to the mistral’s military adviser, Zephyr Bernaud Goss. “The zephyr believes—and the mistral concurs—that Saviič is part of an overall strategy to find a path over the ocean that is not plagued by krakens. He feels that dozens of small craft, perhaps a hundred or more, were sent out in hopes that a few would make it across to somewhere. It’s an old idea, but no one has ever done it because if you are seeking a quick death, you might as well seek a kenning, and few people wish to volunteer to be kraken chow. So we’ll be making queries up the coast, asking if anyone else has seen someone like Saviič. We might have some answers in a few weeks.”

And so, fortified with tea and cake, I descended into the dungeon to resume my language lessons. Saviič’s sunburned skin was peeling and blistering in places. A healer had paid him a visit and given him some ointments or creams or whatever: greasy smelly unguents that might provide him some relief. He preferred one over the others and had been given more, but that dead skin had to flake off at some point and dry, papery ridges of it crested all over him. I asked him how his skin was feeling, and after inspecting his arms, he grunted.

“Hot. Burns,” he said, then pushed down the air with the flat of his hands. “Lower. Better.” He pointed at me. “You burn sometimes?”

“No,” and then I broke eye contact to compose my sentence for him. He was used to such pauses by now. I had to not only come up with the proper words but order them in Eculan syntax so that a simple sentence such as “I stay inside” was phrased as “I inside stay.”

His next question surprised me. The words were, “Skin you black why?” and it took me a moment to realize he was asking why my skin was dark. It was a telling query; it indicated that not only had he never seen people with darker skin, he had never even heard of them before. His entire experience of the world was pale—or pink, I supposed, if they burned so easily.

But that made me wonder how he could have a religious text purporting to know about seven kennings and somehow not know that the majority of people blessed with them had dark skin of one shade or another.

I frowned at him and said, “Most people have dark skin.”

He scrunched up his face. “Here only, most?”

“Not here only. In world.”

He shook his head vigorously. “No. Most skin like mine.”

That made no sense unless he knew much more of the world than we did. “Ecula only?” I asked.

“No. World.”

That conflicted so badly with facts that I wondered if we had different conceptions of what “the world” meant.

“World is Teldwen, yes?” He nodded, so I continued. “Places in world are Ecula and—” I stopped myself and held up a hand, opening my ink pot and scrawling out a rough map of the world I knew, an inferior copy of the professional map we’d used to establish the location of Ecula earlier. I sketched our explored lands to the left and a series of five small blobs for Ecula, leaving room on the right side of the paper in case. I’d been so focused on finding out where his country was that I never asked about other countries he might know—lands beyond his own.

“This is world,” I asserted, thinking he would either accept it or correct me, and he corrected me, shaking his head.

“I do not know this part,” he said, pointing to the west. “But world is more.”

I handed him the paper through the bars in a wordless command to demonstrate what he meant. He still had his own ink and quill from our earlier language lessons.

His attempts at cartography were even worse than mine. He merely drew three circles on the right side, each bigger than Ecula but nothing like the size of our main landmass, and assigned names to them: Joabei to the north, Omesh near the middle, and Bačiiš to the south. The last one drew my attention for its linguistic relation to the old language, but not wishing to forget our original thread of conversation, I pointed to each circle and said, “People here. All skin like yours?”

“Yes. Most.” He pushed down with the flat of his hand once more. “Some small changes. Small differences. But not dark.”

I gestured with my fingers to get the map back and then pointed to the three new circles to the east of Ecula. “These places,” I said, then moved my finger to point to our continent. “Bigger than here?”

He shrugged, though I could not tell if it was because he didn’t know or didn’t care or some combination of both.

“You go to Joabei, Omesh, or Bačiiš?”

“No.”

“Those people come to Ecula?”

“No,” he said, his face twisting with impatience at my stupidity and sighing over the fact that I even had to ask. “Man-eaters in the ocean.”

Yes, but so what? He had passed over those same man-eaters to get here. Baffling. “How do you know they are like you?”

