《Avengard: The Fall of Senvia》


 Prologue

    How would you react, if an entire city vanished before you?


    If your eyes, stinging from sweat, flickered back to a city of stone, near a million people still living inside, only to see it vanish under the evening sun? Only a few steps away, what was once an outer wall, now replaced by a jagged cliff. The ocean water, which had been kept away by the city, now crashing down, rushing in to fill the void. The cold, salty wind, blowing away tears and sweat and blood from your eyes, and the water rushing in all too quickly, slamming itself against cliffs that hadn''t been there before. What would you do, if the very ground you had been running on just a few seconds before, was simply gone, and now there was nothing but the sea and salted air?


    What would you do, if you were alone?


    Would you panic, your lungs collapsing into themselves, and struggling to find a moment to breathe? Would you gasp, astonished, and sketch the scene in your mind to make sure you''d never forget a moment? Or would you scream, terrified, into the unknown?


    I did not scream, or gasp, or struggle to breathe. I had no spirit from which to scream, the shock in my blood kept my fear at bay, and my lungs had already been struggling from my race from the city.


    Instead, I turned on my heels and ran. I ran until my legs gave way beneath me into forest moss floors. I ran until my heartbeat screamed out against my ribcage, threatening to fail unless I slowed. I ran until my body reminded me so violently of the culmination and weight of every moment of my twenty five years in this life pressing against every corner of my being. I wanted to collapse there and then, before I''d even taken a step. I needed to breathe. I needed a moment of peace that only death could have given me.


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    And yet, I ran.


    I ran until I could no longer live with my failures, and I collapsed in front of an inn at the crossroads. The dirt and sweat-plastered hair in my mouth tasted like fresh cherries being tossed into my mouth from across the room by Lyana. That might have just been the exhaustion. It was so sweet, so perfect. And it wasn''t real.


    Lyana was gone. I would never taste those cherries again. Her laugh, her smile, her words, were gone for good.


    Senvia, the capital of the empire, was gone.


    My entire life, replaced by the sea.


    That''s the moment I broke.


    I had been Xera of the Royal Guard. Wielder of the rock crystal ring, Stoneguard, and third advisor to Her Grace, Empress Lyana. After her death, I had been the second advisor to His Grace, Emperor Alaric.


    After, I was just a woman standing there, watching the sea crash against the crumbling cliffs where the city of Senvia used to be. It was not my twice failure, not the death of the second emperor under my protection in the same week, not the screams of my comrades as they were slaughtered, not even the exhaustion itself.


    No. What broke me was the sea. The cold shock of it, the spray of saltwater on my face, the autumn air catching in my throat when the rushing winds came with the smell of kelp and driftwood. That feeling of salt on my skin persisted, even as I collapsed leagues away from the ocean.


    I don''t know how long I stayed out there, in the dirt in front of the nameless inn at the crossroads. Hours, I think. At most, it would have been overnight. Someone must have seen me in fair short time. I was a dark skinned woman in fine armour and pouring sweat, face down and unconscious in the dirt. I was too suspicious-looking to not be noticed. Even had they not seen the Kindred in me, the raw power coursing through the very fabric that made up who I was, I still stood out too much even among knights and warriors.


    But nobody touched me until I woke.

 Chapter 1 — Crossroads

    Winter came with the new year, and I celebrated my birth with the turn of the calendar into the year 322, as all Kindred did. Individual birthdays were for people who had surnames, families, and legacies.


    My legacy was supposed to be forged from blood.


    Lucian, the owner of that inn at the crossroads, hired me, probably thinking I''d either scare away all the bad customers or draw in some of the richer ones. I wasn''t exactly a small, timid, nondescript woman. He''d had the perfect candidate for a bouncer delivered right to his door.


    He gripped my arm like a man might grip a beam of wood to feel its density. "The muscle on you," he had uttered in a hoarse voice. At that point, my being Kindred was just a bonus.


    "There''s a war coming," he said, heaving an axe down on a log. "Sure, things are holding together a bit for now, but it''s all going to collapse. Merity Point will turn on Durn. Ibolan will try to annex Espara. All the provinces will be at each others'' throats."


    I blinked. It had only been a week at the time since Senvia had vanished. I couldn''t imagine the total collapse of an empire that spanned most of the continent. I took the log from him, set it down, and split the wood in half with my bare hands.


    "And a war means thirsty soldiers," he continued, a hint of alarm in his voice. "I''ll need help in the tavern, just across the road."


    He was an extremely short fellow, and too often got pushed around for it.


    It didn''t help that the inn made him look poor. It was centuries old, and it looked the part. He could have renovated it, I''m sure, at least sanded and revarnished the wood, but I know he liked the roughshod look of the place.


    They weren''t bad enough to cause splinters, and they were sturdy, but the stairs creaked like something haunted. Over the main entryway was a burnished diamond pattern that reminded me in a way of the triangle of Pathoticism. The doors looked rough, but held against all sorts of weather and abuse. The hardwood flooring was well-used, enough so that the shoes of countless travellers had smoothened it far past the original grain, and there were odd dips where people walked most often.


    It was, in a very real sense, the epitome of the phrase, "they don''t make them like they used to."


    Still, it was a rest stop. We were the inn at the crossroads that just happened to be near where Senvia once stood. Nobody gave us any merit for the age of the place. There were plenty of old things about, and we had all manner of customers.


    Normal folk, as Lucian liked to call the underserved of society, used us as a place to sleep on their travels. There weren''t that many of them though. Most of the poor didn''t have the luxury of frequent travel unless they had a specific skill that made them more desirable to employers, or unless Senvia decided to relocate them for military reasons.


    Merchants were our most frequent customers, and we had stables and a staging area designed for them. One of my duties was to clear it of weeds and saplings.


    The nobility were frequent too, and they often looked at me, sometimes recognising me for what I was, but never who. They had the training to see that something was off, though they often reasoned that there was no way a Kindred would be working in a place like this, not with a dozen wars breaking out across the continent.


    At the very least, they figured me a lost soldier. They weren''t far off.


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    I recognised so many of them from my time in the royal court, and it gave me a chuckle that they didn''t recognise me in turn. Lewyn Moss, not nobility, but a very renowned merchant of spice. Lord Iblis and the Lady Lasset, the twins of Delheim. Numeria of the Kor, the last family of goldsmiths outside of Merity Point.


    Many of them approached me, unsure where they had seen me before. I was distinctive enough. I was taller than many men, and my arms were thicker too. Even my skin tone stood out as unique. Most of the darker folk were far northeast, far northwest, far south, or buried deep in the forests of Durn.


    But none of them ever bothered with Lucian. He was short, barely tanned despite his time in the sun, and had greying hair that looked unkempt no matter how much he tended to it. It was thinning, so he refused to cut it, but the wind flicked it around his face whenever he was outside. Height aside, that hair was the most distinctive thing about him, and it hardly stood out. He fit in perfectly in this part of the empire.


    Merchants, if they were not bringing him his stock, would approach me for their room key and ignore him entirely.


    The ones who did notice him were often more trouble than not.


    In turn, I placed myself in front of them and called them what they were. Children. It was one thing to mock a man for his height or hair. It was entirely another to be then faced with a woman who towered over them.


    We had a system, he and I, and at his glance, I''d set them straight.


    Soldiers looked over him, fixing their eyes on Ana.


    "Sky''s bleeding," one of them said, a slight drunken slur decorating his voice. "Come and watch it with us."


    Another of the soldiers elbowed him. "Romantics," he scoffed. "Come on, let me show you how a real man''ll treat you!"


    She gave them a smile and handed them their drinks before turning away.


    The smile should have been a mistake. For anyone else, it would have been a mistake. But she played them with an evasive, taunting grace.


    "Oh, come on, sweet thing!" they shouted, "I''ll take real good care of you! Let me hold ya, and you can walk my Path with me."


    "I have my own," she said in a too-cheery tone.


    "What do they even pay you for? Come keep us company!"


    Three soldiers a table away gave a mocking howl. I shifted my foot, ready to step in. It was instinctive. There was rarely a need.


    "Words," she said. Then, to the confused looks they shot at her, "I get paid for words." The turn she gave them was seductive, and left her head trailing behind her body to show off her long, gorgeous curly blonde hair as it dangled through the air.


    One of the other soldiers piped up. "Hear that, Jay? She doesn''t want to sleep with you, she just wants to tease ya!"


    "Maybe I want a little more than teasing," he said. "Maybe I want to haul you up there myself, have my way with you. And that other one, over there." He pointed at me. "She looks like she could throw some colours around."


    I slid my foot out. My hand tightened, and I fingered my rock crystal ring.


    No, that was too much. Overkill, was the word some used. There were... at most, a dozen of them. I could do that with one hand.


    And Ana could wrap them around her finger if she wanted to. Not with her fists, but with those sweet words she claimed to be hired for. If sirens were real, she could have been one.


    These sorts were by far our most common customers, and Ana flourished whenever they came by. She didn''t care about the tips they slipped into her pouches or the money they brought to the inn, only the attention they gave her. She wasn''t my type, but I understood them more than any of them realised.


    And she knew it. That knowledge was on full display in the look she shot me after turning away from the soldiers. Not quite a wink, and not quite a smile, but a half smirk and squinched eyes.


    Oh, she knew.


    It was a dangerous game to play for both of us. I returned her looks with a small, silent chuckle and a laugh.


    I couldn''t do the same things with my hair as she did. I kept it shorter, and the curls and frizz forced all of my black hair to stay up and out of the way. Nothing was left to dangle, except the occasional annoying hair, and I lacked the face and body for it anyway. My eyes were unpleasant to look at, at least as I saw in the mirror. They were blue, but the worst kind of murky blue, dark and almost hazel. My neck was too long, and my torso was too short.


    I stood out as much as she did, but in a very different way. She was the taunting finger, luring men to a bed she would never occupy, and I was a sore thumb.


    But I belonged, just as the wanderers did.


    Each of them, the soldiers and the rich, the merchants and the vagabonds, they had their place at the inn at the crossroads. We welcomed them, and their coin. And that''s why they came, and continued to drink at the tavern even when Ana had a day off.


    We were a pit stop along the road to wherever they were all going.

 Chapter 2 — Offers from Strangers

    On the first day of spring, I managed to pour only fourteen pints before the first stranger approached me. The sort of stranger who could recognise what I was. He would not be the last. He spoke with a mottled voice, and he carried a sealed letter in his left hand, which he lay on the counter for me.


    "One hundred avens," he said. "As an advance."


    I smiled, and turned to my fifteenth customer. He scurried around the bar, following me.


    "Look at you! I''d bet a hundred avens you could take on a direwolf with your bare hands. Fight for the former province of Heldren," he said. "A thousand per season, and help the old government be restored, before Senvia''s interference. You will not see a better offer!"


    I smiled again, with less enthusiasm this time, and turned to my sixteenth.


    The man would not be broken by a smile. None of them ever were. Nor would he be satisfied with a simple answer. He would wait, and wait, and wait. Eventually, I might pour him a pint, and mix in something stronger. He would get drunk quicker than expected, and finally leave. A lack of patience was what wore them out, never my answers or lack of them.


    "You would be a wealthy woman if you did," he said. "By the twin gods, one of the finest specimens I have ever seen! A true Kindred, if any of them are! Fight for me! Fight for Heldren!"


    I poured him a drink. The shittiest whiskey we had. Even if I had wanted to fight, a thousand avens a season was a terrible offer for someone like me, even without including the advance. Not that he would have ever known that, no more than he could tell the quality of his drink. It was reasonable for most Kindred. Of course, he had no idea who I was.


    I barely even knew that myself anymore.


    Plus, he was no Stonekeeper, the demonym for the citizens of Heldren. The province had no gods. Worshipping any deity was still illegal there. Atheists were allowed, and as far as legal religions went, Pathoticism was... encouraged, to say the least. But the open worship of Duun and Laog would have him imprisoned and eventually exiled.


    This man was from Lysina. They were the only ones left who prayed to the twins. I had met some of the Lys before, when I was very young. A few of their nobles had come to court to appease Empress Lyana with their silks and a siqlatin sundress. It was a custom among neighbouring nations, to deter the threat of immediate invasion. It was a practice adopted even by Cinia and Eaden Helm, the very few neighbours unafraid of any attempted invasion. Senvia would never have dared.


    But Lysina was also under no threat, for entirely different reasons. They were across the world, on the other side of the Inner Sea. The easiest way to get there was to sail across it, and that sea was suicide. To them, the silks were not a deterrent. They were a gift. That made it all the more special to me, back then. I was a gift too, from another part of the world, given at the age of six by the lord who had trained me, to foster into Lyana''s care and be her shield.


    I don''t know who gave me. She never told me, and even now, I don''t remember. I don''t really care.


    I was an expensive gift. More expensive than those silks. I was Kindred.


    It was the same reason these strangers continued to pursue me.


    I did not ask him why a Lys was scouting for Heldren. It would be nightfall before I strengthened his drink to make him leave, and further conversation risked inviting him to drink less and stay longer. The bar at the inn always opened too early and closed too late. There were many drinkers, these days. Since Senvia''s fall, and since the Empire crumbled. Some revelled in the chaos. Others just wanted to forget.


    Fortunately, he did not stay. Once the day dimmed, he gave his promise to return tomorrow, took back his sealed envelope, and left.


    He did not return.


    "Are you alright to close tonight?" asked Lucian.


    "Yes," I said.


    On the second day of spring, I poured nine drinks before a new stranger came.


    "One hundred fifty avens, as an advance! Come fight for Durn, and you will be rich beyond your dreams. Seven hundred avens for a season."


    I smiled, and poured her a drink. She was not from Durn either. She didn''t have the right look about her. It was curious ¡ª Durn was a military stronghold. It had joined the empire for trade, out of its own free will. The three prior attempted annexations had failed.


    I tried not to listen to the news and gossip, and speculations like that came to my mind without any intentions for it. The collapse of the empire was not something I wanted to think about.


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    Ana came by, offering a fabulous distraction. This stranger was not Kindred herself, only a human trained in recognising us. Still, she clearly worked out.


    "My, what big arms you have," said Ana, and I nearly choked on my own tongue in reflex. It was such a terrible, awful line, but just like all her others, it somehow worked. The stranger turned to Ana and immediately locked eyes with her in a suddenly intense conversation long enough for me to get away.


    The stranger was not attracted to women, but it didn''t matter. Ana drew her eye all the same, and with it, her unwitting platonic interest.


    Hours later, the day dimmed, and she finally shook Ana off and gave her promise to return tomorrow. She picked up her sealed envelope and left, somewhat stumbling through the doors.


    She did not return.


    "Can you close tonight?"


    At my answer, Lucian walked off into the night, leaving me to my duty.


    This was my life now. I admit, I did not hate it. Six months had passed since my failures. It had given me time to reflect and resign myself to what had happened.


    Mostly, it gave me time to breathe. Every day now, at least twice, my heart would race, and I would lean over the bar to catch myself. A heavy breath, one my lungs had to work to take in. Two Emperors dead. Lyana was my responsibility. Alaric was my fault. It took time to breathe, after my body reminded me of my sins.


    "Seventy-five avens, as an advance! Two thousand avens per season, should you survive! Dengal needs you for its defence! Come, fight alongside the great guild, Warriors of Ashbane!"


    And Lucian left me to close.


    The strangers were becoming more frequent. For the first month, I saw only one in a week. For the second, they came twice, or even three times. Now they were coming daily, pouring in with their offers in an attempt to convince me. They didn''t know who I was, and they wouldn''t have cared. I was Kindred. I was faster, stronger, and trained to kill from the moment I could walk.


    But my hands ached now. They had ached since Senvia. Not in the way you might expect, with blisters and cramps, but a dull, longing ache. I found myself gripping the countertops with a little too much force, and there was now a subtle wave all along the length of the single beam of wood that made up the main section, carved out by my fingers. I needed something to hold, but whenever I bent to pick up an axe to split logs for the fire in the inn, the ache only became worse. It was a weariness about them, and one I could not escape.


    This is why I stayed at the tavern. The cups. The pints. The bottles. Gripping them eased the ache. Sometimes, I still needed to remind myself that I wasn''t holding a hammer, or a spear, or a sword. I did keep them, though. I slept in one of the staff rooms in the attic of the inn, and I had a sword stashed over my bed, a spear beneath it, and a dagger by the door. Of course, my crystal ring never left my finger. I didn''t need it, of course. Against almost anyone, my hands were enough. I was Kindred. But if I needed to, in an instant, I could be brandishing that ring as a fully-formed and transformed weapon, destroying anyone who stood in front of me.


    I almost had, nearly a month into my self-imposed exile. A drunken man had become a little too rough with Lucian, tossing him around and laughing about his height. I picked him up with one hand and shoved him into a wall. His eyes immediately went wide at the shock of a woman flinging him around with such ease, and I saw the moment he realised what I was.


    "Let go of me, and I''ll see you''re rewarded."


    That was when I nearly crushed his skull in with my free hand.


    He hadn''t even been armed. It was an instinct I had worked since to hold back; I was too ready to fight, too ready to kill, even someone who had no part in any war.


    Every day now, I reminded myself of my truth. There were no Kindred here anymore. They were all off to war. They. I did not count myself among them. I refused to. This was my truth. Whether I was or not, I didn''t care. My truth left me out of it, left me alone in that tavern, in that inn at the crossroads. So I stuck to it, however false it may have been.


    The third day of spring, I served only three drinks before the next stranger came. He promised me gold and jewels, and a grand title. No avens though. It was almost funny, that he promised more than most others in worth, but not a single coin of actual currency. He brandished a string of pearls like it was nothing, but the only coin he mentioned was what he used to pay for his bed for the night after I refused him. Word of my presence here had long since spread, I knew. An unclaimed Kindred. Someone still available to hire. Clearly, the offers made hadn''t even topped my wage at an unnamed inn. Surely if they only offered me enough to supplant it, I would accept. How much money could this inn possibly be making?


    On the fourth day of spring, there was no offer. Six months, and days that went by without a pile of gold on the table, or a substitute for it, had become rare. It was enough to annoy Lucian after the first few weeks of my stay. Well, "annoy" wasn''t quite the right word. He wasn''t annoyed at the offers. I attracted customers. He was annoyed by the brandishing of sacks of avens. Those brought attention and nasty looks. The sort of people who would start a fight over that gold, didn''t quite have it in themselves to realise that it wasn''t the establishment''s money. All they saw was the leather pouch.


    It didn''t really matter. They picked a fight, I stepped in, and they had a good nap.


    Kindred were rare enough in these parts, but we did see the occasional one. Street smarts, humans called it. Knowing when to not do something stupid. We had that drilled into our minds from an early age ¡ª you wouldn''t find many Kindred stooping to petty thievery or drunken brawls. Oh sure, I''d known a few who enjoyed a good old fashioned fight down at the pub, a cracked rib or two, maybe a broken jaw, but those were all under well controlled circumstances. Humans were never too close, and each pub in Eaden Helm had a healer.


    That was the city of Kinded. Eaden Helm. I''d only been twice in my life, though Lyana had promised to take me again this year, so we could see the arena.


    Lyana. Always, my thoughts wandered back to Lyana. It didn''t matter if I was listening to festival music, because I''d think back to the festivals in Senvia, and how Lyana and I would disguise ourselves as street urchins just to attend them and swipe a few salt crackers. It didn''t matter if I was tending to customers, serving them drinks in the tavern and seeing them to their rooms upstairs in the inn, because that would just remind me of the many times I had escorted Lyana on her travels, and shared an anonymous drink with her in places just like this. I couldn''t even chop the wood out back without thinking about how, if she''d been there, she''d have been sitting on that stump, just eating an apple and watching me with a grin.


    It was a trap, thinking about it. Anything at all. It was always the same.


    Everything led back to her.

 Chapter 3 — The Stranger Before Dawn

    "You okay?"


    Ana was behind me. She''d learned the hard way not to tap me too hard on the back. I''d apologised to her, and offered to cover her shifts for the next few days, but she waved me off. "It''s just an elbow," she had said, laughing as she tilted her head back to catch the blood dripping down her nose. "I startled you. Could have happened¡ªwould have happened to anyone. Besides, that shriek you gave was worth it. I never get to hear anything that high-pitched from you."


    "Yeah," I had said. "Thank you. I''m alright."


    "Did you see that guest with the red hair?" she asked, bringing me back to the present. "Ugh, he''s cute."


    I twirled a towel in my hands. My eyes were fixed on a speck on the floor.


    "Xera?" She whacked me in the arm with a wooden spoon.


    I looked up, startled out of my trance. Even though she was standing well off to the side for the safety of her nose, I was a bit proud of my reaction. There was a relaxation in my muscles, and after so long, I could be slapped with a spoon and not instinctively respond with violence.


    "Just lost in your thoughts," she mused. "Like always. It''s a schedule. I know, I understand. You get lost in your thoughts. Every. Single. Time."


    I flushed. "Sorry, I''ll¡ª"


    "No, no, you go ahead, you rest and get lost in your thoughts while I finish this," she insisted, gesturing to the pile of dishes in front of her. "I''ll just have to change the water, oh... twenty times? Alone. The pump to the well is only in the basement, it''s not like I have to walk outside. It''s not like I have to go and get the other dishes from the inn and bring them back here, across the road, to the tavern to clean them. No, you rest Xera, you take your time being lost in your thoughts, and you¡ª"


    "I''ll do them," I said, covering her mouth with my hand. She muffled out a startled protest for a moment, then realised what I said. She raised an eyebrow.


    "Yes, I will."


    She raised it higher.


    "All of them. Myself. Go on, take the rest of the night off."


    She tried to say something, but I kept my hand on her mouth.


    "I''m going to do all of this myself, tonight. Okay? AH!" I pulled my hand back, wiping it against my trousers. Ana stuck her tongue out at me, gave me a wide closed-lip smile, then bolted off to her room.


    She hadn''t been kidding. The stack of dishes was as tall as she was. Normally, we did them throughout the day, but there were only three of us to manage two buildings, and Lucian had felt too ill to work.


    We went through our entire stock of pots, bowls, clay plates, knives, and cups. Nothing was left to use. I didn''t even know if I had enough towels to dry it all, and I knew I had no space to wait for them all to dry, but I worked at it anyway.


    The sun had long since set, even with earlier hours for the tavern in the spring. It wasn''t quite the dead of the night, not yet. That hour when everything is quiet and not even a whisper of the wind would break the imposed silence, had not come yet. For now, it was still early, at the time of day when the dark sky looked over parties and events and lights in the cities. In Senvia, the night market would have been in full march just then. Of course, out there, at the inn at the crossroads, there wasn''t much more than the horses in the stables to make a sound. Sometimes we''d hear the coyotes laughing and the foxes screaming, and there was always the river in the distance, but most of the time, it was quiet.


    When I was finally finished my work, it was proper night, closer to the early morning and the dawn. The witching hour, some called it. The time of night when nothing really existed, and everything did at the same time. The hour when legends of the Witchgiver and her witchskin sunflowers haunted the abandoned crop fields.


    It was black out, veiled by an uncertain light and clouds hiding the moon and stars. Outside, the air was crisp. The early hours marked only the fifth morning of spring, after all. Snow still speckled the ground, and puddles gathered in potholes on the road. I couldn''t yet see them all that clearly in this light, but the warm weather had hit long before spring this year, and I knew where they would be.


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    It was still a challenge to not muck my boots in the mud.


    I had walked twenty three careful steps across the road ¡ª I had counted, a small habit I had developed. The forests around the tavern and the inn were thick, and even in winter, watching the sun and counting steps were invaluable practices in ensuring that I didn''t get lost under the canopy.


    Twenty three was more than usual. I had reached only halfway between the two structures, many steps consumed by dodging puddles and chunks of snow still left in the shadows cast by the buildings where we had been piling the snow throughout the season.


    That was when I saw him. Standing there, in the middle of the road. It was a disturbing sight, a lone traveller, barely visible against the night, just... watching me. Only when I saw him did he react.


    "Hello," said the stranger.


    "Hello," I said in reply. My rock crystal ring hummed against my finger, ready for whatever might happen next.


    "What is this place?" he asked, pointing to the inn.


    "That''s the inn," I said. "And that over there is the tavern. You''ll want the inn for the night though. Tavern''s closed."


    He nodded, a movement I could barely make out at this distance. "Yes," he said. "I think I ought to."


    I waited, but he didn''t continue. He didn''t move either. He just looked at me.


    "Off you go, then," I said. "We have an arcane stone, so just leave your handprint and we''ll deal with the check-in in the morning. It''ll give you your key."


    "Yes," said the stranger. "Yes, okay. I will."


    But he didn''t move. He just stared at me.


    "Are you..." he continued, then changed questions. "No, what is this place?"


    "I told you," I said, getting annoyed. Was he drunk? Or high on tafra leaves? "This is the inn."


    "You did tell me that, yes. But which inn? What''s it called?"


    "It doesn''t have a name."


    "The Nameless Inn?"


    "No," I said. "Not The Nameless Inn. Just the inn. Just an inn and a tavern at the crossroads."


    "Why wouldn''t you name your inn?"


    "It''s not mine, it''s not up to me. And lots of places don''t have names."


    "There are many inns in the world. Why shouldn''t yours be unique?"


    "It is unique. It doesn''t have a name. Of all the inns in the world, why should they all have names?"


    The stranger took a step towards me. "It''s just odd," he said. "Suspicious, even. Your inn should have a name. Your tavern should have a name."


    I took a small step back. I couldn''t see the man well enough to know what he was capable of. My ring was pulsing on my finger, and my arm was braced to let it do what it was so ready to do. "We serve travellers. Vagabonds. Merchants."


    "Kindred," he said, taking another step.


    "Yes," I said. "And Kindred. And none of them ever stay very long, so there''s no need to name it. We aren''t renowned. We''re not a destination. We''re a crossroads."


    "You are Kindred," he said with a gleam in his voice that I only imagined was reflected in his eyes. "Yes, I was right about that. It''s not always easy to tell, you know. Not for the rest of us. We''re not all scouters. Only Kindred can just innately tell at a glance, and not everyone is trained to see the magic running in your veins. Sometimes I can tell, sometimes... less. That way you look around, where you hold your hands, the steady resolve of your breath."


    As subtly as I could, I shifted my back foot straight, facing him dead on, and my front leg at an angle. My hands didn''t quite come up, as that would have been telling, but I readied myself to strike, should I need to. He was still too far away to make out properly, and it would take several seconds for a regular human to close this distance.


    A fraction of that for a Kindred.


    "Yes, even now, as you take that stance. It really is hard to tell. But you... I know you."


    I stopped. The tension in my arms slacked for just a moment.


    "I know you," he repeated. "I''ve seen you before, so many times."


    "Who are you?"


    "My name is Eskir," he said. "I don''t expect you to remember it. You never have before."


    The man claimed he knew me. A total stranger who could not have been able to see me clearly at this distance and at this hour, claimed to know who I was.


    "I''m so glad I found you."


    That bit caught me off guard. Who was this man, this Eskir? Was he the sort that believed that the moon was a hole in the sky, and that the fragment had fallen into the Inner Sea? Or that sunflowers could kill you with their smiles, if they so chose? Or that birds had plans for world domination?


    "You survived," he said. "You''re still here, despite everything. An entire city, lost to the waves. Where were you when it happened?"


    Oh.


    "I was there," I said.


    "In the city itself?"


    "No," I whispered. "I left. Just before it happened."


    Eskir was close now, close enough to see properly. He was lean, and had black hair that hung to his neck in waves. He was older than me, though not by much. He was probably still in the latter end of his twenties. He wore decent clothes, but dressed poorly, with open buttons and an oversized lightweight coat. His fingers were long and slender, and told me clearly that he had spent more time holding a writing quill than a sword, and more time still holding a book. I knew this man. I couldn''t quite place where, but I knew him.


    "You are Xera," he said, "of the Emperor''s Guard."


    No.


    "Leave."


    "I need your help."


    "Leave," I repeated. My voice wasn''t quite working properly. It was rigid and mechanical.


    "You are the only one who can help me."


    "Leave!" I shouted. The word echoed through the forest and came back to us.


    "I know what happened to Senvia," he said.


    I flung myself at him. I didn''t bother with my rock crystal. I didn''t need it. He was only human.


    My left hand went to his throat, my elbow knocking his right arm away, and my other hand went to his chest. My right leg stepped behind him, then swung back, bringing him down to the ground. I kept his head from injury, but I grounded that man in less time than it took his heart to beat.


    My long weariness, my longing for an eternal end, vanished all in that moment.


    "Talk."

 Chapter 4 — A Stolen Voice

    Eskir spoke very little, despite my insistence. It was a trait I would soon come to learn was unique to that particular meeting.


    I miss it. I often wished after that day that he would learn to shut up more often.


    I dragged him back into the tavern that we had just finished cleaning, threw him into one of our ancient wood chairs, leaned against the table, and stared at him until he said something. He responded to all of this with cooperative grunts, as if acknowledging that being tossed around was simply the way his life was going to be for the next few minutes. He wasn''t quite a deadweight, but his arms flopped like a limp doll. When he collapsed into the chair, they hung down at his sides, exhausted.


    I didn''t know what I was waiting for him to say. I didn''t think anyone could have known what had happened to Senvia, no matter what he said.


    Not unless they were responsible for it.


    I didn''t even know if anyone had seen it, aside from myself and a few fishers left stranded on the waters outside the city. It had disappeared utterly without warning. I only survived because I was a coward, fleeing the assassination of Emperor Alaric.


    An entire city, gone in a heartbeat, its absence filled by a rush of air and water to occupy the sudden vacuum. The structures, the people, the ground on which it stood, all gone.


    I''d been surprised when I learned of the fishers, that some had survived the resulting torrential cascade of rushing water, and eventually set up a market on the cliffside where the city used to be. It was still a major crossroads. They did their best to make the most of it, and saw a fair amount of success in their newly forming village.


    I would have written it off as a random natural disaster, a Phenomenon gone wrong, except for that small nagging voice in my mind.


    Someone did this.


    I knew it.


    I felt it.


    I tried pushing Eskir, but I had never been very good at getting answers out of people. Even in interrogation, I passed my duties on to people who had a firmer heart.


    And this was no interrogation. He was willing, if slow to speak.


    He sat there for a quarter hour, just staring at me, as if he didn''t quite believe that I was real. A few times, he opened his mouth, as if expecting himself to speak, then closed it again.


    When he finally did manage it, his words weren''t about Senvia. They were about himself.


    "You know, when I was a boy, barely ten years old, my father took me to coronation day. Lord Khet of the Isles was being appointed provincial monarch of Heldren. This was when they still held all the coronations in Senvia. Good old act of imperial solidarity. All the provinces selecting their own kings and queens underneath the watchful eye of the capital, reminding them how little their lives are worth. We''re all equal under the empire. We''re all just soldiers. My father saw it differently, though. He sat me on his knee and told me all about Senvia and what it was. This marvellous place, this unified continent of progress and freedom. It took me a decade to see the truth of things. He saw the world as it should be, never as it was."


    Eskir lowered his eyes, staring at my feet. He had a habit of doing that, I had already noticed. He wasn''t looking down in submission or supplication. Too many people did that, thinking of us Kindred as greater than them. We are not deserving of such veneration.


    You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.


    But Eskir looked at my feet like he was walking through the dark, just trying to find his way. It was a habit some soldiers had when marching, to avoid tripping, and some Kindred had when fighting, to stop looking into the eyes of their enemy for a heartbeat, and keep watch of their footwork instead. Not a long glance, only a momentary look.


    The eyes betrayed their intentions. Footwork betrayed their balance.


    "Are you a soldier?" I asked.


    "No," he said, his eyes still lowered. His hands twitched, and even though I couldn''t see his eyes, the furrowing of his brows told me enough. He used to be.


    I asked him again. A pointed question, that I knew I would make him answer, even if I had to rip the knowledge out of his mind. "What happened to Senvia?"


    He smiled wistfully. "Will you help me?" he answered.


    My fingers tightened into a fist. My ring pulsed on my finger. "With what?"


    "It''s funny," he said, "I never thought I''d have the opportunity to meet one of the Royal Guard."


    "With what?" I repeated.


    "And now, you''re here, and... your purpose is gone. Would you like to reclaim it?"


    Everyone knew by now that Emperor Alaric had been assassinated. I didn''t know how. The fishers survived, but as far as I knew, I was the only one to escape the city itself. Nobody else could have gone from the Emperor''s Spire to the walls of the city quickly enough to know that he was dead and make it out before it vanished.


    I had done so too soon after the Emperor had died. The second assassination in two weeks. There was nothing for me to reclaim, nothing to return to. It was all gone.


    "Would you like to protect again?" he asked.


    "I''ve never been much good at protecting," I said. I''d learned that lesson.


    "Then it''s peace you want? Resolution." He looked up and into my eyes, I think trying to decide what sort of person I was. Not even I knew that anymore.


    "I want to know what happened," I said.


    "It was taken." He had a look in his eyes that I couldn''t place.


    Thieves do not steal cities. "How?"


    "I can''t tell you," he laughed. Maybe that look was heartbreak?


    I knelt down before him and grasped his leg. I wasn''t trying to hurt him, only intimidate.


    "You will tell me," I ordered.


    "I can''t," he insisted. His hand instinctively reached down to try and stop mine. "Really, truly, I can''t."


    "Why not?"


    "My voice was stolen."


    From time to time, there were legends of this. Stolen voices and names, and people left without them. Often of people who wandered into the wrong fields at this very hour. I thought they were myths.


    "You''re speaking right now," I said.


    "Oh... yes. But not of that. I can talk all day, but never of that." He brought his hands in front of him, clasping palms together. "Please," he said. "I can''t tell you, but if you come with me, I can show you."


    "You can show me? Show me what? Where Senvia was taken to? Can you do that? Can you lead me to a city that vanished from the face of the world?"


    He paused, trying to collect his thoughts in a way that would allow him to speak. "There is a group... an organisation out there," he started, "that has kept to the shadows for a long time. They have a... no, they have... damn it, I can''t say it. The words fall away. It''s such a normal word too, like soldier or house. If I said this word in any other context, you would think nothing of it. But the word knows what I mean to say, and it leaves me before my tongue can form it."


    "Should I guess?" He could nod when I got closer to the right word. He said soldier and house, so I thought to start there. "Fortress. Castle. Encampment."


    "No," he said. "Don''t bother. If I could write or mime it out, or if I were able to confirm or deny your guesses, this would be so much simpler. It''s not my speech that has been stolen, but my voice. My ability to express. I can''t hint at it, nor answer your questions, nor do anything to lead you to the truth. But this group, they''re not done. Senvia was only the beginning. They want a repeat, another city to vanish. I''m sure of it. I can only tell you that because they didn''t know what I knew what they were planning. They never stole that part of my voice."


    I didn''t know how to respond to that. How could a voice be stolen? How could a city be stolen?


    If I could go back to that day, and have that conversation with Eskir again... I still wouldn''t know what to say. I wouldn''t know what to say to change anything. I don''t think I''d want to change anything. Getting to the truth a little earlier would have only ruined more lives. Senvia''s still gone. Nothing we''ve done together since that night has changed that.


    But there''s a reason I''m telling this story. A reason beyond the fact that Jenny asked me to.


    "Will you come with me?"


    Such a ridiculous question. Hundreds of scouters and strangers that had come to offer me all the wealth and fame, and here was a man offering nothing but an answer.


    Of course I was going to say yes.

 Chapter 5 — The Morning Sun

    I offered Eskir a bed, but he said he didn''t feel comfortable in soft beds anymore.


    "We have less comfortable beds," I said.


    "I''m sure you have less comfortable everything," he snorted. "Your inn doesn''t even have a name."


    I gave him a room anyway, and he said he''d sleep on the floor. We were going to spend a day here, rather than leaving at dawn like all the good poems say. He had those fantasies of heroes and a grand quest, but I talked him out of it. He needed sleep, not to make the mistake of travelling in the dead of the night again. He claimed he didn''t want to stop and set up tent in the cold, so he powered through. If anything, I had to admire the resilience. Especially from an ordinary human.


    We''d stay for a full day and leave the next morning, destined for Bell Haven, though he wouldn''t say why. Most likely, he was forbidden from saying it. My guess was the organisation must have held a lot of sway there.


    Though we tried, I couldn''t pry anything out of him about the nature of the organisation. He wouldn''t tell me who they were, what their goals were, or what he meant by it happening again. Would another city vanish? Would it be Bell Haven, or was that the one city that would be safe? Were their headquarters there? He had given me a thousand questions with that answer, and left me in the dark.


    It was frustrating, and I was tempted many times to instinctively pin him against the wall until he told me what I wanted to know, but I knew he was as desperate to speak as I was to hear him. The man seemed utterly broken without his voice. Whenever I brought it up, a glimmer of pain showed itself in his eyes.


    Besides, those months at the inn had sapped the soul from me. I didn''t have the heart for needless violence anymore. Lucian kept telling me it was a good thing, even if it meant I couldn''t control the rowdiness of our patrons quite as well as he''d hoped from a Kindred.


    The truth was, I was too tired for that anymore. My muscles ached like Senvia had only been yesterday, and I longed for a constant sleep that would never end.


    I spent the day packing and saying my farewells, but I didn''t sleep that night. Instead, I lay in bed thinking about what Eskir had said. I''d picked up a habit of talking to myself since Senvia had been replaced by cliffs and ocean water. I wasn''t going insane, I kept promising myself. No, it was a comfort. I had nobody else there. All of my friends had gone. I''d made new ones in Lucian and Ana, but they didn''t understand. They weren''t Kindred. They had never lived in Senvia, and they couldn''t relate. My conversations with myself gave me a partner to bounce my ideas off of, and ask her opinions.


    "So," I reasoned, "there are the guilds. Hired for war. They''ve had a lot of business since Senvia vanished, what with everyone wanting to hire mercenary Kindred. We can write off the merchant guilds, they wouldn''t do this, there''s no purpose to it. They wouldn''t make any money by getting rid of customers, and Senvia had some of the wealthiest of them. But even the great ancient guilds, Avenfold and Rise of the Dawn and the rest, they wouldn''t have the means. Would they? They''ve been around since the dark times and the Dreadnaughts. But even then, nothing ever made a city vanish, and the guilds can''t change what''s written in our history.


    And why would they? The guilds were no enemy of the empire. They were mercenary guilds of Kindred, and only profited from war. Emperor Alaric''s speech had been about his intentions to introduce a new era of expansionism and conquest. That was Senvia''s present and history. War. Colonisation. Lyana had reigned for thirty-five years, and those decades had seen more peace than any other time in Senvia''s history. Even then, there had hardly been a moment in her life when the empire was not at war to some extent.


    No, that wasn''t it either. "Government, then. Let''s think, Xera. What government organisations based at least in part outside of the capital would have access to that knowledge? That level of magic? Who would stand to gain from the empire crumbling..."


    I let the silence sit on that for a moment, brushing the hair from my eyes. I used to keep it even shorter than it was, but it had grown out just long enough to be in the way these past three months. It still held itself up high, but there was enough weight to it now to pull it down.


    "No. Okay then, religion. The fanatics across the mountains, who believe in the twin gods. No, I don''t see that... What reason could they have?"


    I kneaded my eyes. My head was hurting. I was tired, but I didn''t need sleep. Even with all the rest I''d had, all that time spent recovering from the world, I still felt exhausted. This had been a mental vacation for me, and still I felt like I needed to get away. I wanted to sleep in the same way that I wanted to die. I needed it to all end.


    "No," I told myself. "It''ll end when I find out who did this. I''ll end them, and then I''ll get Senvia back. There must be a way to get it back. It can''t just be gone. And then it''ll be over. I''m Kindred, I can go without sleep. I''ll rest when it''s done."


    Whoever it was, they couldn''t have been a government, a religion, a cult, a guild... "A business? Someone who profits from war. We certainly have enough of it now. That could be the guilds. Someone who makes weapons? No, someone who sells war magic. There''s too many of those, and none of them are big enough to know they''d win against their competition. Besides, Senvia was a warring empire. The For Peace movement? They are terrorists, after all. No, it''s in their name, they want peace. This only brought out more war. Still, maybe their intentions were different, and they had something planned to fill the power vacuum. Something that never worked out."


    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    A knock came at the door. I looked up at the window, but it was still dark. There were hours until morning, and I had seen the fatigue in Eskir''s step. I knew it wasn''t him.


    I opened the door to a girl standing much shorter than me, with tears streaming down what was normally a mischievous smile on a bright, happy face.


    "Ana!" I said.


    She immediately pressed herself into me, trying to squeeze the life out of me.


    "Please stay," she sobbed.


    "I''m not leaving forever," I laughed, trying to pry her off. She was only human, but she had a strength to her grip that I wasn''t expecting, almost like a small bit of magic was lending her a hand. It would have broken my heart to peel her tiny fingers away.


    "No," she said with a pouty voice, still clinging to me. I found myself being forced back into my room. "No, you''re not allowed to go. You''re my friend." I could hear her voice beginning to crack through tears she was trying to hide.


    "You''re mine too!"


    "If you leave, you won''t come back."


    I melted into her hug. "I promise, I''ll come back."


    I meant those words.


