A Plague of Giants

“I’m not advocating airy lovey-dovey Kaurian peace, Viceroy. This hunter brat can be ruthless, too. I can kill you right now without spending myself at all and deal with your replacement. Or I can wipe out every single soldier in the city and simply take over. As I said earlier—I’m not sure you were listening—if I wanted to take your power, I would have taken it already. Are you listening now, and do you understand?”

“Yes to both.”

“That’s good. Because I came to you in a peaceful manner, and you were the one who decided to flex on me, giving me a stupid either-or decision to make. When you push me like that, I push back hard. Just ask the very dead cavalry of Khul Bashab. So now let me give you an ultimatum: either you write up a legal and valid Beast Callers clave charter right now and then a contract for me to fight the Hathrim or I will have the wheelmouth bore into your twitchy left eye there. What’s it going to be?”

“The charter and contract,” the viceroy said.

“Excellent. Thank you. The faster you work and the faster you get me out of the city safely, the sooner that wheelmouth leaves your shoulder.”

He seethed for a few minutes as he got out paper and began to write, the wheelmouth looking on all the while, but after a few lines of preamble his anger melted away and he chuckled softly.

“You know, Abhinava, you’re delightful.”

“Am I?”

“Very. I haven’t been outmaneuvered like this in so long. My own fault, really, for underestimating you, but it’s refreshing. And I’m starting to think the Hathrim won’t stand a chance against you.”

“We’ll see. Animals burn just like anything else.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to surprise them.”

I wasn’t fooled. The viceroy was like a wheat dog that had lunged too far, had gotten swiped on the nose, and had pulled back to circle and wait for an opening to attack again. But he wrote a fine charter and a finer mercenary contract to engage me against the Hathrim. I was to target and eliminate all the lavaborn I could ahead of the Nentian army’s arrival in the south. He also drafted a requisition and took me past the chamberlain and soldiers waiting in the hall to their logistic support officer. I was given my pick of provisions, from food to tools to clothes, along with a heavy purse of coins, and they returned my horses all brushed and groomed with shining new saddles. I had the viceroy accompany me on foot out of bowshot range, and there I had him first drop his sword to the ground and then stand still while the wheelmouth climbed down his robe and scurried on its hundred legs into the grass.

“I’ll see you below the Godsteeth,” I said. “And I hope that afterward we’ll be able to work together to improve Ghurana Nent for all its citizens.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” the viceroy said, but his eyes already glittered with imagined violence against me.

I pointed the horses toward the nughobe grove where I’d left Murr and Eep and left him to walk back to his squalid city.

Despite the crinkle of signed and sealed papers in my new pack, I understood that nothing was guaranteed. None of my contracts would matter if I died, and that might have been precisely what he was thinking: I can promise the boy anything he wants because the giants will burn him alive. And the charter was good only in Hashan Khek, not the entire country; I’d have to get it signed by the king. Even if I was successful against the Hathrim, I already expected a serious attempt to have me killed. But I thought that at last I had taken some positive steps in the right direction. I couldn’t help my family anymore, but I had hope that I could help everyone else’s.

“And now let’s move right here to the gates of Pelemyn,” Fintan called out to Survivor Field, “except months ago, when Culland du Raffert arrived from Tömerhil.” The smoke from the seeming stone whooshed up and resolved into a bedraggled, weary man.

Bryn’s Lung, the heart of the Second Kenning, is a strange chimney of coral and rock near the palace that empties into the bay via a cave. Or, looked at the other way, the chimney is the exhalation of the underwater cave. During high tide, pressure from rolling waves would force water into the cave and up the chimney and create a sort of salty ejaculation at the surface that was the source of many sniggering jokes. It was half seriously suggested as a metaphor for the lord Bryn’s life-giving powers. But officially it was his lung rather than some other organ, and the water plumes jetting out of the top were properly thought of as exhalations rather than ejaculations.

The reef surrounding Bryn’s Lung was a strange little ecosystem of tidal pools and mosses and amphibians that was closely monitored by a mixed force of church and palace officials. It rose just slightly above sea level at high tide and was fed by the periodic “breathing” of the Lung. During low tide, one could dive into the chimney and attempt to swim down and then through until one emerged from the cave into the bay. You’d either be blessed by Bryn and make it—the only way to swim such a distance—or drown.

Seekers like myself had to queue up and talk to both a secular official and a church official before diving in, and during high tide, while Bryn’s Lung was heaving full force, no one was allowed near it.

I arrived from Tömerhil during high tide, weary from travel and grief, my family lost for certain, and had to wait hours before the queue even began to move. The people in front and in back of me had no interest in conversation. Why try to befriend someone who most likely would be dead soon? Like me, I suspect that most people in line had little left to live for. There was only a sullen acceptance of boredom. Or perhaps I was misinterpreting the silence for piety and meditation and the thinking of profound thoughts in advance of seeking a blessing from the Lord of the Deep. In truth I can speak for no one but myself.

The entrance to the Lung was a narrow gated hall reminiscent of a covered bridge, and to enter the area one first had to speak to a longshoreman who had spoken the same words so many times that his voice had become a despairing monotone.

“Welcome, Seeker,” he said without a trace of welcome. “You understand that by diving into Bryn’s Lung you will most likely drown and your body be eaten by marine animals and never recovered?”

“Uh. Yeah?”

He shoved a piece of paper at me, along with a quill already wet with ink. “Please fill out your name in the blank, last residence, and sign at the bottom.”

There was quite a bit of fine print beneath the basic blanks at the top and the signature at the bottom. “What is this?”

“Conditional bequeathal of all your worldly possessions to the government of the pelenaut should you not have an executable will, and of course if you are blessed, the bequeathal is null.”

“All my worldly possessions? You’re looking at them.” Maybe I still had a house in Fornyd. Or a warehouse in Festwyf. What did it matter?

“Someone will enjoy those clothes,” the longshoreman said.

“May they bring them warmth,” I said, filling out the form and signing it.

“Thank you, citizen. Disrobe after you talk to the priest and leave your clothes with the attendant at the end of the hall.”

I thought of several quips about disrobing priests but figured the longshoreman had already heard them all by now and asked instead, “Is it always this busy?”

“No; it’s only since the attack. Lots of people figure they have nothing to lose anymore.”

“Yeah, that’s me, too.” I moved on so that he could repeat himself to the next person in line.

The priestess of the Lord Bryn was a kind older woman in the traditional long robe of chromatic blues. Unlike the disaffected longshoreman, she recognized me as an individual who might have a story. But I didn’t want to tell her mine, and after a minimal effort at politeness, I moved on.

The entrance to the Lung was an impressive seven feet in circumference, allowing some much-needed room to dive in without hitting the sides of the chimney. Some people gracelessly did just that, leaping too far or not far enough and catching themselves on the rocks, dashing open their heads or otherwise killing themselves before they even hit the water. The suction of low tide in the chimney ensured that they didn’t remain floating on the surface, but I had heard that sometimes their bodies would remain in the chimney for a while and people had to swim past them to reach the cave. One of the blessed periodically swam up into the chimney to make sure it was clear, a vital but grisly task I would never want to call my own.

One last bored longshoreman stood near the edge of the Lung to give final instructions. “Dive in headfirst and swim straight down for the light. When you’re in the cave, you’ll know it and you need to swim for the open sea, which is the black hole of the cave mouth.”

“What’s the light? I mean what’s making it?”

“The interior of the cave is coated with organisms that produce their own light.”

Mincing my way to the edge of the Lung, the coral sharp against the tender soles of my bare feet, I stared down into the roiling cauldron of black water and felt a cool spray misting up from it. The water’s surface rested perhaps a body’s length below, and though I could see no light glowing in its depths, I felt sure it would show up eventually.

“Jump in or walk away,” the longshoreman droned. “Don’t hold up the line.”

“A moment.”

I told my dead wife and kids one more time that I was sorry for how they died, for not being there to help, for not keeping them safe. And then I remembered to be thankful for the time I did have with them, for it truly had been a blessing.

“It’s all over now, though,” I said, and dived into Bryn’s Lung.

The shock of the cold stole most of my breath away immediately, escaping from my mouth in startled bubbles, but I kicked and parted the water with my hands, trying to push it behind me and force my body down, and then I opened my eyes to search for the light. There was none, but I kept kicking and stroking, and after a few more seconds I saw a dull gleam in the center of my vision. I kept swimming and wondered if I would reach it, but it grew in size with each passing moment. It didn’t get any brighter, however—just bigger.

My lungs burned to suck in a deep gulp of oxygen and my muscles cried out for energy, and I hadn’t even made it to the cave yet. Did everyone simply drown in the chimney and then get flushed into the ocean, turning Seekers into metaphorical turds? I wanted to see the cave, at least, before I drowned, so I kept going even though my arms and legs were turning into weak noodles and I was chilled to the bone.

The glow of the light abruptly expanded in my vision, extending off to my left and continuing below me until I realized I was seeing the outline of the cave, illuminated in green and blue and occasional pinpoints of white. Immediately to my right was the back wall of the cave, its bare rock beneath my fingers and devoid of any life. Fleetingly I wondered why the back would be lifeless while the walls and ceiling were covered, but that thought was pushed out by the sight of the cave floor and the silhouettes of bodies floating just above it. Drowned Seekers, including the man who’d jumped in before me—I’d be joining them shortly as my lungs couldn’t take it anymore. And on the cave floor, a carpet of bones and flesh picked over by crabs and eels and other scavengers. No bladefins, though, or larger predators; the blessed must keep them out somehow. And they must also periodically clear away some of the debris or the cave would be choked with remains before long.

I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and the cave mouth and surface were so very far away, but I had seen what I wished to see, and that was enough: the mystery of Bryn’s Lung was revealed to my eyes, and there was no longer any need to struggle. I would give my body to the sea and eventually be borne by currents across the world. My mouth opened reflexively to gasp for air, and I welcomed the expected rush of seawater into my lungs, except that I actually drew breath instead. That first gasp was followed by another, and another, and not a single drop of water entered my mouth or my nose. It was singularly odd to be completely submerged, to feel water on my very eyeballs, yet somehow breathe only air through my mouth and nose. I was treading water, trying to figure out where the air was coming from, when a hand latched on to my hair and pulled.

There was some spirited movement after that.

The hand belonged to another Seeker swimming down through the chimney: the one who’d been behind me in line and who couldn’t breathe in the water like most humans. I saw a flash of pleading eyes in the murk—terrified, really—as she tried to grab on to me and follow me wherever I was going. Not a logical move since I wasn’t going anywhere, but she was panicked and rethinking her decision to drown at the worst possible time.

Belatedly, I realized that since I could somehow breathe and the water did not seem so cold anymore, I quite possibly could save her, and I bunched my legs against the back wall and pushed off, grasping her arm and trying to pull her along with me. My speed was far less impressive than I had hoped.

She went slack and dead before I had managed four lengths, and reluctantly I let her go. I would never make it to the surface in time to revive her, and it reminded me once again of how I’d failed my family in much the same way: I had been far too late to help.

But my breathing continued and even calmed, and the water felt pleasant instead of freezing, and it finally penetrated that I had become one of Bryn’s blessed and could not drown or suffer any ills from water.

I should have been elated—I think that’s the proper response—but instead I felt cheated of my peace. I would have to grieve longer and start some new career determined by the nature of my blessing. Whatever new talents I possessed, they didn’t include forgetfulness.

Forty-two years old, widowed and childless, import business a ruin, but suddenly a man with prospects in an underwater cave.

Another Seeker dropped down out of the chimney, weakly clawing through the water, but I turned my back so that I wouldn’t have to watch him die. There was nothing I could do except get on with being whoever I was supposed to be now.

The cave was serene and beautiful as long as you didn’t look down at the floor of corpses and the clawed or writhing things feasting on them. I bet all that beauty was fed by the deaths of Seekers somehow and the soft glow of those plants was concentrated despair, fear, and desperation.

Outside the cave the water darkened, but something darted toward me in the gloom. I thought it was a bladefin at first, but it pulled up and resolved itself into a clothed woman in military colors. She was much younger than I, and when she waved and smiled, I suddenly remembered that I was acutely naked.

I hadn’t cared about diving into Bryn’s Lung naked, thinking I would be dead soon, but now I felt I might die of embarrassment.

She pointed up to the surface with one hand, wordlessly suggesting that we ascend, and I nodded. She offered her other hand, and I took it. Her grip was strong, and I soon discovered the reason as she pulled me up through the water not by swimming but by using her kenning to propel us. It was strange and exhilarating, moving that fast and feeling the ocean flow around us. When we broke the surface, we both took a moment to sheet the moisture away from our eyes, and she smiled again.

“Congratulations, sir! You’ve been blessed by the lord Bryn! You’re a Water Breather.”

“Thank you,” I said, because I couldn’t think of what else to say.

“I’m Gerstad Nara du Fesset, a rapid in the pelenaut’s service. I’m going to help you figure out your blessing, and then we’ll get you ashore and settled. What’s your name?”

I told her, and she said it was a pleasure to meet me.

“First, cup your hand like this and scoop out a handful of water,” she said, demonstrating. When I did so, treading water with the rest of my limbs, she continued. “I want you to focus on the water in your hand, not the water all around. Really concentrate on it and ask yourself if it’s clean. You should be able to tell.”

“Really?”

“Try it.”

It looked clean to me, just like any other handful of water, but I couldn’t tell anything special about it. “I don’t know. I guess it’s clean?”

Nara shook her head. I had guessed wrong.

“Then it’s dirty water,” I said, trying to recover. “Bad, naughty water.”

No smile, just a raised eyebrow. “You should know precisely what’s wrong with it.”

“I don’t. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not a hygienist, then. That means you’re one of the fast swimmers.”

“I am? I don’t think so, because down in the Lung I was terribly slow.”

“You wouldn’t have known yet. It takes a while to develop, and even if you did get it right away, you wouldn’t know how to access it. I’m going to teach you.”

“All right.”

“Think about putting on clothes—”

“I’ve been thinking about that since we met. Do you think we can get some?”

That earned a smile. “Soon; don’t worry. When you put on pants, you push your leg down as you pull the pants up. Both are happening, but the pushing is in the center moving in one direction while the pulling is on the outside moving in the other. That’s how you use your kenning to travel through water—you pull the water ahead of you down to your feet and then push up through the center, and you naturally move into the space ahead of you where you displaced water. So visualize your body as the foot moving through the pants leg or your fist pushing through the sleeve of a shirt. We actually call it sleeving. And what you want to do is focus on moving your center in the direction you want to go.”

“What, I just think about it and it happens?”

She pinched her fingers close together and squinted. “There’s a little more to it than that. Control takes lots of practice. But generating thrust, pulling and pushing water around? That’s mostly visualization and commitment now that water is your element.”

“Visualization and commitment?”

“It takes some energy on your part, just like treading water does. You’ll get tired after a while. Let’s try it. We’ll start with a fountain.” She pointed to her left, and a tight geyser of water jetted up from the surface of the ocean and continued. “See how there’s a little swirly depression around the base? That’s me pulling the water down, and then it pushes up in the center. Now you. Pick a place, visualize what you want and concentrate, pull the water down, and redirect it up.”

Still not believing that this was possible for me, I chose a spot off to my left and pictured the same sort of fountain that Nara had made, willing the water to form a whirlpool and then fountain up in the center. Nothing happened for a few seconds, and Nara encouraged me to keep trying, to be very clear with my visualization. And then something did happen, but on a larger scale than Nara’s petite fountain. The seawater circled and sucked down in a funnel the circumference of my head.

“Good! Now force the center up instead of down!” Nara said.

She made it sound so easy, but what happened instead was that the whirlpool collapsed and resulted in a sloppy splash instead of a tightly controlled jet.

“That was excellent!”

“It looked miserable.”

“I told you the control takes a lot of practice, and you’ll need to work on that. But now that you know it can be done, you can probably do it better, right?”

“I suppose so.”

“Great. So now you’re going to go much bigger, much stronger. You’re going to make yourself the focus of the energy and move through the water purely on the strength of your kenning. Visualize your center as a sphere just below your ribs but above your hips. That’s what you want to move. You’re going to pull the water down all around you and then push it up from underneath so that you rise up out of the water, like this.”

The gerstad spread her arms out flat on the surface of the ocean, and the water abruptly sucked down in a circle with her elbows marking the circumference. I could feel the water churning nearby, and then my jaw dropped open as a column of water shot her up bodily out of the ocean. She arched her back and flipped over, gracefully diving back into the water. When she resurfaced, we were both smiling.

“That was great,” I said.

“Now it’s your turn.”

“Oh, no …”

“You can do it. Your first attempt was quite strong, you know. You have a good visual mind. Keep your feet together, heels flat, and make the water propel you from there.”

It did look like fun, and I felt flattered that she thought I was ready so quickly. I spread out my arms, focused on imitating Nara’s feat, and tried to commit, as she put it, my energy to executing the maneuver. It happened more slowly at first, but once the water began to sink and swirl around my body, I was encouraged and committed even more strongly. I remembered to put my feet together just as the water gushed up and shot me high into the air, much higher than I wished to be: about ten lengths.

Panicked instead of graceful, I splayed my legs and waved my arms and remembered how very, very nude I was and that Nara was looking. I flailed and thrashed, but it was too late to gain some kind of form, and I hit the water far closer to the horizontal axis than the vertical. The expected sting of a belly flop didn’t happen, though. While there was definitely a slap of impact on the surface, the water felt like a cushion and a welcome and there was no pain. Another bonus of being blessed by the god of the sea.

When I resurfaced, Nara was laughing unabashedly.

“That was amazing!” she gasped. “Oh, I love my job sometimes.”

“You did that on purpose!”

“Yes, I did. Nothing better than the newly blessed who can’t control themselves.”

Wounded, I said, “Isn’t that kind of mean?”

“No, it’s hilarious. Look, I know you’re never going to be that undisciplined again, so don’t worry about that. And for you it’s a valuable lesson on the need to practice, to achieve that discipline. Power without control is useless. For me—well, look. I’m one of the people who has to clean the skeletons out of Bryn’s Lung every so often. I need to get my laughs where I can.”

Since I hadn’t been hurt and she knew I wouldn’t be, I supposed it had been funny and I could laugh with her. She coached me for a while longer on how to direct myself through the water, and once I had demonstrated to her satisfaction that I could move in any direction and stop when she said stop, she had one more test for me.

“This is the last thing we need to do. After this we’ll go get you dressed and signed up in the pelenaut’s service. After all that you’ll be itching to get back in the ocean, trust me.” She pointed to another couple that had surfaced during my practice: some other rapid helping out the newly blessed. “We need to get out of the way for this. Follow me out a bit deeper.”

We sliced through the choppy waves for perhaps a hundred lengths at a moderate clip before she called a halt and we treaded water.

“Okay, face south from here. There’s nothing in your way, nothing you have to steer around. Open ocean but not so deep that you have to worry about the huge predators coming up from underneath. We are going to propel ourselves south as fast as we can. Try to keep up with me—no: try to beat me. If you do pass me and you feel yourself coming apart, stop immediately.”

“Coming apart? That’s a thing I have to worry about?”

“It’s not a bad thing—poor phrasing. I mean if you feel your body kind of letting go and you’re becoming one with the water to move faster through it, just stop. Really.”

“All right.”

“Dinner’s on me if you beat me.” She flashed a grin and then shot through the water without warning, sloshing me in her wake.