“Zanata Sedam.” Ah, The Seven Kennings. How kind of him to bring it up. I had it with me in a leather case containing my notes, and I brought it out so that he could see it. As before, the sight of it brought him rushing to the bars, and he stuck his hand out, demanding that I give it to him.

“Those places—those people—are in here?” I asked.

“Yes. Me give.”

“They have kennings?”

“Yes.” His hand remained out, and for a moment Reinei’s wind ceased to blow in my lungs. If they had kennings, then there must be somewhere else than the six nations where one could become a tempest or a cyclone or a fury or a tidal mariner. When I took breath again, I pointed at his holy writ.

“But this place, my people, are not in here?”

“No.” His fingers curled into a fist and spread out again. “Please give.”

“I cannot give. But I can read. Any part. Any page. I would like that. Would you like that?” I thought I could manage to at least pronounce the words correctly, if not recognize their meanings.

Disappointed, he withdrew his arm and scowled at me, resentful as I suppose any prisoner would be.

“Any page,” he finally said. “You read.” He slouched to the back of his cell, sitting on his cot and drawing his long legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them, and closing his eyes.

I flipped at random to a spot a little past halfway and began to read in my halting Eculan. I thought I was doing well until a low growl began in the cell and rose to a roar. “You wrong are!”

“Sorry. Please. Make me right.”

It went more slowly after that, with frequent stops for subtle coaching on my pronunciation.

“Must correct say,” Saviič insisted. So I concentrated on forcing my mouth to produce the sounds the way Saviič did and missed a lot of meaning; that wasn’t terribly tragic since it was dry, boring stuff about being righteous. I had no complaints; I was learning and enjoying the linguistics if not the content. I kept at it for an hour before I was feeling ready for a break, but then a sentence’s meaning broke through my basic decoding and translation to sink in and make me reread it. Even then it took me some time to untangle the syntax.

I muttered a quick translation in Kaurian: “In the dark of the moon the Seven-Year Ship comes to take the faithful to the … land? Island? … Of the Seventh Kenning, and there they shall know the fullness of Teldwen’s … gifts?”

I looked up with questions in my eyes, and Saviič flashed his crooked brown teeth at me. He didn’t know Kaurian, but he knew that the words were having effect.

“Best part is,” he said.

“Good is,” I agreed, then questioned him on the unfamiliar words to make sure my translation was accurate. Island was correct, but the word I thought was gifts was more accurately translated as blessings. That took quite some time to figure out, but once I was satisfied, I probed for an explanation.

“Seven-Year Ship comes?”

“Yes. My life, two times comes,” Saviič said, holding up his thumb and index finger. His middle finger flicked up, and he continued, “But this time—third time—no come.”

“Which time?”

He told me the Seven-Year Ship was supposed to have come last year but didn’t.

“Where does the Seven-Year Ship come from?”

The Bone Giant shrugged. “Here.”

“Here? No.”

“Somewhere here. I not know.”

Using the map, I asked if he meant the Seven-Year Ship came from Kauria; that was an improbability if he had seen the ship twice in his life yet had never seen a Kaurian. That wasn’t what he meant: “Here” meant somewhere on our continent’s western shores. And I gasped.

“Oh! For Seven-Year Ship you looking?”

He nodded, and I forgot myself and spoke to him using Kaurian syntax but Eculan words. He still followed me, though.

“Who is on the Seven-Year Ship? People with skin like yours?”

“Yes.”

“And how many faithful go on the ship to the island of seven kennings?”

“Seventy-seven and seven. If ship come, I go. Faithful I am. But no ship. Go anyway.”

Eighty-four, then. “Did all the faithful go anyway to find the Island of the Seventh Kenning?”

“Yes.”

Eighty-four religious zealots climbed into tiny boats and sailed west in search of another boat. Might as well ask him again. “What is the Seventh Kenning?”

“I not know. To island faithful go, there discover.”

The text could be interpreted to mean that the Seventh Kenning wasn’t a separate talent at all but rather knowledge of the other six—the fullness of the kennings. Or perhaps it was something else entirely.