    I know now why she didn''t believe me, but it wasn''t a promise I broke. I did go back. I only lived there for three months, yet I still think of that inn at the crossroads as my home. It was warm, and it was a place where I was accepted without responsibility or duty beyond what was expected of me for the wage I was paid. A job, sure, but they were as much my family as Lyana had been. I belonged with them.


    "Ana," I said softly. "I have to go. I have to know."


    Her legs gave out and I caught her before she collapsed. I had her sit on the bed next to me and cradled her head in my arms.


    "I know," she whispered, her voice stabilising somewhat.


    My friend''s warmth brought me to the last sleep I''d have for a long time. When I woke, she was gone. Probably to her duties, I reasoned.


    Down the stairs, I knocked on Eskir''s door, but he didn''t answer. I hadn''t taken him to be a deep sleeper, let alone someone to sleep through the daylight on his face, but Lucian liked to keep the empty rooms open. A closed door meant he was still inside.


    "Eskir!" I yelled. It was an understandable late wake, at least. We hadn''t slept the night prior until the first rays of light had broken the sky. My work in the tavern kept me on a later schedule, and even I slept in that morning.


    I tried opening the door, but it was jammed shut.


    "I know it''s tempting, but it''s not best to sleep through the day. You''ll be tired as we walk."


    No answer.


    "Alright, I''m going to get breakfast. It''s blood sausage and mushrooms."


    Still nothing, though I was sure he should have smelled it. It was a common comment, or even complaint, that the smell of Lucian''s cooking wafted up into the rooms to wake the patrons. Blood sausage was an import from Heldren, and it wasn''t the most popular of foods. I didn''t mind it, but I did prefer the mushrooms.


    "Have you seen Eskir?" I asked Lucian as I loaded up a plate.


    "Ah, the man you''re leaving us for?" he teased. "No, not at all. Still asleep up there. Ana checked in on him earlier, said he was fine. Fast asleep, even with the sun shining on his blanket, but fine."


    "How long ago was this?"


    "Few hours?" he guessed.


    That was concerning. Sunlight at this hour was a reliable wake-up call. It made the bed uncomfortably warm, enough to wake customers in a sweat if they slept in too long. All the linen was stripped, stored, and eventually washed anyway. We had no magic for that, but we had the spare cotton. The inn had been around longer than Lucian, but I always suspected it had been built in such a way to encourage the sunlight.


    I went back upstairs to knock on Eskir''s door. This time, I opened my senses up a bit more.


    We, as Kindred, have unnatural strength. Speed. Ability for magic. We''re not necessarily smarter or more talented, but most of our physical abilities are better. No single human soldier could ever match me on the battlefield.


    If we broaden our senses, we can pick up the details. My eyesight is normally no better than anyone else''s, nor my hearing, and in fact, I suspect my sense of taste is worse than most, but I can find the otherwise imperceived details if I focus.


    Touch. Smell. I had to concentrate for it, but I could feel the door vibrating as I knocked. I could smell the taste of the old oak. I could see the dust in the air, invisible to the naked eye in all but thin strands of sunlight. I could just barely hear the thumping of my own heartbeat. These were as hidden to me as to anyone, until I looked for them.


    What I didn''t hear was Eskir''s snoring. If he snored at all. But he must have been breathing. I should have heard that. But there was nothing. Only Lucian''s pattering around downstairs, swearing as he dropped some piece of cutlery.


    "Eskir?" I said, quiet.


    There was no answer.


    I tried to force the door open, but it held its weight against me, even despite my own strength.


    Sorry, Lucian. I raised my hand and let Stoneguard glow. With a single, swift pulse of energy, the ring blasted the door down. Lucian yelled in panic from downstairs, and I heard his footfalls thumping up the stairs.


    "Eskir?" I called through the sudden cloud of sawdust. The door was only knocked down, but the pulse had left some pieces of it splintered and floating around.


    I focused my eyes and gazed through, the room becoming clearer as the dust cleared in the sunlight. The door had been held shut by a chair, seemingly enchanted to fortify its position. Stoneguard had destroyed that too.


    Eskir was there, his body in an unconscious tangle in the middle of the floor, surrounded now by splintered wood and chair legs. I could hear his breathing now, ragged, and his heartbeat so incredibly faint.


    He wasn''t sleeping. He was dying.

 Chapter 6 — Foul Herbs and Neglected Mistletoe

    "Eskir!" I raced to his side and shook him. The blood had left his face, leaving it far too pale. His breath shook with each rasp, and his skin was cold. His hair was scattered across his face and the floor in an absolute mess created as he tossed and turned in his unconsciousness. He was still alive, but faintly.


    I didn''t even know what had happened. If only I had stayed awake instead of falling asleep with Ana, I might have heard something, I might have stopped this. But there was no time to think about the what-ifs right now.


    Lucian came up behind me, eyes wide at the busted-down door. "Xera!" he said. "I realise you''re leaving, but I still have an inn to run! If you wanted to express disappointment with my management style, you could have just cussed me out!"


    "Lucian," I said, ignoring him, "I need water, rue, holly, and lovage. Now!"


    He froze, staring at Eskir laying in front of me. "Wha¡ª"


    "I think he''s been poisoned," I said. "I need those herbs. I can make antidotes with them."


    "What kind of poison?"


    "I don''t know, but I can treat most things with those herbs."


    "We don''t have any holly," he said, his face whitening. "Berries are too toxic. Children don''t know."


    "Mistletoe, then! There''s an oak tree fifty paces south of the tavern, a mass of mistletoe''s growing up in the branches." Mistletoe was a parasitic plant, and I''d meant to remove it from the tree. It was poisonous as well, with stunning white berries, and children did love to wander and climb. Most knew what plants to avoid where they lived, but this was the inn at the crossroads. Everyone here was a traveller, and would not necessarily recognise the native foliage.


    "Now!" I yelled at him, spurring him after a few more moments of hesitation into a sprint downstairs. I knew he kept rue and lovage. He used rue for poultice and lovage for seasonal soups. But they wouldn''t be enough without holly. Even mistletoe likely wouldn''t do enough. The only magic I had was my ring, Stoneguard, and it was useless against poison. It was just a weapon.


    Lucian was only gone for a few minutes, but Eskir''s breathing had shallowed by the time he returned. His arms were covered in scratches from his climb and his lungs breathless from the run. When could Eskir have been poisoned, if it was killing him this quickly?


    "I have it!" he shouted, handing me the plant. "As much as I could carry."


    "I still need the rue and lovage! And water!"


    He ran off, and I pressed the bark of the mistletoe into the floor. Normally, I would have ground it into a pulp, but I had no time to be delicate. I clasped my hands around as much of it as I could and pulsed my ring against the bough, more gently than I had against the door, but enough to crush it. The berries had all fallen off with the winter behind us, but the pulp of the leaves coloured the bark on their own. When Lucian returned with the rest of what I needed, I mixed the mistletoe with water and pressed it down on Eskir''s throat, wrapping it all the way around as best I could.


    "What are you¡ª"


    "Never mind, just hand me the lovage."


    He passed it to me, and I stuffed it down his throat. This had to work. Eskir was a total stranger, and he was the key to the answers I had only dreamed could exist.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.


    "What in the hell is all of that going to do but choke him?"


    "It''s magic," I said.


    "You don''t have any magic!" he cried out. "You told me yourself! All you''ve got is that ring!"


    I mixed the rue, flowers and stem and all, with the rest of the water, and covered Eskir''s mouth with the resulting paste.


    Only then did I sit back to watch him. His breathing was growing ever more faint, and I doubted Lucian could even tell if he was still alive, but I waited.


    And I waited.


    "Please explain this to me," said Lucian. "So that I understand. What magic?"


    "I only know a little." I adjusted my seating. "Barely anything, really. Just enough to stop some fast-acting poisons."


    "How long does it take to work?"


    I sighed. It should have worked by now. It should have drawn the poison out. Was this it? Were my answers going to die with him?


    I turned to Lucian, a glimmer of realisation hitting me. "That guest from the other day. Do you remember? Red hair, a scar on his wrist?"


    "What about him?" he asked.


    "He''s Kindred. If he''s still here, he might know more than I do."


    The innkeep brought the man, who grumbled with annoyance. His demeanour changed when he saw me. We were, after all, kin.


    "Poison?" the Kindred assessed at a glance.


    "Do you know any magic?"


    "More than you. Move."


    He was very abrupt, pushing me aside to get to Eskir. I didn''t complain. I would have rathered this harsh and sudden attitude than time-wasting pleasantries as my only hope lay dying.


    He pulled some dried herbs from his boot. They reeked of swamp and sweat.


    "You keep those in your shoe?" Lucian''s face was greener than the herbs.


    "The herbs are what smell, not my feet." He crushed them and murmured a spell in what sounded like Old Oleran, some adaptation of Lef. Light trickled from his fingers like raindrops, scattering themselves across Eskir. He ripped open the man''s shirt and let the drops fall on his bare chest. They fell into his skin, soaking all the way through.


    An uncomfortable silence fell over us while we waited. "What spell was that?" I asked.


    He confirmed my suspicions. "Lef."


    "I don''t know much about magic," I confessed. "Just the basics."


    "You''re not very educated for a Kindred, then."


    I should have been. Lyana made sure I knew how to fight, but I was awful at magic. Unusually so. Kindred were as equal in our abilities as humans were in theirs. We were faster, stronger, better. It was the magic part that escaped me, a failing in my studies that I never quite seemed to be able to grasp.


    "I learned," I said. "Not much of it stuck. I know the names of the spells that haven''t been lost, and which languages most of them come from."


    "Xera," Lucian cut in, "your new friend is dying. Stop talking to the nice man about spells."


    "Sorry," I mumbled. "Just really tense."


    "Yeah, I can see that. Your knuckles are bone white."


    A few moments later, Eskir coughed. The sound of his breathing flooded my ears, and I sighed with relief.


    "Now," said the Kindred, "I''m going back to ponder on my Path. Keep his head upright, and get that gunk off him before you poison him a second time."


    I wiped away the paste from his mouth and pulled the lovage from his throat. It wasn''t shameful to need help, but still, my face was red in embarrassment. I had never needed to use the remedy, it was only something I had been taught for emergencies, to protect Lyana if no healers were nearby. The first time I had ever needed to use it, and it had failed me.


    I urged Lucian away, back downstairs to help Ana tend to the patrons before the tavern opened. I brought him to my room and sat beside him as he shifted from his barely conscious stupor to a point where he could nearly speak.


    Instead, he croaked out a long, hoarse groan.


    "Sleep," I said. "It''s too late to leave today anyway, and you''ve just avoided a narrow death. I don''t need you dying from exhaustion, trying to trek across the country."


    He glared at me in protest.


    "Sleep," I commanded.


    He slept. I did not. My eyes were fixed between the locked window and the door, furniture braced against it. Ana brought me food, but I did not leave him, from the light of noon until the morning after.


    Nobody would touch him.

 Chapter 7 — Eastward

    We left in a hurry the next morning. I didn''t let Ana delay me further for yet another goodbye, as much as I wanted one.


    "Xeraaa!" she whined, throwing her arms around me. "Stay! Just one more day!"


    "I''m sorry. " I picked her up with a warm hug, then exchanged her for a sack of wheat and loaded that onto the wagon. It was a small thing, but the wheels were robust and well-oiled. Lucian had bought it from some traders before the winter, and I had just purchased it from him, along with two of the stable horses. I didn''t have many avens left, but I could always do smaller mercenary jobs if the situation became dire.


    "I do have to go," I said. "I really do. You know I''d stay if I could, but I need to know what happened."


    "Do you think..." she said, shuffling her feet. "Do you think you really need it? Or do you just want it? The truth hurts sometimes. You never know what it''ll be. It''s easier to stay here."


    "Yeah," I said. "It would be."


    "H-hang on," she stammered. "I have something for you. I''ll go get it. Don''t leave!"


    She raced back into the inn, and I turned and packed my spear into the side of the wagon, accessible yet hidden. My sword, I left to Lucian. It had been his, after all. A gift to make me feel more comfortable. Weapons were familiar to me.


    The dagger that I had kept near the doorframe, I forced into Eskir''s hands.


    "I''m no fighter," he said, but I dismissed his protests.


    "Someone''s already tried to kill you," I said. "If someone tries again when I''m not around, you need to protect yourself."


    "They poisoned my drink, Xera. I''m not going to start stabbing waitresses."


    I chuckled, knowing just how I would have reacted to someone trying to stab Ana. "Yes, that''s probably a bad idea. Now, where are we going?"


    He looked around for a moment, as though he had no idea where he was. He had arrived in the middle of the night, after all, and if he had been fleeing from the people who had stolen his voice, it made sense for him to be a bit lost.


    "Dengal might be a good place to start," he said. "Or Eaden Helm. Or we could head to where Senvia once was. I understand there''s a market there now, established along the coastline by fishers stranded outside the city and traders who arrived at nothing."


    "Congratulations," I applauded, "you''ve narrowed it down from four roads out of the inn to three."


    "Well, do you want the religious perspective? Path of Knowledge?"


    I faked a barf. "So you have no idea," I concluded. "Aren''t you supposed to know about this organisation?"


    He offered a rueful smile. Of course, he couldn''t speak. He couldn''t tell me whatever connection he had to them. It was possible that his dilemma prevented him from even choosing the path we''d take.


    "All my days." I drew my hands over my face, frustrated. "Fine. Well, there''s not much point in going to the coast. Senvia was west, but it''s gone now. Eaden Helm is the furthest away, and the city''s being emptied quite quickly too. Dengal is a mess right now. Besides, I''m rather suspicious of the one direction you didn''t mention. We''ll head east. Bell Haven."


    "Interesting choice!" exclaimed my travelling partner. "How unique."


    "If you''re going with ambiguity," I said, "I prefer silence."


    "Ah," he said, tapping his nose.


    It was interesting to note at least, that that was the reaction he chose to my choosing a destination that he had not listed.


    "Xera!" Ana was racing back towards us, something clenched firmly in her hand.


    "You don''t need to run," I laughed as she nearly collapsed breathlessly in front of me.


    Ana bent over, clutching her chest. "I need to run more," she wheezed. "Or not. Maybe not. Here." Clenched in her fingers was a tiny medallion, about the size of an aven coin.


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    I took it, curious. It was light and slightly cool to the touch. It was steel, with a diamond emblem engraved on its surface.


    "What is this?" I asked.


    "It''s not magic," she said hurriedly. "It''s just a silly little charm. For safekeeping. It''s to make sure you come back, so you can give that back to me when you return."


    I slipped it into my coin purse. "Thank you, Ana."


    We finished loading the wagon with as many supplies as we could before setting out. Lucian and Ana stood by the stables, watching us roll away. Lucian had a light smile plastered on his lips, like I was his daughter finally setting out for university. He hadn''t even known me, but he had taken me in, fed me, and given me a room and a job. Six months, and we''d become family in every way but blood. The week before, we''d bickered over which champion would win the ring match in Eaden Helm, stopped speaking to each other, and made up again in less than a day.


    Even with Lyana, I had never had that. She was the empress. Lucian was just... Lucian. Father, brother, whatever. In a very real way, he was the family I never had. This nameless, beaten down inn was home. And I was leaving. For who knew how long.


    All I could think at that moment was, maybe I shouldn''t go.


    Ana''s face beside him was plastered in tears. She was taller than him, and her blonde hair was cowlicked from the way she''d slept on it. She hadn''t gotten nearly enough sleep, and I could see it in the heavy bags under her eyes, the clothes she''d worn for the second day in a row, and her saggy, slouched posture.


    I could hear the sounds of her crying from where I stood by the wagon, which was set up across the small service road that encircled the inn, tavern, and stables.


    I really, really wanted to stay.


    But that thought kept nagging at the back of my mind. That loud, angry demand from my brain: what. happened. I needed to know. I owed it to myself, to Senvia, to Lyana.


    Lyana had died before Senvia vanished. But it was her empire. Alaric''s coronation, and his coronation speech, happened on the same day as the city vanished. Senvia was never his to claim. He hadn''t even lived through the speech. He was dead seconds after that boy''s dagger cut his throat open.


    Alaric died because I failed in my duty. He was the emperor. It was my job to keep him alive.


    Lyana died because I failed her. She wasn''t just an emperor. Her life was my life. Everything I was, I owed to her.


    I owed Senvia to her too, and the truth of what happened.


    A small bead of liquid came from my eyes. I clamped them shut and suppressed the urge to bawl into tears. Eskir was right next to me, and Ana and Lucian would have seen.


    "No emotion," I whispered to myself too softly for Eskir to hear. "Nothing at all."


    Both of us sat in the back. A small pendant with a bell inside hung out in front of the horses, suspended by a beam connected to the wagon. The bell inside was a guidance charm, to keep them moving without someone to steer them. It wasn''t a good one, it was old and dented, and made from copper. The modern ones were brass. But it worked.


    He pulled out a biscuit from one of the bread baskets I had tucked away and loudly nibbled on it.


    "If that''s how you eat," I said, noticing the noise, "this is either going to be a very short trip for you, or a very long trip for me."


    His face reddened, and he pocketed the biscuit in a hurry.


    Then he started twiddling his fingers.


    Noisily.


    I planted my foot against his chest. The inn wasn''t even out of sight yet. "You need to learn to stop moving for half a minute."


    "I can''t," he insisted. "Never have been able to. I can''t focus either, my mind wanders too much. One minute I''ll be thinking about this conversation, the next about wow, you have interesting hair, and the next will be about a species of bramble bush I saw as a kid, and how your hair reminds me of it. After that, it''ll be the forest around us, and then the wheels of this wagon and how they keep hitting every pothole, and how uncomfortable that is even though they''ve been filled in, and then I''ll start thinking about how much I hope whoever built this thing knew what they were doing, or our supplies may end up all over the road, and oh my, now I''m quite nervous about it all."


    I stared at him, bewildered.


    "Sorry," he laughed. "I can''t really stop."


    "Moving or talking?"


    "Thinking," he said. "And moving. And talking. Why did you pick Bell Haven?"


    I looked to the road ahead. "I''ve never been."


    He knitted his fingers between his knees. "And here I thought everyone had been to Bell Haven. It might as well be the capital, if... well, if we had an emperor there. Everyone sees it that way, I think."


    I turned back to him. "They don''t see it that way. Every province in the empire is breaking out in war. There is no capital anymore."


    "You''ve been to Dengal then!" he said, changing the subject.


    More times than I could count. Lyana loved the spice markets. She had her own mead recipe that she would only buy the ingredients for from a few merchants on the east road. Honey, rosemary, and oak.


    "Yes," I said, silently grumbling at the conversation. Would this man never shut up?


    He pinched at the wagon''s sideboard behind him with each hand, then sat forward. "You''ve seen the Attilas? How many did you see? I''ve heard there are always at least three in view of the city, and the one that roams the Spice Road itself!"


    "I should have let the poison work."


    Eskir paled, then finally stopped babbling.


    It was going to be a long ride.

 Chapter 8 — Snapping Twigs

    The cliffs where Senvia once rested stretched far north along the shore of the Ardent Sea, from the hollow point where the city once stood to the peninsula where the province of Kore was located. The expanse alongside the cliffs was covered much like the area outside of Senvia, with deep, spongy mosses covering a craggy rocky base, with short, dry grasses growing out above them. Near Senvia, the grasses were common, but as you moved north, they became increasingly replaced by moss and wildflowers.


    In the summer months, those flowers blanketed the fields with mostly yellow, but also shades of blue not found anywhere else in nature. I''ve been all over, and I have never seen anything like it, except in arcane dyes in the clothes of high nobility. The natural dyes in those flowers couldn''t be extracted by mundane or magical means, a mystery that long eluded the fashion artists of the continent of Avengard.


    Most of the animals were birds, often unique and with brightly-coloured beaks, and they dived in and out of ever-present mists, vanishing entirely from view in a heartbeat.


    It was a stunning place, if difficult to turn into a home. The winds that crashed over the ocean turned the area a frigid cold. There were no trees that close to the ocean, and even further away from the coast, forests dwindled the farther from Senvia you went. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but harsh and rough, even for a traveller just passing through.


    It was why Kore had so few visitors, and why Senvia had never formed a stronger presence there. Lucky Lake was the furthest north anyone not preferring a notably colder climate would settle, and it was filled with the summer homes of nobility who could afford it. Lyana had a small cabin at Lana''s Perch, a village on the north side of the lake that sheltered in an alpine forest, under a large cliff outcrop from the steep hills that surrounded the lake. It was lit in the winter by dozens of wrought-iron gas streetlamps, giving the village and its snow-covered rooftops and cobblestone streets a warm, ornate glow. Cozy, was the proper, accurate word. Silent. She only took me once, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life there, without ever a change in seasons.


    Further east from the ocean, Eaden Helm was positioned as far north as one could go before entering the Plains of Refiriem, the wildlands that only champions dared to enter.


    I had left this behind. The biome had shifted as I ran from the city when it vanished. The inn at the crossroads was surrounded by a forest that gradually adjoined those grassy fields, but no longer strictly alpine. Most of the trees dropped their leaves in autumn, and decorated the road with brilliant hues of orange, pink, and red. But it was spring, and instead there were buds and fresh sap that lit up the forest with a thousand delightful scents. The first insects had climbed out of their holes in bark and soil, and danced around the skies, too early in the season to pester our ears and noses over and over again. At that moment, they were welcome, and made everything feel like it was brimming with new life, even though the leaves hadn''t quite come out yet.


    Our path to Bell Haven was not direct. It set out straight east from the inn at the crossroads, which marked the halfway point between the two cities. The road curved and twisted as it went. Our trek would first take to the Lakeside Inn, a reasonable halfway point on the shore of Ghost Lake, and then dip into Durn for less than a day before re-emerging and continuing to the city. The entire thing would take two weeks.


    For two weeks, I''d have to put up with his mewling.


    He didn''t complain as much as my words imply, nor was his voice annoying. If anything, it had a pleasant gravel to it. If he were a singer, and he chose to sing softly, he''d attract crowds. He''d have made a brilliant storyteller, too.


    Three hours after we crossed into the deep woods that poked out the northwestern peak of Durn, before we dipped into the province itself, Eskir insisted on a break. It was the fifth one he''d insisted on since we''d left the inn, and his breaks were long.


    "We''ve been riding for two days," he insisted. Apparently, his ass was hurting from all the sitting and doing nothing he''d been faced with.


    "We can keep going," I said. "The horses can continue. We''ll break when they do."


    "Seriously, Xera."


    "Seriously, Eskir. You''re not the one pulling the wagon. You''re not even pulling yourself."


    He moved from the back of the wagon and placed his head next to mine. "And I am ever so grateful," he said sardonically. "So how about we give the horses another break, to let them really relax and..." He had to pause to think, unsure of how to make his point. "... appreciate the ride..."


    "No."


    "I''ll give them a carrot!" he bribed.


    "I''m not the horse," I said, shoving him back into the supplies. My Kindred strength was enough to topple him over with little effort.


    "If we stop..." he thought out loud, "I''ll..."


    "Shut up?" I suggested.


    "Sure!" he said, raising his finger. "That! If we stop for a break, I''ll stop pestering you. If we don''t, I''ll pester you more! I''ll nag and nag and nag until your ears bleed."


    "You''re a child."


    I stopped the wagon in a small clearing that had formed around the road.


    He leapt in soundless joy out of the wagon and began to stretch.


    "You know," I said, "you could always just walk alongside the wagon. You don''t need to ride."


    "Stretching is nice," he said, "but sometimes I just need to stop moving and listen to the world. It''s part of my Path."


    I rolled my eyes loud enough for him to hear.


    "You were in the Emperor''s Guard!" he said. "How can you have such dismissive thoughts towards the Paths?"


    "I''ve never been one much for religion," I said.


    "Clearly."


    "What was that?"


    "Nothing!" he insisted. "How long is this trek to Bell Haven, anyway? I haven''t walked the road directly before."


    "At your pace? Look at a map."


    He shrugged. "I just mean, the road curves. It twists and turns. I have a map with me, but it must be a decade old, possibly outdated. Wait, what do you mean at my pace?"


    "You''re slow," I chuckled.


    "I''m not slow!" He sounded offended.


    "We''re being pulled by horses," I explained. "That''s only a little faster than a walking pace. This is slow."


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    He stared at me. "How much faster do you expect to go? Break the horses into a gallop the whole way there?"


    I gave him a sarcastic look, and said honestly, "I ran from Senvia to the inn."


    His jaw hung open. "You did what now?"


    "The emperor''s speech was at dawn. The city vanished in early midday, before the sun even hit its peak. I collapsed in front of the inn in the dead of night. It took me days to recover."


    He slowly climbed back onto the wagon and perched himself on the edge of the railing. "You''re being serious?"


    "Do you expect me not to be?"


    Eskir sat down beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked at it. "You ran... okay, Xera, listen to me, I just travelled that distance. I came to the inn from Senvia. It took me two weeks on foot."


    "Yes," I said, still eyeing his hand. "As I said, you''re slow."


    "Humans don''t travel that fast!"


    "I''m not human." I removed his hand. He didn''t seem to notice. "I''m Kindred."


    "Nothing travels that fast!" he shouted, his arms swinging around to demonstrate how outlandish of a concept he thought this was. "What are you, a swift?"


    I stared at him, confused.


    "It''s a bird," he said with a tone of exasperated disbelief. "They travel really far in a day. Never mind, I''m saying that you can''t have done that. No way. Not a chance."


    "You don''t seem to know much about Kindred," I suggested.


    "Xera, I am telling you, there''s no way you did that. Maybe in your dreams, or it''s been so long that your memory isn''t sitting quite right. You must have slept."


    I shifted away from him and dismounted the wagon myself. I didn''t enjoy being dismissed so readily by someone who knew nothing about me. "Senvia has hired Kindred urgently before, and sent runners to Eaden Helm to summon them to war. That''s about the same distance as Senvia to Bell Haven. It takes a single Kindred runner four days to reach the city, and they don''t run until they collapse."


    "That''s not possible," he said.


    "Not possible for a human."


    "You are human! You''re just... born with a few extra gifts."


    "Right," I said caustically. "Strength, speed, endurance, that sort of thing. Including the ability to¡ª"


    "No!" he yelled over me, "Not including that level of stamina and speed! You would need to run... what, five times faster than me? And I''m not that slow."


    I leaned back at the forceful volume in his voice, taken aback by his insistence, then forced myself to laugh. "You''re that slow," I said. I was becoming increasingly annoyed, despite my laughter. "You''re human. It''s not your fault. I''m just... better than you."


    "I''m human, and you''re crazy," he said in defeat. With that, he bent over to gather some fallen branches. He laid them out in a half circle and kneeled down in it.


    I peered at him in curiosity over his seemingly random actions. "Is this how you end all arguments? Just gather some sticks and stones and claim that my words won''t hurt you? You''re missing the stones."


    "I''m meditating," he said.


    "With sticks?" I looked around, almost expecting him to pull out something else to complete the puzzle, but there was nothing. Just the sticks. He didn''t even take up a particularly meditative pose, he just kneeled in them.


    "Do you have a problem with that?" he asked.


    "No," I said innocently. "I just didn''t think meditation included sticks."


    "It''s part of my Path."


    "Sticks...?" I didn''t know much about Pathoticism. In my opinion, it was a stupid religion. It was the only religion even legally permitted throughout most of the empire, but still, it was stupid. There were no gods, no greater powers at all. At the very least, I could understand theistic religions. Gods were an explanation for the mysteries of the world, and a destination for prayers to beings who could help you when all seemed lost. It didn''t matter if they were real or not. They were an answer to people who had nothing left but those prayers.


    Pathoticism had no prayers. It had meditation. Three core Paths, and a zenith Path, each one associated with a cardinal point, part of the self, and each with its own answer to enlightenment and ascension.


    The Windward Path, following the eastern star, taught the way of the body, truth, and trust. As much as I disliked the religion, that one was my favourite. It wasn''t suited to me, not by any means. It was far too much about going with the flow. Each of the Paths had a ritual that pilgrims could take. For the Windward Path, it was a walk through steep mountain cliffs, passing through a valley of rocks and shale and harsh winds, and emerging out to the warm light of an endless grassy plain. To navigate the mountains and harsh winds along exposed cliffsides, you had to trust yourself and your body, and know that each step you took was true.


    I never thought I''d do very well in living by the words "wherever you go, any way the wind blows." It was never quite me.


    The philosophy of the ritual was different from the ritual itself. Not everyone had a set of mountains with grassy plains in their backyards. Most would never set out on the journey of pilgrims. Most would never do the ritual at all, and those who did rarely did more than a simple hike on a windy day.


    Then again, most would never ascend.


    Nobody ever had. Not since Torin, the ancient warrior who had saved the continent of Avengard so many centuries prior with his sacrifice. And he followed the zenith path, the path of the warrior.


    My Path.


    The Path I was raised to follow, as Kindred and as a warrior. It was expected of me. The other three weren''t good enough. I was supposed to achieve ascension like the great Torin, by dying on a battlefield, breath spent and sword drenched in red.


    It was a stupid religion.


    But from what I knew, none of the Paths used this ritual. None of them even asked for actual meditation from followers.


    And yet, Eskir meditated. I heightened my senses, and I could hear the soft rise and fall of his chest. I could smell his breath passing in through his mouth and out through his nose, gentle and consistent.


    "What are you doing?" I asked him. "Even your heart rate has slowed. How do you do that?"


    "Practise," he grumbled. "And silence."


    I stopped talking, but the curiosity drove me mad. It hurt my ears to talk while my senses were so sharp, but I had to ask. "Okay, but how though? Your body is almost acting like you''re asleep."


    He opened one eye. I was behind him, but I could hear his eyelid shlick open. "I would rather be in a proper glade with fallen leaves, of course. But this works. Provided I have some silence. All you have to do is sit down in a comfortable position, close your eyes, and listen to the world. Quietly. Without speaking."


    "That doesn''t look very comfortable," I blurted.


    He sighed. "The kneeling is. The noise is not."


    "What Path do you follow?"


    "Any Path," he said in frustration, "as long as it''s the one that gets you to shut up!"


    I knelt beside him, held my breath, and listened to the world, as he said. My senses were so much better than his while I focused.


    He sat there in a seiza, eyes closed, and breathing deeply and quietly.


    I tried to do the same thing, but my body didn''t want to listen. My clothes scraped against each other and the dirt. My feet got numb, and I had to reposition myself cross-legged to get comfortable. I felt an itch in my leg, and my hand shifted instinctively to scratch it, my fingers tingling in a light breeze that happened to pass through as I did. My hair ruffled, sounding like something between grass and a rough, rusted wire carved out too thin to stay still.


    Nothing worked. The world wouldn''t be quiet enough to submerge me in the silence I was hunting.


    I could hear the scrambling of a mouse in a thicket fifty paces away. There was a light trickle of water from a stream falling down old leaves and water-licked stones, that would eventually join up with crashing white waves that struck against an empty pit as the river vanished underground until it reached a small and mostly underground natural reservoir that sourced Ghost Lake.


    There was a trail line of ants, following the scent of their leader as it led them around a fallen twig, all announced by the shuffling of six legs, dozens of times over.


    Behind me, a songbird ruffled its feathers. Beads of sweat formed on Eskir''s skin from the midday heat, and their erratic, irregular droplets slammed against the ground with such fervour, those ants may have mistaken it for rain.


    Everything made so much noise.


    And then I heard it. Something I never would have heard normally, had I not been sitting in silence with heightened senses.


    It was a snap in the trees.


    Not from an animal. I could tell by the sound and the motion, even with my eyes closed, that it came from something that didn''t exist. Not a mythological creature or something impossible, but literally from a source that produced no sound.


    The snapping of a twig was the exception, a freak accident in defiance of the anomaly.


    Somewhere in the forest, something without a shape was moving.

 Chapter 9 — Ambush

    The snapping of a twig was one thing. The snapping of a twig by something that doesn''t exist was quite another.


    But it did exist. It moved, after all. I shifted my focus, and instead of trying to hear the thing itself, I listened for the parting of leaves and movement of underbrush.


    Not one, but perhaps a dozen of them were approaching us, quieter than anything should have the right to be.


    And then one of them slipped. They made no sound as they hit the ground, but a puff of dust told me exactly where they were. It was the twig snapping all over again, a fluke of the spell, and it had given them away.


    The spell was broken enough to tell. They were people.


    I thought about nudging Eskir, but the last thing I wanted was to send him into a panic. Even as Royal Guard, as we escorted Lyana through the more unpredictable areas of Durn and the dunes, ambushes were rare. I had so little practical experience in defending against them. I needed him to be predictable.


    There were only two of us, and I had no expectations of Eskir in a fight.


    Still, I needed him to see it coming. I crossed my fingers and reached over to nudge him, but he spoke before I made contact.


    "Oh. We''re about to die," he breathed from his resting place.


    "We''ll be fine," I said, now fingering Stoneguard on my finger. I shot him a look. How had he known?


    I stopped focusing on my senses. They would only overwhelm and blind me in a fight, and I needed to be able to move around. I took my spear from the wagon, keeping my head down and placing it gently on the ground, hoping the ambushers had not seen it. I knelt back down beside Eskir, hoping my movement hadn''t been seen. "We''ll get out of this," I whispered.


    There were three in the trees, likely archers with nocked bows, and at least four more behind me. As well, there was more movement on the road we had come from. Some of them had likely been following us.


    Eskir''s eyes remained closed as he spoke. "No, really. We''re dead. We died five minutes ago when we rolled into this clearing. We''ve probably been dead for hours, we just didn''t know about it."


    "Hey, snap out of it," I whispered, elbowing the man. "Which one of us is the soldier?"


    "Right now, here, today? Me."


    I scoffed. He still hadn''t pulled out the dagger I had given him when we set out, so I passed him a knife from my belt. It was plain and boring, just a basic patch knife for spellcrafting that had been left at the inn by a wandering sorcerer. She''d traded her fountain pen for a new one, covered in ornate engravings hailing the great hero Torin.


    Eskir shoved at my arm as I tried to hand him the knife, so I pressed it against his clumsy, fumbling fingers until the handle pressed against his palm, then dragged him to his feet. His eyes were still only halfway open, as if he''d been sleeping deeply, but to his credit, he did take the knife, fumbling at it and gripping half the bare blade along with the handle.


    I hoped he''d at least know which bit of it to hold.


    "Take care of the horses," I said. "Don''t let them run off." He didn''t move, so I stared at him until he clued in.


    "Oh," he said, "you mean like... take care of the horses."


    The tone of his voice gave me a moment of alarm. "Don''t kill them!" I exclaimed.


    "Yeah, yeah, just... take care of them. Babysit."


    "Yes," I growled. The ambushers were already moving, and they moved far too quickly. The spell broke entirely when the first of them began to sprint, and a man dressed in full steel plate armour came into view. He had a broad tower shield strapped loosely to his back, and wielded a double-edged battle axe with a head as large as the handle.


    Normally, it took a look into someone''s eyes to tell if they were Kindred, even for one of us. We could recognise with that much of a look.


    But this man was sprinting across the clearing in full plate armour with one hand gripping the shaft of an unnaturally large axe and the other reaching for the full-sized tower shield behind him. That was far too much weight for any normal human being, even with a spell to enhance strength. And he was moving far too quickly.


    He was Kindred, stronger and faster than any human had the right to be.


    A soft swish in the air announced the incoming arrows from behind us. I clenched my hand into a fist and focused on the single ring on my middle finger. Stoneguard pulsed just like it had at the inn, sending out a shockwave. It scattered the arrows, breaking their flight path before they could reach us.


    It wasn''t a particularly efficient way to use the ring, but it was fast, and that''s what I needed.


    I felt my heels turn almost before I wanted them to, lifted myself to my feet with my ankles, and kicked up the spear I had placed so delicately on the ground. I continued my spin, turning back towards the charging Kindred. He had grabbed the tower shield and was pulling it in front of him. His axe raised up to swing, even though he still had some distance to cover. He would close it before the axe came down, and it would meet my flesh with the speed of a diving falcon and the brute force of an angry elephant.


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    I held the spear in my right hand, and with a flick of my wrist, I launched it at the oncoming Kindred like I was a ballista made flesh. It impaled him straight through his steel plating, driving the air from his lungs before he even began to bleed. The sheer force of it sent him flying backwards, stopping only when the spear stuck into the road.


    I almost paused to admire the quality of the wood. I had expected it to shatter into his ribcage and force me to finish him off with Stoneguard.


    Almost.


    But I didn''t have time to admire anything. Another attacker was already nearly upon us, this one only human. He wasn''t carrying much, and moved quite slowly. He could have been a human sorcerer, or even a skilled fighter, but a human was still only a human. I had plenty of time to pull out Stoneguard, moving my wrist in the familiar motion I was so accustomed to. This ring was my partner, my companion, my mark of my place among the Royal Guard. It had never failed me.


    Until then. I held my hand out, expecting the weapon held within to emerge, but nothing happened. Stoneguard remained silent. It had pulsed for the arrows, and it responded to my intent now, so I knew I could pulse it again, but it refused to allow me to wield it in full.


    I tried again, and again, nothing happened.


    The attacker was on top of us now, and Eskir was far closer to him. He hadn''t even turned his head yet to see the danger, so at least he''d die oblivious. The attacker held a hammer of his own, and was poised to strike Eskir''s head.


    I nearly called out to him on instinct, but these people had forgotten what Kindred could do. Quite possibly, they had no idea who I was. Just another mercenary Kindred who would die to such a small ambush, like their companion that I had just skewered like a shish kebab.


    In that moment, before the human''s hammer even began to swing down, I taught each and every one of them exactly how incorrect that belief was.


    He was wearing brigandine with a thin chain mail underneath. I appeared in front of him by sheer speed and punched his chest. His ribcage splintered like candy brittle and my fist met his fleshy, beating heart. He went from a full sprint to a dead-stop in midair, suspended for a heartbeat before being launched backwards and collapsing to the ground, his body spent and the life fleeing his eyes.


    "Xera!" shouted Eskir from behind me. I turned. He was looking around wildly, not understanding how I had managed to move from one side of him to the other at such speed.


    Another assassin was converging on the wagon as he tried in vain to hold down the now panicking animals. The horses reared up, only held back from bolting by the guidance charm, which was ringing like crazy and doing its best to keep them calm.


    I brandished Stoneguard, sending a pulse that passed through the horses and Eskir to slow the assailant down long enough for me to reach him. Eskir stumbled, almost falling backwards and landing on his knees, and the horses nearly lost their balance from the burst. I grimaced, and mouthed a hurried "Sorry!"


    I leapt over Eskir and broke the assailant''s skull with my vambraces.


    I had no real armour to speak of anymore, I had sold my fine steel to a passing Kindred. At the time, it served me no purpose. I wasn''t fighting anymore. I didn''t want to fight anymore. I was there as a server, not a Royal Guard to be recognised by what I wore.


    I was glad in that moment that I had made an exception for the vambraces.


    Eskir didn''t manage to stand up. He yelped, and pushed off the ground with his feet only to lose his balance and fall on his back, desperately scrambling away from yet another assailant.


    This one was untrained, slower than any of the others, and he was untempered too. He wore no armour, and the only thing gripped in his hands was a flimsy short sword. Had he been at all good at fighting, Eskir could have thrown the patch knife he was still holding into the boy''s face, or at least stood his ground.


    Instead, he ran to the other side of the wagon and whimpered, begging for his life. "Please," he sobbed. He tried to say more, but the words caught in his throat.


    I grabbed the reins before the horses ran, and with a reach, kicked the attacker''s neck from behind, snapping it like kindling. Another volley of arrows came at us, and I scattered them again with my ring.


    "I can''t take out Stoneguard," I said calmly, leaning against the wagon. "They must have a guard ring of their own."


    "What?" he shouted, "How? How many of those rings are there?"


    "Six," I said. "One for each of the Royal Guard. The other five were in Senvia when it vanished." At least, they were supposed to be. All of us had been there for Emperor Alaric''s speech. Everyone else had stayed to fight. They must have had their rings. I was the only coward who had fled the city.


    "If you want to see the sunset tonight," I snapped, "you''re going to need to fight."


    Eskir pointed over her shoulder, forming a warning shout in his mouth. "I know," I said, and elbowed the human sprinting up behind me. His jaw snapped free from his skull.


    Most of them were human. Had they only brought the one Kindred? Was he all they could afford? This wasn''t a random ambush, it was planned. And they hadn''t come for me while I had been at the inn.


    I gave Eskir another glancing look as I deflected another volley of arrows with a pulse from my ring. None of them had been aiming for me. All of them were targeted at the ass end of the man wiggling his way under the wagon to hide behind one of the wheels.


    I let go of the horses to dive overtop of the wagon to fight off another assailant. This would be so much easier if they all just came straight at me, instead of running around and trying to get to him.


    "No!" Eskir shouted. I had my back to the wagon, and didn''t see him climb out from underneath it. He tackled me, forcing me to the ground. We both hit the dirt hard.


    "What is wrong with you?" I demanded, and vaulted my feet onto the ground, standing to fend off the next oncomer.


    But there was no one else. Aside from the horses'' nerves, the clearing was quiet.