“Hey!” That wouldn’t slow her down, so there was only one thing to do: go that way, really fast.

The power rose faster now at my command, practice and confidence making visualization and execution nearly simultaneous. I didn’t think at first I could ever catch up because she was seriously moving through the water faster than a horse could run on land, but I kept willing myself to move faster and faster and committed my whole will to surpassing her, and the gap between us narrowed. In a minute my fists were even with her feet, and in the next five seconds I had surpassed her, my heels even with her fists. It was thrilling to slice through the water like that, vast plumes of spray arcing in our wake, moving much faster than most fish could swim, and I kept going, the ocean beckoning me forward, and I realized that I was grinning in the face of it, truly enjoying my life for the first time since hearing that Festwyf had fallen. But that thought triggered another cloud bank of rage in my brain, and I was no longer swimming for the pleasure of it or for a friendly contest but in rage against those who had taken my family, adding on speed in a desperate attempt to outrun my grief.

I knew something had gone wrong when the pressure of water against my fists abruptly ceased and I could no longer in fact see my hands in front of me. I stopped wishing to move forward, and something wrenched inside of me, a stabbing pain in my chest and a throbbing vibration behind my eyes as I slowed to a stop in the water and windmilled my arms to turn around. I felt exhausted and winded and wondered where Nara had gone. I checked that I was truly facing north, and I was: the coast lay off to my left now. Where was Gerstad du Fesset? Had she perhaps passed me without my knowledge? I turned to check the south sea again but saw nothing. Growing worried, I faced north again and was relieved to see the telltale spray of the rapid’s wake approaching. I sent up a fountain of water—a large but still quite sloppy one—to give her my location.

When she slowed herself and the water calmed around her, I said, “I like lobster for dinner.”

A sardonic nod. “Congratulations, Culland. You’re Brynlön’s newest tidal mariner.”

“What?”

“Only thing faster than a rapid is a tidal mariner. That’s how we test. How are you feeling?”

“Worn out.”

She nodded. “Tapping into that speed will age you.”

“Is that the only difference between a tidal mariner and a rapid?”

“No, there are more. That’s just the easiest thing for us to test. We have a tidal mariner in the palace who will train you from here. Let’s head back, but at a slower pace, and we’ll get you some clothes finally.”

She led me back to Pelemyn and underwater near the palace. There was a locked hatch door near the ocean floor, and she spun the handle around and hauled it open. We entered and swam up through clear water through three more doors until we emerged in a pool inside the palace. A mariner was waiting nearby, and when she saw me, she plucked a robe off a hook and smiled, offering it to me. “Welcome, sir. Let’s get you dry.”

“Where are we?” I asked.

“You’re in the Wellspring of Brynlön,” Nara said, pulling herself out of the water and dripping on the marbled tile. “The pelenaut wants to meet all new tidal mariners immediately. Standing orders.”

“The pelenaut? I’m going to meet Pelenaut Röllend?”

Gerstad du Fesset reached for a towel and ran it over her closely cropped head, leaving the mariner to nod and smile at me. I hauled myself out of the water and put on the robe, feeling a chill develop in the air.

“You’ll want to practice doing this,” the gerstad said, and as I watched, the water soaking her uniform fairly leapt out of the fabric and dropped back into the pool, rendering the towel unnecessary.

“Definitely handy.”

The gerstad beckoned me to follow, and it was only a short distance to the front of the Wellspring, where a cluster of blue and white uniforms stood out against the coral of the wall and a sheet of water cascaded into the same narrow pond from which we had emerged. I felt underdressed. I couldn’t see the pelenaut, and my attention was so preoccupied with trying to see him that I didn’t realize the gerstad had stopped in front of me, and I ran into her.

“Oh! Sorry.” There was another woman in front of me who looked a few years my senior. Lines on her neck and face and a bit of gray at the temples. She had many shiny things on her uniform, and I had no idea what any of them meant.

“No harm done,” the gerstad said. “Culland du Raffert, I’d like to introduce you to Second Könstad Tallynd du Böll, our senior tidal mariner. She’ll be handling your training from here.”

We bowed to each other, and the Second Könstad thanked the gerstad for the introduction and dismissed her.

“Farewell, Master du Raffert,” Gerstad du Fesset said. “If you are free for that dinner later, you may find me at the garrison after 1500. Otherwise, another night.” She gave me a tight nod and spun on her heel, leaving me with the impressively festooned officer. My knowledge of the military was so minuscule that I had no idea what her rank meant except that it must be higher than gerstad.

“A new tidal mariner is very welcome! But you look a bit overwhelmed,” she said. “Not the kind of day you expected, is it?”

“No. Rather expected it to be my last day.”

Her nod was grim and understanding. “The queue for the Lung is long these days. Lots of people figuring they should have been taken with their families, and they see it as the honorable way out.”

It was so precisely what I felt that I welled up and looked away, wiping my eyes. “Yes. Excuse me.”

“Apologies. Who did you lose?”

“My family. In Festwyf.”

“I’m very sorry. I lost my husband—not to the Bone Giants but earlier. I know the sting of that pain. We can’t bring them back, but you’re in a position now to save the families of many others and perhaps exact a bit of vengeance if you wish it.”

“How?” The idea of revenge hadn’t occurred to me before—it seemed an impossibility—but now that she had suggested it, I found the concept attractive.

“Let’s get to that after we meet the pelenaut. He will simply welcome you and thank you for serving the country, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

I wasn’t sure that I wanted to serve the country or wear a uniform, but I also didn’t have an inkling of what to do with my kenning otherwise.

Meeting the pelenaut was … intense. When a man whose attentions are pulled in so many directions forgets everything and focuses entirely on you, you feel the weight of that stare. He grabbed my hand with one of his and covered it with the other and pinned me with his eyes. “Culland! Culland. Welcome. And thank you. I know that people who dive into the Lung are often beset by many troubles, and I’m sure you’re no exception. But you are wanted and needed here, and I am so grateful that you are.”

My throat closed with emotion again at the unexpected kindness, and all I could manage was a nod. Seeing this, the pelenaut continued.

“You’re in excellent hands with Second Könstad du Böll. She’ll have you feeling comfortable in no time. I look forward to speaking with you again. We’re going to fix things and be prosperous again with your help.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. He seemed pleased with the affirmation, and his attention drifted to someone to his right with a uniform even shinier than the Second Könstad’s.

She gave me another smile. “Not so bad, was it?”

“No.”

“Come on, let’s get you settled.” She led me out of the Wellspring and to the garrison barracks, during which time I noticed that she favored her left foot, moving with a significant limp. People saluted her along the way, and she greeted them with nods and addressed them by rank: Mariner. Sarstad. Mynstad. Gerstad. This intensified inside the barracks themselves, but she spoke between all the salutes. “You’re going to be a gerstad so that no one can really order you around except me, Könstad du Lallend, or the pelenaut. At the same time, we’re not going to be having you ordering a lot of people around either. You have a military rank, but as a tidal mariner you’re not really part of the land or naval forces like the rapids or hygienists. You are a force all by yourself and act alone. Everyone understands that.”

“I didn’t know that, but I guess I do now.”

She nodded, allowing that such knowledge would have been outside my experience. “These barracks are on one side of an open courtyard, and on the other is the armory.” She paused at one of three open doorways on the left side of the hall and gestured inside. “Here are your quarters. Standard gerstad accommodations. You have an office in front, your personal space in the back.”

“I have an office? For office work?” I peered through the door to find a bare wooden desk and chair with a couple of chairs in front of it for guests. A door behind the desk presumably led to a bedroom. I wanted to collapse on it already but also had some anxiety about making the bed properly afterward. I was fairly certain that I would not be able to do it according to regulations.

“You’re an officer,” she said. “But you won’t have much use for it. You won’t have any paperwork to speak of. Report to the armory and see Mynstad du Möcher for a uniform and sundries. Anyone can direct you to the mess hall for meals. I’ll let you settle in for the day but report to me at the Wellspring in the morning for duty. We’ll begin your training then.”

“Okay. I mean, yes, Second Könstad. Am I supposed to salute or something?”

“I’m not a stickler for that sort of thing, but some people are. Ask the Mynstad to walk you through the proprieties so that you don’t accidentally offend anyone. I’d do it myself, but I need to return.”

“Right, right, you’re busy. Thank you.”

“If you don’t mind the question, how old are you, Gerstad du Raffert?” she asked. I told her, and she remarked on how unusual it was to have a new tidal mariner in his middle age.

“Forgive me, but are you not nearly the same age?” I asked.

“No,” she said, her expression turning sad. “I am twenty-nine. War always takes your life. Sometimes it’s just not all at once.”

I remembered that when we met at the chowder house, Fintan had mentioned that Nara du Fesset would show up in his tale eventually. I hoped she was well wherever she was and was completing her mission safely. Mynstad du Möcher got a mention, too; I’d have to congratulate her on her few seconds of fame.

Elynea invited me to accompany her to work to meet her new employer, so after we dropped off the kids at school, we trekked to the southwestern industrial district to the furniture workshop of Bel Tes Wey, an older Fornish woman who had planted large trees all around her building that spread their canopy over the roof. Those trees, I realized, could be seen from the wall during the bard’s performances. I had assumed they indicated a public park of some kind, but no, it was a business doubling as a home. I could see structures built among the branches. Elynea followed my eyes and answered the question I was thinking.

“Yes, she lives up there, along with a couple of her clan members. A little bit of home, she says. Can’t stand the thought of sleeping on ground level.”

“Which clan?”

“The Green Beetles. Her nephew ships back and forth to Forn, bringing up hardwoods for her. His wife—her niece, I guess—is just a month or two away from becoming a master herself, so Bel is ready for a new apprentice and there’s plenty of work right now. I showed her yesterday that I already knew a couple of things, the only thing Garst was good for, and she said she’d take me on.”

The shop smelled divine even if sawdust coated almost everything. Invigorating, the scent of wood. I saw nine Brynts in the shop, all working on something or other, and two diminutive white women under five feet tall working among them. The older of them came over when she spied Elynea. Hands gnarled and face weathered by time, back somewhat bent by the weight of age and her hair gone gray, she nonetheless possessed a quick step and a ready smile.

“Ah, my new apprentice! Welcome to your first day. Who’s this, then?” she asked, chucking her chin at me.

“Oh!” Elynea said, looking at me. “This is … my friend, Master Dervan du Alöbar.”

Yes, friend: that worked. A friend and not a husband who couldn’t save his dying wife. Elynea was not Sarena and didn’t need me to save her. I’d taken the time last night to work that much out, at least: since I couldn’t save Sarena, I’d been trying to save Elynea instead even though her situation was not remotely similar. Strange how we unconsciously steer ourselves into new spectacular mistakes while trying to avoid repeating our past failures.

“It’s a pleasure,” Bel said, nodding once to me out of politeness but clearly not interested. She had work on her mind and turned to Elynea. “Ready to begin?”

We waved farewell, and I took myself to the armory for a workout with Mynstad du Möcher, whose foul mood from earlier had lifted. “Nara is back!” she told me, and her grin was huge.

“Ah, excellent! She’s well?”

The grin faded. “Recuperating, but it’ll be fine.”

That didn’t sound good. “Recuperating?”

“She broke an arm, but it was clean and should heal straight. The most important things are that she’s back and she feels good about whatever she did.”

“She still can’t tell you?”

The Mynstad shook her head. “Nope. Terrible secret. And I don’t care. She’s here, and she won’t be doing anything like it again—she promised me that. So that’s good enough for me.”

It gratified me to hear that Nara felt good about the mission, whatever it was. I’d worried that she would let guilt gnaw away at her confidence until she felt worthless.

The morning went so well that I wondered if Fintan would tell me over lunch that he had good news, too: that practicing presence had eliminated his nervous condition and nightmares. That turned out not to be the case.

“I still had nightmares,” he told me when I met him, “not that I expected them to disappear immediately. Still, I went to see Kindin Ladd this morning because I think the idea has merit. He led me through some mental exercises, and I’d like to go back to the Hathrim restaurant again if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

I noticed that there were new servers there, and once Orden and Hollit came out to say hello, I apologized for not sending over Elynea, explaining that she had found another job already. They waved away my concern and thanked us for coming back.

“We really enjoy the food,” Fintan said. I watched him to see how he was doing. No visible signs of distress, but perhaps it would hit him once the giants left the table, as it had before. The Hathrim thanked us again and lumbered back to the kitchen and the bar, but I kept my eyes on the bard. He laid his hands flat on the table. He visibly took some deep breaths and his eyes darted around the room, but his expression remained neutral.

“Are you all right?” I asked. He wasn’t sweating or shaking, but neither did he seem completely unaffected.

“I think so,” he said, a tiny tug at the corners of his mouth signaling victory. “There really is something to this, living in the present, focusing on breathing peace, and all that other stuff the Kaurians are always saying. It’s not just a slogan. This is working.”

“How?”

“I’m breathing consciously. I’m noting that you’re worried. I’m also noting that no one else is, that they all feel safe. At the same time, I’m getting flashes of the massacre of the Nentians who Gorin Mogen set on fire and men being eaten or torn apart by hounds, split in two by giant axes, imagining Hollit and Orden participating in that, all of it. That’s never going away. As you said, some things you see you can never unsee, never forget. But it’s not present like the rest of everything here. It’s not as important as what’s in front of me now. So it cannot affect me today like it did yesterday, and this is something I can do all the time. This is an improvement.”

I allowed that it was. Fintan closed his eyes and took a couple more deep breaths, and when he opened them again, his smile was more confident.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”

Once upon the wall, Fintan said, “Today concerns one of your country’s most historic events. But it also involves a Raelech and a Kaurian, and I was thinking about Gondel Vedd, wandering around your country with the mistral’s osprey on his shoulder. But I inquired at the Kaurian embassy about his house—the Kaurians all have broad family associations named after birds—and was told that he’s from the house of Terns. I was taught all the House Hymns during my apprenticeship, which are brief verses of values given to Kaurians as children, and I thought I’d share Gondel’s with you today.

Dive and glide, swoop and sail,

In your duty never fail,

Be sustained on isles and seas,

Soar the winds of Reinei’s peace,

In every action may you earn

Your honor in the house of Tern.

“We’ll begin with the stonecutter Meara, who came to Brynlön after the collapse of the Granite Tunnel.”

Few people cross the Poet’s Range to get to Brynlön because it is passable only for a few months of the year and during that time it’s fraught with all sorts of natural dangers. Nothing like the legendary flesh eels of the Nentian plains that take you in your sleep but other things that you will see coming before they eat you alive and screaming. Mountain wolves, for example, sound rather boring when you’re not being actively chased by a pack of them. They do become exciting very quickly in such a circumstance, and for a while Tuala and I had them on our tail. But they couldn’t keep up with the speed of a courier, and we soon left them behind. Still, their barking and howling attracted the attention of a chittering scurry of flying meat squirrels that could keep up.

They are not technically squirrels at all, though they do bear a marked resemblance and I suppose whoever named them wanted to give people nightmares when they saw the nicer ones. Meat squirrels don’t eat seeds and nuts. They are arboreal carnivores, watching from the trees, and typically they prefer to gather quietly above their prey’s head and simply glide down on top of them, splaying their limbs wide and letting the skin stretched between them act to slow their descent. And then, where a normal squirrel would have a nice pair of choppers for cracking nuts, the meat squirrel has a mouth full of serrated teeth for tearing flesh. But they also have tremendously powerful back legs that let them jump between tree trunks far faster than they could glide between them, allowing them to pursue running prey on the forest floor until they can get close enough to jump on top of them. I had heard of their existence before and Tuala warned me that we might wake up a scurry of them on our way, but that didn’t really prepare me for the horror of them. They were cute, making little scratching noises on the trunks of snakewood pines, until they opened their mouths. That’s when I saw the teeth that would scoop out gobbets of my flesh and make quick work of me, since there were twenty or more of them. I’d probably be able to defend myself with my kenning if I had to, but against that many hungry mouths all at once? If they opened up an artery, I might bleed out anyway.

When we packed for the trip, we took nothing but food and water and wooden sparring staves that took me back to my Colaiste days. There were secure and furnished shelters, Tuala assured me, built along the way for the couriers’ use by stonecutters in days gone by, and of course I could build a new one for us if need be.

“I didn’t know there were shelters up there,” I said.

“We don’t advertise their existence because we’d rather they didn’t become attractive to outlaws. Better for everyone to believe there’s no safety to be found in the Poet’s Range.”

I believed that viscerally as the first meat squirrel leapt at me from the branches of a snakewood pine, its tiny needle claws scrabbling for purchase on my shoulder and gouging deep grooves but ultimately failing to catch and falling to the trail as we churned past.

Another squirrel leapt for Tuala ahead of me. She spotted it and slapped it away with one of her staves in a move that looked almost identical to the basic warm-ups taught to first-year students at the Colaiste. I withdrew my staves, determined to follow her example, and found them immediately useful. A meat squirrel landed on the back of my neck, and I bashed it with a stave blindly until its spine broke and it stopped trying to bite its way through to mine.

It occurred to me that since the squirrels were so dependent on speed and accurate trajectory to bring us down, anything we could do to foil either one of those would keep us safe. Tuala was using her kenning to the utmost, but I had yet to contribute. It wasn’t a common problem for stonecutters in the cities of Rael, trying to outsmart meat squirrels. The problem was that I couldn’t really communicate effectively with the earth moving at such speed and with shoes on. But why, I thought, did I need shoes? The earth would never harm me. It was a fashion affectation more than a necessity and one I’d never understood: Were shoes invented merely to hide toes from people who found them disgusting? I definitely didn’t need them or, once I thought about it, really want them. If I was to live my life in exile, I might as well be comfortable and practical and throw fashion down the deepest mine shaft underneath Jeremech. Since Tuala’s kenning allowed us to travel insanely fast while only jogging, I was able to slap my shoes off my heels and then alter my gait to kick them through the air in tumbling arcs. I called to the earth then and focused on the trail ahead and threw up surface rocks and topsoil in a thin screen the width of a fingernail. It was the same principle as erecting a wall except that I didn’t try to keep any shape to it. I just threw sediment up into the air that the meat squirrels were trying to navigate to get to us. Not a serious impediment unless they met face-first with a rock but perhaps enough to disorient them or scare them away from leaping at us.

Only one tried it, and I saw the whole thing. He leapt for Tuala from behind and to her left, and as he passed through the curtain of earth I was throwing up, sediment buffeted him from underneath and threw off his trajectory just enough that he sailed behind Tuala’s back and in front of me, landing somewhere on the right side of the trail. His momentum carried him farther on the ground, and by that time we had passed, never slowing, and he’d never catch up. The rest of the meat squirrels, either seeing his failure or simply afraid of my kenning, gave up and ceased to pursue us. I kept up the screen for perhaps another mile and let it drop to see if we had any stubborn ones on our trail. We did not, and I thanked the Triple Goddess aloud for that.

“There’s a bunker up ahead we can rest in,” Tuala called back, and I responded with enthusiasm to the idea. We veered off the well-traveled trail and into dense woods for only a few hundred lengths to find a half-buried shelter constructed by some stonecutter many generations ago. Without being shown where it was, you’d never expect it to be there; it was close to the trail but not visible from it. Highly unlikely that anyone but Raelech couriers would ever use it.