The only islands to the west of Ecula were the archipelago between Kauria and Forn, the island next to the Tempest of Reinei, and the Mistmaiden Isles in the north. But the only pale people on this side of the continent were the Fornish, so the evidence pointed to this mythical island being very close to Kauria. The mistral needed to know right away. I had learned so much, and it was only midafternoon. I excused myself hastily, promising Saviič that I would return soon. Rushing out of the dungeon with the scribbled map and Zanata Sedam, my finger jammed in the pages to mark the passage, I had a cyclone take me to Teela Parr, and on the way I wondered if the Eculans might not be some mutation of the Fornish as the Hathrim were supposed to be, caused by the Rift ages ago. It would at least account for their root language if they had at one point come from Forn’s eastern shores.

Speaking perhaps a bit too quickly, I told her that there were three nations beyond Ecula, the site of the Seventh Kenning might be located somewhere in the archipelago, and if Saviič wasn’t lying, someone from Forn was crossing the ocean and going back every seven years.

“Someone Fornish? How does he know that?”

“It’s my deduction. He said the people on this ship had pale skin. And he asked me why my skin is dark.”

Teela snorted. “Guess he doesn’t get out much.”

“A fair assessment. But the mistral’s suggestion was excellent. This conversation blew fair because I asked him about his religion and began to read his scripture. But you know the oddest thing?”

“It all sounds odd to me.”

“Agreed, but now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t remember him ever mentioning the actual deity he follows, nor did any deity get mentioned in the portion I read.”

Teela’s eyes dropped to the book. “It has to be in there somewhere.”

“I hope so. I have a lot of reading to do.”

She asked me to walk with her and bring the map because the mistral would want to hear everything straight from me.

“We’re going to see the mistral?”

“Of course. Didn’t you want her to know all this?”

“Well, yes, but—” I looked down to see if I had any mustard stains on my tunic this time. I was blessedly stain-free but still a decrepit old scholar unfit for court.

“Don’t worry about your clothes. She is well aware that you have other priorities, unlike her courtiers.”

We entered the Calm from behind the throne while the mistral was receiving the Fornish ambassador. Apparently, a volcano had erupted in Hathrir and the entire surviving population of Harthrad had sailed north to land in Ghurana Nent. A serious situation, no doubt, that could trigger the Sovereignty Accords for the first time. But as those giants were on the other side of the continent, I could not muster very much worry about them. The giant we had in the dungeon was far more interesting. The mistral asked the ambassador to acquire more information about the Hathrim before committing to anything; a precipitous action against Gorin Mogen in a time of obvious crisis could damage relationships with the other Hathrim hearthfires.

Teela Parr executed some sort of hand signal to the mistral after the ambassador bowed, and Kauria’s elected ruler requested that the Calm be cleared for a private briefing. I caught many curious and perhaps calculating glances thrown my way as a result. I thought I recognized some of the faces from my first visit, though of course they were all clothed differently now and I looked like I was only a generous step away from a pauper. One man in particular was reluctant to leave. He was a broad-nosed handsome fellow in the younger half of his fourth decade who adorned the world with the muscles in his arms and spoke in one of those deep sonorous voices that sounded heavy with gravitas. “Begging your pardon, Mistral, but if this regards the Bone Giant, might I remain to hear it?” he said.

“Should it bear any relation to your concerns, Zephyr, I will consult you right away,” she replied.

So that was Zephyr Bernaud Goss. He removed himself slowly not because he was incapable of speed but because there was no dignity in moving quickly. He wanted all the dignity. Or maybe his heavy voice slowed him down. Once all the doors closed, however, Teela moved with alacrity. She snatched the map out of my hand and stepped quickly toward the mistral.

“First is this,” she said, pointing to the circles on the right before handing it over. “Three more countries we’ve never heard of before, all populated by people with pale skin. Second, eighty-four Bone Giants, Saviič included, sailed for our shores because they were looking for a sacred ship that supposedly sails from an island in the west every seven years—their west being our east. It didn’t show up on schedule, so they got worried. They call it the Island of the Seventh Kenning. And that ship is crewed by pale people.”

Mistral Kira said, “You mean the Fornish?”