    Eskir groaned, stood up, and walked over to the wagon to pluck out an arrow that had stuck itself to it. It took him a moment, and he had to readjust and brace himself against the wagon before finally managing to wrench it free with both hands. "This was about to hit you," he said.


    I glared at him. My ears were still perked for the faint hiss of oncoming arrows. "You could have died at least three times over in that mess."


    I expected him to tell me something I already knew, like he wasn''t a fighter or that he was a coward, or even apologise for being a burden, but instead, his eyes lost their focus on me.


    Scoffing, I turned back to calm the horses. He wasn''t even paying attention anymore.


    I reached for my shoulder, kneading away the ache from the man I had punched.


    We hadn''t lost anything, there was that.


    "Just..." I sighed, "don''t die."

 Chapter 10 — Meditation, Part 1

    It took me half an hour to clean up after the ambush. The wagon was mostly undamaged, barring a half dozen arrows that had found their way between the shallow grain of the oak. It was, however, drenched in red. I didn''t bother wasting our supply of water to scrub. It would have been too much work. Instead, I borrowed Eskir''s dagger ¡ª the one I had given him, that he''d failed to use in the attack ¡ª and shaved off the surface layer of the wood.


    The wagon was old anyway, I reasoned, and had sat in the wagon shed outside the inn for a full winter. Lucian had oiled it well with boiled linseed oil, and applied several coats. I was attempting to shave off only the thinnest layer of wood. I could re-apply the oil, but it would take days of drying time to properly apply enough layers, and mineral oil wouldn''t be sufficient.


    My fingers were precise, and I braced my palm against the side of the wagon to maintain consistency. It was like shaving a man''s beard. I''d only done it once, just before Alaric''s coronation.


    I told him then, I wasn''t a barber, nor his valet. I was Emperor''s Guard.


    He said he wanted to look groomed, and he didn''t trust his other servants. They were bound to die for him, but I was bound to kill for him, and as he put it, I was an expert with any blade on the battlefield. If the blade was so much smaller, it would be that much easier to wield with precision.


    I had to hold back a laugh at his likening of a greatsword to a shaving razor, but I didn''t. I would never be as good as someone with any manner of experience, but I had been given a command by the man about to become the Emperor of Senvia.


    So I shut my mouth, gritted my teeth, and set the blade to his skin as steadily as I could muster. My senses sharpened, and I could hear and feel each nick of the sharpened edge slicing through his coarse, greying black hairs.


    I didn''t have to like it, I just had to do it.


    A small cracking sound came from the grain of the wood in front of me ¡ª a small splinter. I frowned, readjusted my blade, and shaved the peeling splinter away.


    "Who were they?" I asked Eskir as I worked.


    There was a chance he''d know, as he was the one they had been trying to kill.


    He didn''t answer.


    "Oh right," I said, "the voice thing."


    "They deserve a proper burial," he said, staring down at one of the attackers. I hadn''t cleaned up the bodies at all, only the damage to our wagon and the scattered arrows along the roadway. Bodies were common in Avengard, anywhere the Senvian Empire had tread. Nature had adapted to the excess volume of available carrion. All I had to do was pull them to the side of the road, and animals would take care of the rest.


    He had taken a knee beside the corpse, his hand pressed into the dead man''s armour.


    "They tried to kill you," I remarked.


    "Yes, they did. And they were my friends."


    I coughed. "Excuse me?"


    He nodded down at the corpse. "I spent ten years of my life growing up alongside this man. We were so young, so eager to see the world." He leaned in, as if the ambusher could hear him. "We shared our first drink when we were kids, brother," he whispered, barely audible. "I''m sure we''ll we share our last in the days to come."


    "They tried to kill you," I repeated.


    He gave a half-hearted laugh. "I don''t blame them for it. We are... ideologically opposed."


    I wondered what their ideology was. Or what Eskir''s was. The one he couldn''t talk about. He wasn''t satisfied with Senvia, that much was clear, but to what degree? "Ideology or not," I said, changing the subject, "you were useless today. I need you to take care of yourself."


    "Do you mind if we pause here for a bit longer?" he asked, ignoring my comment. Without waiting for an answer, he stood up from his dead friend and walked out into the forest, his footsteps fading into the underbrush.


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    "I need you to learn how to fight!" I yelled after him.


    I could have stopped him, or at least also shouted after him about the stupidity of walking out alone into the woods after a fairly large group had just tried to kill him. I hadn''t caught any of the archers, either. They were still alive, just pulled back. Hopefully running as fast as their legs could take them. Hopefully not lying in wait, their cloaking spell reactivated. All I knew was, I couldn''t hear them anymore.


    I could have stopped him. But I didn''t. I let him go, my eyes glaring into his back. I could have waited with the horses too, and stood at the ready in case he shouted out. Instead, I tied the horses, turned my back to him, and walked off in the opposite direction.


    Something he had said still bothered me.


    "Which one of us is the soldier?" I had asked.


    His reply left too much unsaid. "Right now, here, today? Me."


    He couldn''t fight. He could barely hold a knife. There were calluses on the tips of his pollex, fore, middle, and ring fingers.


    The ring finger was the strangest of them. For the rest, I would have guessed he was a writer with a three-fingered grip, possibly a scribe or researcher. Maybe he just had a strange grip. There weren''t many other tasks that specifically excluded the little finger.


    What if he played an instrument? Well, that was the optimist in me thinking. I loved musicians, especially the kind that didn''t announce an oncoming battle. That was Lyana''s influence, her passion for music. She couldn''t play her worth to a coin, but she did frequently try to sneak past me to enjoy the live music in the red-light district. The greatest conglomeration of musicians in the capital rallied to streets covered by hanging red lanterns.


    Despite its reputation, it was also a venue for food, festivals, and music. Better than that, it was filled with too many people not wanting to be seen. It made it easy for a hooded monarch, when she managed to actually sneak past me. When I realised and followed, I drew attention. But as long as that attention stayed on me, she was safe.


    I missed that music.


    But it was wishful thinking, that Eskir would be a musician. If he were, he would have carried an instrument. And he had come to the inn with suspiciously little, not even a rucksack of food. He didn''t even have a water filter.


    There was nothing wrong with being a writer, of course. Nothing officially wrong with being a writer. Writers were welcomed as speech-writers, educators, the keeping of archives through historical records and documentation, and authors. Most of all, and something nearly all of them shared, they were scholars, among the most influential members of society alongside Kindred, Deacons, merchants, artists, and sorcerers. Their word would reach where the voices of others would not.


    And therein was the pessimist in me, that nagging doubt.


    He said, "Right now, here, today? Me."


    Even if I were going to believe that hands like that had been trained to hold a weapon, his performance in the ambush had taught me otherwise. The man was no soldier. Not with any conventional weapon.


    And yet, he was calm. He might have been terrified during the ambush, but now he was collected. His mental recovery was staggeringly fast ¡ª faster than some Kindred, and Kindred were trained to be killers from birth.


    There was nothing wrong with being a writer, as long as he was the right sort of writer. As long as he didn''t touch any of the forbidden research of the world. I had a sick feeling in my gut that Eskir was exactly the sort of person who would dive into the kind of secrets that I didn''t even know existed.


    The wrong kind of scholar was the wrong kind of weapon to be carrying about in the world.


    I thought on this for three hours as I brushed my way through the dense woodland. We weren''t in Durn yet, but we were nearing Ghost Lake, which was infamously filled with the same sort of plantlife as the woodland country. The forest had already changed from the inn at the crossroads. There were fewer evergreens here, replaced by an abundance of willows and maples. When we reached Ghost Lake, those maples would vanish, and water-loving willows would take over. After that, it was the road''s dip into Durn, and finally, on to Bell Haven, a city surrounded by dense, scratching shrubbery.


    Eventually, I walked back to the wagon with a rabbit slung over my shoulder.


    Eskir was sitting in the clearing with a collection of sticks, stones, and leaves surrounding him, a circle fancier than the one he''d managed before. More time had been spent on this collection. His knees sank into a soft bed of lush green moss, and pebble-sized stones came up to form a frame around the circle, sheltering him in his meditation. Underneath the whole thing, dead leaves added additional give to the soil. He''d set up off the cartway that formed the dirt path where the wagon travelled. His meditation was in the grass, the verge just before the forest, with several mounds of dirt before him where bodies had been lain to a shallow rest.


    His meditation was the same ritual he had been doing before.


    I let him be until my fire was made and the rabbit was cleaned and cooked. A cookway charm wove into the air a therapeutic rasp of wood scraping against wood as it turned the spit over the crackling flames for me. I reached over with a pinch of salt and a small vial of oil to season the rabbit.


    It would have been lean. Wild animals were almost always lean. The oil helped the skin sear with a sizzle, and the spit was high enough that it wouldn''t cook too quickly, even as the fat and oil dripped down into the flames, encouraging them to hungrily claw their way up the rabbit.


    Eskir stood up and wandered over to the captivating smell of the meat.

 Chapter 10 — Meditation, Part 2

    Even after leaving Senvia, I had always eaten well at the inn at the crossroads. Moose, deer, bear, boar. It was mostly game, as I had plenty to hunt. Livestock were expensive, and with a deer, I could reinvigorate the menu for guests. Once, while I was still in Lyana''s court, I had the chance to taste the meat of one of the beasts of Refiriem at a special welcome banquet in Eaden Helm. It was rubbery and fatty, and I nearly gagged when the champion who had killed it described his kill, a three-headed snake that kept itself invisible in the tall, white grasses of the endless fields.


    It was strange, because as sickening as his description was, and as unpleasant as the texture of the meat, I enjoyed the taste. Like the sort of food you wanted to hate, but was actually quite a delight.


    Game was not new to me, but I was quite unfamiliar with rabbit.


    Eskir snatched the piece I handed him and dove into it eagerly. We had other food in the wagon, but it was salted meats and beans, root vegetables, and hard breads. Foods that would keep for months or years. They weren''t hot, they were sustenance.


    Clearly, Eskir found no hesitations in lean rabbit. I looked at mine with an ill sense in my stomach. I found myself remembering the Kindred champion''s description of his kill, and I nearly vomited over my rabbit.


    "Don''t eat meat?" he asked.


    "Don''t be ridiculous," I said. "Why would I have gone hunting?"


    "Well, eat up," he said.


    He said.


    To me.


    The person who had just fed him.


    "All my days," I breathed, "you are useless."


    He stopped eating.


    "You can''t fight," I said to his shocked expression, "You can''t speak. You need us to stop so you can, how did you put it? Do nothing. You exposed us to an ambush because you wanted to. Do. Nothing."


    "Well, I think they would have caught us anyway¡ª"


    "Shut up," I snapped, placing my rabbit down on my lap. "You said you should shut up if we stopped, so shut up. Stop talking. Or, if you insist on it, tell me who you are."


    "You''re talking too."


    "I''m the one keeping us alive!"


    "I''m only human."


    "Ah! You''re only human! Well, that explains any incompetencies you might have. A perfect excuse to not be able to look after yourself."


    He looked down, dejected. "I wasn''t raised my entire life to be the perfect fighter. I can lift a sword by technicality, but that''s about the extent of it. I''m a scholar, not a soldier. I shouldn''t even be on this road."


    "You called yourself a soldier earlier," I pointed out.


    He furrowed his eyebrows. "Did I...? Oh, I suppose... I shouldn''t have said that." He paused for a moment, recollected himself, and murmured an apology.


    I sighed. "I don''t want an apology, I want the truth. So you are a scholar, then? Why did you say you''re a soldier?"


    "Please don''t ask me that," he begged. A glint of panic flashed in his eyes.


    "Or what? Afraid your voice is going to stop you? It didn''t before."


    "Y-you don''t understand," he said. "This thing I have, curse, stolen voice, whatever you want to call it, it''s not... it''s not like it has defined limits. Earlier, I did something. Or rather, I didn''t do something. Say something, specifically. I didn''t tell you anything, but I hinted¡ª"


    "When you didn''t mention Bell Haven as one of the paths we could take from the inn," I suggested for him.


    "AH!" he shouted. "Why would you do that?"


    "What?" I asked blankly. "Do what?"


    "You realised! You told me that you realised! This isn''t about my vocal chords, it''s about my ability to express. I can''t tell you what made Senvia vanish. I can''t tell you who erased a city from the world. I can''t say why or how or anything like that. But it''s more than words. I can''t tell you by way of elimination. That''s too obvious. I can''t nod along, I can''t confirm what you say or suggest, none of that. I was able to suggest a path by not suggesting a path because it wasn''t obvious. If I were to say that it wasn''t any of the other three paths, it would be obvious that the correct path was the fourth."


    "So," I said, "you''re saying if you want to communicate something, you can''t? This stolen voice of yours will stop you?"


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    "Yes! Exactly! There are ways around it, but they''re not direct. The minute I realise, whether I want to or not, that you''ve figured something out, whatever method I used to convey it to you just joins my repertoire of forbidden actions. I can''t intentionally reveal anything to you, but I can do certain things that do not reveal any information. The problem is, once you figure out what I did, the information is revealed. And the action is banned. It makes it impossible for us to develop any form of code or strategy to communicate."


    "But if I don''t tell or hint to you that I''ve figured it out..."


    "Then the action won''t be banned. But I won''t know. And if I guess, if I figure out that you''ve solved the puzzle, then I can''t use it anymore. It''s frustrating, because it''s somewhere between intent and a lack of intent. I intend to say these things, to do these things, and as long as I don''t expect you to understand them, I''m safe. Theoretically, I could even come close to telling you the truth outright, but only if I knew that you wouldn''t understand it. I can talk to myself, if I know beyond a doubt that I''m alone. Just, I know that you have that... really sensitive Kindred hearing. So now that we''re travelling together, I can''t do that anymore."


    I paused for a minute, bewildered at his conclusions. "How in the stars did you figure this all out?" I said at last.


    "Trying to talk to people," he chuckled. "And a half remembered passage of a very old book that described something similar."


    "That''s... deranged. Like a perpetual game, and not the sort I like."


    "Yep," he said. "Deranged is one word for it. Would you like to know where it gets really messy?"


    "Okay," I huffed with exasperation.


    "I said something. Earlier, in this conversation. Something hinting at the truth. Half of me is hoping you spot it, the other half is... ah, I can''t say that. Sorry, you''re on your own. I would have pointed it out earlier, but this voice bit would have stopped me."


    I glared at him. "Okay Xera," I started with a sarcastic tone, "I''ve buried a secret in our conversation about my inability to divulge secrets. Have fun!"


    He shrugged, a playful grin curling up his lips. "I wish this were easier."


    I finally took my first bite of rabbit. It was cooling off, but the insides were still warm. It wasn''t quite as dry as I''d imagined, and nowhere near as gamey as larger animals. It was almost like chicken.


    "So just to summarise," I said, pointing a rabbit leg at him after a swallow, "you can hint at things, but only if you don''t think I''m going to catch the hint, and¡ª"


    "Correct."


    "¡ªif I do catch the hint, you can never use that hint again, unless¡ª"


    "Yes."


    "¡ªunless I don''t tell you that I''ve figured it out¡ª"


    "Yes."


    "¡ªwhich means I might start forming tangents and conclusions based on hints that aren''t even hints, just my mind finding patterns and implications where there aren''t any?"


    He nodded.


    I groaned. "Well, I''m not going to bother trying to recall this entire conversation and pour over every word."


    He laughed. "I don''t blame you. You know, sometimes I wish I were just the perfect soldier. So much less hassle. Much more straightforward. Kill or be killed."


    "That''s the second time you''ve called us perfect," I said, then pointed at the spear he had removed from the Kindred I had skewered into the road. "Does that look perfect to you? Did his body look like he was a perfect fighter when you were burying it?"


    "No," he whispered. "I suppose no one is."


    "So," I said, trying to change the subject away from more death, "Eskir who?"


    "Just Eskir."


    "You''re human, not Kindred. Shouldn''t you have a surname?"


    "Ah... I abandoned it."


    "You abandoned... why?"


    "I told you about my father when we first met," he said. "He saw the world as it should be. He died a long time ago. My mother took over his part in raising me. They were an odd match. He hated the world as it was, and she was a trueborn patriot. So I left. Once upon a time, I was Eskir Navarro. Now I''m just Eskir."


    "I''ve never heard of a Navarro before."


    "No, I don''t expect so. We were never very wealthy or renowned. My father was the human son of a nobleman from Espara, with all Kindred siblings. He was kicked out and disowned, and met my mother in Lucky Lake. They raised sheep, up on the cliffs that overlooked the lake. Just a shabby cabin, barely holding together. Pleasant in the summer, if small, but freezing in the winter. We lined the walls with wool as insulation. Not the best wool, not the best meat, just middling on all counts." He had finished his rabbit, and was staring off in a sort of trance at a random point in space.


    "Were you praying when I returned?" I asked.


    He looked up, surprised.


    "I know it''s rare," I said. "But I''ve met people who prayed. People from Lysina. They prayed twice a day, once to Laog in the morning, and once to Duun before bed."


    "I follow my Path," he said.


    Prayer was an odd concept to the both of us, but this meditation always did remind me of the concept. There were no gods to pray to, only his Path.


    "So," I said, moving on to our days to come. "Bell Haven. It''ll take us eleven or twelve days to get there at our current pace. If you want to stop the wagon to do... whatever you do, every day. Plus, I smell rain. Our speed will be cut in half if that happens."


    "Isn''t there an inn ahead?" he asked. "The Lakeside Inn. It actually has a name. I''m sure its accommodations will be suitable for a rest if it rains."


    We were long past the inn at the crossroads. Lakeside, bordering Ghost Lake, was a hefty hike from my former little abode. And it was, in all earnest, a good inn, and travellers passing on that very road would very often stop at both, if they could afford a night in an inn. We had a dedicated tavern, and they only had an alehouse for drinks. Their restaurant did sell some alcohol, but only the more expensive variety, not the basics that the alehouse would supply to thirsty travellers aplenty. That restaurant was in the same building as people slept, adjacent to the lobby.


    An unusual concoction.


    It was unusual to see a proper restaurant at all in an inn for travellers outside of any town, but our shared road was a secondary thoroughfare for four major cities. They weren''t any real competition to the inn at the crossroads, more of a complement to our own services.


    And despite their lacking a tavern, Lakeside was a sight to see, almost making the inn at the crossroads look as plain as a packstaff.


    Almost.


    It was a good suggestion, really. I shouldn''t have been quite as annoyed as I was at Eskir''s willingness to give business to our competition.

 Chapter 11 — Lakeside, Part 1

    We didn''t camp at the site of the ambush. No matter how comfortable I might have been on a battlefield when Lyana was alive, the thought of sleeping next to the dead made me sick. I used to practically bathe in blood, but since my time at the inn, only a wall away from Ana and Lucian''s fragile snoring bodies, I couldn''t stomach it. I didn''t even bother to ask Eskir how he felt, though I''m sure he would have said the same.


    His murderous "friends" buried and his meditation site thoroughly vandalised, he signalled that he was ready to leave.


    "Why take the trouble to destroy it?" I asked. "Why not leave it for the forest, or someone else who shares your path?"


    He shook his head, a dejected look barely present in his eyes. But he didn''t speak.


    The day was already nearing its end by the time we set out. We wouldn''t ride in the dark, and the days were still short in the spring, but the horses would at least take us away from the site of the ambush.


    We arrived in the evening of the next day. Immediately, the crowds made me miss Ana. She would have moved through them like a dancer surrounded by a shower of falling cherry blossoms, never touching any of them and maintaining such grace that they seemed to flow with her. She always seemed so at home in a a crowd like this.


    It made me wonder why she chose our inn, less crowded and more quaint than seemed to suit her.


    Probably for the same reason as I had come to stay there. It was home.


    But this place was densely packed, far more than our inn at the crossroads ever saw outside of peak seasons. And it was still spring, with soft mud and remnants of snow outside. A better time to travel than winter, but still weeks too early for ideal circumstances.


    I handed the innkeep, a stubby sort of man with greasy hair, a few pieces to spend the night. Then, Eskir dragged me to huddle over the serving counter of the restaurant.


    "Ah, beer if you please!" said Eskir.


    "Alehouse is that way," said the server curtly, but barely lifted his finger to point. Eskir turned around, confused.


    "Outside, through those doors," I told him. "They only serve the good stuff in here."


    "The good stuff?" he sputtered in outrage. "I asked for beer!"


    "Exactly," I snickered.


    "Now listen here," he started, "we weren''t all raised in a palace with the fancy folk. I want beer! What is this, some sort of class discrimination?"


    "Yes," said the server with a gruff laugh. He wore a shoddy black coat and ruffled cotton pants. He didn''t look like much, but the Lakeside wasn''t a place for looks. It was an inn for the wealthier, but not quite noble side of the population, notably higher end merchants and Kindred.


    This man was not Kindred, but I caught a flash in his eyes that said he was something. A sorcerer, perhaps?


    The doors to the inn popped as they hit the wall, and I could tell by the shingles that the regulars here liked to swing them hard. The doors needed replacing. I wouldn''t have tolerated that sort of behaviour in the tavern at the crossroads, but this was Lakeside. If anything, it brought a small smile to my lips.


    The server didn''t react to the doors.


    I enjoyed the rivalry, even if I happened to be the only one who ever thought about it.


    Well, that''s not entirely true. Lucian first mentioned Lakeside to me with a sneer. Look at him, not me. It''s all Lucian''s fault that I relished the subtle damage to their veneer.


    Two Kindred walked in, neither of them particularly remarkable.


    "Look," I whispered to Eskir, nodding at them. "They''re heading to Merity Point. See the gold dragon emblem on their pauldrons? And they''re dressed in full armour as they travel. They''re even taking the time to walk rather than run."


    "I want a beer," he complained.


    "Merity Point," I repeated. "The two of them might be able to build their own inn if they survive the season and pool the earnings. That''s the sort of clientele Lakeside gets, and you want a beer."


    "Eisbock," he said wistfully. "Eisbock like they had at Lucky Lake. Lucky Lake the city I mean, not the villages around the lake. Or a rauchbier, but one of the really strong, smokey ones."


    "You''re not getting drunk," I chided.


    "I am most certainly getting drunk," he insisted. "Yesterday, I watched you save my life by murdering my friends. And you think I''m staying sober?"


    "Ahhaha, keep your voice¡ª" I whalloped him in the gut, "¡ªdown."


    Eskir heaved out the air from his lungs with a huff. "What''s the issue?" he wheezed over my fist. "There''s about a dozen wars on across the country. Nobody''s going to be surprised at a Kindred doing some tiny violence."


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    "Shut up," I ordered. "We don''t know who''s listening." I dropped into a whisper and held his ear to my mouth. "Or would you like a third attempt on your life?"


    He scowled at me, but eased off, and slumped over to the counter of the restaurant, still holding his stomach. I may have hit him a bit harder than expected. There would likely be a large bruise there by morning.


    "Get me a fucking drink," he demanded.


    The server glared at him.


    "Fine, not beer! Cider, wine, whatever you have. Just get me something with alcohol."


    "Would you like to see a list of our collection," asked the server with an annoyed curl to his lip, "or shall I close my eyes and pick at random?"


    "You know what?" Eskir laughed. "The eyes closed one sounds good. Yeah, do that. Make sure to spin around three times first, so you get all nice and dizzy and don''t remember where anything is."


    The server scowled and stomped over to a large rack of bottles. It was carved from a deep red wood, probably stained oak, and sat over four massive barrel kegs. It wasn''t a particularly large rack, but the guests of the restaurant likely didn''t drink themselves to quite the same extent as Eskir was planning to.


    The server picked up a dark, unlabelled bottle of what may have been a reserva, or possibly cognac. It wasn''t wine. The edges of the bottle were square. It couldn''t have been whiskey, but that didn''t seem quite right. Despite the smokey brown colour of the bottle, I could make out a reddish tint from the liquid inside.


    The colour was confirmed when he poured a long, thin stream of dark red liquid into a glass stout mug.


    Eskir eagerly brought it to his lips and drank faster than he likely ought to. His lips formed into a look of disgust and alcohol dribbled from his open jaw. "Egh!" he spat. "What is this?"


    "Wine," smiled the server. "You asked for something random."


    "It tastes like feet."


    "Kidney beans," he said. "I''ve been trying to find someone willing to drink it. That''ll be three avens for the bottle."


    "THREE AVENS?" he yelped, spitting out what little liquid he still had in his mouth. Without missing a beat, he instinctively grabbed the mug with his other hand to stabilise it, making sure it didn''t spill. "What am I, made of money?"


    "That bottle has been aged for eight years," said the server. "You''re getting it at a startling discount."


    "Why am I buying the entire bottle?! Why has it been ageing for EIGHT YEARS?"


    "That''s what you agreed to," he cackled. "You said to pick at random. This bottle is only sold by the bottle. As for the age... well, I suppose I just haven''t been able to find anyone willing to buy it in all that time."


    "You''re a demon."


    "I hear that sentiment quite a bit when dealing with customers who like beer."


    "Oh," seethed Eskir, "I can imagine."


    "I suspect it''s your... composition. Mostly water."


    I couldn''t help myself from laughing. I handed the server the three avens, and a lettercoin as a tip. "Thank you, this was... this has been engaging," I said. "Come on Eskir, drink up. Don''t waste the bottle. Hang on, we should get a stopper, just in case you want to save some for later."


    The server produced one from his pocket. "On the house," he grinned.


    Eskir was nearly in tears from the taste lingering on his tongue. I wasn''t tempted.


    "There has to be more to this than kidney beans," he sobbed.


    "Red kidney beans!" said the server. "That, and I believe some dried autumn leaves shovelled off the ground. Oh, and some citrus for nutrients. This was made by a clever little fellow from Lucky Lake."


    Eskir paled. "My own country betrayed me."


    "Yes, citrus, leaves, beans. Oh, but he sprouted the beans, boiled them, chewed them, and spat them into a pot. He boiled the leaves too and added some sugar. Nectar, I believe, though I''m not sure from which plant. Not very much of it though, just enough to get the fermentation started. He had a name for the bottle, I think it was Mistake."


    Eskir gagged, choking on the memory of the taste of the wine. "You handed me a bottle named Mistake?"


    "Oh no, don''t be ridiculous. See? The label''s worn off. No, it used to be called Mistake. I don''t think it''s called anything now. Bit of a fun technicality there for you."


    "Burn in hell."


    "Oh, I intend to follow you straight down."


    "Why?! Why would you do this to me?"


    "You wanted beer. I told you where to find it. It''s in the alehouse. You didn''t want to listen. So I gave you the closest thing I have."


    Eskir lunged at the server. I grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back, forcing my companion to keel over in pain. He was still trying to wipe his tongue against his teeth.


    I braced his body against my knee to keep him from collapsing to the ground.


    "Thanks for the wine," I said, waving the server away. He left with a light giggle on his lips.


    "Xera, just do it," said Eskir. "Kill me now. I don''t want to taste this anymore. It''s not going away. It''s just going to sit there forever."


    "You''ll be fine," I said. "Oh, server?" I called over another one, this time a young woman. "I''d like to order some drinks. For the man pressed into my knee, he''ll take a hot-brewed vanilla nutmeg cider and rum. For me, an orc''s sunrise."


    The cider and rum was good, in my experience, at washing away taste. It had a habit of leaving a cinnamon-like craving in the mouths of the people who drank it, encouraging them to keep drinking for as long as we wanted them to.


    The orc''s sunrise was a favourite of mine. Lime and juniper mead poured over a fire-touched, half-grated orange rind, with just a dash of peppercorn syrup. We rarely served it at the tavern, as none of the ingredients were in hot demand by passing merchants.


    But Lakeside was more upper class, a resting spot merging a three-way intersection leading between Senvia, Bell Haven, and the northern road to the foothills, which connected as well to the main road linking Bell Haven and the hollow point where Senvia had been. There were enough nobles here to warrant it, even though the drink itself was fairly inexpensive if the ingredients were held on-hand.


    A different server passed us the drinks. Mine, a ceramic mug with a long handle that reminded me of an old milk pot, and his, a stout wooden mazer with steam coming out the top. I propped Eskir back up on a stool and left him with his cider and rum. He shot me a foul glance, then gave the bean wine server a side-eye before bringing the drink to his lips.


    "L''chaim," he said over the rim of the mazer. There was a faint glint of hope in his eyes, for what I assumed was anything different from what was already in his mouth. He tilted the mazer back, and the relief that fell over him was palpable.


    I laughed, and looked back around the room. I was rarely given the chance to be this aloof with security before Senvia vanished, and I now felt very much at home in this atmosphere, but I had to remember our circumstance. Twice now, Eskir had nearly died. I wanted to capture the next person who attempted to kill him. An interrogation could yield more results than Eskir''s lack of a voice.

 Chapter 11 — Lakeside, Part 2

    Near the door, his seat nearly pressed up against the veneer that kept getting pounded by the swinging inn door, one man sat alone with a drink in his hand. He had a hood partially up, covering only the back of his head, which was balding at what seemed an unusually early age. The hood came from a long, black trenchcoat, little-travelled and muddy. It was propped up between his arm and the table at a strange angle that may have been hiding a short weapon of some kind, but his eyes were hazy. He was drunk, probably barely holding himself up in a torpor. It wasn''t the alcohol that did it though. His eyes lacked a soul, a spirit for life, as though his entire life had just come crashing down around him. Someone in his boots may have been a threat, but not a threat with purpose. To me, that was the same as no threat at all. He wasn''t even Kindred.


    The two Kindred that had come in before had sat down and were chatting at their table about... something. I couldn''t focus my senses at all in this mess of a restaurant, I would have been overwhelmed. But they were energetic and happy, and had ordered drinks and food. Probably not a threat.


    There were five servers at the inn. The bean waiter, the one who had given us our drinks, and three others that wandered the place. In the kitchen were four cooks. No, three cooks. The fourth one was just running around trying to look busy. Was he the manager? None of them were a threat.


    A young woman had approached the counter to the inn. She''d just come in from outside, already drenched from a rain that hadn''t been there a few moments ago. A violent melange of wind struck the side of the inn, rattling the windows.


    "Please," she pleaded, "I just want to stay for a night."


    "No," said the innkeep, waving his hand as if to shoo her away. "Not for you. Not for any of you."


    Nothing about the woman stood out as particularly notable. She was normal-looking, albeit attractive, with hair the colour of honey and skin of a deep, rich cream made from something other than dairy. Probably from a northern country. Her accent was distinct yet subtle, something along the lines of Hearth Senvian or Kvassian.


    The bean server had treated Eskir poorly, and I thought it funny due to the circumstances. But now this, turning away a woman for no reason at all. I had never heard anything about the people at this inn being particularly rude, so why?


    "Please," she insisted. "Look outside. I can''t go back out there."


    "Then you should have stayed in Penwurst," he said. It was a small settlement between the nameless inn at the crossroads and Lakeside, and just like the two inns, was in the province of Lower Eckshire. We had kept to the main road in our rush, as Penwurst was a needless detour.


    Inns didn''t dot the main road as often as they once had, centuries ago. Senvia had a warring nature, and it discouraged isolated establishments.


    "I can pay," the woman said. "Please, you don''t even have to feed me, all I need is a room. I can''t sleep outside in this."


    "Get out," the server said with a warning tone. "And don''t you dare sleep anywhere near the inn. We don''t want your people around here. Keep walking."


    I felt an uncomfortable lurch in my gut. She was just a traveller who needed a room. I couldn''t even imagine why he didn''t want her around. She looked the same as him, and her tongue was fluent in the common language. It was nonsensical to turn her away. I opened my mouth to speak, but two men who had been standing nearby beat me to it.


    "You can sta¡ª y-you can stay with us!"


    The first one was tall and fat, with a beard dropping down to his chest and a powerful set of muscles in his legs. He placed a gross hand on the woman''s waist, and she shirked away in response.


    "Yeah!" shouted the second dumbly. "Um. Yeah!" This one was skinnier, but still fat, and substantially more built. They were only human, but so was she.


    "I''m good, thanks," she sneered, eyeing his lingering hand.


    The innkeep laughed. "Seems you don''t need a room that badly, then."


    I wanted to punch him for that snide. The implication in his words was revolting. I took a step forward, ready to snap the man''s hand at her waist like a twig.


    "Come on. What. What? Never been with a lad?"


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    "I have a sword of my own, thanks." she retorted. "Wanna see it?" With a shlick of steel, she popped a small short sword from its chape, its clean steel glimmering in the light of the arcane bulbs.


    "Woah, she''s spicy too!" shouted the second quite loudly before looking around, hoping for an audience of cheers and laughter. He was greeted with nothing. The only support for his comment came from his friend, who managed a fumbling "Yeah, spicy," in response.


    Both of them were inebriated, and the quiet fact that they were making a scene set into their minds. The surrounding atmosphere of the inn''s entrance and restaurant wouldn''t likely offer assistance to the woman''s plight, but nearly the entire room had turned to look at him with his shout. Dozens of sets of eyes locked on the man with a subtle air of disgust in their gaze.


    The second one, who had shouted, backed off, fumbling some sort of excuse about her being too ugly to share his bed with anyway. The first one still had his hand on her waist.


    "I will cut that off," she warned.


    "Nah," he laughed, then paused for a moment, as if he''d forgotten what he was laughing about. A blank look settled on his face, followed by an uncontrollable giggle. "Come to my room," he said again.


    I took another half-step forward, but felt a handful of eyes in the crowd spot the motion. Now wasn''t the time to start drawing attention to myself. I had only just given Eskir a lecture about it.


    "Get off me," she snarled, and somehow, that was the trigger that pulled his hand away.


    "Woah lady," he said, his voice touching on anger, "I''m only trying to help. Thought I''d show you a fun time. Fine, be that ¡ª be that way. Nobody''s going to help you." He kept backing up until his back slapped the wall next to the door. "Hey," he complained, "get out of the way!" He turned around, fist raised for a fight, his face close enough to kiss the wall. "Oh, you''re a. You''re not. You''re not a person. Wall."


    "What," asked the woman, turning back to the innkeep and pointing to her short sword, still showing a bit of bare steel poking out of the sheath, "this you''re okay with?"


    "Not my business," he said.


    "You''re out of your mind."


    The innkeep shrugged. "Get with the times."


    The bustling noise of the crowd returned. I hadn''t even noticed when it faded. I stepped up to the innkeep''s podium and handed him two small, triangular coins with four hollow points at the triangle peaks and heart. Two lettercoins.


    "Here," I said. "This should cover her."


    "Not a chance," he refused. "She doesn''t get a room, no matter how much you dish out."


    "Then she can stay with me," I said. He paused, eyeing me and debating if this was the hill he wanted to die on. I''d already conceded to the woman not getting her own room.


    "Fine," he snapped. "But you''re responsible for her. No funny business, you hear me? Nothing at all! If one sheet is out of place, it''s on your head."


    I nodded, then turned to her. "Are you okay?"


    "I''m fine," she snapped. "Who says I want to room with you?"


    "You don''t need to," I said. "But I don''t see what options you have. You''ll be safe."


    "So you say. You stood there for quite awhile before bothering to help. You could be Kindred, for all I know."


    "I am Kindred."


    She blinked three times, then inhaled and uttered a quiet "Oh."


    I gave an awkward smile.


    She adjusted her soaked jacket, then regained her posture. "I''m not going to sleep in the same room as a Kindred." She turned back to the innkeep, paused, and faced me again. "Are you with anyone?" she asked reluctantly.


    I nodded, and pointed at Eskir. "That idiot over there, sipping from the wood mazer."


    "Is he Kindred?"


    "Human. And he would probably lose a fight to a toddler, if given the chance."


    "How do I know that''s the truth?"


    I smiled, then popped my knife from my belt and handed it to her. "You could stab me in my sleep as easily as I could kill you awake. I''ll trust you, you trust me."


    Of course, I was never unarmed. Stoneguard remained on my finger. Even if by some chance, it failed to emerge again, it was still capable of sending out pulses that would at least stagger any human attacker. I wouldn''t tell her that, of course. But I didn''t mind giving up my knife if it made her feel more comfortable.


    And I couldn''t imagine a random, lone traveller still drenched from the rain and pleading for a room to be any measurable threat.


    She pointed to her sword sword. "I already have a blade."


    "And now you have two! Come on, I''ll introduce you," I said, and led her over to Eskir.


    "Picking up strays?" he asked, his face buried in the drink.


    "She needs a place to sleep," I said.


    "Oh, and I suppose I''ll be sleeping on the floor?" he complained.


    "I thought you didn''t feel comfortable in soft beds?"


    "I don''t! But I still want the choice of whether to sleep in a bed or on the floor."


    I shrugged. "Okay. Take my bed."


    "No, I want the floor."


    The woman gave a half-hearted grin. "Well," she said, "you were right about him being an idiot."


    He glared at her, then drank from his mazer. "Shut it, stray. Hey, can I get another of this stuff? It''s really good."


    I turned to the woman, offering her my arm to lay her drenched coat on. "I''m Xera. He''s Eskir."


    "Jenny."

 Chapter 12 — Jenny

    Talking to Jenny felt comfortable. Her voice, her tone, her accent blended together in just the right way so that every word she spoke sounded like home. It was like I''d stumbled through the Kvass Flats alongside the western Cinian mountains and glimpsed the Inner Sea. I could picture was the snow in her hair and her footprints trailing behind her.


    It wasn''t her as a person, nor her looks. Her voice just felt like... home.


    It wasn''t just her voice. She was friendly too, if wary. My being Kindred set her ill at ease, but she played that part off well enough.


    The servers avoided her with odd, hesitant glances, so I ordered her a bottle of wintergreen.


    "So," I asked as another server skirted around her, "why are they all avoiding you? An innkeep turning someone away in a storm..."


    "I''m not from around here," she said. Her boots were broken in and worn down. I enhanced my eyes only for a moment to glance at them, and I could see the leather beginning to peel away from the heel. Rough hand stitching bound it back together, but if she kept using them, they would soon fall apart more than a basic set of sewing skills would allow. Magic would be needed to repair them, or a new pair, perhaps one more designed for walking.


    But to wear out shoes to that extent was unusual. There were more elegant methods of transportation. Our guidance charm, for one. More costly, though less reliable, were automated movement charms, which abandoned the need for horses in favour of a self-steering, self-propelling wagon charm.


    Empress Lyana had relied on human drivers and well-fed, well-trained horses. They were more predictable. Though she did keep arcane alternatives on-hand.


    Still, the act of walking between provinces was unimaginable. Most of them were former nations, massive stretches of country that would take days to months to pass through. Most humans spent their entire lives without ever leaving their own little corner of the world, and the ones who did leave did not often do so on foot.


    "Where are you from?" I asked.


    "I''m going to need you a bit more drunk before I tell you that," she laughed. "What if you turn me away?"


    "I would never!" I exclaimed in mock aghast.


    "In that case, where are you from, Kindred?"


    I nearly said Senvia, but Eskir grabbed my arm. Jenny eyed his hand curiously.


    I shrugged him off, trying to make it seem like it wasn''t a big deal to tell her where I''d spent my life. "There''s a nameless inn at the crossroads three days west of here."


    Her eyes lit up. "I know the one!" she exclaimed. "I didn''t come from that way, but I''ve stayed there before, when Senvia was still around. I used it a few times. The owner was really friendly. I never saw you there though."


    I struggled out a grin. "Coincidence?" I lied.


    "Why did you leave? Must be quite the story for a Kindred to end up in an inn in the first place."


    "Quite the story," I agreed. "But I just left. We''ve only been on the road a few days." The look she gave me in return was something like longing. "You''ve been travelling for longer?" I suggested.


    "Awhile. Listen, I hate to bother you with this, but... I''m cold. I''m wet. I''m drenched by the rain. I''ve heard the rooms here have wood stoves in them."


    "Oh, I''ll bet they do," I said in disgust. "Sorry, it''s a rivalry thing. Come on. We already have a room. Eskir, we''re going upstairs. In your shoes, I''d come too."


    He glared at me, then looked down at his drink with an exaggerated frown.


    "Five more minutes," he pleaded.


    "I''m not your mother. Take as long as you want. Just be careful."


    "Be careful?" asked Jenny.


    "He gets into trouble," I said.


    "Why did you leave?" she asked again as we climbed a thin, creaking staircase. The staining on the wood had been touched up, but the inn was well-used. She followed behind, so I had to speak up to be heard.


    "You''re a very curious person," I noted.


    "And you''re still a Kindred," she said. "You''ll forgive me if I want to figure out what sort of person is hiding under all that."


    I stopped at the midway point between floors and turned back to her. "I''m the same as anyone else."


    She laughed in a dark, disbelieving tone. "No, you''re not. You might be human under whatever nature did to you, but having human parents doesn''t mean you''re the same as the rest of us. You weren''t raised like we were. You don''t value life like we do."


    My lips parted in shock. "All my days. Where did you get that impression?"


    She sneered. "Your entire people are mercenaries. Where do you think?"


    "Not all of them," I whispered. "And the ones that are... that''s how we were raised. That''s all we were ever taught we could be."


    "Exactly," she hissed, jabbing my chest with a finger. "But it''s not just how you''re raised. You''re born that way. It''s inevitable. You''re natural killers who turn a profit from war."


    A moment of silence hit us both. Her words send me reeling. It wasn''t from shock. This perception wasn''t new to me. It wasn''t even entirely inaccurate. This is how Kindred were raised.


