A Plague of Giants

“Why are you here, Olet?” I asked, thinking perhaps that she would be willing to speak to me as Jerin had. She cast a resentful glare at me for drawing her into conversation, then looked away, considering.

“The short answer is because I was ordered to be,” she finally replied, “but the truth is I am here because Jerin and I have fathers who are driven by the kind of fire that would devour the world.” She slid her eyes across to Jerin to see how he took it, and he met her gaze.

“You will hear no argument from me on that. I agree completely.”

Olet stopped rowing, heaving the oar out of the ocean and setting it in its cradle before turning to face him. Jerin did the same.

“Is it your ambition to be Hearthfire of that city someday?”

“No. I’m not particularly disposed to be a Hearthfire at all.”

Olet’s arched eyebrows leapt up. “Have you shared that disposition with your father?”

“No. He doesn’t make a habit of asking me what I want.”

“All right. So what do you want?”

“Will you answer the same question?”

“Sure. You first.”

Jerin hesitated, then sighed. “The truth is I like the idea of starting a new city outside of Hathrir. But I’d like to be doing it legally, not the way my father’s doing it, and I’d like to do it with people from all six nations participating. And I don’t want to be in charge. I just want to help build it, hammer steel, shape glass. Create something new, but not at the expense of others. The problem, of course, is finding a place to make that happen.”

Olet’s mouth opened and then froze that way, stunned. Jerin saw and misinterpreted. “I know it sounds stupid …”

“Did La Mastik—? No.” Olet looked at me, her eyes narrowing. “Did the bard tell you to say that?”

“No,” Jerin and I said in concert. Olet dismissed me and turned back to Jerin.

“Doesn’t it burn you to be manipulated like this? Your father put us on this boat so we’d talk, and now here we are, doing what he wants.”

“Yes, it burns to be manipulated, but I don’t care what he wants. I got to honestly speak my mind just now, and it was refreshing. He might have wanted us to talk, but I’m sure he didn’t want me to say I disagree with his goals.”

“You say you disagree, yet you participated in that slaughter today.”

“Yes, I did. I did indeed. And when was the last time you openly defied your father?”

Olet flinched and looked down, her voice barely audible. “You think because I’m here on this boat with you I’ve never defied him?”

“No. I’m sure you have. And you probably found out, as I did, that however horrible the thing was that he wanted you to do, defying him was worse.”

Olet looked up. “Yes.”

“What happened?”

Her eyes fell away from him, and her voice went flat. “You heard about what my father did four years ago? It was what forced the Hearthfire of Narvik to face him in single combat, made him ruler of two cities.”

“Yes, I remember.”

The giantess sniffed and passed a hand across her pale cheek. “That was because I defied him. I’d been a firelord for three years and serving on some ships as protection, observing that tensions between us and Narvik had been steadily increasing. One day, he told me to sail south with my crew and burn the cargo of just one ship from Narvik, and I refused, thinking of those sailors and merchants and their families at home and how desperate they’d be without that income. It would be heartless, I told him, which I thought would make him explode. I was a fifteen-year-old brat, and that was my rebellion. But his face softened, and he looked so kind, and he said, ‘Oh, no, my sweet daughter, I’m trying to save lives by doing it this way. Can I show you why this is better?’ and I said okay, thinking he would show me something I hadn’t thought of, something outside my experience. And I guess in a way he did. He sailed south with me and was very serious, working out with me precisely what the impact would be if we burned the cargo of one ship, what the impact would be on that ship’s crew and their families, and what the impact would be on Narvik as a whole. ‘I’m glad you’ve taken the time to think this through,’ he said. ‘Proud, in fact. You should always weigh the consequences of your actions ahead of time.’ And then we came upon ten ships—the Narvik Bloodmoon fleet, bringing up all the chipped volcanic glass knives and crystal, plus enchanted firebowls and lamps—the dragon’s share of their economy. He ordered his fury, Pinter Stuken, to set them all on fire, sailors and cargo, and that sick son of a sand badger smiled. His arms just turned to gouts of flame that spanned the distance between ships, and in moments everything aboard was kindled. Two of the ships had lavaborn on them, and they snuffed out the flames on their ships as best they could, but they couldn’t save everyone. So it was eight ships he destroyed and a good portion of the others. Hundreds of sailors and many of Narvik’s most important merchants, gone. Eight times the economic damage I had calculated and just … incalculable damage to the lives of their loved ones.”

Olet sniffed again and shook her head, and this time when tears spilled from her eyes, she let them fall. “And of course I screamed at him to stop; he didn’t have to kill our own people. It was too horrible. That’s when all the kindness and pride left his face and there was nothing left but this ugly, molten rage. He said, ‘Their deaths are absolutely necessary, Olet. In the future, you need to also weigh the consequences of defying me. It will always be a price you never want to pay and certainly a price no one else will want to pay either. I trust you’ll never be so heartless again.’ So—” She splayed her hands wide. “—here we are.”

“I’m so sorry. Yes. Here we are, two kids, adrift on the ocean, who don’t want to grow up to be like their murderous parents.”

“And who can’t escape them.”

“No, we can’t. Well, wait. Why can’t we?” Jerin flicked a finger in my direction. “We’ll drop off the Raelech in Hashan Khek and then just keep sailing north into a life of adventure.”

Olet smiled for the first time, and it transformed her whole person. “You mean two itinerant firelords walking among the tiny people of the world, caramelizing their onions and custard for them?”

“And fetching things off the top shelf. We’d be very helpful like that.”

“I like it. Very heroic.” She beamed at him for another few moments, enjoying the fantasy, before her smile crumpled and the joy leached away. “They’d never let us go. They’d send people after us, and someone would get hurt. Someone innocent.”

“Yes,” Jerin admitted. “I would have struck out already on my own if I thought I could. But I would just be trailing chaos behind me if I did.”

Something shifted in the air between them; I could see it, even feel it. Olet cocked her head to one side, and Jerin leaned back, nostrils flared, as it hit them both at the same time: they were each sitting across from someone who didn’t want them to be a Hearthfire. The same someone who could, perhaps uniquely, understand their problems.

“Are you …?” Olet began, and then she frowned, shaking her head minutely. “Oh, no, no. You’re like him, aren’t you, being all charming, and then later you’ll be a badger hole.”

“What? No. Look, Olet: I’m not your father, and I’m not mine either. It’s okay if you don’t like me, but please make sure it’s really me you don’t like and not someone else.”

They had themselves a staring contest, Jerin projecting earnest sincerity and Olet trying to peel back a mask with her eyes, certain that he was wearing one.

“I have trouble trusting people,” she finally said, “and probably always will have.”

“After what your father did, I can certainly understand why. And I’m not asking you to trust me. Just … reserve judgment, perhaps.”

She nodded once, her eyes boring into his. “Were you aware that your father threatened to bury his axe in La Mastik’s head if she said another word about returning to Hathrir?”

Jerin blinked. “No. But it doesn’t surprise me. He can be ruthless and even callous, as we saw today. But he does have his admirable qualities.”

“Such as? You don’t mean battle, I hope.”

“No. I mean he truly loves my mother. And me, too, I guess, though I didn’t appreciate that until recently. When we first arrived after Mount Thayil erupted, he told me something that I think you might appreciate. He said that if you and I didn’t hit it off, he’d let me out of this arrangement so that I could marry for love.”

Olet’s mouth gaped, and Jerin grinned at her, pointing. “That was my reaction, too! Very surprising. But maybe that will give you some comfort. If you want out, you can rest assured that there won’t be any backdraft from the Mogens.”

She blew out a long breath. “Only an explosion from Winthir Kanek. Thank you, though.”

“Sure. But what do you want, Olet? You promised you’d answer.”

“Oh. Well, it’s an impossible dream. I want to be free of my father, and I don’t want anyone to get hurt because of it.”

“That’s a fine vision for the future. I’d like the same, honestly.”

“And I’ve thought about trying to start a new city elsewhere, too, far away from Hathrir, which is why when you said that, I couldn’t believe it.”

“We have plenty of time to waste talking about it. We can scheme, or we can let the bard do his thing.”

They looked at me for all of one second and chose to scheme. And, unexpectedly, to smoke. Olet had a bag of personal effects and withdrew two glass pipes from it. “Do you partake?” she asked Jerin. I noted that she didn’t ask me.

“Not usually.”

“Neither do I. Only on special occasions. Can’t stand the taste of it. Kind of lingers in the mouth.”

“Indeed it does. But is this a special occasion?”

“Yes. Come on. Spark up with me and I’ll explain. I don’t like to smoke alone.”

“All right.”

Olet pinched some dried, shredded leaves out of a pouch and tamped them into the pipes. Being firelords, they sparked them with a thought, drew in the smoke, and exhaled. They both coughed a bit afterward and grinned at each other.

“Okay. Why are we doing this to ourselves?” Jerin asked.

“It’s not for the fire or the taste or the smell. It’s for the smoke itself.”

“The smoke?”

She took a deep drag and exhaled slowly, withdrawing the pipe and pointing at the cloud birthed from her mouth. “Yes. Look at it curl into the sky, Jerin, each puff of it different and beautiful for a brief ephemeral time, like us, and then it dissipates, out of sight, gone forever and forgotten. Unless we pay attention and remember. That’s what we’re doing. Observing and celebrating this moment before it’s gone. And using fire not to consume but to preserve.” She tapped the side of her head with a free finger. “Preserving this fleeting, smoky moment in our memories.”

“What are we preserving?”

“The revelation that we don’t have to be what our parents want us to be. That someone else agrees with us. A small sliver of perfect accord between the Mogen and Kanek families.”

Jerin stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “Okay,” he said, but must have thought that wasn’t strong enough, because then he added, “Yes. That’s a good reason to smoke. Even if your mouth tastes horrible for days, you know why. You remember.”

“That’s right.”

The two of them were so absorbed in each other that they never saw my jaw drop. Following a morning of screaming death with a quiet smoke on a boat was the last thing I expected that day. Not that I had expected the screaming death either.

I never got to sing or tell them a single story. Instead I had to listen to them daydream about freedom and flirt the whole distance to Hashan Khek.

I offered a prayer of thanks to the Triple Goddess when we finally sailed into port under a flag of parley. The giants delivered me into the hands of a group of soldiers at the docks and pushed off immediately. I was ushered into the viceroy’s presence, where I delivered the bad news and Gorin Mogen’s ultimatum and said nothing about what I had heard at sea. Thinking of what Jerin and Olet might be plotting now that they didn’t have a bard along to listen in, I gave Viceroy Melishev Lohmet at least one advantage over the Hearthfire: he knew he had a problem and where it was coming from.

“The reason that the juggernaut was called back to Rael, of course, was the invasion of the Bone Giants and the loss of the Raelech city Bennelin,” Fintan said upon dismissing the seeming of his armored self. “The Triune Council saw the Bone Giants as a much greater threat than Gorin Mogen and required Tarrech’s presence, for there were still plenty of Bone Giants left in the south of Brynlön, able to strike at us if they wished by skirting the southern edge of the Poet’s Range.”

He pulled out a sphere to imprint and grinned. “As you might expect, the viceroy of Hashan Khek was displeased to receive my report. But let’s save his reaction for later. Shall we catch up with Abhinava Khose and the newly blessed Beast Callers?” Fintan asked.

All during Fintan’s tale the crowd below the wall had continued to grow; the children had been dismissed from school as soon as he began and ran to join their parents and listen to the bard. They roared approval at the suggestion of more Abhi: I saw some little kids in particular jump up and down, clapping their hands.

Hanima was true to her word and took few opportunities to be quiet. Her enthusiasm was infectious, though. She told me what it was like living under the docks by the river. “Nobody wanted me around. I was the stupid dirty girl because my mouth wouldn’t work, so I had nowhere else to go.” For a brief moment, her expression clouded with rage at the memory. She would not forget the treatment she’d suffered, and perhaps there would be occasion to right a wrong done to many people. The cloud cleared away, however, as she thought of her change in fortune. “But now I can talk, and I bet I’ll clean up really nice. Plus there will be a respect bonus now. You know, for being blessed.”

“A respect bonus,” Sudhi said, a grin spreading across his face. “I like the sound of that. I’d like to just get some baseline respect, never mind the bonus.”

“You’re going to get it,” Hanima replied, and stabbed a finger in his direction. “You watch and see. And we deserve it for getting chewed on. We’re, uh … I don’t know. Abhi, what are we again?”

“Beast Callers.”

“That’s right. Beast Callers. Except I don’t know what I’m supposed to call or how to call them yet. Are we going to get our own bloodcats and stalk hawks now?”

I shrugged. “It’s going to be a discovery for me as much as it is for you. I don’t know what to expect.”

We emerged from the nughobe grove where the horses waited undisturbed. They turned their heads as one to look at Adithi, who had been silent as she limped.

“Whoa,” she said. “Why are they staring at me?”

“Ask them.”

“Are you … no. Seriously?”

“Absolutely. I spoke to Murr and Eep, and they followed me.” The horses nickered and approached Adithi. A bemused half smile on her face, she reached out and petted their heads. “They seem to be much more interested in you, though, than my animals were in me.”

“I think I know what they’re feeling or wanting,” Adithi said. “Can you guys feel it?”

“No,” I said, and the others chimed in with the same.

“What do they want?” Sudhi asked.

“Apples. They’re bored with this grass.”

“Don’t horses always want apples?” Hanima said.

“This one says I can ride him!” Adithi said, her hands on the head of a spotted stallion.

“That’s definitely different from me,” I said. “I don’t get any mental communication from Murr or Eep. They understand me but not the other way around.”

“Looks like you figured out the nature of your blessing already,” Sudhi said. “Congratulations.”

“This is the best,” Hanima asserted. “You need a tough title now, like plaguebringer but horsey.”

“Well, what if she can hear more than horses?” Sudhi asked.

Adithi’s smile was wide now, and she had tears leaking down her cheeks. “I’d be happy if this is all I can do.”

“You could be a horsemaster!” Hanima said.

Adithi scoffed. “You mean a horsemistress?”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

We fed the horses apples from my cart, made a camp, and spent the day there, trying to figure out the boundaries of our kenning. Adithi could make herself understood by horses just as I could, but they could “talk” back to her in a sort of fuzzy emotional language of desires. Her broader communication with horses did not extend to other animals, however. When Murr rejoined us from the grove and Eep returned from hunting in the plains, they couldn’t understand her at all like they could me. They didn’t understand Sudhi or Hanima either, and night fell before we could discover what new talents those two might have.

The writhing mass of snakes and eels collected around Sudhi in the morning, however, gave us a fairly decent clue about his affinity.

“Gah! Flesh eels!” Adithi cried. Not the gentlest of good mornings, but that’s how I woke up. And we all scrambled to our feet, including Sudhi, who was staring at a whole lot of reptiles. Instincts and a lifetime of horror stories about flesh eels will get any Nentian off the ground in a hurry when confronted with one.

Except that none of us had to worry about flesh eels anymore, and we realized that after a few seconds of cursing. Our kenning protected us, and I had specifically protected Tamhan as well. Had I not taken care to do so, the eels would have injected their paralyzing poison, gnawed through the skin, and burrowed to the lungs while he still lived until they tore open the lungs to lay their eggs inside. In a couple of days tiny eels would slither up the windpipe and out his mouth and enjoy his face for breakfast. That is, if the lungs weren’t eaten first by blackwings or other scavengers. The eels’ quick gestation period and the ravenous hunger of the plains scavengers always made it a race.

“Go away!” Sudhi said to the mass of reptiles. He flipped his hands at the wrist to banish them, as if such a human gesture would be recognizable to snakes, but they began to disperse and slither off into the grass. The flesh eels obeyed as well. The significance sank in, and Sudhi turned to me, his jaw slack. “Snakes do what I say now?”

I shrugged. “Looks like maybe they do. Call one back to wrap around your arm; see what happens.”

“But I don’t even like snakes.”

“Maybe they’ll grow on you.”

“Or slither on you,” Hanima said. “Slither slither slither—”

“Shut up.”

“Nope, I’m never shutting up again. They’ll flick those little forked tongues in your ear, all tickly—”

“Ugh. If they do what I say, they won’t be doing that.”

“What’s your title going to be, Sudhi? Serpentlord? Snakemaster?” Hanima snapped her fingers. “Ooh! How about an ‘eel wizard’?”

He shook his head. “Not cool enough. I don’t even know if this is it or not. But if it is? I think I’d prefer to be called a charmer.”

“Oh, that’s good, Sudhi,” Adithi said. “I like it.”

“You should talk to them, see what you can do,” I suggested.

Sudhi called a wheaten constrictor to him and had it coil up on his right. There was a bulge in its abdomen where it was still digesting something. On his left coiled a kholeshar, the most poisonous serpent in the world.

“Somehow I don’t think anyone will tease me about my hairstyle anymore,” he said, and we grinned at him.

“This is the best,” Hanima said. “Wish I knew what I was, though. Kind of weird that I’ve felt nothing so far. Maybe I have some kind of talent with fish and there aren’t any around here. Or maybe some animals that aren’t technically Nentian. Like some of those freaky creatures that live in the Gravewood. Oh! What if I could talk to gravemaws? Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “We could explore the Gravewood without fear. Who knows what’s in there? I’ll bet there are animals humans have never seen before or at least creatures no one has lived to tell about.”

“You’re right,” Sudhi said. “There is so much we can do now.”

“It’s true freedom, isn’t it?” Adithi said. “I can get on my horse and go anywhere and not have to worry.”

And during our breakfast of oats and apples, which we shared with the horses, a bee landed on Hanima’s arm and did a frenetic little dance.

“Huh,” she said, casually regarding it as she bit into her apple. “There’s a hive back there in the nughobes about a hundred lengths from the bloodcat nest.” She looked up to find us staring at her, wide-eyed, and then her eyes popped open as well. “Hey! How’d I know that? That’s my thing, isn’t it? Bees! I know what they’re saying! Where they are! I’m a, uh … I’m a hivemaster! Yeah!”

“Hivemistress,” Adithi corrected her.

“Whatever! That! Yes, that! You know what this is?”

“Is it … the best?” Sudhi ventured.

“Yes! Exactly! This is the best! You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because if someone wants to mess with me, I’ll be able to say, ‘Step back, man, or I am going to throw bees in your face!’”

“What? Why would you throw them?”

“Well, I will urge them to fly faceward, okay? Don’t pick at my words, Sudhi; I’m all excited! I have a thing now. Bees are my thing. But not just bees!”

“What?”

“I can sense other hives,” she said, her hands freezing in the air and her eyes closing. “Ants. Termites. Burrow wasps. All near here.”

I stretched out with the senses of my kenning, seeking those specific creatures, and found the ants and burrow wasps at the limits of my range. “Where are the termites?” I asked.

“Three leagues to the south. The other side of the nughobes.” That was a much greater distance than I could sense, as was the beehive. Hanima’s affinity granted her far more sensitivity.

“What about other insects?” I asked. Can you sense them? Or spiders?”

Hanima paused and shut her eyes tight, trying to find them. “No,” she finally said. “Just the kind with queens.”

“Think of what we could do,” Adithi said, her face glowing. “Charmers could have serpents keep fields free of shrews and voles. A hivemistress like Hanima could make crops more fruitful.”

Tamhan, who’d been quiet to this point, snorted softly and said, “That won’t be the first thing the viceroy will think of.”

Adithi frowned. “What will he think of?”