Teela shrugged. “I don’t know who else it could be unless we have a secret population of Hathrim living in the archipelago without our knowledge. Shall I call the Fornish ambassador back to ask about it?”

The mistral considered it, then shook her head. “No. If they have been keeping this a secret from us for all this time, we’d best not reveal that we know something about it until we know a whole lot more about it. Did Saviič tell you all this?” she asked me.

“Most but not all. I read some of his scripture, and the discussion that ensued was quite revelatory.”

The mistral pointed at Zanata Sedam. “Scholar Vedd, I would like you to make a complete, detailed copy of that book, including any scribblings in the margins. Then you can give it back to him and work together on translating it.”

“Certainly. Your instincts were correct: he made no effort to pretend he was a merchant once we discussed religious matters.”

“My thanks for your work, Scholar.” Mistral Kira shifted her eyes to Teela. “When was the last time anyone did a really good survey of the archipelago?”

“I would have to check. Certainly not in our lifetime.”

“It might be worthwhile to see what’s happening in there. A task to occupy the zephyr’s mind.” She smiled at me and raised a hand to the side of her mouth to whisper even though no one else was in the room but us. “I think being the military leader of a peaceful nation wears on him.”

We all chuckled at the poor zephyr’s expense, and I did feel somewhat sorry for him. All our culture and diplomacy was determined to make sure he had nothing to do. “Well, he certainly has the ships needed to carry out the task,” Teela said.

“Set up a private meeting with him later tonight, and I’ll get him to work on it. But not a word of this to anyone else. I don’t want everyone sailing through there looking for this and alerting the Fornish.” Her eyes flicked back to me to make sure I knew I was included in the silence order. “And say nothing about the three new countries, either, or any of it. We still don’t know which way the wind will blow. I’ll await your next report eagerly, Scholar.”

“My pleasure to serve, Mistral.”

“Do you have everything you need?”

“Well …”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps some cheese to go with that mustard you gave me?”

U početku je bilo sedam, a na kraju neče biti jed.

It is the very first line of Zanata Sedam, and I tremble at the translation.

If I am correct, it means: “In the beginning there were seven, and in the end there shall be one.”

If this refers to the kennings—and I believe it does—then it implies a very militant philosophy on the part of the Eculans, especially when taken in context with what else I’ve read. They may interpret that line to mean that they should conquer all the nations of Teldwen, taking their kennings for their own. Yet there could be other meanings: Perhaps the various sources of the kennings will cease at some point to bless those who seek magical powers. Perhaps the gods themselves will expire and the kennings along with them—an apocalyptic vision, to be sure, but also consistent with their seeming lack of a deity in their holy text, for why worship gods you believe will fall? I am still not convinced they worship no god—that would contradict Saviič’s holy fervor and his devotion to this religious text—but I have yet to see a god mentioned.

The simplest answer would be to ask Saviič in plain terms to name his god, but I keep thinking the next sentence I translate will give me the answer, and since the mistral ordered me to complete a copy, that is what I will do. I am translating as I go, however, rather than simply copying the text. I can’t help it. I’m leaving blanks for the words and passages I’m having trouble with. My thinking is that I will be able to prioritize which sections deserve to be translated first. The temptation to return to the dungeon is almost overwhelming, and that would have been an unthinkable sentence for me to write a few weeks ago. The problem is that my progress will slow if I begin talking to Saviič. Better to continue working in my private corner of the university library.

Yet the first line disturbs me so, I hardly know how to proceed. Should I recommend to the mistral that all nations look to their borders in the near future, perhaps spurring taxes on east coast peoples in advance of an attack that will never come? Or should I keep it to myself, a private fear unworthy of larger circulation? It is too large a thing for me to decide. It’s best that I pass it on to the chamberlain, like everything else, and let the people in power choose the path forward. I am merely a scholar with a taste for mustards and cheeses of a far finer quality than I can afford.

Teela Parr was quick to see me when I relayed a request for a meeting to discuss it. But her face, initially welcoming and pleasant, crushed itself into a frown after a few steps as she took in my appearance and the dirty dishes stacked on the end of the table from past meals.