    But this was the first time anyone had spoken so brazenly and so directly of the notion.


    I nearly opened my mouth to speak, but Jenny raised her arms in surrender. "I give," she said. "You''re giving me a warm place to sleep. Thank you. I can''t trust you, not really. But I''d be fucked without your help. You are what you are, and you can''t change that."


    I took a step into her, placing my foot between her legs and forcing her back. She was so much shorter than me, and I could have rested my chin on her head if I wanted to. "I wouldn''t want to change it," I stated bluntly, staring down at her.


    I stepped back and turned back up the stairs, wordlessly motioning for her to follow.


    We sat in a tense silence until Eskir stumbled in much later, barely managing to close the door behind him. Our lights were still on, the room illuminated by arcane lanterns, and he fell into the door to force it closed, collapsing his body against it.


    "Did you know?" he started, still facing the wall and pointing at his boots, "These are steep stairs. I hate these stairs. I hate most stairs, frankly. Do you hate stairs, Xera? I bet this new girl hates stairs." A low chuckle set into his throat, and a fit of giggling randomly fell over him. He clutched at his sides and nearly fell over before turning back towards us. His laughter died. "Oh."


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    "Oh?" asked Jenny.


    I rolled my eyes.


    "I thought you were kidding," he said with a lost expression on his face.


    I gave him an awkward, flat smile. "Nope."


    "Why were you not joking?"


    "You know I worked at an inn, right? I don''t like turning people away."


    He was still drunk, and the apparent revelation about Jenny did little to sober him up. "Xera!" he said, suddenly shouting. "How about this rare delicacy of a wine, a mere five avens? That''s vennies to a Kindred like you." He propped up the bottle of bean wine, still almost entirely full. The cork had been clumsily forced back in.


    "I was there when you tasted that, Eskir."


    He frowned. "Oh. Oh, Jenny! How about this rare delicacy of a wine, a mere seven avens? It''s worth every venny!"


    She raised her eyebrows.


    He frowned, pointed at her, then clasped his hands on the left side of his mouth, blocking view of it from Jenny, and whispered very loudly, "Does she know people are trying to kill me?"


    He was standing halfway between the two of us.


    Jenny''s ears perked up. "Um."


    "Fuck," he cursed. "How did you find out?"


    I pressed my face into my hands. "Eskir, please shut up and go to bed."


    He squinted for a moment as if dazzled by light, stumbled, and shoved a finger at me. "I don''t have a bed. She stole it."


    "You gave it up," I reminded him.


    "She stole it." He turned to her. "You stole it. I''m not sleeping with you."


    Jenny grimaced. "No thanks."


    "You stole it. And next you''re gonna murder me."


    Jenny turned to me. "Who''s trying to kill him?"


    "Anyone who finds him annoying," I chuckled.


    "So... everyone?"


    "It seems that way, doesn''t it?"


    Eskir gaped. "Hey!"


    "You''re drunk," I said. "Go to sleep."


    His head sank down to stare at the floor and he fell silent for awhile. Long enough that I even started to wonder if he''d fallen asleep standing.


    Jenny crawled over to sit beside me. "Where are you from?" she asked again. "Really, this time. Why did you leave the inn?"


    I looked at her with a question in my eyes. Where was she from? She looked like she might be from the north.


    Jenny understood, and sighed at the ask. "I was born in Espara."


    The province wasn''t north. It lay south of Carrack Bay, itself south of Lower Eckshire, near Dengal and Ibolan. Straight south from the inn at the crossroads.


    But Espara was a place of nobility, and the wealthy had flocked to it for centuries, regardless of the colour of their skin.


    She had been worried earlier, that I''d take the news of her origins poorly, but Espara wasn''t deserving of such a reaction.


    "That explains why you hate Kindred so much," I noted. "Most people treat us like brutes, but Esparans think of us more like jewellery than people. Those... arranged marriages. Maximising the chances of having Kindred children. Kindred, and people with Kindred ancestry, all trained up to wear pretty clothes and act noble."


    Jenny laughed. "Yeah, Esparans are... well, not totally wrong. More Kindred are born there relative to their population than almost anywhere else. But no, I''m not from Espara. I was born there, but see, I''m human." Her voice turned to malice. "My brothers were Kindred. My sister was Kindred. A great match, my parents were. Four kids, and only one was born human. So they gave up after me, to avoid pushing their luck."


    "Did your family move?" I asked, wondering if it would be appropriate to attempt to comfort her.


    She laughed again, this time her tone filled with a cruel sarcasm. "My family? My family were street vendors on the spice road in Dengal. My family could barely afford the cart they sold their masala from. The people who gave birth to me were never my family, they were just the group I had the displeasure of being with for the first seven years of my life, until they pawned their family shame off to the people who would become my real parents, with a sum of money that seemed insignificant to nobility."


    I motioned to Eskir. "His father too, apparently. Same boat as you." I placed my arm around her. She shivered, and leapt away, returning to her own bed and keeping her eyes locked on the floor. A small twitch in her hand betrayed the fact that she had nearly gone for the knife I had given her.


    "I''m sorry," I said. "That''s a valid reason to resent my kind."


    She looked up, an expression of halfway relief, halfway insulted. "That''s not why I hate Kindred."


    "Then why?"


    She turned her head away, as if to shake it, but stopped mid-motion, her face quivering in anger. A twitch came to her upper lip, curling a thin smile into an expression of distaste.


    Don''t, was the warning.


    Don''t ask.


    Eskir clued back into consciousness. "Fine," he said, bordering on a shout. "I''ll sleep." He sagged, collapsed, face pressed against floor, and immediately began snoring.


    "We''re leaving at dawn," I said. "Be up before then."


    He didn''t stop snoring, but a low wail of complaint sprouted from his lips.


    "You''re strict," noted Jenny.


    "I used to be military," I said.


    "Naturally. Not a mercenary?"


    I shook my head. I had never been a mercenary. That was the standard employment for Kindred. Had I gone into mercenary work after Senvia vanished, any guild would have taken me. An Emperor''s Guard? I would have been valued equal to the champions in Eaden Helm, at least three thousand avens per season. With the strangers that kept coming to the inn at the crossroads, though I would have turned them all down anyway, I had decided at some point to value myself at four thousand avens per season.


    Lucian paid me and Ana one aven each per day. Something modestly closer to a normal wage.


    Of course, innkeeps and servers didn''t need to spend most of what they earned on equipment that could tolerate a Kindred''s strength. But I hadn''t really cared about the money anyway.


    "I was in the Imperial Senvian military," I said. It wasn''t a total lie.


    "Not much better," remarked Jenny. "Where are you heading now?"


    "To Bell Haven."


    "Why?"


    I paused for a moment, trying to think of some excuse. "I have no idea," I said honestly. "I suppose we''ll find out when we get there. You?"


    "Same," she said. "And then down south to Heldren, probably."


    "We could travel together," I suggested.


    Without a word in response, Jenny turned over and waved her hand through the air to motion ''off'' to the arcane lantern on her side of the room. It dimmed, yellow lights seeping back into the confines of the red square, and finally extinguishing entirely.


    I did the same with mine, but it flickered for a moment before turning off.


    "Cheap lights," I muttered. We mostly used candles at the inn at the crossroads. The wax wasn''t as expensive, and fire was always reliable. It was predictable. It didn''t depend on the musings of the magic in the earth, or the presence of water in Ghost Lake. It flickered as it should, not randomly when you didn''t want it to.


    I pressed my head into the pillow and nearly closed my eyes when a thought occurred to me. I lifted the blankets, waved the light back on, and stood up from bed to walk over to the door. It was well-built, but the latch on it was unreliable, and it could be bypassed by anyone who had a key. I had known it from the moment I''d used the door the first time, and heard the clunk of the bolt falling into the strike plate at an angle. Heavy, yes. But any flexible and firm piece of material would lift it right up. A carved piece of willow branch would do it, or even a thin piece of leather.


    I picked up one of the room''s cabinets. It was heavy, though light to someone with my strength, and I propped it against the door at an angle, fixing it below the knob.


    It wouldn''t come close to stopping a Kindred, but it would at least force them to make some noise when they crashed open the door.


    I hadn''t been planning on sleeping anyway. Jenny was there, her hand gripped on the hilt of my knife hidden under her pillow in a way that she thought was clever, and there was always the chance of someone breaking in from the outside. I hadn''t slept in days. I didn''t need it. I could power through this for weeks, if I needed to.


    But I couldn''t count on not sleeping. There was always the chance that I would, and in that event, I needed some measure of a plan.


    The windows were sealed shut. My guess was, there was too much fog from Ghost Lake to allow patrons to open them in the middle of the night. It had the potential to cause havoc to the wood. In this case, it meant I had one less thing to worry about.


    I heard a shift behind me. Jenny. She was watching me, trying to stay unnoticed herself.


    I checked the door twice more, then returned to my bed, propped the pillow up, and stared at the door.


    "Okay," I heard her whisper. "I''ll travel with you."


    And then she was asleep.

 Chapter 13 — Sunrise

    "Explain this to me again. Why do we need to wake up before dawn?"


    I sighed. It was the third time Eskir had asked the question since I''d shaken him awake. The first time, I had ignored it. He had barely been conscious, his eyes barely managing to squint. Even if I had answered him, there was no guarantee he would register it as actual language, and not the remnants of a dream he wasn''t even sure he''d yet escaped.


    The second time, I told him it built character, and he responded with a groan while he clenched his head.


    This time, I dismissed him by saying, "You signed up for this."


    In truth, I wanted to leave before anyone found us.


    Jenny and I sat down for breakfast in the restaurant, while Eskir set up his meditation leaves outside. "You''ll be hungry later," I had warned.


    "We have plenty of food," he reminded me, pointing to the wagon. "And besides, I''m going to be cramped in that thing all day, with an extra passenger too. With a hangover. Let me have a few moments alone."


    "Maybe he just wants to sleep," laughed Jenny. I couldn''t help myself from a lighthearted chuckle, but I was less concerned about Eskir''s hunger or fatigue, and more about his safety. I couldn''t watch him constantly. It wasn''t practical, and it wasn''t exactly conducive of sanity. Still, he''d had too many close calls, and I''d only just met the man.


    My consolation was that he''d somehow survived until he met me. However he''d managed, he was managing. It wasn''t as if there were some conspiracy to keep the two of us either apart or dead. Eskir might have had a stolen voice, but for all intents and purposes, I was just a random citizen of the capital.


    When Jenny came to the table, she brought two mugs of steaming, black coffee. I took a moment to breathe in the smell, and for the first time, noticed just how brown her eyes were. They simmered just like the coffee, glowing in the light of the morning sun through the windows.


    My plate of breakfast hit the table with a careless toss from a passing waiter. I grabbed his arm and pulled him back. He eyed my strength with a glimmer of realised panic, as if he''d only now realised that it was a mistake.


    "My apologies," he insisted. "I thought, since you''re sitting together..."


    "Why?" I asked bluntly. "She''s done nothing to you."


    He paled. I was still gripping his arm, but he managed to keep a firm tone in his voice. "She''s not welcome here."


    "Why?"


    "She''s For Peace."


    I released the server, and he scurried off apologetically. I turned to look at Jenny again, a knot in my gut from the thought of my invitation. Her expression remained neutral, but I could have sworn there was curiosity hidden in there, wondering how I was going to react. "It wasn''t where you were from that you were worried about telling me," I said.


    "You''re Kindred," she replied, as if in response to my accusation.


    "If you don''t like my kind," I started, "that''s fine. But I was honest with you about that. How do they all know you''re For Peace?"


    "I''ve been here before," she said. "Before the incident in Eaden Helm, they were more receptive."


    "And you had nothing to do with that," I suggested.


    "Of course not!" she spat, suddenly enraged. "We''re not all fucking terrorists."


    "And I''m to believe you because...?"


    "Well, I didn''t kill you last night."


    Against my best intentions, I had fallen asleep the night prior. Only for a short time, but it had happened.


    "I could have let them in," she continued. "Whoever was at the door. I could have moved the cabinet. But their intentions were pretty obvious, and I would never do that."


    My breath stopped. "Someone was trying to get into our room?" I nearly got up and rushed out the door to check on Eskir, but the fatigue of it stopped me. What little sleep I had taken wasn''t enough, and not for the first night in a row. I wasn''t so tired that I''d suffer on a battlefield, but instead of rushing over, I opened up my hearing. The comforting shuffle of Eskir''s boots on wet, sloppy ground brought a breath of relief.


    "Yeah," said Jenny. The sound of it split my ears open in shock. My fingers rushed to fill my ears, crying out from the sudden pain. I''d almost forgotten I was in the middle of a conversation.


    She gave me a weird look, then continued. "It woke me up. I heard some shuffling, and someone tried forcing the door open. Eskir woke up too, but he was so hungover that I''m not even sure if he remembers. He just fell asleep again right away. You were completely out of it."


    I looked down at my coffee and saw Jenny''s eyes reflected in it.


    "Look," she said, "if you don''t want me to travel with you, that''s just fine with me. It''s clear you''re trying to protect him, but that''s not enough for me to trust you. As far as I''m concerned, you''re all killers."


    "This coming from a member of the For Peace movement," I remarked.


    Jenny rolled her eyes. "It''s in the name? For Peace. I want peace."


    "Your organisation might disagree with that. They happen to be called For Peace too, you know."


    "A small minority," she said.


    "A very loud one."


    "Fine, a very loud minority. But I''m not one of them." She grabbed my plate, poured the bacon, toast, blood sausage, baked potato, and boiled egg into a small muslin sachet, and left the beans and roasted tomatoes. "Eat mine instead," she snapped, then slammed her chair back and stormed out of the restaurant.


    I felt a collective sigh from the staff, as if they had been whispering to themselves, wondering when she would finally leave.


    The ground outside was drenched. The spring storm had lasted all night, and Eskir had given up on sitting in the mud for his meditation. Whatever had been left of the snow near the Lakeside had now melted, and the free-flowing water that had not collected into puddles was trickling down the slope to the lake that bordered the southeast edge of the road that would bring us to Bell Haven.


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    I walked out of the restaurant, my belly full. It was a poor substitute for a lack of sleep, but at least my strength had returned. Eskir was seated in the wagon, waiting in the back with the horses ready.


    "Are you ready?" I asked.


    He nodded. "I thought Jenny was coming? I saw her walk off east with her pack. That''s the direction we''re going."


    "Not travelling with us," I said. "She''s For Peace."


    Eskir cursed. "Of all the... and I was asleep in the same room as her!"


    "Relax," I chided. "If she wanted you dead, she had plenty of opportunity to kill you."


    "And you trusted her!" he continued, ignoring my response. "You brought her in!"


    I hoisted myself into the wagon and gripped the reins. "We can''t go around refusing to trust anyone," I said. "We do that, nobody will ever trust us. How to you expect me to get any of that information you''re unable to share if I treat everyone with suspicion?"


    Eskir slumped a bit into his seat with a grumble, preparing for the jolt as the horses broke the wagon free from the caked mud around the wheels. The wagon had been under shelter all night, but from the moment it left its respite shelter, the wheels were near immobile again, and it took the horses a minute to break the friction lock that held it.


    "Sorry," he sighed. "I''m a little on edge."


    I chuckled, trying to ease his nerves with the laughter. "Look at it this way. How many people can say they''ve had assassins after them? Consider it a point of pride. You have bragging rights!"


    He gave me a semi-bombastic side-eye. "I worry about how you view the world sometimes."


    I suppose, that is what I get for growing up a Kindred in the capital.


    The city of Senvia was different. More removed from it all. The empire spanned half of Avengard, and in most places, war was at the forefront of culture. Kindred were raised for it. Save for those born in Espara or Eaden Helm, or born to Kindred parents, our kind were taken from families we would never know, and raised nearly from birth to fight.


    Human armies still existed. They were the regular force, an army maintained and conscripted for what most nations might otherwise consider normal war preparation and safeguarding. Kindred were, by tradition, mercenaries. There were a few exceptions to this, of course. Elite guards, like me. Other sensitive posts, elite members of more potent militaries, and high ranking individuals who served on the front lines. Human generals did the paperwork. Kindred generals walked through the mud.


    But Kindred demanded a high price, far higher than any human. A single trained Kindred soldier in a mercenary guild could command, at minimum, five hundred avens a season. That was twice what an average human would earn in a full year. Even untrained Kindred, as rare as they were, could demand one hundred avens a season.


    If I had decided to pursue mercenary work after Senvia''s disappearance, I would have valued myself at four thousand avens per season, the same rate as champions like Triton and Nymeria.


    Of course, over half of that would have gone to equipment. Armour, weapons, training, arcane items. Most chose to follow a Path, and for the ones who chose it, they also paid a tithe. As a member of the Royal Guard, those expenses didn''t exist for me. They were provided to me for free. I never had to find work. I was employed year-round, and made two thousand avens in each year. My food, training, armour, even my housing in the Emperor''s Spire, was all free.


    It wasn''t exactly the noble life most people expected. Not for me. It might have been, if I''d sought it. I was there to do a job, and I acted like it. Most of what I made was banked in institutions located in the city, and as a result, the vast majority of it had vanished with Senvia.


    But that didn''t bother me. I had five hundred avens on my person as I travelled with Eskir, and more in an account in Bell Haven. I had wealth enough that I never needed to worry about it, and an unwillingness to flaunt it.


    The humans on the other hand...


    The Emperor''s Spire was a palace in a league of its own, with each floor dedicated to its own purpose.


    The lower steps were a gathering place for tradesfolk and wealthier merchants. From there, the marble steps led to the legal courts, which had originally been a gallery of war accomplishments until Lyana''s rule.


    Above there were government offices and passageways and pedways to adjacent structures, most of which either housed the workers of the spire, or the services and infrastructure that nobody wanted to look at.


    There were the kitchens near the peak, where the smells of the food would carry themselves upwards and away from the rest of the spire. That was in part, I think, influenced by vanity. It was difficult for some to avoid the temptation if they could smell it all the time. There were a few suites located above it, attracting nobility who wanted the view. Or the smell. But they were a more select few.


    Beneath the kitchens lay the royal court. Those rooms, adjacent to the throne room, were where I slept and spent most of my time. My home was a single room underneath the stoves of the kitchens. It was the third location in the spire. My first was as a child, when my services were first sold to Lyana, and I was stationed in the training grounds near the base. After she took a more specific interest in me, I found myself moved to a larger room with too many cupboards, dressers, and seating.


    It took time, but when I felt more comfortable speaking to the empress, I asked her to move me to a hideaway storage space I had found, somewhere out of the way.


    "Let me pick somewhere better for you than this," she said, staring around the dim corner with a look of aghast. "You''ll freeze in the winter and boil in the summer. That window over there doesn''t deserve the name, it''s too thin and disturbingly tall. And you''ll be cramped beyond belief."


    I shook my head. "I don''t need much."


    She gave me a look halfway between pride and disappointment, as though she couldn''t decide which one she wanted to feel. "Xera."


    "Thank you, Empress."


    And it was. Freezing in the winter. Boiling in the summer. Exactly what she predicted. And it was perfect. I rarely spent much time in there to begin with, and it was well-suited to my wants. I didn''t want to show off my income or buy fifteen armour sets. I bought weapons, but in modest amounts. If I broke one, as was common with Kindred, I replaced it. I kept a small armoury of what I trained with. A spear, sword, axe, daggers, staff, flail, and logically, a training hammer. It was all to make sure I could use anything I could essentially use anything at my disposal as a weapon, from a broom to a rope, or even a plate.


    How long had it been, I wondered, since I had to do that?


    Well, how long had it been since I''d fought at all? That ambush had warmed my joints for the first time in a very, very long time. It didn''t sit well with me anymore. My muscles fell back into dealing out death far too comfortably.


    But by the stars, did it feel right. The splatter of blood, the satisfying crunch of armour and ribs. Bodies launched back as I struck them like a game of whack-a-mole.


    It was like I was back with Lyana again. Not travelling for politics, but for war. She was never very fond of war, but when it happened, it happened.


    And it happened. Again and again. That was Senvia for you. Every year, a new separation state. Every year, a new province conquered. Often the same ones, cycling. What was left that bordered the empire? Elann? The impenetrable gates under a mountain. Refiriem? The endless grass sea that consumed entire armies, never to be heard from again. The westfjords, too far away to be profitable, and on the other side of Alvenor too. Cinia, the tiny country hidden in the mountains? Senvia in all its might wouldn''t have stood a chance.


    I hate war. I always have. Even as I sat there in that wagon, my bones relishing the memory of blood, my mind revolted against it.


    This is not what I am, I told myself.


    This is not what I want to be.


    This was never what I was meant to be.


    Still, Lyana took me with her in the conquests. She didn''t need a guard, not really. She was just a human, and I was never able to lay a finger on her unless she wanted it. A scythe in a field full of briars. I could look up to her as a god, if I believed in deities.


    So why did she take me with her?


    Was it her fault that my bones craved blood? Or her fault that I hated my longing for it?


    It didn''t really matter. I''d never resent her for it. It was my joy just to be there with her, to watch her rule, to witness her prove herself again and again to people who demanded it.


    She wasn''t the first woman to sit on the throne, but that didn''t change their thoughts on the matter. She wasn''t even Kindred, they kept muttering, as if that make a difference to someone in government.


    As if that made a difference to her in battle.


    Flawless, I remembered. Absolutely fl¡ª


    "Xera," said Eskir, jolting me back to reality.


    I shook myself back to awareness. The wagon bumped against a pothole in the roadway.


    "You''ve been talking to yourself."


    My face turned beet red. "If you tell anyone, I''ll break your kneecaps."


    He perked an eyebrow, chuckled, and pulled a thick straw hat over his head. "My lips are sealed," he laughed. "After all, I apparently know how to keep a secret."

 Chapter 14 — Deacon

    It was midday when we caught up to Jenny. She hadn''t taken a side road, as Eskir had loudly been theorising, but horses only walked a little faster than people, and we had stopped already for Eskir''s meditation.


    The wagon bumped as it struck a pothole that Jenny had jumped over. They were common in these parts. We were well past Ghost Lake, but the humidity still remained, and the river ran alongside the road. Frequent freeze and thaw cycles in the winter had water finding its way into the gaps in the cobblestone, then turning to ice to force it apart. Even filled with bramble and dirt, it left a permanent scar on the road. But our wagon wobbled down the cobblestone anyway. It was easier than the rutted dirt cartways designed for wagons, now muddy and hindering from the last night''s storm.


    "My my," snarked Eskir as we rolled past. "Look at who it is."


    "Fuck off," she spat.


    "Oh!" said Eskir, "And she''s spicy, too. I didn''t expect that from a pacifist."


    She stopped in her tracks and spun to face Eskir. I reached over to pull back on the reins, signalling the guidance charm to stop the horses.


    "I''m not a pacifist!" said Jenny. "And we''re not terrorists either. That''s bullshit the empire sends out in the papers. I''m just sick of war."


    Eskir grinned. "Pacifist."


    Jenny leapt for the wagon, climbed up its side, and decked Eskir in the head. He fell over with a "Aah!" half laughing and half shouting from pain.


    Jenny straightened up and demounted from the wagon''s sides. She brushed off her coat, still wet from the previous night, that she''d wrapped around her waist like a belt. "Just because we''re not the ones fighting, doesn''t make it right," she lectured. "Just because Kindred are basically gods on a battlefield compared to the rest of us, doesn''t mean they should have to be. War should never be waged as a business, and that''s exactly what the the guilds are. That''s exactly what Kindred are."


    Eskir shouted a mock wail. "Hurry Xera, we must flee! Flee for our lives! The pacifist is gonna get us!"


    I couldn''t stop myself from grinning. With a signalling motion, the horses resumed their march, leaving Jenny scrambling to reach the wagon to hit Eskir again.


    "Oh, don''t be like that!" said Eskir. "It''s better than being a terrorist, right?"


    She leapt, catching the wagon and climbing on board. She fell into Eskir, but the tone of rage she had carried in her voice was half gone now, and she was hitting him repeatedly with a thin, sarcastic smile.


    "Bite me."


    "Not my type, my lady. Sorry."


    I let out a sharp huff of hair from my nose, then turned my head to look at the road ahead of us. The mud was clearing to dirt. We were reaching the edge of where the storm had passed by. I signalled the horses to move to the cartway, where the dirt would be easier on both the wagon''s wheels and the horses themselves.


    There was a figure in the distance, who had been obscured prior to that by the horse sitting in front of me. Whoever it was still had a ways to go before reaching us, and it was only one person anyway, but by habit and instinct, I expanded my senses and took a look.


    A soft crunch greeted my ears before anything else. He was walking. His boots were probably soft, not clad in metal or any true measure of armour. Not an ambush, probably not even Kindred, just a lone traveller.


    "Xera, help me!" said Eskir, splitting my ears in pain. "She''s hitting me! The pacifist is hitting me!"


    I squinted my eyes, straining for a better look through a lingering fog. At my signal, the horses stopped.


    "Well, isn''t that ironic," Jenny shot back at Eskir, then whacked him again.


    I looked back to them, reducing my hearing and vision enough to communicate. "You should probably stay with us for a moment, Jenny."


    "What?" yelped Eskir. "Why are you inviting her on? I''m being ravaged here!"


    My smile was gone. "Well, treating everyone as if they''re about to murder you doesn''t make for a very pleasant social life," I said.


    Both of their expressions faded back into a state of aggravated boredom.


    "Wow, killjoy," said Jenny. "And here I was, having fun."


    "And if she does murder us?" asked Eskir, still trying to joke. He was more used to my demeanour.


    Not this time, Eskir.


    "Don''t worry," said Jenny, "you''re not exactly my top priority right now."


    "I''m more worried about that," I said, my voice clear and sharp enough to get their undivided attention as I pointed to the figure approaching us. They looked at me, confused.


    "That''s a Deacon."


    Eskir paled.


    "I''ve never met a Deacon before," said Jenny, tentatively climbing forward over the food and supplies that lay stocked in the wagon. "But I''ve heard things. Most of the stories don''t make much sense though."


    "They''re true," said Eskir. "Doesn''t matter what you''ve heard, they''re true. Each and every one of them. Xera, we need to leave. Turn the horses around, have them break into a gallop. Or we can hide in the trees, untie the horses and flip over the wagon, make it look like we got attacked by bandits."


    I didn''t say anything.


    "Please," he urged, "we need to go."


    "We''ll stay," I said. "It''s fine. Just stay calm."


    "Xera!"


    "He''d see us anyway," I reasoned. "He''s not so far away that he can''t recognise that we''re not already flipped over or racing away from him. It wouldn''t do us any favours to make ourselves look suspicious."


    "By the path, you''re an idiot sometimes!"


    My hearing and vision were enhanced again. I could hear Eskir''s heartbeat, louder than mine. I could smell the sweat dripping down his sticky skin.


    Before any other part of the Deacon came into proper view, I recognised his eyes. To this day, I cannot tell you what colour they were. From that distance, my focused senses were far greater than a Deacon''s, and I knew he would not have been able to make out any details. Yet still, when I found his eyes, they found mine.


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    "Please," he begged, coming over to lay his hands on my legs in supplication. "We need to get as far away from here as we can."


    "It''s just a Deacon," I said.


    He scoffed in disbelief. "Just a Deacon? Just? Do you have any inkling what''s walking towards us right now?"


    "I''ve spent my life in court," I said. "I''ve met more Deacons than you have."


    He grimaced. "Right, so you have no idea then. The stories are just stories to you. You haven''t seen." He grabbed my shoulder and shook me. "We need to get out, NOW."


    "We''ll wait," I said, shaking him off.


    The Deacon was still far away, but close enough now to see him properly. He was dressed formally, as Deacons were in court. Most likely, he had been at the site of a battle. He may have even fought.


    He wore grey robes, covering him down to the ankles. Around his neck, he wore a sash the same colour as blood, which also adorned his cuffs. Across his chest, and would have been on his back as well, sat the three cardinal stars of Pathoticism, and the central star in the heart of them. Each star shone with an ethereal light, woven from an arcane fabric. I never knew what it was. There was an ironic venerance in their clothes.


    He was young, this one. Older than me, certainly, but young for a Deacon. In his forties, at most. I could see, even from there, the barely greying hair and the lack of creases on his skin.


    "I''m about to start running myself," said Jenny. "If the stories... if any of them are true. I thought they were just myths. Superstitions."


    "They''re true," I said. "But we''re going to wait here."


    "Nope," said Eskir. "Nope, nope, nope. Fuck that. I''m out."


    "I thought you were going to help me," I said. He had already braced his hands over the side of the wagon.


    "I didn''t think you''d just sit there and wait for a Deacon to walk right past you!"


    "If you leave now," I warned him with a growl, "that Deacon will be the least of your problems."


    Eskir gulped. Jenny shot me an alarmed look. She knew the threat wasn''t intended for her, but it worked just as well to keep her in the wagon too.


    He''d had some training at identifying Kindred, he had said. He could see the flash of power in my eyes. I knew that from his expression.


    "Please," he whimpered.


    "We''ll be okay," I repeated, and turned back to face the Deacon. My ears had begun to ring from the conversation, but I kept them perked.


    He was close now. So close. I could make out his fingers, worn from time and use. Even for someone who spent so much time writing, the Deacon''s hands were aged, as though he had in fact been twenty years older, and all the passage of time had been concentrated into them.


    Eskir vaulted over the wagon, then crawled under the thing and kept himself off the ground by securing himself above the body bar. I rolled my eyes. I could feel everything he did, every shuffle of the wood. If there would be trouble, he was more likely now than ever to cause it.


    "Don''t let him know I''m here," he hissed.


    "Yes," I said flatly, "I''ll make sure not to tell him."


    He was almost upon us now. The scatterings of dust and rain and fog that had been laid down into the earth by the seasons greeted his arrival, and the world opened up to him.


    "Xera," Jenny started, but I reached by and placed my hand on her shoulder. It was as much reassurance as I could offer. I released my focus. If I kept my senses heightened with a Deacon nearby, my body would never have forgiven me.


    The Deacon''s footsteps shook the resolve of the earth, and he came up to the wagon with a smile.


    "Xera," he said. "Is that you?"


    "It is."


    He chuckled. "You are dutiless now. There is no need to be so formal."


    "I understand." The blood in my veins ran cold.


    "Who are your companions? This one here, and the man hiding under your wagon."


    I felt Eskir shift in his position and swear under his breath.


    "Passersby," I said. "I''m offering them assistance in their journey."


    "That is good," he said. "I trust you are keeping to your Path?"


    "I am."


    "And when was the last time you entered battle, girl? I see no blood on your clothes. I see no armour on you at all, barring your vambraces."


    "Ereyesterday." It was some twisted luck that I wasn''t technically lying.


    "I see. Well done then, I applaud you. It is not easy to wage violence on the road." He did not applaud. He did not move his hands at all. They were unnaturally motionless at his sides.


    "Hello mister Deacon," piped Jenny with a squeak in her voice.


    I wanted to tell her to shut up.


    He smiled, and said "child" in acknowledgment. "And you down there, hello," he said, nodding his head to where Eskir was hiding.


    "What''s your name?" she asked. Why was she still talking?


    He laughed. "Am I your first Deacon, girl? Well met, then. I was not given a name."


    "How do people call you?" Shut up, shut up, shut up. She continued anyway. "Your relatives? Your followers? What if you married?"


    "I will never marry. No Deacon will. I have no relatives, and anyone who chooses to follow me will call me Deacon. I am the Fifth Deacon of Senvia. That is all."


    I turned in time to see her expression shift from awe to fear. I could see her eyes ask, that''s all? That was all he was? Not even the first, but the Fifth Deacon. And he said it so passively, as if he truly were humble in the statement.


    "I have a question, if you don''t mind."


    The Deacon''s gaze was the only thing that stopped me from slapping her. I gave her as cold of a warning look as I could without letting the Deacon see it.


    "Be wary of answers you assume to need," the thing in front of us said.


    She eyed me, then asked it anyway. "I need to find someone. How? Is there a spell, or a¡ª"


    The Deacon raised his withered hand. "If your Path takes you to them, you will find them. If not, then it is not your duty. Pursue only enlightenment, my child."


    I could feel my fingers reflexively tightening, forming fists that I braced against my legs. His focus moved away from Jenny and settled back on me. "We must all stick to our Paths," he said.


    I nodded. "Good day to you, Deacon."


    He smiled. "It has been copacetic. Yes, good day, Xera."


    I could feel his first step hit the dirt, even without my senses. I knew the other two must have felt it too. His second step parted the dust like a giant stepping into the ocean and crashing a towering wave against the shore. I held my breath as he walked away. I could feel each of his points of impact on the ground reverberate in my bones. Only when the rumbling stopped, and he had almost turned the corner of the treeline, did I finally allow myself to breathe.


    It took Eskir several minutes more before he finally asked, "Is he gone?"


    Jenny sat rooted next to me, unmoving. I couldn''t bring myself to muster the horses. They hadn''t panicked, at least. To them, Deacons were like anyone else who might have given them hay. Horses didn''t know the stories. Their souls, or minds perhaps, were different enough that they could ignore his presence. At most, it would have made them feel uncomfortable, but his departure eased them again.


    "He''s gone," I said. His words still hung in the air like the words of a god commanding the earth to remember him. It has been copacetic, he''d said. The very thought of it gave me dread.


    Eskir collapsed from the position he''d been holding himself in and fell to the cobblestone below.


    "Ereyesterday?" said Jenny. "What are you, a fucking scribe?"


    "They like formality," I said. I tried to accompany it with a shrug, but my shoulders didn''t cooperate with such a lax motion.


    Eskir stood up, his front plastered in mud, and shot her a judgmental look.


    She looked at him innocently, then whispered "Ashran." A small spout of water shot from her wrist and drenched the man, cleaning off most of the mud. He raised his arms in a tee. His eyes had slammed shut in rapid reaction.


    I turned to her in shock. "You know Ashran?"


    "I''ve been studying," she said.


    "That''s a difficult spell," I remarked.


    "Well, it''s not like I''m slowing time."


    Eskir spluttered out a mixture of mud and water. "I hate both of you. So much."


    I grinned. "Well, you''re going to have to walk until you dry off. Don''t want mud and water all over the food."


    "Or us," Jenny added.


    "How are you both so calm?" he demanded.


    My hands were still shaking. I had hardly noticed, but the adrenaline was evaporating from my system. Every part of me ached, and there was a tensing pain in my back. I could see Jenny''s expression shift to a grimace as well, and I wondered if she''d even realised how much her body had been on alert.


    "I guess we''ve just got bigger balls," I chuckled.


    It was difficult to stop the tremble in my voice, but Jenny also forced out a quivering laugh.


    "I hate you both," he repeated. "Let''s not do that again."

 Chapter 15 — Snared, Part 1

    Beyond our encounter with the Deacon, our path turned south. The road to Bell Haven was not straight from west to east, it flowed north and spiralled around small fields of boulders and dense trees before dipping south into Durn, all the while mostly sticking to rivers and creeks that flowed against our direction of travel and into the ocean that now lay behind us, and the occasional foray between brackish ponds formed centuries ago by a flood and kept moderately saline despite the rain thanks to salt deposits at their basins.


    The old road went up along the hillsides, now long since buried by brambles, overgrown roots, and young poplar trees. That was the way of old roads, left unmaintained to rot like ghost towns. There were many of them coming out of Senvia, old logging roads and paths down to the base of the cliffs. But the fields outside of Senvia were covered with thick layers of moss and grass, deep enough to sink into. Those roads were not quickly overgrown. They were replaced with burrowed holes by small furred things, anthills, and tufts of stiff blue grass working its way in between the gravel. Even the logging roads grew in not with trees, but with tall threads of that same blue grass, pigweed, and fireweed.


    When I was twelve, Lyana had taken me down one of them. It led through a thin rowan forest filled with rhubarb and ferns. The floor of the pathway had overgrown itself with wild, violet thyme. The edges were adorned with the same bilberries that I had on occasion found on the cliffsides.


    I never told Lyana that, or she''d have strung me up. I had officially been in her service for six years, but it wasn''t until a few months before that that I had actually come to know her, and see her on a daily basis. Once that happened, she very quickly learned how many of my lessons I had taken to skipping in favour of exploring. I excelled at fighting, naturally, but training was tedious and boring. Even though he was Kindred himself, the palace instructor was an inadequate sparring partner.


    So I collected berries. Rather, I ate them straight off the branches, and made sure to wash my mouth before I came back, so that I wouldn''t be caught.


    It was when I wasn''t hungry enough to eat the palace food that she caught my purple-stained tongue, and found out where I had been. It turned out, I wasn''t very good at cleaning the stains from it.


    She was less concerned about the berries, I think. If anything, she smiled at the thought.


    But, she said, "Never, ever go near the cliffs. Do you understand me?"


    And I nodded. Of course, I understood. No more cliffs.


    Of course, I immediately resolved to go back at the first opportunity, as soon as her back was turned, and eat more berries. Until the next morning, when she took me to that fire road, showed me those same berries, and gave me a bucket to fill.


    We brought back heaps and loads, and I stuffed even more into my pockets, not realising they''d be squished as I walked.


    We made a randalin and pies with them, and the next morning, she took me to train. Not with my instructor. She sparred with me herself. Twenty four years older than me.


    "I don''t want to hurt you," I told her. Her age and experience wasn''t enough of a handicap to make it an even fight. I was good enough to spar with my instructor, himself a Kindred. Lyana was completely human. She couldn''t even use magic, however much she''d studied the theory.


    "You won''t," she said, and readied her staff. I held a copper short sword, my weapon of choice against my instructor. Dulled, but metal, as was custom. It was well sized, and I could cross the distance between us with ease. A staff would have reach, but only if she could stop me from crossing the distance.


    And I knew she couldn''t. I was twelve, and no human would have been able to stop me. I knew the very truth of this, of my strength. So I grabbed a wooden sword instead, and promised to strike her gently. She smiled.


    I struck, and I found myself flat on my ass. No matter how many times I came at her, the outcome never changed. I was a flurry, a storm, and increasingly unforgiving. And to her, I was just a twelve year old.


    It was years before I saw her fight to kill, and it remained the only the one time. She hated fighting. It was laughably rare for an Empress of Senvia to be such a pacifist, but she was. Her first approach was always to talk her way out of problems, and she held me back from brandishing Stoneguard at attackers.


    When she was finally pushed to fight, it was against a hired band of Kindred. Who hired them, we never knew, but they had the resources to hire all of the Guild of Delmest. It was a fifty-some year old guild based out of Eaden Helm. The entire complement was there, even the guild leader.


    We fought for our lives, the royal guard. I was among them, carving my way through as many of the enemy as I could. These were professional members of a mercenary guild, each one experienced from years of battle. I had only sparred to train. It was all I could do to keep up with them.


    But Lyana was different. She was a scythe in a field of briars. Each strike was perfect, and I had to focus my senses just to see them for their speed. I could see more clearly than ever, that each time she had beaten me in sparring, she had been trying to pay me the compliment of at least making it look like it was a challenge for her.


    She was small. Even if her foes had been human, they were still each twice her size, and mostly men. They had thick armour and blades wider across than her head. In a contest of pure strength, she would have lost to any of them, even without the fact of what they were.


    But she stood against them all, a single human in a field of Kindred. Their strength didn''t matter. She used her own more efficiently, and moved without effort between their blades like a blade of grass in the wind.


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    The guild went extinct that day, their doors later shuttered and their support staff interrogated. Delmest died.


    When the battle was done, she greeted us without a single speck of blood on her body. She hadn''t even been wearing armour. Mine was dented, and I had suffered a massive gash down my leg while the others of the royal guard had worked to protect me as the youngest among them.


    There were six of us, one for each guard ring. Only two were unsurprised. The rest of us were left in awe. I recall asking something along the lines of why she even needed us. The others were not very happy with my question.


    All of that, and even Lyana was still wary of the Deacon we encountered later on that same day. He blessed us and wished us well, and congratulated us for the progress made on the Path were were all supposed to share.


    It was the same Path the Deacon had told me to keep to, on that day with Eskir and Jenny. The Path of the Warrior. The three cardinal stars of Pathoticism, of east, west, and north. The Path of the Warrior was the zenith star, and the one true Path for all Kindred.


    It would not be night for some time, and we sat there in silence, away from its watchful eye as we passed out from the province of Ibolan that stretched around Dengal and Bell Haven, and followed the road south into Durn. The canopy sheltered us from the sun, and within the hour, we were greeted by a new form of silence.


    The silence was the way of Durn. There were scuffling sounds of rodents and birds, and the occasional deer unafraid of malicious hunters within the boundaries of the ancient forest, but the sound of wind died away. The traces of civilisation vanished. Here, the path was not cobblestone, but dirt, tended only by traffic that never seemed to show itself to outsiders.


    More than that, the forest changed. Near Senvia, it was rowan trees to the northeast, and more concentrated expanses of pine, fir, and birch to the southeast. Those evergreens remained through to the inn and the intersection with Durn.


    But from that point on, the evergreens began to fade. There were still many, but they now formed the minority of the forest, replaced with oak, spruce, and trees I didn''t recognise. There were trees in these woods that nobody really knew the names of anymore, nearly one-of-a-kind old growths, some more than a thousand years old. The animals here were different, almost touched.


