Fractured Legacies

Emuund glared up at the Night-Light as if it had personally offended him, and then returned his eye to the telescope’s eyepiece.

“Featureless. Completely featureless. How?”

He looked away again, and his sketchbook seemed to mock him with its emptiness. But what was there to sketch? Unlike the moon, which showed its usual half-face for the winter and moved through the sky against the stars in a nightly pattern that was easily explained by the mathematics of orbital motion, the Night-Light was a true mystery. It was unquestionably further away than their world was from the sun, so it should have a slower orbit, as per the law of gravity that every other known object seemed to obey, ranging from the smallest comets to the largest planets.

However, it didn’t. It remained at opposition to the sun relative to his world… mostly. Some very precise measurements in the last few years by the royal astronomers of Sloviori had shown that it was almost imperceptibly orbiting an imaginary point on the line between the sun and their planet’s center, tracing out gentle loops over a period of weeks… around what was apparently an empty point in space.

“You all right?” Haannes asked from his spot further down the rooftop by his own telescope.

“Just… what is the Night-Light orbiting?” Emuund grumbled. “It has no features, when we’ve seen clouds and craters on other bodies out there, and there’s nothing for it to orbit!”

“I have not the slightest clue,” Haannes said with a shrug, not moving from his eyepiece. “Although I do have to say that I’m partial to the ‘invisible planet’ theory.”

“You mean the theoretical object that only pulls on the Night-Light and doesn’t affect our own moon, or any of the other objects in orbit?” Emuund rebutted. “That theory was disproven fifteen years ago when that comet passed through the region and it wasn’t affected.”

“Yes, but then what is it orbiting?”

“Gaaah!”

“Here, why don’t you give a look at Kilia?” Haannes said. “It’s particularly gorgeous at the moment. Relax, draw some sketches, and then get back to pounding your head against the wall.”

“Gladly. At least there I can be of some use.” Emuund reoriented his telescope; this was his first winter with this particular one, and he adored it already. It had a curved silver mirror measuring almost a foot across instead of the outdated eight-inch glass lens of his old one, which he’d passed down to his nephew. Kilia was easy to spot, with its red-salmon coloring, and he had it in his eyepiece a few moments later.

“Gorgeous…” he breathed. The planet, which was the third one out from his own world, was marked by great belts of clouds and storms, and had an intricate set of rings banding around the planet’s equator. Unlike Nephaas, Kilia had a modest tilt of only eighteen degrees from its plane of orbit, but that was still enough to see the rings in all of their glory as they cast shadows on the surface of their world. Several of Kilia’s moons were also visible—and they orbited according to the laws of gravity, as the hundred and more years since their discovery had shown!

He looked at the Isurn Gap between the two largest sets of rings; the thin black line was stark against the red and white of the rings above and below it. “I wonder what causes that?”

“What?”

“The Isurn Gap.”

“I was just reading up on that, and one theory that seems to fit is orbital resonance,” Haannes said. “It’s at the right distance from the planet that every two orbits at that distance would match up to one orbit of Golea, so the moon is pulling the particles out of that gap.”

“You still think that the ring is made up of particles?”

“It has to be. A solid ring wouldn’t be stable.”

“You mean like how the Night-Light doesn’t seem to orbit anything?”

“Fair, but how many exceptions to natural laws are we making here?”

“As few as possible, I suppose.” He mused. Yes, over enough time, the gravity of the moon would pull out any little rocks from that ring, just like how the tides here on their world went in time with their own moon…

He looked away from his eyepiece and up at their moon. It was nearing ninety degrees away from the Night-Light, meaning that they were closing in on Mid-Winter. The general structure of his world’s orbital mechanics came up, almost as a model as he visualized it in his mind. The moon, orbiting over Nephaas’ deeply tilted equator, and the Night-Light, somewhere far beyond. Right now, the summer in the southern hemisphere would be reaching its height, with great storms that would blow northward from the south pole as the oceans steamed. It all worked so nicely, like clockwork.

Looking back through the eyepiece, he tried to just soak in the beauty of the far-off planet. It was fascinating to think that the gap in the rings could be from the influence of the moon, impacting its fellow orbiters…

The realization struck him like a blow, and he pulled away from the eyepiece.

“Everything all right?” Haannes asked.

“Yes! I just—I need paper and pen and a counting frame!” he said as he started to hurriedly put away his telescope.

“Check inside. I think Raavi left some in his desk.”

“Yes, yes!”

Having packed up his telescope, he went inside, barely taking the time to remove his coat and boots before going off to find the materials he needed. Sitting down at the kitchen table, he started by looking up in his reference book the figures he needed, and then began doing math.

“All right… so the orbit based on the mass of the sun is directly proportional to the product of the mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers…” he said, citing the law of gravitation. “Now… what happens if I add the planet’s mass to that of the sun?”

Ten pages of paper and several hours of furious math later, he had an answer.

There was a stable point a million miles further out from the sun, where his world’s gravity and that of their sun would add together.

He slumped in the chair, exhausted but exultant. He’d solved it.

He’d solved it.

The Night-Light orbited this stable point. He’d need to do more of the math, but if he was correct, he’d just solved the greatest mystery in astronomy for his age—how far away was the Night-Light, and how did it keep pace with his planet?

And if he knew how far away it was… then he could figure out how big it was in reality. It appeared to be just under a quarter the size of the moon, but was much, much brighter. Which meant that they could figure out how reflective it was…

He realized he was crying and wiped away the tears.

“I wish Raavi was here…” he muttered. “The kid would love this…”

But the boy was off somewhere, escorting that duke’s wife to the capital… and he'd left weeks ago. He just hoped that he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere. It would be awful to have to explain to his parents where their son had gone…

No, he was probably just holed up in the capital. Given the difficulties with traveling in winter, it was almost certain that they’d arrived and would be staying there until it was easier to come back. He’d probably be on the first canal barge come Spring, full of tales about the beauty of the capital by the sea.

He rose and got himself something to drink out of the icebox. A good beer proved handy, and he knocked it back, only to jump as someone pounded on the door. “Get out here! A courier from the capital just arrived!” he heard through the front door.