The stone bunker was well ventilated but had no openings large enough to admit wildlife. There was a fireplace and a stack of wood and kindling nearby, a primitive tank privy behind a privacy curtain, and two straw tick beds resting on top of a raised platform. Not luxurious but safe.

A pedestal held a basin for washing up, but there was no water except what we brought with us. I used some of mine to wash my wounds and drank the rest.

“Are you all right?” Tuala asked.

“I imagine I will be eventually.”

“Hungry?”

“Not in the least.” I shuddered at the thought of eating right then, having come too close to being eaten myself.

“Well, we’re not over the range yet, and it’s only a couple of hours until sunset. It’s unwise to run at night, so we might as well stay here. What shall we talk about?”

“Anything. But yeah, let’s talk.”

The truth was I preferred running for my life from the meat squirrels to being alone with my haunted thoughts. I think perhaps Tuala sensed that, and she chatted away, kindly giving me something to focus on besides mourning and pain. But eventually darkness fell, she wound down, and even the fire she had laid quieted from a lively crackle to sullen, smoldering coals. She snored softly on her bed, and I did my best to sob quietly in mine, nearly suffocating under a blanket of guilt, unable to avoid it any longer with distractions of one kind or another. The shock of what had happened in the Granite Tunnel had sloughed away in the run, and now the enormity of it oppressed me: I’d lost my love, my job, and my country in a moment. Maybe my work in the future would balance the scales somehow, but I’d never get back what I’d lost. It was not the first time I wished that I could be as unfeeling as stone.

Sleep relieved me eventually, and in the morning I felt hungry enough to eat our basic bread and dried meats and fruits. My neck and shoulder stung but not, I hoped, with the deep pain of infection.

“We’ll have a Brynt hygienist look at it regardless,” Tuala assured me.

“How long until we’re in Tömerhil?”

“We can make it today if we don’t stop and if you’re up to it. Or else we rest and get there tomorrow.”

“Let’s try to get there today.”

There were no natural threats once we descended the Poet’s Range and followed a riverbank trail to Tömerhil. It was my first time in Brynlön, and it seemed like a softer land somehow than Rael, rounded leafy canopies instead of the pointed needles I was used to in the mountains, flowering bushes that held few predators and gave shelter to hares and hedgehogs. We arrived at dusk and entered a chaotic city stuffed to the walls with refugees from the river cities. The walls were in fine condition and in no danger of attack. What they needed was a few cities’ worth of food and space.

Tuala led me first to the Raelech embassy rather than the quartermaster’s Wellspring. There were several Raelechs in the room we were ushered into, but the lead diplomat was identifiable by his Jereh band: the white onyx of the Triune, master’s amethyst, and citrine. I’d never met a diplomat myself since they were all stationed abroad. But he was very interested to meet Tuala: everyone was, I supposed. Wherever she went, she was instantly the most important person in the room since she had information no one else did. I wondered what that must be like.

I gathered quickly that Tuala and the diplomat had met many times before. They addressed each other informally with given names and cordial nods, and through that I caught the diplomat’s name, Harach. He had a taut, stringy body for an older man; so many of them despair and falter at the signs of age, but he was battling defiantly to defeat them. His eyes were quick, taking in both my relative youth and my Jereh band in a single glance.

Tuala introduced me, and he welcomed me to Tömerhil. Then she proceeded to deliver the news that I had destroyed the invading Bone Giant army in the Granite Tunnel and saved Baseld. Curiously, she left out that I had also destroyed half of Baseld’s garrison, and it gave Harach the impression that I was a heroine rather than a failure.

“Stonecutter Meara, I am not only honored but grateful to meet you in person,” he said, and bowed to me. “Thank you for defending Baseld. I myself am from there, and most of my relations still reside in that fair city.”

His gratitude was so out of tune with what I felt that I gasped, and when he looked up to see how he had erred, I struggled to control myself and muster an appropriate response.

“The honor was mine,” I said. “Forgive me. I didn’t expect to be commended for doing my duty.”

Tuala stepped forward and pulled a folded piece of paper sealed with wax from her pack. She extended it to him and said, “From the Triune Council.”

“Ah.” He took it, broke the seal, and frowned as he read. “Oh.” His eyes flicked up to me, and I knew that he must have read about the total destruction of the tunnel and Baseld’s soldiers, along with my banishment. He continued reading and then said, “I see.” He folded the paper with crisp movements, and it disappeared behind his back with his other hand as he addressed me. “I am informed that your own funds are to be converted to Brynt currency and a stipend be paid to you for services to Brynlön henceforth in perpetuity. I’m to accompany you along with Courier Tuala to visit the quartermaster and send missives to my colleagues throughout Brynlön informing them of your situation, and then you are to report monthly to the nearest embassy for your living. Otherwise you are to live and work where you see fit. Does that comport with what you’ve been told?”

It didn’t. I hadn’t been told that much. It sounded like I could simply collect a monthly stipend in any Brynt city and not actually do anything for it, which, when I looked at it from the Triune’s perspective, made the most sense. I’d saved a Raelech city but at tremendous cost. Banishing me with a living was their best move politically, which I hadn’t been clearheaded enough to see before. Depending on who was listening, they could emphasize either the banishment or the eternal honor they did me, and I’d never be there to contradict them. And it had clearly been Dechtira’s idea. She saw that I didn’t want to go back to Baseld, saw perhaps the trouble it would cause, and contrived this “punishment” as a matter of convenience more than anything else.

Not that any of that mattered to me. I would work because I needed to.

“Close enough, Diplomat,” I replied.

The quartermaster of Tömerhil, when we met him soon thereafter, spat out a mouthful of wine when he heard that the Bone Giants had been completely destroyed in the Granite Tunnel and that it was closed for the foreseeable future.

“Good news and bad news,” he said.

“We will, of course, let you know when it reopens, but that may not be for some long while,” Harach said. Both he and Tuala left out my role in that but introduced me as someone who would help as needed in Brynlön. At that the quartermaster frowned, but in thought rather than disapproval. Or maybe he was just confused by my bare feet.

“I don’t think a stonecutter would be as useful here right now as along the river cities. I’m sure the quartermaster of Fornyd could use you now, but perhaps she doesn’t need you as urgently as somewhere else. The Bone Giants are not an imminent threat to her anymore. But to the south—well, that’s a different story. They’ve taken Göfyrd, and they’re occupying it. I know you’re not a juggernaut, but if there’s anything you can do there …” He trailed off and raised his eyebrows, which created several deep grooves in his forehead.

I had no idea what I could do. My career—short as it was thus far and until the Granite Tunnel—had been entirely focused on civic beautification, not military action. My Gaerit and hundreds more died because I’d been forced into a role I didn’t know how to play. But that wasn’t what the quartermaster wanted to hear.

“I’ll do my best, sir,” I told him, and his face spread into a smile. That was what he wanted to hear.

The outlying farms surrounding Göfyrd were abandoned, populated only by lonesome goats and sheep bleating at our passage, simply wanting to be milked or fed, missing their people. The reason behind their neglect struck me anew: in Baseld there were families missing their people, too.

When the road emerged from lines of trees serving as windbreaks and property markers, we saw the city of Göfyrd nestled at the river mouth below. There were hedgerows marking farm boundaries from here on but no more trees. It gave anyone atop the walls an excellent view but afforded us the same. Clouds of blackwings circled above and around the city.

At the edge of a once-prosperous family farm, Tuala crouched down with me behind some sort of native shrubbery with waxy dark green leaves and white four-petaled flowers, and we scanned the walls from a distance. It was difficult to tell whether they were manned.

“We’re too far away. I’m going to need to scout.”

“Watch out for earthwork traps.”

“Always.” She flashed a quick grin at me and departed in such a rush of displaced air that I was blown over sideways. I laughed and got up and brushed myself off, and then a flash of movement in my peripheral vision jerked my head to the right. Six Bone Giants had emerged from the nearby farmhouse and were running directly toward me, the clatter of their armor becoming clearer and louder with every step. The farms were not quite as abandoned as I thought, and I saw the cleverness: they were using farms to set little infantry traps for scouts.

“Tuala!” I called, but she was already out of hearing. I had my staves but was a year out of practice with my combat training. Six-to-one odds didn’t look good either, and they were moving fast. The Bone Giants weren’t meat squirrels, but maybe a little dirt in their eyes would at least slow them down. I threw up some sediment in their path, and it did make them lose a few steps as they clawed at their faces and spat, but I hadn’t stopped them. I didn’t know what else to do; the juggernauts were trained to use their kenning in a military fashion, but stonecutters weren’t. Could I make rocks erupt from the ground to hit them directly in their, uh, rocks? Perhaps when I was more skilled.

Better, perhaps, to disrupt the ground they had to cross to get to me. Throw up obstacles. They were bunched up, swords raised, and looking at me rather than at their feet. I called on a patch of the earth to ripple and shake in front of them, just a handbreadth of topsoil made uncertain, and they tumbled in a heap of gangly white limbs. One of them accidentally cut deeply into another with his sword, and an awful scream split the air, illustrating why parents always tell their children not to run with sharp objects. But that didn’t stop them. All except the hacked one got up again, even more determined to cut me down. They came more slowly now, careful of their footing, but they kept closing the distance. When I shook the ground beneath them once more, they wobbled but remained on their feet and would soon be able to take a swipe at me. A different tactic, then.

Focusing on the leader, I had the sod leap at him from all sides, trapping him at the waist, so that it appeared he was erupting out of an enormous anthill. That held him motionless, the weight of the earth too much for him, but that still left four, and the effort of moving and shaping that much ground so quickly left me winded. When the others stopped to check on him, he shouted and gestured that they should keep going without him.

Repeating that maneuver would be pointless. It took too much effort, and there would still be three left in range to take me out. If I was going to move that much earth, I might as well take them all out at once. Grunting with exertion—pain like a diamond blade stabbed me between the eyes—I tore lose a broad strip of sod, roots, and soil two hands deep and curled it back toward me. The egg-white eyes bulged in their painted black sockets, but they kept coming, and so I pushed that roll of earth back as hard as I could, flattening three of the four, their cries of alarm cut off as the sod covered them in a final blanket. Spots swam in my vision, and I fell backward onto my rear, legs suddenly unable to support my weight. Stonecutters were not supposed to move that much earth with such violent force. We could move tremendous weight, erect walls and more, so long as we did it at a measured pace. Whenever we moved too fast, something went wrong: the collapse of the Granite Tunnel, for example, or my current collapse. The one giant who had managed to retreat in time, avoiding the slap-down, saw me blinking furiously on the ground and charged, thinking that I was too drained to react in time.

He was right. I knew I was in danger but couldn’t think of what to do about it, the pain in my head was so fierce. And perhaps I was hallucinating, for the Bone Giant’s legs seemed absurdly long and thin, stepping over land like a crane mincing through the shallows of a pond, and the rattling of his bone armor clapped in my ears like applause for my imminent death.

His sword flashed above his head, and the hallucination continued, for there was a wet, percussive crunch and the Bone Giant’s body caved in sideways, practically folding in half like a rug beaten by a rod as something blurred behind him, and once he fell over next to me, broken and twitching, a knife handle sprouted underneath his jaw, the blade rammed up through his mouth and into the brain. And then Tuala was standing over him, chest heaving and her right arm looking strange at the shoulder.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Alive,” I managed. “Your arm …”

“Dislocated it just now when I hit him.”

“Oh! That was you …”

“Yes. You’re out of it. Hold on; I have to get the others.”

“Others?”

Tuala picked up the strange sword that the Bone Giant had dropped and carried it in her left hand, jogging toward a mound with a tall white man stuck in it that I suddenly remembered creating. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I think that guy was gonna kill me.” Tuala circled around to his left, got behind him, sped up, and his skull was split abruptly down the middle. She left the sword embedded in his flesh at the top of his rib cage, the two halves of his head and neck resting on his shoulders like the open petals of a blood lily. “Well, he probably won’t kill me now,” I said, “but this headache might.”

I tried to locate Tuala after that and discovered she had gone to finish off the wounded one who’d been injured by one of his fellows. I blinked a couple of times, and she was right next to me.

“Meara, can you stand?”

“Hm? Stand. On my feet. Maybe? Help me up.” I raised a hand, and she grasped me by the arm with her left hand, pulling me to my feet. The movement did nothing good for my headache. A sudden wave of nausea overcame me, and I vomited on the body of the Bone Giant.

“Aww. That was such a good breakfast, too.”

“I’m sorry, Meara.”

“Don’t be. I think that’s what I needed, honestly. I feel better already.”

“Good. Then you can help me put my arm back in its socket.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I hit that Bone Giant with a stave at top speed,” she explained. “Deadly to him but not without consequence to me.”

“Uh … I don’t know how to do this.”

“Both hands firmly on my biceps, then roll it back in.”

“I take it you’ve done this before?”

A tight nod. “Happens a lot.”

Tuala hissed when I grabbed her arm but nodded. “Do it. Do it!”

I tried to do it, and judging by the sounds Tuala made, I was doing it wrong. I was simultaneously trying to push and roll it in, as she said, but that wasn’t accomplishing anything except more pain for her.

“No, no, just … hold it steady and I’ll roll it in from my end, all right? Just put my arm in your strongest grip and hold it still.”

We both gritted our teeth, though mine was more in sympathy as Tuala grunted, shifted her torso, and rolled that socket onto the end of her arm bone with a dull pop.

“Ahh! Much better, thank you. Now observe the city.”

“Why?” I turned my head toward Göfyrd, and my question was answered. A largish group of Bone Giants were streaming out of the gate and running our way. “Oh, goddess. That looks like more than six.”

“A lot more than six,” Tuala agreed. “There’s a whole army in there. Sentries on the walls, towers fully staffed, and they saw me make my scouting run. I’m fast but not invisible. So what do you want to do?”

“I’m not sure.”

“We can run, easy. That’s an option.”

We hadn’t run in the Granite Tunnel, and I didn’t want to run here, either. We had a short time to think because the city gates were more distant than the farmhouse. I felt taxed already to my limits; that searing pain, faded now, was the signal one was aging and should back off. I had pushed the kenning too far. Thinking of that brought up a memory of my temblor in the Colaiste, Temblor Kavich, growling out military history through his beard: “The earth will nourish you until it is time to return and nourish it yourself, and your enemies will either send you back early or press you, like the earth would, into gemstones.”

I thought it unlikely I’d ever be a gem. But maybe this confrontation would harden me from soft soapstone into granite. I wished Temblor Kavich were here to counsel me now.

“Stand next to me,” I said to Tuala, beckoning her to follow me three lengths away from the Bone Giant’s body.

“What are you going to do?”

“What I should have done in the tunnel. Build from the ground up.”

The farmland near the coast was rich and aerated and relatively free of rocks, having been plowed and harvested and fertilized for many years. A modest earthwork should be manageable, especially since I had the luxury of a full minute or so rather than a few seconds in which to do it.

I scrunched my toes in the turf. It was springy soil, watered well by recent rains and ideal for shaping. I reached out with my kenning and pulled it underneath us in a generous circle, and we rose on a thick pillar of earth as the first rattle and clack of bones reached our ears. By the time we could easily count them, our feet were already above their heads, though not by much.

“You know they climb walls, right? Stand on one another’s shoulders?” Tuala asked.

“I heard, yes. Bennelin and others. I have a plan.”

“Glad to hear it. I think there are close to fifty of them coming.”

“Right. I’d get your staves out just in case they decide to jump. How’s the shoulder?”

“Well enough to smash fingers.”

I braced myself for the headache to come but did what prep work I could as the Bone Giants clacked and snapped closer, macabre skull faces promising all that they had to deliver. Through my feet, through my kenning, I could feel the earth all around my tower and urged it to loosen up, especially in the direction from which the Bone Giants were coming. And once they got in range, I commanded the earth to loosen more, become like sand pulling at their feet, reducing their speed. The leaders tripped, and that tripped up some behind them, and then the challenge began. I commanded the earth to hold on to their feet, even draw them down into it up to their knees, a very different process from throwing earth up to their waists. Smarter to allow the earth to give way and then firm up, compact around their ankles and calves, a far more efficient operation that froze them in the ground. Except that I had to do it nearly fifty times while still urging the pillar to rise higher. After the tenth giant had been frozen in such a manner I felt that headache coming back. And the rest of them were at the base of the tower—sinking into the earth mostly but able to steady themselves, and one leapt onto the back of another braced against the pillar and lifted himself up to where he could take a hack at us.

Tuala was ready. She sped herself up and rotated at the hips as she swept her staves left, the left one smacking away the sword as it came for her and the right one busting open the real skull under all that paint. He tumbled away, and Tuala said as she peered down, “They’re surrounding us. I won’t be able to catch them all if they come from all sides. Might need to revise your plan.”

That wasn’t it: I just needed to commit to hurting myself to hurt them more. I pushed hard with my kenning to loosen the softened earth even more around the base of the pillar so that it wouldn’t bear their weight, and they sank up to their knees as I wished. That set off a mass vocalization of alarm and surprise, along with a lance of pain through my head and torso that brought me to my knees.

“Good, that’s working, but they can still get out if they try,” Tuala said. “Close them up now.”

“Hhk … can’t,” I said, clutching at my chest. “Feels like I’m burning from the inside.”

Tuala spared me a fleeting glimpse. “Oh. Yeah, that’s about right. Burning your life away when you strain your kenning.” She turned away to gaze down at the enemy. “Well, with the ground all soft like that I don’t think they can do their spooky ladder trick effectively. But maybe get over here and just do one at a time. We don’t want them to figure this out.”

Splaying flat on the top of my improvised tower, I dragged myself to the edge, grunting as I went, until I reached the edge and peered over. The Bone Giants were doing their best to win free of the soil only to find that there was no such thing as solid land nearby. They could force their way out of the affected area, perhaps, if they thought to do that, but they were still trying to get to us instead. They would try clawing their way up the tower, I guessed, since it was earth and not solid rock.

Wincing, anticipating more pain, I targeted one of the attackers and gently prodded the soil around his legs to compact and firm up. The screaming fire I felt didn’t increase, but it didn’t decrease either. The Bone Giant squawked when he realized there was no more give to the ground and he was truly stuck.

A ragged sigh of relief escaped me, and I continued to trap them one by one, working from the base of the pillar outward. The spots came back into my vision by the end of it and the nausea returned as well, but I had nothing left in my stomach to evacuate, and I was convulsed by dry heaves while Tuala knelt next to me with a comforting hand on my shoulder.

“Relax now. You did it,” she said. “Just listen to them complain.” The Bone Giants were shouting at us and one another in their incomprehensible language, and it made me smile for a moment until I remembered there were many more inside the walls of Göfyrd.

“If any more come after us, we run. I can’t do that again.”

“Yes, I agree.” She fetched my canteen and made me drink some water. “Just relax and regain your strength.”

“What should we do next?”

“Let’s eat lunch in front of them while they cook in the sun.”

It hurt to laugh, but I did anyway, and Tuala helped me sit up. We sat on the edge of the tower, legs dangling in the air, and chewed through some salted dry meat and biscuits as the invaders hurled insults and dire promises of murder at us. We smiled and waved, and by the end of the meal I felt better if not actually good.

Tuala waved a hand at them. “Notice anything weird about this group besides them being tall, pale, and obsessed with death?”

I took a moment to survey them with a critical eye before observing, “They’re all men.”

“Good, so it’s not just me.”