    "Is there no other way around?" asked Eskir.


    "We''re already inside the forest," I reminded him. "We won''t be here for long."


    "I''ve never been," he said, the nervousness in his laughter palpable. "This is my first time. Have you heard the stories? The forest grows on the backs of ancient dragons that have slept for an eon. Old magics and dangerous folk."


    "Really?" I mumbled, only half paying attention. My gaze was drawn the the increasingly thick treelines, cautious for another ambush.


    "They say the people of Durn hold power in their eyes and leave stardust in their wake."


    I hadn''t taken Eskir for superstitions. Then again, we were chasing a conspiracy organisation that had likely been responsible for the capital vanishing into the sea only moments after an emperor had been assassinated.


    And this forest felt as though it carried that sort of weight.


    "They''re stories," I reassured him. "Creation myths and gossip. I''ve been through Durn. The people here are strange, but no stranger than you, in your own way."


    "What, so they''re afraid of me more than I am of them, is that it?"


    "Afraid? Oh no, not afraid. You''re a stranger in their territory. They won''t fear you. But they will be curious."


    Jenny had remained silent, her arms crossed over her chest, but her ears perked up at the sound of a squeak from the woods.


    "Did you hear that?" she asked.


    I nodded, and she dismounted the wagon.


    "Jenny!" yelled Eskir. "Don''t wander off!" But she was already gone. "Or do," he grumbled, rolling his eyes. "As long as we get to keep moving."


    I reached over to pull back the guidance charm and halt the horses, then lifted myself over the walls of the wagon to follow her.


    "Xera!" he protested.


    Jenny was kneeling somewhat into the edges of the forest, next to a snare. It had caught a small, besnouted animal by the rear leg. The snare was not enough to even slice through its hide, yet it struggled against the wire in desperation, not realising that the more it fought, the tighter the snare became. It was something like a rabbit, but not like any rabbit I had ever seen, almost halfway to being a fox.


    "What are you?" she whispered to it soothingly.


    "I''ve never seen one of these before," I said.


    "It''s adorable," she said angrily. "Here, hold it while I release the wire. It''s kicking too hard for me to get a grip."


    The kicks were pulsive and instinctive. I gripped its leg still with one hand, and gently held its head against the ground with the other, careful not to use too much strength against the mammal.


    Jenny loosened the wire carefully, then smoothed out the fur it had marred. "I''m sorry," she said. "I hope that feels better. Go on now, you can go. It''s okay, go!"


    The animal didn''t leave immediately. It tested out its leg a few times, wary of its restraints, before suddenly darting off into the forest.


    "This wire, it''s not..."


    "It''s not from Durn," I agreed, taking it from her. "It''s steel. I wonder who placed this."


    "To place snares here though..." she trailed off.


    I nodded. "Even though this is technically the main road, I didn''t think anyone would be that brazen."


    "Well, they are at war." Eskir stood behind us, looking down at the snare in my hands. "Durn and Merity Point. Bigger than any other provincial war, from what I''ve heard. Senvia vanishes, the empire crumbles, even Durn gets invaded. I''m not surprised people have taken advantage of that."


    I looked up at him. "Why haven''t I heard about that? Some skirmishes along the border, sure. That''s old news, been happening since Merity Point was founded. But war? Actual, proper war?"


    He gave a sombre nod. "Apparently, Merity Point was pushing in, and Durn finally retaliated to reclaim their land."


    "They united?"


    "Yeah," added Jenny, "Perchy Myr finally voted in, so it''s official. The whole province is off to war. Merity Point''s fucked."


    "They''re rich," pointed out Eskir. "Merity''s gold alone means they''ll be able to hire all the Kindred they ever need."


    "Durn has all those old magics you were so scared of," she teased widening her eyes in mock horror. "Even that spooky dragon. Or do you take that back? Even Senvia didn''t fuck with Durn."


    He sneered and stuck his tongue out at her.


    "Okay, children," I interrupted, standing back up. "We still have a long ways to travel."

 Chapter 15 — Snared, Part 2

    Eskir led the way back to the wagon.


    "The world''s gone to shit," said Jenny, as she climbed back aboard. Eskir''s expression contorted, as if to ask what she was still doing there.


    "Everyone''s turning on each other," she continued, ignoring him. "And war was bad enough before Senvia vanished."


    "War''s the natural order," I said. "It''s an empire. It happens. Senvia expanded its border to survive."


    Eskir hollered a laugh. "Okay, even I have to agree with the pacifist on this one. Senvia was fine. It didn''t need to expand." I opened my mouth to speak, but he cut me off. "No, don''t start on about the separatists. They weren''t trying to split off as a hobby. They had a reason for leaving. Senvia could have fixed the problems rather than invading them again."


    "Everyone''s a politician," I mumbled.


    "What was that?"


    "Nothing!"


    "We live here too," he said. "We have a right to care about politics, don''t you think? Even if we don''t all have democracies."


    Jenny leaned back in the wagon, eyeing him as a wide-toothed grin spreading across her face.


    "You can''t just fix the world with the drop of a coin," I interjected. "It''s not as easy as changing a few laws. Lyana was trying her entire reign to make Senvia less warlike. It takes time to change a culture."


    "It takes less time if the people are on your side," said Jenny. "And even less if you do bother to change the laws. But she never did."


    I shifted in my seat as the wagon hit a bump. I didn''t like the way either of them were talking about Lyana.


    "It wasn''t like that," I blurted, but held my tongue when I felt heat rising to my cheeks.


    Eskir looked at me with an odd look in his eyes. It wasn''t pained, but his features softened in much the same way. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed his eyes and stopped.


    I paused to stare at him, wondering if he''d speak. Something told me that the words he wanted refused to come.


    "Okay, you two need to stop doing that," remarked Jenny.


    Eskir shifted back and raised his eyebrows. "Doing what?"


    "That weird look! You''ve been giving her the weird sympathy eyes even when her back is turned. Is she dying or something?"


    I slowly turned in my seat, my face contorting in mock amusement. "Am I dying?"


    I knew what she meant, of course. But Jenny didn''t know about Eskir''s stolen voice, and I wasn''t about to tell her.


    Eskir laughed, but my focus had already shifted. I didn''t have time to worry about Jenny''s suspicions. The path behind us had darkened. It was still midday, but the light had faded where we''d been only minutes before. The horses were on edge, ready to bolt.


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    "What is it?" asked Eskir, sobering his laughter when he noticed my shoulders tense.


    I glanced from one side of the wagon to the other. I couldn''t see anything, and in the rapidly growing dark, focusing my eyes wouldn''t do me much good. It wasn''t just shaded, it was a rolling pitch black, and growing darker by the moment.


    Jenny noticed the dark itself before Eskir. Her hair flipped around when she turned, looking for the cause.


    "Hunak," I announced. "Get down."


    "Hunak?" said Eskir, bewildered. "Here? Why?"


    I grabbed him and forced him down to the floor of the wagon, then tossed a sack of rice on his back. He let out a grunt of air as it hit him.


    Jenny didn''t need me to tell her twice. I reached for her after Eskir, but she was already down, tucking herself down in between the bales. She knew magic, I remembered. Likely not a great deal, but at the very least, she understood the severity of Hunak.


    The horses had stopped, ignoring their guidance charm. The dark had surrounded us now, and even with my enhanced vision, it was difficult to see beyond the confines of the wagon. I couldn''t even see the heads of our horses.


    A faint screaming came from the other side of the road, deep in the forest. Not a panicked scream. A war cry.


    "Is it another ambush?" whispered Eskir.


    I held his head down against the wood. "No. Be quiet."


    I could hear Jenny shivering, but not from the cold. It was the adrenaline coursing through her body.


    "I''m starting to get the impression that you two do this a lot," she said.


    I gave one more look around the wagon. There was nothing. Nothing that could be seen. But I could hear the pounding of feet against the ground from ahead of us, and more coming from behind. Faint lights trickled through the forest, barely bright enough to break through the darkness. It wouldn''t enough to remove their disadvantage, not when their opponents would have been marked to be immune from the darkness.


    I gathered two rough wool blankets from the bottom of the wagon, pulling one up from beneath Eskir''s legs and the other from where Jenny had been sitting, and vaulted over the wooden sides.


    They were so close now, and we were caught dead in the heart of both. Merity Point and Durn, I could only assume.


    I hurried to the front of the horses. I could see the fear and confusion in their eyes, with only the guidance charm keeping them from bolting. Though, bolting may have been better than freezing in place.


    We had two, both powerful draft horses. I tossed the first blanket over the chestnut coloured one. It didn''t quite calm it down, as I felt its coat bristle from the sudden occlusion. But it was better to stare at a blindfold than off into a darkness thicker than an overcast midnight. One was like closing your eyes. The other was an ocean, and everything in it lurking just out of sight.


    I couldn''t even see the wagon from where I was standing. I knew it was in front of me, but I might as well have been swimming a thousand leagues under the sea for all the light I had to see.


    I wrapped the second blanket around our other steed, taller than the first, and pitch black on colour. In daylight, his coat shined in the sun. In that moment, I nearly poked him in the eye just trying to get the blindfold on.


    I darted back to the wagon, making sure to keep a hand following the body of the chestnut until the wagon came back into view. It took longer ¡ª I nearly had to touch it before I could finally see it. Eskir and Jenny must have been unable to see anything at all with their human eyes, even with their faces pressed against the wood.


    I climbed in, and Eskir let out a startled gasp. "It''s me," I said. "Just keep quiet, no matter what you do."


    I let my hand float near his hair, so I could feel his head nod.


    I fumbled around a bit, eventually managing to grasp a few more sacks of food to toss on their backs, before settling in myself. We had food, but not enough of it was conveniently sack-shaped. I had only packed two blankets when we set out. I would need to ride it out with next to no protection from the sky and potential falling arrows.


    I tucked my body in as best as I could, took a deep breath, and waited for the charge.


    "They''re coming."

 Chapter 16 — The Dark

    There''s a funny thing about breathing in the dark.


    It''s the only thing you have to focus on. There might be sounds and smells and the cold wood pressed against your cheek, but your breathing is louder all the same, slamming against your ears like a panicked drum.


    When you breathe in the dark, you''re little more than a wild animal, running for its life from the thing three times its size that somehow manages to be just as quiet.


    In the dark, you have no eyes. Only your breath.


    In the dark, nothing can move. Until something does.


    My breath lapped against the wood, washing back at me like the crests of a wave dancing against the shore. Had I been one to require spectacles, they would have fogged up instantly. It wouldn''t have made any difference. Little did. I could hear my breath, and my heart pounding, but the more I focused and enhanced my hearing, the less effective it was. I knew Eskir and Jenny were there with me. My leg lay on Jenny''s hair, and Eskir''s thumb was pressed into my spine, for what I could only assume was his own reassurance that I hadn''t vanished for good.


    It hurt.


    But that''s the other thing the dark tends to do. Everything hurts so much more. You stub your toe, you''re going to feel it. Even this, Eskir''s thumb, wasn''t something that caught me off guard. It was persistent. But still, it hurt more than it would have in the daylight.


    But it wasn''t the pain of his thumb that let me hear my own heart pounding in my chest, even without any augmented senses. That was steady beat of charging feet, a prelude to the all-out clash of swords that would follow it. A full brawl that would definitely, absolutely kill Eskir and Jenny if they stuck their heads out, and would most likely leave me a broken, battered body. If I was lucky.


    This spell, this darkness, granted the ones marked by it their vision. Otherwise, everyone else was drowned in it, left to carry torches and hope that a few steps of light would be enough to save them.


    It wouldn''t be.


    I didn''t know which side cast the spell. Durn or Merity Point. Either way, it was almost certainly Hunak. It meant occlude in Astivian, one of the languages, one of the original peoples, of Durn. But the Durnians frowned on it, old taboos and ridiculous superstitions. Hunak was a primal spell with many variations, but it excelled at the dark.


    When their blades met, it was not metal on metal, but metal on bone and flesh. Spears carved through the cracks in armour, nearly unimpeded by the need to aim for the gaps. Their opponents could barely even see them, let alone defend themselves.


    Still though, to come in with such speed, carving their way through the army... That was when the realisation came to me. They were Kindred. Nearly all of them, far more than Durn would muster for a single attack. These were from Merity Point, a fairly young province carved from the hills that once belonged to Durn, and so rich with gold, it could likely have hired out all of Eaden Helm.


    Hunak was not to give them any manner of tactical advantage. It was to blind them. Rob them of their safety. Make them feel fear, to leave an impression in the memories of any survivors.


    The battle didn''t land directly on top of us, or we would have died with no way out. That part was nothing short of a miracle, as we''d stopped directly on the path. Instead, they crashed into each other in the forest, by my best guess a fair distance away, but the pressing force of Hunak drained my hearing too much to tell.


    I felt Jenny''s hand reach up to my leg, then feel its way upwards, trying to find the shape of my body and crawl her way up.


    "Jenny?" I whispered, still wanting to verify it was her, even though her movement required my leg to lift up and free her trapped hair.


    She crawled up my body, staying as quiet as possible and as low as possible to the wood base of the wagon. "Xera," she whispered, but even as her mouth approached my face, her voice was distant. "We''re going to die if we stay here."


    Her breath touched the surface of my nose. She was probably only just in front of me, but still invisible in the black. From the placement of her breath, her lips were probably just in front of mine. Her hands were now clasped around my waist, as if to affirm my presence.


    I nodded, then remembered she couldn''t see me. "Fine," I said in what must have sounded like a whisper to her in this dark. Anything was better than staying here, waiting to die.


    I moved my hand back and tapped on Eskir''s head. He pushed himself up to level with us.


    "Let''s go," I said, louder to him than Jenny, to make sure they both heard. It was less worrying, speaking loudly in the dark like this. Merity''s forces could have heard us with their immunity to the spell, if they weren''t preoccupied with slaughtering Durnians, but they were the only real threat besides the threat of tripping over a root we couldn''t see. Everything else would have been muffled by the dark.


    Eskir didn''t move, so I picked him up like a kitten and set him down on his feet.


    "Grab what you can," I said quite loudly. He knelt over immediately to rummage around for anything his hands could recognise, and I leapt over the side of the wagon to ensure nothing was waiting for us.


    To my relief, Stoneguard assembled itself properly. It was obscured in Hunak, but it was, at the very least, there. I swung it, hoping its length would slam into anything or anyone that wasn''t supposed to be there, but my weapon felt only empty air.


    "We''re clear," I said, sheathing Stoneguard before remembering that they wouldn''t hear me. The wagon shook, and one of them vaulted off from the rear. The other disembarked from the other side.


    "Where are you," came a faint shout from Jenny across from me.


    "Jenny?" called Eskir at the back. "Where''d Xera go?"


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    "I''m here," I yelled, pressing one hand against the wagon in the same way as I had done before with the horses, and walked around it, feeling my way through the dark. One hand extended out, trying to feel for him, but missed, and I smacked right into the man. He let out a groan of pain, but straightened himself and lashed out without warning to set his understanding of his position, poking me in the eye. Both of us cried out in pain.


    "Are you okay?" shouted Jenny, her voice still barely carrying over to us.


    "We''re fine," I said. "Walk towards us, keep a hand on the wagon."


    "What about the horses?" said Eskir.


    I grimaced. "We''ll have to leave them," I said. "We can''t get them out of here like this, and they wouldn''t be particularly cooperative like this anyway."


    Jenny''s hand fumbled on the wood. "Are you two still there?"


    "We''re here!" I shouted, and realised that I''d spoken the instructions to her earlier, so I repeated them at volume.


    Eskir''s hand groped my nose. "Ah, there you are."


    "I''ve been here the whole time, ass-wit."


    "How are we supposed to move away from the battle in this dark?"


    That was a problem for all of us. If the dark were not so insipid in sound, ears might have been somewhat useful, and we could have felt out way down the road like bats. But the road was not the place to go. The wagon was untouched and alone for now, but it would soon draw the attention of the victors, and the path would become a marching ground for a displaced raiding party.


    The only option was through the trees that I could not see.


    Another hand, not Eskir''s, rammed itself into my back. "Ow," said Jenny.


    I thought for a moment, then reached down to pick each of them up, and tossed them over my shoulder like newborns.


    "Waa! Hey! What the fuck!" screamed Jenny.


    Eskir contained his swearing, and his reaction, to a mere "SHIT!"


    "Be quiet," I urged. "I''ve got the best chance at navigating, so you''ll have to deal with it."


    I took two steps forward. Nothing. Another four steps. Still nothing. By now, we should have been off the main path and into the forest, but the ground beneath my feet was still harsh, slippery dirt. My direction was off. I adjusted, putting the sounds of war directly behind me, and walked in the direction I assumed was west.


    A tree met my face with the confident speed of someone who knew where the were going. In an instant, I was down on the ground, my head spinning in delirious dizziness.


    Similar groans of urgent pain came from my companions. Jenny hoisted herself to her feet first, I knew, because her voice came from above. "Let me guide, please. Don''t just fucking pick me up like that."


    "You?" groaned Eskir. "Guide? We''re trying to live, sugarshit."


    "You''re trying to get us killed. Let me guide."


    I didn''t stand up right away. Instead, I rolled on to my knees and pressed my forehead to the ground. My headache was slowly, very slowly, subsiding, being replaced with nausea and a spinning blackness.


    "I found it," said Jenny.


    "Bullshit," said Eskir.


    "I found it," she said again, more firmly. "I know magic, you fuck."


    "You splashed me with some water. You need to do more than that to ''know magic,'' you fuck."


    "Want to get splashed again? I''m happy to do it."


    "You can''t even see me, how are you going to¡ª"


    "Ashran."


    A swift sound like a waterfall slapped against a hard surface, and a few drips of water fell onto the back of my neck.


    "Fuck you," cursed Eskir.


    "Not my type."


    I pushed myself to my feet, reaching out a hand on either side in hopes of grabbing on to one of them. I didn''t feel clothes or skin, nor the bark of a tree, but something squishy and soft.


    "Jenny? Eskir?"


    "Yes?" they answered in unison, with very distinct tones.


    "Who am I holding?"


    Silence. That was my concern. I withdrew my hand, and a soft hiss came from whatever I had just been holding.


    Hunak meant occlude. It carried more danger in it than mere darkness.


    "Don''t move, either of you."


    "What the fuck is going on?" said Eskir. "Who are you holding?"


    "I''m proud of you, you little shit-turd," mocked Jenny. "That''s, what, half a dozen now in less than a minute? You''re learning how to swear!"


    In a flicker of movement that neither of them were likely to have caught even if they''d been able to see it, I unleashed Stoneguard and buried it in whatever was standing beside me. A squelching noise was the only answer. No scream, no release of air, just a squelch, like stomping on a bug. I didn''t want to discover what it was that I''d just hit. I didn''t want to discover how many more of them were lurking around.


    "Okay," I said. "Now run."


    "Seriously, what''s going on?" Eskir repeated. "What was that sound?"


    Through the dark, a faint light burst into life, barely illuminating a set of hands.


    "Ashran," whispered Jenny. The light blossomed from her fingertips. It was barely anything, and Hunak suppressed it further still, but it was there. Fingernails that I hadn''t previously noticed were covered in dirt and grime, but most definitely belonged to Jenny, poked out from the small light. She had them wrapped around it delicately, like a handle. Her chest became somewhat visible on the other side of the light from me, but only just.


    My eyes locked in on her for a moment, before I remembered. I turned around, looking in the direction where I''d swung Stoneguard. Nothing was there. I looked at my weapon, expecting to see blood or any other bodily substance, but it was voice. Shivers ran up my spine.


    "We need to go," I said.


    "One more minute," Jenny urged, still whispering as if to give herself more focus. It came out like a whisper, at least, but it was louder now than her first one. The noise of the world grew every so slightly louder in the presence of the light. "I can make it bright enough to see. I''m not good at most things, but I can do this at least."


    Eskir''s face came into view. He was leaning down, eyes right in front of her light, ogling the magic.


    "It''s really quite pretty when I''m not getting drenched," he said.


    "Keep it up, and you will be."


    "Only you kept saying you''d ''found it''," he said. "Found what?"


    "The weak point in the spell. Hunak is one of the spells that can act as a dampener to suppress magic. I''m not strong enough to do this with the dampener, but there''s a thousand, thousand weak links running through every piece of space. I needed to find one."


    "Both of you, shut up," I said. "Something''s out there."


    "It''s ready!" The light grew brighter, until Jenny''s face and feet came into view. I sighed with relief. She hadn''t been hurt, obviously, but seeing her uninjured was reassuring. It was a relief, but the shiver of dread still lay into my spine as a warning of what was right behind me.


    She stooped down to pick up the rucksack she''d plucked off the wagon. It was filled with potatoes and carrots, and quite heavy for her. I sheathed Stoneguard back into its ring and took it from her, shouldering the weight of it over my back. It was a good pick, and we were lucky she''d happened to grab that one of all of them. Eskir had grabbed three bags, being his own rucksack, Jenny''s backpack, and a sack of salt.


    Jenny gave me a thankful look, transferred the light of Ashran entirely to one hand, clasped my arm with the other, and the three of us stepped off the path and into the forest.

 Chapter 17 — Shades

    The trees didn''t welcome our light. Jenny''s spell haunted us through those branches, casting shadows that had our eyes looking off into every corner, expecting to see something that was never quite there. All the while, whatever fears the other two may have had swirling in their heads, my mind tracked the things behind us, whatever they were. I only hoped they were behind us, and now I was putting some distance from the wagon.


    A knot settled into my stomach at the thought of leaving the horses, but, I reasoned, they should have survived. It was just the dark, after all. Horses were a valuable resource to humans and Kindred alike. Our wagon was filled with food and supplies. They would keep it, use it, and keep the horses alive.


    Right?


    But that shiver down my spine told me another story. That the horses were already dead, and I had left them to die in the dark, lonely and cold.


    "Eskir, knock it off."


    "I can''t see!" He had been stepping on her heels as we walked, trying to get closer to the light. A thump sounded from below, and I shot my hand out to his shoulder. Eskir had tripped on a root and nearly fallen straight into Jenny.


    "Learn to walk," she spat.


    "Learn to cast a spell properly."


    I smacked Eskir on the back of the head, took a large step forward, and did the same to Jenny. "Behave," I said. "Are you two trying to get us killed?"


    "I can''t help it when I get nervous," said Eskir. Jenny didn''t speak, but I saw the frame of her shoulders tense up.


    "You can and you will. Both of you. Whoever cast this Hunak was not playing around, and something''s out there. Shut up, watch where you''re putting your feet, and walk."


    "What is it?" asked Eskir, gesturing behind us in the same direction I kept glancing, dreading I''d see or sense something in the abyss of the forest. In a way, it would have been reassuring if I had. The dark was an endless ocean, and we were blinded by the depths.


    I gave him a stern look. He could only barely see it in what little light we had, but he clamped his mouth shut and looked back towards Jenny''s light.


    I knew so little about magic, but from what I remembered from Lyana''s lessons about Hunak, they were probably shades. Manifestations of the spell. Not sentient beings, but byproducts, like an infection. They weren''t hunting us, not really. Not intentionally. They had no intentions, no more than a tornado intended to bash your head against the rocks.


    And I was caught with two bickering children, drawing in the unconscious ire of the shades.


    Even with their reluctant silence, the walk dragged on for an eternity. We had no destination, and the faint light gave us no direction. Normally, I could tell which way was north quite easily. I used to carry a compass while escorting Lyana, but it was rarely essential. But now, my instincts pulled up nothing at all. We were aimless and lost.


    And it was only after hours that the shades finally moved.


    "Xera, I think I hear something," said Eskir.


    Shut up, I wanted to say. Instead, I moved to clamp my hand around his mouth. Neither of them knew what they were. It was my responsibility to keep them safe.


    Mine alone.


    "Mghfm!" Eskir mumbled through my hand. Why wouldn''t he shut the hell up?


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    "AH!" Jenny shrieked. I glanced up, and her light vanished. Another cry came from Eskir, quieter this time, muffled again by the omnipresent dark.


    I let go of Eskir and pulled my hand around to wield Stoneguard. I didn''t draw out the entire weapon from my ring, I only brandished the familiar pulsing blow, scattering it in all directions. I heard nothing, not a scream or squelch or reaction. The shades were immune, or it missed them entirely, or they were just silent.


    "Xera!" I heard Eskir call, and then a breath of air. Something had struck him. I reached out, but my hands felt at nothing. He didn''t shout again. There was only silence.


    I readied my weapon entirely, preparing to brandish it the instant I felt something touch me, but the shades were faster. They struck me in the side, and in less than a heartbeat, I was lifted off the ground and flung into a tree.


    The next blow came heavy and hard, and only hit me after I''d crumpled to the ground like a defunct doll. One of the shades slammed me back up and against something else, either a stump or a rock. It was quick, just a one-off attack, but it sent a ringing in my head so harsh that I could barely tell which way the ground was.


    I groaned, trying to stand. The shade didn''t touch me again, for reasons I couldn''t fathom. I was beaten. It could have desecrated my body if it had wanted to, or eaten me, as shades often tended to do. They were nasty things, manifestations of imperfect spellcraft that preyed on people like us. Passersby, bystanders to the sorcery. They were ravenous and without conscious thought, and were known to tear into people apart just trying to fill the deprivation of magic that cause their existence.


    I finally struggled to my feet, heaving my lungs for air. The two blows had winded me. The earth was soft under the soles of my boots, like moss and last year''s fallen leaves creating a barrier. It was spring, not early enough for the mushrooms and moss to have grown in enough to make the ground soft. But I was not walking on shades. This was a natural basin.


    "ESKIR!" I shouted. "JENNY!"


    There was no answer. If they had been anywhere nearby, they ought to have heard me.


    My heart began to race. There was only silence, and I couldn''t see well enough to keep walking. I leaned back, searching for purchase against a tree I had just brushed past. My head rang like the bells of Bell Haven. Everything hurt so much, and even in the dark, I closed my eyes reflexively, as if preparing myself for the light.


    "ESKIR!" I shouted again, but I felt the volume in my head and knelt down from the shock of what hadn''t been there a moment ago. This time, with a lower tone, I said, "Where are you?"


    With a sickening crunch, a shade struck me from behind. I flew forward, hitting my head against something that I can only assume was a large rock. I had no time to process it, it just happened.


    I believe I woke up some time later. I wasn''t even confident I''d ever been unconscious, because the dark betrayed nothing. How was the battle still ongoing? That was what was keeping the spell active, it had to have been. Why else would they still need it if not to win?


    At the very least, my head wasn''t perpetually threatening to end me anymore. For the most part, the pain had subsided. Instead, I found myself exhausted. Standing up, taking a step forward, it all hurt so much.


    I looked around, thinking I might find something with more substance than the dark.


    Instead, it found me. A small light nearby came into view, emanating from a nook in a short cliff of dirt that sheltered overgrown roots. I crept over to it, minding my steps to avoid tripping, until I rounded the corner and greeted Jenny''s half-lit face under the light.


    Her eyes, which widened for a moment as I came into view, were bloodshot. She clutched the light between her hands, scared to let it go.


    "Xera?" she murmured, hesitant, as though my presence were a figment of her imagination, or a light brought upon by the dark.


    "I''m here," I said. "Have you seen Eskir?"


    She shook her head.


    "Okay, let''s get you up." She didn''t want to move, so I dragged her upright. The light almost flickered from her hands, but she kept it safe in the shuffle.


    The shades still moved outside of our line of view, but didn''t approach with the new zone we had created. I knew they lay just beyond my sight, waiting to attack as I had done so before.


    I turned to look for Jenny again, to secure her position beside me. Now that I could see her face in a bit more light, I noticed the scratches and bruises from her foray through the dark, presumably from the twigs and brambles she would have had to walk through.


    "What are they?" she asked. "I could feel them... one of them nearly dragged me off before I found the weak point to the spell."


    "They''re shades," I said. "They lurk where the magic''s thinnest. They''re offspring of the magic itself, and they''re very dangerous."


    She shivered at the thought of them behind her, or anywhere near her that she couldn''t see.


    "We need to find him," I said. She nodded obediently, too scared of what they might do to her if they caught her again. The light in her hand held high for me to see too.


    Behind us, in front of us, in all directions, the shades still moved.

 Chapter 18 — Light

    Jenny''s feet slammed the ground behind me. We could see now, with her spell shining again, but I still ran in front to watch for roots and stumps.


    "ESKIR!" I shouted. I''d been shouting for quite some time, but there was no response.


    Running headfirst, and I could barely see two steps ahead of me. My body also obstructed Jenny''s light, making it even harder to see. Every breath, I thought I would slam headfirst into a tree. I almost did, for a few of them. Before, the forest had been thick, but now it was thinner, and dense shrubbery and trees were replaced by a soft mossy floor.


    I hoped Eskir had made it there. I hoped the shades hadn''t ripped him apart, but if he''d somehow survived, I wanted it to be where we were running. I wanted it to be anywhere, because he had to be alive. He wasn''t allowed to die, not as long as I still needed answers.


    "Eskir!" called Jenny. There was a heavy heaving in her voice, and her shout was dampened in the oppressing dark, even though she was only just behind me.


    "Root!" I called out, leaping over a protruding tendril. Jenny leapt as well, just barely avoiding it. I could hear the exhaustion in her breathing.


    It was always such a shocking reminder, to hear humans wheezing for air. Kindred aren''t any tougher, not without magic. Our skin tears the same. But at least we had endurance. We''d only been running for only a few minutes, and I was slowing to a human speed for her too, but she was nearly spent, every muscle in her body wanting to collapse in on itself.


    Her light was the problem. Shades were fast, almost faster than humans, but they still had their limit. I could have picked Jenny up, tossed her over my shoulder, and sped away fast enough to leave them behind. But she''d hated it the last time I did it, and doing it again would probably distract her just enough to have the light vanish.


    When I had asked her for permission anyway, right after we''d lost Eskir, she''d said: "Don''t you FUCKING dare pick me up, or I swear I will slap you with a fish."


    I reached out and snapped a branch off of a tree as we sped by, then flung it out into the dark. I heard it slap against something. A shade. Jenny''s lungs were about to collapse, and I needed to do something. Hunak seemed to have no end in sight, and if¡ª


    "Liguadhf," wheezed Jenny.


    "What?" I called back.


    All I heard was heavy breathing. I stopped, spun, and grabbed her as she fell into me.


    "Theroiasssdi....... ait."


    "Jenny, speak."


    She looked up at me with eyes that could melt steel, and I immediately felt a little dumber as I remembered she couldn''t breathe.


    "Light," she finally gasped.


    I looked down. Hers hadn''t gone out, it was still there, illuminating her face like candlelight.


    "Light," she repeated.


    If she kept talking nonsense, I would have to pick her up whether she liked it or not, and just hope she was able to keep the spell lit.


    "Pick mup."


    "You want me to pick you up?"


    She nodded. I scooped her up and caught a glimpse of a shade behind her. I kicked at it as hard as I could, and the soft matter curved around my foot almost like a fluid. It was still there and solid, I could still hit it, but it was like kicking a cloud. It went flying back into a tree or a boulder. Something hard, at least. I heard the squelch of the shade slapping against the surface and drew myself backwards.


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    "Light," gasped Jenny.


    I looked around and saw it. Finally, we both must have thought. It wasn''t far off, either. I didn''t know how I''d missed it earlier. A soft glow broke through the darkness. It wasn''t enough to see, and it looked so far away, but I knew it was closer. Hunak swallowed all light. Even Jenny''s spell could only light up our faces and a little bit of the ground ahead, when it should have been able to do so much more. The light we saw couldn''t have been far ahead.


    And that''s when the shades caught up. False claws and teeth tore into my skin, tearing away hair and skin from my arms. I swatted at my arm, where most of the pain was concentrated, but my hands brushed through air and the gnawing continued. They were coming at my legs, my arms, my throat, every part of my body. Jenny started screaming, and it was all I could do to keep running with her over my shoulder. Every bone in my body wanted to stop and tear them away from her, but if I did, we''d both die.


    The light was still there, and brighter now. What terrified me most was how thin it seemed. I expected the end of Hunak to stretch across the horizon, but instead it was just a small pocket of light, almost like Jenny''s spell. The shades kept tearing at us, and then one of them caught my leg. I fell, sending Jenny flying far ahead. I heard a thunk, and her screaming stopped.


    "Jenny!" I shouted, but one of the shades slammed my head into the ground, pinning me down. It was so soft, so formless, that my instincts barely registered it as a threat. But those claws were still there, those fangs still dug into me.


    Another two shades grabbed each of my arms. At least two, it could have been more. I couldn''t move them.


    I was going to be eaten alive by the shades, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.


    "XERA!"


    I tried to look up. That was Jenny''s voice, as clear as day, not muffled at all by the dark. But I was still surrounded by it, I could tell that much. The shades were still on top of me.


    I tried to say "help," but it just came out as a hoarse scream. The pain was too much. Have you ever had your flesh peeled from your bones? I was only just then learning exactly what it was like, and I will remember that sensation until the day I die. Probably long after.


    A light broke out the darkness, scattering the depths of that sea and beaming out a beacon of the dawn.


    I looked up, my head now unhindered by shades. They had been scattered with the dark too. They were as formless as it was.


    My skin was not torn from my bones.


    My arms were not split open and infested with feasting shades.


    The mossy forest floor was not soaked in my blood.


    I was covered in bite marks, and my skin ached like it had just been ripped apart from the inside out, but the devastation hadn''t yet been actualised. I wasn''t completely dead.


    I touched my arms in amazement. My more severe injuries may have been made real if the dark had persisted for much longer, where their falsehood could have tricked the world under the cover of darkness if they''d only had more time.


    And by some miracle of light, this dawn had saved me.


    "HEY AIRHEAD!"


    I looked up. Jenny was standing on the edge of a small pocket of proper light. It was her spell that had cleared away the shades hanging over my head, and she was waving at me from beside a moss-covered kinstone.


    "Jenny!" I shouted back, elated that she was alive.


    "GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE!"


    I startled, then quickly realised what was happening. The dark was sweeping back in, covering the forest she had illuminated. Her spell must have worked properly from her spot in the light, but it wasn''t permanent. Hunak was still there, caking the forest in that soul-crushing void.


    I bolted in Jenny''s direction. The dark flowed in faster than I could move, and closed in on me before I could reach her. She was clear enough to see now, as she started struggling with another spell, but nearly fainted in the attempt. The magic had sapped a lot from her, but she still tried.


    The shades returned, climbing all over me with their eager deprived hunger, desperate to finish their meal.


    With three more steps, I cleared the threshold of the light and broke through to the glade of light. The air hit me like a nice breeze on a sweltering hot day, clearing away the foul and entrenched stick of the dark. I took a deep breath in, appreciating for a moment the relief of freedom.


    Nobody wants to be eaten alive, alone and buried where nobody would ever find them.


    I would have vanished in that ocean.


    Instead, I was alive.

 Chapter 19 — Kinstone

    The light was blinding after so long in the dark. I could barely bring myself to squint. It felt like I would be able to see perfectly well with my eyes entirely shut, and when I did shut them, my blindness was bathed in a slight glow of orange and yellow.


    I turned to where I knew Jenny was, prepared to thank her, but instead, her palm collided with my head and I reflexively sank to the ground.


    "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she demanded. "I save your life, and you just sit there waiting to die? Oh, look at me, I''m Xera and I have arms. Look at them, they''re so pretty and strong and OH YEAH, I''M GETTING EATEN ALIVE. Oh well, who cares, because I HAVE ARMS. LOOK AT MY FASCINATING ARMS!"


    I opened my mouth to speak, but as I managed to open my eyes and peek at it for a half-second before the light got to be too much, I noticed her arms. She was covered in bite marks. She''d nearly been clawed apart by the shades. I looked down to see if I looked the same. The bites on me weren''t as bad, but there were so many of them. Thousands, I guessed, littering my skin like I was sick and covered in blisters.


    The bites were small, tiny enough that they could have been made by mice, but the shades had been about the size of people.


    "Sorry," I said at last. "I was a bit surprised."


    I still couldn''t open my eyes enough to see her properly, but it looked like she mouthed a hiss at me before sitting down on something that looked like a log.


    "Are you alright?" she whispered.


    "Are you?" I shot back.


    She didn''t answer.


    Eventually, I was able to open my eyes enough to look at our surroundings. It was a small space, a tiny pillar of light surrounded by Hunak. We were still in the forest, as the earth was covered in last year''s fallen leaves. Jenny was sitting on an old fallen tree, and we were surrounded by medium-sized grass and a small shrub at the edge of the pillar. The source of the light at the heart of the pillar was a kinstone: a statue of a man long forgotten.


    There were thousands of them scattered around Avengard. One of the mysteries of the world.


    This one looked exactly like all the others, identical in every way: a large, burly man, one knee planted into the soil, both hands clasping the handle of a two-handed greatsword planted into the ground in front of his bare chest. His face was shaven, and quite ugly, though some people who had a greater appreciation for the fine arts claimed him to be attractive. Covering his shoulders, which he held with proper posture, were scraps of dented, battered armour. He''d been in many fights, this man, and emerged from them by having every single blade swing exclusively at the tiny pieces of armour on his shoulders rather than his bare chest or thinly-clothed legs.


    Maybe everyone wanted to decapitate him, to get away from that face.


    The only difference between this one and the others was a tiny chip on one of his fingers. Beyond that, he was pristine. Where they were worn, he was worn. Where they were polished, he was polished. It was the same statue, transposed over the continent.


    Some elders claimed that the statues used to be different ¡ª a hair out of place there, a slight move of the index finger here, like they were moving or shifting with time, but they couldn''t even agree between them what those changes were. There were some paintings of the kinstones, but only as many as there were of chicken coops. The expression could be taken quite literally in this case: if you''d seen one, you''d seen them all. Besides, any artist rendition was never perfect, and they all wanted to add their own interpretations and twists. Whether the kinstones changed with time or not was an unanswerable question.


    The legend was, the statue was carved by a woman who had fallen in love with the man. But that was only one telling, and there were so many. One claim had it as a work of fiction, the perfect warrior, clad in his armour and standing guard against the enemy. Which enemy, the story didn''t say. Any enemy, I supposed. Whichever one was best suited for the era.


    They were old, that was obvious at a glance. But the imperial records traced their history back to long before the empire began. The earliest record I ever saw was five hundred years old, and it was of a man claiming that one of them had moved to save him from an assailant. Anything older than that lacked any verifiable credibility. One source said he had been a ritualistic sacrifice seven hundred years ago, in the great war. Another said the statues and the earth were connected, and that they''d been around for as long as the world.


    Apparently, they protected against Hunak. I hadn''t know that. They had some level of magic within them, that much was clear to anyone, but this had gone beyond some subtle inlaid magic. It had saved us. I wondered if there had been any legends about what kind of magic was woven into the statues. This pillar at least implied the existence of wards. I wondered which spell had been used to craft them. El, maybe?


    "Weird, isn''t it?" asked Jenny.


    I stood and walked over to the edge of the pillar of light. I couldn''t see anything beyond it. Branches from the fallen tree Jenny was sitting on shot off into the abyss, but to my eyes, it was like they just ceased to exist. The darkness was a wall. It was easier to open my eyes while looking at it, as the light came only from its reflections against the objects in my periphery. I cautiously waved my hand through it, and for a moment, my forearm stopped existing to anyone else who had only eyes. I could still feel it, but that was my only indication it still existed.


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    I stuck my hand back out and snapped my fingers. No sound reached back out to me. Hunak had grown more oppressive since our escape from its grasp. There was no sound at all anymore, not even muffled cries.


    "Maybe pull your hand back in," she reminded me.


    Her words chilled my spine, and I scooped my arm back into the light. There were still shades out there who could have pulled me in.


    "I can''t save you like that again," she said. "That took a lot out of me. Seriously, a lot. I''m not very good at magic."


    I looked her dead in the eye. "You saved me," I said, squinting at her. "That makes you as good as the best, in my books."


    She frowned and stood up, walking over to me. "Stop moving for a moment," she said, pulling me down to her height and placing her fingers over my eyes.


    "Breathe," she ordered. Her fingers were warm and familiar, her voice calming. I wanted to sink into those fingers like they were Lyana''s arms. "Ashran."


    A soft pulse hit my face, gently enough that it didn''t hurt, but hard enough that I felt it push my eyes a little into their sockets. Even through my eyelids, I could see an overwhelming burst of blue light.


    "Okay," she said. "Open."


    I opened my eyes reluctantly, but when I did, there was no pain at all. I didn''t have to squint. My vision was entirely restored.


    I looked Jenny up and down. "Right," I said with a mocking tone that I hoped she took in a good light. "Not very good at magic."


    Jenny nearly collapsed, falling into my arms out of sheer exhaustion. The spell she''d just used on me was a sliver barely qualifying as magic, and she''d still collapsed. I let her fall into me, hoping she wouldn''t try to stand.


    She pushed herself out of my arms, gave me a halfhearted smile, and stumbled back over to the trunk to sit down. "Not that it matters," she said, letting her legs give out from under her when she was near enough to the tree to fall into it. "We''re trapped here for however long it takes for Hunak to wear off."