“What!? In winter?” Emuund demanded, but, his exhaustion forgotten, he ran to pull his boots and coat back on.

A few minutes later, he was down at the canal-head, where a crowd of the overwinterers had gathered around what looked strangely familiar—a copy of Raavi’s ice-boat.

Well, close to it, Emuund could see. It was smaller and lighter, with just two men in it.

Neither of them were Raavi.

The mayor came marching up, and the two men from the boat spoke with him before giving him a sealed sack in exchange for a signature. Then they were off down the canal, moving with incredible speed.

“I… I guess Raavi made it to the capital,” Emuund heard someone say. “And they liked his idea!”

“Good for him! I hope that he’s getting credit from the King for it!” someone else in the crowd commented, and they gave a little cheer. Their boy had done good!

Then they all turned to the mayor. “Any news?”

“Not that they told me. Just that this is mail, official and unofficial, for the town. I will look and see if there is anything of relevance and see to it that you all get your deliveries in short order,” the mayor said brusquely, but then he turned and looked down the canal, where the ice-boat had vanished already into the distance. Then he shook his head, and Emuund heard the mayor say quietly “Well done, lad. Well done.”

Shaking his own head, Emuund made his way back to the house. Just seeing the ice-boat made him relax. Raavi wasn’t dead or lost. Instead, royal couriers were using his design to travel through the winter. If that didn’t say so much right there…

The boy’s mother would be proud, and his father pleased and exasperated, and now Emuund couldn’t wait to tell them.

He’d gotten back to his calculations, cleaning them up and preparing them for publication, when Haannes came in. “Hoy! Emuund, you need to see this!”

“What is it?”

“News from the Royal Astronomy Society. So this Equal Night, we’re in for a treat!”

“Oh?”

“So someone has crunched the numbers and apparently, in three months, the moon will be in just the right place at just the right time that it’ll be between us and the sun. They’re calling it an ‘eclipse’.”

“I remember reading up on the idea. It was purely theoretical, wasn’t it?” Emuund said. “Just as a matter of probability?”

“Well, we’re going to have one for real, and it’s going to pass over our kingdom, Emuund!” Haannes looked like he was about to start bouncing from foot to foot. “Something that’s a once in a thousand year opportunity, and it’s going to happen right here! According to the math, it’ll be in a line across the Center Sea, and reach its maximum extent inland from here—in the duchy of Rechneesse.”

Emmund breathed out. “Wow. Let me see that.”

Just as Haannes handed him the paper, though, there was another pounding at the door. Emuund rose, wondering where his peaceful winter had gone.

One of the mayor’s staff stood outside. “Town meeting. Get going.”

“What is it?”

“We’re preparing for war.”

#

The snow crunched under Thamiyiba’s feet. Like the others with her, she carried a spear in her hands.

“There,” came the word from her group’s leader, Zaahur. “Another town.”

Thamiyiba squinted to peer through the darkness. Sure enough, a small settlement lay nestled in the valley between the rolling hills, a grove of oilsap trees on the northern edge, as was typical of these people.

Despite the suggestions of some, they had resisted burning those trees across all of their raids. A few of their people, who had been distraught at the loss of friends of centuries, had attempted to fire the groves, but they had managed to extinguish the fires before they’d caught and spread. It was bad enough what they were doing; there was no need to make it worse. They would be—had already been—spreading enough chaos and destruction as it was. Spreading more out of spite at their victims would be an even greater damnation.

Thamiyiba knelt with the others as Zaahur led the prayer. “Blessed be those who came before us, those who laid the trail for us to follow. Thank you to all of our ancestors, whose efforts raised us and enabled us. We shall follow in your footsteps, day by day, hour by hour, until the last, carrying our inheritors before us, so that they might know a better world.”

“A better world,” the group intoned, and rose.

As they trudged through the snow, Thamiyiba found her thoughts circling again. They gave thanks to their ancestors, but to the living of their people, they were the ancestors thus praised and thanked. Had her own parents and grandparents ever felt this conflicted? This confused and agonized at what they needed to do in order to survive? Seen a betrayal of their ideals in the name of continuing on?

But… if she didn’t… if they didn’t…

She remembered the Nightfest, the feast at the last rising of the sun before the winter. Her eightfold-great-grandchildren had looked at her with fear and worry, not knowing if they would see her again. Dressed in the fine tunics she had woven for them, the youngest squeezing a doll Thamiyiba had first crafted a hundred years before, and repaired anew for each generation, they had clutched their parents as they had gone down to the sleeping chambers… but not before each of them had given her an embrace and a blessing.

Her heart, which no longer beat, had broken at their fear and worry.

It was for them that she did this. It was so that they would survive and thrive from her efforts that she had first put her name on the scroll.

While no one spoke of it, it was an open secret among those who had seen their decades turn to centuries that the Oathbound needed to have ties to the living. As strong as principles were, one could not labor ceaselessly on behalf of principles. One needed a face, a family, loved ones on whose behalf they continued on, year after year, season after season, generation after generation. Because otherwise, one day, you would ask yourself why you were continuing on, spinning, weaving, herding, carving, painting, endlessly…

And one could say, for the sake of my tribe and my people all one wanted. And for some, that sustained for a while. But eventually, it would wear thin, and on the day when it broke…

There would be an empty spot on the scroll to be filled with a new name.

But for Thamiyiba?

She had sewn the wedding garments for all of her married descendants—all eight hundred and sixty-three of them. She had held them when they were born. She had anointed them when they passed into the company of the ancestors.

And she had assured the youngest of them that she would be there when winter passed.

She had made many oaths in her life, and intended to fulfill this one.

They reached the town, and began to search for those who were awake.

“Remember,” Zaahur said, “we pull back at the first sign of significant resistance, but if it comes down to it… don’t risk yourselves over them. We’re here to provoke, not slaughter.”

Thamiyiba nodded, and held the spear as she and the other spear-wielders moved together.

The overwinterers were easy to find, clustered in a few houses towards the center of the town, near a large building that had smoke drifting from a brick chimney.