“First, he will think of how you threaten his power. He will look at his lost cavalry and say you’re too dangerous to live. He’ll think of how Sudhi could send that kholeshar or a flesh eel into his bedchamber at night and end his life. And so he’ll seek to control you if he can, and if he can’t, he’ll try to kill you and then get others blessed by the Sixth Kenning that he can control.”

“Stop being a storm cloud, Tamhan,” Hanima said.

“I know it’s unpleasant, but we need to think about this. Do you even want to return to Khul Bashab? You don’t have to. You can go anywhere.”

They all wanted to return, which disappointed but did not surprise me.

“I can’t go back myself,” I said, “because I killed those cavalrymen and I don’t want to be under the viceroy’s control. But you owe it to yourselves to think about what he will want from you once you submit to him.”

Sudhi’s lip curled. “I don’t want to submit. That’s a terrible idea.”

“It will be that or die, Sudhi,” Tamhan said. “He won’t have it any other way. So once you submit, what will he want you to do? Follow his orders. And you might not like them.”

“What kind of orders do you mean?” he said.

“Well, he’ll ask you to tame wild horses and put bridles on them, Adithi, so he’ll have more cavalry. You’ll be attached to the cavalry and have a military role. I can guarantee it.”

She scowled, and Tamhan continued. “Hanima, you’ll be his leverage against farmers.”

“What? How?”

“If farmers don’t pay enough tax or plant what he wants, you’ll keep bees from visiting their crops.”

“No, I won’t! That’s evil.”

“He would say it’s good government. He’ll think of some way to exploit you that will increase his power at the expense of others. And Sudhi, you’ll be an assassin.”

“No way. I’m not killing anyone.”

“Not you. Your snakes.”

“That’s disgusting, and I would never do it. If I did that even once, then charmers would be viewed as spies and assassins forever.”

“He’s not going to worry about that. In his eyes you are resources to be used. And not just his eyes—this is how we’ll be seen by any government official. We either serve them or must be eliminated.”

“Where are you getting these ideas? They’re horrifying,” Adithi said.

“They’re not ideas. They’re educated guesses. Leaders will do almost anything to hold on to their position. It’s what makes them smile in the morning, the idea that they’re the boss of everything they can see under the sky. If you can help them, they will use you; if you threaten them, they will throw you to the wheat dogs. Since you are a threat but also of potential use, they’ll try to control you. That’s how it is in all the other countries.”

Sudhi pointed out, “The blessed are sometimes in charge. The pelenaut of Brynlön is a tidal mariner. The mistral of Kauria is a cyclone.”

“But they are elected and still serve the government. They are still controlled by the responsibilities of office. They’re not retiring to a quiet life of gardening and grumbling about the weather.”

“Well, I could have one glorious garden now,” Hanima said, “but I don’t want to keep this to myself. I want to change things.”

“There has to be a third option,” Adithi insisted. “A way that we can help people as we wish without the government controlling our lives.”

“I agree that there should be,” Tamhan said, nodding. “But look at every other country with a kenning. Almost without exception, the blessed serve the government’s interests in some way. Especially those with the greatest powers. They are immediately conscripted into military service. The Raelech juggernauts, the Fornish greensleeves, the Hathrim furies—”

“But there are exceptions?” Hanima asked.

“There are those who serve in helpful roles but are still technically under the government’s control. The hygienists in Brynlön who clean water and wounds and cure disease. The stonecutters in Rael who build walls and so on.”

Adithi brightened. “My father is in a clave; he’s a tanner. Clave members get paid better for their work, and the government likes it because they pay taxes regularly. And of course the government uses them when it needs something, too, but I don’t think the government can force the clave to do something against its own interests. Why don’t we form a Beast Callers clave? Anyone can employ our services, and we retain the right to refuse work we don’t want to do.”

Sudhi and Hanima liked that idea and Tamhan had no objections, so I encouraged them to try. “Apply to the viceroy and see what happens.”

“Or simply announce it to as many people as possible so that the government has to acknowledge us,” Adithi offered.

“Count me in,” I said, “though only as a member, not an officer.”

Tamhan said, “I’d make sure you have a charter that clearly defines what the government can and cannot order you to do. And it will have to be signed by the king eventually. I would get legal advice. Move cautiously when you get to town. Hide, in fact. And if they ask—actually, even if they don’t ask—tell the truth about what happened. The viceroy’s cavalry killed Madhep, not you, and then they were going to cover it up by killing us all. Abhi acted purely in self-defense.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever come out again if I enter that city now,” I said. “Not until I get some guarantees of safety.”

They fell silent, and after a few moments Tamhan nodded. “You’re probably right; you shouldn’t go back now. What will you do?”

“I was thinking of following the Banighel River down to the ocean, but isn’t the viceroy at Batana Mar Din a cousin or something of Bhamet Senesh?” They confirmed this. “I won’t find a sympathetic ear there, then. Maybe the viceroy at Hashan Khek will be more open to working with me. And if not, I’ll simply live outside the cities as a free man. Maybe explore the Gravewood like Sudhi said.”

“How will you live, though?” Hanima asked.

“I’ve been thinking of it. I would modify my hunting skills. When grass pumas or wheat dogs take down something with a pelt—or when Murr does—I will step in after the kill and take the hide to sell, then let them eat. No waste and no death on my head, and I will have income to buy grain and apples in the cities. And what if we could establish a solid trade route between Hashan Khek and Khul Bashab? It’s not a new idea. There’s an old road going south from Khul Bashab to the Khek River, but no one really uses it because it’s too dangerous. Beast Callers would change that. We’d protect caravans from animals; the merchants pay me less than they would for river transport, and there’s no risk of bandits on the plains for them. I think I’d do very well.”

“Okay,” Hanima said. “I think it’s good that we all have a plan. Start the clave and grow it. Improve lives in Ghurana Nent. And in the process we will allow our country to enjoy the same freedoms as the other nations.”

“One more thing,” I said. “Protect animals as well.”

“Murr,” my bloodcat said, and nodded his head in agreement. He hadn’t understood the rest of the conversation, but he’d understood that.

Planning continued as we traveled north. Tamhan was quite animated as he thought aloud about how the country could, should, and would change with the Sixth Kenning. And more than the country—the whole world would be different. His excitement was contagious and we were all smiling, listening to him build us up as future legends. By the time we saw the walls of Khul Bashab, we had a rough outline of a clave in mind and a list of projects we wanted to work on. Recruitment would be put on hold until the source of the kenning moved somewhere away from the spiders, though. We didn’t think anyone would want to try that, and we didn’t want to watch regardless.

Sudhi adopted the kholeshar viper, which draped itself around his shoulders and neck and slept most of the time, but its bright green and yellow skin gave off a clear warning of danger against Sudhi’s warm brown complexion, and it also matched the yellow stripe of his hair. Hanima, meanwhile, acquired a small swarm of bees that trailed after her and buzzed over her head in a cloud, including a young queen. “I’ll get them a hive as soon as I get into town,” she said. “Something I can take with me if necessary.”

We parted ways well outside the vision of the guards on the wall. Adithi gave me an extra horse in addition to the one I had pulling my cart, and she would take the rest with her and return them to the viceroy’s stables, though she hoped that she would be able to keep the spotted stallion for herself.

“When I get to Hashan Khek,” I said, “I’ll send word where you can find me. To Tamhan, I mean.”

They each thanked me, and Tamhan hung back to say farewell. He opened his arms and embraced me, and I felt like I belonged there. A scant count to three, but it was perfection. When he pulled back, he kept his hands on top of my shoulders and spoke to my eyes. “Thank you for coming to me. For letting me be a part of this.”

“Thank you for the many kindnesses.”

“Nonsense. You will be safe and I will see you again, yes?”

“I hope so. Yes.”

“I feel we should have been friends long before this,” he said, and my throat closed up and all I could do was nod. “We will make up for lost time later. May Kalaad smile down upon you, Abhi.”

“And you, Tamhan,” I said, giving him a tight grin and a nod, letting my hands fall from him as he did the same. I’d been dwelling on the fact that when that captain had shot at me, it wasn’t just Madhep who had stepped in front of the bolt. Tamhan had stepped in, too. Perhaps he felt as I did for him, or perhaps he merely had the heart of a hero. But it wasn’t the time to ask.

Our eyes lingered on each other for an uncountable span, and then they fell away. He turned to join the others, they all waved, and I turned away in case my face showed how much I didn’t want to be alone then.

I mounted the extra horse, and Murr and Eep followed along as I searched for the old trade road heading south. I found it after a few minutes, and through the dull ache of loneliness I felt the smallest kernel of hope for the future. Perhaps with our concerted efforts we’d be able to make life better for all Nentians. But for all the wonder of the kenning, I’d give it all up in an instant if I could have my family back.

“More from Abhi in a few days!” the bard promised. “Here’s someone you ought to recognize.”

He threw down a seeming sphere, and the form of Second Könstad Tallynd du Böll emerged. I watched the faces of the crowd and saw their expressions light up with glee upon her appearance. They hadn’t heard from her directly since his first day on the wall. Applause erupted before Fintan said another word. He let it wash over him for a while, knowing it was for the Second Könstad as much as for him, then held up his hands to quiet them and let Tallynd speak.

When I surfaced near the docks at Gönerled, the smell of rot made me gag and I had to dive back underwater, take a clean filtered breath, then rise again, holding my nose. There was nothing alive except blackwings feeding on the dead. My sister lay among them somewhere, along with her family. I longed to find her if I could and return her to the sea, giving her a gentle farewell after the violence she suffered. But she would have to wait with all the others. My mission was to scout the enemy, destroy small targets where I could, and note what needed to be done in the fallen cities should we be victorious.

The note taking was quite literal: I had a waterproof satchel with writing materials, food, and fresh water inside. Pulling myself up onto the docks and wicking away the moisture from my clothing, I performed the quickest survey possible: No watchers on the walls, gates wide open, bodies everywhere, even in the wells. Structures all intact. Like Festwyf, Gönerled could be scoured and lived in again if people could bear the feeling of being haunted.

On to Göfyrd, moving at the top speed I could manage without strain, where there were most definitely sentries on the walls. The Bone Giants had decided to stay there, no doubt because of the rich food stores, and strategically it posed a problem for us. They could strike at Pelemyn, Tömerhil, or Setyrön from there. If we struck at them, we would leave our cities open to counterattack, and we didn’t have ten thousand soldiers to throw at the walls anyway.

I spent the night in Setyrön, exhausted from the travel and the emotional wear, confirming for their quartermaster that Göfyrd was occupied and delivering some messages from the pelenaut and the Lung.

He told me that Möllerud was abandoned like Gönerled and he had approved an expedition of mariners, merchants, and citizens to head down there, scuttle the Bone Giant fleet, and begin cleaning up the city. I wearily noted after the next morning’s journey that the city was indeed abandoned and ready for cleanup. There was only the Bone Giant ships anchored in the harbor and blackwings circling above. From there I sleeved myself to Hillegöm, where I assumed I’d find the army that had landed at Möllerud. And by midafternoon, I did find them, but they were not inside the walls.

They were walking—not marching, not in formation, but simply strolling—along the coastal road from Hillegöm to Möllerud. I had come upon them as they were leaving the city. No one was watching on the walls. They had left the gates open, and they had scuttled all the Brynt ships in the harbor, their masts only peeking above the surface of the water.

There were … I don’t know how many. More than I could count. All tall, pale, and dressed in clacking bones. Some with swords, some with spears—the tools they had used to slay the people of Möllerud and Hillegöm. Looking at them from the shallows, below their actual feet, all I could see was the first rank or so. There could be untold ranks behind them. Brynt cargo carts heaped high with plundered grain and other goods rolled in the middle of the column. But near the back, there was one pale giant who was unarmed and adorned in a different fashion. The skin of his torso bore swirled patterns of dark ink, and he wore no bones except for thin hollow ones strung in three levels around his neck. Unlike all the others, he had a beard, the sort one might see only on the most eccentric Hathrim. He had twirled, waxed, or somehow shaped tufts of it into pointed spikes that radiated from his face, as if his jaw were the bottom half of a child’s drawing of the sun. Instead of basic strips of cloth around his groin and flimsy sandals on his feet, he had cloth pants and boots. And most important, he was reading something. Not a book or a single piece of paper but a sheaf of them, and there were more sticking out of a cloth bag he had slung over his shoulder. Plans? Messages? Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be poetry. It was much more likely to be information we could use. And even if we couldn’t read their language, denying them their information was a sound strategy, and this particular giant was most likely one of their leaders. Everything about his appearance spoke of status even if the markers were strange to my eyes.

I had a glass knife. They had swords and spears and arms that were half again as long as mine, plus bodies that weren’t slowing and breaking down. Combat wasn’t an option, even at one-to-one odds, much less one-to-hundreds or thousands. But the Lord of the Deep had given me a kenning and now an opportunity not only to avenge my people but perhaps learn something that would help rid us of this scourge.

I sleeved myself quietly through the water, keeping only my eyes above the surface. They weren’t even looking my way, their eyes on the path or on the giants in front of them. They thought themselves safe from attack. Any other day they’d be justified in thinking that.

To secure the papers I’d have to go ashore. I’d be vulnerable there, so to avoid being surrounded, I began my work at the back while I was still largely submerged. I targeted ten giants, all I could easily keep in view, and used my kenning to pull the water in their heads toward me by the width of a thumb. No screaming, no pain, just a fatal hemorrhage in the brain. Not fair, not sporting, just war, like they waged against us, using every advantage they had in size, reach, and numbers. And definitely not murder: no, just my duty.

The bones they wore rattled as they collapsed, causing the giants in front of them to turn around and see their bodies just before I scrambled their brains as well. And when they fell, that drew the attention of the leader. He was in the next group of ten, but I paused before continuing. I wanted him, at least, to see who was responsible, to see that a Brynt woman would be the end of him. So I dropped my feet, found the sand of the bay, and stood up, calling out to him. He didn’t hear me at first over the tide, but someone else did and got his attention, pointing to me as I emerged from the ocean. And as soon as his eyes lighted on me, I shot out my hand toward him, an unnecessary gesture except to communicate that I was doing something, and then I pulled the water from his head much more forcefully so that his eyeballs exploded and blood and brains gouted out of the sockets.

His surrounding soldiers gasped once, and then they fell, too, ten at a time, as I rushed the shore and cleared a space for me to secure those documents. I opened my waterproof satchel as I left the surf and saw that the army was a truly huge one. There were not hundreds but thousands. My mouth dried up as I absorbed the odds of survival and instinct screamed at me to turn back now, take the death of a field commander, and call it victory. The only thing I had in my favor was surprise and perhaps, bizarrely, my comparatively small stature. None of the giants more than a rank or two back could see me over the heads and shoulders of their brothers. And in the time that it took them to turn, see that the people behind them had fallen, and look around for danger, it was already upon them, and they fell, too.

But cries of alarm spread up the column faster than I could work, and as I reached the leader and knelt down beside him, long, bony fingers were pointing in my direction and conclusions were being reached: The short woman who came from the sea must somehow be responsible for sixty—no, seventy!—dead giants! Kill her! At least that’s what my imagination supplied to match their foreign words.

A rank of them took two steps, raising weapons, before I exploded their brains. A stab of pain shot between my eyes after that; I was pushing myself too hard now, aging with each new effort.

The fallen bearded officer or whatever he was smelled horrible already; it was too soon to be decay, so he must have polluted the air as part of his daily existence. Did these savages never bathe?

I had to push him over onto his back since he had fallen on top of the papers. Grunting with the effort, I looked up as I worked and put down two more groups of ten giants charging in my direction. That gave the rest of them pause, and there was some discussion on how to proceed. I took advantage and scooped up all the papers I could, cramming them into my satchel. I even reached into his tattered cloth bag and pulled out more, shoving them into my satchel and sealing it as the Bone Giants decided that spears might work and hurled a bunch in my direction.

Scrambling away from the body in a panicked crab walk on all fours, I avoided most of them. One sheared through the skin on the inside of my right calf, and another sank through the top of my left foot, pinning me to the beach. The rest thudded into the body of their leader or around it. I screamed and yanked out the spear, closing my eyes as I did so, and when I opened them, I saw a group of giants behind the foremost preparing to send another volley my way, since the first had enjoyed some success. Gritting my teeth, I pushed the water in their heads hard, disrupting their throws as they fell backward, already dead. My skull throbbed every bit as much as my foot after that, but I pushed myself up onto my right leg, testing the calf, and though it stung, it still functioned well enough. I purposely did not look at my left foot, fearing I’d faint if I saw the wound. I hopped on my right foot experimentally, holding my left foot off the ground with a bent knee, and when I didn’t crash to the ground, I lunged toward the sea.

The mob of giants rippled and flowed in my direction, a roar building among them as it sank in that a single woman had killed more than a hundred of them, had stolen their leader’s writings, and was both wounded and trying to escape.

In furtive glances over my shoulder, I looked for the ones with spears and pushed the water in their skulls away and let the ones with swords come on. They had some ground to cover and they would cover it pretty quickly, but not as quickly as a thrown spear. Once they closed the distance, I figured the spears wouldn’t keep coming for fear of hitting their own men—and their stature would hide me from the view of others, perhaps.

Whooshing sounds, gritty impacts, and blurs in my vision told me that I didn’t get all the spear throwers, but the distance and my convulsive movements made me a difficult target. The distance to the ocean would not seem so long had I two working legs, but it yawned like the abyss when I could only hop and the giants could take huge, ground-eating strides at full speed.

When I looked over my shoulder again, having made the beach, I could not see any more giants with spears; presumably they could not see me either, because my entire vision was filled with a phalanx of the skeletal figures with their swords raised, ready to cut me down. The shoulder of the nearest one bunched, his skull face snarled, and I dropped to the ground on my right side as he swung, realizing that I was already within his inhuman reach, and a line of searing pain scorched my left side as the blade sliced down my ribs. But I rolled and shoved the water of their bodies away from me, and they collapsed. Rather than try to get up, I just kept rolling into the surf, as it allowed me to get a view of my pursuers and take a few out with each revolution.

Once I hit the water and the salt stung my wounds, I sleeved myself out to sea with all speed, hearing spears plunk into the surf behind me. As soon as I felt safe enough to do so, I surfaced and checked the seal on my satchel. It was sound, and the papers within were protected. Now all I had to do was survive my trip back. Leaking blood into the water would draw predators before long. And if I passed out from blood loss, well, it wouldn’t matter that I couldn’t drown. Something would eat me before I woke up.

I sleeved myself to the west, past the cold dead walls of Hillegöm and heading toward the Raelech city of Bennelin, which also had been lost to the Bone Giants. I figured it would be a safe place to see to my wounds, since the Bone Giants were heading in the opposite direction. I simply needed to give myself some space.

Crawling out onto the beach but not far from the tide, I faced the east in case any Bone Giants came running along in search of me. Then I took several deep breaths and forced myself to look at my foot, which was beginning to hurt unbearably now that the shock had worn off somewhat. There was definitely a hole there; I could see the sand through the top of my foot. I wouldn’t be able to walk without a cane or crutch for a while and might never walk normally again. Blood was pumping out of it still, and I was beginning to feel light-headed. Concentrating, I used my kenning to stop the flow and trusted that my system would catch up soon enough and close the blood vessels without magical aid. I did the same for the vessels along my side and my calf. That would prevent death by blood loss, at least, but infection was still a real possibility. I’d need a hygienist to do that, and the nearest reliable one was in Setyrön.