“It’s really strange now that I think of it. Don’t their women fight? I didn’t see anything like the whole army in the Granite Tunnel, but the ones I saw there were all men, too.”

The courier shrugged. “Maybe they’re in the city running things.”

“If so, it’s a criminal war they’re waging. Killing children and the elderly.”

Tuala shook her head. “You ever go to Bennelin?”

“No, I never got down there.”

“It was wonderful. Thriving market down by the docks. Best seafood in Rael, you know, right off the boat. There was one fishmonger in particular I liked to visit whenever I was in town. Nicest old woman you’d ever meet; she must have been seventy-odd years old, her spine all bent with age, a good number of her teeth missing, but she was down there every day, rain or shine, and just happy as could be. She braided her hair with shells, had shells around her neck, too. She also spoke fluent Brynt and knew their sea chants and Drowning Songs and taught a bunch of them to me. That helped me get along in Brynlön and make fast friends, you know. She did so much good for me, and I never learned her name. She smiled and I smiled back, and we talked and sang, and I always bought some fish to cook later, always assuming that I’d see her again. And now I never will. Because of them.” Her head bobbed down at the Bone Giants. “Well, not them specifically but another army of them. They’re all stone killers.”

“They are,” I agreed.

“We have to be the same. We can’t leave them like this or they’ll dig themselves out. I can go down, speed up, and knife them in the kidney.”

“No, don’t do that.”

“We don’t have a choice. They’ll kill anyone they meet.”

“I meant, don’t do that specifically. I have a better idea. I’ll finish what I started.”

“How so?”

“Watch that one there,” I said, pointing to a Bone Giant gesticulating at me with what I assumed were rude gestures in his culture and bellowing what I guessed were promises of a gnarly death. Placing the soles of my feet against the side of the earthen tower, I commanded the earth to convulse underneath his feet, loosening and dropping, and then compact once more around his body. It worked so well that I repeated it. The effect was that he was being gulped down into the earth, a hand span or two at a time. His aggressive tone and demeanor changed the farther down he sank. He kept his arms up and held on to his sword, I noticed. When he was buried up to his belly, he fell silent and despair gripped him as he saw his end approach. But once he sank to his armpits, he raised that sword high above his head and shouted a phrase as inspiration to the others, for they raised theirs in answer and repeated the phrase back to him in unison. Two more gulps and his head disappeared from view. I let it go one more gulp after that, leaving only his forearm and hand above the ground, still clutching that sword in defiance. It quivered, spasmed, but held on to the handle tightly even when it grew still. The remaining Bone Giants watched that in silence once he went under, but as soon as they were sure their fellow soldier was dead, they all turned to face me and shouted that phrase again.

“What is that they’re saying?” Tuala wondered aloud. “It’s all kind of a garble at the beginning, but then they say ‘Zanata sedam.’ Maybe that’s the word for their king or queen or god. Or their country.”

“I don’t know. But the good news is that wasn’t too rough on me. I think I can do that forty more times or so.” I picked the invader nearest the tower to be next. He stubbornly died the same way as the first, sword in the air, and so did the next two. The fifth giant broke the pattern and appeared to beg me for mercy, but he was quickly shamed by the others into dying with what they considered to be dignity. He raised his sword like the others and died like the others. There were no more entreaties until I got to the very last one. Seeing forty-seven die ahead of him—forty-eight counting the one Tuala brained with her stave—had robbed him of his convictions. Or else he figured there was no one left to witness his plea for mercy and judge him.

I would show him the exact same mercy that his people showed Bennelin and all the Brynt cities, that is to say, none at all. And I would ignore the twinge of my conscience. “There is no such thing as moral high ground in war,” Temblor Kavich told me once. “There is only high ground, and as a Raelech stonecutter, you don’t take and hold it. You make and mold it.”

From my high ground I sank that Bone Giant into the rich farmland of Brynlön to join the others, leaving only their wrists and swords standing in the air. The worms would be at the rest of them soon enough.

Fintan returned to himself and said, “Let’s step backward in time that very same morning right here in Pelemyn, where the newly commissioned gerstad Culland du Raffert had an appointment with Second Könstad Tallynd du Böll.”

This time the importer was dressed in a very smart and overly stiff uniform.

Pressed pants with a crease that audibly crackles as I walk: I hate this uniform already. But I move it and all its stiff, scratchy, crunchy noises to report on time to the Second Könstad at the Wellspring, hoping that she will give me some excuse to take it off and go swimming. People salute me as I walk now that I have shiny things on my breast indicating my rank, and I remember to respond only half the time and probably salute improperly when I do. Mynstad du Möcher confirmed via her expression yesterday that I’m definitely not military material, and she may have suffered a crisis of faith as a result: What was Lord Bryn thinking, making me a tidal mariner?

She’s not the only one asking herself that question.

No close encounters with the pelenaut this time: Tallynd du Böll meets me at the entrance to the Wellspring and guides me back around the throne to the small pool that leads to the Lung’s Locks and the bay.

“Gerstad du Fesset reports that you’re competent at sleeving and swimming in general now. You will not have had much practice at dry direction, though.”

“You’re right. I don’t even know what that is.”

“It’s any exertion of your kenning while on dry land. The pulling and pushing of water on your person or elsewhere.”

“Okay.”

“Hop into the pool, get yourself soaked, and climb back out.”

“All right.” I noticed that her uniform, while appearing quite sharp, didn’t make all the noise that mine did. I gladly leapt into the pool just to stop the itching and make that material loosen up. I climbed out, dripping, and she smiled.

“Feels better, doesn’t it?”

“So much better.”

“Good. Now I want you to pull that water out of your clothing and let it fall back in the pool.”

“How do I …?”

“It’s focused visualization and exertion of will, just like moving yourself through water. Your kenning will do most of the work.”

My first attempt gets the water out of my uniform, but it doesn’t all go in the pool. Instead it radiates out in all directions from my body, spraying down the Second Könstad and the mariner standing guard there and splashing against the wall behind me as well. I apologize to them both, horrified and embarrassed. Tallynd du Böll just laughs, says it’s no problem, and wicks away the moisture properly from both herself and the mariner.

“This is why we call it dry direction,” she explains. “It’s the direction that takes work. The nature of water is to take the easiest path. Forcing it to take a path of your choosing takes a bit more effort. Not exertion, mind—just an effort of concentration. Wrapping your mind around the totality of the water you wish to affect, allowing none of it to behave as it would wish but as you would wish. Again, Gerstad—and again and again until you can do it flawlessly.”

It takes me nine attempts to perform it to the Second Könstad’s satisfaction. It was, as she suggested, much more of a mental exercise than a physical one. Water will try to leak out of any container, physical or mental.

“But at what point,” I ask her, “does this kind of thing become a physical exercise? I mean, when do we get the physical consequences—the aging?”

Tallynd du Böll shrugs. “Difficult to say. At some point you pass a threshold of moving volume or creating pressure that triggers the cost. No one has ever wished to experiment with their lives to measure it precisely. The effect is that we try to get along with the minimum possible. You live longer that way.”

She dives into the pool and waves at me once she surfaces. “Come on; we’ll head out to the ocean now. I have some things to show you.”

We cycle through the locks, and once we’re out of the harbor, we pause and tread water. “Before the invasion and my promotion, the majority of my work involved current adjustment and reef farming.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“All those people who dive into Bryn’s Lung—you saw what happens to the bodies, right?”

“Yes. Crabs and scavengers on the bottom. Glowing fungus on the walls.”

“Right. It’s a tremendous source of both food and waste. We have to keep that moving out of there, and I used to work with the rapids and hygienists to maintain it. Lots of particles can be used elsewhere; the hygienists analyze the contents of the water and work with me on moving it out. We feed the coral reefs and shellfish beds, those in turn feed the fish, and as a result we have the world’s most fecund fishing waters. And thank goodness because I think it might be all that keeps us going when we run out of everything else. Follow me down. I’m going to show you Pelenaut Röllend’s personal reef.”

“He has his own reef?”

“Yes. He sneaks out every morning and tends it. Takes a small net sometimes and catches his breakfast. And he allows a small daily harvest of the pelenaut’s reef to be sold at the Steam Spire restaurant. Have you ever been there?”

“No, but I’ve heard legends about its high quality and higher price tag.”

“Well-deserved legends, both. Follow.” She bends at the waist and dives, propelling herself to the south, and I trail after, opening my eyes and enjoying the swim. We don’t descend very far; we stay in the shallows where we still have light to see. I’ll have to ask her how she handles going deeper where the sun doesn’t penetrate. Do our eyes adjust due to some gift of the kenning or do we need luminous bulbs of some kind, like the fungus living on the walls of Bryn’s Lung?

She slows down as we approach a reef teeming with schools of shining fish, rays cruising along the sandy shallows, colorful banded eels, and all kinds of pulsing, feeding, crawling, squirming things I had never seen or even heard of before.

When we surface, she smiles. “Is that not beautiful?” I agree that it is. “You see his attention to making sure all the creatures thrive. It’s a consuming interest of the pelenaut’s, the flow and equitable distribution of resources, his passion for infrastructure as the basis of prosperity. He’s taught me so much. I have my own reefs being fed by currents, and they do well, too, but not so well as his. That’s primarily what tidal mariners do with our kenning in the absence of war.” Her face turns somber. “But there are obviously aggressive tactics. Ways to use water as a weapon. That method we use to pull the water out of our clothes, for example. What do you think would happen if you applied the same principle and forcibly pulled the water out of someone’s head through their ear?”

“Gods, they’d be dead before they dropped to the ground.”

“Exactly.”

She swims closer to me and speaks quietly. “People are mostly water to begin with. But tidal mariners are a bit more so. You belong to Bryn of the Deep now.”

“I, uh … I don’t follow.”

“You’re not going to leave anything behind you when you die except water.”

“Wow, this has taken a pretty dark turn all of a sudden. You mean …?”

“I mean to say I know you wanted to die when you jumped into Bryn’s Lung. And you can still die if you want. But not before every last Bone Giant in Göfyrd dies first.”

“You mean I have to go down there and do the exploding ear trick to every last—”

“No. That would take too long, and they’d overwhelm you. You’ll think of something else.”

“Oh. Of course.”

“They represent an imminent threat. We’ve seen scouts or messengers coming our way, and we’ve managed to pick them off so far. But eventually they’re going to figure out that Pelemyn and Tömerhil remain untouched and march against us. So there’s no time like the present.”

“Right, right. I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yes, indeed.” They’d been waiting for someone like me to come along, someone willing to return to the sea and take the enemy with him. I’m not saying the Second Könstad wasn’t willing to make sacrifices—she’d aged much in defense of Pelemyn, and I learned from Mynstad du Möcher that she got that limp from a spear in her foot, earned while stealing Bone Giant documents near Hillegöm—but she has kids to raise, and I don’t. “Leave it to me. Currents keep you safe, Second Könstad.”

“And you as well, Gerstad.”

She salutes me and then propels herself back to the Lung’s Locks. I tread water for a minute, taking a last look at Pelemyn’s domes and spires, and then decide I’m not quite ready to go just yet. I sleeve myself along the surface but do not return to the locks. I head for the docks instead and climb out there, wicking the water out of my uniform to drop back into the harbor. Longshoremen and fish heads alike look surprised and give me tight nods and wide berths. I walk back to my quarters, enjoying the morning sun, and once there I fetch a log book, ink and a pen, and a waterproof satchel issued to me by a surly sarstad at the armory. I check the contents of my purse, which is slightly swollen from the gerstad’s stipend paid to me, and realize that I have enough for one last glorious, ridiculous meal at the Steam Spire Loose Leaf Emporium. They have a table for me on the second level, where I indulge in their rarest Fornish tea and a selection of fresh raw fish from the pelenaut’s reef, cooked in citrus acids. A month’s pay and more blown on breakfast. But it is an excellent place to record some final thoughts in the log.

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to carry out my orders—for they are orders, even if not explicitly spoken—but then I don’t think the Second Könstad knows either. There’s no precedent for any of this. But what I do understand is that I’m probably going to die in the attempt regardless of how successful I am.

Few people get a single chance to choose the time of their passing, let alone a second chance. I think today will suit me just fine. For as marvelous as Bryn’s blessing is, as beautiful the white-ribboned blue sky, as exquisite the tea, and as filling the breakfast, I’m still empty and alone. Life is for those graced with love and ambition. My life no longer features such graces, so I’m ready for oblivion rather than a hollow existence. For me, the deep awaits.

I put the log safely inside the satchel, slung it across my shoulder, and left my entire purse on the table. I fell backward off the docks, waving Pelemyn goodbye, and sleeved myself most of the way to Göfyrd on my back, looking up at the sky and marveling at how something so empty could contain so much.

It was past midday when the bay began to narrow, and I flipped over to see my target better. I had yet to see those creatures who had destroyed so many lives. There were some, perhaps, on the walls, but I couldn’t see them well. I didn’t want to get too close, either, not knowing what their capabilities were, so I avoided both the docks and the Lung’s Locks, choosing to walk out of the sea on a beach well outside the city walls. I had been there only a few moments, beginning to wonder how I was supposed to eliminate a whole army by myself and also wondering why there was a strange earthen tower near the road leading north, when I saw a woman approaching me impossibly fast. Impossible, that is, until I realized she must be a Raelech courier. She had a Jereh band on her right arm, and couriers were the only Earth Shapers who could move like that.

She slowed down to normal human speeds and waved in a friendly manner before I could worry that she had come to attack. I noted that she stopped a good distance away, however, and shouted a greeting to me in accented Brynt.

“Hello! May I approach and speak with you?”

I nodded at her, and she darted forward, flashing a grin at me when she halted a length away.

“I am Tuala, courier of the Triune Council,” she said.

“Gerstad Culland du Raffert, tidal mariner,” I replied.

Her eyes widened. “You’re a tidal mariner?” Her gaze took in my decidedly unmilitary body, and doubt clouded her expression.

“Yes. I’m here to do something about …” My hand writhed at the city like a beached eel. “That. Them. This.”

“Ah! We thought Brynlön would be doing something soon, but we thought we’d see an army instead of just one person.”

“Who’s we? You mean Rael?”

“No, I mean me and the stonecutter who raised that tower.”

I looked past her at the tower, then at the city, thinking the view from that tower might be far superior to the one I currently had. “Is the stonecutter still up there? I mean, can I have a look at the city from there?” I asked, pointing.

“Sure. Let’s go. She doesn’t speak Brynt, but I’ll translate if you need me to.”

She pulled me along with her by using her kenning, moving as fast over land as I could move through the water. When we reached the base, I saw the strangest crop one will ever see in farmland: pale thin wrists and bony fingers clutching swords, sprouting from the ground, bunched together near the base but trailing away toward the city like the tapered tail of a river lizard.

“Are those …?”

“Bone Giants? Yes. Meara just got finished burying them. I was worried about her for a while, but she’s a stone killer.”

“Can’t wait to meet her.”

At the top of the steps spiraling around the tower, I met Meara, who looked to be in her midtwenties and weary beyond measure. We nodded helplessly at each other, unable to speak except through our eyes. Hers had pain in them, and she didn’t smile at me the way the courier had. Perhaps she had lost her family in Bennelin the way I’d lost mine in Festwyf. We wouldn’t get to trade tragedies, however.

The view of the city was better but not good enough. I could see sentries on the walls much more clearly now but not into the city itself. Perhaps the stonecutter could mend that.

I turned to Tuala and asked, “Can Meara get me a look down into the city? Raise the tower, maybe, until I can see over the battlements?”

After Tuala’s translation, that turned out to be something Meara could do. The tower lurched for a moment under my feet, then rose as the ground built beneath us.

I don’t know precisely how high we climbed, because I never took my eyes off the city. As we rose above the walls, I could finally see them and understand what they’d done. Being told is one thing, but seeing it is another. Milky ghouls on sticklike legs, teeming in the streets, and … dragging bodies around. Brynt bodies, men, women, and children, all murdered by those horrible creatures like wraiths made flesh.

“Why?” I murmured, not really expecting an answer, but Tuala gave me one.

“Because they thought they could get away with it,” she said.

“But what are they doing? With the people?”

The courier shrugged. “I don’t think they’re going to bury them in the ground or in the sea like you and I would. They appear to be dragging them all into one big pile. See there? My guess is they’re going to burn them.”

“Burn …?” My fingers twitched first, but the tremors spread all over my body, just as they had when I’d heard the news about Festwyf. All those poor people, hauled around like so much meat, only to be melted down to ashes, denied their return to the ocean. My family was little better off, still left where they were slain in Festwyf. My thumb caught on the edge of the satchel in its restless quivering, and I unslung it from my shoulders, handing it to the courier. “That’s the last of me,” I told her.

She stared at me, uncomprehending. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Whatever you like. It’s yours now. I’m going to practice my dry direction.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

Sunlight glinted on the scalloped surface of the bay as if a school of moonscales had surfaced to feed. “The people of Göfyrd deserve to be buried properly at sea,” I said, “and the Bone Giants deserve to drown in it.”

I didn’t talk any more after that, though Tuala tried to get me to explain. She would see for herself soon enough.

All my trembling rage and despair I channeled into calling the waters of the shining blue bay. And it resisted because what I wanted was not the path of least resistance, but I poured my emotions into it and pulled, and it pulled back until I quaked with the effort. Still the waters receded from the shore and built into a wave—no ordinary wave but one shaped by my will to do the right thing. To bring Göfyrd vengeance and peace. Justice and a final rest. A reaping, yes, but also a cleansing.

Needles of pain fired hot and bright throughout my body, the toll for such a kenning already being exacted, but I kept calling the water anyway. How strange that the process of liquefying your organs should feel so blasted hot.

The roar of that building water matched the roar in my ears and the roar tearing from my throat—or maybe it was all one, the same roar I’d heard back in Fornyd, calling to me even then, and I understood that it had always been the Lord of the Deep, calling me to this duty, calling me home to the sea.

Without a word, Fintan threw down a black sphere and changed seemings directly back to the stonecutter Meara.

This strange Brynt man who looked so uncomfortable in his military uniform was in fact a tidal mariner: the Second Kenning’s equivalent of a juggernaut. I didn’t speak the language—yet—so we did little more than make eye contact and nod. I wished I could have talked to him, though. He looked like he could relate to the week I’d had.

Mild mannered at first, he transformed after he saw the Bone Giants from on high, moving Brynt bodies around. His jaw clenched, he gave his satchel to Tuala, and then he looked out at the bay as if he could slay the whole ocean with a snarl. I followed his gaze and saw nothing but calm waters, so I checked him again and he was quivering, head to toe. Sweat glistened on his brow and his upper lip, and I worried that perhaps he was having some sort of physical episode, maybe even a seizure. What reason could he have, after all, to glare at the bay with such fury? I turned back to look, and it was different: the waters were receding from the tongue of the shore to form the most massive single wave I have ever seen. A wave much taller than the walls of Göfyrd, even seen from farther out in the bay, and heading straight for the city. The building roar of it reached our ears later than the sight, and both the size of the wave and the volume of the roar grew as it approached the occupied city. Furthermore, it was oddly shaped: not a wide bank of blue-green with a foam-capped leading edge spanning the width of the bay but rather a fat whirling cylinder that looked like it might fit perfectly inside the walls.