“Sweet Reinei, Gondel, do you ever actually eat any mustard or do you just smear it on yourself on purpose?”

“What?” I looked down at my tunic, realizing that I was more than usually stained.

“When was the last time you went home?”

I blinked, considering. “What day is this?”

“It’s Feiller.”

“Then it’s been days.” Suddenly I missed Maron. He must have thought I’d fallen into the ocean. Or that I didn’t love him anymore. Or that the government owned me now. He’s always had trouble understanding that sometimes I get lost in my work. That kind of thing never happened to him, and since it was so far outside his own experience, he never believed me when I said it was a frequent hazard. He thought instead that he was not interesting enough to hold my attention, ignoring all the times I lost myself in him and neglected my work for his sake.

“I want you to go home after this meeting,” Teela said. “Take a day off. Maybe two.”

“But the mistral wants this translation—”

“And she’ll still want it when you get back. She also wants you healthy, believe me. And don’t worry about Saviič. He will be fine. Now: What have you found?”

“The translation of Zanata Sedam is disturbing. Portions of it also conflate with my professional interest in the origins of the Rift; apparently the Eculans know of it as well but think of it quite differently than we do. But let’s begin with the very beginning. Look at this first page.” I rifled through the stacks of paper and placed my translation in front of her.

“In the beginning there were seven, and in the end there shall be one. Only when there is one shall the Rift be healed and unknown return to the world. Then those who were unknown and unknown will thrive, and the selfish and unknown will perish.”

Teela shifted her eyes sideways. “There are some rather important words missing here.”

I don’t know those yet. I was going to return to Saviič after I finished making a copy of the text.”

“What’s going to return to the world when the Rift is healed?”

“That’s the first question I’ll ask him.”

“Well, why do the Eculans think the Rift is something that can be healed? I mean, we’re talking about the ocean between us and Hathrir, right? It’s not a wound to be stitched.”

“I believe they are using the term to refer to the event rather than the ocean. The event that created the ocean, in other words, and the Hathrim if you give any credence to their version.”

“You’re talking about old legends.”

“Yes. It’s a favorite subject of mine.”

The chamberlain made no comment on that but returned to the text. “I don’t like this part where some will thrive and others will die. Even with the missing words it demonstrates a confrontational mindset. Label someone selfish or whatever this missing word is and you have justification for going to war. It’s the sort of language the Hathrim use to justify their history of violence.”

I nodded in agreement, and she continued, finally paying attention to the first sentence. “And in the end there will be one? One what? One nation?”

“Perhaps. I cannot say for certain, but I think it refers to the kennings.”

“That’s ominous.”

“Indeed.”

“Is there more along this line?”

“Yes, much more. Thus far it is not a scripture concerned with enlightenment and spiritual improvement. Maybe the tone will lighten soon.”

“Well. I will mention it to the mistral. It’s important work that you’re doing, Gondel, but not so important that you need to forgo sleep or live outside of the wind. This library is little better than the dungeon.”

“I find it a vast improvement.”

“Go home and open the windows. With such negative words entering your mind you need to breathe peace, and there is no terrible hurry.”

“That we know of.”

Teela crossed her arms. “All we know at this point is coming from you. Do you see a reason to push yourself past exhaustion over this?”

I sighed in defeat. “Nothing I can specifically point to. Just a feeling.”

“You’re feeling tired, Gondel. Go home.”

Once she said it out loud, I felt my eyelids droop, ready to sleep. “Very well.”

It would be good to see Maron again even if he was cross with me. A change in the wind would be welcome.

But Maron turned out to be in no mood to breathe peace when I arrived home. A glass flew at my head and shattered against the door-jamb when I entered.

“Bastard!” he shouted. “Where have you been?”

“At Windsong and the library. Was that one of our wedding glasses?”

“What wedding? What marriage? You call this a marriage? You disappear in the middle of the night and then no word from you for weeks! I thought you were dead!”