A few Oathbound with massive hammers broke down the doors, and others smashed some windows and walls.

Inside, the Kalltii screamed and shouted, and there was a clangor of metal on metal as they fought back. They’d been warned, apparently.

Good. Thamiyiba still felt sick at the early attacks they’d been forced to stage, where they’d attacked an unaware populace in the middle of winter. It was dishonorable, a travesty, a violation of all that was good and proper…

And yet…

What choice did they have?

Still, as a building began to burn and they pulled back, Thamiyiba glanced back at the flaming structure.

All of her existence, she had made things. She had taken disorder and made order from it, whether that was a chaotic mass of fleece from a sheep, spun into yarn, dyed into colors, and then woven into the structure of cloth and fabric, or any of the other crafts she had trained in. It was the nature of the Oathbound of the Gehtun, the great contradiction of their existence—by binding themselves to death and decay, they brought life and order. While the world itself attempted to tear down everything they built, they defied the calling of death itself in order to rebuke chaos.

So it galled her that now she had become the sunderer in the winter night, bringing pain and death and destruction.

#

“Blessed to you are those who bring forth the life and the growth,” King Luitpoold intoned as he sat kneeling on the woven mat. He hummed in wordless vocalization as he threw another pinch of incense onto the brazier in front of him, making a small cloud of fragrant smoke appear in time with the chiming bell held by one of the acolytes. “Thanks be to those who bless the fields and the groves with fertility and spirit.” Another wordless intonation, echoed by those seated around him, and he threw in the next pinch of incense, again accompanied by the bell. “Thus we give thanks. Thus we mark the turnings of the years and the seasons. Thus we stand, as the next link in the chain, growing forth to tomorrow.”

“Thus we stand,” intoned the others. “Thus we give thanks.”

Luitpoold set the bowl of incense aside and bowed, pressing his forehead to the floor. “Thus passes the year.”

As the others echoed his words and followed his motion, the chamber felt as if it had grown damp and fecund; a smell like a forest after a rainstorm permeated the air. A shimmering of light seemed to be reflected in the smooth floor, but he did not dare look up; he knew what he would see, and he did not wish to offend the spirit. Not now, not when things were so dire for his kingdom.

The sensation passed, and Luitpoold rose; one of his aides helped him to his feet, and he looked out across the vast chamber that underlaid his capital.

Through some lost art he did not understand, the ceiling gave light when charged with Breath, but did so in a manner vastly different than the usual form of Breath-charged crystals.

And under those arcane lights stood something precious.

Bending over, Luitpoold reached down and examined the tiny seedling sprouting from the soil of its pot, and felt a thrill. No matter how many times he’d done this, no matter how many pots crowded the chamber, each with their freshly sprouted oilsap, conifur, or other baby tree, it always pleased him. His kingdom would grow, both in prosperity and in life. Come spring and the melting of the canals, these seedlings would be shipped out to every village, town, grove, and city in the realm, where they would be planted to add to the existing groves. Certainly they could plant their own—and many places did—but the trees that came from the royal nursery reportedly grew better, and were distinct from their fellows in hardiness and potency.

But that was for later, and first he had to make sure that they would have a kingdom to be planted in.

Leaving the underground chamber, he returned to the King’s Tower and was dressed in his robes of office by his attendants.

“So where do we stand?” he asked as his embroidered vest, the threads marking out the honors and ranks he held, was placed over his tunic.

His leading general, Conraad ava Eernst, bowed politely. “At the moment, damage from these barbarians seems to be light; generally, from the reports we’ve been given, they seem to be mostly probing for weaknesses. Mostly they come rushing in, attack, draw blood, and then retreat back out to the snows. Some fatalities, but mostly moderate to serious wounds are the worst we deal with.”

Luitpoold scoffed and held his arms out as his aides buttoned up his clothes. “Makes sense. Do probing attacks in winter, find out where the weakest places are, and then concentrate before the kingdom awakens and strike at those places. They have unmatched mobility in these conditions, after all.”

“At least they did, before we got our hands on these ice-boats,” Conraad said with a wry smile. “When Spring comes, we’ll be ready, mobilized in a way that we couldn’t have been without them.” He shook his head. “Why didn’t we ever come up with these before?”

“Because who has a major war break out in the middle of winter, where news and reports suddenly take on such magnitude?” Luitpoold said sourly.

“I know, sire. It was just a rhetorical question. I, for one, am blessing that young blacksmith boy.” He chuckled. “If he and the pirate end up coming back from their fool’s errand, I think that I would like to lay claim to the boy for the army and see what else he can cook up.”

Luitpoold scoffed. “If he manages to get back, we’ll speak. As far as I’m concerned, he’s either dead or lost in enemy territory. But at least before he went he gave us the tools to combat these raids.” He sighed. That was a letter he wasn’t terribly looking forward to have to write, but given the boy’s service to the kingdom, if and when it came to it, he would have to write to the boy’s parents, listing the accolades their son had earned in his short-lived service to the kingdom.

“You don’t think he and the Lady will survive?” Conraad asked. “She’s already shown considerable talent for survival.”

“Yes, she’s quite the mythologized pirate. And she is competent. And if she does manage to return with an armistice, I then have other problems. But I doubt it.” He shook his head… even as a small portion of the back of his mind was both annoyed and grateful that he wouldn’t have the excuse or reason to pin back Duke Rechneesse and his ambitions. But in the end, as annoying as the Duke was, his day would come. For now…

A war, on a flank he had always considered secure and safe, was burgeoning.

And it was time to prepare.

<<<<>>>>

A few housekeeping things.

First, it's my birthday next week, followed by my wife's two weeks later, so I'm going to be taking off from posting until September 17th for a vacation and build my buffer back up.

Second, for my birthday, I'm getting a proper website to host my writing, so I'll be linking to it there from here in the future, rather than posting entire chapters on here.

Enjoy!

Lady Fiaswith of House Rechneesse

The pirate in the back of Fia’s mind was gibbering a little as she and her people were escorted into the Gehtun King’s palace. To say that the place was splendidly appointed would be an understatement. The floor was carpeted with rugs woven with expert care and splendidly dyed, while tapestries covered the walls, and exquisite pieces of sculpture sat in small niches and alcoves along the way. The wealth and taste on display was astounding.