“That has to be terrifying,” I whispered, looking at the distant figures on the walls pointing out frantically to the oncoming wave. They could see it coming to get them but could not possibly get out of the way in time or do anything to stop it. The base rushed forward, all that weight slamming into the seaside wall, more than any stonecutter would prepare for, and the massive cylinder of whirling water crested over the wall and fell inside, crushing rooftops and the much more fragile bodies they sheltered. Anyone not immediately killed by the weight of it would surely drown, for the water filled up the city walls like a soup ladle filling a bowl, but instead of herbs and vegetables floating in soup we saw rubble and bodies bobbing to the surface of the churn.

The tidal mariner cried out, and I turned just in time to see his face ripple like there were waves underneath his skin, and then there was no skin or anything really solid beyond a sodden lump like wet ashes, for he came apart and splashed inside his uniform, his head fountaining briefly, and he watered the soil of the tower as the Second Kenning destroyed the vessel through which it worked. His empty mariner clothes smacked wetly to the earth, and I sank down next to them, seized by revelation.

He had just achieved the impossible because he didn’t care about the consequences. He knew he’d die instantly for straining his kenning like that, and he did it anyway. And if I had thought to do the same thing in the Granite Tunnel, I could have made those seals hold and prevented the collapse. I could have saved those soldiers if only I had been willing to sacrifice as this man had. I would have returned to the earth, someone would have sung the Dirge for the Fallen for me—not Temblor Priyit but someone, surely—and I wouldn’t be an exile, this legendary example of how not to be a stonecutter.

Tuala shook me gently by the shoulders. “Meara, it’s okay. He meant to do that. He knew it was going to happen.”

“I know,” I said, wiping at my nose and realizing that I had become a mess of tears and snot. But not, as Tuala thought, because this man had died but because I hadn’t. “I should have done what he did. If I had committed everything, I could have saved them.”

“No. No, Meara. If you had, you wouldn’t have been here to help him. He needed this tower to be here. You helped him and thereby helped Brynlön, as you pledged to do.” She snorted at a sudden thought. “I know it may not feel like it, but the Triple Goddess may be working through you. Do you not realize you have been instrumental in destroying two armies? And now you will help the Brynts even more.”

“How?”

“Get up. Look at that,” Tuala said, pointing to the city. Waves of Brynt bodies were returning to the sea, which was every bit as important to Brynts as burial in the ground was to us. “That’s history right there. A turning point, as was the Granite Tunnel. And it needs remembering. I will tell what happened here and bards will repeat it, but you will make it last forever. Because you’re going to work on this tower and make it a monument to this tidal mariner. What he did, right here, deserves your best effort.”

“I never caught his name. It just didn’t penetrate.”

“Culland du Raffert.”

“Okay. You’re right. I will do my best sparkle work—”

“What?”

“Never mind. Hey,” I said, pointing to something in the sky above Göfyrd. “I don’t think those are blackwings over there. Those look like flying men.”

“We must step back just a wee bit from that point,” Fintan said, “and pick up with Gondel Vedd and Ponder Tann.”

There are a few rolling hills south of Göfyrd, and I crested them with Ponder Tann one morning to witness the most awe-inspiring work of the Second Kenning I’d ever seen or even heard of. We knew something strange was going on as soon as we saw a rather incongruous tower to the north of the city, rising above the walls yet not made of stone—it appeared to be raw earth.

“What purpose does that tower serve?” Ponder wondered aloud. “It’s not in an ideal spot for a lighthouse.”

“An archers’ tower, perhaps?”

“Too high for that. And any archers you put up there would be cut off in an attack.”

“Well, I think there are people on top of it.”

The tempest squinted. “I think you’re right. Three, perhaps. Difficult to tell at this distance.”

We could see much more clearly that there were Bone Giants on the walls of Göfyrd, pale bodies clearly visible against dark stone. There was no telling how many more might be inside the city; all we could see was rooftops from our angle.

“I hate to ask, Ponder, but might you be able to get us closer? Quickly, I mean, yet without straining yourself?”

“Sure. We could fly over there without much strain if you don’t mind a rough ride. Where would you like to land?”

“Perhaps within hailing distance of the people on the tower. We can at least ascertain if they are friend or foe. And if they are the latter, I suppose we must fly away quickly again.”

He nodded. “All right. I’ll take us over the city to get a better look inside.”

“Out of bowshot range, I hope.”

“Arrows won’t fly straight when I’m directing the wind,” he said, “so no need to worry about that. I don’t think the Bone Giants have bows anyway. Better secure whatever you need to hold on to before we go.”

My carisak was already strapped to me, but I rechecked to see that the clasp was securely fastened and tightened everything before nodding to the tempest. “Ready.”

He closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, and on the third inhalation a phenomenal gust blew up from the valley below and lifted us into the air, chilling my nethers abruptly and sending my stomach into sloshing nervous fits. We dipped and twisted and flipped, and in short order I was hurling my breakfast into the wind.

We managed to straighten out to at least a semihorizontal trajectory by the time we reached Göfyrd, some alarming swoops aside. Looking down directly into the streets and squares, I saw that the city was well populated with Eculan invaders. Some of them spotted us and pointed, but no one tried to shoot us out of the sky.

“Oh, Reinei preserve us,” I breathed when I saw the bodies. On the northern edge of the city, the Eculans were dragging the slaughtered bodies of all the Brynts and piling them against the inside of the wall. The streets leading to it were smeared with their blood. I caught something of the smell as we passed over, and my guts heaved again even though my stomach was already empty.

Tears streamed out the corners of my eyes as we approached the wall. How could the Eculans believe that they were just and righteous in this behavior? For they surely did, using their religion as their excuse. What was I missing in Zanata Sedam that gave them permission to kill without remorse?

Now closer to the strange tower, we saw that there were indeed three figures on top: two women and a man. The women were easily identified as Raelechs thanks to their bare arms and the Jereh bands worn on the right.

The man, middle-aged and stout, wore a blue and white uniform that looked like it might be Brynt military, though I couldn’t tell what rank; I am unfamiliar with such customs anyway, and he might simply have liked crisp blue and white clothing. He appeared to be in some kind of distress: his expression was strained, and his clenched fists shook. He was staring out at the bay, and the Raelechs were staring at him; none of them saw us approaching. I turned my head to follow their gaze and saw that the waters were behaving strangely. They were receding from the shore quite rapidly. I pointed it out to Ponder and shouted through the wind, “Look at the bay! That’s not normal, is it?”

He stared. “No. That’s unnatural. Where is it going—oh! He must be a tidal mariner!”

“Why? What do you—oh, sweet kraken tits.” Ponder’s eyes were better than mine, and I was a bit slow in discerning that the waters were receding only to form a wave able to crush the entire city underneath its weight, dumping a large portion of the bay right over the walls and obliterating the entire occupying force of Eculans in a matter of seconds. It crashed through the wall facing the sea, and eventually the water returned there, taking the bodies of the Eculans and the Brynts with it.

My mouth ran dry with fear despite the fact that we were looking down upon so much water.

Ponder spun us around and held us aloft in a juddering plume of air. “Think of the power that would require!” he said, ignoring that he was already doing what only a handful of people could do with their kenning.

I thought of my brother, already aged near to death, who had died transporting us to this continent. The tidal mariner had not been nearly so old, but the power he must have summoned to do that—to wipe out an entire city with a single wave, for that is what he just did—would surely bring him near to death if not kill him outright.

Tearing my gaze away from the city to peer at the tower, I saw that there were only two figures on top of it now: the Raelechs, one of them on her knees. Where was the Brynt man? Had he fallen off the tower? As I watched, the other Raelech moved to comfort the one on her knees. Had she loved the Brynt man?

“Ponder! Can you take us to the tower?” I called.

He glanced over at me briefly and then returned his gaze to the ruined city, perhaps determined to fix the sight in his mind. But he nodded, and moments later the wind shifted and carried us toward the tower.

“Do you speak Raelech?” I asked Ponder.

“No.”

“All right. I will try to summarize as needed.”

“If that tidal mariner is still alive, I’ll be surprised,” Ponder said as we began our descent. “That kenning probably finished him.”

Both of the Raelech women were on their feet now, looking at Göfyrd, but as we neared, one of them spotted us and pointed. I waved to let them know we were friendly, and they braced themselves as the first gusts of Ponder’s wind reached them. Then they flattened themselves to the top of the tower to reduce their profiles and avoid being blown over the side.

They rose and slapped dirt off their clothes once we landed, and I saw by their Jereh bands that one of them was a stonecutter and the other was one of the Triune’s couriers. Meara and Tuala were their names. Meara looked as if she’d been crying recently. The Brynt man’s uniform lay crumpled and drenched between us, but there was no sign of his body.

“I’m Gondel Vedd, and this is Ponder Tann,” I said in the Raelech tongue. “We serve Mistral Kira of Kauria, here to witness and report, and we have witnessed something truly remarkable. Where is the tidal mariner?”

My question caused the stonecutter to sob openly. She covered her eyes with her hands and turned away.

“He’s dead,” Tuala replied, gesturing at the uniform. “He just melted. Dissolved—whatever. The kenning drank him up, liquefied even his bones. And it was so strange because it was like he wanted to die.”

“Who was he?”

“His name was Culland du Raffert.” She waggled a small leather journal in her hand. “He gave me this, said it was the last of him.”

“May I take a look at it? For scholarly purposes.”

“You can read Brynt?”

“I am fluent in all the languages, as you are.”

“Why did the mistral send you up here with a tempest?” she asked, but handed the journal to me.

“Because I can also speak with the Eculans.”

“Who?”

“The Bone Giants.”

That interested her, and we traded information. The destruction of the northern army was news to me; everything I knew about the Eculans, including the Seventh Kenning and the Seven-Year Ship, was news to her. Tuala wanted to leave right away to inform the Brynt pelenaut at Pelemyn what his tidal mariner had done and then return to Rael to report to the Triune Council. But Meara, it seemed, would be staying. She wanted to turn the tower into a memorial for Culland. I’d not yet read his journal and knew nothing of him, but I’d seen what he’d done and agreed that such a moment should be preserved.

Before Tuala left us, I asked her to report also to the Kaurian embassy in Pelemyn and let them know I’d be coming and would deliver Culland’s journal to the Wellspring after I’d made a copy.

The courier departed, and I seated myself on the tower top with Ponder, paging through the tidal mariner’s journal and also keeping an eye on Meara as she frowned and set about her work, converting the earthen tower to stone by slowly calling up the rock from deep in the earth and fitting it around the circumference of the tower until it reached the top. Later, she said, she would let all the earth drain from the middle and build a spiral staircase inside so that people could visit the spot, and she would work with masons to create a mosaic floor to walk on. Culland’s uniform, along with the dirt around it to a depth of three fingerlengths, was not to be touched or moved, and eventually sealed under glass. But she needed to work with a Raelech mason to do the fine decorative work she had in mind, and she would go with us to Pelemyn to find one once she had the basic structure completed.

Ponder and I thought it an excellent plan. The tempest probably listened to ghosts on the wind while I read Culland’s journal and made a copy in Kaurian.

When I got to his last entry, I exclaimed and startled everyone, including myself.

“What is it?” Ponder asked.

“A possibility. A small gust of hope that I can do some actual good here.” I pointed to a passage in Culland’s journal. “It says here that another tidal mariner stole some Eculan documents from the vojskovodja near Hillegöm and brought them back to Pelemyn. If they will let me see them, I can help translate! Perhaps there will be something there to help us anticipate the Eculans’ next move.”

I dearly hoped there would be. Some shred of vital information that would mean my brother had good reason to die to get me here. Something that would save lives and validate my decision to breathe in all the words of the world instead of the wind.

Meara finished the basic tower structure near sundown but wasn’t ready to leave then. “We need something to explain what’s here. An obelisk, I’m thinking, which I’ll decorate later. But I want the words finished today. You can help with that?” she asked me.

“Of course.”

There being no stairs at present, we leapt off the tower together and Ponder caught us in the wind, lowering us gently to the ground. At the base, near where she would later create an entrance to the tower, she erected a polished granite obelisk with a Raelech-language inscription chiseled into the base through her kenning. I translated it for her into Brynt, Fornish, and Kaurian, and she etched the same message on the other sides of the obelisk in those languages:

On this spot on 17 Barebranch 3042, witnessed by two Raelechs and two Kaurians, tidal mariner Culland du Raffert sacrificed himself to call the wrath of Bryn down upon the city of Göfyrd, held by the Eculan invaders known as Bone Giants. The wave he summoned crashed through the seaside wall of the city, drowned the occupying army, and washed them out to sea, along with their victims, who returned to Lord Bryn.

“Gerstad Culland du Raffert, friends,” Fintan said, returning to his shape in a cloud of smoke. “His memorial can be found in that spot if you ever get down to Göfyrd. And you will find the stonecutter Meara there, too. She’s made it her life’s work to rebuild that city.”

I’d been looking forward to going home and asking Elynea about her first day as an official apprentice, but my plans were drowned by a longshoreman in coral livery. After the bard’s tale, he thrust some fancy paper our way and informed both of us that we were invited to join the pelenaut at the Nentian embassy in town for dinner.

“You’re expected to attend. Formal dress if you can manage it,” the longshoreman said.

The invitation promised a “rare dining experience” and varied company.

“How is this possible?” I asked. “The pelenaut expelled the Nentian ambassador and his staff four days ago. They’re on a ship heading for Fandlin.”

“This isn’t hosted by the ambassador. These are some fat yaks from Ar Balesh who paid the Raelechs to take them over the Poet’s Range since they couldn’t go through the tunnel.”

“Who are they?”

The longshoreman shrugged. “Rich fat yaks. Not diplomats. That’s all I know. Except they just got here. So they wouldn’t have heard anything about that murdering viceroy with the diseased tadpole hose.”

I caught Fintan’s eyes. “Could be fun.”

“Could be heinous. Why do I have to go?”

“Pelenaut Röllend wants your perfect recall. But he may also need your language skills. We’re not sure how many of them speak Brynt, and the pelenaut does not speak Nentian.”

“Well, I want someone to taste everything first and see if they die.”

The longshoreman grinned. “That’s being taken care of. The entire preparation will be supervised. And there will be hygienists in attendance, of course.”

We arrived punctually, which turned out to be early. Four Nentian merchants, dressed in their floofy and poufy best, welcomed us and were delighted that the bard could speak Nentian. They could hardly wait to put drinks in our hands, but Fintan protested that he’d best wait until the rest of the party arrived. He relayed to me their names and what their particular business was, but then much of the talk swirled around me like thin word soup and I didn’t have a spoon to enjoy it.

The merchants were entertaining at least. Jovial, ebullient types, lacking the restraint of diplomats and projecting a sincere rather than a feigned warmth. None of them resembled a fat yak, but they did appear to be rich. Poudresh Marekh was the shortest of the lot and had taken the trouble to grow a mustache that spread to his sideburns, leaving his chin bare. He represented a collective of Nentian llama ranchers and sold everything from their curly wool to combs carved from their hooves. Ghurang Bokh was quite clearly into tanning and leathers of all kinds, and he was the sort to wear his products as a walking advertisement. Even his hair was plaited and run through broad tooled leather circles fastened with a wooden pin. Subodh Ramala was an older man, comfortable with his jowls and wattled neck and perhaps the most tense of the lot despite the smile pasted onto his face. He was a distributor for smoked and cured Nentian meats such as chaktu, khern, and even borchatta. The last merchant was tallest of the lot and had grown a scraggly goatee on his chin in an attempt to hide the apple in his throat. Fintan said he was “a purveyor of fine footwear—a bootmonger, if you will,” and his name was Jahm Joumeloh Jeikhs.

“He gave you three names?”

“He did. Said it helped people not blessed with perfect recall remember him.”

“The boots help, too, no doubt,” I said, for they were undeniably rich, the uppers sparkling with mosaics of inlaid semiprecious stones. “Why are they here and so anxious to meet the pelenaut?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

And we didn’t get to, at least right then, for the pelenaut arrived with his entourage, and the introductions could begin anew. He had three hygienists with him, and apparently another had been in the kitchen all day with a couple of mariners and longshoremen as the food was being prepared. The three newly arrived ones immediately set about checking the liquors for poisons, and once they declared them safe, everyone relaxed a bit. The pelenaut proposed a toast to our distant friends the Nentians, and no sooner had we drunk than a longshoreman announced that dinner was ready and we moved from the parlor into the embassy’s dining room.

Platters of Nentian charcuterie and sliced rounds of chaktu cheese waited there, thanks to Subodh Ramala, but I was far more excited to see the Brynt foods spread out there: some meats and vegetables I hadn’t seen in some time—or, indeed, ever. There was an entire scurry of roasted meat squirrels, for example. Hunting them must have been extraordinarily dangerous. There was also fresh broiled moonscale, fire-glazed swamp duck, and some rare wild fyndöl mushrooms sauteéd in even rarer Fornish cream butter. These merchants had really spared no expense to impress us. That only made me more curious about what they wanted.

Jahm Jeikhs couldn’t wait to get to that and began to speak of it in halting Brynt as soon as we sat down, clearing his throat and saying, “Pelenaut Röllend, I’d like to speak of some vital matters in Ghurana Nent—” but Rölly held up a hand to stop him.

“Time enough for that after we’ve eaten, Jahm. I’m famished, and that’s a vital matter as well. Let’s enjoy this extraordinary meal.”

“Surely we can do both?” Certainly not a diplomatic reply; he’d been given an undeniable cue to wait until later but chose to ignore it. My friend just smiled at him.

“We could, but a dinner like this is a rare treat. Please eat first and then we’ll talk.”

“Eat first? We didn’t travel all this way to eat, but all right.” The bootmonger’s long fingers darted forward to the swamp duck resting in a shallow pool of orange glaze, and he tore off a wing and crammed it into his mouth. “I’m eating,” he said, his words muffled by the food, and everyone stared at him, aware that he was jumping into a pool of embarrassment but unable to do anything but look on. “Mmm! So good! Delicious! I want some more of that!” He grabbed the swamp duck with both hands and simply tore at either breast in a fantastically rude spectacle and moaned as he brought the hunks of greasy meat to his mouth. “Oh, mmm! So saucy!” His cheeks bulged with the flesh, and he kept cramming it in faster than he could chew. Trickles of the sticky orange glaze dribbled down his chin and soaked his goatee, turning it into a glistening rope of hair. When he couldn’t fit any more in, he glanced at his countrymen, who universally wore expressions of horror at his behavior, and he laughed, necessarily spitting some of the duck out to do so. That only made him laugh harder.

“Aha ha ha ha!” he cried, duck bits spraying across the table, but when he took a breath to continue, his eyes boggled in panic and he wheezed, spitting the rest out without even trying to keep it in. He clutched at his throat and attempted to breathe but couldn’t.

“Hygienist!” Röllend barked, worried that the food might have been poisoned somehow after all and perhaps a hygienist might still be able to purify his blood. One of the hygienists rushed to the Nentian’s side and placed a hand on his neck, using her kenning to search for poison in his system. Jahm continued to struggle, slowly turning blue from lack of oxygen and pointing at his throat as if we weren’t aware there was a problem. The hygienist shook her head.

“He’s not poisoned. He’s choking.” She began to pound him on the back, not being gentle about it either, and Jahm’s choking noises changed tenor but didn’t cease. The bone he must have inhaled was lodged firmly in his airway and refused to budge. Duck bones can be broad and flat, and even if they are hollow, they are excellent at blocking air. The Nentian’s complexion continued to go pale and blue until his eyes rolled up and his head crashed to the table, his long fine hair mired in swamp duck meat, causing both Poudresh and Ghurang to leap up and join in pounding the abyss out of his back to eject the bone.