    "That''s okay," I said, sighing. My lungs felt like they were about to collapse. "I just need to stop breathing for a moment."


    "Should I be worried?"


    "It''s just stress," I said.


    It was just me.


    Whatever pitiful excuse for a Kindred was still holding me together.


    What a disgrace.


    I couldn''t save Eskir.


    I couldn''t save the horses.


    I couldn''t even save one.


    Jenny had saved me, at the cost of leaving her barely able to stay standing. I tried to find some manner of comfort in her voice, but her accent alone didn''t bring me the warmth I wanted, so I searched her eyes for another hint of home. She returned the glance with something, maybe a faint hostility. But there was something there. Respect, maybe. Possibly familiarity.


    I leaned against the trunk and tried to nurse my wounds. I didn''t have much of anything to treat them with, so I picked at a few of them absentmindedly, switching between the bites when I''d either made them one of them worse or it got too painful to continue.


    It was easier to think about my fingers peeling away small pieces of flesh than Eskir.


    When we first noticed the light begin to fade, both of us looked at the kinstone, alarmed. It took a moment to realise that it was the setting sun.


    "It should still protect us from Hunak," I said.


    "This is taking too fucking long," snapped Jenny. "How long can a spell last?"


    I don''t think either of us slept that night. Our worries of Hunak breaking through the barrier when night fell and there was no light to save us abated when we could still see the barrier in the moonlight. It wasn''t just keeping out the darkness, it was keeping out all the unpleasantness that came with it, including those things that lurked in its sea.


    Thirst hit us hard. You never really think about how much you drink until you haven''t had a sip all day. A strange notion had me tempted to lick away my own sweat, just to retain some manner of moisture. By the time the sun rose again at noon of the next day, my mouth hurt and my lips were tearing from the dryness, and my breath stank. There was a metallic tang in my mouth, and I would have begged Jenny for the spit in her mouth if she''d had any to spare. I may have asked her for some, I can''t quite remember. Neither of us were in our right minds, as dehydrated as we were.


    "Fuuuuucckkkk," I heard Jenny groan. Her voice cracked and broke from her parched tongue.


    "I''m trying not to cough," I complained. If we were any further gone, we''d be delirious and drunk from dehydration.


    "No," she said, interrupting the thought. "There''s literally no better time than now. We''re about to die of thirst, and you still talk like that. Do you never swear, Xera?"


    I blinked. "Swear?"


    "Curse. Say bad words. You know, swear!"


    "I know what swearing is."


    "Well?"


    I looked over at her. "I was taught to speak properly."


    She gave a wry half-smile, unconvinced. "However you speak is properly."


    "Why do you swear?"


    "Pfff," she breathed, then coughed. "Ah fuck, now I''m going to cough again. No, I swear because I don''t have a reason not to anymore. Life''s too short to worry about that shit. What''s your excuse?"


    "No," I said. "It''s too long."


    A branch on the tree, opposite of either of us, snapped. I jumped to my feet, my first curling and ready to take out Stoneguard. Jenny looked alert, but she hardly moved. The thirst had gotten to her too much to react. Not to mention, she wasn''t trained.


    Another branch snapped, the wall of darkness rippled in announcement, and through it, a man stumbled out into the light.

 Chapter 20 — Sage, Part 1

    I stood up. The man, stumbling fresh from the darkness and out into our clearing, was not whom I had expected to see.


    I hadn''t expected to see anyone at all, but he was particularly unusual. He was raggedly dressed in Durnian-styled robes, though he was darker skinned than I expected Durnians to be, to the point that he almost looked Oleran. His hair was grey, but the youthful sort of whitish black that made sense for someone with a face that young. He couldn''t have been over thirty. At least, that''s what my eyes told me. I had seen people before with the same look in their eyes as this man, people who had well outlived their thirties. You were more likely to run into someone who claimed to live over a hundred years than to actually run into someone who wouldn''t have been lying with that claim. But those who did shared a look in their eyes. I didn''t recognise it then, I was too delirious from thirst, but in the coming weeks, I eventually would think back to him with that realisation.


    His skin had no bite marks at all, and despite his roughshod clothes, he didn''t look like he''d almost died in the dark. Instead, he carried a walking stick, and his stumbling out of the dark seemed like it could have just been him tripping on a root. Around his belt swung a small pouch with live herbs inside, and a small canteen as well.


    "Water," I managed through my cracking throat.


    He looked at me, as though just realising we were there, and handed me his canteen. I drank a sip before moving to pass it to Jenny, but he stopped me. "More," he said. "It''s enchanted."


    I paused, then took the canteen back and drank deeply. The water messily splashed down my neck like I had flipped the canteen upside down. The effort left me gasping and coughing for air.


    Jenny gave me a concerned look, so I passed it to her. She drank as deeply as I did, if not more, and kept the canteen hovered at her mouth even as she slowed down to prepare for another gulp.


    "Don''t drink too much," said the man. "You need food in your system to balance it."


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    "Do you have any?" I panted.


    The man shook his head.


    "Thank you, stranger," I said. "Now, who are you?"


    He was closer to the kinstone now, examining its surfaces intently. He didn''t answer me right away, instead taking his time to pour over the stone with something akin to tenderness. He cared for the statues like some people cared for their belongings, or perhaps their pets. I stopped myself from thinking his love for it was anything close to what many would deem as love for their family, but the way he brushed his fingers over it could have fooled me.


    When he got to the cracked finger, he stopped. He''d noticed it right away, I think, and saved it for last, almost as though he''d been expecting to find it. I had never seen it on any kinstone before, and assumed it unique to this one.


    "Vox," he said at last, quickly removing his hands from the stone.


    "What?" asked Jenny, winded from her drinking.


    "My name," he said, taking his canteen back. "Vox."


    "Thank you, Vox," I said. "You just saved our lives."


    He nodded bluntly. "This Hunak had me worried," he said. "I saw it go up. I''ve been waiting for it to come down."


    "Why has it been up for so long?" asked Jenny.


    "I don''t know," he said. "There could be a witch sustaining it past its natural life cycle. Or someone might have extended it artificially. I had to walk through it to get here."


    "Little desperate to pass though," said Jenny. "You could have waited. We''d be dead, but it would have cleared eventually."


    He smiled. "I have ways of navigating Hunak, even one that would manifest shades."


    "I wouldn''t mind knowing some of that," I mumbled, still wincing from the bite marks all over me.


    He had a moment of pause, as though he''d only just now seen our injuries. "Lef," he said, and the bite marks cleared. I looked over at Jenny in amazement, and hers did too.


    "You know magic?" I asked. It seemed like the obvious thing, this man who could walk through Hunak, but my healed wounds left me amazed all the same.


    Vox didn''t answer, he just smiled.

 Chapter 20 — Sage, Part 2

    "Thank you," said Jenny quietly. She sank down to the ground and tucked her arms in under her legs.


    "You drank too much too quickly," Vox noted.


    She nodded.


    "Did you say there could be a witch sustaining it?" I asked him. That was not news I wanted to hear today. I''d rather jump back in with the shades than meet a witch.


    "Possible," he said. "I don''t know. I haven''t seen a Hunak in a long time."


    He walked back over to the statue and touched the cracked finger again. "This concerns me more."


    "Why did you help us?" I asked. "You have no idea who we are."


    He looked back to me, his fingers still lingering on the stone. "You sought him out," he said. "You were injured, and you needed help. What else would I do?"


    "Sought who out?" I demanded.


    He looked at me like I''d grown a second head, then paused and refocused his gaze, as though I''d said the most bizarre thing in the world, and then he''d realised I was actually a fish, and wouldn''t know the difference between toast and a tomato. "Him," he said, pointing at the kinstone.


    "That''s... not a person," I said cautiously, hoping we hadn''t just been healed by a crazy person. "It''s stone. It''s not alive."


    He let out a nostalgic laugh. "I suppose that depends on your definition of alive."


    "Can we stop talking?" whispered Jenny.


    I walked over to her and let my hand rest on her shoulder. She had moved her hands out from under her legs and was clenching her stomach in pain.


    "She drank too much," said Vox. "She''ll be fine. Best to give her something to eat, if you have anything."


    "We lost all of our supplies," I said. "And our friend. Have you seen him? He''s short, annoying, never stops talking, black hair..."


    "I haven''t seen anyone, no. Quite hard to, in that." He pointed out at the Hunak.


    "I need to find him," I croaked. Even with the water Vox had given us, my throat hurt from the talking. "It matters."


    "Many things matter, young one," he said.


    I blinked at that. He couldn''t have been much older than I was.


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    "You keep looking at the kinstone," cut in Jenny with a groan.


    "Kinstone? Oh... yes, the finger." He was obsessing over it, his eyes constantly falling back to make sure it was still there, like he was worried some tiny crack would have it fall from the statue.


    "It shouldn''t have changed."


    "They never change," I said.


    "They do," said Vox. "Not very often, but they do. But a crack... this is something else."


    I glanced over at Jenny. She was paying as much attention to him as she could muster, despite the pain. It looked to me like she was handling the shock of how much she drank, but the cramps would take awhile to fade.


    She shot me a sideways glance, as if to say "Crazy person!"


    "I need to find him," I repeated out loud.


    "Yes, I''m sure you do," he mumbled, facing the kinstone.


    The statues were just waymarkers, not objects of intense fascination. Strange figments of the world.


    "We," I said, quite loudly and gesturing between myself and Jenny, "need to leave."


    "Oh. Then go."


    I sighed. "Hunak!"


    "What do you expect me to do about it?" His voice was annoyingly calm, like a parent was asking me to just think for a few seconds about the situation. "I''ve given you water."


    "You said you had a way to navigate Hunak," I said. "Help us!"


    He turned back to face me, finally, and gave me a half-hearted smile. "No."


    "What do you mean ''no''?" asked Jenny.


    Vox placed his walking stick against the fallen tree and sat against its trunk. His chest heaved from a large breath. "I am sure your friend is important."


    "But?" I snapped.


    "It''s Hunak. I can navigate myself. I cannot ferry you. We must wait until the darkness clears."


    Some part of me wanted to punch him, but the part of my body that remembered the water he had given us stayed my hand. He''d saved us, one way or another.


    "Xera," whispered Jenny, climbing over to me. She wasn''t trying to hide her thoughts from Vox, but to keep her voice from hurting even more. "If you care about my thoughts on this, I think we should wait. Even if he can guide us through... I really don''t want to be eaten alive."


    She continued in my silence. "Either way, I''m staying."


    I looked up. The sky was overcast. Not rain-worthy, but enough to cover up the eventual moon.


    "Night isn''t going to be very fun," I warned Vox. "We won''t see a thing."


    He knelt down beside us and wrapped his cloak over his front. "No," he said. "But then, that''s how it normally goes when you close your eyes for the night. Try not to worry, dear ones. Nights never last very long."


    "You never asked us for our names," said Jenny.


    "Oh?" he wondered. "I suppose I didn''t. It gets difficult, you know. I have so many names trapped up in here." He tapped his head. "Too many to remember. The space is all filled up."


    She glared at him. "Jenny."


    "Hm?"


    "My name, you shithead. She''s Xera. Remember them."


    He chuckled. "If you insist."


    We tried to keep talking to him, but Vox wasn''t much of a talker. He didn''t reveal anything about himself. He didn''t say anything that gave away where he was from. All we could make out was that he had seen more kinstones than either of us, and was probably a bit older than he looked.


    Instead, we talked. He was there, he listened, but it was a conversation between me and Jenny. I thought she''d be more engaged in making fun of Eskir, which I used as a distraction from his absence. She avoided mentioning him, I think for the same reasons as I wanted to talk about him.


    He was the only hope I had in the world, and we left him alone in the dark.

 Chapter 21 — Dawn

    The sun actually rose.


    It was more than a creeping light through the narrow tunnel connecting our souls to the sky, reflecting from the clouds and leaves above us to cast a humble glow into our small clearing.


    No.


    The dawn came.


    It broke my sleep in a heartbeat, from the instant the trees allowed its existence. They parted their leaves in eager hungering anticipation for something they had been missing for days.


    I opened my eyes to the blue and green I hadn''t seen for ages. To the morning dew of spring lingering on a forest of trees I had stumbled through in a flight for my life, but had never glimpsed.


    I stood up facing what had been the abyss, staring into the place we had come from. I had been right about the trees. They were sparse, and moss and underbrush covered the floor of a shaded forest so thick and consistent, it formed its own sub-canopy. I took a breath in to smell the pine and larch that had been muffled by Hunak. This type of forestry meant we had reached the hills that bordered the north and east edges of Durn. We were likely well off the path, but we were alive. Vox''s canteen had saved us. Jenny''s light had rescued us. The dawn had pulled us from the endless ocean.


    I turned back towards them. Jenny was awake, and struggling to fit on her boots.


    "Don''t look at me," she snapped.


    We hadn''t had a fire, nor much of a meal besides a few herbs Vox had spared for us from his strange pouch garden belt around his waist, but the conversation had kept us awake well past what might have otherwise been sundown. Jenny had slipped her boots off midway through for comfort.


    I looked over at Vox. He was just sitting on the fallen tree, completely calm. I gave him a slight nod of appreciation, and he returned it in acknowledgement.


    "It was a cold night," I said.


    He nodded. His garments were well and neatly bundled around him, a composition that must have worked well in winter and overheated in summer. But he didn''t exactly seem like the sort of man who would have much more than a cabin to visit infrequently. And from our conversation the night prior, he never said much about himself. He never said much at all, in fact. He was clever that way.


    "AH!" screamed Jenny. "Why? Why! Why are you not getting on my foot!"


    "A side effect, most likely," said Vox.


    "From what?" she demanded.


    "You overused magic," he said. "It''s not the same for everyone, and not everyone experiences anything, but swollen feet after casting as much magic as you did?"


    "That was days ago!"


    "And you only took off your boots last night," he pointed out. "You''ve been sleeping with them on."


    "But wouldn''t her feet have swollen with her boots on?" I asked. "She would have felt them getting tighter."


    He raised his brow. "Didn''t you?"


    She stopped struggling with her boot for a moment and considered the question. "How should I know?" she asked dismissively. "I wasn''t exactly walking around in them."


    "Here, let me help," I said, starting towards her.


    Jenny leapt to her feet, boots in hand. "No! No. Look, I''ll admit, neither of you seem particularly shitty. You''re alright. For Kindred. But you¡ª" she pointed at me, "¡ªneed to understand something."


    I flapped my arms at my sides. "Okay?"


    "You''re dangerous. Not just in the ''could-kill-me-with-her-pinkie'' kind of way. You attract danger. This? All of this? Hunak? That doesn''t just happen to people. People don''t just randomly get trapped between two fucking ARMIES using spells like Hunak! And I don''t know what the fuck you''re doing with Eskir, but something weird''s going on with you two, and it''s not normal! What, we have a Deacon just crossing our path, and that''s? Normal to you? In what world is that a normal thing!"


    "I never said it was normal," I started, but she cut me off with a finger.


    "Don''t speak. Don''t say another word. I don''t want to hear anything, I don''t want to know anything, I just want to go my own way and not get proximity murdered by whatever happens to you next. You think I don''t have stuff to do?! I have shit to resolve!"


    Jenny picked up her boots in a huff, then turned to leave.


    "I''m sorry," I said.


    She jabbed a finger out to silence me. "NOT A WORD! And yes, if I see Eskir, I''ll tell him you''re alive. I can''t really promise he''ll want to be around you either, but I''ll tell him. Now, where the hell is my coat?"


    Vox picked it up from the fallen tree, where she must have placed it before I woke up, and handed it to her.


    She took it from him and nearly started to walk away before rounding back on me. "And another thing!" Vox covered his ears. "THE NIGHT WE MET! Someone was trying to break into our room! AND YOU WERE ASLEEP! Whatever sort of lunatic would pick a fight with you is NOT someone I want to meet!" She looked over. "Sorry Vox."


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    ''It''s fine,'' he gestured.


    "I''m not going to die here, Xera!"


    With that, she turned on her heel and walked away, with only a moment of hesitation at the threshold of Hunak''s former boundary.


    And then she was gone. Off into the sparse trees. I watched her until she was properly out of sight.


    "Interesting life," said Vox.


    "Apparently."


    "Your friend. I don''t know where he is, but someone''s been moving out that way since I woke." He pointed away from where Jenny had stormed off.


    I let my senses broaden properly for the first time since Hunak. I hadn''t done this regularly since my time in Senvia, but that had changed since Eskir had found me, and it was a relief to actually be able to see and hear things properly again.


    Vox was right. Somewhere off in the trees, I heard some rustling. Distinctly with it, the sounds of clothing. A human.


    "Thank you!" I shouted back. I should have said goodbye, given a proper thanks, even just waited for his reply, but I was already speeding through the forest.


    It wasn''t just excitement. The sounds were from a ways off, and I hadn''t been sure at first. Everyone has a unique cadence to their walk, to their breath, but it wasn''t like I''d memorised Eskir''s. I didn''t walk around with my senses augmented at all times. I wasn''t a dog. Even as I was running, I only expanded it briefly, to avoid hurting my ears from the sounds of my own body crashing through the forest. I wasn''t exactly concerned with moving gently. Because every time I listened, the rustling sounded more and more like Eskir, and if it was Eskir, it meant I hadn''t let him die.


    The noises were coming from the near side of a ridgeline I could somewhat make out through the canopy, and heading straight towards me. The last time I opened up my hearing, it was still some distance away. I adjusted my course to his, guessed the time it would take to reach him, and careened in his direction.


    He isn''t very far now, is what I thought to myself when I crashed through a bush and heard a grunted "Oof!"


    I slowed to a stop as fast as I could, but my momentum kept me moving for some distance past the bush and into a clearing. I braced my stop against a tree at the far side of the clearing and trekked my way back at a more human speed until I found the bush again.


    "Owww," came a voice from the bush. I pushed my hand in past the thick tangle and grasped an arm, then pulled out the human trapped inside, trying to minimise the bush''s scratching with my spare arm.


    Eskir fell upwards into my arms and grappled on like a baby monkey.


    "Xera!" he wailed. "You''re alive!"


    I held him tight in relief. I hadn''t known for sure until that moment that he had survived.


    "How did you make it through?" I asked, after he''d let me go and stepped back to reassure his eyes that it was actually me.


    "I didn''t expect to get bodied into the ground like that. I heard some rampaging thing coming straight at me, I thought you were a bear! Perspective, Xera, perspective. What else was I supposed to think? I''m alone, and then no, there''s something speeding towards me faster than a horse, and I can hear it snapping every branch in the forest like they''re twigs, and then I''m just on the ground. Learn to slow down! But, where''s Jenny? I''m assuming she''s still running to catch up? It''ll be awhile before she arrives, I''m sure."


    "She left," I said. "Thinks travelling with us is too dangerous. How did you survive?"


    "Well, that''s a shame. Sort of. She was fun. To tease. I''m not sure how I feel about that. Well, at least she survived. Not too sure about me though, my chest still hurts."


    "Eskir, how did you survive?"


    "Actually, I have something you need to see. It''s just over a ridgeline over there."


    I grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him into the air. "How. Did. You. Survive."


    His mouth twitched. "I can''t say."


    I tossed him back into the bush, a little too hard. He fell back through the hole in the tangle where I had dragged him out.


    "Ow," he complained through the leaves and twigs. "I''m sorry!" he called. "You know my voice was stolen."


    "How could survival possibly connect to that?" I demanded. "What, did the people who stole your voice come and save you? Do you have a weird ability that plucked you out from Hunak? What happened!"


    He fell quiet, trying in vain to garble out a few sounds. I hauled him out of the bush again. His eyes fixated on my shoe. "I''m sorry," he mumbled.


    I closed my eyes. Breathe, I told myself. He was okay. He was alive. We''d get his voice back eventually.


    "What did you want to show me?"


    He looked away. "I don''t want to show you," he admitted. "But you need to see it. And from what I can tell, we''re not far from Bell Haven. The path would have taken us on a detour, but since we''re in the middle of the forest now..."


    "We have no horses or food anymore," I said. "We dropped the bags we''d taken back in the forest."


    "Oh, I have mine!" said Eskir. "The ones I grabbed, they''re over here."


    He led me over to three bags: his own rucksack, Jenny''s backpack, and a small sack of salt.


    "Since she''s left it, I suppose the backpack''s ours now?" he suggested. He leaned over to unbuckle the fasteners.


    "No. We''ll hold onto it for now," I said.


    He frowned. "Damn. Well, you''re carrying it then."


    He had a small, empty canteen attached to his own rucksack. It would have been how he''d survived the thirst, at least. I assumed he''d had some food in his pack.


    I took another look at the three bags before strapping the salt to Jenny''s backpack and swinging them both onto my back, loosening the straps to make them fit.


    "How did you survive?" I asked again, more in wonder to myself. The man had kept track of all of this even through the attack by the shades, and he somehow looked well-nourished and hydrated.


    He pinched his lips and turned towards the ridgeline, leading me over to its summit. It wasn''t very tall, but it was enough to obstruct our view of what lay beyond.


    The sight that greeted us over that ridge was something I remember even now, and I think I always will.


    There was nothing. Not life. Not greenery. Barely a blue sky.


    It was a wasteland.


    The ground, for as far as I could see before the valley closed off to larger foothills in the distance, was painted red. Crushed white decorated the base of planted banners and littered weapons. Carriages were broken, shattered apart and their contents made unusable, not by intent, but as a byproduct of their destruction. Some pieces of horses lay scattered, but most of the rubbled bodies were humans and Kindred alike, as close to unrecognisable as bodies could get before blending back in with nature.


    Though nature was a stretch.


    Nature had abandoned this place, even inside of Durn.


    "This can''t have been the battlefield for Hunak," I whispered. My spine hurt. My legs were weak. My tongue burned cold. Even without my senses, the ridgeline was the only thing masking the scent of this place, and it invaded my mouth with ease.


    "No," said Eskir. "This was the Deacon."

 Chapter 22 — Blood

    The red wastes.


    It''s the name given to places like this. They''re temporary. Eventually, nature will reclaim them. It won''t happen soon. First, the earth must shift. Heal from the devastation. Only after that will the fireweed grow, and then the broom-moss, and the lichens and mushrooms and fire-moss, and then the willow and birch. Eventually, lodgepole. Larch. Poplar. It will take years.


    But it will happen.


    The crunch of dust that used to be something else and lost its shape under my foot. The smell of a burnt nose, like my senses had been stripped entirely from me. The corpses of stones, shattered into a thousand thousand pieces, now settling as dust themselves.


    Storm clouds gathered in the distance, but the winds took them northbound, away from the red wastes, as if frightened of this scar on the land. Ants were not survivors here, they lay corpses even in the colonies that remained intact under the surface. But there were one or two. Not a colony, but individuals, now without a home, their entire cities annihilated, and running, screaming, until they escaped.


    They wouldn''t. The red waste was vast, and ants are so very small. They could run, and would run, until the end of their very short lives.


    "Be careful," I warned Eskir. The danger of volatile, unstable magic still lingered. This could have been what had made the Hunak last so long.


    My footsteps were hollow in the silence.


    "Eskir," I breathed, "why aren''t you talking?"


    He answered reluctantly. Cautiously. "Does my voice bring you comfort?"


    "No," I admitted, trying now to break the silence that persevered around us, no matter what sounds we made. "But neither you nor Jenny could shut up during Hunak."


    "This is different," he said, stepping carefully over what remained of a dead soldier''s vambrace, sticking up out of the dust like a forgotten relic.


    "That was a life or death situation," I said.


    "This is different."


    The man barely spoke. It was unusual for him. He was so quiet, I barely noticed when he stopped to kneel down at the foot of a banner, somehow still intact and planted in the soil.


    "Eskir?"


    The banner, or what was left of the design, was a simple diamond.


    "Sorry," he said. "Just... give me a moment please."


    I waited.


    "No, I mean, please leave."


    I cocked my head. "Are you sure?"


    He nodded. "This place is disturbing, but I think it''s safe. I''ll catch up in a minute."


    I tried to ignore the crunch under the soles of my boots.


    "It''s only the grass," I muttered to myself. "Dried grass, cut too short. It''s just the grass."


    There was no grass, but at least I gave myself the courtesy of that fantasy. If I had been standing on a mountain cliff, or in a deep sea abyss with the wrong sorts of things beneath me, even those cases would have been preferable to looking down at this. As long as my eyes were fixed on the horizon, I could pretend this was all so very far away.


    Walking all over it nearly made me puke. The red wasn''t wet, it was crusty and dry. It didn''t congeal. It crisped, like it had been cooked in the oven. But that signature shade of red, the same as I saw whenever I killed a man, a woman, a rabbit, we all bled that same colour fresh.


    I must have disassociated, because Eskir tapped me on the shoulder what seemed like a few moments after I''d put him out of sight.


    "I''m ready," he said. "Let''s leave."


    I nodded, barely managing to shake my head. I would have asked myself what was wrong with me, but the answer would have been too obvious.


    "Bell Haven''s not too far from that ridge," he said, pointing off at the eastern foothills. The sun was still low in the sky, the spring air still crisp.


    "I know. As long as that Deacon doesn''t come back."


    "Wait, you don''t think he will, do you?"


    I looked back, as if he could be behind us. All I saw was more red. Where had I entered the wastes? Sets of footprints tagged along behind us.


    "Jenny was right, you know," I said.


    "What do you mean? What did she say?"


    "She said that weird stuff happens to us. Death follows us."


    "Paranoid, really."


    "Maybe," I said. "Avengard is at war with itself. Maybe she was paranoid, and you and me running into that Deacon, that ambush, the Hunak. Now this. Maybe whoever tried to break into our room was just drunk and went for the wrong door."


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    "She was paranoid," he said with a nod, as though affirming that piece of knowledge to himself.


    "Sure, possibly. But then again," I said, "there are three sets of footprints behind us."


    Eskir froze. I spun around, Stoneguard primed to release.


    There was nobody there, same as when I''d last looked. Just the endless red wastes.


    When I pivoted, Eskir startled himself into a slower, clumsy turn. He looked down at where the extra set of footprints should have been. They were gone.


    "Okay, now that was just mean."


    I knelt down into the dried blood dust and poked at it with a finger. It parted easily and stained the undersides of my fingernails a dark pink.


    "Maybe."


    They existed. I saw. I knew they''d existed.


    "Can you maybe wait to scare me like that until we''re somewhere safer."


    His fingers were flipping a pink rock over and over in his palm. His boots scraped against the ground buried in the dust, kicking up heavy-weighted clouds of red ash.


    "You should leave that behind," I said, pointing to the stone. "I don''t want to find out what happens if we take anything with us. This place is missing markers."


    He stopped turning the stone, but kept it palmed. "Markers?"


    "Gravestones," I said sourly. "This place is a tomb."


    He nodded. "I''ll leave it behind when we get to the edge. I just can''t get this knot out of my chest."


    I stood up. The red had stained my clothes where I''d been kneeling. The wastes were that feeling of something watching you, made reality. Given flesh and bones and footprints.


    Eskir placed a hand over his stomach.


    "Are you okay?" I asked.


    "It''s not just a knot," he said. "Can''t you feel it? This place is a scar."


    I looked around at what was left of the desecrated corpses of trees, scattered as twigs and coloured sawdust. "Feel it? If you mean does this leave me reeling..."


    "It''s a scar on the earth."


    "Yeah, I can see it," I said.


    "No, I mean deeper than that. I''m talking about the land itself."


    "The land? What, like the dirt?"


    He shook his head. "The dirt, the grass, sure, but the earth itself. You can feel it in the magic here. It''s dead. Gone. There''s no soul or spirit to it. This entire field, this used to be foothills before that thing," he spat the word like any mention of the Deacon burned his tongue, "killed it. Our world, beyond just Avengard, it''s alive. I''m not even talking about magic. It''s the closest thing to a god that I believe in. We care for it. It cares for us. But this..." He closed his eyes. "The land is dead. Completely, entirely dead. The magic lingering in the air doesn''t belong to it anymore. It''s unbound, disconnected. The things you could do with magic like this..."


    I couldn''t feel the magic. I''ve never had much of a talent for that. But I saw where he was going. "Wait, are you saying this was done intentionally?"


    He gave a half-hearted laugh. "I wish. If it were, at least there would be some rhyme or reason. Some purpose. But there''s no reason for this to have been done just outside of Bell Haven."


    I held my breath, unwilling to even whisper the fear that struck my mind.


    Eskir said it for me. "Unless Bell Haven doesn''t exist anymore."


    My blood might as well have dried up and joined the rest of it. Thoughts froze up in my mind. Everything tangled up like a knot on a string, halting the cascade from untangling further from the forbidden fear Eskir had verbalised.


    Please, not again.


    "These are bodies," I said, practically pleading. "This is blood. People were here. Maybe it was just a battle? The Deacon could have dropped in on a warfront and annihilated both sides."


    Eskir opened his mouth into a half-gasp. "I didn''t mean ¡ª no, not like that. This isn''t Senvia. Bell Haven, I''m sure it''s fine. Even if it isn''t, it''s not the same thing. That wasn''t a Deacon, that was a ¡ª" The air caught in his throat and strangled him until he stopped trying to speak through it. He knelt over, gasping for air.


    I gave him a thankful glance. "I''m just saying, maybe he went after the people."


    Eskir didn''t answer. He wanted to, I knew that much from the fact that he was once again fighting against the magic that kept him silent. But he had said... The words blurted from my mouth, trying to keep up with my own thoughts. Everything hit me like a crashing waterfall. My speech came out as a jumble, barely coherent.


    In the simplest terms, not recalling the actual mess of words I used, I said with a flood of realisation, "He did go after the people. Not armies. Not a war. Deacons don''t do this. This kind of mass destruction ends wars. Deacons don''t end wars, they encourage them. They wouldn''t want to slaughter two perfectly good armies. He went after the people. This was targeted. You asked for a moment by that banner. You knew these people. You just said it wasn''t the Deacon who took Senvia, it was something else. You know what it was. Anything that could have wiped out Senvia, a Deacon would consider an enemy. Something that needs to be purged, root and stem." I looked at him, and I know I said this exactly: "It was you. Your people are responsible for Senvia. That''s why they took your voice, why you wanted me to come with you. You disapproved, didn''t you?"


    He gave me an empathetic wince. "I can''t answer your questions."


    I nodded. "You disapproved. They stole your voice to shut you up."


    He closed his eyes. "I did."


    "Then we''re friends," I said. "You disapproved, and you found me despite all that. That''s why they want you dead, because you still won''t keep quiet, even with your mouth sewn shut."


    "I should have done more," he said.


    "What more could you have done?" I asked. "It''s easy to blame ourselves."


    He pinched his lips into a thin line and gave me an ironic look.


    "I''m alive," he said. "I didn''t need to be."


    I gripped him by the shoulder, trying to snap him back to today. "Exactly. You''re alive. That means you can still fight your way forward."


    A hoarse laugh escaped his lips. "You can''t punch your way out of every problem, Xera."


    "You think I don''t know that?" After all, I was the one who ran. "Maybe I can''t break something to fix Avengard, but at least I''m alive to break it."


    I really hoped I wasn''t lying to myself.


    He sighed. "I think you need to ask yourself if the truth is worth your life."


    "Twice over," I said without hesitation, not quite thinking about the ugly truth. There were two of us.


    "Look around you."


    "I have," I said, staring directly at him. "I''ve seen enough. Bell Haven is going to be there. The city is standing. I can feel it. So let''s go. We need to wash ourselves off, so we don''t carry this wasteland with us. And there''s a chance that there are signal markers here, put in place to see if anyone comes back. We need to leave."


    He couldn''t speak, but not from his curse. His guilt pervaded the air with a foul reminder of what he could have sacrificed. I let my own guilt hang with it, because I could have stayed. The both of us could have chosen not to be cowards, and been rewarded with our deaths. His voice was stolen, perhaps, but we would have nothing at all if either of us were dead.


    For the first time, I felt a bit of relief at my own decisions. My own cowardice. My life actually meant something moving forward. I could do something with it.


    And I would.

 Chapter 23 — Bell Haven

    Bell Haven was an old city filled with people who had no idea what time meant. Dozens of bell towers scattered across the city, some old enough to escape any memory of their purpose, some built within the year, and some entirely ageless, their origins a mystery.


    The oldest of them didn''t ring anymore. A series of bells placed around the city, considered too antique to waste on a silly thing like pealing. The younger ones usually had a purpose, though it was becoming increasingly unpopular to have bells announcing the arrival of the dawn. People had magic for that, personalised devices to wake them as needed, if the sunlight didn''t wake them enough on its own. Universal wake-up calls were out of fashion, and in the way of folks who wanted to sleep in, or who worked later into the night or early in the morning.


    Bell Haven had forgotten time. It was a city beyond it. Every hour of every day was in fact, noon. Every hour of every day was midnight. Every moment in time in that city, another part of it lived in another moment. Another person was doing the same thing, but twelve hours later. The shops still closed, but as they did, a night crowd opened up their own stalls. When the sun rose, they would go to sleep, pulling the drapes over their windows to keep out the light.


    Bell Haven was the people. It was an older man who, unprompted, would decide to insert into an unrelated conversation, a comment about the youth of the latest generation being too carefree and lazy and having the world handed to them on a silver platter, or a mention of how a joke about an alligator in a vest being an investigator was apparently offensive, and the problem with humour nowadays was that everyone got offended too easily, and how he missed the good old days when nobody''s feelings ever got hurt. He''d go on and on about it, and when he eventually died, his son would repeat his words unknowingly, and his grandson after that.


    Bell Haven was the boy who never learned his lesson, and night after night, would sneak into the orphanage from his hiding spot on the shingles where two roughshod buildings met. He wanted the candied apples, because candied apples were very good, and the muck he got from the kitchens was very and extremely not good. And besides, the candied apples never seemed to get touched. They were practically reserved for him. The bowl was placed near the chimney, not too close and not too far. He could linger in the orphanage for a few seconds before finally sneaking an apple, which somehow always seemed to be the last one left, and was always left uncovered and in the open.


    Bell Haven was a girl, barely ten years old, excited for this new chapter in her ever-evolving life, where she had finally reached the double digit numbers. This was a saga for her, you see. A never-ending adventure where the adults were perpetually adults and gross and icky and old, and she was never going to age for even a moment. Of course, she looked forward to ageing up, because adults got to do whatever they wanted and eat absolutely anything, and stay up past dark to see the night markets. But she didn''t. Age didn''t happen. Time didn''t happen. Not to her.


    Not like the couple who would get married all too soon and decide to go out and buy a small farm for themselves. Bell Haven was a city-state, isolated in its own way, but with some hefty expanse of farmland and pastures on its outskirts, which technically fell inside the city''s border, only outside of its walls. But this couple, rather than farm, would plant shrubs and pretty grasses and trees, and carved bird feeders and benches for the property, and just like that, there would be a little less food in the world.


    But that was alright, because underneath that air of relaxed retirement, Bell Haven was a human city of work and labour, and food could be imported for cheap from Durn and Espara and Eckshire.


    Every city had work and labour, but Bell Haven was especially known for it, labelled with terrifying words like ''unions'', ''welfare'', and ''democracy''. It was one of the only provinces to have instituted democracy, and had in fact done so since the city first popped up from the ground, forever and a half ago.


    It would never work, of course. Democracy would fail. It must have been true, because proponents of more traditional systems kept insisting so, incessantly reminding the city and its inhabitants of their inevitably and perpetually impending failure. Democracy was a flawed notion, and irredeemably so. Better to let someone rule who had trained their entire lives for it, learned all the rules of governance, than have the same thing happen anyway when career politicians got into the mix.


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    Besides, a proper aristocracy or theocracy would be better, carrying with it safeguards against unpleasantries and that longing lust for wealth and power that seemed to perpetually follow around those who had neither. Better to be governed by an aristocracy who didn''t care about them one way or another, and had little motive to exploit them more than they already were, than to be governed by someone who very much cared, down to the very fibres that made up their bones.


    Because the odds were, a democracy would sooner appoint a raving lunatic, ever passionate about torturing the underserviced, than someone with a heart and soul.


    And yet, despite that endless reminder that still continues even today, that their government would eventually fall and the prime minister would soon be replaced, any day now, by a deranged anarchist promoting chaos in the streets, the people continued to live their lives.


    It was a broad city, and those lives lived all throughout it. The poorest, or those who needed the extra space, or even the wealthy who didn''t quite need to work in the heart of the place, lived on the outskirts, hours away from the heart of the city by foot. And where that beating heart of the city lay, the same sorts of people lived. The rich, who wanted appealing places and didn''t really need to be there except because they wanted to be. The workers, who needed to be close to their work for practical reasons. And the poorest, who spent seventy five per cent of their income just to stay alive. Cheaper rent didn''t exist. Not for them. It wasn''t just the owner of their accommodations forcing twenty cabins that straddled the definition between a home and a shack, it was the work. The work existed, but not for them. It existed for those with the education to afford it.


    And it was easy to tell them to afford it. For most people, them included, society was built to use and abuse them. They weren''t wealthy nor Kindred. Society was built for the wealthy, and safeguarded by the Kindred. The ones who became mercenaries, or most of us, were the champions of the system, a system that expanded its borders far beyond Bell Haven. A system that transcended democracy. Or rather, a system that democracy was never quite able to make go away. A system of war, where Kindred were warriors.


    The only Kindred it didn''t help were the delusional ones.


    It''s why Bell Haven was a working city. The work was always there. The reason for it was always there. The people who did it, again, were always there. So the city remained. In a word, it unionised.


    Businesses left and right were taken aback by the new trend of workers'' rights. Votes to strike happened all at once, across the city. No union worker would take on a job from an employer who had laid off another union worker. Alone, the threat meant nothing. When the entire city stood behind the promise, it became an oath and a mandate in all but name. An injury to one is an injury to all.


    That revolutionary ardour plastered its message on every wall, window, and business door. Everyone heard it, whether they liked it or not. Every voice spoke it with brio, for those who couldn''t read. And the message carried that weight: what were any of them, if even a single one couldn''t read?


    Down would come education, to greet everyone no matter their wealth. Down would come food and water, so that no one would starve. Down would come the voice of the people, because they were going to be heard, well and proper. It wouldn''t be democracy that would silence them, not at all. The government tried for a moment to mandate permits for their protests and their posters, so posters covered every government office three times over, and protesters gathered outside every night for a month until the permit mandates were repealed.


    The government caved, until offered enough coin to ignore the posters and the protests, and go and do the whole lot anyway.


    So in turn, they made the employers bleed. But it wasn''t blood that came from the veins of the rich. It was gold. Their avidity had the streets filled with liquid gold that nobody seemed to be able to scoop up quite well enough. It dowsed the city in a golden tint, alluring visitors. "Come here," said the invite, "if we speak together, we have a voice loud enough for even them to hear."


    And the city grew. And as it did, the rich grew fatter and fatter and fatter, until their bloat overshadowed Bell Haven again. It was a circular thing, and the same story repeated itself every eighty to ninety years or so, just long enough for the warning signs to be forgotten and the new generation, freshly in charge of the city, took the helm.


    Bell Haven was the city that forgot time. It forgot its lessons. Its challenges. Its rules. It stood beyond all that nonsense, and was itself older and larger than most of it too. If any city besides Senvia could have been the capital, it was Bell Haven.


    And so the capital, in all but name, Bell Haven became.

 Chapter 24 — Posters

    The walls and gates of Bell Haven lay well inside the city. Great and burly things suited for a well-forgotten time. Nobody had guessed they''d ever properly be used again. Even in a continental war, an entire empire breaking out into self-conflict, who would attack Bell Haven? It even had Haven in the name, and what sort of lunatic would want to smash up some bells? Who would spend a fortune to hire an army of Kindred to attack a city of civilians, when they could simply pay off the politicians who ran the city?


    The red wastes announced an end to that safety. Most of them likely guessed it had been a Deacon, but few if any could possibly guess why. And a single man with the power to annihilate a city encouraged them to at least cower behind the walls that might as well have been crafted like a child''s sandcastle on the eve of a hurricane.


    Still, most didn''t quite want to just abandon their perfectly good homes just to cross the wall and live poorly by jamming their family in with another. And many of that most were at least willing to admit that the walls would do very little for them.


    We left the red wastes at a point of disconnect; we had little idea where we were until we met a path again, probably outside of Duria by technicality, and it branched back around to the main road and reconnected us to the city. That approach left us looking at farms, villas, and empty homes of Kindred who had left to fight in the wars. A peaceful entrance, except for the road itself, which was littered with folk streaming out from the city and splitting off in various directions, aiming for homes. Travellers too, and merchants, snaked by us with wagons and carts pulled by mules, and a few with horses. Most were on foot.


    But Bell Haven bustled with life, even at the gates themselves. If each person were a candle, the city would have been reduced to ash a long time ago. The gates were kept open, and the city guard were hardly soldiers as much as they were watchmen, standing up high on the walls with a lazy demeanour. There must have been twenty people in the gatehouse at any moment of time, crossing the threshold between city and country.


    "The main road must not go by the wastes," muttered Eskir, eyeing a wealthy automated carriage passing us by. "Oh, look. I''ve always wanted one of those."


    "We might need to get one," I said. "No idea where we''re going next, unless you magically grow a second mouth that can talk." I shot him a look, as if he suddenly might. With the mouth on this one, I wouldn''t have been surprised.