Fia didn’t remember much of her childhood in Singharrow, but she knew that a lot of people around the Center Sea sneered at her homeland for its supposed backwardness and lack of culture. More than once, she’d used that to her advantage, letting people underestimate her.

Now the shoe was on the other foot. She’d heard ‘nomadic horsemen and herders’ and assumed that meant ‘backwards’ and ‘uncultured.’

More fool her.

The guardsmen were living men and women, dressed in polished scale-mail armor and a distinctive helm with a ridge along the top of the head and ending with a downward peak on the forehead, framing the eyes. They had swords, but those were sheathed, and carried horsebows and quivers strapped to their backs. They moved with the ease of training and familiarity, which shot another hole in her personal theory that the oathwalkers had been the king’s personal guard and retinue of soldiers. That’s how it was in most other lands that had oathwalkers, but apparently here the living did the work of safeguarding the royal line.

They were brought to a small side chamber—Raavi had to be told continuously to keep up, as he kept getting distracted by the art—where a table with food and drink was waiting, along with several cushioned chairs and couches. One of the guards spoke, his words broken by unfamiliarity, “You here wait. Drink. Eat. Safe be. Soon King meet.”

She bowed deeply. “Thank you.”

He nodded back, and for a moment—just a moment—his professionalism cracked.

And she saw terror… but also, oddly, hope in his eyes.

The moment passed, and he went out the door, closing it behind him.

“So we’re here,” Zoy commented, heading over to the table and picking up a pasty. “Damn, look.” She held it up. “Even their cookies are little works of art!”

Fia walked over and peered at it; the rectangular cookie had been stamped with the shape of a running horse and painted with what looked like berry juice such that a red roan stallion raced across the rolling grasses of the pasty.

“Beautiful.”

Zoy ate it and chewed. “Delicious. Sweet and buttery.”

That got Raavi’s attention, and he came out of his art reverie. Coming over to the table, he started perusing it. “Is it okay for us to eat these?”

“We were told to, and I don’t know how long it’ll take the King to be ready to see us,” Fia said. “Probably not too long, but I wouldn’t bet on it, and for all I know they have to get him out of bed and dressed. Which could take a while. So dig in.”

Raavi and Oksyna didn’t need to be told twice, and the pair of them started in as Fia poured herself a glass of what smelled like wine. She wasn’t worried about poison. If the Gehtun wanted to try to kill them, those swords would have been a lot more effective. Also, she personally could laugh off things like hemlock and nightshade—and had.

“Oooh, Raavi, you have to try this,” Oksyna said around her mouthful.

“What is it?”

“Some kind of flaky dough in layers, filled with chopped nuts and honey,” she said, and popped a piece into his mouth.

Fia hid a smile behind her goblet—which was a work of art itself. Metal, wrought around pieces of glass and what looked like slivers of horn, carved with delicate scenes of daily life. Weavers, herders, bowyers, sculptors…

A swallow of the wine proved that it was an excellent vintage, and she made a note that, if they survived all of this, she was going to have to ask for a bottle or better yet a small cask. While she couldn’t get drunk, she could still appreciate the flavor, and she and Faalk deserved a nice few hours in the summer sun to work their way through it.

Some cheeses—made with sheep’s milk, if she was tasting them correctly—complemented the wine wonderfully, and she made her way over to a chair with her plate and goblet.

Stylio joined her, also laden down.

“Something doesn’t add up.”

“This entire thing has more things that don’t add up than an underworld Kasmenartan accountant’s books,” Fia said.

“Oh no. Their public books add up beautifully, and so do the private books,” Stylio said with a small smile. “Of course, trying to reconcile the two is… interesting.”

Fia gave her a sidelong look. “Speaking from experience?”

“Perhaps. But inaccurate analogies aside, I agree with the spirit of what you’re trying to say. Just… why are the oathwalkers attacking? Why are the Gehtun treating us as they are? Why are they apparently grieving their efforts to attack?”

“Exactly.” She leaned back and took a bite of her cheese. “I am baffled and hope that we get some answers.”

She’d just finished chewing on her cheese when the door opened. A pair of servants came in, carrying several pieces of cloth—no, clothing. Speaking in their tongue, they looked around, and the older one, a woman somewhere between Fia and Stylio in age, motioned for her to rise.

Curious, she did so, and quickly found herself being posed by the women, who had a grip like iron tongs and a measuring string, wrapping around Fia’s arms, chest, legs, and up the length of her body. Then she was released, and the woman turned to her assistant.

As they spoke rapidly, going through the pile of clothes, Stylio said dryly, “I suppose that we need to be properly dressed before we meet with the king.”

Fia sighed. “Please, please let me get out of here without getting blood on whatever outfit they give me.”

As Stylio laughed, the senior tailor came back over, holding a gorgeous piece of what looked like embroidered silk; the base was red, with vivid oranges and yellows in the form of flowers and vines across it. Fia tolerated the fitting, and thankfully the tailor was quick and efficient.

Then it was Stylio’s turn, followed by Zoy. When they started pulling out knives from her clothing, the expressions on the faces of the two tailors was something to behold. Yufemya, Oksyna, and Raavi followed in quick succession, and then the two left.

“Well. That was… interesting,” Zoy said as the door closed. She stretched and started putting her knives back, and then she yawned. “Think we can sack out in here? I’m exhausted.”

Raavi yawned as well. “Damn those are infectious,” he said, stifling a second one.

“We probably have some time before they’re finished altering those clothes to fit us,” Stylio said. “And those couches and chairs look comfortable. Rest up while we can.”

Raavi didn’t need to be told twice, and was laid out on a couch in a matter of moments.

Fia smiled at him and patted his cheek. “You know you can let other people pilot the Lynx…”

He shook his head, but was asleep before he could respond.