Unready to begin the journey and desperate to find a distraction from the pain, I pulled out the papers from my satchel and took a look at what I had stolen.

It was all gibberish. Completely unreadable. It looked like the Bone Giants used letters in their writing system that we never used. I doubted anyone could read it at all; I might have risked everything and permanently injured myself for nothing.

Well, not for nothing. At least that army lacked a leader now. And more than a hundred of them would never strike at a Brynt again.

Sealing the papers away, I rolled back into the sea and began the journey back to Setyrön, keeping to the shallows to avoid large predators but remaining underwater as I passed the Bone Giant army. I didn’t reach Setyrön until well after dark, and the hygienist gave me some Fornish tea as she set to work purging my blood of impurities and doing what she could to set the bones back in place.

I sent a report to the quartermaster saying that the enemy was returning to Möllerud and he shouldn’t let that expedition depart, but he showed up in person at the barracks to question me about it.

“Are you positive they’re heading for Möllerud?” he said, frowning at me.

“Absolutely certain. The hole in my foot bears witness.”

“Bryn preserve us.”

“What’s the problem? Just keep that expedition you approved … here.” I blinked, feeling incredibly tired.

“No, you misunderstood what I said,” the quartermaster growled. “That expedition already left. Two days ago.”

“What? You have to get them back here!”

“I’ll send out riders, of course. But they’ll be two days behind.”

“Well then, shend out shome rapids!” I said, wondering why my speech sounded so strange. “Or I’ll go myshelf!”

“You’re not going anywhere,” the hygienist said. “That Fornish tea I gave you was a sedative, and you’ll be sleeping for a while.”

“Don’t worry,” the quartermaster said. “We’ll take care of it. Rest.”

And so, having no other choice, I rested.

Fintan bade everyone a good evening after that and reminded them that the Second Könstad was fine except for a limp now. “And no gift baskets!” he chided them. “The pelenaut already took care of that!”

May Bryn drown the next person who interrupts my morning toast.

I should make a habit of checking the door before I try to eat, because once again a loud knock at my door sent my breakfast facedown to the tile. Beyond annoyed, I shouted, “Who is it now?”

An accented and aggrieved voice replied, “Jasindur Torghala, Nentian ambassador to Brynlön. I must speak with you.”

After our recent troubles there was no way I’d open my door to a Nentian. “I think you must be mistaken. I have no business with Ghurana Nent.”

“I assure you that you do, so long as you be Scholar Dervan du Alöbar. Are you not he?”

“I am, but this isn’t a good time. I’ll contact you later at my convenience.”

“My business is urgent, sir. I need to speak to you right away.”

“Apologies, Ambassador, but I am not obligated to share your sense of urgency. Good day.”

Someone—either the ambassador or someone with him—abandoned the brisk knock the ambassador had employed earlier and switched to an angry pounding of my door, a clear signal that they had not come on pleasant business. “We must speak with you immediately!”

If they could break through that door with all the locks on it, then I’d speak to them, all right. I went to fetch my rapier and put on my mail shirt while they continued to hammer at my home and demand that I speak with them. Armed and protected, I returned to the living area and wondered how long it would take them to tire of knocking.

It stopped abruptly when a new voice called to them, faintly heard but plainly angry. I drew closer to the door and cocked my ear to hear the exchange better. The surly voice of the ambassador was saying, “We must speak with him regarding the representation of Ghurana Nent in his records.”

“What records?” came the reply. It was the voice of Föstyr du Bertrum, the pelenaut’s Lung. “You can’t go around bothering private citizens like this.”

“He is hardly a private citizen! He is in your government’s employ, and as such we may speak with him. He kept records for the pelenaut and is now keeping a record of the bard’s tales.”

“So what if he is?”

“So it is bad enough that the bard is allowed to spread these lies every day about our country to your people, but it is an insult of the highest order to allow them to be written down as if they were history! As if they were factual!”

I supposed my involvement in the project was no secret. The pelenaut had, after all, proclaimed it to the court on the day the bard arrived. I thought it strange that it took the Nentians so long to figure it out, though, or anyway that they would get incensed enough about it now to accost me at home rather than complain through the proper channels. Obviously Föstyr had expected something of the kind and had been keeping a close eye on them if he happened to be near enough to intervene.

“An insult of the highest order?” the Lung said. “The bard’s performance and its recording are by the order of Pelenaut Röllend. So your position is that the pelenaut has ordered an official insult to Ghurana Nent?”

“It is! This has gone too far!”

“Hmm. We will see precisely how far it has gone. Would you like to repeat these sentiments to the pelenaut himself?”

There was the briefest of pauses, but the ambassador must have decided that backing down would be poor form and label him as a blustery gasbag. “I would, yes.”

“Very well. He shall be fetched to this very spot. Please wait here.”

“Here? In the street?”

“You saw fit to start this in the street, so it will be finished here as well.”

“No, that’s not necessary.”

“The ‘highest order,’ you said. Your complaint therefore trumps all other concerns, and we must not quibble about keeping the pelenaut’s appointments.”

Föstyr sent someone away to the palace, and then the Nentian ambassador began to speak to him in more hushed tones that I couldn’t make out. Already regretting his decision, I bet. There wasn’t a leader in the world who would appreciate being summoned away from his throne to deal with the tantrum of a foreign ambassador. Besides, Rölly was legendary for winning street fights of any kind, and Föstyr had cast the situation so that the ambassador was essentially calling out the pelenaut for a brawl, albeit a verbal one. Oh, this was going to be good. I put on a kettle to boil for another pot of tea while we waited for Rölly to arrive, cleaned up my fallen toast, and made myself a new piece. Tea and toast in hand, I crept to the window and peered through it to see if I could spy them.

The Lung was there in the street but pointedly not looking at any of the Nentians standing next to him. One of them, who I assumed must be Ambassador Jasindur Torghala, was talking to him earnestly, but the ambassador might as well have been a stump for all the Lung cared. They had moved across the street to stand in front of Dame du Marröd’s house, an idea I would wager was Föstyr’s. I’d have to go outside if I wanted to hear anything more. Happily, they were all so focused on the Lung that I could probably sneak out without them seeing me.

Nentian fashion was a little bolder than Brynt tastes; I liked it but doubted I could pull it off. Supposedly a Nentian’s boots were analogous to a Raelech’s Jereh band, in that they conveyed quite a bit of information about who was wearing them. Ambassador Torghala wore boots made of soft, supple khernhide with a stripe of kholesharhide inlaid along the top of the foot. Simple but wildly expensive and pretentious. Don’t mess with me, his boots said, for I am wearing the skin of the world’s deadliest serpent. Or maybe they said, Behold, I’m an arrogant ass. Or both.

But he still quaked in those boots when he saw Pelenaut Röllend approaching in a phalanx of mariners. That was my cue to step outside with my tea and toast. I didn’t want to miss a word.

No one saw me walk right out and cross the street. The Lung and the Nentians had their eyes locked on the pelenaut’s party and vice versa. I was the only one grinning. I casually took up a position behind the Nentians and sipped at my tea.

The mariners spread out a bit to give the pelenaut some room while protecting him, though in truth he wasn’t in much danger. The water of all their bodies belonged to him if he wanted to call it forth. Ranged weapons could take him down, however, so his bodyguards had large shields and scanned the area for snipers.

“Ambassador Torghala,” the pelenaut said. “I’m told that I’ve given your country an insult of the highest order.”

“Yes, sir. This recording of the bard’s tale must be destroyed. He continues to lie and defame our nation almost daily, and to have such a performance preserved and written down as if it were history is offensive and irresponsible.”

“I disagree. The bard has been tremendously accurate regarding everything we can easily confirm here. There is no reason to believe he’s being false elsewhere in his tale, especially since that would betray his duty to the poet goddess.”

“There is every reason to believe it! He’s accurate regarding Brynt matters precisely because you can check his facts and you are his host! Meanwhile he fabricates scandalous behavior about Nentians and paints one of our viceroys as a murderer!”

“Interesting. Do you think that he is also fabricating the clan squabbles of Forn? Or that he is sugarcoating the behavior of Gorin Mogen, who did, in fact, invade your country?”

“I cannot speak to those. But the Nentian portions of his tale are despicable falsehoods.”

“Do you offer any proof of this beyond your word?”

“My word is much better than his!”

“I disagree,” the pelenaut said in a flat voice. No qualifiers, no subtlety. Rölly told the ambassador that his word was held in less regard than that of a man the ambassador had just accused of being a liar. Silence fell for a moment except I crunched into my breakfast, rapt.

“So it’s personal insults now, too,” Torghala said. “You’ve been dismissive of our concerns from the beginning. And you recalled all your hygienists some months ago, thereby condemning our people to die of diesease. I see what you think of us.” I nearly choked on my toast. Torghala had just made himself toast whether he realized it yet or not. Rölly’s expression roiled from mild annoyance to barely controlled rage.

“I recalled hygienists from the entire world. We have a severe health crisis here right now far beyond any that might be afflicting Ghurana Nent, and Brynts’ first loyalty must be to the land that blessed them. Gerstad.”

One of the mariners stiffened. “Yes, sir?”

“Take the ambassador into custody—but gently, and with utmost respect. March him down to the docks and put him and his entourage here on the first ship to Rael at my expense.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What?” Torghala spluttered as the mariners moved to either side of him.

“You have made yourself an unwelcome guest by suggesting that I am murdering your people when I’m trying to save my own. Ghurana Nent can send another ambassador—or not—at its leisure.”

“No, I never made such a suggestion! You misunderstood me.”

“I don’t think so. Gerstad, take him away now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jasindur Torghala, an ambassador no more, shouted that this was outrageous, he’d said nothing improper, the pelenaut was acting out of all proportion, there would be dire consequences, and so on, as he was prodded forward by the mariners. Rölly gave the Lung a tight grin and a nod. “See to the details, will you?”

“I shall,” Föstyr replied with a small bow, and then he trailed after the mariners, leaving me there alone with my tea and half-eaten toast staring at my old friend. He saw me for the first time and started.

“Dervan! Have you been there all this while? I’m sorry you were disturbed.”

“No, that was fabulous,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Not at all. We knew Torghala would overstep eventually.” Rölly closed the distance between us and clapped me on the shoulder.

“Why’d he wait until now to complain about the manuscript, do you think?” I asked.

“He was taking far too long discovering the information for himself, so one of Föstyr’s lads made sure he found out last night.”

My chin dropped and pulled my mouth wide open. “You wanted him to do that?”

“We didn’t know how precisely he’d respond, but we knew he’d be upset and do something stupid. Worked out pretty well. I needed to get rid of him because I’ve gotten reports that he might be a source of renewed attacks against the bard, and I also don’t need him reporting to the king what’s being said about his various viceroys. Not that they’ve had any contact since the invasions began. Regardless, I have a feeling the story will only get worse in their eyes, and I’m tired of it.”

“Bones in the abyss,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know how you think of all this.”

“Flow studies,” he said. “Water always finds a way through. The path may twist and fall over rocks, but it gets there. You just have to be willing to navigate the currents.”

I nodded, not knowing how to respond except with the standard politeness: “Would you like to come in for some tea?”

“No, thank you. I have to get back to the palace. But I’m glad I got to see you this morning; that was a pleasant surprise. Be well, Dervan.”

“You, too, Rölly.”

He strode back toward the palace unaccompanied as if he were an ordinary citizen and not the leader of the country. People were too occupied with their thoughts or errands to worry about who else was walking along the street. They paid him no mind. He wasn’t wearing a crown or anything especially fancy that day, and without an escort of guards to signal that he was someone important, he blended in.

It gave me hope, seeing that. Everybody was getting to work. It was time for me to do the same. I ducked back inside and wrote a letter to the chief scholar of the university, inquiring whether there might be a position for me when the new semester began.

I still felt braced for work when I met Fintan for lunch. It was in the only restaurant of its kind, a Hathrim establishment where the chef and bartender were a married couple of sparkers living far, far away from the source of the First Kenning. They used their talents to create gourmet fare: perfectly cooked food and alcoholic beverages set on fire. The ceilings were ridiculously high and the doorways quite wide, but the actual servers were Brynts in their employ. We had bladefin steaks in a salted orange demi-glace and some flash-grilled southern vegetables that must have just arrived from Forn or Kauria.

Our server must have told the owners that the bard was in the house, for after the lunch rush had passed, they both came out and loomed over us, grinning.

“Hello,” said the Hathrim woman, who was dressed in a huge kitchen apron smeared with a few sauces. “I’m Hollit, and this is my husband, Orden.” She was probably eleven feet tall, and he had maybe half a foot on her. “Are you the Raelech bard, sir?”

“Yes. Thank you for your work; it was delicious.”

They beamed. “I’m glad to hear it,” Hollit said. “And the admiration is mutual. We are very much enjoying your work.”

Fintan gave them a wry smile. “You’re enjoying Gorin Mogen laying waste to armies, eh?”

“No, Gorin Mogen is a fiery boil on the ass of the world,” Orden said. “We’re from Haradok originally, and no one south of Olenik really likes him—except for his hearth, I guess. He’s one of the most arrogant Hearthfires ever. But we do like hearing about our people. Especially La Mastik, the priestess of Thurik’s Flame. She sounds like someone of our mind. I wish you had told us more of her thoughts, actually. But this is all news to us, as it is to everyone else. We’re enjoying it very much, and we are hoping she will be able to teach Mogen to burn clean without so much smoke and spite.”

“But please don’t spoil anything!” Hollit added, her huge hands splayed out in a halting motion. “We relish the suspense. We simply wanted to thank you and refuse payment for your lunch today. It’s our privilege to have you visit.”

“Oh, well, eating that bladefin was a privilege. Thank you.”

They nodded and smiled and left us to our work. After a couple of minutes Fintan commented in a pinched voice, “They were such a nice couple. Hard to imagine them setting you on fire with a thought, isn’t it? But they could.”

“Ugh. Why’d you have to mention it? I don’t want to think about that.”

“I never wanted to think about it either. But after you see the lavaborn do that to people, you never look at them the same way. You say to yourself instead, ‘If I say the wrong thing right now, will they cook me down and sweep the ashes into the trash?’ ”

“Stop it.”

“Look at me, Dervan,” Fintan said, pointing to his temple. “I’m sweating.”

He was. His skin had turned ashen, and he looked sick. His hand trembled. “Lord of the Deep, Fintan, if you knew you were going to have this reaction, why did you come here?”

“I didn’t know,” he replied in an intense whisper. “I thought maybe telling yesterday’s tale would put it all behind me. But obviously that hasn’t happened.”

“Are you going to be able to tell the story anymore?”

“Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine,” he said. “There won’t be any more of the Hathrim for a few days anyway. And telling the story is nothing like being in their presence.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I know. I guess echoes of war can reverberate for a long time,” he said. Reaching out for his pint of ale, he downed the whole thing in greedy gulps and ordered another.

“Will you be all right today?” I asked again.

He took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. It’ll pass.” He wiped his brow and tried to dismiss the spell by shaking his head. Clearing his throat, he said, “Let’s get back to work.”

Once he got on the wall and faced Survivor Field, you’d never know he had suffered a nervous episode. But perhaps his choice of a song had something to do with his state of mind. “Something from Rael today,” he said, strumming a chord on his harp, “about seeking your own good fortune as opposed to waiting for it to happen. A traditional nine-liner.”

Deep in stone and mineral and lime

Waiting for pressure and sufficient time

Are diamonds and emeralds and sapphires;

So in our fragile hearts and minds

Waiting for affection of different kinds

Are virtues the goddess admires;

But do not passively wait to thrive,

For this very moment you may strive

To whatever your will aspires.

“Switching gears now to a very different person,” Fintan said. “An introduction, in fact, to a stonecutter named Meara in the northern Raelech city of Baseld, connected by the Granite Tunnel to the Brynt city of Grynek.”

The figure who took shape out of the seeming smoke had the mellow brown complexion of Raelechs, with her straight black hair gently waving down to her shoulders. She was petite and had a young person’s smooth skin, unweathered yet by too many years in the sun. She had a long nose and dimples on both sides of her face. Unlike the other Raelechs I had seen to that point, her clothing was more fashionable than utilitarian. Perhaps those blessed by the earth goddess to actually move the earth around carried a certain cultural cachet in Rael, a higher status. Her Jereh band had the brown sard of Dinae on the left, the master amethyst in the middle, and a maroon moonstone on the right, all set in a single person’s bronze rather than the married gold.

I am a woman who loves her mud. It’s an unusual affection, I know, but where most people see filth, I see potential. And not just in mud but in all the myriad forms the earth takes beneath our feet. It already shows us the vast range of shapes and colors it can take, and our imaginations, combined with the blessing of the earth goddess Dinae, can transform a sodden mess into something sublime. Or dress up the plain in fancier clothes.

Baseld is an old city, its basic structures built long ago, so my duties are split between maintenance and what I like to call sparkle work. I have been teaming with masons to face old structures with swirled marble and granite or polished mosaics of light jade, malachite, and onyx. And inside the Granite Tunnel, where many people have chosen to live and work full time, I have been often employed to help line the walls with reflective polished tiles that magnify a candle’s light. It is still mud that fascinates me, though. Nothing to recommend it as a material except the shape one can give it, so it is a pure medium to my way of thinking. I have a sculpture space in the city where I create nothing but mud figures, which wash away and melt in the rain, allowing me to make new ones when the clouds part.

It is not the glamorous life that Raelechs might associate with the title of “stonecutter,” but it is a peaceful, fulfilling, prosperous one, and my betrothed, a soldier in the garrison, is aggressive enough for the two of us. We balance each other out, I suppose: my calm serenity is a foil for the boiling within him, and his energy and passion ensure that I do not get bored. Plus, Gaerit is often filthy. And he has a southern accent and knows how to cook. My kind of man.

My sparkle work for the city came to an abrupt end with the visit of a courier and a temblor to my home on a misty morning.

“Stonecutter Meara, I am sent by the Triune Council with orders for you,” the courier said.

“Ha! The Triune Council?” I grinned at them. “Who put you up to this? Was it Gaerit?”

“No, I’m really from the Council. An invading army approaches the Granite Tunnel from the Brynlön side. Temblor Priyit is taking a force into the tunnel to meet them, and you are to assist to the best of your abilities to prevent this army from ever reaching Baseld.”

I snorted in disbelief. “Assist how? I’m no juggernaut.”

“The Council is well aware. But you are the only Earth Shaper of sufficient power to make a difference. You are Rael’s only option.”

Dinae and Kaelin and Raena, too, she was serious. “I don’t understand what you wish me to do.”

The temblor spoke. “We need you to seal the Granite Tunnel. Create a wall that they cannot pass, and once they reach it, create another one behind them. Trap them in the tunnel. They will all die in a week, and Rael will be safe.”

“But there are people living in the tunnel! Homes carved into the mountain!”

“We will be evacuating, of course, but that is why we must move into the tunnel to meet this army halfway,” the temblor replied. “Should we meet them earlier than we planned or be surprised by advance scouts, I am taking half our garrison along to provide you time enough to seal off the tunnel. You should be in no danger.”

The courier’s eyes bored into mine. “The Triune Council is counting on your full cooperation, stonecutter. As is the city of Baseld and indeed the nation.”