“I’m not. I’m sorry, Maron, but the mistral summoned me, and it’s been most extraordinary—”

“Oh, the mistral! So that excuses it all? Doesn’t the mistral have some boys waiting around to do any little thing she wishes? You could have thought to send a message!”

“You’re right. I should have. I’m so sorry.”

Maron folded his arms across his chest. Still so handsome; he had aged far more gracefully than I. “I’m not sure you are sorry, Gondel. That’s just a word you’re saying because you perceive it’s the time to say it, not something you truly feel. You know what you are? Distant. Inaccessible. Just like your brother.”

I’d been resigned to enduring his lecture because I’d earned one, but that piqued my anger and I raised a finger. “Now that’s not fair, Maron.”

“Not fair because it’s inaccurate? Or not fair because it hurts your feelings?”

“It’s inaccurate. And you know it hurts my feelings.”

“It’s entirely accurate, and it hurts your feelings because you don’t want it to be. But you are driven, Gondel, just like him, to the point where you don’t recognize you’re hurting the people around you.”

Some words, aimed and thrown at the right time, are sharper than steel. Maron’s pierced me, and I had to sit down, tossing my bag onto the desk and sinking into my chair. The very last thing I wanted to be was my brother. But it was true I had become so involved, so single-minded in solving the mystery that Saviič presented, that I hadn’t spared my own husband a thought in all that time.

“You are right,” I murmured, lowering my face into my hand because I couldn’t look at him. “I’ve been inconsiderate and selfish and rude. And, and, I guess, if you were going to leave—well, you should leave. I deserve it. And you deserve better.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I do. But I want you, Gondel. I want you here. I like that you’re driven. I’m glad you love your work. But when you get lost in it, I’m forgotten. I need some attention, too.”

I looked up. “You have all of it now. I truly am sorry, Maron.”

And I was. Because he was so very right. I am far too much like my brother. Even as he kissed me, soft and perfect and evocative of all our years together—largely blissful and joyous, a reminder of how much I loved him—I couldn’t stop thinking about the apocalyptic language of Zanata Sedam and what poison awaited in its pages, fresh new horrors biding their time until I could translate them.

“Of course, we Raelechs and Brynts know only too well that Gondel was right to have misgivings about that text. For even as he was near collapse from exhaustion in the south, the Eculan fleets were arriving on our shores in the north, and the winds filling their sails weren’t peaceful ones.”

Fintan took a deep breath. “Normally I’d continue, but I’ve given you plenty to talk about today, and like Gondel, I have much sleep to catch up on. I’ll rest up and return tomorrow to tell you what happened next in the west!”

Though I hurried home from the wall to indulge in a well-deserved collapse on my cot, Gerstad Nara du Fesset knocked on my door right after I had shed my clothes to groan in privacy over my abdominal wound. I groaned more loudly, outraged that my rest should be disturbed so soon. Having told my body that now it could relax and start healing, I did not want to reverse myself and say, “But right after I answer the door and play host.” But the gerstad knocked again, and I heaved myself out of the bed to answer, calling out to her to be patient while I threw on my tunic. The sun had set, and I had to light a candle in the dark before I could shuffle to the entrance.

“Oh,” I said upon opening the door, blinking in surprise. “Hello, Gerstad. I thought you’d be, uh …” I didn’t know what I thought and trailed off when I saw that she wasn’t alone. The street lamps had been lit, but most of her companion’s features were occluded by the darkness. I could tell little more than that he was a Kaurian dressed in loose-fitting orange and yellow robes. When our eyes met, I received a friendly flash of white teeth and a tight nod but he said nothing. “Would you like to come in?”

“Yes, please.” I stood aside to let them enter and enjoyed their reactions when they saw that my home was nearly empty. To Nara’s credit, she made no comment but waited until I shut the door before introducing her companion.

“Master Dervan, this is Kindin Ladd from the Kaurian embassy. He’s here to protect you.”

“Nice to meet—whoa, what? Protect me?”

“We’ve been sent by the Lung. Hopefully it’s just for one night. Our mariners are stretched thin with other duties, and Kindin was kind enough to volunteer to be your bodyguard on a short-term basis.”