#

Raavi ava Laargan

Stylio’s prediction turned out to be accurate… mostly. We got enough sleep to feel a little rested, but the Gehtun returned with our new clothes in just a few hours. I was dressed in a stiff woolen tunic and pants that were lined on the inside; the fabric felt weird and itchy on my skin, for all that it was soft, and I missed my usual tree-wool shirt and pants. But Lady Fia insisted, so I wore them and tried to keep my twitching to a minimum.

We were escorted up into a grand audience chamber; easily thirty feet high, probably forty at the highest point. It had a wood and gold throne at the far end, with an older man seated in it, dressed in fine robes that put mine to shame.

Next to him however, was something… else.

Oksyna gasped and bowed deeply to the six-and-a-half foot tall skeleton—dressed in worn but fine robes of its own, colored a deep blue-black with silver speckles—and it bowed to her in response.

And then it spoke. <Greetings to you, Signatory. But I believe that the King in whose chamber you stand has precedence.>

I blinked. How had I understood that? It hadn’t been in my language.

Oksyna nodded and straightened hastily before bowing to the King in his throne. He raised an eyebrow, and spoke. A man standing next to him started to translate into my language.

“‘Greetings to you, foreign envoys of Westernfellsen. We have been expecting you.’” The King nodded to Lady Fia. “‘You have questions. And I have answers. But first, I must ask you a crucial question.’” He rose from the throne. “‘Will you help us?’”

Lady Fia’s head jerked back a little. “But your people have been attacking us! Did you send them to attack us just to get our help!?”

The King shook his head. “‘No. It is complicated.’” He bowed his head slightly towards the translator, and spoke. The translator swallowed and turned to the skeleton, which, I noticed now, stood inside of a circle made of some kind of metal set into the floor, and dangling lazily around its neck and shoulders was a lynx spirit, its translucent blue body harder to see in the well-lit chamber. “Death Lord, hear and witness my oath. To these people here and now, I swear to tell the truth as I know it, or may my flesh break out in boils and my eyes cloud with blindness, until such time as they release me.”

<I hear your oath, freely made, and bind you to it, Hayri of the Tillkey Tribe of the Gehtun people.>

Oksyna stared at him, her eyes wide, as I asked, “Wait, what just happened?”

The man—Hayri—stepped forward. “What just happened is that my King understood that you would need a show of trust. I am Minister Hayri, his aide and companion, and now I must answer your questions or suffer pain and blindness.” His smile turned sickly. “Please keep your questions to the topic at hand?”

Lady Fia turned to Oksyna. “Explain what’s going on and why you look like someone’s stabbed you someplace painful?”

“I… I… I can’t.”

“Why not?”

Oksyna turned to the skeleton. “Death Lord. You are not the one who holds my binding, but I appeal to you to suspend my oaths of silence for the sake of justice and truth.”

The skeleton stepped up to the edge of the circle, as the lynx hopped off of its shoulders and down onto the ground. <And what would you offer to me, Signatory Oksyna of the Endanchoria? I spoke against you being given the Oath when you were a child. Too young, too rash. It would have been a mercy to let you pass. And now you ask me to loosen the chains you agreed to bind you?>

My eyes widened as implications started to go through my mind.

“What would you ask of me for this service?” she asked.

I saw the King watching and stepped forward next to Oksyna. “I can help you pay.”

She turned to me. “Raavi, you have no idea what you’re offering.”

“But I’m willing to help.” I looked to the Death Lord—whatever that was—and saw now that its cloak was shimmering, like stars in the night sky; it wasn’t just fabric. “I’m willing to pay what it is you want from Oksyna.”

<And what if it is your life I ask for, Raavi ava Laargan of the Hudejjaan tribe of the Kalltii people?>

I swallowed. “You wouldn’t ask for that, because if you wanted that much of a price, you would have just said that to Oksyna.”

<You are wise. Yes. Such a price would be too much for such a service. Well done. But what if my price is your peaceful sleep? Your youth? Your health? Five years of your life? Your skill with your hands? Knowledge of something you hold dear? The memory of a lost loved one? Would you still stand in lieu of this Signatory?>

Oksyna’s hand gripped mine, and I squeezed back. “I would. She needs to be able to speak freely if we’re to help my people.” I shrugged. “At the end of the day… I’m just the driver. And someone else could pilot the Lynx if they needed to.”

The Death Lord leaned down to stare me in the eyes, and, despite desperately wanting to look away, I met its gaze.

Infinity stared back at me through the empty eye sockets. I could see… everything. The death of people, of nations, of worlds, of stars…

Then it moved back. <You are brave in the literal face of death, young Raavi. Or foolish. I name my price. You are a craftsman. There will come a time when you must destroy something which you yourself have created, and you will do so. You will know when.> It looked me over. <Is that price acceptable?>

I swallowed. And nodded. “Yes.”

<Good. Signatory Oksyna of the Endanchoria. Your clause of silence, specifically, is lifted and void for those present here.> There was a bright, blinding flash of purple light between Oksyna and it. Then the Death Lord stepped back and nodded at me. <You may thank your associate for paying the price.>

I turned to her, and she was looking at me, horrified, before she swallowed and gave me a weak smile. “You…” She took a deep breath. “Fia… I can explain now.”

#

Lady Fiaswith of House Rechneesse

“Oh good,” Fia said, putting her hands on her hips. “So, first question: How stupid was Raavi just now? On a scale of one to ten.”

“A solid six.”

“Oh, well, that’s not so bad,” he said, and Fia rolled her eyes.

“Next, explain what Hayri did.”

“He bound himself to an oath. Like what I can do, but worse and more powerful.” She motioned towards the skeleton in the middle of the circle. “Death Lords like that are what make necromancers. We’re their oathbound and empowered representatives. Anything I can do, he can do, and make it look easy.” She motioned again towards the Gehtun man, who was waiting patiently—well, maybe a little anxiously, as Fia caught him bouncing a little on his feet—off to the side. “So if he lies to us, he’s going to hurt.”

“Yes. Exactly,” Hayri said. “And, if I may… while I understand that this drama just now was necessary, I feel that it is important that we return to the matter at hand.”