“Of course, of course, but … what army?” I asked, trying to catch up. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”

The temblor held up a hand to encourage patience. Her Jereh band was bronze, I saw, not gold. “I’ll brief you in a moment.” She turned to the courier. “You can inform the Triune Council that the stonecutter is engaged.”

“Yes, I am,” I said.

“Blessings of the Triple Goddess on you both,” she said, and departed so swiftly that our hair blew in the wind of her passing.

Temblor Priyit offered up a smirk to me. She was a Nentian immigrant who’d been blessed by the Triple Goddess when she sought a kenning—one of many who came to Rael, since the Nentians didn’t have their own kenning and the Fornish didn’t let outsiders be Seekers at the First Tree. “What did you have planned for today? Bringing up some nice marble for a new sculpture?”

“Miners sent over a shipment of raw gold-flecked quartz from the Lochlaen quarry. I was going to shape them into translucent tiles for the interior of a dome.”

“Ha! Well, never mind that. You get to save the country instead. Come with me to the garrison.”

And it was during that walk to the garrison that I learned that much of Brynlön had been overrun by a people being called the Bone Giants and that the army headed our way had depopulated almost all the Brynt river cities.

“Almost all?”

“The quartermaster of Fornyd had the good sense to evacuate her people in advance. She warned the quartermasters of Sturföd and Grynek, but they were either unconvinced by the warning or unable to convince their populace of the danger. The Bone Giants move fast.”

“How fast?”

“They’re already in the tunnel.”

“Shit!”

“If it weren’t for our couriers, we’d be taken by surprise, too. And we lost Bennelin because of their surprise attack from the sea.”

“Shit! Bennelin lost? As in captured or …?”

“As in wiped out. Everyone dead. The juggernaut at Fandlin took out the invaders after the fact, but no one could save Bennelin.”

“Goddesses, no.” Gaerit was from there originally, which meant that his family would be gone. We’d been planning on visiting them after we got married; I’d always wanted to see the Brynt Sea anyway, but now I supposed that dream had been snuffed like a lonely candle.

“How is this possible? Why haven’t we heard about this yet?”

“Because the city bard hasn’t been told. She’s being told right now, though. That’s where the courier went after she left us. The Triune has been employing the couriers for a lot of scouting missions and essential military operations, and spreading news wasn’t their priority. But no doubt we’ll hear the bard’s voice soon enough. I understand the Brynts lost several other cities as well.”

I walked along with the temblor, stunned, trying to process it all, and I simply couldn’t. Instead, I noticed that although the temblor had adopted Rael’s customs and fought for us now, she hadn’t entirely given up on her own culture’s fascination for boots. I marveled at first that I could think of anything besides the tragedy of all those lives lost, but then realized that I was desperate to think of anything else, even something as insignificant as fabulous footwear. I remember the bard at the Colaiste remarking on our tendency to do that: “Small material things can be a shelter from an emotional storm,” she said, “but if you hide away in them, you’ll be hiding from life. Sometimes you have to face that bad weather. It will catch you out eventually.”

Here I was, caught out and still trying to hide.

As we entered the stone walls surrounding the garrison, the rich voice of the city bard entered our ears, floating above the city, declaring that she had dire news and emergency instructions from the Triune Council. The tunnel must begin to evacuate immediately because of the approach of an invading army of many thousands. All soldiers were to report to the garrison. And then the details: Bennelin, lost. All but four Brynt cities, lost. No reason for the attack and no hope of negotiation. The Bone Giants appeared to have no kenning but won through surprise attacks in large numbers. And I could see heads shaking, no one wanting to believe it was true, but bards don’t spread falsehoods when they speak to cities; they can lose their kenning that way, as the Lying Bard of Bechlan did, long ago. It was that thought and the thought of seeing all these people in front of me dead that broke through the shock and let me imagine what horrors must lie outside our city, which had been safe for so long. Tears escaped my eyes and dropped to the earth, emotion honoring the poet goddess.

When the bard finished speaking to the city, the temblor had me climb the steps to the garrison tower, where we found the bard waiting. Her name was Laera, and she’d been the only bard in Baseld since I’d moved there.

“Temblor, I’ve been expecting you,” she said.

“My thanks. Can you project my voice to just the garrison, please?”

“Certainly.”

Priyit first called everyone to assemble in the training ground, and while that happened another temblor joined us, an older man I think Gaerit didn’t particularly like. But it was Priyit who spoke once the soldiers had mustered. “May the Huntress bless you all today. Half of the garrison will go with me into the tunnel as soon as possible to stop the Bone Giants before they get here. The other half shall remain here under command of Temblor Maerton to defend the city should we fail, provide a rear guard as citizens evacuate, and keep order in the meantime among a frightened populace. Neither duty is enviable or glorious, but they are both necessary. May I have volunteers to go into the tunnel?”

Every single soldier in the garrison volunteered, so Priyit first picked anyone who had family in Bennelin, including Gaerit, figuring they’d like to get a measure of revenge, and then gestured to the soldiers massed on the eastern side of the training ground and said, “Plus you lot. Armor, shields, and spears. No staves. Fast as you can. We leave in a quarter hour.”

Gaerit and I were able to exchange a glance but not speak in advance of mobilization; we marched toward the Granite Tunnel a half hour after the temblor’s orders, and they armed me, too, in spite of the fact that I hadn’t practiced with weapons since my days in the Colaiste. I found Gaerit and matched pace next to him. His jaw was set like a jagged cliff, and his eyes were dark with the promise of violence.

Trying to lighten his mood, I waggled the shield and spear and said, “I hold these in front of me, right?” He didn’t think it was funny; his expression even registered disgust that I would try to joke right then, and I felt alone and unloved like barren soil. But then I reflected that perhaps this was a mood that shouldn’t be lightened. If ever there was a time for him to feel violent and justified in doing so, it was now. My selfish desire to have one last soft look from him before we met an uncertain future had caused me to open my mouth when it should have stayed shut.

“I’m sorry, Gaerit,” I whispered to him. “I’m just nervous. Fight well for the Huntress. Be safe. I love you.”

I started to lengthen my stride to catch up with the temblor near the front, but Gaerit called me back. The bunched muscles in his jaw relaxed as I waited, looking at him with a question in my brows. His shoulders relaxed, the smooth brown skin stretched over his arms arranging itself into planes I knew well, the way they did when he wasn’t tense.

“Forgive me, Meara,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be curt with you. I’m simply upset about the news. My family …”

“I know, I know. All the things I want to do I can’t do while we’re on the march, so I said something stupid. I’m sorry.”

His mouth slid into a half grin. “We’ll go down to the riverbank later, roll around in the mud, and make love like otters, and we’ll both feel better.” The soldiers near him heard that, eyes shifting and smirks appearing on their faces, but I didn’t care.

“I hope you’re not just saying that, because rolling in the mud is a serious promise.”

“I will keep it. Because I love you, too. Now go march with the temblor. I know you’re supposed to save us all somehow.”

No need for a half grin now: reassured, I beamed at him and scurried forward to join the temblor and caught up with her as the entrance to the Granite Tunnel gaped before us.

It was fretted with the ornate bas-relief sculpture of stonecutters and masons long since past, and the weight of the mountain above it never loomed so heavy. The tunnel connecting Rael and Brynlön under the Poet’s Range had been the work of three hundred stonecutters, working in concert to create not only a vital and safe trade route between our countries but a wonder of the world, a testament to the power of our kenning. The same three hundred stonecutters also had created the Basalt Tunnel to Ghurana Nent underneath the Huntress Range, allowing the breadth of the continent to be connected via the Merchant Trail. It felt unwholesome to wall that up, to tarnish such a legacy and a monument in the space of minutes, to effectively destroy its function, however temporarily. But I supposed it was less unwholesome than everyone I knew dying at the sword of something called a Bone Giant.

People streamed out of the tunnel as we marched in, bundles held under their arms and slung on their backs, some pulling carts or riding horse-drawn wagons. Worried evacuees from the tunnel warrens, wondering where they should go. And some of them—quite a few of them—were Brynts who must be refugees, running in advance of the army. It was their bleak, hopeless faces that drove home to me the urgency of our mission. How horrific it must be to be forced out of your home with nothing but the clothes on your back. If we failed—more specifically, if I failed—to hold this army back, then everyone in Baseld and perhaps beyond would wear the same bleak expressions.

I thought perhaps I finally had an insight to what coal must feel like being pressed into a diamond.

I was marching near the front of the column with Temblor Priyit some while later when a young courier sped up from the Brynt side of the tunnel and halted in front of her, saluting and stating that he had a scouting report.

“The enemy forces are only a quarter hour away, Temblor, moving at double time.”

“Size of force?”

“They are depleted—they’ve been drinking from the Gravewater, and it’s taken a toll. But they are still an army of six or seven thousand.”

We were four hundred.

The temblor turned to me. “Stonecutter Meara. Can you tell how far into the tunnel we are right now?”

“Aye. A moment.” I removed my boots, closed my eyes to block out visual distraction, and stretched out with my kenning to sense the mountain above us and the long, smooth tunnel carved out of it by stonecutters long dead. I located my position within it and opened my eyes. “A little less than a quarter of the way, Temblor.” The Bone Giants moved fast, indeed. Had we delayed, we might not have been able to meet them in the tunnel at all. She gave a curt nod and addressed the courier once more. “So that should mean that they are entirely within the tunnel at this point if they are marching in anything like a formation and not stretched out.”

“I believe that is correct, Temblor.”

“Excellent,” she said with a tight grin of satisfaction. “Stonecutter, begin constructing your wall right here. When it’s finished, seal them in at the other end with another wall.”

“My range may not be that great, Temblor.”

The satisfaction disappeared. “It’s not? How far back can you build another wall?”

“I have never tried to build a wall out of my sight, so I am unsure. A thousand lengths? Two thousand, maybe?”

A frown now. “That won’t trap enough of them. They could retreat and get out.”

“But it would at least keep Baseld safe until the Council can send a juggernaut to finish them,” the courier said.

“True enough. Stopping them is the primary objective, and elimination is secondary. Please begin, stonecutter, building from the top down. I will array my forces in front of you to give you time to complete it should it be necessary.” Noises echoing off stone from down the tunnel suggested that it might. The temblor paused, listening, then continued. “Leave some room at the bottom so that we may execute an orderly retreat underneath, and once we’re safe, you complete it. We’ll worry about sealing them in from behind later.”

She shouted orders to the column, and they marched ahead and filled the width of the tunnel in a tight formation, shields overlapping and spears pointed outward. Gaerit was among them, and he gave me the tiniest of nods and a hint of a smile as he passed by. He was in the third row, which worried me. I had to build the wall in minutes and give them enough time to retreat behind it.

I couldn’t think about that pressure, though. I had to focus on the stone and soil of the mountain above and reshape it to fulfill a new purpose. This was not a simple movement of virgin earth but rather a modification of older work. The ceiling had been strengthened and solidified by the will of three hundred stonecutters. I had to break through that by the force of my will alone and then draw down a thin slice of mountain to seal off the tunnel.

The tight seals of the past did not wish to be broken, however, and they were much more powerful than I had anticipated. My forebears had shored up the ceiling as strongly as they possibly could to prevent collapse even in an earthquake. And so the temblor interrupted me as I was trying to pierce through the layers of protection because it had been several minutes, the sound of the approaching enemy was growing louder, and nothing had happened.

“What’s the delay, stonecutter?” she growled. I explained and said the wall would form quickly once I broke through the protections of the past. “Hurry it up,” she said, as if I had been idle.

Spreading my efforts or my focus across the width of the tunnel wasn’t working; I was peeling away strips of protection like an onion, but it felt as if I was making very little progress. I tried a different tactic, focusing my kenning on a small area in the middle and drilling up through the seals. That went faster, and once my kenning touched virgin rock above, I spread out my focus across the width of the tunnel again but only a single length’s thickness and attacked the seals from above, prising them apart, until they shattered into pieces like shards of glass. Nothing that anyone else could see, of course; it was simply what it felt like to me in the trance of my kenning.

With a strip of the seals gone I could now draw down the mountain, and it was then that it occurred to me that it would have been far wiser and much quicker to deal with the seals on the floor of the tunnel—which were much thinner and did not involve the potential for a cave-in once broken—and make a wall rise up instead of descend, but it was too late to begin anew and those hadn’t been my orders. In the gap between switching my focus from one task to another, the outside world penetrated. Combat had been joined, and the Bone Giants fell upon our soldiers with their strange swords. Over the tops of rows of Raelech heads I saw the heads and shoulders of pale, ghastly creatures floating above them, swinging their weapons down and sometimes crashing into shields, sometimes recoiling as spears thrust out from the formation and pierced their bodies; then, when they were yanked out, the barbs pulled forth intestines through the gaps in their bone armor. The blood, I thought, looked obscene against their white skin.

The temblor, still standing nearby, looked up and saw nothing before turning to me with a snarl on her face, all her affable demeanor gone. She shouted over the din, “The wall, stonecutter! Get me that wall now or we’re all going to die!”

It rocked me back into focus, and I stretched out with my senses to the strip of virgin rock and chanted the stonecutter’s hymn, providing structure to my thoughts and a shape to the kenning. Rock sheared and shifted, popped and cracked as it began to slide down from the ceiling in a slab one length wide, and all my muscles tensed with the strain of containing it. The mountain above was heavy and wanted the tunnel closed.

“That’s it! Faster!” the temblor said.

“I can’t go faster,” I explained through gritted teeth. “I have to control the descent or I won’t be able to stop it.”

“The floor will stop it!”

“No—you don’t understand. I mean the seals are fragile now.”

“As fast as you can, stonecutter. Our warriors are strong but cannot hold forever—no, don’t look! Concentrate on your job.”

“Quit interrupting me and I will.”

The mountain wanted to heal itself; the Granite Tunnel was an open wound, and now that it felt a break in the seals keeping it out, it wanted to reclaim all that space. Letting the rock descend was easy: all my straining was to keep the edges of the seals in the ceiling intact, to prevent them from expanding.

Despite the wall descending, the clash of steel and the juicy noises of flesh being torn and blood being spilled only grew louder. Death screams floated above it all, and they chilled my spine. I kept my eyes averted from the battle, looking at the stone above, and soon it had descended low enough that I couldn’t see the fight in my peripheral vision. That was some relief, but halting the descent of the slab short of the floor was a monumental effort that left me sweating and gasping with the beginnings of a headache. The soldiers would have to drop prone and roll underneath, and the temblor was yelling that the Raelechs should begin doing precisely that.

“Retreat under the wall! Your duty is done! Retreat now! Retreat!”

Soon the soldiers began to appear, and the temblor had them stand at the ready with their spears. “If one of those giants comes through, you stab him and let me know,” she said, and then to me, “As soon as the enemy appears, you drop the wall the rest of the way, understand?”

“Understood,” I managed, my hands braced on my knees as I bent, trying to recover my breath. My arms trembled with exhaustion. Earth shaping of this magnitude drained one so quickly; that was why they had used three hundred stonecutters in the past to do this work.

Ten warriors rolled underneath the slab and stood, their faces grim and even frightened. Another ten, and ten more, helped to their feet and deployed in ranks as the temblor continued to shout orders. Ninety warriors in all came through, and then a Bone Giant appeared underneath the stone on the far side and was immediately speared through the neck.

“Giants!” the nearby warriors cried, and even as they did so another appeared, and another, at different points across the width of the tunnel, and the temblor turned to me. “Drop the wall now, stonecutter.”

“But more of our people might be coming,” I said. None had come through close to our side of the tunnel, and that was the side on which my fiancé had been deployed.

“Now, stonecutter! The rest of the garrison is dead or we wouldn’t see Bone Giants coming through!”

“But … where’s Gaerit? I don’t see Gaerit!”

The temblor grabbed me by the tunic and growled. “He is either here or he isn’t. If he isn’t, he’s not going to be coming through just because you wish it. But Rael remains in danger until you do your job, so do it already!”

A Bone Giant tried to roll out from under the wall near us, and the warrior standing sentinel there promptly speared him in the throat. The bodies of the first few giants conveniently prevented the advance of others underneath the wall, and we could effectively hold them now, but there would be no more Raelechs returning either. The temblor was right: either my fiancé was on our side of the wall and I hadn’t seen him or he was already dead on the other side with three hundred other soldiers.

“All right, all right,” I said to get the temblor to back off, but my eyes searched desperately over her shoulder for some glimpse of Gaerit. I didn’t see him, and it drained my spirit more than my earth shaping had. Already I felt like a failure. If I had not been so slow in breaking through the seals, those warriors would not have died. Or if the courier had warned us just a little bit sooner. If we had started the process earlier in the tunnel. If I hadn’t been the only stonecutter in Baseld. If we had a juggernaut to send instead.

“Hurry up!” the temblor barked.

Her peremptory command and lack of empathy punctured what little control I had, and in a momentary flash of anger I let the stone drop down abruptly, crushing anyone underneath it and sealing off the tunnel. But I had paid no attention to the seals as I released the stone, no attention to the ripple effect such a sudden shift would have on the mountain above. A shock wave tremor curled through the seals of the old stonecutters, and they shattered at the top of the wall. And that breakage triggered more and more as the pressure of the mountain rushed to fill a void, and the seals began to unravel on either side of the wall, too fast and too strong for me to contain them. The mountain fell down on top of us from the center outward, crushing everyone but me and the temblor underneath tons of granite. Our kenning ensured that we could not die by any force of earth. The rock weighed on my head and shoulders like the hand of a gentle friend, no more, and it would be the same for the temblor. Not so for anyone else. The Bone Giants were no more, but neither were the Raelechs. I had managed in a moment of weakness to kill everyone who was not already dead and turn the Granite Tunnel into a long, silent tomb. The Poet’s Range had closed itself.

The enormity of it crushed me since the mountain could not. I wept in the dark and the dirt where no one could hear me, and when my breaths became short, I exerted myself and cleared some space around me so that I could take in a proper lungful of air. I realized that the temblor would need air, too, for though she could punch through almost anything with the strength of her kenning, she’d need to breathe first. After the initial trial of their kenning, temblors did not do well underground.

I could sense the human-size absence of rock nearby and shifted the earth so that I could move toward her and bring her into my hollowed-out space with a little bit of breathing room. She coughed and sputtered as the rock and sediment shifted away, taking in huge gasps of air.

“Wondered if you were going to let me suffocate,” she said.

“What? Of course not!”

She coughed a few more times, and I could hear her brush rubble off her tunic, and then a scraping sound and a few sparks in the darkness announced that she had a flint and candle in her pouch. Both flint and candle, she claimed, were Hathrim-enchanted, but it still took a while to get it sparked up. Once it finally lit, she gave me a cursory glance, then looked at her long dust-covered hair with dismay. “What happened, stonecutter?”

“The seals gave way, and I wasn’t strong enough to stop them all by myself. We should have built the wall from the floor up, and there wouldn’t have been any danger of a cave-in.”

Temblor Priyit froze, her eyes narrowing. “So I gave you the wrong orders. Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. Ordering me to break the seals on the ceiling and build the wall from the top down was the wrong call.”

“I see. So I’m to be blamed for this?”

“It’s not assigning blame; it’s recognizing how we got here. At the same time, I should have thought of it earlier. And I should have paid attention to the seals when I dropped the wall the rest of the way. It was my fault, and I expect the Triune will punish me accordingly.”