They failed, and Jahm Joumeloh Jeikhs died there in front of us, ending the dinner before it truly began.

The surviving merchants and the pelenaut all floated experimental sentences to express their shock and deep regret, having never been trained in what to say when someone dies at your dinner party.

I turned to the bard on my right and said in a low voice intended only for him, “That was certainly a rare dining experience. I’ve never seen someone kill himself with a glazed duck before.”

“You realize I can’t let him die like that for nothing, don’t you?” the bard whispered back to me.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I have to write a song about this. Kids can learn a lesson from poor old Jahm. Take your time eating and chew your food.”

“Fintan. No.”

“How can I pass this up? ‘The Saucy Fire-Glazed Swamp Duck Death of Jahm Joumeloh Jeikhs.’ The tale of his demise will live longer than he did!”

The pelenaut asked a question that distracted both of us from possible morality songs. “Might any of you know what he was so anxious to talk about?”

The merchants all nodded, and Subodh spoke for the others in Nentian, which Fintan then translated. “We were hoping we could convince you to send at least a few hygienists back to Ghurana Nent. Our people are suffering and our businesses flagging without their aid.”

“It saddens me to hear that, and it’s regrettable,” Pelenaut Röllend said, “and I do hope to allow our hygienists to resume work abroad in the future. At present, however, we need them here to recover from the devasting aftermath of the invasion.”

“But you have so many here tonight,” Subodh protested. “Four of them when one would have sufficed. Surely you can spare one or two for Ghurana Nent. I ask not merely for myself but on behalf of the viceroys and even the king, who helped us get here.”

“I can’t spare them, no. They are here tonight after working all day in Survivor Field as a favor to me. And tomorrow they will go out there again. I wish I could give you better news, but you have my assurances that we will send hygienists abroad as soon as we can afford to.”

“Sir,” Poudresh Marekh pleaded in Brynt, his mustache quivering, “at the risk of leaving my llamas out to play with bloodcats, it’s the king. He’s not well. And it threatens us all. We need a hygienist for the king.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s unstable. Going mad, in fact, though I will thank you not to repeat that to him. And he has our families. If we don’t come back with a hygienist, he has promised to strap them to the posts of Kalaad and let his cheek raptor tear their faces off.”

The pelenaut snorted. “We’re talking about Bhadram Ghanghuli, right? Since when does he have a cheek raptor? That sounds like Viceroy Melishev Lohmet.”

The Nentians all traded looks of alarm and bemusement, and Fintan, I noticed, covered his eyes with one hand. Ghurang Bokh was the first to venture, “But it is Melishev Lohmet.”

“Who is?”

“The king,” Subodh said. “Melishev Lohmet is the king now.”

The pelenaut and I and every other Brynt in the room turned to Fintan. Rölly said, “Fintan, is this true?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

The pelenaut gaped, then shouted, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m sorry, but I thought you knew! How could you not?”

“Well, we’ve been a bit busy, and the Nentians never use their king’s name, do they? They just call him the king. So I rely on the ambassador to tell me when there’s someone new sitting on the throne.”

“You threw him out a few days ago,” I pointed out.

“He didn’t know anyway. He was still calling Melishev a viceroy. And with the Granite Tunnel closed it’s no wonder we haven’t heard anything. We’ve had almost zero trade from Ghurana Nent since then. When did this happen?”

The question was directed at Fintan, but Subodh answered. “Two months ago.”

“Two months? Neither I nor the ambassador heard anything for two months? How is that possible?”

“Like you, we have been busy,” Subodh said, shrugging helplessly. “In the worst possible way.”

The pelenaut fumed and took a couple of deep breaths before saying, “Fintan.”

“Yes?”

“I don’t suppose Melishev’s coup is part of your tale in the coming days?”

“It is.”

“And Bhadram Ghanghuli, the former king? What happened to him?”

“Do you want all the details?”

“No; just give me the short version.”

“He’s dead.”

The pelenaut grimaced and clenched his fists. “Do you have any idea how angry I am with you right now? I want to beat you senseless with the biggest kraken cock in the abyss.”

“I’m very sorry, sir. I truly thought you would have been informed through other channels, and we just haven’t gotten to that part of the story yet.”

The pelenaut said, “Oh, you can be sure I’ll be following up through other channels. Never mind the Nentian embassy. Why hasn’t the Raelech embassy spoken to me about a change of leadership in Ghurana Nent? Or the Fornish, for that matter?”

“They may not know either, sir,” Subodh said, drawing all eyes to him. “I mean, now that I think about it. The king has been, uh. What’s the word?” He said something in Nentian, and Fintan translated.

“Paranoid.”

“That’s it, thank you,” Subodh said. “Paranoid. And violent. He is not well.”

“Yes, we’ve been hearing about that from the bard.” Röllend turned sharply to Fintan and said, “You’re not embellishing him, right? He truly is the shitsnake you’ve described?”

“He is. If anything, I’ve been casting him in the best possible light.”

“Bryn drown me, then.” He returned his gaze to Subodh and the others. “I have to tell you, kind sirs, I’m not inclined to help him. He’s a casual murderer and cares nothing for the suffering of his people.”

Panic grew in the Nentians’ eyes, and they all spoke at once some variation of “But sir, our families—”

Pelenaut Röllend held up a hand to silence them. “I didn’t say I’m not inclined to help you. I’m just not inclined to help Melishev Lohmet. Let me think on this, consult with some advisers, and try to come up with a solution.” He looked down at the body of Jahm Joumeloh Jeikhs, whose face was still planted in his plate of decadent swamp duck sauce. “I assume Melishev has his family, too?”

The Nentians nodded, and Ghurang added, “He has three children.”

“I’m sorry it ended like this. I didn’t realize what was at stake. But I understand now and thank you for speaking candidly with me. I assure you that I’m engaged and will be in touch soon.”

Rölly took his leave, and Fintan and I followed close on his heels, leaving behind the Nentians, their sumptuous feast, and the body of Jahm Joumeloh Jeikhs in the middle of it.

When Fintan took the stage the next day, he had two additional musicians with him, both with lutes—one bass and one rhythm. He lifted up his feet one by one and pointed at them. “I got new shoes!” he exclaimed, and I felt unobservant for not noticing earlier. They were simple brown leather but undeniably new. “I wanted to sing about them, but sadly I don’t know any shoe songs. Fortunately, the Nentians have a celebratory song about boots, and I was reminded of it by a Nentian bootmonger I met briefly yesterday. We’re going to perform that for you today.” The musicians launched into an up-tempo tune, and Fintan picked a blistering melody above it on his harp until he began to sing:

My hens all died and my plow is broke

My well is dry and my yak just croaked

My farm’s all rotted straight down to the roots

But I don’t care because now I can wearrrrr—!

My worldwide, superglide, yellow-dyed, verified,

Certified, ratified, justified and dignified,

Qualified ironside, fortified and purified,

Bona fide, amplified, khernhide boots!

“Let’s begin today with Abhinava Khose, who has a contract to fulfill at the Hathrim city of Baghra Khek.”

There are so many bones to the north of the Hathrim city. Charred, blackened, and some with strings of gristle left on them, but mostly just helmets and mail draping skeletons. An army’s open grave. I remained far out of range. If that mass of men could be burned at such a distance from the walls, I could be, too. I came upon another battlefield first where some bodies were burned but most had been halved or quartered by huge blades. There were still some scavengers in the neighborhood, but they left us alone. Murr and Eep hunted some of them for their next meal, and I led the horses around to the east, planning to circle the Hathrim city at a healthy remove until I reached the foothills.

I saw the reflected glare of glass boats down by the shore but no actual giants until I’d nearly reached the bottom of the Godsteeth. I’d never seen one in the flesh before because they had little reason to visit Khul Bashab. I saw a group from a distance that was clearing the timber closest to their walls on the forest side, the south side.

More than their stature—which was awesome, to be sure—I noticed their skin and hair. So pale you’d think they’d burn up in the sun. And their hair wasn’t just dark like ours; some of them had light yellow or red hair. I did see at least one who was bald, except his—or maybe her—skull was on fire. Definitely one of the lavaborn there. I doubted the others would be so helpful in identifying themselves. I’d never heard that fire skulls were how you could tell a blessed giant from a merely huge one. I think it was a woman, and for some reason she wasn’t pitching in but rather talking to the workers. Perhaps I could figure out more if I watched, but I couldn’t just stand there and be spotted.

The sawgrass was high and I could hide myself completely in it if I crouched, but the horses could be seen above it. Before that crew took a good look around to the east, I dismounted and asked the horses to lie down for a few minutes so that I could think in safety.

“Murr. Can you smell the large people near here? I mean, do they have a specific smell?”

The bloodcat tipped his snout into the air, and his nostrils flared as he took in a few deep breaths. Then he looked at me and tossed his chin in a nod.

“Can you smell any of them closer to us than they are?” He checked again and nodded. “Where? I mean, in which direction? Can you point with one of your paws?”

He turned south to face the Godsteeth and lifted his right front paw in that direction. I rose somewhat from my crouch so that I could peek over the grass. A hundred or so lengths away, the plains gave way to hills that rose to mountains, and they were covered in shorter grasses, shrubs, and grand moss pine trees. Tans and browns and some leafy greens mostly, so the gray and white movement among it all caught my eyes.

Two Hathrim houndsmen on patrol, returning to the city at a leisurely walk. Unbelievable to see a predator that size—the hounds alone were the size of kherns! I couldn’t tell whether the armored giants astride them were lavaborn, but either way they posed a challenge. I’d have no chance against them without my own kenning. Now that I’d seen the hounds with my own eyes, I reached out with my kenning to see if I could locate them. They weren’t native to Ghurana Nent, so I wanted to make sure it would work, and it did. I sensed the hounds, felt their barely contained ferocity, and knew that I could use it to my advantage. I suggested to the hounds that the lavaborn with the fiery skull was extraordinarily delicious but only one of them could get there first, and they took off at top speed, much to the surprise of their riders. One of them held on, though just barely, and the other toppled from his saddle onto the ground, axe and all.

The houndsman who managed to stay mounted yanked hard on the reins, but his hound fought it, twisting and shaking its head from side to side and then spinning in a circle to try to reach the rider on its back. That was certainly entertaining, but I wanted to see what happened with the free hound. It had descended from the trees and charged full speed through the grass toward the working giants next to the city walls. Kalaad, what power there! But it was not a stealthy charge. The Hathrim outside turned and saw it coming and raised the alarm, and one bearded giant stepped forward to meet the charge. He was not armored, but he did have one of those huge axes, and he set it aflame, demonstrating that he was lavaborn also. Though the lavaborn were supposed to be my targets, it would not end well for the hound and I told it to stop and forget it; none of those giants were tasty after all.

In fact, he should sit down until his rider could catch up, and I told the other hound to calm down as well. I knew that those hounds most likely would be involved in the battle later, but I could muster no more anger toward them than I could toward the horse that bore the man who shot Madhep. Let the king’s army worry about them: I hadn’t been sent to hunt hounds, only giants blessed with the First Kenning. But what could the Sixth Kenning do against fire? I knew of no fireproof animals.

The giant who’d fallen off his mount groaned audibly and clambered to his feet. He said some things that I assumed were curses and began to jog after his hound, his heavy footsteps crashing through the underbrush. The more competent rider was berating his hound in an angry tone while the lavaborn was standing in place, ready to defend the workers should either hound resume its charge. He was a valid target.

I searched the area with my new senses, hoping a solution might present itself. High up in a grand moss pine perhaps three or four ranks up from where they were clearing trees, a hive of moss hornets reminded me of something Hanima once said: if anybody gave her cause, she’d throw bees in their face. That might actually work. Moss hornets were supposed to be pretty nasty: it was said you felt only the first sting because their venom numbed your nerves and eventually paralyzed you. Didn’t know if that would necessarily be true for a giant, but if it didn’t work, that hive was probably going to be dead in a few days anyway. I let them know that their hive was in danger and that it was the guy with the fiery axe who had it in for them. It took perhaps half a minute, but a cloud of iridescent black and green descended on that particular giant’s head. He roared and flared up, burning some of the hornets, but then the toxins overcame him and the flames died, shortly followed by the rest of him. I supposed with enough moss hornet venom in you everything went numb, including the heart. He keeled right over, and the hornets departed, leaving a shocked and bewildered work detail behind him, and more than a few shouts for help.

Several of the giants worked together to lift the body of the fallen lavaborn and carry him into the city through some gates on the south side; it was good to know they were there. I heard quite an uproar after that—anguished voices raised in lamentation—and then a huge blossoming cloud of flame rose into the air.

“Huh. He must have been someone important,” I said to my companions.

“Murr.”

“Eep.”

The houndsmen went into the city, following everyone else, and for the moment we had the plains to ourselves. I told the horses they could get up.

“Let’s put a bit more distance between us and the giants,” I said to them all. “I doubt I’ll have enough hornets to do that again. Getting rid of the rest of the lavaborn is going to require some study. Preferably out of sight.”

With Murr’s excellent nose we identified where the limits of the houndsmen’s patrol route was in the trees and went a bit farther east to be safe. It didn’t matter if the hounds caught our scent the next time they came through; they couldn’t tell their riders about us, and I could tell them to go away if they got too close.

We found cover for the horses among the trees, just slightly uphill from the great plain, and I made a dry camp and the futile offer of a belly rub to Murr. Bedding down with a blanket over some piled pine needles, I stared at the rising moon and stretched out with my kenning every so often, counting the animals to get myself to sleep. It was less effective than I hoped. Worry about what to do kept me awake until the moon was directly overhead, when I became aware of some new creatures moving into my range. That gave me an idea that could either work or get me killed. Since all my other ideas would just get me killed, I called it good enough and sighed, finally able to relax and drift off to sleep.

“So who was that lavaborn?” Fintan asked his audience. “Let’s find out!” He threw down a sphere and took on the seeming of Gorin Mogen.

The five children that Sefir and I lost to the boil in Olenik died as giants should: by forces larger, stronger than ourselves. Volcanoes, lava dragons, the axe of a worthy foe, or the ever-increasing weight of time—these are noble ways for a giant’s fire to be extinguished. We should not die in a cloud of blasted insects!

And yet my son is dead. Seeing him carried in on the shoulders of the work detail, I recognized his beard, but the rest of his face was swollen, blackened and purpled with poison, mountains of fluids and pus bubbling underneath the skin.

My legacy—hope for the future—oh, I will burn them! Burn them all. And dump their ashes in the ocean to dwell in cold darkness forever.

Jerin was an artist and a warrior, kind until the very moment he had to be ruthless, already showing that he could be a better man than me. I could not be more proud of him or have loved him more. And now he is ruined.

This city, all the plotting and killing I’ve done to make it rise from the grasses—what does it matter now? It’s all worthless, all for naught, because my son is dead. By triple-damned insects.

Someone had to explain to me what they were because I had never heard of moss hornets before. We have large and poisonous insects in Hathrir, but none behave as these hornets did. No provocation was given, yet they attacked a single target as if they bore a personal grudge: Who has ever heard of such a thing? It wasn’t natural. Someone was responsible.

Kill them all.

Immediately before this attack two houndsmen lost control of their hounds. Or more accurately, the hounds did their very best to charge the work detail clearing trees outside the south gates, one of them throwing off his rider completely, and then they both stopped as abruptly as they began. To have two such freakish occurrences happen suggests that it was planned somehow. Both occurred within or at the edge of the woods. I don’t know how they did it, but I’m sure it’s the Fornish. They must be in the woods, high up the mountain, and they have some kind of pollen- or plant-based devilry to drive creatures into a murderous frenzy. And they plan to attack at dawn or soon after.

Unless it was La Mastik. She might have arranged this to free Olet Kanek from her obligations. She’d be able to return to Tharsif without placing Winthir Kanek in my debt. And she was on the detail with Jerin.

I grabbed my axe and stalked over to her. “La Mastik!” She whirled around at the rage in my tone, and her eyes grew wide as she saw my axe, saw me raise it, saw my intent. “You killed him!”

“What? No, Hearthfire, it wasn’t me!”

She took a step back and said something else; I don’t remember what, and it doesn’t matter. I was going to have that shaved head separated from her shoulders. An inchoate roar ripped loose from my throat as I leapt for her, the axe raised high, already anticipating how much better I’d feel once I heard the crunch of it take her miserable life. “Graaahh!”

Someone rammed into me from the left side, unseen, and caught me off balance; the impact knocked me sideways to the ground, my axe hand trapped under me. Whoever it was followed me down and planted their weight on top of me, guaranteeing only that they would die shortly before La Mastik did.

“Gorin! Gorin!” the person shouted, and it took me a moment to connect that voice to Sefir. It was Sefir who had knocked me down and pinned me, and her hair dangled in my face as she spoke into my ear in lower tones. “You need to stop. La Mastik did nothing.”

“She did! She killed him!” I did not bother to modulate my tone.

“No, Gorin. She had nothing to do with it.”

“That was no accident! Someone killed him!”

“You’re right about that. But it wasn’t La Mastik.”

“No—” I turned my eyes toward the priestess, who was still backing away, guilt written large on her face.

Sefir’s hand cupped my cheek and forced me to turn back to her. “Gorin. We will find out who did it and cut them down together.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Together, you hear me? But now we need to set him free in flame. We have to say goodbye and let him go.”

No!

The rage boiled over, and I exploded in fire. Sefir joined me, and a plume erupted from us both, billowing into the sky as we cried for our son, his lost hopes, all the glass and steel he would never shape, all the battles he would never fight. And when we exhausted ourselves, we were just a bit older, the ground was scorched black in a circle around us, and we were alone.

We did not ask La Mastik to perform the rites. We did not invite anyone to participate in his last fire. He was our son. Even when Halsten approached, we shook our heads at him and he understood. He kept everyone else away.

Together we took Jerin’s body to our hearth and laid him out on the ground. No longer lavaborn, he would ignite now, his spirit freed from the confines of flesh, and nothing would be left but ashes and his lava dragon hides. We stood over him, and Sefir took my hand in hers.

“He made me proud,” she said.

I nodded my agreement and added, “He would have been a stronger Hearthfire than either of us.”

“He would have ruled well.”

“His art would have been the envy of the world.”

“Yes. That magnificent hound and rider he crafted showed the blaze of his gift. Glass of smoke and flame and amber, with blue steel for the rider’s axe. I wish we still had it. We lost so much to Mount Thayil.”

That was true, but I thought we had lost still more. To insects. Burn them all.

“Is it time to tell him?” I asked.

Sefir squeezed my hand. “Yes.”

We addressed Jerin directly, in concert: “We love you, Jerin, and your memory will forever burn bright in our hearts. And now we set your spirit free and bid your flesh farewell.”

Together we set him alight and watched in silence as he burned away in the night, a process of hours. I know not what Sefir thought during that time, but all I could think of was the vengeance I would wreak on the Fornish. For Sefir was right: La Mastik could not have done this. I had been seized by madness when I attacked her; perhaps I am still in its grip.

I have not slept this night, and it has occurred to me that perhaps I am being alarmist, that the death of my son has banished my reason. But no: the naval watch reported moments ago that the Nentians are sending a significant army against us, marching through the night, and they’ll be here at dawn as well, coming from the north. I hope they will be able to see the bones of the first army they sent against me. The Nentians would not be coming unless their Fornish allies were waiting for them on the slopes of the Godsteeth. They no doubt see themselves as the hammer to the Fornish anvil.