    He stuck his tongue out, facing forward to somewhat pass it off as unantagonistic. "No such luck. But oh, that would be nice. We have no money though."


    I pointed to the bag on his shoulder. "Salt sells for a decent price," I said. "And that''s a fair amount."


    He shrugged. "I suppose it does. It''s a wonder your boss parted with it."


    "Lucian," I corrected. "I bought some of our supplies from it. He insisted on the rest."


    "That''s kind of him."


    "He''s a good man. I miss him."


    "You can always go back," he said.


    I shook my head. "Not until this is over."


    We paused at a crossroads just inside the gates. Here was the main path, splitting off three ways. It wasn''t like Senvia, where a single main road led unidirectionally from the main gate to the palace, and the other roads were all adjacent or subdivisional to it. In the capital, the stair market was on a side road that paralleled the main road. The roads leading around the city were smaller, treated as mere means of transportation, not as showcases of the city''s worth. It was built for emperors.


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    Bell Haven was entirely meant for transportation. After Senvia''s fall, and possibly even when it had been standing, Bell Haven was the fiscal capital of Avengard. None of it had any use for roads meant for show.


    Two bell towers stood between the three forks, each of them plastered with posters and scraps of decor. The stone they''d been built from was barely visible underneath. One of the posters, larger than most of the others, had a red and white border, and a blazing white diamond in the centre.


    "Look," I pointed. "Jenny would love that."


    Eskir glanced at the poster. "For Peace," he laughed. "I bet she would, the pacifist."


    "Where to first?" I asked expectantly.


    He blinked. "I... would love to tell you."


    I sighed. "Fine. South."


    We walked along the southern road, hugging the wall that faced Durn. The noise of conversation grew softer at first, then returned in waves as we cycled through busy and quiet streets. There were caf¨¦s and coffee houses, restaurants and artisan shops, tinkerer shacks, and finally, a charm shop.


    "We have no wagon," I commented.


    Eskir shot me a glance. "Nor horses. Nor a guidance charm."


    "I have money," I suggested. "Not a fortune, but enough to buy horses and a wagon."


    His eyes glimmered. "Oh, please."


    "But no guidance charm. You''ll have to steer from now on."


    "Well that''s going to be uncomf¡ªwait a minute, what do you mean I''ll have to steer?"


    I laughed. "Well I''m not doing it. Do you have any idea how long it''s been since I steered a wagon? By hand?"


    He scoffed with indignation. "Do you know how many times I''ve had to do that in my life? My voice aside, I profoundly have no idea where we might be going from here. We might be going to Heldren or Eaden Helm or Kore, for all I know. And you want me to steer the entire way? You were royal guard weren''t you? I''m sure you have much more experience."


    "I was royal guard, not royal chauffeur," I pointed out. "My job was to keep Lyana alive, not ferry her from one place to the next. I usually sat with her. She liked the conversation."


    "What," he said sarcastically, "she had guards AND a driver?"


    "Yes!" I said. "She was the empress!"


    He stared me down until I caved. His eyes were just these little helpless things and I couldn''t break his heart like that. "Fine," I sighed. "We''ll sell the salt for food. Go buy us a guidance charm. I''ll figure something out, probably take a small Kindred job while we''re here."


    He almost audibly cackled with delight, but managed to keep it quiet as he scurried into the charm shop.


    My eyes wandered to the nearest bell tower as I waited. We had passed a few of them so far, small ones decorating the roadside. This one had a For Peace poster too. It was smaller than the last one, but was posted to cover up one of the stars of pathoticism, the zenith star. I took three purposeful steps towards it, about to tear it down, but as I gripped the corner of the thin, sleek sheet, I stopped.


    I thought about Jenny.


    I thought about the red wastes.


    I thought about the Hunak.


    And I took my hand away.


    "Xera," came Eskir''s shout. He was running out of the shop with an excited breath, holding up a small pendant charm, wobbling and bouncing about in his grip.


    "Is that the guidance charm?" I asked.


    "Better," he chuckled. "It''s an automated movement charm. Secondhand, so it''s not particularly fast, but¡ª"


    "Eskir, I love your face." I pulled him into a half-hug that was a little too tight, then slung the charm around his neck. "Good for you."


    He shot me a childish grin before noticing the poster. His expression fell.


    "More for Jenny," I joked.


    He didn''t answer.


    "Eskir?"


    "Do you think this war is going to go on forever?" he asked. "If we don''t fix it, I mean. It''s an entire continent."


    I shrugged, feeling a bit lightheaded. My mood was good, and it was easy to blow off the stress of the thought. "Maybe. Maybe not. People can''t fight forever, you know. They get tired."


    "They are tired," he said, pointing to the For Peace sign.


    I peeled it off the tower, then grabbed the zenith star poster and tore that into pieces and stuck the For Peace sign back up.


    "So am I."

 Chapter 25 — Tunnels

    Eskir grabbed my hand and pulled me away.


    "Slow down," I protested. I could have stopped him, obviously, but he was moving with such... something. Fear, passion, I couldn''t quite tell.


    "Are you crazy?" he shouted back to me through a new group of people we were now careening into. "What if someone saw you?"


    He was right, of course. Obviously, he was right. Tearing down a poster of one of the three paths of pathoticism was one thing, but tearing down the zenith path was quite another. That was the path I was supposed to be following. The one the First Deacons followed. The same Deacon we had met, the Fifth Deacon of Senvia, followed it too. All Kindred were supposed to. It wasn''t law, not technically, but practically everyone outside of Eaden Helm at least feigned its worship.


    Die on the battlefield, your blade drenched in blood.


    That''s how you''re supposed to ascend. When you reach your moment of enlightenment, it''s supposed to be in the middle of a battlefield, where the fighting is thickest, where you''ve come out on top. That''s what the zenith path teaches you. The star directly overhead. Not to the north or east or west like the other three, but entirely devoid of cardinal directions, ever-present and always watching. Mind, body, soul. Each of the three paths represented one. The zenith path represented death, because, as its teachings said, "how can you possibly master life if you can''t master its end?" All the other paths combined.


    I never thought about it much, but now... how dangerous that philosophy truly is.


    Obviously, Eskir was hauling me away as fast as he could from the place where I''d torn apart a poster of the zenith path.


    And then, like an idiot, I''d stuck back up the For Peace sign. I might as well have screamed out, "I''m a heretic."


    I never was one much for religion anyway.


    I tried to shake Eskir off, but he had a death grip and I didn''t want to hurt him. "It''s okay, Eskir, we''re far enough away now."


    He didn''t answer. Instead, we took a sharp turn right and nearly ran into a bell tower. It was one of the older ones in the city, and certainly the oldest we''d passed by. It was large too, big enough to eclipse the gatehouse at the entrance to the city. Around it were two-story businesses and residences that kept close to its edge. The upper floors formed lips that jutted out from the buildings, casting extra shade onto the street.


    We walked around the curve of the bell tower to a small alcove that had been seemingly accidentally created by newer construction. It was dark, with only a little light making its way down from above.


    Eskir finally let go of my hand and knelt down to a sewer drain.


    "Help me," he said.


    I lifted it for him. It was much heavier than I''d expected, and likely would have taken two people had I not been Kindred. The drain cover slammed against the ground like cymbal. Eskir winced at the noise.


    "Sorry. But why are we going into the sewers?"


    "It''s safer."


    "Eskir."


    "Shut up and follow me."


    We snaked down a grimy ladder covered in something I really didn''t want to think about. It was sticky and pulled away with my hands, and let''s leave it at that.


    Eskir''s feet slapped against wet stone, and I jumped down beside him. The sewer was dark, but a bit of light streamed in from the opening above.


    He looked up. "You didn''t close it?"


    I glared at him. "I am not going back up there."


    "Xera..."


    "My hands, Eskir. Look at my hands. This stuff got everywhere, on my clothes, on Stoneguard, and somehow in my hair?"


    But I could make out his face enough to know he had these giant puppy dog eyes. It felt like Lyana staring me down, only the emotions plastering his face were pleading, not disappointment. I climbed the ladder again, nearly vomiting in disgust from whatever was coating my hands. I considered against closing my eyes for a moment when I grabbed the cover from the surface, but immediately thought better of it and clamped them shut. I would rather not know what it was. The cover slid across the sky and plunged us back into the darkness.


    At least it wasn''t Hunak again. No magic here, and probably nothing wanting to eat us alive in the sewer.


    Probably.


    It took me a bit to remember that I could open my senses again. The arcane darkness we''d experienced before made that concept feel almost foreign to me now, but I was able to make out most details in the sewers around me. The ladder descended to a narrow corridor flanked on one side by a narrow pool of water and archway windows on the other side. One end of the corridor opened to a larger archway before immediately splitting off left and right, and the other trailed down as far as I could see in the dark.This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    "Where to now?" I asked a few moments after my feet slapped against the watery stone for the second time.


    "No idea," he said.


    I sighed. "Why are we down here?"


    "Can''t say."


    That perked my ears. It must have been more than some safe zone he''d be familiar with. A secret lair? But who builds a secret base in a sewer system?


    "This organisation of yours... is it entirely human, or are there rats?"


    "You mean informants? Well, you''ve seen what they did to me, so I can''t imagine so. Informing isn''t really in everyone''s best interest anyway."


    "No, I mean..." I smacked my mouth rapidly, trying to sound like a rodent.


    He laughed. "What?"


    "Seems like at least some of you live in the sewers, right?"


    His laughed turned into a belly-aching giggle. "I like this interpretation. You can run with it if you''d like. But no, sadly, there are no rodents forming up the ranks."


    "Sadly?" I mused.


    "Well, I think they''d make good company. Think of the stories they would tell, if they had a voice. More than me, certainly. All the hidden holes and pockets, the subterranean insulation and the perpetual warmth that shit produces in the winter, and all the leftover food in Bell Haven to keep them fed. They''re already living the dream, if you think about it. What have they got to worry about? Housecats? A few traps? Statistically speaking, they probably have a better shot at living through us than we have of surviving... well, everything out to get us."


    "I wonder if they do. Dream, I mean. And what must they dream about. You know, I''ve never actually seen a rat."


    "Never?" he exclaimed. "Not once?"


    "I''ve seen mice," I said. "Beavers. Squirrels. Shrews. Never a rat."


    "I don''t believe you."


    "We didn''t have them in Senvia," I insisted.


    "How could you not... they''re rats! Like I said, not so easy to get rid of."


    "Magic," I said. "Senvia had enchantments placed around the city decades ago, long before Lyana was born. No living thing under a certain size was permitted entry without first having a specific protection charm cast on them, or they''d be incinerated. After that, they just purged out the city. It took years, but they were militant, and they used spells to hunt them down. Eventually, they were gone. Occasionally, the enchantment would catch them at the gates sneaking in with inbound food, but they''d always burst into flames."


    Eskir''s face keeled back in shock. "I thought you were exaggerating when you said incinerated. That seems like... a dangerous solution."


    I nodded solemnly, forgetting he likely couldn''t see me. "Before signs were put in to warn people, the gate guards had to clean up far too many charred corpses of pet rodents and birds from the children of folks moving to the city."


    "That''s... horrible," he said. "But I''ve been to Senvia, I don''t remember any signs."


    I shrugged. "Some gates have them, some don''t. The guards will stop you before going in anyway. Their new process requires some form of inspection for most travellers."


    "That''s horrible," he repeated, his voice dying off as his mind wandered to all the burned parakeets.


    "This way," I said, changing the subject and pointing towards the archway. "If this sewer does lead to a secret base, I''m guessing the path we take there will have options. A straight line isn''t exactly difficult to follow."


    He nodded. "First, let me just..."


    Eskir pulled something out of his sleeve and held it up. It looked like a scrap of crumpled parchment, but as soon as he released his grip, it began to shine white. I shut my eyes, toning down my vision in a hurry. When I opened them again, the shine had died back in intensity to a white glow. Or rather, it burned white. It wasn''t fire, but something similar to it.


    "Speaking of enchantments," he said. "Only works in these tunnels. Won''t guide us the right way unfortunately, but..."


    The light wrapped around the room. It wasn''t quite as good as my Kindred eyesight for distance, but it did a better job of illuminating the details. I kept my hands at my sides, still conscious of whatever disgusting slime coated them.


    "Can''t you just lead?" I asked. "You brought me here."


    He shook his head. "I can''t do anything that would lead you to the truth, remember? Except perhaps withhold information. I seem to have more lenience with that tactic. When we ran here, I was guiding you under the premise of hiding from anyone who might have seen you tear down the poster. Tut tut, speaking out against the Warrior''s Path? Shame on you. Had to hide us both, really. I didn''t intend for you to guess what this place was, that part''s just a happy coincidence."


    I sighed. "I''m going to punch whoever did this to you in the groin."


    "Please do. Oh, and I should correct you: there''s no secret base down here. There is a secret, you got that part right, but it''s not a base. Not really. It... it might not be what you''d expect."


    "Fine with me," I said. "As long as there''s no people."


    He grimaced. "I can''t tell you anything there, either."


    "So there are people," I concluded. "Fine. You hold the light, so you go first. I suppose I''ll tell you where to turn."


    I led us through a tunnel network far more extensive than I had anticipated. We were walking for at least an hour, with the option to take branching paths every few minutes.


    "Does this never end?" I complained. "At the very least, I just want some water that isn''t from a sewer so I can wash myself off from the grime from that ladder."


    Eventually, we rounded a corner... and saw a light.


    It was similar to Eskir''s, but nobody held it. It was a slight burning white, like the tip of a lit candle wick, hovering in the air.


    "What is that?" I asked.


    "On this one, I really do wish I could tell you," he said excitedly. "I''m an academic, you know. And a scribe. I spent a year studying these things! I could go on for hours about them. They''re one of the most fascinating things about our world."


    I eyeballed him. "That is a loaded statement for something that looks like your portable torch there."


    He swayed his hand in a brushing off motion. "Oh, this is just a mockery, an imitation. A lookalike, really. All it does is offer a bit of light. But this..." he held out his hand to the light in front of us. "This is a joy. It''s actually making me quite angry that they stole my voice. Did they really need to take this from me too?"


    "Are there more of them? Here, I mean. In the sewers."


    He turned back to me, his face beaming with delight. "You''ll have to pop your head around the corner and find out."


    I walked ahead and looked out from the next fork. There were three paths this time, and down the left one was another floating white light.


    "Eskir," I called back, my voice echoing through the tunnel. His expression sank a tad when he pulled his hand away from the candle flame, then hurried up to me and peered down the tunnel.


    I pointed to the flickering thing. "Shall we follow the lights?"

 Chapter 26 — Lights

    We followed the flickering white candle lights through the sewers. At first, they were spread apart so much, I sometimes had to scout passages ahead to find the next one. My initial suspicion was that we were going the wrong way. An old trick a friend of mine had taught me was to hold your hand to the wall, right or left, and as long as you did so as soon as you entered and kept the same hand on the wall, you would eventually reach the end of a maze. Unless the maze decided to change.


    But that wouldn''t help here. The lights were not connected by walls, they held their own places in a tunnel system that spanned the entire subterranean network of one of the largest cities in Avengard. The time we had spent in the sewers barely scratched the surface of its true extent.


    Eventually, the flames appeared more often and closer together. At first it was hardly noticeable, rare enough that I could fool myself into thinking it was just my imagination. But then we saw two in the same hallway. And then three. And four.


    After several hours of hunting, which Eskir jokingly assured me would likely not have taken anywhere near as long if he weren''t barred from his curse from guiding us, the lights grew to the point where Eskir could put out his portable imitation light. They surrounded us in brilliance, dancing their unpredictable glow around the tunnel. This spot was hardly a tunnel. We must have descended further down at some point, as the ceiling in this room was far taller than the rest, and it stretched out above us like a cathedral.


    It felt like I was at a festival. Senvia had earned the monicker of the City of Lights, and these reminded me exactly of the ones that danced around Senvia. They were different enough that I didn''t attempt to rationalise a connection, but the feeling I had, standing in the middle of Senvia, surrounded by a thousand, thousand floating candle-like flames raining a flickering yellow paradise down on my eyes, was perfectly replicated in the sewers. For a moment, I forgot about the ick on my hands, I forgot about the fact that we were in a sewer, I forgot about my hunt for the truth.


    For a moment, just a fading few minutes, I was a kid again. Lyana was just around the corner, beckoning me with a paper lantern I could release into the sky to join the lights. Senvia was whole and filled with life, and the night streets bustled with carts of festival food. Every corner I turned, there were more of them, and I had a stupid-silly grin plastered across my face as I chased out the thickest batch of them I could find. Most people were comfortable to prop up a chair, and many homes in the city had been built with patio-like rooftops that met the edges of other buildings'' shingles, specifically for the festival of lights. Another corner passed, and I looked up to see a wooden platform constructed higher up, nestled in-between two brick buildings with an ivy ceiling and the lights finding their way into the alcove, illuminating it like a yellow dawn. I envied whoever had the chance to sit up there, whoever owned that bridging balcony, whoever had the talent and motivation to build a piece of architecture like that. It was the sort of hidden-away spot that I pictured Lyana longed for in her hunt for that perfect bookstore with stacks of ancient, dusty books rising from the floor and forming ever-narrowing dimly lit aisles. The crisp air of an almost-winter hit my breath like mint, and I wrapped my scarf around my neck to compensate. Lyana was there, just looking up at the sky and smiling with a joy I so rarely got to see in her eyes.


    For a moment, just a fading few minutes, I was home.


    The white lights in the sewer invited us onwards from that underground cathedral, moving from passageway to room, room to tunnel, tunnel to hall, until we finally arrived at a large stone door emblazed with a blue gem in the shape of a diamond. The lights danced over it like they were announcing its impending existence and celebrating all that it held inside.


    Eskir and I both fell against it. The door groaned out in response, but it did open, creaking with the sound of a door that only ever opened when it absolutely needed to.


    Light burst out from the other side of the door, but this was not the white light of our companion flames. It was a normal light from an arcane fixture. A sign of civilisation.


    We each stepped inside, and I forced the door closed behind us. It was unexpectedly heavy, even for me, and it took most of my strength to force it shut. Eskir''s help had actually made a difference in opening it in the first place, and I noticed the contrast when the room available to us restricted him from helping me to close it.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    We found ourselves at the foot of a curving staircase. It wasn''t very long. Some distance above my head, the wall broke away and opened to a larger room that we couldn''t yet see. I almost said something to Eskir before catching myself. I didn''t know who else was here. Surely, they''d heard the door. Still, announcing my identity ¡ª and potentially worse, Eskir''s identity, to the same organisation that had stolen his voice, tried to kill us, and even angered a Deacon, seemed like a bad idea.


    We walked up as quietly as we could. My hand traced the stone wall, devoid of any hand holds or railing. It was cold and silent. The warm light didn''t diminish the loneliness that sank into my hand.


    The relative dark of the recessed stairs broke as we poked out heads out. The room we were in was not a room at all, but a small section of a much larger network of chambers forming up the largest library I had ever seen. This is what Lyana must have dreamt of in her searches. Books, scrolls, unbound manuscripts, loose pages, letters, ephemeral newspapers, paintings, hand sketches, and every other collection of paper you might think of. A saintly preservation of knowledge hosted in mass.


    Our small section, adjoined to the rest by a square archway that lined most of the far end of the wall, was packed with newer-looking books of varying sizes and assortments, and a few older ones as well. They lined the walls, not only on bookshelves, but stacked on their sides as well. An old wooden table filled most of the middle of the room, with a few matching stools perched around it for sitting, though most of them, and the table too, where filled with their own collections, mostly loose papers, scrolls, and archival tools rather than books.


    "The cataloguing room," said Eskir, then gave a disapproving click when he noticed the stacked books. "How many times have I told them? It''s bad for the books!"


    I pointed out beyond our room. "Not to... but there''s stacks out there too."


    He waved me off. "That''s fine. We have charms to protect the place, including the collections, from damage. It won''t stop someone shredding a book in half or anything, but light, humidity, pressure, those are all managed."


    He started unloading the books from the nearest stack, trying not to bump into other stacks, precariously piled against each other like dirty dishes towering high in a kitchen.


    "What is this place?" I asked, mostly to the room. "This library... it''s massive."


    "Technically, it''s an archive," said Eskir, examining the title embossed on the spine of a book.


    "Oh, that you''re allowed to tell me?"


    He shrugged. "Grammatical technicality. Technically, we call it the Athenaeum. Oh... that worked."


    "Anything else?" I suggested. "No more truths you might suddenly be allowed to speak?"


    He opened and closed his mouth a few times in a fish-like motion. "No," he sighed. "The Athenaeum is just a name. That''s probably why it works. It doesn''t actually mean anything or give you any information. Doesn''t put us in any extra danger, not now that you know about it."


    I narrowed my eyes. "Am I a danger?"


    His expressed softened as he looked up at me from a small red chapbook of poems. "Oh, Xera. You''re the greatest threat to ever lay eyes on this place."


    "I take it Kindred aren''t very welcome, then."


    "Kindred are fine, but you..." he trailed off, his expression still... sympathetic? No. Pity. His eyes were filled with pity.


    "... I shouldn''t have brought you here," he concluded. "We should go."


    I laughed. "Oh, I''m not leaving."


    "Xera¡ª"


    "You bring me to the biggest library I have ever seen, far bigger than anything Senvia had, you call it an Athenaeum, you say I''m a threat, and you expect me to just leave? There isn''t a chance of that."


    "Please, this was a mistake, I''m sorry. There will be another way, but I don''t want you to¡ª"


    "What, see this place? Read a few books? It would take me lifetimes to go through everything in this place, and that''s just from what I can see. There are other rooms branching off. This place goes on, I can tell. How does it even fit? It''s too tall. It the ceiling is three times as high as any indoor chamber or hall I''ve ever seen. Aren''t we below Bell Haven?"


    "Stop asking questions," he begged. "At least while we''re in here. And keep your voice down!"


    "Why?" I gave a hoarse chuckle. "This place is empty."


    Eskir''s eyes widened, and I realised my back was to the archway. A voice shook out from behind me.


    "Not quite empty, I''m afraid."


    I spun around, my ring finger readying for... an old man. He stood in the archway, wearing what looked like a housecoat and holding a book in his hand.


    "Hello, Eskir. It''s good to see you again."

 Chapter 26 — Lights

    We followed the flickering white candle lights through the sewers. At first, they were spread apart so much, I sometimes had to scout passages ahead to find the next one. My initial suspicion was that we were going the wrong way. An old trick a friend of mine had taught me was to hold your hand to the wall, right or left, and as long as you did so as soon as you entered and kept the same hand on the wall, you would eventually reach the end of a maze. Unless the maze decided to change.


    But that wouldn''t help here. The lights were not connected by walls, they held their own places in a tunnel system that spanned the entire subterranean network of one of the largest cities in Avengard. The time we had spent in the sewers barely scratched the surface of its true extent.


    Eventually, the flames appeared more often and closer together. At first it was hardly noticeable, rare enough that I could fool myself into thinking it was just my imagination. But then we saw two in the same hallway. And then three. And four.


    After several hours of hunting, which Eskir jokingly assured me would likely not have taken anywhere near as long if he weren''t barred from his curse from guiding us, the lights grew to the point where Eskir could put out his portable imitation light. They surrounded us in brilliance, dancing their unpredictable glow around the tunnel. This spot was hardly a tunnel. We must have descended further down at some point, as the ceiling in this room was far taller than the rest, and it stretched out above us like a cathedral.


    It felt like I was at a festival. Senvia had earned the monicker of the City of Lights, and these reminded me exactly of the ones that danced around Senvia. They were different enough that I didn''t attempt to rationalise a connection, but the feeling I had, standing in the middle of Senvia, surrounded by a thousand, thousand floating candle-like flames raining a flickering yellow paradise down on my eyes, was perfectly replicated in the sewers. For a moment, I forgot about the ick on my hands, I forgot about the fact that we were in a sewer, I forgot about my hunt for the truth.


    For a moment, just a fading few minutes, I was a kid again. Lyana was just around the corner, beckoning me with a paper lantern I could release into the sky to join the lights. Senvia was whole and filled with life, and the night streets bustled with carts of festival food. Every corner I turned, there were more of them, and I had a stupid-silly grin plastered across my face as I chased out the thickest batch of them I could find. Most people were comfortable to prop up a chair, and many homes in the city had been built with patio-like rooftops that met the edges of other buildings'' shingles, specifically for the festival of lights. Another corner passed, and I looked up to see a wooden platform constructed higher up, nestled in-between two brick buildings with an ivy ceiling and the lights finding their way into the alcove, illuminating it like a yellow dawn. I envied whoever had the chance to sit up there, whoever owned that bridging balcony, whoever had the talent and motivation to build a piece of architecture like that. It was the sort of hidden-away spot that I pictured Lyana longed for in her hunt for that perfect bookstore with stacks of ancient, dusty books rising from the floor and forming ever-narrowing dimly lit aisles. The crisp air of an almost-winter hit my breath like mint, and I wrapped my scarf around my neck to compensate. Lyana was there, just looking up at the sky and smiling with a joy I so rarely got to see in her eyes.


    For a moment, just a fading few minutes, I was home.


    The white lights in the sewer invited us onwards from that underground cathedral, moving from passageway to room, room to tunnel, tunnel to hall, until we finally arrived at a large stone door emblazed with a blue gem in the shape of a diamond. The lights danced over it like they were announcing its impending existence and celebrating all that it held inside.


    Eskir and I both fell against it. The door groaned out in response, but it did open, creaking with the sound of a door that only ever opened when it absolutely needed to.


    Light burst out from the other side of the door, but this was not the white light of our companion flames. It was a normal light from an arcane fixture. A sign of civilisation.


    We each stepped inside, and I forced the door closed behind us. It was unexpectedly heavy, even for me, and it took most of my strength to force it shut. Eskir''s help had actually made a difference in opening it in the first place, and I noticed the contrast when the room available to us restricted him from helping me to close it.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    We found ourselves at the foot of a curving staircase. It wasn''t very long. Some distance above my head, the wall broke away and opened to a larger room that we couldn''t yet see. I almost said something to Eskir before catching myself. I didn''t know who else was here. Surely, they''d heard the door. Still, announcing my identity ¡ª and potentially worse, Eskir''s identity, to the same organisation that had stolen his voice, tried to kill us, and even angered a Deacon, seemed like a bad idea.


    We walked up as quietly as we could. My hand traced the stone wall, devoid of any hand holds or railing. It was cold and silent. The warm light didn''t diminish the loneliness that sank into my hand.


    The relative dark of the recessed stairs broke as we poked out heads out. The room we were in was not a room at all, but a small section of a much larger network of chambers forming up the largest library I had ever seen. This is what Lyana must have dreamt of in her searches. Books, scrolls, unbound manuscripts, loose pages, letters, ephemeral newspapers, paintings, hand sketches, and every other collection of paper you might think of. A saintly preservation of knowledge hosted in mass.


    Our small section, adjoined to the rest by a square archway that lined most of the far end of the wall, was packed with newer-looking books of varying sizes and assortments, and a few older ones as well. They lined the walls, not only on bookshelves, but stacked on their sides as well. An old wooden table filled most of the middle of the room, with a few matching stools perched around it for sitting, though most of them, and the table too, where filled with their own collections, mostly loose papers, scrolls, and archival tools rather than books.


    "The cataloguing room," said Eskir, then gave a disapproving click when he noticed the stacked books. "How many times have I told them? It''s bad for the books!"


    I pointed out beyond our room. "Not to... but there''s stacks out there too."


    He waved me off. "That''s fine. We have charms to protect the place, including the collections, from damage. It won''t stop someone shredding a book in half or anything, but light, humidity, pressure, those are all managed."


    He started unloading the books from the nearest stack, trying not to bump into other stacks, precariously piled against each other like dirty dishes towering high in a kitchen.


    "What is this place?" I asked, mostly to the room. "This library... it''s massive."


    "Technically, it''s an archive," said Eskir, examining the title embossed on the spine of a book.


    "Oh, that you''re allowed to tell me?"


    He shrugged. "Grammatical technicality. Technically, we call it the Athenaeum. Oh... that worked."


    "Anything else?" I suggested. "No more truths you might suddenly be allowed to speak?"


    He opened and closed his mouth a few times in a fish-like motion. "No," he sighed. "The Athenaeum is just a name. That''s probably why it works. It doesn''t actually mean anything or give you any information. Doesn''t put us in any extra danger, not now that you know about it."


    I narrowed my eyes. "Am I a danger?"


    His expressed softened as he looked up at me from a small red chapbook of poems. "Oh, Xera. You''re the greatest threat to ever lay eyes on this place."


    "I take it Kindred aren''t very welcome, then."


    "Kindred are fine, but you..." he trailed off, his expression still... sympathetic? No. Pity. His eyes were filled with pity.


    "... I shouldn''t have brought you here," he concluded. "We should go."


    I laughed. "Oh, I''m not leaving."


    "Xera¡ª"


    "You bring me to the biggest library I have ever seen, far bigger than anything Senvia had, you call it an Athenaeum, you say I''m a threat, and you expect me to just leave? There isn''t a chance of that."


    "Please, this was a mistake, I''m sorry. There will be another way, but I don''t want you to¡ª"


    "What, see this place? Read a few books? It would take me lifetimes to go through everything in this place, and that''s just from what I can see. There are other rooms branching off. This place goes on, I can tell. How does it even fit? It''s too tall. It the ceiling is three times as high as any indoor chamber or hall I''ve ever seen. Aren''t we below Bell Haven?"


    "Stop asking questions," he begged. "At least while we''re in here. And keep your voice down!"


    "Why?" I gave a hoarse chuckle. "This place is empty."


    Eskir''s eyes widened, and I realised my back was to the archway. A voice shook out from behind me.


    "Not quite empty, I''m afraid."


    I spun around, my ring finger readying for... an old man. He stood in the archway, wearing what looked like a housecoat and holding a book in his hand.


    "Hello, Eskir. It''s good to see you again."

 Chapter 27 — The Archivist

    Eskir''s eyes shot down to hide on the floor.


    The man wasn''t holding a cane, he didn''t have grey hair, and his skin was smooth and free of wrinkles. Anyone with eyes would think he wasn''t old at all, but a middle-aged man still in the spry of his life. But there was something about him, some quality. I lowered my eyes too.


    "It has been some time," he said. "A year, at least. I am glad to see you, even... not whole. And who is our guest?"


    My name broke from my lips like a river bursting through a dam. Violent and untempered. "Xera."


    "Kindred." It wasn''t a question.


    "Yes."


    "Ah, and that ring. Royal guard, too. I had heard that most of the others were lost. I am glad you have yours. It kept my friend alive. You kept my friend alive."


    He stepped towards us. Every pace he made, I felt through my spine, some creeping unease. I half-expected him to slam me in the stomach with a hidden dagger, but he didn''t. Instead, he rested his hand on my shoulder.


    "Thank you."


    "Hello again," murmured Eskir. "I''m sorry, it''s been awhile. I''m n¡ªnot used to this anymore. Talking to you. And I''ve had some recent experiences."


    I wasn''t following the man''s gaze, but his feet shifted. "Were you followed?" he said sharply.


    "No." Eskir''s voice was firm.


    "Are you sure?"


    "I am."


    "She''s here," he nodded towards me, then gestured to my ring. His eyes were grey, like frosted steel. He broke away from us, walking back to the threshold that connected our room to the rest of the sprawling maze.


    "Well," he said, "welcome to the Athenaeum. I would assume Eskir intends to keep you here for a bit, until you''ve had a moment to look around."


    The look he gave us was almost playful, like he was teasing Eskir for not being remotely subtle about his intentions. The man hadn''t been fooled. He knew I was here for the truth.


    I didn''t even wait for him to leave. My eyes darted across the bookshelves, scanning for a pattern in the titles that might give away what they all had in common, but I found nothing. There were fairy tales and history books, books on road construction and others on the old war and its enemy. On the table, stacked on tomes and papers beneath it, an article in a newspaper was laid out facing the ceiling, ''The Fifty Two: Resource Analysis of Avengard''s Linguistic Spellcrafting.'' Another was titled, ''New Advancements In Magic Crafting Promise a Reinvention of Objective Wards.''


    "Xera," said Eskir, "this is the Archivist."


    "Fancy title," I said. "Bit of a giveaway outside though. Secret organisation. A man named the Archivist. And there''s a giant blue gem on the door."


    "Not when no one can find it," said the Archivist.


    "We found it."


    "You followed the lights. You never would have been able to do that if Eskir hadn''t had one on him. Crafty, sneaking that out." He saw the look on Eskir''s face and laughed. "Oh, I won''t take it. I understand why they stole your voice, but I don''t like it. And I gave them hell for it. None of them are allowed back in the archives, except to bring new collections."


    Eskir''s lip twitched. "They still stole it."This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it


    "Maybe one day, you''ll get it back." The Archivist gave a small nod and left, leaving us to the cataloguing room.


    "Something''s wrong with his eyes," I said as soon as I was confident he was far enough away.


    "His eyes?" asked Eskir. He was half here, half lost in the books surrounding us.


    "Tell me I''m not crazy. They just feel... off."


    "I''ve never noticed anything," he said.


    "You''re hiding something."


    He forced out a fake laugh. "Oh, obviously. Stolen voice and all that."


    I looked back to the archway. "He''s hiding something."


    "We''re all part of the same organisation. You know that out already."


    "You do know what he''s hiding," I accused. "Your voice is the only thing stopping you from telling me. You don''t have to lie. You have the option of staying quiet. What, you never noticed those eyes? How off-putting they are?"


    Eskir held back his breath. "... not this time, Xera. This time I do actually have a voice. But I won''t tell you. Some things shouldn''t be said. If it bothers you, just don''t look in his eyes. I couldn''t bring myself to even look in his direction for the first two years."


    "You studied here?" I gaped. "For two years? In a sewer?"


    "Five years," he corrected. "And I lived here. There are faster ways in and out though. We came in through the main entrance. You don''t usually have to go through the sewers."


    "Is that where we''re going next? Out one of the back doors? Everywhere we''ve been, it never stops. Doesn''t slow down, does it? Is the next stop more normal?"


    "This was meant to be the first stop," he said. "I didn''t expect to go through what we did to get here. No, there''s nothing from here. Not until you find some sort of answer." He caught the dance of light in my eyes and corrected himself. "You won''t find all the truth, Xera."


    "You''re telling me that in all this, there''s no answer? How Senvia vanished? How your voice was stolen? Who you people are?"


    "The answer is here. But look at these books. Just in this room, how long do you think it would take you to read them? The Archivist has spent decades here, and he''s barely scratched the surface. Our goal is to research. We''re looking for a truth too, and these books, the hope is that they hold pieces of it. You won''t find any answers stated so bluntly, not here."


    I scoffed. "So you''re saying nobody''s ever written down what you''ve found? All this research and what, you''re passing it along by word of mouth?"


    He shook his head. "It''s written down. But you''ll never find those pages. Some are written in code. Some are stated bluntly, but hidden. Even if you did find them, look at how many of these books are fiction. Would you believe it, if you really saw it?"


    I pulled one of the books of fiction from the shelf. It was grimy, not dusty. A thin layer of oil taped a collection of muck to its outside, which had been smeared by dainty fingers plucking it from its former home. "If the fiction were removed."


    "How? Do you know some make-believe spell that can whisk away everything fictional? And what about fables, or apologues, or stories written to reference reality?"


    "I just mean, if it were. Would I know the truth when I see it? How big of a truth is this?"


    He didn''t answer.


    "Damn it Eskir, I just want to know the scale."


    "I can''t."


    "Why Senvia? You collect books, fine. What does annihilating a city do for you? Senvia had books in it too, millions of them. Are you saying that not a single one of them had value to you?"


    Still, he didn''t speak.


    I pulled at my hair in frustration. "TELL ME! What did a single city do to you? What, because it was the capital of the empire? So this is against the empire, is that it? You''re out here collecting books to overthrow an empire? Don''t be so delusional, Eskir. A single Kindred sorcerer with a bit of magic, your wards won''t hold up. This place would burn. So you keep it a secret, but all that knowledge is useless if you never share it, you¡ª" I stopped, heaving my chest.


    "And she realises," he mutters. "Finally, she realises what they did to me."


    "You were planning on talking."


    "If it stopped them from annihilating a city, yes. And you''re right. This place would have burned. Not Kindred. They would have called in Deacons to make sure not a single page survived."


    "That''s..."


    Eskir sighed. "You are the greatest threat to have ever set foot in these halls, Xera. You were one of the imperial guard. One word from you, and this place burns."


    "So this place..." I looked up and stared out into the archives. Thousands and thousands of books, an uncountable, unfathomable number. Pages I wouldn''t have been able to read if I''d had a thousand years to live. Government, religion, the old gods, all of it. "... it was a threat."


    Eskir stepped up beside me and looked out at the archives as well. His voice sounded older, more tired than I had ever heard it before. "The Senvian Empire''s oldest enemy."

 Chapter 28 — The Athenaeum

    Every day, the Archivist brought us cookies while we read.


    It was such a silly, ordinary thing. Cookies. From a man whose eyes made my skin crawl.


    They were almond shortbread topped with candied sprinkles. They didn''t even crumb, which was helpful with a book in my hands. It was hard to keep track of my sleeping and waking hours without sunlight, but between the arcane lights flickering off every "night" and the cookies every "midday," I established some sort of an awareness.


    The candied sprinkles were impressive enough, those were expensive, but I had no idea where he managed to get almonds. They grew along the east coast, in the foothills between the sea and the mountain range that ran down the eastern side of Avengard, reaching from beyond Elann to Heldren.


    They were expensive in peace times. In the middle of a war, I decided he must have had a stash of them. He could have had a stash of anything in that place. It was a maze, and every now and then, Eskir would guide me down a corridor I hadn''t even noticed was right beside me. Between the stacks of books and confusing layout of the shelves, anything was easy to miss. Even in the stairs, the gap beneath them was used to store books, and the walkways on the upper floors were sometimes the tops of bookshelves themselves.


    Neither Eskir nor the Archivist would lead me to any books in particular. Eskir couldn''t and the Archivist refused. But they showed me where to sleep, where to eat, that sort of thing. The food, save the daily cookies, was sparse. The sacks of provisions we''d rescued were "donated" against my will to the Archivist.


    "How do you plan on eating?" I asked, but Eskir shrugged me off. The Archivist was having a harder time getting the rations he needed. Their organisation still valued him enough to bring him the essentials, but whether it was animosity or a fear of what he might do to the people who had taken his friend''s voice, they stopped bringing in the luxuries. Just an occasional sack of potatoes or onions with the books. I think he especially appreciated our salt.


    And apparently, he couldn''t go to the surface to fetch them himself. The eyes, I thought. He didn''t tell me why, but I was sure it was his eyes. I was there a week before he asked me to go up to Bell Haven.


    "You''re eating up all my food," he complained.


    It was a relieving request, frankly. It wasn''t just him, it was the books. The ceiling. I was never one for claustrophobia, but it felt like the entire place was about to collapse, like it was a tomb for lost stories that would seal at any moment with me inside. Just another story.


    He didn''t want Eskir going, either. Made sense. I was Kindred, he was a human with a target on his back.


    "Just don''t..." he''d stammered as I stacked the books I''d set aside in my own personal pile on a thin table that was already overcrowded. "Just don''t fuck with anything, okay? Bell Haven''s not as safe as you think it is, not for you."


    "Eskir." I said with a teasing coyness. "I can handle myself."


    He shuffled on the spot before grumbling a reluctant "Fine."


    The Archivist led me not to the door where I''d entered, but up a ladder in one of the sections I''d barely explored. Here, more of the books were falling apart at the spines, when the spines existed at all, shedding pages and bindings. Older books apparently didn''t have spines, but were bound together with leather strips. Glue, Eskir had taught me, was used in the perfect binds of the more modern books, which meant spines that lasted longer than most unenchanted strings and strips.


    I had nothing against books, but in my view, I''d learned far too much about them in the week I''d been there.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.


    The final ladder we climbed was made from what seemed like flimsy bamboo, but it didn''t sag at all when we climbed it. It led to a small alcove hidden only by the angle of the ascent. There were no books up here, and it was dark, but there was an iron door at the far wall. Behind us, I expected the Athenaeum to stretch out endlessly, but I was only able to see cut-out fractions of it, separated into sections by shelves that stretched up to the ceiling. How books were retrieved from up there, I had no idea, but it had to have been magic.


    "Out here," said the Archivist. "And take this with you." He handed me a small blue coin shaped like a diamond. "It''s enchanted, so hold it in your hand until you''re outside so you know what it looks like. And remember where you come out. Make sure to return to that spot."


    "Can''t you just tell me where I''m going to come up? Bell Haven isn''t exactly known for being well-organised and having plenty of signage."


    "Then remember," he ordered. "The door is different every time. The location is specific to your coin. It will work once and only once, and it will only work for you."


    I sighed, turning towards the iron door. "Alright."


    The Archivist grabbed my wrist and pulled me back, dragging my arm down to force my eyes to meet his gaze.