“Punish you?” The temblor’s mouth twisted into a broad grin made lurid by the candlelight, and she raised a hand, palm up. “We won! The Bone Giants are dead! Baseld is safe!”

“It doesn’t feel like a win when all our soldiers are dead.”

She waved my objection away. “The Bone Giants did most of that. Fewer than a hundred of them were able to retreat.”

“So you can just shrug off the unnecessary deaths of close to a hundred soldiers?”

Priyit gave me an exaggerated shrug to demonstrate that she could. “I didn’t kill them. It was an accident.”

My mouth gaped. I had no problem taking my share of the blame, for I had indeed been responsible. What shocked me was that Priyit didn’t seem to feel responsible for any part of it or even question whether perhaps we should have begun our work as soon as we’d passed the populated areas rather than go farther into the tunnel. The enemy was crushed and she was alive, and that was all that mattered to her.

The temblor handed me the candle and pulled her long hair into a knot in the back, waiting for me to say something, and when I didn’t, she gestured in the direction of Baseld. “Well? Shouldn’t we be going?”

“Not yet. The dead need to be spoken for. We should sing the Dirge for the Fallen.”

“Oh.” The temblor folded her arms and looked down. “I don’t feel comfortable with that. I grew up with Kalaad, you know, in Ghurana Nent.”

“But you’ve been blessed by the Triple Goddess, and these soldiers were under your command.”

“Yes, and I’m grateful for their blessing and honored by the faith the Triune Council has placed in me. But I don’t think I’m the best person to sing the dirge. You go ahead; it’ll mean more coming from you.”

I had never met Temblor Priyit before that day—I’d only heard what Gaerit had told me—but right then I was positive that I didn’t want to know her any better. If she thought I was simply going to leave to spare her any discomfort, she was wrong. Especially since it appeared that she might not suffer any other discomfort for her role in these deaths.

A sob built in my throat as I thought of Gaerit buried somewhere nearby, unseen, and I launched into the dirge straight away, because the first verse was to the poet goddess and once past the first two lines, every singer’s voice improved and could not be shaken by emotion.

Kaelin, let not my voice falter

As I sing this Dirge for the Fallen:

Let not the passage of time alter

Or diminish the honor earned,

The victories won, the friends well met,

Or the lessons learned.

I hoped the temblor would react to that line, but she kept her eyes downcast. I’m not sure she thought there were any lessons to learn.

Raena, salute these warriors of Rael

Who spat defiance at cowardice:

They never meant to fail

In defense of that they cherished,

But rather fought to the limits

Of their skill till they perished.

Dinae, our soldiers come to your embrace,

To rest forever in the earth:

We shall remember their faces

Until someday we join them there,

And then we too will nourish life

And leave behind all warfare.

My voice certainly broke after that. I let my sorrow cry itself out while Priyit waited. The trade-off could and would be rationalized as the temblor saw fit, I knew: four hundred lives against six or seven thousand was more than acceptable. Except that I was the one who was supposed to make sure that it would never come to that. The trade-off for me couldn’t be rationalized. I would forever be bereft of a fiancé, most likely bereft of friends, and recognized as that stonecutter who was not quite strong enough to do the job, who killed nearly a hundred soldiers, created orphans and widows and robbed families of their sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. My chest felt like it was tearing apart inside.

I remained standing in place for a long, countless time, feeling the weight and loneliness of it all, and the temblor held her silence for as long as she could, the best gesture she could make, I supposed. But eventually she made a throat-clearing noise, and I oriented myself to the direction of Baseld. I parted the earth before us as we moved, letting it fall back in behind us as we passed, determined to put one foot in front of the other until we saw daylight again.

Eventually you come to a point where you have no choice but to be about the business of forever.

When the temblor and I emerged from the collapsed tunnel into Baseld, rocks and dirt parting before me, a small group of people were waiting. They had shovels in their hands and rags tied across their mouths to reduce dust inhalation. They thought perhaps the cave-in was only local and wanted to get back to their homes somewhere near the entrance of the Granite Tunnel. They had been attacking the cave-in with boundless optimism, trying to clear it away.

They started to pepper me with questions immediately, glancing at my Jereh band to confirm that I was a stonecutter and not a juggernaut or some other Earth Shaper.

“Stonecutter, what happened?”

“How far does the cave-in go?”

And then, when they saw the temblor, the questions were fired at her:

“Is the garrison all right?”

“Did the Bone Giants cause this?”

All of that at once, and more that I didn’t catch. They needed answers, and I felt nothing so much as the need to hide: to collapse in bed and stay there for days. But I was trapped.

Someone pushed between the shoulders of two men, who at first looked annoyed and about to say something, but they closed their mouths when they saw her Jereh band. It was a courier but a different one from the courier who had given me orders from the Triune Council. She was shorter and sharply featured, with a bladelike nose and well-toned shoulders.

“Stonecutter Meara,” she said. “Temblor Priyit. The Triune requires a report immediately. Please come with me.”

I didn’t want to go, not before the Triune. But I didn’t want to stay, either, and face these people. So I didn’t resist when the courier took my arm and escorted me through the assembled excavators, the temblor following.

“Hey, wait!” said one of them, a stout man with a thick beard. “Tell us what happened first!”

“No,” the courier replied, saving me the need to respond. “The Triune will hear it first.”

As soon as we got past the press of bodies and had some space before us, the courier turned to us. “I am Tuala, courier of the Huntress Raena in service to the Triune Council.”

She already knew who we were, so I merely nodded and said, “Honored.”

“Have you ever run with a courier before?”

I shook my head, but the temblor nodded. Tuala focused on me.

“All right. You’re going to jog behind me, and it’ll continue to seem like an easy jog even when we’re traveling at top speed. But keep your mouth closed. You don’t want a bug to fly in there while we’re traveling that fast.”

“No, I—oh, that’s disgusting. Are they going to splatter on me?”

Tuala pointed to several discolored spots on her armor. “Yes.” I almost felt like returning to answer the questions of the locals, but the courier smiled. “It’s not that bad. But wear these.” She pulled goggles out of her belt pouch and handed a pair to me and another to Priyit. “A bug in your eye wouldn’t feel good. Plus it protects you from the wind.” She had her own pair and put them on. “Come, let’s be on our way.”

She began to lope downhill and checked over her shoulder to make sure we followed. I jogged after her, uncertain for some reason that I was doing it right, even though I rather enjoyed jogging as a rule. Perhaps I would be doubting everything I did from now on.

For the length of two houses nothing seemed unusual, but then I noticed that the houses began to move by much faster even though I wasn’t trying to run any faster. And in a matter of seconds we were traveling so quickly that I felt the skin of my face pulling back, the loose folds of my clothing snapping in the wind. It was exhilarating to experience such speed but terrifying as well. I was thinking about some of the larger beetle species of Rael and imagining the impact if one of them slammed into me.

And then it happened. I felt a hard thump against my rib cage, as if someone had flicked me with their forefinger with all the force they could muster, and it stung. I looked down and saw a green splash of entrails on my tunic. It robbed the experience of fast travel of much of its romantic associations, and I wished I had a miner’s helmet.

After a while, even at the relatively slow pace I was keeping, I began to get winded. I shortened my stride and gasped out a “Sorry” to Tuala, uncertain that she would hear me. She cast a glance back at me.

“Don’t worry. You can walk if you want to now. You’re completely caught up in my kenning. Just don’t stop.”

I slowed to a walk, chest heaving, and found that it was true. We were still flying across the land, every step gobbling up fifty feet or more as the earth took our lightest step and pushed us forward. Even at that speed, however, running due south, it took us hours to reach Killae on the northern shore of Goddess Lake. When we arrived at the Triune building, which was surrounded by sculptures erected by the nation’s most celebrated stonecutters and artisans, I took a few steps to become accustomed to everything moving slowly again. Tuala checked in with the cluster of guards outside the door and informed them that she had an urgent message from Baseld. I didn’t speak a word to the temblor while we waited and doubted I would ever speak to her again.

The councillors had retired for the evening and would need to be summoned, but she led us to the Council chamber to wait and take some refreshment.

I drank three glasses of water and then confessed I had a dire need to relieve myself. Tuala led me to a fancy privy designed by Brynt hygienists and trimmed in polished granite flecked with metals.

Given a small space of privacy free of distractions, I let worry seize me as I did my business. What would the Triune do to me once they heard what I had done? Throw me into a salted dungeon somewhere, cut off from the song of the earth forever? Execute me for criminal incompetence? Have me work in the mines the rest of my days to pay reparations to the families of those I’d killed?

“Whatever their sentence, Meara,” I whispered to myself, “you deserve it and will greet it like an old friend.” I washed my hands and face, gave up on trying to make my bug-spattered clothes presentable, and composed myself to deliver the news without emotion. I even said that to my reflection in the mirror: “You will deliver the news without emotion. You have nothing left but duty.” I felt strong as I left the privy, and after a short wait to allow Temblor Priyit to finish her report, Tuala introduced me to the assembled members of the Triune Council in the chamber: Dechtira, Clodagh, and Carrig.

“Welcome, stonecutter,” Dechtira said. “We have already heard from the temblor but would like to hear your version of events. Please tell us what happened.”

“The entire Granite Tunnel is collapsed. The Bone Giant army is destroyed as a result. But so is half of Baseld’s garrison.” And my betrothed, I did not say. And my shiny dreamt-of future. And my sense of self-worth.

Questions and answers followed with a close focus on why I could not control the unraveling of the ancient seals keeping the tunnel intact. The seals themselves required some explanation since none of the councillors was a stonecutter. Carrig noted drily that I had proved why we needed physical support to shore up the magic of the stonecutters, ugly and costly as it might be. “We’ll have to shore up the Basalt Tunnel as soon as possible.”

And despite the fact that essentially it all came down because I cracked under pressure or that it could have all been prevented if I had simply built up instead of down, the Council did not seem especially upset about it.

“The deaths of the garrison are regrettable,” Clodagh said, and the callous dismissal of their lost lives, so close to what Priyit had done, nearly took my breath away. “But Baseld is safe, at least. You saved it from certain sacking and untold civilian casualties. We shouldn’t have sent you in alone to do such a massive job, but we had no choice. You are not to blame.”

I knew she meant the words kindly but could not imagine her being more wrong. If I was not to blame, then who was? If I had not buckled under the strain, those soldiers would be alive. The Granite Tunnel would still be a tunnel instead of rubble. Had I thought to question Priyit’s orders in time, maybe Gaerit would still be alive and we’d still be getting married in a few months.

Silence fell in the chamber as the Council stared at me and I stared back. I waited for the other members to contradict Clodagh, but they did not. Gradually I realized that they expected me to say something.

“Um. Begging your pardons, what is to happen to me now?”

“Happen to you?” Carrig said.

“Yes. I mean—” I looked down and licked my suddenly dry lips. “—my punishment.”

“Punishment?” Clodagh said, her face scrunched with incomprehension. “You saved a city. We commend your service to the Triple Goddess, and now you may go back to your duties.”

“Oh. So I’m to go back and face the families. I see.” I nodded. “That’s fit. That’s just. Thank you.”

“Now wait a moment,” Dechtira said. “Clodagh did not speak for the entire Council right then.”

“I didn’t?”

“No,” Dechtira said. “There is much for us to discuss in private. Stonecutter Meara, take your rest in our guest quarters, but under guard, of course.”

“What?” Clodagh exploded. Dechtira ignored her.

“Return here in the morning for your punishment.”

I looked to the other two councillors for confirmation, and after a moment of exchanged glances among themselves, they nodded at me to indicate they were in agreement.

Tuala led me to a room I would have appreciated in other circumstances, but I had eyes only for the bed and its down pillow. I wanted only a few hours of sleep to put the worst day of my life behind me. Every day henceforward would be miserable but not quite as bad.

There were fresh clothes waiting for me when I awoke, free of insect remains. I changed into them after visiting the washroom and then stepped into the hall, and there a guard escorted me to the Council chamber. I had to wait for a few moments but eventually was ushered in to hear my sentence.

“Our unanimous decree,” Dechtira said, “is that you cross the Poet’s Range in the company of the courier Tuala and aid the Brynt city of Tömerhil however they ask. Your services are to be provided free of charge. And after you are finished there, you are to travel to whatever Brynt city you wish and help them rebuild. You will have a stipend for modest living expenses from the Raelech embassy wherever you go. But you are never to return to Rael. You are banished.”

No more days spent occupied with decorative flourishes, then. A lifetime of rebuilding. Yes. That would be my path to redemption. The temblor might have been awarded a medal or something, but I didn’t care. She was unaware that she had anything to atone for. But I needed some way to balance out what I’d done, and the Council had given it to me. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I thanked them.

When the bard returned to his accustomed form, I was startled to discover that my cheeks were wet. And I wasn’t the only one. I’d heard, of course, that the Raelechs had collapsed the Granite Tunnel to defeat the Bone Giants because they didn’t have sufficient forces at Baseld—we’d all heard that—but I didn’t think anyone knew that it was a mistake. Or that someone out there thought of it as a disaster rather than a victory.

What Meara had said—being about the business of forever—gave me much to think on. I’m still not ready to move on from Sarena and don’t know that I ever will be. Perhaps my eternity is to be forever a widower. But I had a growing hope that I would be more than that, and I hoped Meara would be, too.

A few days of normality and happy kids restored Elynea to the point where she bestowed at least one tired smile per evening. Sometimes more. She hadn’t found another job yet but seemed much more optimistic about it. After she departed in the morning and the children were safely off to school, I grabbed my rapier and marched down to the armory to resume my training with Mynstad du Möcher. I began with an apology.

“Sorry about the other day,” I said.

“Oooh,” she said, wincing as she took in my bruised face. “You must have run into someone mean.”

“Not at all,” I said, smiling. “She was very kind and kept all my teeth in my head.”

“Back for more?”

“Just training this time, if you’re available. I’d rather not get rusty.”

“Good. I could use the workout.”

And she threw herself into it with unusual vigor and maybe a good measure of her own frustration. I recalled that she had been ready to beat someone at the time I needed a beating, and it appeared that whatever had vexed her then hadn’t quite worked itself out of her system. When we called it quits, both of us gasping for breath and sweating, I suggested a trade.

“Trade what?”

“Reasons,” I said. “I’ll tell you why I came looking for a fight a couple of days ago if you tell me what’s bothering you now.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Okay, but you go first.”

I shrugged. “It’s easy enough. I was missing my wife and was enraged because I was reminded that we still have no idea who killed her. I wanted to feel any pain but that sort of impotent fury.”

“Impotent fury. Yes. That’s what I’m feeling, too. But look—this is between us.”

“Of course.” The Mynstad peered around to see if anyone was within earshot, then drew closer and lowered her voice.

“You’ve met Gerstad Nara du Fesset?”

“Yes, we met a few days ago.”

“She’s away right now, doing something for the pelenaut.”

“Right, I think she mentioned she’d be on assignment for a while.”

“Well, it’s not widely known, but she’s my lifebond.”

“Oh!” Some comments and behaviors from others made a bit more sense now. “I didn’t realize you were bound with anyone. But that’s great. I wish you both happiness.”

“Thank you. But that is what’s on my mind. I worry about her more each day. She could be dead already and I wouldn’t know it.”

“No, surely—she’s a rapid.”

“It’s a dangerous mission.”

“I’m sorry. I know that worry can wear on you. Should she be back yet?”

“I don’t even know that much about it.”

“Which makes it worse, yes.”

I did secure permission from the Mynstad later to write this down so that I wasn’t breaking any confidence, but I offered a sympathetic ear and thanked her again for her sympathetic fists.

“It’s more difficult to make new friends as you grow older,” I ventured, and then my conversational ship ran aground and I flailed about, not knowing what to say next that wouldn’t sound ridiculously sentimental. She saw the panic in my eyes and had mercy, smiling at me.

“I understand completely, Dervan,” she said. “I’m glad we met as well.”

“Right,” I managed, giving her a tight nod. “See you soon.”

Fintan surprised me by wishing to return to Hollit and Orden’s restaurant again. “I’m paying this time,” he said, “and I’m going to face this fear that’s been hiding inside me.”

It was busy during the lunch rush again, so busy that they couldn’t keep up with demand and some people walked out. They appeared to be short-staffed, and Orden confirmed it when he came to visit our table after the madness.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “Two of our staff didn’t show up for work today, and we received a note that they’ve decided to move to Festwyf.”

“Festwyf?” Fintan and I said in unison.

“Aye, the pelenaut’s reopened it for resettlement as of this morning. Surprised you hadn’t heard already. Should relieve some of the pressure on Survivor Field and in the city proper, I imagine.”

I immediately thought of Elynea. Would she be moving back? Or would she want to remain here?

“Does that mean you need a new server or two, Orden?” I asked. “Because I know someone looking for work if so.”

He eyed me. “Well, who is it?”

“Widow of Festwyf with two kids, currently living with me. She’s almost thirty, I think.”

“Is she going to move back?”

“I don’t know. I’ll ask her.”

“If she wants a job, send her here, midmorning, with a note from you. If she doesn’t show, I’ll have to hire someone else.”

“Understood.”

When Orden left, I peered at Fintan. He didn’t exhibit any shakes this time, but perhaps that was because he was clutching the edge of the table. He was sweating again, though.

“If it helps,” I said, “I used to have similar reactions anytime someone said the word gravemaw.” Fintan looked up at me, a querulous scowl on his face, and I realized I hadn’t shared that story with him, only with Mynstad du Möcher. I waved it away. “Traumatic experience from my mariner days. Gave me my limp, nightmares, and a bad reaction for years. But the nightmares faded with time, and it’s just the limp I have to live with now.”

“How much time?”

“About twenty years.”

“Great. Well, I’m blessed with perfect recall. My memories won’t fade with time. That’s essential for telling stories and recording history, but every horror and every embarrassment of my life—everything I’d like to forget—is fresh as the day it happened. I’m used to the nightmares now, as much as one can get used to them, but this is new. I’m perfectly safe and I know it, but my body is behaving like I’m back at the Godsteeth.”

I didn’t know what to do or how to help, because his was a special case. There was no comfort I could give him except to say quietly, “You have my sympathies.”

The multitudes on Survivor Field did look somewhat less multitudinous when we looked out from the wall that afternoon, but there were still many thousands out there, and they were still clamoring to hear more of the Raelech bard’s tale.

“I’ve heard that Festwyf is on its way to being a city again,” Fintan called out. “That’s excellent news. How about a traveling song, then, for all those on the road to restoring Brynlön?”

The open road beckons, so I may not linger

The trees in the wind wave to me like fingers

The clouds drift low like welcome banners

And the horizon greets me with good manners

So I’m off, I’m rolling on the open road

And the freedom of it always lightens my load

Don’t know what I’ll find when I get there

But the journey’s better so I don’t care

(Second verse repeated until everyone gets tired of it)

“Let’s find out how Melishev Lohmet reacted to the news I delivered to him,” Fintan said after the break, and took on the seeming of the Nentian viceroy.

This situation is worse than five kherns fucking. The Raelech juggernaut got called back to Rael to deal with some strange giants invading the other side of the continent—not Hathrim but some people they’re calling Bone Giants. Which means we can’t expect any more help from them, not that they gave us any to begin with. And then that scrawny ball sack of a bard arrived to tell me that Ghuyedai is dead and all my army with him, completely destroyed by Gorin Mogen. Except for Junior Tactician Nasreghur, whom I suppose I must now promote to senior, and the dregs of my garrison, I am defenseless should the Hathrim or anyone else decide to take my city. The Raelech stonecutters, at least, have been returned and are already at work finishing what they started.