I want to burn them all. And I will.

That may, in fact, be the smartest move. Before the Fornish can move against us, we should set the mountainside aflame and see if the light illuminates any greensleeves lurking in the brush. Let them choke to death on the smoke of their precious trees. Or let them run out of the forest and into the blade of my thirsty axe.

Volund is back from Tharsif, having successfully delivered timber to Hearthfire Kanek and secured enough food to last us for months. I will send him up the coast to harass the Nentians on the instant. Let them burn before they even get here.

It is time to armor up. Sefir and I will show them what it means to provoke a Hearthfire. If they want to end the Mogen line, we will make sure they all meet their end with us.

“If we turn back the clock just a wee bit while that was going on, we’ll find out what the Fornish were up to under the leadership of Nel Kit ben Sah.”

A successful garden blooms again and again, as the saying goes. Having confronted the Hathrim twice and survived, the sway decided that I’m to be Forn’s first Champion in three hundred years or so. Or rather, the First Tree decided. There was some argument at first about who was to lead a party against this city the Hathrim were calling Baghra Khek, with Rig Wel ben Lok of the Yellow Bats and Nef’s uncle, Vin Tai ben Dar, arguing strongly in my favor, among many others, but of course the Black Jaguars and the Blue Moths objected and were ready to die upon the hill of Anybody-But-Nel. After an hour of circular wrangling, another voice, rarely heard, spoke in the sway for the first time in living memory, though we all instantly knew to whom it belonged. Slow, rumbling, and strong, vibrating through my silverbark and in my skull, the First Tree said, “Nel Kit ben Sah. You are my Champion. Serve the Canopy well.”

The naysayers had to be silent after that. If they protested, they’d be contradicting the First Tree. And if I made the high-pitched noise I wanted to make or went up to Pak Sey ben Kor and spat “Ha!” in his face, I would not be remembered as a dignified Champion.

I consulted strategists, asked the western clans to send me one picked greensleeve each and a bunch of grassgliders and thornhands, and requested siege crews from the Invisible Owl Clan.

Pen was very upset that I did not include her on the team.

“Only one greensleeve from each clan is participating,” I explained, “and I’m the one from the White Gossamer Clan.”

“But I need this, Nel! What they did to my brother—”

“I know, Pen. If you want to see action against the Hathrim, I can station you in the south, where the timber pirates make regular raids. But you’re our clan’s only other greensleeve. We can’t risk both of us on something like this.” She huffed, and I continued. “Speaking of risk … just in case, I have something for you.” I took from my vest a small wooden box and put it in front of her.

“What’s this?”

“Every new greensleeve gets one from an elder of their clan. I’m not sure when I’ll see you again, and I didn’t want you to miss out. Open it but don’t touch what’s inside.”

Pen carefully pushed open the hinge and saw the bantil plant seed inside. “Is this …?”

“Yes. Keep it with you always in case you need it to defend the Canopy.” I planted a kiss on her forehead. “I’m proud of you, cousin. I wish I could stay, but I won’t have much rest until Gorin Mogen is defeated. After that I can get you properly trained. Perhaps we can spend some time in the south together.”

“I would like that,” she said.

And I would like it, too, since Nef was from there and I’d have the opportunity to see him more often. We had enjoyed only a single, interrupted outing together, slurping noodles in a swing-by soup cradle, laughing together and almost kissing. We were leaning toward each other, slowly, enjoying the anticipation, when a thornhand found me and said I was needed at the Second Tree for the sway where I was to be named Champion.

“To be continued,” I said. Now he was under my command again, part of my siege crew, and we would have to wait a bit longer. That was fine: everything has its season, and budding promise has as much beauty as full flower.

High up on the slopes of the Godsteeth days later, I was in charge of a small army of the blessed intended to soften up the Hathrim before the Nentians, who were marching from the north, arrived in overwhelming numbers. I had my doubts and insecurities. I heard echoes of the criticisms levied by the Black Jaguars and the Blue Moths that I was too young, too inexperienced, to be given such responsibility. I worried that I would lead our forces into disaster or that the Nentians would arrive too late or prove ineffective and the giants would be firmly rooted here forever. But being named Champion by the First Tree appeared to have given everyone else complete confidence in my abilities.

At sundown, grassglider scouts lower down the mountain reported that a huge fireball had risen from the city, generated by two giants, but they had no idea what it signified.

Patrols of houndsmen passed underneath the scouts, unaware of their presence. For all that we are unused to attacking the Hathrim outside our borders, they are just as unfamiliar with defending against us. They are so used to looking down on everything that it never occurs to them to look up into the trees for silent watchers.

Rig Wel ben Lok asked to lead the first siege crew downhill, and I gave him the go-ahead at midnight. Grassgliders positioned themselves around the Invisible Owls, who all had portable pieces of a light catapult that would launch payloads of choke gourds over the walls, and they moved together in utter silence thanks to their kenning. Pods of thornhands with a grassglider each also streamed downhill to chosen locations.

I nodded with satisfaction as each crew and pod quietly mobilized. This is what the Canopy teaches us: grow while they’re not looking, silent and strong, and then, just as your competitors become aware that you may pose a problem, you grow thorns and choke them out, and they will fall by necessity.

I caught Nef smiling at me for no reason, his eyes keen to drink in the light of mine. I gave him only the tiniest grin in response, conscious of being watched, before sending him down with a few other grassgliders to spread bantil seeds in front of the southern and eastern gates. He makes me laugh, and it is easy to imagine being happy with him. Nef and Nel. Oh, that would be almost impermissibly adorable.

Bah—I have no time to dream of something that cannot bear fruit now. My mind should be employed anticipating what surprises the Hathrim will throw at us. I am certain they will do something horrific.

“Tomorrow: the Battle of the Godsteeth!” Fintan said.

This time, at least I got to finish my toast. But my dream of a pleasant morning was crushed as soon as a huge mariner I recognized knocked on my door after breakfast. He was one of the hallway guards in the Wraith’s spooky facility.

“He needs to see you now,” the mariner said. The thought was as appetizing to me as a spoonful of squid shit.

“He told me I wouldn’t have to visit him again.” The mariner shrugged. “Right. I’ll be out in a moment.”

We entered the secret complex by a different route, a door hidden behind some stinking barrels of fish heads and entrails that nearly made me vomit up my delicious toast. Labyrinthine security procedures had to be endured once again before I was dumped into the care of Approval Smile. She had no approval for me this morning, just a crooked finger as a summons to follow her. Ushered into the same dark room with the same dark chair, I was surprised to find a different picture hanging on the wall for me to stare at. No wraith among the trees this time: it was a landscape portrait of Goddess Lake in Rael, with the city of Killae shining on the shore. On the table next to the chair, resting near the single candle, was a journal bound in red leather. A blue ribbon marked a certain page.

The hoarse, wheezing rumble of the Wraith’s voice said without greeting, “I’ll ask you to look at that journal in a moment. First, are you familiar with Gerstad Nara du Fessett?”

“You must know that I am.”

The Wraith attempted a modest clearing of his throat, but it only inspired an epic fit of mucus-filled coughing. He groaned once and apologized when it finally subsided. “You know that she was away on assignment and that now she’s returned.”

“Yes. A broken arm, I’ve heard, but otherwise all right.”

“More than all right. She’s pulled off one of the most stunning espionage missions ever. One that I will tell you about because I made you a promise. But you must understand first that this information can never leave the room. You most especially must share no hint of it with the bard even though you will be sorely tempted to do so.”

“The only promise you made me was to tell me if you learned anything about my wife.”

“That’s correct. I doubt this knowledge will do you any good. I fear it may ruin what little peace you have.”

“I have no peace to ruin.”

“That’s nonsense. After you read the marked page in that journal, you’ll look back at yesterday as a time of carefree bliss. Go ahead and read it if you truly wish to know what happened to your wife. Or you could leave it alone and be assured that I—that we—will respond.”

I didn’t hesitate. I picked up the journal and flipped to the marked page, which had a folded sheet of paper inserted there as well. A flowing script in the Raelech tongue slowed me down.

“Can you read Raelech?” the Wraith asked.

“A little. I’m not as fluent as I’d like to be.”

“There should be a Brynt translation in there for you.”

When I unfolded the paper, a neat hand in Brynt provided the date: Shalech, Bloodmoon 9, 3041. The autumn before the Bone Giant attacks. The autumn Sarena fell ill.

Master herbalist from Aelinmech believes that a new tincture, when added to drink, will finally work as a slow-acting poison that Brynt hygienists will be unable to counteract. The poison will collect in the liver and remain there, bonding to tissue, rather than flow free in the bloodstream. Liver failure and death will follow in a few months. I think that troublesome spy from Brynlön would make an ideal test subject.

Sarena had died at the end of Barebranch, her skin turning yellow from jaundice and no help for it as her liver failed. “Whose journal is this?” I asked, for I was already planning a trip to Rael.

“I will tell you, but there is nothing you can do about it.”

“Well, you can toss that notion into the abyss. Whoever this Raelech is, they’re going to die a horrible death.”

“Dervan, that is the personal journal of Clodagh of the Raelech Triune Council.”

“Clodagh? The militant councillor you said was dangerous now?”

“The same. Though that journal confirms that she has been dangerous all along, working in deep waters.”

“Does Fintan know that she ordered my wife’s poisoning?”

“I very much doubt it. But you can’t ask him about it or even allude to it, because then Rael would know that we’ve stolen it. And that would be an unhappy revelation for us right now seeing as they have an army already within our borders and marching this way.”

I shut my eyes, and my whole body clenched at the effort not to scream my frustration.

“The last time you looked like that,” the Wraith said, “you went to get your face smashed by Mynstad du Möcher. And it’s not healed yet.”

“That won’t happen this time. I was helpless to do anything then.”

“You still are. You can’t do anything right now except wait.”

“There has to be more we can do!”

“Clodagh is untouchable right now, but her term ends soon. Her service ended, she’ll be returning to her family in the country and be quite vulnerable. And this master herbalist she mentions in Aelinmech needs to be found, records destroyed if possible. We can hope that the formula for this poison has been kept secret.”

“Surely they’d figure we were responsible.”

“Accidents happen.”

I tasted bile in the back of my throat and felt polluted then, as if I’d tried to cleanse a foul cistern by shitting in it. His nonchalant talk of arranging murders placed him in the same moral cesspool as Clodagh—and if I pursued it on my own, I’d be joining them. Had Sarena been one who organized such accidents for others? Whether she had or not, working for the Wraith had gotten her killed. And if I pressed him, he’d say that the good she had done for the country in secret had been worth her early death. But it would never be worth it for me.

My body remained tense for another few moments of anger, but it relaxed when I decided I wouldn’t swim anywhere near these longarms if I could help it. Where would be my profit? I could never fill the emptiness of my wife’s absence with Clodagh’s death, and I’d come away from the experience forever stained and might not even feel any better afterward. Taking a deep breath and sinking back into the chair, I placed the journal back on the table.

“Thank you for keeping your promise,” I said, my voice flat. “Am I dismissed?”

“What? No, I need to make sure you understand how to approach the bard now. You cannot bring up the subject of Clodagh or her journal, and be very careful not to betray anything if he brings it up. I expect he will once their embassy hears about the theft, and that might be soon if they suspect us and sent a courier right away. He could try anything: claim that the journal is blue or that it was a series of papers or anything just to see if you contradict him. He may also bring up your wife’s death again to see how you react to that. Just be careful not to betray any knowledge of this journal to anyone. We are in no shape to start a war with the Earth Shapers.”

No, we weren’t. That made me wonder why he had taken the risk of sending Nara on such a mission. What if she’d been caught? How had she done it? Obviously she had used her blessing to move quickly up the river to Goddess Lake and thence to the capital and back again, but how had she infiltrated the Council chambers? I opened my mouth to ask but thought better of it. If I didn’t know, I couldn’t betray anything.

“I’ll be careful,” I said instead, and the Wraith was silent for a while as he considered—well, silent except for his wet, ragged breathing.

“Currents keep you safe,” he finally said, and I was free to return to the dubious care of Approval Smile. She led me to the exit by the docks again, and instead of going home or to the armory, I went down to the end of the quay where one could rent a remembrance craft and purchase a basket of white rose petals.

Raelechs like to erect monuments and stone edifices to mark where their people returned to the earth; Kaurians raise flags to blow in the wind; the Fornish plant something unusual when one of their own returns to the roots; the Hathrim have special candles to commemorate the dead; and the Nentians give everything to the sky. But we Brynts consign our dead to the sea, and so when we wish to remember them, we sail out a short way and spend some time alone bobbing on the waves, adding our salt tears to the salt ocean and spreading white petals on the surface, small fragile craft that bear the weight of our thoughts and memories for a while before sinking into the deep to join our loved ones.

I told Sarena that at least we knew who killed her now but I hoped she would forgive me if I left any vengeance to the Wraith.

“That’s not the way my river flows,” I said. “I suppose I’m not well suited to being a man of action anymore despite my occasional wishes to be. I’m too old, and my knee literally won’t stand for it. I know there are those who say if you are not strong, then you are merely a victim in waiting, but I think that’s the violent man’s way of justifying the evil he does. And it is profoundly simplistic, the sort of thing we heard from the fish heads who used to beat me and Rölly when we were young and living on the streets. I never wanted to believe in that or be the sort of person they were, and I don’t think Rölly did either. I think—and it is something I have thought about for a while—that there is a measure of heroism in providing safe harbor. Not actively saving anyone so much as providing the space for them to save themselves. It takes a lot of effort and patience and kindness and a resignation that while you may be thanked, you will never be celebrated for it. Though you did notice every so often. You used to tell me that our home centered you after your missions; it was dependable like the sunrise, the one true and solid thing in your life. For me, that was better than any medal I could have won in a war. Well, I can’t be your safe harbor anymore, but I’m trying to be one for another family now. It’s the only sort of heroism that suits me in my middle age. And it’ll do more good than seeking revenge.”

I scattered the rose petals onto the soft churning blue of the ocean, where they bobbed like curling white flags snapping in a distant sky. “I’m still here,” I said, “though I’ll join you soon enough, my love.”

During the row back into shore I determined to record what happened that morning and see if it survived the attentions of the Wraith. He no doubt had keys to my place and perused my manuscript regularly. Perhaps he would see, after tensions were not so high, that keeping the secret was moot. Clodagh had had my wife killed, and we had the proof. Let the Raelechs make a stink like a fishmonger if they wished. Sure, we stole their stuff. But the Earth Shapers could hardly point fingers at us and claim they stood on holy ground. Not anymore.

Fintan seemed especially cheerful when I met him for lunch and work, and I asked him why. “Numa’s here,” he said. So it was just as the Wraith had predicted: a courier would arrive to inform the Raelech diplomats that some valuable intelligence had been stolen.

“Oh? News from home?”

He shrugged. “I assume so. She’s at the embassy now and will meet with the pelenaut later, no doubt. I’ll get to see her tonight after the performance.”

“That’s excellent,” I said, and prepared myself for probing questions or statements about the contents of the journal tomorrow. I doubted Fintan was a party to Sarena’s murder or even knew that Clodagh was responsible. But he was oath-bound to support the person who murdered her and not, therefore, someone I could trust.

Fintan brought a full complement of musicians with him to the wall for the day’s song, which was largely instrumental and an old favorite at Brynt dances. It had only one verse, sung between long breaks of foot-stomping, furious music with a famous flute melody skirling above the rhythm, and the rule was that every time it was sung, the band had to play faster afterward and the dancers had to keep up. People would boast for years about any time they made it beyond six verses without collapsing from exhaustion, and musicians likewise bragged if they could play beyond eight. The words weren’t anything special, but by long-standing tradition, whoever sang it had to begin calmly and get progressively angrier with each repetition:

Well, the sun and the sea and stars up above

You can always take for given,

But you never know what will happen next

With the mariner men and women!

The Raelech bard’s band made it to nine repetitions along with two young dancing couples of extraordinary endurance, and then everybody needed a break before he began the day’s tales. He started with Hearthfire Gorin Mogen, fully armored, face half obscured by a helmet, and carrying both an axe and an enormous shield that must have been six feet tall.

The Fornish had their plans, no doubt, little scheming weeds they planted with the Nentians, which they hoped would grow and choke us out. The last thing I should do is wait for them to proceed. A warrior’s duty, above all, is to shit on the enemy’s plans.

Before dawn even grayed the sky, I lit an arrow and shot it over the walls to fall into the needle-covered ground of the mountainside. And then, standing on tiptoe to peer over the walls, I accelerated that fire and spread it along the ground in a line parallel to the wall, illuminating the front ranks of trees, which revealed a Fornish siege crew putting together the interlocking pieces of a catapult. I knew it! Burn them all.

I urged the flames up the mountain to surround the crew and then ignite them. Their screams tore into the night, and it was better than birdsong to my ears. Those who killed my son and would kill me and all my people deserved to die in pain.

There would be more of them, no doubt, unseen in the darkness, farther up the mountain. I spread the flames directly uphill from that crew and saw nothing, but they had to be out there. I needed to take them out before they could get set. It turned out that only Sefir and I were armored and ready to go, however. The city had gone to sleep while Sefir and I set Jerin’s spirit free. I roared the alarm: we were under attack and needed hounds in the hills, hunting at will.

Halsten got four out the southern gate in a hurry, but they ran into the same flesh-eating plant that the Fornish used on Jerin’s patrol. One made it through and up into the hills, but for the others it was a grim business. Three of them immediately showed signs of distress, their paws pierced by those barbed toothy things that grew inside them and ate their muscles and organs. One rider was thrown from his mount, and two held on; I thought perhaps they would have time to jump free, but the hounds spun and caved in on themselves, trying desperately to nip out the pain in their paws, and they flipped onto their sides. One rider’s leg was crushed and trapped by his hound going down, and once he hit the ground, I saw one of those horrible toothy blossoms take a mouthful of him as well, and he was helpless to free himself. The other rider leapt clear of his hound before it went down and shouted something at me, looking at the ground beneath his boots, but I couldn’t make out the words over the noise the hounds and the trapped rider were making. Soon he was high stepping as if his own feet were in pain; a barbed seed must have pierced through the sole of his lava dragon boots. He was a sparker, though, and before he crumpled to the ground, realizing that they were all dead anyway and he could help clear the way, he set the hounds and himself on fire as well as the land all around the gates. He was immune to the flames until he died, but the third rider, who had been thrown from his mount, was not. He howled as his hair and beard ignited, but strangely, he didn’t move otherwise. He must have broken his spine in the fall and become paralyzed.

I ground my teeth. The eastern gate no doubt would be seeded as well. Better to burn through this first gate since the fire was already started, make sure the plants were exterminated, and plow through with armored lavaborn to take on the Fornish.

I added to the flames in front of the southern gate to hasten the end both for the plants and for the houndsmen.

“I want all the lavaborn with me!” I shouted. “Armor and shields and axes! And Halsten, get the rest of your riders ready. Once we’re through, you follow behind with the houndsmen!”

I sought out Olet Kanek after that. She was with La Mastik and, seeing me coming, stepped in front of her. She was already armored and carried a sword, I saw, rather than an axe. Serviceable, even fine work, but not up to the Mogen standard.