Fia nodded. “Yes. Please.” She took a deep breath. “I have a lot of questions… but since you have this oath and a motivation, why don’t you start explaining, and if I have any questions at the end, I’ll ask them?”

“That sounds fine to me.” He paused, as if waiting for the boils to break out, and when nothing happened, he continued. “As for what happened… last summer, the sacred Scroll of the Gehtun Ancestors was stolen from the deep vault under this tower.” He nodded towards Oksyna. “I believe the common necromancer term for it is the oath-gem.”

Oksyna blinked and her eyes went wide before she started to swear.

“Yes. About that bad.”

Fia glanced back and forth between them. “Oksyna, explain.”

She clamped her mouth shut like she was chewing for a moment before saying, in precise words, “It’s what makes an oathwalker, Fia. It’s the physical contract.” She motioned towards the Death Lord. “I can’t make them, but he can, as can others like him. If you sign it with your own real name, you become an oathwalker when you die. You’ll live until either you break your oath, your body is destroyed, or the contract is destroyed.”

“Yes. And whoever took it left a ransom. They would return the scroll—it is made of the finest foil of platinum, with two endcaps of peridot on a shaft of ruby and lead—if our oathwalkers attacked and harassed your kingdom this winter.”

“Ah. And if you didn’t…”

“Then they would destroy it. And that would destroy us.” Hayri wrung his hands together. “Our lands are not rich. We survive on trade and cunning use of what we have, and we depend on the unending, undying labor of our ancestors. They are the most skilled of us, the most dedicated and devoted. It is a sign of great honor and skill to be selected to fill an empty space on the scroll, an honor to which many aspire. To see their children’s children’s children’s children grow and thrive with their aid. Without them, we would die of cold and hunger, for they labor unceasingly through the summer and winter to provide for their families.”

“That’s why they’re all so good at crafting?” Raavi asked.

“Yes. Others use their oathwalkers for war and fighting. Our first king,” he motioned to the man on the throne, “Fakarat’s many-time great grandfather, when he came to negotiate with the Death Lord who forged the scroll, knew that if he were to word the contract for war, it would be the death of his people. So instead, they are bound to serve their families, their tribes, and their people using their skills.”

“So how do you even know that they’ll return the scroll?” Fia asked.

“We don’t. We cast many lots of prophecy, looking for guidance. And there was a slim chance that, if we went along with it… the scroll would be returned.” He looked to them. “You are our chance. The chance for the survival of our ancestors, who did not ask for this war, did not ask to be forced to kill, who would only like to return to their art and their crafts, the chance for the stability of our realm, for the loss of the scroll is sending mutterings through the tribes that the king is unfit and unworthy despite leading for thirty-two years, and the chance for the survival of our people, for we face war, famine and the bitter cold of winter.” He bowed. “Will you help us?”

#

Raavi ava Laargan

“So what do we do?”

I watched Lady Fia pace across the fine rug in the chamber we’d been given by the Gehtun King. We’d talked with Hayri until his voice had started to go hoarse, and then come back here.

“First, I suppose, the question is ‘Do we help them at all?’” Stylio asked from her chair. We all looked at her, and she raised her hands. “I am not saying that we should not—I fully plan on doing so myself—but…” she looked around the room and her eyes landed on me. “Raavi. You offered to help Fia, but this is far more than you bargained for. Why should you risk yourself more now?”

I shrugged and replied, “I already said that I was going to help. I’m not going to back out now.”

She nodded and turned, looking at Zoy and Yufemya where they sat together on one of the couches. “And Zoy—”

“Don’t you dare. You’ve been trying to get me to ‘stay behind where it’s safe’ since I was thirteen.” Zoy crossed her arms and looked at me. “And if Raavi is coming, then I’m also coming.” She flung a pillow at me, and I yelped as it impacted my nose. “I still can’t believe you went and offered yourself to that thing!” She glared at me and crossed her arms as she scowled. “You idiot.”

I gave her a weak smile in response. “Uh… it seemed like a good idea at the time?”

Oksyna poked me in the ribs. She hadn’t let me out of arm’s reach since we’d left the King’s audience chamber. “How someone so smart can be so dumb is beyond me!” She shook her head, her hair brushing against my arm, and then leaned against me.

Stylio cleared her throat. “Well. If you are all coming—” she glanced at Yufemya, who nodded, her mouth twisted up into a wry smile, “—then we need to figure out our next step.”

“I think that part is fairly obvious,” Zoy commented. “We know where the thieves came from. Let’s go and steal it back.”

“Do we know that? For sure?” Yufemya asked.

I frowned. “But Hayri said that they came from Sudlichreichweitte.” It was the Kalltii kingdom at the southern extent of our people’s range. I’d be lying if I said that I hadn’t felt betrayed when Hayri said that the thieves had come from there. They’d been a group of people posing as merchants who had spent the last few years building a trade relationship with the Siyahayi Gehtun tribe, a relationship strong enough that they’d gotten invited to the Gehtun Midsummer festivals, but had left a week before the summer’s peak.

“Yes, and he also said that their own attempts to probe the future showed them that attempting to invade would end with the scroll lost.” She shifted a little on the couch and leaned forward. “Look. I’m not saying that their conclusion is wrong. But I am saying that we should make sure before we go haring off to another kingdom and accuse them of instigating war and hey, can we have a powerful magical artifact back too?”

Lady Fia frowned. “That’s a good point. Do you have any suggestions on how to refine things?”

“Let’s look for clues and see if anyone was sloppy,” Yufemya suggested, leaning back.

“Hmm. It’s a long shot… but I’ve seen enough people be sloppy even when they were trying to be sneaky that I have to agree,” Lady Fia said.

“I agree as well,” Stylio said. “From what I understand, the Gehtun didn’t make a concerted sweep of the palace after the theft was discovered. We might be able to find something that can point us in the right direction if we are lucky. If we are not, then we have lost nothing but time.”

“Which we only have so much of,” Lady Fia said.

“Yes, but if we find a good lead, then we will have saved time. A kingdom is a very large area to search, after all.”

Lady Fia frowned, her lip twisting. “You are far too good at making sense.”

Stylio smiled. “Thank you.”