The Hearthfire’s demands that we simply give him that land in perpetuity are so outrageous that I cannot begin to respond. Let the king do it—that’s beyond my purview anyway. I’ve done all I can at the moment. Maybe when or if the king’s forces arrive here we can take back a measure of the blood Mogen’s spilled. The Fornish say through their perfumed ambassador that they’re working on providing some military aid, but I don’t know when or even if they’ll have a force capable of countering the Hathrim.

The bard ends his completely miserable audience by saying he’ll stay at the Raelech embassy and then tosses out a wish for me to “be well,” which is more alarming than the news of my army’s destruction. People are beginning to notice. To question my health. My sanity! My fitness to rule. Khaghesh has been making noises to the effect that I should rest and he will take care of everything while I heal. Which I never will with the king withholding his hygienist from me. So I must show them I am well. A trip to the plains with my cheek raptor! An outing under Kalaad’s blue sky! Nothing makes one feel more alive or appear more normal than playing with a face-eating pet!

My forearm is wrapped in khernhide and I have a khernhide helmet with cheek guards as well, the only natural material impervious to raptor claws and far cooler than steel. Four crossbowmen accompany me; they have the same helmets on.

It’s going well. The raptor’s behaving, fetching a khek hare here, a grass weasel there, when a flushed Nentian courier rides out from the city. He turns out to be military; insignia on his shoulder flares identify him as a junior tactician, but he’s not one of mine. I toy with the idea of offering him a commission here since I’m so poorly supplied with officers, but he looks afraid of me. If he fears me, he’d soil himself in battle and shouldn’t be leading men at all. He surprises me, though.

“Viceroy Bhamet Senesh needs your help,” he begins, and it’s a request so out of tune with reality that I laugh at him. And then, to my horror as much as his, I can’t stop. It’s too ridiculous.

“Forgive me, Viceroy, but it’s no joke. He really needs your help.”

That keeps me going for another minute, and he has sense enough to keep silent until I can speak.

“Well, Tactician,” I finally manage. “If it’s not a joke—you’re sure about that?”

“Very sure.”

“It’s quite a coincidence, then. I could use his help, too, but somehow my messages have failed to produce any either from him or from his cousin in Batana Mar Din. Has he even received them?”

“I have no knowledge of any other messages, Viceroy. I only have this one to deliver.” He waggles a sealed envelope in his hand.

“Of course you don’t know anything. Fine. Deliver your message.” He steps forward, stretches out his arm, and extends the envelope to me at the greatest distance possible. Definitely afraid. Though maybe he’s afraid of the raptor on my arm. I have one of the crossbowmen break the seal and give me the letter folded inside, which is covered in Bhamet Senesh’s hasty scribble.

My dear Melishev,

An extraordinary situation here forces me to ask for your aid. Please send any troops you can spare upriver from Batana Mar Din as soon as possible, preferably with my tactician.

I sense a rebellion in the making and fear that the Sixth Kenning may be real. Only three of the thirty or so beggars who left the city as Seekers have returned, and they claim to be blessed with the Sixth Kenning, too. They call themselves Beast Callers, and I’m told through intermediaries that they want to form a clave. I haven’t been able to locate them in the city, but the rumors of their abilities are awed and even worshipful. The possibility exists that they could be telling the truth since the guards at the Hunter Gate were killed in strange attacks: one suffered a kholeshar bite, and the other’s face was covered in bee stings.

I need more men to find these kids and get them under control. My cousin has sent a few troops upriver, but it’s not enough. I pledge to return them as soon as the situation is secure.

Yours in respect and service to the Crown,

Viceroy Bhamet Senesh

Kalaad save me, not this again. “Do you know what the viceroy asked me, Tactician?”

“I do.”

“Tell me, then, what do you know of these kids who claim to have found the Sixth Kenning?”

“Nothing for certain …”

“Share with me the rumors you’ve heard.”

The tactician nods and gulps. “They say one controls bees and wasps, one controls snakes and flesh eels, and one controls horses.”

“Controls horses? Perhaps that might help answer what happened to your lost cavalry.”

“It’s a possibility, yes.”

“Did you know the men guarding the Hunter Gate?”

“Yes. They were under my command, Viceroy.”

“Ah, so you saw their bodies.”

“I did.”

“And could their deaths have been accidental? A freak chance of animal aggression from the plains?”

“No, Viceroy. The bees might have been a freak attack, but if so, why go after only one man and why only sting his face? A natural swarm would have stung hands as well, any exposed skin. And the other guard who got the kholeshar bite—that was on his face, too.”

“A snakebite to the face?”

“Yes. One would hardly bend down to kiss a kholeshar, so that suggests the kholeshar struck from his height. Which would make sense if the snake was coiled on the shoulder or arms of this individual as rumors claim.”

Extraordinary. Bhamet might have genuine cause to worry. A bunch of kids with power was even more terrifying than adults with power. And for us to finally find our national birthright would necessarily cause tremendous upheaval. “So you believe it’s true—these kids have found the Sixth Kenning after all this time?”

“I cannot be certain, but it fits the facts that we have, Viceroy.”

“And they’re willing to use these powers to kill guards and possibly the missing cavalry.”

“Yes. Though there are rumors about that as well.”

“Oh? Do tell.”

“The story that’s circulating—and that must have come from the kids—is that the cavalry accidentally killed a boy and were going to kill all the Seekers to cover it up, so the hunter boy, the one who found the kenning, acted in self-defense.”

“So they’re actually claiming credit for the lost cavalry instead of pretending they never ran into them, and claiming the cavalry provoked a lethal response?”

“Correct.”

“Very interesting. Do you think they might be telling the truth?”

The tactician shrugged. “We will only ever have their side of the story.”

“So just to make sure I have this right: Viceroy Senesh has lost men twice to these allegedly blessed kids, and they’re asking him to recognize their clave and ignore those deaths.”

“Yes, Viceroy.”

“Fantastic. Gentlemen,” I say to the crossbowmen, “please secure the junior tactician to one of the posts.”

There is some struggle. Some protest. A quick blow to the head with a crossbow stock stuns him and allows my men to get him secured.

“Did you know that cheek raptors can count?” I ask him, and his head wobbles on his neck as he tries to focus.

“What are you talking about? Why are you doing this?”

“Why do children pull the wings off butterflies? Why does my cock hurt all the time? We have no reasons for all the cruelties under Kalaad’s great wide sky. But we do have an answer to the first question I asked you. It’s true! Cheek raptors can count. Watch this; I’ll prove it to you.”

I snap my fingers in front of the raptor and say “Hup!” then hold up my index finger and say, “One! One! Hup!” The raptor leaps off my protected arm and flaps over to the junior tactician, digging its talons into his left cheek and ripping it off, flying back to my arm with a bloody hunk of the tactician’s face as he screams.

“There, you see? His natural instinct would be to take both of your cheeks at the same time, but he only took one! And look, he thinks you’re quite delicious, Tactician. Oh, my, gone already! These plains creatures eat fast. They have to, you know. Well, he was such a good boy, we have to reward him, don’t we? Hup! One! Hup!”

We leave the largely faceless tactician there after removing his military shoulder pins and return to the city. The raptor to his aerie, me to my tower to compose a suitable reply for my colleague in Khul Bashab.

My dear Bhamet,

You great wide gash, we’ve been invaded by Hathrim and we’ll all be breakfast for blackwings if I don’t get some help! Pay attention—I’ve already informed you of this before. If you can’t handle a few rebellious teenagers, then you definitely won’t be able to handle Hearthfire Gorin Mogen when he comes calling. Send all your men to me now in defense of our country. And tell your cousin to do the same.

I do have a suggestion that may solve your problems. Let it be known in your city that you will accept the Beast Callers clave and you won’t have to search for the kids because they’ll gladly pay you a visit to get what they want. Once you have a signed charter—actually, make it a condition of signing it—employ them immediately in service to the Crown and send them to me. I will send them against the Hathrim. Either these kids will emerge victorious and become national heroes—in which case you can publicly “believe” their self-defense stories and forgive the cavalry deaths—or they will die in a fire. You win either way.

Sincere sorrow about the sudden death of your junior tactician. He was attacked by a cheek raptor outside the protection of our walls.

In service to the Crown,

Viceroy Melishev Lohmet

I give the letter to a courier, enclosing the tactician’s shoulder pins, and tell him to make haste to Khul Bashab. And then, just in case those blessed kids could change my luck, I visit Nasreghur at the garrison in person, not trusting Khaghesh to deliver the message.

“Inform every single one of your gate staff. They’re to grant anyone claiming to be a Beast Caller an immediate audience.” One of them under my control would catapult me to the throne for sure.

I was glad that the Nentian expatriates had already been taken care of and the ambassador expelled as well, or else we would have more violent attempts on Fintan’s life to confront. That was the viceroy at his scheming worst, and the crowd muttered among themselves, wishing far worse pain upon him than a burning sensation when he urinated.

“Returning back to this side of the continent, you may recall mention of an expedition to Möllerud that concerned Second Könstad Tallynd du Böll and that Kallindra du Paskre and her family were part of that expedition.”

The bard threw down a black sphere and became the sleepy-eyed teenager with her dark hair pulled back in a queue.

I don’t think I can ever look upon blackwings again with anything but horror. They are creatures of my nightmares now, companions with death the way rain and clouds are best friends. The land is their dinner plate, and they feast upon us when we drop onto it, lifeless and rotting. They swirl and screech over Möllerud still, though it has been weeks since we passed here last and the bodies of our countrymen were freshly slain.

But they have done their work in the meantime, and the corpses outside the walls are mostly rags and bones now. If there is any mercy here, at least the faces are gone. This is an anonymous resting place, the victims mysterious and possessed of a certain distance without the substance of their flesh. I won’t recognize anyone we traded with once. I can pretend for short periods that they’re merely skeletons instead of former people, relics of the landscape who never laughed or cried or loved or shouted in anger.

I still think we should set the whole place on fire. Erase this excrescence from the earth, if not our memories, and let us build again, however long that takes, so that people will laugh here again instead of weep and mourn.

But I am only a trader’s daughter. No one will listen to me. I think that instead of joining this clave or that, I would primarily like to become someone people will listen to. There is no clear path to that summit, however. Unless you count becoming one of the blessed. I am often amazed that Pelenaut Röllend spent part of his youth as a fish head in the dank alleys of Pelemyn. But just jump into Bryn’s Lung, somehow survive to become a tidal mariner, and you, too, can leave behind your impoverished history and grow up to rule one of the world’s largest countries!

Though I suppose we are not so large anymore. We are much reduced: the great cauldron of our people, once a mighty reservoir, has steamed away to a mere puddle.

Our caravan has paused for a while some distance away from the walls, allowing me this time to write without danger of a spilled ink pot or a scribbled word as a result of wagon wheels over rocks. The company of mariners sent with us by the quartermaster is scouting ahead, entering the city to make sure there are no traps or Bone Giants around.

I am sure they will be doing some discreet looting in advance of the rest of us to pay themselves for the danger. I am of Mother’s mind in this regard: robbing the dead holds no attraction for me no matter how shiny the gold. Robbing the absent Bone Giants of a ship or five, however, sounds perfectly justified. I am not sure if that is morally defensible, but I feel it anyway. Perhaps it is just as well that no one listens to me.

We can see the silhouetted fleet anchored in the harbor from here. Father is trying to determine which ships might be in the best shape from this impossible distance and speculating aloud. Mother is ignoring him. Jorry has found a pretty girl to flirt with a couple of wagons behind us, and her parents have put him to work under their watchful eyes. The girl is extremely conscious of being the subject of a public mating ritual and uncomfortable with it as well. She’s tolerating him only to be polite, but Jorry isn’t picking up on any of those signals. He is little more than an ambulatory boner.

A mariner scout has just come from the west on horseback to warn us that there are small raiding parties of Bone Giants roaming around the outlying farms. “You should all head back,” he said. “It’s not safe.” He has blood on him—not his own, though.

The men challenge him: Is this an order? Does he even have authority to order us around? How many parties of Bone Giants did he see? How many in each party? Were they actually headed this way or farther into the country? What if we head back now without the mariners in the city and these parties find us along the way?

“I’m going to report to the gerstad now,” the scout said, making a visible effort to be patient. “Do as you like. I’m merely informing you that there are giants in the area and it’s not safe. We may have to head back.”

The father of the pretty girl Jorry was flirting with said, “Won’t the mariners in the city protect us?”

That caused the scout to shed his thin veil of professionalism. His eyes grew to the size of chicken eggs, and he bared his teeth. “No! No, they won’t. Bryn drown us all, I was in a party of five, you understand? Five men on horseback! We came upon three of the Bone Giants, and I am the only one who escaped. Do you see? We can’t fight them. They’re too big. Their reach is inhuman. If you get one, the others take you down—that’s exactly what happened. We got one of them, and they got four. Blows coming from angles you can’t predict, from distances you think impossible. One of them shattered my shield—” He broke off, realizing he had lost control. “But you can stay here if you like.” He trotted off to the city, men shouting after him to come back and answer their questions. And once it was clear that he wouldn’t stand there and be a target for them, they began to argue amongst themselves about what to do. Except for Father. He asked Mother what she thought.

“To the deep with what these others think,” he said. “What do you figure we should do?”

“I think we should get on one of those ships right now and sail back to Setyrön,” she said. “We’re dead if they find us here. And if there are more than a few of them, then those walls and the mariners inside them won’t make much difference. They didn’t make any difference to all the rest of those people.” She shook her head. “We never should have come down here, Lönsyr. We need to get away as fast as we can. And taking a ship was the whole idea anyway. Let’s go.”

He didn’t argue. He nodded once and whipped the horses. I had to call to Jorry to tell him we were leaving, and he was forced to run to catch up with us. Or jog, anyway; we weren’t moving all that fast.

We weren’t the only ones to move. Some families decided to head for the city gates as we headed to the harbor. Some of them turned around. Some remained where they were.

Writing as we roll now, and this road we’re taking is ill maintained and rough going. But Mother was right: we both need to get away and never should have come. The Bone Giants are here. Now. Coming out of distant tree lines like the pale wraiths of the Mistmaiden Isles, running across the dead fields of once-green farms. I knew that these wouldn’t be like Motah, mostly naked and trying to appear harmless, but they were even more horrifying than I expected. Clacking bones and painted faces, white butchers who feed the blackwings, strange swords in their hands to slaughter us like animals. Which makes me wonder: Are we even human in their eyes? Are they in mine?

The scout is streaking for the castle, whipping his horse in panic. He has a chance to make it, I think. But the families that were headed that way behind him have largely rethought and are trying to turn their wagons around to either head for the harbor or simply go back. The ones who remained where the scout found us are definitely turning back for Setyrön. I can see some mariners up on the walls with bows. But there are more giants than archers already. They just keep coming. That mariner scout might have found an isolated party of three, but this is no isolated raiding party foaming out of the country like wave breakers. I think it must be the army come back to claim their fleet or at least occupy the city now that they’ve sacked Hillegöm and the interior villages. It’s the tide rolling in, except it’s no gentle progression of curling waters but one huge menacing whitecap, and I hope we’re not on the beach when it hits.

The outcry when the bard dismissed Kallindra’s seeming was swift and loud.

“Don’t worry; the story continues,” he assured everyone. “But I’m going to let the Kaurian scholar Gondel Vedd take it from here.”

I really shouldn’t eat while angry. Reinei found a way to remind me that peace is a better garden to cultivate in the mind. Ponder and I were eating breakfast at an outdoor café in Setyrön, and the people at the next table made clear through their expressions of disgust and muttered comments that I had committed a culinary crime by slathering my smoked moonscale with mustard. While I paused to glare at them, full fork raised and suspended before my mouth, a gust of wind from the sea blew that glorious mustard-covered bite right off my fork and onto my lap, beginning my day with a fresh mustard stain. The Brynts laughed at me and I laughed with them, but not for the same reason.

“Oh, no, Gondel!” Ponder said, dipping his napkin in water and offering it to me.

“No, thank you, I’ll be fine. It’s a gentle lesson from Reinei about what can happen when you don’t maintain your peace of mind.”

I had already sent a letter to the mistral on yesterday’s ship to Kauria and a longer one to my husband in hopes that he’d forgive me for my sudden disappearance and an absence that may stretch out for months. I could not in good conscience return yet; there had to be a way to get ahead of this and save Kauria from an assault like the ones Brynlön and Rael suffered, and right then Brynlön was my best hope of teasing out more information from the Eculans. Saviič could help me translate the blank spaces in Zanata Sedam, but could not tell me any more about their plans.

Ponder agreed that we would be better off doing most anything else than trying to approach the entire army occupying Göfyrd in hopes they would opt to talk instead of kill us on sight. So it was back to Möllerud for us, where there was a fleet that we could examine for clues on how they crossed the ocean and perhaps there would be some written orders left behind in the city. That large party of people we’d passed on the way to Setyrön was more than enough to handle that small group of Bone Giants we had run into, so it should be a safe place to conduct our investigations.

For a couple of days as we traveled down the coast on foot, we could forget that there was a war going on and we were in a land beset by invaders. The wind blew soft and peaceful upon our skin, carrying a pleasant tang from the ocean and a gentle rain on the second night. I noted aloud that I enjoyed being outdoors for a change instead of in a library or a musty dungeon. Ponder grunted and smiled but offered little else. I thought he must have very little on his mind since he rarely spoke, but a simple question dispelled that notion.

“What occupies your thoughts as you walk along with me on this boring duty?” I asked him.

“It’s not boring at all. The air here is different, and it speaks to me. I sense things you cannot because of my blessing.”

“Oh. Like pressure and moisture and precise temperature?”

“Yes, but much more than that. Ghosts and voices in the wind.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He cast a worried glance at me, hoping he would not have cause to regret giving his thoughts breath. “It’s not something we tempests speak of very often. Cyclones don’t perceive them. And I wouldn’t have said anything except that you asked and this is extraordinary. There are many unhoused spirits out here.”

“I guess there would be wherever humans have lived.”

“No, I don’t hear this kind of noise in Kauria. Most people tend to die at peace there, and their spirits become the wordless breath of the wind. But here, where there has been so much violence, the air is restless with anger and loss and yearning. Much of it ahead of us.”

“I’d expect so. Do you hear actual words?”

“Sometimes, yes. Mostly it’s just faint screams and roars.”

“And what do you see?”

“That’s difficult to explain—begging your forgiveness, Scholar. It’s like asking me to describe yellow to someone born blind. But there are spirits collected in this area. Nothing that you would be able to see and nothing that will harm us. But violence leaves its echoes.”

Indeed it does. On the third day, I felt out of sorts and the sky wore a somber gray skirt with dark folds of resentment pleated throughout, refusing to rain and refusing to let the sun shine through. Ponder felt it, too—more so, I’m sure. We hardly spoke the entire day, traveling in silence and our thoughts roiling like the desultory vapors above. If this was the invisible effect of the spirits he spoke of, how could anybody breathe peace in this part of Brynlön ever again? Could anyone be truly happy in close proximity to the site of a massacre?

The sky continued to churn with dark omens on the next day when we returned to Möllerud. There was supposed to be industry there if I had my facts straight—a cleanup in progress and a refitting of the anchored Eculan fleet for Brynt purposes. What we saw did not match expectations.