“I’m not here to fight either of you,” I said, putting them at ease. “Now that Jerin is gone, Olet, your father will no doubt wish you to return to Tharsif. That being the case, I will not ask you to leave the walls with us. But the Fornish have catapults and may try to lob something over the walls. I hope you won’t mind burning whatever they send, using your blessing to protect people.”

They both stared at me, looking for deception, and I was content to bear it. Most of the lavaborn were still struggling into their armor anyway. Finally, Olet gave me the barest nod. “We will, Hearthfire.”

“My thanks.” I peered past her to lock eyes with La Mastik. “My apologies for earlier. My anger was … misdirected.”

She didn’t reply, only nodded acknowledgment, but that was good enough. I had a proper focus for my fire now. It was right outside the southern gate. The Fornish would be scrambling to do what damage they could before dawn even as we were scrambling to prevent them. We had traded a few casualties so far, but I looked forward to tipping the scales in our favor. The Fifth Kenning was meant to be burned by the First, and once we dealt with them, the Nentians would be routed just as before, and Baghra Khek would be secure.

Eschewing previous practice, Fintan did not dispel the seeming but put on another one, transforming directly into the greensleeve Nel Kit ben Sah.

I had to stifle a cry when I saw Rig Wel ben Lok and his siege crew combust, their screaming silhouettes outlined in fire. How had Gorin Mogen known we were creeping down the mountain? The grassgliders were making sure we moved in silence. Did this have anything to do with the huge fireball we’d seen rise into the sky near sunset after they’d stopped chopping down trees for the day? Something must have upset him, made him suspicious, eager to lash out.

I thought of recalling the attack, for the element of surprise was gone now and it simply wasn’t our season, but if I did that, the Nentians would have no support when they arrived. The Hathrim would huddle behind their walls and wait for them to get close enough to set aflame, and when it was over, they would be nearly impossible to uproot.

So I had to order everyone forward. Speed was our best chance of success now.

I sent Nef Tam ben Wat downhill to the other crews to relay my orders: run directly east, keeping to the trees and the darkness, and then go down to the southeast corner of the city where the clusters of thornhands waited. Mogen might be able to spy the lowest crews at first, but once out of his immediate line of sight, they’d disappear into the darkness and make no sound as they ran thanks to the grassgliders. I withdrew from the kenning of my own crew’s grassgliders so that I could be heard and called out for Vin Tai ben Dar, who was the greensleeve for the crew below mine. I doubted Mogen would hear me above the anguished cries of Rig Wel ben Lok’s crew.

“Would you accelerate the growth of the bantil plants at the south gate? He’s going to send out some houndsmen soon, and if we can clog that gate, it will buy us some time.”

“Aye, Champion,” he replied—a title I was still getting used to—and fell back with his crew so that he could send out his shoots safely and communicate with the bantil plants. I moved back into the sound bubble of my grassgliders, and together we picked up our pace until we were running at a full sprint, heading east on the mountain. The other crews below were doing the same thing, trying to keep themselves shrouded in darkness. Sometimes they tripped as a result, which I managed to do myself—a fine display of leadership. Any light we used from our glowing fungi bulbs could attract the Hearthfire’s attention or that of the spotters he no doubt would have watching soon, so we kept them covered.

Once we cleared the fire, we had to descend rapidly at dangerous speeds to get to the catapults in range. We wouldn’t be able to cover the entire city in spores anymore, but we could at least choke off the eastern gate and force the Hathrim to use only the southern gate if they wanted to get at us. And they would. The spores inside the eastern walls would prevent them from targeting us with fire while standing behind them; they’d have to come out to play, and that was the whole point. Send out your lavaborn where the thornhands can reach them.

Four houndsmen erupted out of the southern gates, and three of them were caught by the bantil seeds, taking them out without endangering us. But we were having our own troubles. Moving so quickly down the steep mountainside, one siege crew went down in a tumble of limbs and wood and suffered broken bones and in one case a broken neck. That meant there were only eight crews left, including Vin Tai ben Dar’s, who were still high up on the mountain. He would be moving now, though, his work at the gate with the bantil plants finished.

At the southern gate, nothing more had emerged but the flames had bloomed higher. They were scouring the area, cleansing it of bantil plants and seeds. When they felt safe enough, the lavaborn would walk right through that fire and attack our positions. Our crews needed to assemble, launch, and retreat if they could, leaving the Hathrim exposed to Nentian archers. But we would never have the luxury of that time: Mogen had chosen to deal with us first, before the Nentians could get involved. It was up to us to eliminate the lavaborn.

The black sky dissolved to cobalt in anticipation of the dawn, giving just enough light to allow our eyes to secure our footing and speed our descent. I could pick out silhouettes of crews below and the clusters of the thornhands. One crew had cleared the trees and was busy assembling its catapult just east of that southeastern corner of the Hathrim city. I dispatched Nef, who already was winded from his prior run, with orders to have them fire at the eastern gate first. Another team arrived and stationed itself a bit farther east but more forward, constructing its catapult to fire deeper into the city. Another and another, and soon I drew close enough to speak my orders to the thornhands without relays.

“We’re going to keep them from coming out at the east, so watch the south—two pods can drift that way now. Lavaborn will be coming out first, and we need them taken out. Then watch for the hounds once they snuff the fires at the gate, and remember there’s already one houndsman up in the trees.”

I urged my crew forward as the thornhands moved to take up positions behind the trunks of grand moss pines. The first siege crew to set up was ready to fire its first payload of spore gourds at the eastern gate as I passed it, and I noted that it was the crew of the greensleeve sent by the Black Jaguar Clan, Lan Del ben Huf, who was a vast improvement over Pak Sey ben Kor. I nodded at him in passing and watched the first volley wobble into the air, five gourds lobbed north and just slightly west. Four landed inside the eastern gate, and one fell outside of it, an excellent shot, and I heard the soft crack of the shells and the hiss of the escaping spores. The gates had actually begun to open but halted as the gourds fell, spores floating up and into the noses of the giants behind them, burning their sinuses and swelling their throats so that their airways would be choked. We were protected by the Fifth Kenning and had nothing to fear from the spores. I led my team out past all the others, way beyond the trees and fully on the eastern side of the city. We would aim for inside the northern wall, opposite the southern gate. The more giants we could push out into the open, the better for the Nentians.

Looking back as the crew began its assembly work, I saw all the remaining crews either launching or preparing to launch except for Vin Tai ben Dar’s lagging group, which was only now emerging from the trees and heading in our direction. He had done us a tremendous service by slowing down the giants at the southern gate, but as he grew closer, I could see that he had paid for it, pushing the bantil seeds so fast from such a distance. He looked much older and moved more slowly, crags on his face appearing like the rugged bark of the grand moss pines. He called a halt next to my crew, and I gave him a quick hug and murmured words of praise as he took heaving breaths. We broke apart as the shrieking song of thornhands split the dawn: Mogen’s lavaborn had poured through the fire of the southern gate, armor and axes aflame, and charged to the east to take out our catapults.

That was around the corner of the wall from me, though, so I dashed back toward the trees to see what new poison they were sprouting.

Fintan returned to himself and held out his hands, forestalling any applause.

“As this was happening, Gorin Mogen’s trusted firelord, Volund, had taken a glass boat north and spotted the dark mass of the Nentian army advancing on the Hathrim city in the early dawn. He was the only lavaborn among a crew mainly employed in rowing against the prevailing current. But a single firelord can do tremendous damage with the ability to spark, stoke, and spread flames. Squeezing a mixture of dung and hay around the tip of an arrow, he used his kenning to ignite it and shot it in a shallow arc to the grasses of the plains. Since most of the Nentians were already looking at the inferno combusting the flanks of the Godsteeth, few of them saw the single flicker off to the west, and when it disappeared into the grasses, there was no need to comment or raise the alarm. But Volund had only begun his work. Dropping his bow to clatter in the bottom of the boat, he stretched out with his kenning and pushed those flames through the grasses toward the Nentian army, and once they reached the westernmost flank of the forces, he spread them to the north and south to illuminate them, relieving the dim silhouettes of early morning. Shouts of alarm spread among the ranks, and near the front, where the mounted men were bunched, the horses shied and whinnied, and Volund grinned. The flames gave him a glimpse of a Nentian armored in bright, beautiful colors, no doubt their leader, and Volund directed the flames to spread in his direction, and once they arrived under the horse carrying him, he pushed hard and fanned those flames to engulf both horse and rider. He could hear their screams carry across the plains and the water, and he smiled, taking a moment to rest. The effort had drained him, and the Nentian forces churned and reared and shouted in panic. The fire was still there, waiting to be directed or simply burn on its own, and he could afford a short span of time to marshal his strength for another push.

“Except he discovered a short six breaths later that he was profoundly mistaken. The mass of men behind the cavalry rippled, a wave of shadow passed among them, and then the sky darkened from a deep blue to black off to the east. A massive light-sucking flight of arrows blocked out the nascent sunrise, and Volund’s mouth dropped open as he recognized his mistake. Whoever he had killed, it wasn’t the only person capable of assessing the situation and giving quick, efficient orders. There was no evasive maneuver they could execute, no shields they could raise above their heads. He spoke a quick prayer to Thurik, and then the shower of arrows rained upon him and his crew, cutting them down and leaving their lifeless boat at the mercy of the western ocean tides.

“Volund’s mistake was this: the immolated Nentian had not been the King’s Tactician Diyoghu Hennedigha but rather Junior Tactician Senesh—younger brother of Viceroy Bhamet Senesh—dressed purposely in the brightest regalia possible as a decoy. It was a position of honor precisely because of its danger. And so the Nentians marched on toward the Godsteeth and Baghra Khek.”

Fintan threw down a seeming sphere and changed back into Gorin Mogen, this time dressed for battle, axe and armor aflame and teeth clenched in a savage grin.

In my youth, before I became a Hearthfire, I used to be a timber pirate until I rose to captain my own ship and then take over Harthrad from my sire. We had to deal with thornhands as a matter of course when we raided the Fornish coast, and I had forgotten how much I enjoyed thwarting them. They are freakish creatures who become instruments of death at the sacrifice of their own lives. But they are not unstoppable. No Fornish hardwood can penetrate Mogen steel.

Sefir and I led a cluster of lavaborn, six-foot-high shields carried purposely on our right sides as an impenetrable barrier, the wall of the city on our left as we jogged east to take out the catapults that were launching spores into the city. We heard the thornhands before we saw them. They chose their targets and quite literally planted themselves, the bones of their legs and feet cracking and transforming into strong taproots plunging into the earth, and from those roots they drew strength to trigger the rest of their violent metamorphosis, a shuddering, excruciating, and fatal process of converting flesh and blood to wood and sap and flame-resistant resin. As they died, the thornhands sent up a spine-shivering wail both from their throats and from the abrupt growth of their arms from muscled sinews into spined spears that shot out from a melting body to seek out a target, find soft flesh to pierce, invade, and sprout new thorns until something vital was shredded. Four from the first pod attacked our formation, lethal branches of thorns penetrating our wreath of flame, searching for weakness, but only one slipped through shields and axes and armor to pull down a giant.

Sefir and I were both targeted, but I batted away one thorned spear with my axe and we deflected the others with our shields. The formation shifted and closed up to take the place of the one fallen giant, and we advanced in lockstep, because there is a silken unconscious flow to battle at times, when there is nothing but blood to let and blood to lose and all senses are tuned to survival rather than conversation. The wit departs, and instinct takes over. And it was my instinct to kill all the Fornish I saw for killing my son.

I sparked the arm of the nearest catapult, and once it kindled, I directed fingers of flame to lance out and ignite the hair of all the crew. I made sure to spread an extra portion to the greensleeve, igniting his silverbark arms as well as his hair, and as he and his crew cried out in pain and horror, I knew that we would prevail so long as we could outlast the thornhands.

There is no preventing their transformation; one cannot preemptively kill them before they take their shot, because even while on fire, they have enough time to strike back before they die. All one can do, therefore, is survive their attacks, and flame-resistant is not the same as flameproof.

Searching for a new target, my eyes slipped past the next couple of catapults to a diminutive blond woman, a greensleeve, staring at me with her fists clenched. A dark-haired man who wasn’t a greensleeve but might have some other kenning demanded her attention and pointed to something on the eastern side of the city, out of my sight around the corner of the wall. She nodded at him and jogged that way, which made me curious. What were the Fornish up to around the corner, and who was this man to give her orders? I thought that greensleeves ran things among the Fornish in the field. Perhaps she was the leader after all and he had merely delivered a message. The man remained behind, staring at me, but I let my attention refocus on the catapults; though he was no threat, they were.

I set the next crew on fire as Sefir barked a warning that another thornhand attack was incoming. We were ready and deflected them all this time, the thorns unable to penetrate our shields and then unable to quest beyond or around them as our protective flames blackened them to char.

My awareness of fire registered the conscious snuffing of the flames behind us at the southern gate. Halsten and the houndsmen were ready to ride, and I heard them yip in excitement as he gave the order. We were not the only ones who heard that: movement in the trees revealed the next pod of thornhands, who were moving to intercept and let us pass by—not a bad decision strategically. The hounds would be more vulnerable, with significant gaps in their armor and no shields or axes. But the houndsman who had escaped in the first sally and disappeared uphill returned, plowing into the pod, with the hound snapping up a thornhand in its jaws; the rider’s long poleaxe cut two more in half with a single sweep of steel and sprayed blood, leaving only one who had ducked with an opportunity to exact revenge. She screamed as the change shook her, and her hands and arms first lengthened and then shot into the backs of both the hound and the rider, in the hound’s case entering directly underneath the tail. They convulsed but kept going because of their momentum as the thorns grew and spread inside them, and it was only a bare second longer until they passed the limit of the thornhand’s accelerated growth. Their immense combined mass pulled her roots out of the ground, but the thorns also pulled out of the hound and rider, yanking steaming entrails with them into the dawn and toppling them both; all three died together.

It was a grisly and distracting reminder of what a thornhand can do if one is not vigilant. And two full pods chose that moment to attack us simultaneously—eight suicidal tree fanatics willing to die to take just one of us down because we might need firewood someday. Except that this time more than one of us fell. There were so many thorned spears coming at once, creaking and popping the way wood does, that it was overwhelming. Sefir and I were scratched, and deeply, but nothing hooked and held on because we crouched behind our shields, took the impact of the spears, swept the edges with our axes, and flared up until the thorns lost their animation. Sefir glanced at me, dressed in flame and steel, blood sheeting down one cheek, a small grin on her face.

“Burn them all,” I said.

“For Jerin,” she replied, “and for us. For our people.”

She will always be my love.

We rose together, our formation tightened behind us again, and we continued east along the southern wall. Sefir and I sparked the next catapult and its crew together just as it launched, which was delightful overkill. The music of their screams drowned for a moment a building thunder in the ground. We felt it before we heard it, and we heard it before we saw it. Out past the dark-haired Fornish man who’d sent the blond greensleeve out of sight, tall shapes loomed above the grasses, gray-skinned things difficult to see in the gray twilight. They were singular in that they appeared to be my height—twelve feet, easily. And they were coming straight at us.

Massive beasts, wicked horns and tapered snouts, moving at speed, and we had no cover—

“Sefir, run! We must make the corner!” I said, and lengthened my stride. The Fornish man turned around, saw them coming—saw the kherns coming; that’s what they were called—and scrambled out of sight the same way the greensleeve had gone. “Hug the wall!” I said, and shuffled a few strides to the left, thinking that perhaps the kherns would pass by us. But they altered course to match us—this was no natural stampede! It was a calculated attack, just like the attack on Jerin. The Fornish must have found the Sixth Kenning and gained control over animals—confirmed, almost as I thought it, by Halsten’s swearing behind me. I looked over my shoulder and saw that the houndsmen, who had been charging right behind us, were now fighting their hounds as they turned around and ran directly west, toward the ocean.

No matter. There was another way to control animals. “Burn them, Sefir!” I said, and we sent gouts of flame toward the vanguard, lighting up the fine hairs on their heads and setting their skin to bubbling. They bellowed and keened but kept coming, shaking the ground as they churned through the remnants of the burned catapults, smashing them to splinters, grinding the bodies of the Fornish crews into paste. I drew a line of fire in the grass ahead, and Sefir added hers to it until it rose to our height, a wall of flame to dissuade the kherns from continuing. But they plowed through it, snuffed it as they came, and we had not yet reached the corner.

Panic gripped me as I realized that I could not stop them after all, and I did not know if I could make the corner. Gorge rose in my throat at the thought of a collision. I doubted I’d survive it, and even if I did, there were more of them behind the leaders; if I went down, I’d be trampled by the boil, and even my armor might not protect me against such weight and force. A better death than moss hornets, to be sure, but I did not want it to be mine. “Come on!” I roared to Sefir, and sped up without a care for protecting myself against thornhands, having no other choice. If I played it cautious now, I would be bowled over and churned into the earth.

Thunder and fire, horns and steel, sprinting to outrun a crushing death: I had never felt so alive. I saw the small black eyes of the kherns focused on me and felt their desire to ram their horns through my guts. The ground shook, my lungs heaved, and my legs strained, the corner only a couple of lengths away, the leading fire-mad khern a couple of lengths beyond that.

He wanted the collision because he knew he would win, and I wanted desperately to deny him.

“Gorin!” Sefir cried, fear in her voice. “We won’t make it!”

I couldn’t look around, couldn’t lose an inch of momentum. “We will! Just … jump!”

My muscles convulsed as I reached the corner and leapt out of the path of the oncoming khern, to my left and its right, its bellow deafening me as it realized it was going to miss. One of the horns knocked against the wall with a hollow thunk, and then there was the crash, scrape, and shudder of flesh and bone against stone and steel. When I hit the ground, I kept rolling out of the path in case any of the kherns following chose to pursue me, but they kept going straight on. By the time I stopped and rose to one knee, they were past. There were pods of thornhands emerging from their cover in the foothills and following the boil, presumably to make sure the houndsmen were contained. They ignored me, which I thought strange: Weren’t the lavaborn their primary concern? There were four more catapults here, unprotected except by their greensleeves, and they were highly flammable.

“Sefir!” I called. “They’re past. Where are you?”

No answer. I didn’t see her either. I clambered to my feet to get a better view, since she was probably lying prone in the grass. But I didn’t see her at all. “Sefir?” She had been right next to me, perhaps a step behind on my right shoulder. She should have made it. “No, no …”

Returning to the corner, I peered around it and beheld ruin. The leading khern we had set on fire was sprawled on the ground, gouges in the wall and in the earth, its corpse smoking, its end hastened by Sefir’s axe in its skull. The rest of the boil had trampled through and was still moving to the ocean, thornhands jogging behind them. My lavaborn littered the ground in their wake, including Sefir. She was not merely unconscious—she was broken, her bones caved in, vital organs punctured by crushed ribs, the once beautiful face inside the helmet a shapeless pulp, a smashed fruit.

My love—all I had left to live for—was a bloody ruin.

“Sefir … I am so sorry.” Had anyone attacked me then, I would not have fought. Tears welled, spilled into my beard. “I was wrong to bring us here.” I set her body aflame to set her free of the flesh. “I won’t be far behind.” I set all the lavaborn alight, apologizing to them as well, and realized that was why the thornhands had written me off. Only I had escaped the boil of kherns, and weighed against a pack of houndsmen, how much damage could one giant do?

I would show them.