“It wasn’t entirely a compliment.”

“I know.”

“All right. Raavi, you’re going to look over this vault and figure out how they broke in,” Lady Fia said. “It’s your wheelhouse and this way you won’t get distracted by all of the art.”

I laughed a little weakly, running my hand through my hair. “Sorry. It’s just… so well executed!”

“I know. But you’re like a squirrel between four piles of nuts. So vault for you. See if you can figure things out.”

Feeling a bit sheepish, I nodded. “Okay.”

“Stylio, I need you to cross-examine Hayri. Follow up on anything you can think of that can give us a clue. I don’t think he was holding anything back, but we need details.”

“Got it.”

“Zoy, Yufemya, the two of you and myself are going to sweep the palace and look for anything on the break-in method, route, whatever.”

“And what about me?” Oksyna asked.

Lady Fia glanced at her, and then at me. “Unfortunately, I don’t think that your skillset is going to be particularly helpful here, so I’m at a loss for what to do with you.”

“I agree. Can I help Raavi down by the vault?” She patted me on the shoulder. “I can make sure he doesn’t get distracted by some piece of sculpture or something.”

“What do you say, Raavi? Want Oksyna to help you?”

I glanced at her, but I didn’t see any mockery or joking in her expression. Just support and concern. I nodded. “Sure.”

“Good. Then let’s get to work.”

#

Raavi ava Laargan

Collecting our escorts, I and Oksyna made our way down into the lower levels of the tower. Down here, the carpets were less rich, although they still muffled our steps. Down we went, past rooms walled in with the same sort of eternal glass that made up the main body of the tower itself, as well as the King’s Tower in my homeland, and other such towers elsewhere. In those rooms, I could see more art, but here they were being made. There were looms the size of small huts, sculptor shops, painting rooms, tailoring shops…

And nearly all of them were empty. The tools and materials were there, but the people who would have crafted the works I could see standing half-finished were missing.

I thought of the pile of burning oathwalker bodies outside of the town where we’d met Oksyna and wondered how many masterpieces would be left unfinished because of this unwanted war.

And then I saw something that made me give a double-take.

A young woman—somewhere between my age and Yufemya’s—was walking down the hallway carrying a large sledgehammer, large enough that she was having difficulty carrying it. She saw our guards and spoke in the Gehtun tongue, handing it off to one of them, who took it, but replied in a protesting tone.

After a moment, she responded, and then looked at the two of us. Then she spoke. “You the Kalltii are, yes? Saw you I did in the chamber earlier with the Death-Lord.”

I blinked in surprise, and nodded. “Yes. Well, technically, just me. Oksyna is Endanchorian.” I cocked my head in thought. “Now that I think about it, I’m the only ethnic Kalltii in the group—”

“Very good. Your guards I must borrow. Problem is? Will brief be.”

I shared a glance with Oksyna; she shrugged, her eyebrows knitted in curiosity. “I suppose it can’t hurt.”

“Good. With me come.” She spoke to the guardsmen, who followed gamely, one of them holding the sledgehammer over his shoulder. We made our way down the hall following her, arriving one level down in front of an emptied glassed-in room; outside, there was a wooden frame as tall as me. It was nothing more than an open box with a bar across the top and weights holding up in place below; the bar, once I took a closer look, had a graduated angle measure attached behind it, and a bracket in the middle, along with a pulley system.

The woman took the sledgehammer back and, with a grunt of effort, held it in the middle of the frame, lining it up with the bracket as best she could, but it was clearly very heavy.

“Me help?” she said to me, looking at how I was watching.

“Me?”

“No, the other man with a belt of tools. Yes, you!”

Oksyna snickered as I stepped forward. “All right—”

“Hold while I tighten, or I hold and you tighten?”

“I’ll hold, I guess.” I reached out and helped socket the sledgehammer into the bracket, and held it there as best I could while she engaged the bracket.

Baffled, I stepped back and watched her put a second bracket on the shaft of the hammer, just below the iron block that was the hammerhead, and then attach the pulley system to it. Then she pulled up on the rope.

I eyed the arc of the hammer. It would smack dead into the eternal glass of the room’s window—but if this place was as old as the King’s Tower, then the glass was unbreakable.

…wasn’t it?

After a few moments of grunting effort from the woman, she tied off the rope to a loop on the side and picked up a sheaf of paper. Examining the angle measurement on the frame, she frowned, but shrugged and made a note.

“What is she doing?” Oksyna asked me.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” I said, and then noticed that there was a basket filled with smaller hammers sitting next to the glass, along with what looked like a ruler marked with inches. “Wait, no—”

She released the rope, and the sledgehammer swung down and impacted the window with a shattering reverberation.

I jumped, and then heard the woman exclaim in excitement. She was standing in front of the window while I was still trying to clear the sound of the impact from my ears, ruler in her hand, measuring the cracks she’d just inflicted in the ancient glass.

“What are—what did—how could—” I started sputtering, aghast at the apparent vandalism.

“You! Good! Help!” She tossed the sheaf of papers at me, and shoved a pencil in my hand. “Note time! Notes take!”

“I, what—”

“Quick, quick! First crack, sixteen and three quarter inches! Mark time!” She shoved a pocketwatch in my hands as well, and I fumbled it open and recorded the time. “Second crack, twenty-three and half inches, three forks, six, eight, and four inches!”

I scribbled as quickly as I could as she read off measurements of the remaining cracks around the hole in the glass. I’d ask questions when she was done.

Finally, she finished. “Broken section, two and one quarter inches by three and one half inches!” She held up a sliver of glass from inside the room, the surface of it looking spalled and cracked like a spiderweb, the whole thing smaller than the size of my palm. “Hole, two and one quarter inches by three and one half inches! Mark time!”

I wrote down the measurements and the time, and even grabbed the piece of glass from her to draw an outline of it on the paper. I didn’t know what was going on, but if she was breaking ancient pieces of this place for whatever reason, it would be a crime not to get as much information—and witnesses, I supposed—down on paper as I could.

“Time! What is time?”

“Uh… the sequence of events as they happen?”

“No—well, yes, but what time is reading?”