“But—I mean, thank you, I hope I don’t sound ungrateful—I’m merely confused. Why is this necessary, and why would a Kaurian diplomat double as a bodyguard?”

“I am not technically a diplomat,” Kindin said, his voice mellow and measured, but his eyes darted to the gerstad to apologize for interrupting. She nodded at him to continue. “I am a Priest of the Gale. I do serve some low-level functions at the embassy, but I primarily breathe the peace of Reinei and guard the diplomats when they visit.”

“Oh, you’re—” I cut myself short before I said something potentially offensive. I had heard of Priests of the Gale before but never actually met one. They were commonly referred to as Talkers, but never to their faces. And Kindin Ladd, now that I could see him a bit better, had a kind face, possessed of a simple serenity that bespoke of spiritual fulfillment. Broad cheeks and a broad nose, stout and thick-necked, he’d shaven his head and regarded me from heavy-lidded eyes. “Yeah, I’ve heard of you guys before. Welcome. In peace. For sure. But uh, why …?”

Gerstad du Fesset took over, every inch of her taut and strained. “Both Pelenaut Röllend and the Lung were appalled to hear of what happened at the chowder house today. I’m to relay their apologies to you.” After a brief pause, she added, with a hint of moisture in her eyes, “And you have mine as well.”

“Nara, there’s no need—”

She shook her head, cutting me off and plowing ahead. She was internalizing the blame and did not want to hear that she bore no responsibility for the attack. “Toying with the Nentians was a mistake they’re not going to repeat. The Lung did get his man into place as planned, and he has already been contracted by two different Nentian expatriates willing to pay for the Raelech bard’s death. They will be arrested very soon—perhaps even as we speak—and their assets seized.”

“Incredible. They’re still angry with him even though Abhi’s story represents something positive for their country?”

“Yes. Our spies have updated us, and it’s primarily the portrayal of Melishev that has them incensed. One of them is from Hashan Khek and knows Melishev personally. He thinks Melishev has a real shot at becoming their king someday.”

“So to spread goodwill and convince us that Nentians are nothing like Melishev Lohmet, they arrange for someone to be assassinated.”

“Counterproductive in public relations, yes. But Föstyr—I mean the Lung—has concerns that various agents may be engaged already. This friend of Melishev basically got to the docks and put a bounty on Fintan’s head, winner take all. So in an abundance of caution we are taking extreme care of the bard this evening and extending protection to you as well. Once it’s made public tomorrow that the Nentians have been arrested and no one will be getting paid, we should have no more of this sewage.”

“I see.” There was a pause since none of us knew the precise thing to say next. “Uh … would you like some tea?” I offered.

“Thank you, no, I must be going,” the gerstad said, and Kindin Ladd held up a hand and shook his head. “But before I do, how is your wound?”

“Painful but nothing that won’t heal eventually.”

“You should get some rest,” she said.

“Yes, I fear we disturbed you. Not our intention,” Kindin assured me.

The gerstad bid farewell and departed, leaving me there with the Priest of the Gale.

“Please, Master Dervan, return to your rest. If you will just leave me that candle, I will be perfectly content.”

“Oh. You’re sure?” I asked, handing it to him, relieved that I wouldn’t have to play host.

“I’ve already eaten, and I imagine I can get water if I become thirsty.”

“Absolutely. Do make yourself at home.”

“Rest well.”

For a few blissful hours I did just that. Far too exhausted to make any pretense at polite conversation with a stranger, I returned to my cot feeling that it was kind of the Lung to think of me even though it wasn’t necessary.

But something woke me an indeterminate time later; it was utterly dark in the house, no soft glow of a candle coming from the other room. A few quick thumps and grunts could be heard, followed by a heavy impact on the floor, eliciting a cry of pain.

“Shhh, keep your voice down, please,” the low voice of Kindin Ladd said. “Master Dervan is trying to sleep. Now, let’s talk about this in peace.”

“Get off me!” some man replied none too softly.

“I promise I will after we’ve chatted peaceably,” Kindin said, his voice almost a coo. “Let’s lower our voices, please.”