There were only more bodies and more blackwings gorging themselves. The remains of the caravan of wagons we passed on the way to Setyrön were now scattered outside the walls. The air was thick and sour with death, the peace of Reinei stilled on the killing field.

“I think they found more than just a few Eculans when they got here,” Ponder said.

“Oh, no. That family.”

“Which one?”

“The one I spoke with for a while. With the young woman who showed me her journal. I don’t see their wagon.”

We scanned the carnage in silence until Ponder pointed toward the port. “Over there. I think that might be theirs.”

“Ah, by the ships! Yes, that’s excellent! Perhaps they escaped. I’d like to check on them if we can.”

Ponder squinted at the walls before replying. “I think the Eculans are in there now. I’m pretty sure I see a sentry. But we can try and leave quickly if it becomes necessary.”

“Yes, let’s try, please.”

Hope built within my chest as we approached. I didn’t see any bodies around their wagon except for the half-seen corpses of the horses. The Eculans had slain them all in their harnesses, a tremendous waste of resources. Did they not know how useful horses were? Perhaps their stature made riding horses impractical. Still, did they wish to operate plowshares on their own or pull their own wagons? It made no sense.

There were far too many ships at anchor in the bay to determine if one was missing. We had to see if we could locate the du Paskres and, if we could not, hold on to the hope of their survival.

Shouts and a familiar dread clacking pursued us before we could get there. The Eculans had spied us and sent out a party to deal with us. Seven of them, armed with both spears and swords this time.

“Ponder?” I said.

“It will be all right if that’s all they send,” he said. “Keep going.”

I urged my ancient legs to a quicker pace, a sort of gliding half jog that would reduce stress on my knees. Appearing to flee would give them confidence and convince any officers watching from the walls that they didn’t need to send anyone else to deal with us.

The Eculans steadily closed the distance between us, as they were running at nearly full speed and had a much longer stride. Ponder turned to face them, keeping one hand on my shoulder for some reason, and jogged backward. The reason for the hand became clear when he clutched my shoulder and said, “Stop!”

I did and turned to see what he was reacting to. The Eculans had decided they were close enough to hurl their spears at us in high arcs. Ponder shot a hand into the sky and uttered a simple denial at them, whipping his hand to our left as he did so. A powerful gust of wind blew the spears off course to fall harmlessly to the turf. And then he reached out with the same hand to the attackers and clenched his fist in a familiar gesture. The Eculans discovered they had no more air to breathe and collapsed after a few steps.

“Go,” Ponder said. “This is under control. I’ll follow behind.”

Resuming my awkward and unforgivably slow top speed, I hoped to have time to discover what had happened to the du Paskres. If there were watchers on the walls, they would definitely respond to the sight of their sortie brought to its knees.

The back door of the wagon gaped open, but I could see nothing, shadows preventing me from determining if there was anything inside at all. I altered my course once I drew closer, taking an angle to see if anyone was in the front seat. My heart dropped when I saw two bodies slumped against each other. It was the father and mother I’d spoken to only briefly, large bloody gashes on their torsos, their eye sockets plucked bare, and their heads crawling with blowflies laying eggs. They obviously had never made it to the ships. That meant …

“No, no, no.” I hurried to the back of the wagon and placed my foot on the wooden step that would allow me to peer inside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom inside, but I could see right away that it wasn’t empty. There was a mess of things inside. An overturned ledger, pots and baskets, scattered pieces of clothing and sachets of tea, a burst container of dry beans. And at least one body, facedown. The flies would have told me that if nothing else. The feet were near me, and I pulled up the pant leg for a clue—muscular, like a man’s. I didn’t know who it could be, but it wasn’t Kallindra. I checked behind me, and Ponder was only ten lengths away. He made a gesture with his hands to indicate that we were still okay and I could continue. There were no visible Eculans behind him; they must be prone and unconscious.

“I’m going in,” I told him. “I can’t see enough.”

“Fine. I’ll keep watch.”

Grunting with the effort, I hauled myself up into the wagon and saw a knob on the left wall. There was a matching one on the right. I pulled and shoved and twisted on one until something moved—it was a slot that allowed some light to enter the interior. I did the same on the other side and reevaluated the scene. That was definitely a man sprawled facedown in front of me, but a young one. His left arm was splayed out, and there was another one underneath it, light-skinned palm up. That didn’t belong to him, and the fingers were thin. Between him and the rest of the mess in the wagon I couldn’t see who that hand belonged to.

More grunting to move the young man away, roll him over on his side. I expected the body to be stiff like a board, but it wasn’t. He had been dead long enough for the muscles to relax again. This had happened days ago, perhaps while we were still enjoying the comforts of Setyrön.

I tossed aside a tunic and a random sheet of paper to reveal the other person underneath, and my breath caught when I confirmed it was Kallindra. I had difficulty taking a new breath after that, as often happens when peace abandons us and we are besieged by storms. I blubbered and gasped and shut my eyes to the horror of her vacant expression and open lips past which no wind moved. When strangers die, you let that knowledge flow around and past your mind, perhaps thinking “How sad,” or “What a tragedy.” These sympathetic thoughts never affect your breath. But when someone you know personally dies, it is like a thunderclap in the heart. And the manner of Kallindra’s death was nothing more than a result of unreasoning hatred. It’s an airborne poison, hatred is, for I felt it filling my lungs and contaminating my thoughts. It is how violence thrives and peace withers. I caught myself hoping that Ponder had made a mistake and withheld breath from the Eculans a few seconds too long. Unworthy and wrong of me but nonetheless fervently wished in that moment. And I remembered the words Jubal spoke to me, that once I saw violent death, it would change me, make me capable of violence myself. I hoped he was wrong, but my thoughts suggested he might have been right.

Kallindra and the young man—perhaps her brother?—had been killed by slashes to their throats. The blood had stained her tunic and pooled underneath her neck, where her hair had become mired in it.

“Gondel. We need to be leaving,” Ponder’s voice floated into my consciousness and hung there until I could attach some significance to it.

“What?”

“Look.” I turned around and saw that there were more Eculans coming from the city. Many more, too many to count. “I can’t handle that many without resorting to violence.”

I wanted to tell him to resort to it immediately. Summon winds to lift them high in the air, as my brother had to the Hathrim, and let them fall to their deaths. These monsters had no regard for peace. But it was not my place to give such orders, and even if it was, it wouldn’t be in keeping with Reinei’s teachings.

“Her journal,” I muttered to myself. “Where is her journal?” If she had kept up with it, I might learn what had happened after I left her. I found it lying on her belly, her left arm draped over it as if to shield it from violation. I slipped it out and squeezed her cold hand. “I am so sorry, Kallindra. I hope you and your family are not haunting the winds here. Be at peace. Your story will be told.”

“Scholar, we really need to go!” Ponder said.

“Coming!”

I scrambled out as best as I could, fingers pinched tightly around the journal, and Ponder lifted us up and away from the reach of the Eculans. The wind didn’t carry us back toward Setyrön, however, which surprised me. Ponder instead floated us out over the harbor and set us down on the deck of one of the anchored Eculan ships, well out of spear range but still within their sight. They could try swimming out after us if they wished or board a boat to chase us, but it didn’t matter. We’d have plenty of time to react to anything they tried.

“What do you want to do now?” Ponder asked.

“Report to Setyrön that Möllerud is actively occupied and all their party is lost.”

“Should we do that, though, when they might see us depart and decide to follow us to Setyrön?”

“I don’t think it will make a difference,” I said. “They already knew the people they slaughtered came from that direction. And they saw us coming from that direction as well. We won’t be giving them any new information. But Setyrön doesn’t know about this. They should be warned.”

“Very well. And after that?”

“We will head north. Continuing to seek information here will lead us both into a situation where we must break the peace. Let us visit Göfyrd and then the capital. Trading facts with the pelenaut might be fruitful.”

The tempest nodded but said nothing. He folded his arms and frowned at the pale bodies collecting at the shore.

“Ponder?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know of any way to give the spirits you see here some measure of peace?”

He shook his head slowly. “I wish I did, Gondel.”

As if in answer the wind picked up and howled about our ears. I couldn’t bear to stand anymore, and I crumpled to the floor of the boat, hugging Kallindra’s journal to my chest, a record of a now-extinct way of life. Once again, I had been too late to be of any help to the Brynts. I had to find some way to leap ahead of the Eculans and anticipate their next move or I would be doing nothing but writing their histories.

The bard sighed heavily when he dissolved his seeming. “That is, of course, how I came to know of the contents of Kallindra’s journal. Gondel Vedd brought it here to Pelemyn. Tomorrow we’ll have more from Abhi and revisit Culland du Raffert.”

Tidal pools can mirror life at times, for they are simultaneously a place of beauty and wonder, yet occupied by horrors with teeth and there is no place to escape them. After I returned home from the bard’s performance, I felt trapped in one.

Elynea had found a job and was positively beaming about it, her face and indeed her entire body transformed by the personal victory. But since this came as a complete surprise to me and I had walked in expecting to say that I had a job waiting for her if she wanted it, my face wasn’t suffused with unadulterated joy when she said, “Isn’t that great?”

It was only a second or two’s delay, if that, for me to let go of my expectations and embrace her good news. But she noticed. When I said, “Oh, yes. Of course! That’s fantastic!” she frowned and folded her arms across her chest.

“Are you sure? You don’t seem that thrilled.”

“No, I am! Honestly, congratulations. Sorry, I was just surprised because I was about to say I’ve found a job for you if you wanted it.”

She cocked her head. “When did I ever ask you to get a job for me, Dervan?”

“Well, never—”

“That’s right. I never asked. Because I didn’t want your help. I wanted to get a job on my own, and I did. Drown me if I didn’t.”

“And that’s wonderful! Seriously. I’m very happy for you. Please forgive me my presumption. Tell me about your job.”

She eyed me for a moment, uncertain of my sincerity, and I admit that it hurt. It was a pain I’ve felt before—wounded pride, perhaps? Far too simple a label but perhaps close enough. It was more accurately an intellectual awareness that I was wrong, a fervent desire to be right from the start and go back in time to be right, coupled with an awareness that I couldn’t do that and that in fact wishing to do so was stupid and immature, piled on top of the stupidity I already felt for assuming Elynea would want my help, and underneath it all an irrational desire to lash out in anger at Elynea when she had done nothing wrong and in truth I was angry at myself.

Sarena had trained me to identify at least what was going on in my head. She could tell what I was thinking and feeling because she’d seen the same things in the faces of men around the world. It didn’t stop me from feeling any of it, but it did stop me from acting on those things the way many men would. So I restrained myself from making it worse and did what I knew to be right: give Elynea nothing but encouragement. When she was convinced I wanted to hear about it, she unfolded her arms and clasped her hands together, beaming and bobbing up and down on her toes.

“I’m formally apprenticed to a Fornish master woodworker! Eee!” She gave up the bouncing and did some full-on jumps, and that set off her kids. Tamöd and Pyrella leapt around the house, delighted because their mother’s mood was so infectious, making high-pitched noises of joy and laughing.

I congratulated her again; she thanked me and then said that some post had arrived for me and she’d put it on my desk to keep it safe from the playing kids. That was my chance to escape with a shred or two of my dignity intact, and I withdrew to investigate, closing the door behind me and sighing.

“Brilliant, Dervan,” I said aloud. Maybe the letter would make me feel better.

It bore the seal of the university, and I gave a surprised grunt. That was an impressively quick response. I tore it open, nearly as excited as the children for a moment, but my face quickly fell. Greetings, and then:

“I regret to inform you that while the university will open again, it will do so at greatly diminished capacity and your services will not be required.” I read that three times in mounting disbelief before continuing. “I hear that you have secured other important work during the hiatus, and I hope you will continue to find that fulfilling and prosperous.” Best wishes and the signature of the chief scholar of my department. My hands gripped the edges of the letter so tightly that my fingers turned white at the edges and my jaw ached from clenching my teeth.

He had heard? What had he heard, and from whom? Was this the hand of the Wraith at work, making sure I had nothing else to do but work for him—or the Lung or the pelenaut—from now on?

I had to sit down and rest my face in my hands, letting the letter fall. My temporary employment by the government was supposed to be just that: temporary. I’d spent the majority of my professional life as a scholar and introduced myself as such; my identity was bound up with a job that made me feel proud and useful. What was I now? Certainly not a soldier, though I seemed to be in their company more often than not these days. And I couldn’t tell people I was a spy even if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to. No: I was definitely not a spy. The last thing I wanted was to follow my wife into an abyss of plots and deception and poisons.

Rölly might intervene if I asked, but I’d be ashamed to play on that association any more than I already had. Asking him to help after the university closed was what had washed me into this tidal pool in the first place. And I had the uncomfortable feeling that this arrangement was what he preferred anyway.

There was a soft knock at my door, and Elynea called through it, “Dervan? Are you hungry? I feel like cooking if you want.”

Mastering my voice into something amiable, I replied, “Ah, yes, that would be grand. I’ll be out to help in a moment.”

I took a couple of deep breaths. Elynea’s example might be the one for me to follow. She had reinvented herself; it had not been without effort, true, or a good measure of pain, but she’d proved that it could be done. Opening the door of my room, I paused at the threshold so that I wouldn’t interrupt a family moment. Elynea was chopping up a carrot on a board in the kitchen, and Pyrella had frozen, staring at her. It was her intensity of expression that had caused me to freeze as well. Tamöd caught on and stopped jumping up and down on the couch, where he’d been singing the Current Chorus. The abrupt silence made Elynea look up to see what was wrong.

“What is it, Pyrella?” she said.

“You’re cooking?” her daughter asked, her voice tiny.

Elynea shrugged. “Yes. You want to eat tonight, don’t you?”

“But you haven’t cooked in a long time.”

Elynea looked down at the chopped-up vegetables and the knife in her hand, suddenly realizing it was true. Her shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Mom,” Pyrella said. “I’m just noticing. And I’m glad. Because it’s like you’re back now.”

The knife clattered to the counter as Elynea rushed around the counter to give Pyrella a hug. They were already sobbing as they embraced, and Tamöd’s mouth dropped open; he was too young to understand. As I eased backward into my room and slowly shut the door, I heard him say, “Hey! What’s going on?”

Feeling guilty about eavesdropping but telling myself it was necessary so that I didn’t stomp through an important time for healing, I waited until their voices resumed their happy tones and I could hear the knife thwacking on the cutting board again. Then I cleared my throat noisily as I exited my room and joined them.

Over dinner I asked if they had heard that the pelenaut had declared Festwyf open for resettlement. Elynea nodded. “But you won’t be going back?”

The kids looked to their mother, perhaps a bit worried, and she caught it. “No,” she replied. “I’ve lived there long enough and for even longer in my mind. I’m here now. We are here now. Time to live in the present and be thankful for what’s in front of us.”

Pyrella beamed at her mother. “I’m thankful.”

Tamöd asked, “Is there going to be pudding in front of us after this?”

Fintan and I revisited the Kaurian restaurant where the bard had first been recognized in public. We were not so lucky as to arrive just after a shipment of oranges this time, and the menu had most of its meat entrees crossed out, replaced by new seafood dishes. They were all prepared with dry Kaurian spices and sometimes slivers of Kaurian tree nuts either baked on or garnishing the fillets. Kindin Ladd, the Priest of the Gale, was enjoying his lunch there, and we waved to each other across the dining room and traded smiles.

The bard looked a little weary under his eyes and I inquired if he had slept well. He shook his head.

“The nightmares were bad last night.”

I pursed my lips, considering. I knew that many people suffered lingering mental effects after something terrible happened to them—how could they not?—and that it took many forms. Their tempers flared quickly, or they withdrew and shut down the way Elynea had until recently, or they had nightmares or vivid flashbacks of whatever trauma they experienced, or all that and more. Regardless, it crippled them to some extent. My panic attacks and nightmares about gravemaws hounded me for years and then ebbed thanks to a Kaurian principle Rölly told me about. Deciding that neither of us had anything to lose, I brought it up.

“Have you ever heard of the Kaurian practice of presence?”

“I’ve heard of it, but I’m not too clear on the concept. Why?”

“It helped me reduce the number and frequency of my nightmares. Or maybe it was simply a matter of time, as I suggested yesterday, though I still get them every once in a while. The problem with such horror is that some things, once seen, can never be unseen. Since you pointed out that your memories won’t fade over time and I think practicing presence helped me, perhaps it might help you, too.”

“I don’t know,” Fintan said. “If it’s associated with Reinei, I might offend the Triple Goddess.”

“It’s not a religious practice at all,” I assured him, “though of course the Church of Reinei condones anything that leads to peace, including personal peace of mind. It is simple to adapt by those of other faiths or of no faith at all. I could try to explain, but I might not do it justice. There’s a Priest of the Gale a few tables over whom I know. Would you mind if I invited him to briefly outline the practice?”

Fintan shrugged. “Sure.”

I waved to catch Kindin’s attention and beckoned him over. After introducing him to Fintan, I asked him to explain presence and its benefits to us as laypeople.

“Certainly. May I sit? I will stay only a small while.”

We begged him to be seated, and he thanked us.

“Outside the Church of Reinei,” he began, “presence is a therapeutic practice that suggests one should make a conscious effort to live in the present. The reasons for this deserve to be examined regardless of one’s faith. We begin with this observation: That which tends to cause us mental distress is either memories of the past or worries about the future. In such times we are not living in the present; we are missing the peace and fulfillment in every moment because our mind is absent in some other time that lies behind us or ahead. To amend this—to ease the distress we feel—we must train ourselves to be mindful of the now.” Kindin leaned back and grinned. “Open your senses to this instant, friends. Is it not fine? The clank of pans and the hiss of heat from the kitchen. The chimes dangling in the wind outside the door that we can hear, a muffled yet insouciant song of the wind. The smell and taste of your food and the bounty of the ocean that makes it possible. The craftsmanship on display in this building and this very table, a beautiful hardwood improved from my home. The company you are keeping, Fintan—a Brynt and a Kaurian, with darker skin and different cultures from yours but still men who love and mourn and exult in the sun as you do. To be present, you note these things instead of ignore them. You allow—no, let me rather say, you encourage the wonders of the moment to occupy your thoughts rather than your past or future.”

“All right; that sounds fine in theory,” Fintan replied, “but if I’m to achieve that, isn’t that some form of repression? I can’t prevent thoughts of the past or future from happening. They won’t simply go away.”

“Oh, no, I’m not suggesting that!” The priest straightened in his chair, his hands held up in a placating gesture. “I’m suggesting that what you may be doing instead is repressing the present, and your path to peace is to simply stop doing that.” He spread his arms wide. “Open yourself to it instead. Give this particular time its due.” He dropped his hands and hunched forward, his eyes boring into Fintan’s. “And then, when these unpleasant thoughts of the past or the future inevitably intrude, you note them, as you do the present, but when they are placed next to the present and the beauty of this world, you will also note they are not nearly as important as they once were.” His intensity faded, and he smiled again as his body relaxed in his chair. “I am told that practicing presence has helped many people with troubled pasts. Their feelings of anxiety and panic decrease, and they even experience fewer nightmares if that is something that afflicts them. I hope it works for you as well.”

Fintan gave him a tight nod. “Thank you very much.”