    "Only you," he said, his tone suddenly cold. "I think you''re trustworthy, girl. And you haven''t reacted to those cookies. But if you try to lead someone else here, I will make your eyes will bleed puss."


    "I won''t," I said, taken aback by his harshness. "I''m here for the truth, no matter what it takes."


    He looked at me for a moment before his grip finally softened. His voice changed to an upbeat, cheery tone. "Make sure to get fresh garden carrots," he said. "You''ve tasted the ones I''ve been living on. And get some butter! It''s been years since I''ve had a good vegetable roast."


    He stepped down the bamboo ladder, leaving me to stare after him in astonishment. What a bold man, to threaten a Kindred like that. But this was his space, and I was the stranger from Senvia. All week, I''d spent pouring over books, trying to figure out what the Athenaeum was. What it was meant for. What sort of massive secret was hidden in those walls that Senvia would consider a threat. Lyana had adored knowledge, she''d loved books. She poured over her own personal library for hours almost every day. And she was the Empress, the pinnacle of political power in the empire.


    A week in there, and I hadn''t seen anything. No connection, no hidden hints that I could make out. As far as I could tell, they were random books. Law, philosophy, crime, fiction, magic, textbooks, biographies, anything I could have anticipated and more.


    The iron door was cold, and it groaned as I pushed it open to what looked like someone''s private balcony. As I crossed the threshold and stepped onto a wooden deck, the coin the Archivist had given me shifted between my fingers from the blue gem into a small earth-like ring, just barely too small to slip over my smallest finger. I turned it over to examine it before slipping it in my pocket.


    As soon as the door closed behind me, it vanished into a wooden fence that split the balcony into two sections. A tiny hole was left behind where a keyhole might be on a door, shaped like the ring in my pocket. The wood was rough and unpainted. Uncomfortable to the touch, probably prone to splintering, but most definitely wood.


    I could barely hear the bustling of the crowds surrounding me. I was in the heart of Bell Haven, that much I knew from what I could see. The city walls were out of sight, and I could make out four bell towers over the rooftops of the buildings.


    The balcony ended in a raised fence. It was adjoined to a large glass pane that acted as a sliding door to the balcony from someone''s family room. The lights were off, but a soft glow came from a hallway connecting the rest of the home.


    This was an apartment, but one of the wealthier ones. The street below was a side street, barely more than an alleyway, that likely served to act as an entrance to the building. Across from it was a tall stone building that rose as a square, but capped off like a pyramid. Probably some government building or war room, or maybe a gambling hall. I wasn''t familiar enough with Bell Haven to know.


    The ground was six or seven body lengths down. I could jump it. I wasn''t very keen on climbing back up, but it would have to do. I wasn''t about to waltz through this family''s back door unannounced.


    My boots hit the stone with a thud, breaking one of the soles and hurling me on my back with a low groan. The boot was useless now, the soles too thick to wear them lopsided for very long. I rested on the street for a moment, pressing my head into my hands. Being unable to afford new boots was a first for me, but I fumbled over the coins in my pouch like they were made of gold. Maybe if I found a really, really good discount on those carrots. Or if someone paid me to take them. But this was Bell Haven, not Dengal.


    "You had better appreciate this," I mumbled, and lifted myself to my feet, preparing myself to scour the city for everything I needed.

 Chapter 29 — Southpoint Square

    When we had arrived in Bell Haven, the crowds had not been so vicious. The buildings below eye level were practically invisible between the masses. Nobody seemed to be explicitly shouting, but combined, their voices crashed against my ears like a thundering waterfall, drowning out all else. Two people brushed past me on either side, and after a delay, I buckled my knees and staggered backwards. It was such an artificial movement that my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. The intention had been to hide my strength ¡ª any human would have staggered back, but not one of us. But I waited too long, and the reaction came after they were both well past me.


    And yet, it seemed nobody had even noticed. Others walked past, oblivious to my fumble. There was an intoxicated rush to them, an inebriation that materialised only from their sheer number. I could tell where most people in Senvia were going, what sorts of people they were, but here was just a mess with no rhyme or reason. Instinctively, my shoulders came in a bit to turtle myself. And the smell. It was inhumane. Something between juiced rotten apples and at least four different kinds of bodily fluids.


    I looked around for anchor. A solid wall rose up nearby, somewhere I could go to breathe with less of that stench, and where people would only pass by on one side. The bricks were soothingly cold. Familiar, was the right word. Bricks were still just bricks.


    In all the voices, a few stood out near me. Near me were two merchants trying to pass off their wares, a hoard of dried mango slices covered in a litany of spice mixes. They were paired, the two to a single cart, and were approaching people with samples to sell. I thought it was random at first, until I noticed the clothes. Everyone they approached was wearing poorer clothing. That part I was used to, I had seen it so often in Senvia. Wealthier clothing was woven, stitched, or otherwise formed precisely by hand, usually with a strengthening enchantment of some kind. It was meticulous, each piece unique. Poorer clothing was generic, repetitive. Rather than handmade, it was most often woven by an arcane loom that made ten of them faster than a human could make one. The patterning was predictable, flawless in a sense that made it seem cheap.


    I hadn''t noticed one of them approach me. "Dried mango, miss? Someone like you, I''m sure you like the spicier sort. I have a delicacy of a blend here, made with paprika, garlic, salt, and a sweet secret ingredient."


    I grinned like an idiot. I loved dried mango.


    And then I realised.


    I nearly opened my mouth in outrage, then stopped and looked down at my clothes. They were indeed ragged. Not patterned predictably, just messy, and the same ones I''d gotten from Lucian. They were, in a very literal sense, tavern clothes. I hadn''t changed them in weeks, and I''d even been sleeping in them, only washing them whenever was convenient.


    When I looked up, he was already gone, most likely scared off by the realisation that he''d have to deal with whatever story he thought I was carrying around. These merchants weren''t here to trade in stories. Just mangoes.


    More voices raised up from the crowd, across the plaza from my little wall. I hadn''t ventured more than a few minutes from the entrance to the Athenaeum before I stumbled on this place. It wasn''t the middle of the city as far as I could tell, but rather the heart of one of the city''s more populated districts, Southpoint. I stepped off the wall towards the shouting and the crowd swept me away.


    Two people approached me with intent. Not part of the crowd, but as separate moving entities. On the left was a notably fat one, not quite a blob but tall and hefty, like he ate nothing but fatty meats. The one on the right was sooty and tired-looking. Still tall, but his eyes betrayed a deadness inside.


    "You owe us!" shouted the fat one. "Fifty Avens!"


    I looked around, bewildered. "Me?"


    The fat one rolled his eyes. "Yes, you! What, did you think that favour was free? Fifty Avens, now!"


    Most people in this city made that in about two or three months, before taxes. Avens were not pocket change, they were true currency. It''s what I normally carried with me, just in case. They were also what I had absolutely none of at that moment.


    "Okay, look," I lowered my voice as they reached me. "I don''t know who you are or what favours you think you''ve done, but I''ve never seen you before¡ª"


    "Shut up," spat the tired one. "Give us what you owe."


    "... Oh?" I asked, my tone now deadly.


    The fat one grabbed me and lifted me up, straining to keep me aloft. Over the heads of the crowd, a small group of soldiers were gathered. Not the city watch, but soldiers wearing the colours of the Senvian Empire, gold on black with three blue gems emblazoned into the cloth cover, one for each of the stars of Pathoticism. I could handle them too if I needed to, but...This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.


    "Listen woman," he spat, the vile tone palpable when he branded me for what was between my legs, "You owe us. If you don''t pay up, we''ll make sure you''re put where you belong."


    I really didn''t want a spotlight on me. That was the only thing stopping me from caving their heads in.


    "On the throne?" I jived, my arms lax at my sides while his hand struggled to keep me aloft at my collar. "You seem to have such a problem with me being a woman, but we had an empress for thirty five years."


    The fat one looked at the tired one. "Thirty... Jave, how long was she..."


    "Who gives a shit?" Jave shot back. "Keep focused, this bitch owes us money."


    He huffed. "Oh... right. I''m tired, Jave. She''s really heavy."


    I closed my eyes and took in a breath.


    "Who cares how heavy she is? She. Owes. Us. Money. Fifty Avens, Delmond!" He slapped Delmond''s chest. "Keep it together. And you!" He turned to me. "The empire has never been weaker than in those forty years."


    "Thirty five," said Jave.


    "The empire has never been weaker than in those thirty five years! Not enough wars, shitty laws, some bullshit focus on ''academic rigor'' for all those big fancy pants and their big books. Nothing for us, the working lads! The people out there, swords to shields, defending the common people. Someone made right to make sure to replace her before a woman ended up being the last Emperor of Senvia."


    "How do you want to be remembered?" I asked, still hanging from Jave''s hands. "Alive? Or with your head bashed into that stone right there?"


    "Do you think that''s how they wanted it to be remembered?" he continued, unfazed. "A city died because a woman was in charge? Or that it died when it was at its strongest, ruled by the great and powerful Emperor Alaric!"


    The cold, hard reminder of my months of pent-up rage and sorrow slapped against my lungs. Every piece of effort I had went into keeping my fist away from their faces, but I couldn''t unclench it.


    Delmond gave a bellowing roar to accompany the message. "Strongest! Strongest!"


    He was going to unite the continent!" shouted Jave. "Make us whole again! A new era of expansion, he said!"


    The soldiers were starting to take notice from the shouting. One of them turned his head and saw me, still lifted above the crowd. Delmond''s arm was starting to shake. His face was beading with sweat.


    "ALARIC!" shouted Delmond, and his arm gave way and dropped me to the ground. I hit it with a thud, bending my knees only to absorb the balance. The interruption threw off my focus, and before I realised my arms were even moving, I felt my fists connect. My left met Delmond''s jaw, letting out a sickening crack. The shock of it threw me off guard with a sudden rush of horrified malaise. My right came a second later, missing Jave''s face and instead landing on his shoulder, dislocated it and probably cracking the bone as well.


    "Oh," I muttered. The guards were nearly on top of us, brushing their way through an increasingly dense crowd. Few had even turned their eyes when Delmond had been holding me, but punching the two turned everyone''s focus.


    "Over here!" someone nearby shouted, waving their arm above the crowd to get the soldiers'' attention. I shot a glare in the direction of the shout. I nearly bolted. I was ready to shove my way through too many people to count, but more arms came up, and I realised just how out of place I was in this city. Everyone''s skin was so light. There was variety, but most of them were pale. Even common folk from Senvia would have darker skin tones. I was the most visible of any of them.


    Instead, I collapsed to the ground in submission.


    The soldiers rushed in to the small vacancy that had formed around us.


    "It was her!" another voice called out. Several fingers pointed at my face.


    The first soldier pulled out a pair of cuffs from his waist. These were enchanted, bound together by magic once worn, not steel. "Can''t believe they have us doing watchmen work," he said back to his companions.


    "Hang on," said one of them. He''d been looking at Delmond and Jave''s injuries. He was tall and lanky, and bent over in front of me with an analytical look to his eyes. "Are you Kindred?"


    I hesitated, pondering my options, then nodded.


    He sighed. "Ah... I apologise. I''m sure you had your reasons. They were the ones shouting, right? Should really know better, these boys. Shouldn''t be messing with our warmakers. How else are we supposed to restore Senvia without our Kindred? Let her go, Corporal.


    I rose to my feet. "Wait, why?" I asked, not thinking. This was insulting.


    "Well, uh," he started, "Like I said, you''re a warmaker. You''re the reason we have Bell Haven, why we have freedom. You keep out lawless..." he looked me up and down, realising just then how different I looked, how similar my skin tone was to the people he was about to name. The words in his mouth shifted, and he muttered out a weak and quavering "... Heldrens."


    "I should be arrested," I protested. "Being Kindred doesn''t make me a better person than these two." Shut up, Xera. Shut up, shut up, shut up. I was screaming at myself in my mind. I needed to get back to the Athenaeum. If they grabbed me here, I could lose the coin. I may lose my way back. Stop talking yourself into trouble. I''d be stranded and late. Shut. The. Living. Path. Up.


    "Look, I¡ª" he stammered. I turned my back to him and walked to the edge of the crowd, muttering "I''m disappointed in you" with all the authority I could muster before stepping into the thick of it.

 Chapter 30 — Protests

    I made my way towards the raised voices across the plaza. Southpoint Square was massive and dense, but through the ruckus pulling people to the incident I had only made worse, I finally made it to the other side. It became easier to move as I left and navigated my way away from the square and towards what become increasingly clear was shouting. It was much farther away than I''d expected. Protesters were gathered in a long, narrow street with banners and signs fixed to broomsticks and staffs and held high over their heads.


    NO MORE WAR one said. Another, SENVIA IS DONE. A third had no words, but it hosted the same design as many of the protesters had painted onto their face, a yellow diamond with red paint crossing it out. The yellow gem was the Senvian Empire''s symbol for the Path of the Warrior, the fourth direction of Pathoticism. According to the empire, the only true way for warriors to follow. Die on the battlefield, die in glory, die in honour, and only then would we ascend and greet the warrior kings of ages past. Elephius, Karn, Olega. All of them. And above them all, Torin. The heroes ascended in their battles. Living forever in enlightenment, above our worldly concerns. That is the truth of the world. To suffer now was the mission, and it was not suffering at all, but a life well lived and filled with a glory of purpose. All worth it to live among and call yourself equal to the men made gods from their flesh.


    These protesters were making the same mistake that I had when Eskir had dragged me into the Athenaeum. This was the zenith star, disrespected and branded false by heretics.


    And finally, the nail in the coffin confirmed it. The largest banner of all took ten people to carry it, and they carried it above all the rest. It was massively long, like the body of a wurm coiling its way through the earth. Hoisted well above the crowd and seated in the between the upper windows that bordered the street''s skyline floated the words, FOR PEACE.


    I pressed myself against the stucco siding of a residential home. None of them would recognise me, but I was the very face of what they wanted to tear apart.


    The red wastes flashed before my eyes again.


    Maybe it was time for some sort of a change.


    What good had war ever really done?


    Could the zenith path really justify that level of death and devastation?


    I couldn''t exactly ignore the For Peace movement''s track record though. Too many acts of terror. The incident in the sky district in Perch Akna. The attack on the commerce guilds in Eaden Helm. The disruptive protests in Senvia, refusing to let people sleep day and night. Even the hijacking of the Attila I''d heard through grapevine. All of it, the worst ways to go about change. I had no problems believing that For Peace was involved somehow with Senvia''s disappearance.


    In any case, I had to find some sort of a market. At least a storefront that sold produce. I let myself be swept off into the march of protesters, a group all but invisible to the crowd at Southpoint Square that I had just left. I wonder what they thought of it all? Bell Haven was practically the centre of the movement. Even Lyana didn''t know where it had begun, but Bell Haven had become its home and heart.


    The protest moved through a five-way intersection, then turned on the spot and headed off east. It was a turn made with purpose, clearly planned ahead. Wherever they were going, they had a direction. The buildings moved away from the residential and shifted towards the industrial. A bridge interrupted the road in its predictable cadence of orchestrated three to five-storey buildings. It barely looked different from the road itself, only that the buildings gave way to a shaded local aqueduct flowing from the north at the ground level. Most of the aqueducts in this city ran through underground pipes, but the city had been built around its river flow.If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.


    Finally, I spotted a store. It was nearly hidden under a jeweler''s shop, with only a broken-down sign pointing to its existence. A steep, narrow staircase brought me to its entrance, the doors barely a step away from the last stair. If the doors had swung outward, they wouldn''t have been able to open at all.


    It was a small store, marketed to a very specific demographic. I couldn''t remember which one, but I knew they lived on a small chain of islands off the southern east coast, too small to even appear on a map. Most of the store was filled with bizarre cheeses and fruits I had never seen before.


    "Yesa?" A young woman called out. She''d been half buried under a massive crate of waxed Durnian bananas.


    "I''m looking for some supplies," I said, reaching through the shelving to hand her a copy of my list. "How much of this do you have?"


    She looked it over with a concentrated half-frown. "Alo, eeh, no little. We have four. Missing rest."


    "Can you prepare the right quantities? I can come back later to pick it up." I didn''t want to carry produce from store to store.


    "First pay," she snapped politely, hopping down from a stool I hadn''t realised she''d been standing on. She was much shorter than I had expected, and her face gleamed like raindrops in the store lighting.


    I nodded and reached for my coins.


    My coin purse was gone. I felt for it again, this time more frantically.


    "No pay, no food."


    I stepped out of the store in a panic, looking from one end of the protesting line to the other. Who could have stolen it? A pickpocket got the better of me? How was that possible? I went through the interactions I''d had over the last few minutes, brief passings by at the shoulder. Most of them barely touched me. I should have felt it, I should I known. How could I not?


    My fingers fell into the pocket where I''d dropped the Archivist''s coin. To my relief, my fingers felt the ring it had formed itself into. At the very least, I could get back in. But save for a few spare coins I always kept tucked under the sole of my left boot, that purse held everything I had. Even the coin I''d gotten from Ana before I left the tavern.


    "Why?" I sighed. "Just. Why? I''d like to have one day without any issues. One day. Is that really so much to ask for?"


    "Yes," came a voice from behind me.


    Sometimes, a single word can hit with the weight of the world. When it is said at the right moment, in the right circumstances, or with the right voice, it can mean everything. The ''yes'' was meaningless, said with an aloof sarcasm. But the voice behind it hit me like the smell of fresh bilberries and salty air. It felt like home. Without fully realising it, my distressed expression faded and my lips curled into an unwilling grin. I turned on the spot to greet the newcomer.


    "Jenny!"


    She looked better than when we''d parted ways, moments after coming out of the Hunak. She''d gone from ragged, worn-out travel clothes to something that made her look like she was on the warpath. A light hint of red now adorned her face in two thing straight lines like tattoos, following from the tips of her forehead above her temples and meeting the outer edges of her eyes. Across the lower half of her body, she wore an ankle-grazing earthy green travel dress, split on the sides for movement and flexibility, and thin stretch brown leggings underneath. Above was a loose-fitting white tunic and a brown boiled wool jacket, with a yellow shawl that moved almost unnaturally. It wasn''t the only thing she wore that looked out of place, either. A necklace was looped several times around her wrist like a bracelet with a dangling cooling charm. A wedding ring hung from another necklace around her neck. On top of it all, a wide-brimmed olive green hat.


    She was dressed for the impending summer.


    "Forget it," she said, staring down at my waist. "It''s long gone. Those people don''t stick around."


    "What?" I asked, dumbfounded.


    "You were pickpocketed, right?" Her tone turned into a babying sarcasm. "You poor thing, probably don''t even know when it happened."


    Her eyes had distracted me. Her voice thrown me off. The colour of a morning coffee lit up by the sunlight and the sound of a hearth.


    "Hey," she snapped her fingers in my face. "Are you listening?"

 Chapter 31 — Not Yet

    "I was accosted earlier," I said, sipping my tea. Lyana had taught me manners, after all.


    "By?" Jenny had already downed her entire mug. It was barely a caf¨¦, just a couple of tables in front of a storefront that barely existed.


    "Men," I said.


    She sighed. "I need more information than ''men''. Why were they bothering you?"


    She was the one who had demanded we sit down and talk. She''d chosen to leave before, claiming we drew in danger. I could have lived with that. I could. I knew I could, is at least what I kept telling myself.


    "They didn''t like what I was," I sneered in the vague direction of the square. I''d remembered my way, or at least I hoped I had.


    "A Kindred." Not a question. A statement of fact.


    "A woman," I corrected her. "They were probably the ones who took my coin purse."


    Jenny shook her head. "Not a chance they''d draw attention to themselves. Anyone else? Anyone brush past you? Bump into you? Talk to you?"


    "Why are you here, Jenny?" I asked. "Sitting here with me. Why aren''t you marching in the protest? You''re For Peace, you should be with them. But you''re sitting with me."


    "Do you not want me sitting with you?" she asked slyly. Her fingers curled around her empty mug like a glass of wine.


    "I didn''t know you were married," I teased, switching the topic and pointing to the wedding ring hanging from her neck. "Or are you widowed?"


    Her lip twitched as she tucked the necklace into her shawl. "Not yet."


    "Jenny, you were very clear about how you felt about travelling with us," I said, my tone serious again. "How you felt about travelling with me."


    She shrugged. "Things change."


    "What changed?"


    She kept me waiting awhile before speaking. "Danger finds you," she sighed. "But me, I go looking for it. I''m hunting someone. Someone I want dead. And it''s dangerous. You didn''t intend for those things to happen, but they did. The world came after you, and that''s what makes it so dangerous to travel with you. Whether you want it to or not, eventually, the world is going to catch up."


    I stared at her. She was upset with how Eskir and I were at risk, but she wanted to go chase down that danger herself? And somehow that made it better?


    "Me," she continued, pushing down against the backs of the edges of her fingernails with the table, "I''m hunting it. I know when I''ll die before I actually do. I''ll see it coming. You''re in danger Xera, but me, I''m¡ª"


    "What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Do you seriously think you''ll see your death coming? You could die in three seconds if someone in that protest just happens to throw a knife our way." I jabbed my finger towards the crowd hammering their way past us through the city. "You could die from choking on a muffin."


    "I know that!" she snapped. "I knew it before, I obviously know it now." Her eyes hit the floor. "I meant the big stuff. Hunak big."


    "So what changed," I asked again, grumbling.


    She kept her eyes fixed downwards.


    "Jenny," I coaxed.


    "... the red wastes," she said at last. "I knew Deacons were bad, but... and everyone in this city is ignoring it. Pretending it never happened. Even these idiots." She pointed at the For Peace protest. "We can''t protest that. We can''t negotiate with a Deacon. If he decides people are going to die, people die. I''m trying to say, I want to come with you. But I have conditions."


    I wanted to ask her why she thought we''d take her along. She fought with Eskir constantly, and she had no idea what we were doing. She hated Kindred and didn''t even know I had been royal guard. But the truth was, I wanted her to come with us. I didn''t care where. She felt like a touch of home.


    I missed my home.


    "Okay. What are your conditions?"


    Her eyes thinned to a point that could cut steel. "When the time comes, stay out of my way."


    "You want me to let you kill someone?" I asked.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    "I want to come with you to make sure it happens," she said. "After he''s dead, I don''t care what happens to me. But I can''t die until it does. I can''t risk stumbling across a Deacon or a Kindred who''s having a bad day. Or being caught in the middle of a warzone. Again. You keep me alive, and I''ll help you with. Well, whatever you need help with. I have no idea what the deal is with you two. Well, I''m assuming Eskir survived. He seems like the kind of cockroach who would."


    "Why do you want to kill him?" I asked. She was For Peace, wasn''t she? Though I did remember something about her insisting with fervor that she wasn''t a pacifist. Maybe it was a warlord?


    "That''s private," she said resolutely.


    I let the conversation fade for a moment as I sipped my tea. My gaze drifted to the protest. Most of it had passed us now. The crowds were beginning to thin.


    "Why hasn''t anyone stopped them yet?" I asked.


    "What?"


    "For Peace," I said. "There are a lot of terrorist acts committed by its members. A gathering like this, ont this magnitude, should have every guard and soldier in the city ready to shut it down."


    "We have a permit to protest," she said with a sneer, but it wasn''t directed at me. "Like I said, how willing they were to ignore the red wastes on their doorstep. These people are spineless. They refuse to even march in circles without the government allowing it."


    "Doesn''t that defeat the purpose of a protest?"


    "Obviously," she said with a sour chortle. "But try telling them that. They''re given set city blocks they''re allowed to walk around at set times. This city used to be a city for the people, by the people. Now look at them. Walking around in circles with no rhyme or reason at all."


    "Then why are you with them?" Especially after that long speech about wanting to murder someone, I was questioning her logic.


    She sighed. "There are good ones and bad ones. I''m not denying the terrorism. Lots of these shitheads would, but it''s the reality. But For Peace members have made a difference. Not with whatever the fuck this is, but before Senvia fell, laws were changed. Things happened. When was the last great big war? Senvia''s last big expansion? For Peace has done a lot, and it''s because of the people who are working at it."


    "And you want someone dead," I pointed out.


    "And I want someone dead," she confirmed. "I''m not one of the good ones, Xera. I''m not here to make a difference. And believe me, nobody in any world that you can think of is ever going to miss that piece of shit. He deserves to die slowly and painfully, and the only problem I have with that is that I know I won''t be patient enough to give him what he deserves."


    She looked back out at the few people on the rear line of the protest march. The stragglers were scattered, some of them barely looking like they knew why they were there. A few teenagers were playing tag by dodging their way through the people stuck at the tail-end.


    "But For Peace... we''re fighting for the right thing. They''re fighting. I don''t know anymore. The world needs to stop. Some of them think that we should make it stop, even if that means burning enough of it down that the rest will listen. Others are too much of pacifists to do anything."


    "Where do you sit?" I asked. There were hints of tears glistening her eyebrows, and I didn''t want to push her too far and scare her away. But this, I wanted to know. If she was so ready to kill someone...


    She looked at me. "How many children do you think have died because of war in the last few months?" she asked, her voice half-broken.


    I tried to rationalise the number. Some provinces, like Merity Point, could afford to hire as many Kindred mercenaries as they wanted. Others, like Durn, relied on different tactics and sources of power. But some could only make up for their lack of military might with conscriptions. Heldren was one of them. They were amazing stoneworkers, even making my ring, Stoneguard. It''s why we called them Stonekeepers. Their castles were grand, impenetrable fortresses. The mountain range that ran from Elann ended with Heldren at the southern point of Avengard, and the mountains there were shorter. Instead of towering natural peaks, they were adorned with the castles of Heldren, entire cities built into the mountain sides. Some were situated on peaks, others at closer to sea level, with several right against the ocean, and each of them were splendid.


    They were also easy to defend. Heldren didn''t have many Kindred. Stonemasonry did not bring them the wealth of provinces like Merity Point and Espara, especially when so much of their skill was kept to their province. Instead, they recruited their military from their population, mostly humans. Mostly young. Too young for war.


    I thought of Bell Haven and Dengal and Eckshire.


    Jenny had asked me how many children, and I gave her the only answer I had. "Too many."


    She nodded. "It needs to end. I''m not the right person for that. I''m really not. But if I meet someone who is. I''m going to help them. Senvia needed to fall. Senvia deserved to fall. Not the people in the city, all those innocent lives... The empire needed to end. Only with it dead can we fight for peace. Properly, this time. And we''re still fighting it." She sighed. "The soul of the empire is still here. In this city. In every city. The chains are unlocked, but people haven''t realised yet that they''re allowed to take them off."


    "Provinces have kings," I reminded her. "Lords. Ministers. Even elected officials, here in Bell Haven. I think most of them are fighting to keep those chains on."


    She laughed. "But picture the council, fighting off that crowd. That''s why they need the permit. It keeps them in line, a line well away from anything important. Stops them from being a problem the government needs to listen to."


    The noises from the protest were already fading, but in a matter of seconds, they vanished.


    The people around us had stopped too. The silence held unabated for several seconds before a low murmur crept back into the city block.


    "What''s going on?" asked Jenny in a hushed voice.


    I shrugged, bewildered.


    Across the road, a shopkeeper was staring up at the sky.


    "Xera," whispered Jenny.


    "Look at him," I said, pointing at the shopkeeper. "He looks bewitched."


    "Xera."


    "What?"


    "Look at the sun."


    I twisted my head and gave a sparing glance at it, trying to shield my eyes as best as I could.


    There was little need. The sunlight didn''t burn or scald my eyes as it normally did. Instead of the familiar whitish yellow, the sky was bathed in a deep red by a sun the colour of blood.

 Chapter 32 — A Red Sun

    "Every single fucking time with you, isn''t it?"


    I was too stunned to speak. My eyes were still fixed on the sky.


    "The minute we meet up, the sun turns the whole damn sky red. I know what that means. You sure as hell should know what that means. And now I''m going to die. That''s just wonderful."


    A red sun like that always meant the same thing. The magic of the world itself was rising, breaking, in announcement. A Deacon was coming.


    My muscles tensed from the panic that rapidly set into my bones.


    No. Not here. Not now. A group of humans I could handle, maybe a couple of Kindred if they weren''t too good, but a Deacon was well beyond me. A Deacon was beyond anyone.


    "Let''s go," I said, pulling on Jenny''s arm.


    She half-laughed. "Where?"


    "Somewhere we won''t die." I didn''t much wait for her answer, but she wasn''t keen on speaking anyway. I was the same, caught between a daze and panic. For us, it was easier. I knew where to go. I didn''t know if the Athenaeum would be safe, but I at least had somewhere to hide. Jenny didn''t, but let me pull her along with me with a measure of trust. The people around us quieted, murmuring in disbelief. Screaming and scattering was an option, just not one that occurred to them. A Deacon could never attack a city. Never. It was unfathomable. A red sun wasn''t just the arrival. Deacons came by often to preach, unaccompanied by doomsday skies. Rather, it was a Deacon''s war cry, an intent to kill, and it only appeared above where they intended to attack.


    A Deacon''s power was very different from a Kindred''s. The real origins of Kindred had always been a mystery. We were born to human and Kindred parents seemingly at random. Some nations, like Espara, had their own theories on how to birth a Kindred, but the resounding academic thought in Senvia, and the one Lyana trusted, was that we were, in very blunt terms, freaks of nature. Uncaused. Unexpected. Our power was contained within our bodies. We were stronger, faster, more durable, better at magic, but ultimately limited to the confines of the flesh.


    But Deacons were not born. They were forged. A thing that used to be human, but altered and deformed, imbued with the power of the land. Their power was intrinsic to the earth itself. A red sun announced one''s arrival not as a warning, but through the Deacon''s magic. It wasn''t just some hued discolouration, it was raw power. The sky was being torn apart above us. The Deacon was coming for death.


    Everyone in Bell Haven had been treated to a very recent reminder of just how deadly a Deacon could be. A year ago, when Senvia was still around, a Deacon merely fighting within the boundaries of a Senvian province was unheard-of, let alone attacking its own people. And Bell Haven was a city.


    "It''s insane," muttered Jenny. "How could one just..." she looked around, eyeing the city around us. Some people had started to move, but they did so quietly, like they were afraid of announcing themselves to the world. Their pacing still accompanied by a muttering at most. Silence clad the streets of Bell Haven like a crypt just waiting to be born.This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.


    I pulled her left, right, and back into the square I had first entered into. It was mostly empty now, its crowds having scattered faster than the streets. I crossed it with purpose, almost dragging her along. The Deacon''s magic was already tugging at my bones. My face felt red hot and my lungs burned from the strain. The magic in the air was hitting them, but it was the fear splitting me in half that had me practically kneeling. If Jenny hadn''t been there, I might have just given up and laid down to die.


    Instead, I pulled her along. When we got to the wall where I had jumped down and I pointed out the balcony above, she eyed it incredulously.


    "No thanks," she said. "I''m... not in the mood to climb a ladder right now. I need to... I need to just sit down..."


    "That''s the fatigue," I said, grabbing her and tossing her over my shoulder. She yelped and swatted my head.


    "Stop squirming," I said.


    "Let me go! What are you doing? Are you insane?!"


    I gritted my teeth. "I need you to stop squirming." My hands slipped against the stone at first. I considered punching out hand holds, but it was the sweat covering my palms that made it so difficult to climb. I dried them off frantically on Jenny''s tunic and grabbed the stone again. This time, my hands didn''t slip. The strain was intense, but I was able to lift the two of us up using the cracks and seams in the wall. Finally, my arm came down on the edge of the balcony and I peered over the wooden railing and into the house. A young man, barely older than a teenager, was staring at me in fear.


    It was understandable. A red sun in the sky, a giant dark-skinned woman scaling a stone wall while carrying another woman on her shoulder, and I realised, probably eyeing the boy with an intense stare. It was exhaustion on my part, but I averted my eyes apologetically.


    I let Jenny off my shoulder and looked around. The imprint for the ring coin was still there in the wood, etched-like into the grain, inviting the use of my key. The young man was gone, probably telling his parents or hiding from the two strangers on their balcony.


    "Why are we here?" Jenny demanded in a hushed voice. "Why are we scaling random balconies? We should be getting out of the city!"


    "This," I said, and pressed my ring coin into the wood. My gut clenched as the door to the Athenaeum opened. What if... I shook the thought from my mind. Whatever Eskir''s secrets, no matter how much the Athenaeum was an enemy to Senvia, the Deacon wasn''t after us. There''s no way it could even know. Even if it had laid a trap in the red wastes to detect us, how could it know about the Athenaeum? If it was that much of a threat to Senvia, then if the Empire had known about it, it would have been buried for good a long time ago.


    This wasn''t about us.


    Jenny stared at the unfolding doorway. "What the fuck?"


    It looked different this time. Before, the door inside the Athenaeum had opened to the balcony like any other door. This time, I didn''t see the Athenaeum at all. Instead of a threshold, it was a shimmering blue mirror covered in a pattern of barrenness like patchy vitiligo. The blue parts reflected us with a tint, half shifting between reflection and arcane haze. The other half, the dulled and barren bits, reflected other things. A forest, a bonfire, an art gallery, a tomb. It was a daze to look at.


    "Follow me," I said.


    "No way, nope, I''m not doing that."


    "Would you rather have the red sun?"


    She groaned. "If I die to a magical blue portal that just appeared on a random balcony, I will fucking haunt you for the rest of time."


    Jenny extended her hand and touched the mirror tentatively. I did the same, holding on to her with my spare hand. I had no idea if this would work. The Archivist had said it wouldn''t, that the coin would only work for me, but there were no other options.


    Jenny took in a deep breath like she was diving into an ocean, and we both stepped into the mirror.

 Chapter 33 — The Seaward Path, Part 1

    This was not the Athenaeum I had left. Rather than books and the multi-levelled wooden maze I had almost grown accustomed to, we stepped out of the portal and into an aged library surrounded by an unending ocean. We were underwater. Enchantments kept the sea at bay, and lights guided the path forward, but they shone out into the abyss as well, illuminating the surrounding ocean. Unhindered by the usual glare of the sun, and probably assisted by the enchantments, we could see farther than I thought possible. Fish of all manner of species crossed our path, darting above, below, and around the enchantments in a bewildered manner. The walls must have been as invisible to them as they were to us, and that was no comforting notion. Moments later, something massive passed overhead. Not a shark, nor anything I had ever heard of before, but it had four fins that were thick enough to be flippers and an array of small, blade-like teeth that it kept well hidden when it closed its jaws. End-to-end, it was as long as the tallest of the bell towers in Bell Haven, and much larger around.


    Jenny stood behind me, as stunned as I was. Her hand settled on my arm.


    "It was supposed to take us to the Athenaeum," I said.


    "Okay," she said in disbelief. "Sure. Yeah. And what is that?"


    "It''s... a library. We should go."


    "Back where we came from?" She turned back to the mirror.


    I pulled her away. "No. Further in. There are books here... the Athenaeum was big. Really big. I''m fairly sure there''s no ocean under Bell Haven, but maybe it''s an illusion."


    "It''s a library?" She paused for a moment, still reeling. "So it''s the Seaward Path?"


    I was never quite big on religion. "How?"


    "It''s what they preach," she said. "Each of the paths has a doctrine, a literal path you can take to reach enlightenment. The Warrior''s Path, everyone knows. You die in battle. The Windward Path too, it''s a bit more common knowledge than the others, you follow a narrow mountain pass, walking along narrow cliffs in high winds until you get to a valley. That''s why it''s the path of the body. The Seaward Path though, most people don''t know much."A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.


    "How do you?" I asked, pocketing the coin that had brought us back, now back in its original form.


    She shifted her arm, pulling away from me. "My... my husband was religious. He followed the Warrior''s Path, but he respected the others. Knew all about them. Taught me a fair bit."


    "So you are married," I prodded.


    "For now," she replied curtly. "Let''s get a move on please. This place is creepy."


    The path was narrow at first, leading away from the portal we had entered from and into a more sheltered area of what I assumed was still the Athenaeum. Crumbling walls rose up on our sides, leaving only the sky to the ocean. Stone flooring mixed with sand and in some cases, hardwood.


    Jenny told me about the Seaward Path as we walked.


    "This place is like the epitome of the path of knowledge," she awed. "The books, the scrolls in this place... it''s more than I''ve ever seen before."


    This was nothing compared to the Athenaeum I had left. The collection was scattered, with the occasional shelf lining an enchanted wall. Half of the bookshelves were crumpled and fallen over, with only a few smaller rooms remaining entirely intact, but the collection here was impressive all the same.


    Jenny turned on her heels, staring at the submerged Athenaeum. "You''re supposed to wade into deep water, sit down under the waves, and hold your breath as long as you can. I always thought people took it literally, but maybe they meant something like this instead. Throw aside your doubts and fears and learn to understand them."


    "You walk into the ocean," I suggested.


    "Exactly. Physically, you sit there and meditate, but the philosophy is that you walk deeper into the abyss, this infinite depth. The wiser you are, the further you can go. You''re walking deeper into a wealth of limitless knowledge about... well, everything. There''s always more to know."


    I helped her over a collapsed stone pillar blocking our path. The road forked, but we continued straight, a descent into a stone tunnel leading downwards that opened up on the other side to a bottomless expanse of water.


    "The star itself is at the bottom of the ocean," she continued. "Down there... ascension. Apparently. Because once you get to the end, and you''re surrounded by all that crushing pressure, you start to understand just how small you really are."


    It made me wonder about the Archivist and Eskir. I had asked Eskir what path he followed, but his stolen voice stopped him from telling me. I hadn''t even bothered to ask the Archivist. All they did was study and seek knowledge, whatever secret they were researching. This was probably their path.

 Chapter 33 — The Seaward Path, Part 2

    "Who are you, Xera?"


    The question hit me in the silence of the Athenaeum, prompted by Jenny''s inner thoughts gone wild. She normally spoke far more often. I figured she must have grown frustrated at the silence.


    I gave the easy answer. "I''m a Kindred." I knew her distaste for us. I didn''t want to give her more purpose to hate me with my former position in the Royal Guard, nor risk telling her too much about Eskir. Though, what could the harm have been? Nobody had tried to kill us because his secret had been revealed.


    Well, nobody had tried yet.


    She rolled her eyes. "Thank you for reminding me. What are you doing in a place like this? Shouldn''t you be following the Path of the Warrior?"


    I did wonder about that. It''s what we were supposed to follow.


    "I can live with death," I said. "Not ascending. That''s fine. As long as I leave the world a better place than I found it."


    "That''s refreshing," she said, sliding down a sandy slope that had accumulated on the steps. "I wonder if we can do that, if it''s even possible."


    "It''s a shit world," I mused, "and humans are quite terrible." She shot me an annoyed look, and I quickly corrected myself: "All humans. Kindred too. Maybe especially Kindred."


    We stepped across the threshold of a massive chamber. The water was held back far above our heads. An entire city block could have fit in here, with buildings towering higher than anything I had seen in Bell Haven.


    "It''s like the arena in Eaden Helm," I commented.


    "It''s disturbing. I feel exposed. Can we stick to the edges so we don''t have to walk through that?" She pointed at the heart of the chamber, isolated and empty and suspended beneath the perpetual threat of the enchantments about to give way at any moment.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    "This Athenaeum place," said Jenny, "I mean, why?"


    "It''s complicated." How was I supposed to explain any of it?


    Our steps took us the long way around the expanse, sticking to the edges where the walls opened up to smaller compartmentalised rooms filled not just with books and scrolls, but weapons, garments, charms, and oddities that were entirely unfamiliar. Jenny commented on them, noting peculiarities or admiring the contents of the rooms. At several points, she identified and explained objects that I had not seen before as trade goods, farming equipment, or components to machinery. How was she so knowledgeable, I wondered. Her eyes lingered often on some rooms, sometimes wistful and sometimes tense, where her entire body froze up and only the reflections of light from the water gave movement to her skin. The only connection of note in the rooms where she gave a notable reaction was in their presence of magic. Tools or otherwise, those rooms drew her eye more than others.


    For me, it was the opposite. My eye was drawn to books, scanning titles with my Kindred eyesight when they faced the doorway, and when there were titles at all. My research in the Athenaeum had turned no good results, and this was a new section to me, something I had not seen before.


    To my dismay, my search here revealed nothing. Most of the books were on aquatic life, which gave me new purpose to think that this was a section of the Athenaeum and not its whole, that we would come out of it and break back into the sections I was familiar with before getting lost.


    When we reached the far edge of the chamber and the hall opened up again to passage beyond, that is when I finally saw it. Not a blue flickering, not the green lights that shone up from below and reflected off the water above to give us our ambient light, but the colour of unwashed stone bathed in dimness. The path ahead was darkened, but it was certainly stone, and therefore must have led back to the main area of the Athenaeum. I breathed a sigh of relief. It was not home, nor familiar, but I couldn''t help to feel a sense of security in the Athenaeum, despite the red sun we had left behind. If the Deacon found its way in here, we would die just as easily below ground as we would above.


    I resolved to steel myself for it, if and when the time should come. I''d go down fighting, and I would ensure to ask the thing why it would do so much just to destroy a man who could not speak. That was, at least, my best rationalisation for its coming. I was an ally to the Deacons through my position, and no protest, no matter how outrageous, would prompt a Deacon to annihilate a city.


    His voice was the only explanation to the madness.