“Should you wish further instruction, perhaps some specific techniques, you may visit or leave word for me at the Kaurian embassy,” Kindin said, taking his cue. He rose from his chair and gave a little bow. “Please breathe peace.”

When he was out of earshot, the bard chuckled. “I feel better already.” He nodded and said more sincerely, “Thank you, Dervan. That might actually help. And I will note what I see presently for the record: you are a kind man.”

I ducked my head, not knowing how to respond. But I think both of us were in good spirits after that, and it was our most amiable work session to date.

“I’ve noticed a little something about my diet in recent days,” Fintan said upon the wall, “and you might be experiencing something similar. Here’s one of your songs, one of my personal favorites.”

I had fish heads for my breakfast

For my lunch and dinner too

And all my friends are fish heads

Don’t know what I’m going to do

I’m mighty sick of fish heads

I’d like some fruits and veg

But all I have are fish heads

And a half-squeezed lemon wedge

I’d trade you all my fish heads

For an apple and a smoke

Or just take them, I don’t care,

If I have one more I’ll choke!

(Coda)

Fish heads, fish heads, they’ll rot your bloody brain,

Fish heads, fish heads, I’ll never eat them again!

“We’re going to hop from coast to coast today,” Fintan said. “First we’ll go to the west, where Abhinava Khose is about to meet the viceroy of Hashan Khek.”

The bard transformed into the plaguebringer, looking a bit dusty from his travels.

I have been walking for a while now along the bank of the Khek River, exploring a possible land-based trade route that would give both Hashan Khek and Khul Bashab a new trading partner. And it’s a very pleasant walk as long as you don’t have to worry about being eaten. Easy, too, when you have a stalk hawk traveling along with you, pointing out where one can find nuts and berries. The grasses hide clumps of bushes sometimes, and though trees rise above them, they are often difficult to identify from a distance. An airborne friend definitely makes such things easier.

But my new senses help as well. I’m learning to identify what plant life might be nearby in conjunction with certain concentrations of animals and insects. I found a small clump of khanja berry bushes, for example, because I sensed the presence of khanja caterpillars feeding on them before they slept and turned into moon moths. Hunting for plant life to sustain me in this way is much more enjoyable than hunting creatures.

The old road down from Khul Bashab to the Khek River needs plenty of work. It’s mostly overgrown from disuse, though it does swing by a few watering holes and end at a dock where one can tie up cargo barges. I’ve been counting the days and marking places along the way that might work well for waypoints. Spots that could support a fortified inn, or a trading post, or a small village someday to keep traders safe at night. I passed the spider colony that is now the current location for the Sixth Kenning and shuddered as I gazed upon it. They are larger than my head, gray and furry and no doubt capable of delivering very painful and poisonous bites. If one was to be blessed, then no doubt the poison would be neutralized almost immediately, but that wouldn’t subtract from the pain and horror of being bitten. And if one wasn’t blessed, why, then, I imagine it would be one of the most terrifying ways you could die, for it would not be quick or painless and you might still be alive as they began to digest you, liquefying your muscles and slurping them up, and Kalaad in the sky, I think I might be making myself sick just thinking about it. I’ve heard stories that somewhere in Forn there is a clan that harvests silks from spiders, caterpillars, and worms and makes their primary living from it. I hope their spiders are more sensibly sized than these.

On the positive side, it will be only a few weeks and the kenning site will shift north to the plains below Tel Ghanaz, where one can be merrily torn apart by a troop of golden baboons or else blessed by bites and maybe some hugs. I cannot speak for all, but I would take baboons over spiders any day.

Also on the positive side, I have managed not to kill anything since I left Tamhan, Hanima, Adithi, and Sudhi or do anything stupid that contributed to the death of another creature. Let Murr and Eep and all others hunt according to their nature: my nature now is to walk gently among the animals of the plains and do no harm.

I hope my fellows are safe in Khul Bashab and well on their way to creating a Beast Callers clave. Viceroy Bhamet Senesh may be unwilling to do us any favors after the mess I’ve made of things, but perhaps the viceroy of Hashan Khek will be more open to the idea. I will inquire when I arrive. Situated on the coast as he is, he might be interested particularly in what I can do for him in the sea, so I conducted an experiment: I waded into the river up to my ankles—not far at all—and stretched out with my kenning to discover if I could sense the animal life in the river. And I could! Sunfish. Borchatta. Clawbugs in the mud. Checking first to make sure no fish-eating birds were nearby, I asked a sunfish to leap out of the water briefly, and it did, blinding me with sunlight on its scales before returning safely to the water.

Impossible not to grin at something like that.

When I drew close to Hashan Khek, I noticed that the number of animals decreased significantly. They were more frequently hunted, of course, but also the city simply smelled bad. Like borchatta soup and … something worse. No wonder the animals avoided the place: humans were befouling it.

I found a small grove of nughobes well outside the walls and asked Murr and Eep to wait in the area while I visited the city, perhaps for a few days. I unhitched my horse from the cart and took both horses with me into the city to keep them safe. Murr and Eep most likely would fend very well for themselves, but two horses would be easy prey for a pack of something hungry.

The guards at the Hunter Gate could not have been more surprised to see a single unarmed man approach them and ask to enter the city.

“Who are you?” one asked. I told him. “What’s your business here?”

“I’ve come to see the viceroy if he’ll grant me an audience. I have news regarding the discovery of the Sixth Kenning near Khul Bashab.”

“What nonsense is that?” They hadn’t heard of the discovery, then. But perhaps they had heard of something else.

“They call themselves Beast Callers. They’re trying to start a clave in the city. I’d like to discuss those developments with him.”

If that didn’t work, I would bring up the missing cavalry, but the guards exchanged glances after “Beast Callers” and nodded.

“We’re supposed to bring anyone who speaks of that straight to him,” one said. He had a marker of rank on his shoulder. “Enter and follow.”

The other guard remained at the gate, and I followed the ranked soldier to the viceroy’s compound, which surrounded the Tower of Kalaad near the harbor. There were some questions from other guards about my clothes, or relative lack of them, but matters of personal appearance did not matter so much as following their orders, and I was steadily passed through a series of checkpoints, gave my horses into the care of their stables, and soon was presented to the viceroy’s chamberlain. He was a short man with a large gap between his front two teeth, introduced only as Khaghesh. I did not know if that was his first name or surname, but I did know that I did not trust him.

He did not think very highly of me either. I must have looked terrible, caked in dust and grass from days of walking on the plains. I might have smelled worse than the city—certainly like a horse. He smelled like some Fornish ideal of masculinity, all cloves and vanilla, but I think he had sprayed that on himself to disguise his fondness for onions, which I detected hovering about as well. He lived a pampered existence, wearing boots made of gut goats, and his lip curled in evident disgust. I should probably bathe soon.

“You are a messenger of Viceroy Senesh in Khul Bashab?”

“No, sir. I am an envoy of the Beast Callers.”

“An envoy only, or are you a Beast Caller yourself?”

“I am.”

His sneer communicated his disbelief. “And what proof can you offer of this rumored talent?”

“What proof would satisfy you?”

“I hardly know. There are no beasts here for you to call.”

“Oh, there are plenty, sir.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“There are many insects and spiders in the compound—quite nearby, in fact—and some small rodents as well. If you will agree not to strike at them when they appear, I will ask them to show themselves and do no harm to you or this guard here.”

He stared at me for a moment, then looked all around at the walls and ceilings, searching for insects and the like. They were all hidden at the moment in cracks in the salt-worn masonry.

“Very well, it is agreed,” Khaghesh said. “Make them appear. I will do no harm to them so long as they do not crawl on me.”

I called the insects and spiders and other crawling things forth. They obliged and emerged from various hiding places in the hallway. One was a poisonous hundred-legged wheelmouth with rotary teeth that drilled into flesh and shredded it before sucking down the resulting slurry of meat.

“Ugh!” Khaghesh grunted. “I had no idea there were so many. And you said there were rodents?”

“Near the kitchen. Enjoying the food there.”

His disgust deepened, but his regard improved. Grudging respect, perhaps a small hint of fear in his eyes.

“Understood. Now make them go away again. I liked them better when I couldn’t see them.”

I allowed the creatures to return to their shelters with my thanks.

“Wait here,” the chamberlain said. “I’ll inform the viceroy.”

That left me alone in the hallway with the guard. He looked at me differently now, too.

“The Sixth Kenning is real, then?” he asked. “You control animals?”

“It’s real,” I said. “You saw for yourself just now.”

“So I could seek a kenning. Any one of us could. Just like the Raelechs or the Fornish or whoever.”

“Yes. Just like them.”

The guard shook his head. “I never thought I’d live to see the day.” His teeth flashed at me, and he laughed. “This is amazing.”

Khaghesh reappeared and waved us into the viceroy’s receiving room or whatever he called it. It was wide but even longer, with his throne, a writing desk, and a conversation table set upon a single step that spanned the room and divided the back third from the rest of the room. I still didn’t know the viceroy’s name, but Khaghesh took care of that with a formal introduction and a flourish of his hand: “The viceroy Melishev Lohmet.”

I noticed there were several guards with crossbows posted against the walls on either side. The viceroy himself looked like he could not decide between being fashionable or martial. He wore a silken tunic in red, white, and black but with a saber belted at his side and a pauldron strapped onto his left shoulder with a flared piece designed to protect his neck from blows on that side. The robe did seem bulky and suggested a body far larger than the column of his neck would point to, so I imagined he had significant armor underneath as well. He nodded at me and the guard who’d brought me from the gate, standing in front of his throne with hands clasped in front of him. His eyes narrowed somewhat as he took me in, but he made no obvious signs of disgust as his chamberlain had. Up close I could see that he was sweating, a muscle twitched underneath his left eye, and his expression suggested not calm diplomacy but rather that he was barely holding on to his sanity. I almost inquired if he was well but reconsidered. Some egos are easily bruised by the suggestion that they are anything but excellent at all times, and his might be one of those.

“Report, soldier,” he said to the guard, who stiffened at being addressed and barked out a quick summary of my appearance at the gate and what I’d said. While he did that, I called what creatures I could to collect silently inside the room, including the wheelmouth. I told them to keep to the shadows but be ready to move quickly into the light.

“Very well. Thank you. You are dismissed to return to your post.”

The guard saluted and departed, his posture painfully erect, sweeping right past the creatures scrambling through the door, leaving me alone with the viceroy, his chamberlain, the crossbowmen, and an ever-growing collection of many-legged, toothsome allies.

“Tell me, Abhinava, what were you before you were a Beast Caller?” I thought it interesting that he did not ask me to prove my powers. He accepted that I was what I said I was.

“A hunter, sir.”

“You will address him as Viceroy—” Khaghesh snapped, but Lohmet held up a hand to silence him.

“He’s been perfectly polite, Khaghesh.” Turning to me, he said, “ ‘Sir’ will do, but you can call me Melishev if you wish. Let’s not think of titles right now; I find that they slow down conversation. Is it true you discovered the source of the Sixth Kenning south of Khul Bashab?”

“That’s true.” It was now due east of him along the Khek River, but he didn’t need to know that.

“How many others have been blessed with the Sixth Kenning now?”

“Three others.”

“So three others and yourself know where the kenning site is.”

“Correct.”

“Will you tell me where it is?”

“No, sir, begging your pardon.”

I expected him to frown, but instead he grinned at me and rubbed his hands together. “Ah! Now we get to it. You have reasons. Reasons that no doubt have something to do with the behavior of Viceroy Senesh and his cavalry.”

I responded with a curt nod and tensed. Would he try to take me into custody?

“Well, you will find that he and I are very different. He is quick to see enemies in people who would be his friends. I’m glad you came to me. Do please tell me what you want.” He withdrew a journal from a pocket of his tunic below the belt and sat down at a writing desk, flipping it open to a blank page and dipping a quill into ink before looking up at me expectantly. “Please, sit. Khaghesh, bring one of those chairs over for him.” He scratched “Beast Caller” at the top of a page while the chamberlain brought over a chair for me. It was all very strange and solicitous; his polite demeanor contrasted with his sweating, twitching face, and I realized that I was being hunted. These viceroys are predators, each with his own style of hunting, and Viceroy Melishev Lohmet was every bit as dangerous as Viceroy Bhamet Senesh. Perhaps more so. Senesh wielded a heavy club that you saw coming, whereas Lohmet plunged an unseen knife in your back. I checked the position of the crossbowmen again as well as that of Khaghesh. He hovered behind me, and I stared at him until it became uncomfortable and Lohmet noticed.

“Khaghesh, come over here to my side, please. Don’t loom over our guest.”

“Thank you.” My back would be to one wall of crossbowmen, but they couldn’t shoot at me without risk of hitting the viceroy, so I sat. “I first would like to say I appreciate very much your willingness to talk, sir. This is much better than confronting cavalry from Khul Bashab pointing crossbows at me.” He was too sharp to miss the subtext there. The cavalry hadn’t come back. The corners of his mouth played in a half smile. The muscle under his left eye twitched even faster.

“I agree. This is much preferable. Like many young people, you are not fond of authority.”

“No, sir.”

He looked pleased. “So what does the angry young man want? A completely new government? Some kind of endless wrangling in committee like the Raelechs have, yearly elections?”

“Not necessarily. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. And let me assure you I do not want a violent revolution. If I wanted that, I would have done it already. I could take over this city without moving from this chair, which is not a threat, sir, just a statement of fact. But I don’t think such chaos would help people. I do think that our country must change now that it has a kenning of its own. So many laws and customs are built around not having one.”

The viceroy grimaced. “Yes. It’s going to be an uncertain time. I cannot tell you how the king will react to this. Because as you just pointed out, you’re a threat to his power, never mind mine.”

“Well, perhaps speaking with you can go a long way to ensuring that we won’t have any more ugly incidents. Let’s be as honest as we can for our mutual benefit. Here is what we want—I mean me and the other Beast Callers.”

“Go on.”

“We want to help our country but not be pressed into military service.”

The viceroy frowned for the first time but did not reply until he had scrawled something in his journal. “And if your country is under a grave military threat?”

“Then please request our services, detailing exactly what needs to be done, and negotiate terms of engagement, payment, and release from service through a contract. We address the threat and then are free to enter other contracts, just like Raelech stonecutters or Brynt hygienists. Treat the Nentian blessed, in other words, the same way you would the blessed from any other country. We will happily serve as contractors but refuse to be military weapons used to oppress the population and preserve the power of current rulers.”

The viceroy threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, the king would definitely not respond well to that.” He spared a glance for Khaghesh, whose face looked as if he had swallowed something particularly bitter. That amused him, for his mouth smirked anew as he bent to write some more. When he finished, he cocked his head at me. “Do you mean to say that other countries use their blessed to oppress their populations?”

“No. But I believe this country uses its military to do that. So I will not join the military here except on a limited contractual basis.”

“Ah! I see.” He closed his journal and shifted awkwardly in his chair to place it back into the pocket of his tunic. Khaghesh took particular notice of this, staring at it as if he wanted to possess nothing else so much in the world. “Blasted armor. I’m not used to wearing it here. Have you heard what gives me cause to go armored these days?”

“No.”

“We’ve been invaded by the Hathrim. Hearthfire Gorin Mogen has a whole city of them to the south, just north of the Godsteeth.”

I watched him to see if he was joking. He appeared perfectly serious. “The Hathrim are truly invading? With hounds and their firelords and everything?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “They’ve already killed four thousand of my men. Lost my best tactician. The king is sending a much larger army now. They should be here in the next few days, and then we march.”

“I had no idea.”

“I thought as much. Viceroy Senesh has been more worried about four Beast Callers than an entire army of giants. Between you and me,” he said, and lowered his voice to a whisper, “I don’t think he’s particularly good at setting priorities.”

“Will the king’s army be able to defeat them?”

Lohmet winced and waggled a hand in the air. “I don’t think they can by themselves. We’d have to have some major help from the Fornish, but there’s a good chance we might get that since they don’t like having the lavaborn on their border.”

“I’d imagine not.”

“No. But don’t you find it odd that Ghurana Nent finally discovers the Sixth Kenning just when we need it most? To counter our destruction by the First Kenning, I mean?”

I shrugged. “It’s a coincidence.”

“A fortunate one, if so. And again, I’m glad you’re here. So let’s do this: I will contract with you to head south and take care of this Hathrim threat, because it is dire. And when you’re finished with that, we can formally set up your clave and do such other business as you wish.”

That was far too glib. Far too easy. Send me off to be killed by the Hearthfire of Harthrad, would he? Ha! “Let’s set up the clave first. It’s not like the Hathrim are outside the walls this very moment.”

The viceroy’s pasted-on pleasant expression melted into a clenched jaw. “We are under an existential threat. And you have yet to prove that you can do anything except murder the cavalry of Khul Bashab. You need to make amends.”

“I most certainly will. Under a contract that is permitted under the articles of the Beast Callers clave, which we will take the time to draft and sign right now.”

There was no hint of amusement or even patience in the viceroy’s voice as he pointed a finger at me. “I’m not drafting anything for a boy who’s done nothing yet for his people. You can work for me now—as a paid mercenary—or you can fight me. And if you fight me, you will spend yourself to old age and early death. That’s how these kennings work, right?”

“More or less,” I admitted while simultaneously asking the spiders and assorted other insects and small creatures to move along the walls behind the crossbowmen. They were all looking up at us, not down at their feet. And the viceroy’s sudden ultimatum told me all I needed to know about his true character. He was arbitrary and stubborn like my father and like that cavalry captain. “But I’m not trying to fight you. I’m trying to help you even as you help me. I can fight these giants under a clave contract. And then you and I and the other Beast Callers can usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for Hashan Khek. We both win.”

The viceroy pressed his lips together and shook his head in regret. “I like it better when I win the way I want to and don’t have some hunter brat thinking airy lovey-dovey Kaurian peace will spread over the world if we just be nice to animals.”

That confirmed he wouldn’t be negotiating in good faith. He’d be ordering those crossbowmen to act against me soon, so I commanded the bugs to crawl up the crossbowmen and chamberlain and bite at will. I had the wheelmouth crawl up the viceroy’s chair and then his armored back. Khaghesh was the first to scream and start slapping at his clothes, followed shortly by all the crossbowmen, who dropped their weapons in an attempt to crush the bugs chewing them up.

“Don’t move, Viceroy,” I said as he gripped the arms of his chair as a prelude to lunging out of it. “There’s a wheelmouth at your neck, and he will bite at my command.”

Melishev sneered at me. “I think I’d know if a wheelmouth was crawling on me.”

“Not through all that armor of yours. Turn your head, very slowly, and look at your left shoulder. Don’t jump or try to brush him off. It won’t end well.”

Melishev Lohmet swiveled his head to the left and saw the gaping serrated circle of a wheelmouth’s jaws facing him. That left eye muscle jumped so much that the eye simply closed and stayed that way. For the first time, I saw fear in his face rather than barely restrained malice or amusement. And because I had caused that and witnessed it, he would forever be my enemy.

“Dismiss your soldiers and your chamberlain. I’ll call off the bugs.” I did exactly that, except for the wheelmouth. I asked him to stay precisely where he was, ready to strike. Melishev ordered everyone out, and I added, “Leave those crossbows on the ground.” They would depart with some painful bites and a lingering sense of horror but nothing worse.

“We’ll be waiting for you outside,” Khaghesh promised me, and I was sure they would. Once we had privacy, I leaned forward and told Melishev to look at me, not the wheelmouth.