“Oh!” I read off the time from the pocketwatch even as Oksyna snickered again. “It’s been about ten minutes.”

“Good, good. First crack, measure. Fifteen and nine-tenth inches! Note time!”

I started writing, and then blinked. “Wait.”

“No wait! Record must!” she said. “Second crack. Twenty-three inches, three forks, five and one half, seven and nine-tenths, and three inches!”

I stared. “They’re healing?”

“Yes! Measure must! Rate of healing important to measure!”

“But, but… how?”

She gave me a look with her mouth a bit open in exasperation, her eyebrows half-lidded, and her hands spread out, the ruler waving in one of them. “If knowing that I did, do this not I need!”

“Oh!” I held up the papers. “Ready!”

“Good! Third crack…”

She read them off again, and in the space of those ten minutes or so, each of the cracks had healed by at least a quarter of an inch if not more, with the hole decreasing in size by a tenth of an inch. The piece that had been knocked free, though…

She held it against the outline I’d drawn on the paper and frowned before cursing under her breath. “No grow.”

I shook my head.

“So part of building must be?”

“For it to grow and heal? Makes sense… but I’d want to test that.”

“Agreed I am.” She abruptly stuck out her hand. “Finished I am for now. Paper, watch, please. I stay and time total heal, and you go to where you go.” She turned to the guards who had been watching the whole thing silently and spoke to them in their own tongue. They nodded and motioned for me and Oksyna to follow them.

“Did I understand that right?” Oksyna asked as we walked along behind the guards. “The glass heals?”

“Sure seems that way! But how? It’s not alive. It doesn’t have Breath, much less a life force…”

“Explains how these buildings have lasted so long, though,” Oksyna mused. “I mean, in my experience, everything can rot and break and die. But these buildings are so old…”

“Yeah, even the earliest histories we have mention them as already standing,” I said as we made our way down some stairs, and then I paused at the sight of a massive set of iron-banded stone doors at the end of the hall, more guards flanking it. “And this would be the vault.”

#

Evdoksia of the Nikelnemnos Dynasty of the Dormelion Empire

Evdoksia crept through the halls of the Gehtun palace. Fortunately, the sheer amount of tapestries and carpets filling the place made it almost ridiculously easy.

A shadow-that-was-not seemed to move across her vision, and she moved behind a tapestry. A moment later, the guardsman who she had Seen with her Sight walked past, his spear in hand.

She waited until he was around the corner and then emerged, going for the stairs.

For the moment, the others were focused on the lower levels of the palace, including the basements and lower levels where the vault that had contained the oath-scroll was. She had other goals.

The team that had taken the scroll had been professional, skilled, effective, trained specifically by her family to execute these sorts of operations. There would be no evidence left behind for Fia and Zoy to discover.

She took the stairs two at a time, knowing that she only had a brief window of opportunity to pull this off… and the Gehtun and many others were depending on her to do it.

Her lungs burning, despite her own fitness, she reached the landing she wanted. Outside of that door was the vast balcony formed by the statue’s thrust arms. The operations team had never been up here, she knew that.

But that didn’t mean that they couldn’t have…

She reached down to her pouch and pulled out a small object, rolling it delicately into a corner, where it could be easily overlooked… unless someone as skilled as Zoy was searching for it.

Opening the door, she went out onto the balcony, and placed another object.

And then, going back down the stairs, her time running out, she left another, where it wouldn’t be found until the first two were.

It was done.

She made her way back down, feeling things shifting around her, hearing her uncle whisper in the back of her mind.

She hated it. She hated what she had to do.

She hated herself for doing it. These people had become her friends. And here she was, lying to them, manipulating them…

But she didn’t have a choice.

Reaching the lower floors, she straightened up and resumed walking around, as if searching for any clues. A shadow heralding Zoy appeared around the corner, giving her a few moments with which to brace herself before the other woman appeared.

“Yufemya! There you are! I’m just about done sweeping this floor.”

“Find anything?”

“No. The maids apparently swept before me,” she said. “I’m going to start on the next floor. Coming?”

Evdoksia smiled, hiding her pain at Zoy’s own eager smile. She hadn’t expected to become such good friends with her. She hadn’t expected to have Zoy’s body leaning against hers in the Lynx to feel so right.

She hadn’t expected to feel her stomach flutter at the sight of that smile.

So she said, “Of course!”

For now, the future would attend to itself.

~~~~~

END OF PART ONE

<<<<>>>>

Prologue | Chapter 14

So I have some good news; in the next week or two, I'm going to be getting a separate website of my own for posting my writing! While I'll continue to post here for the time being, eventually I'll just be posting links to the new chapter rather than the full text.

Lady Fiaswith of House Rechneesse

As they approached the Gehtun settlement, Fia glanced over at Raavi. The young man was still stewing from the burial site, but from Fia’s perspective, she was baffled for a completely different reason. Why had the Gehtun oathwalkers given such care to the dead who they had killed? She’d seen enough atrocities over the years to tell the difference between a mass grave and a caring burial. Just… why? Were they offerings to their gods? If so, why the sudden change? Had there been a coup or something that had shifted things here? Or something else?

The oathwalker leader motioned for them to stop and then walked on ahead towards the settlement. It wasn’t much; it looked like stone buildings thatched with grass of some sort, but the smoke issuing from the tops showed that they were currently inhabited. Some square-ish shapes in the snow could be smaller outbuildings.

Two figures with spears stood outside, and the oathwalker leader went up to them and started to speak.

“Think we’re about to get attacked?” Zoy asked.

“No,” Fia said. “If they wanted to attack us, they would have had us come in first. Here, we can run away, and with the wind picking up, we could probably make a break for it. No, they’re probably going up and saying, ‘You would not believe what followed us home. Please don’t try to kill them, it would hurt.’”

She heard Oksyna snort.

Still, despite her own words to the contrary, she put her hand near the hilt of her sword. Just in case one of the guards wasn’t in the mood to listen or overreacted…

The guard and the oathwalker spoke back and forth, and the guard craned his neck in the universal body language of ‘You’ve got to be kidding me”, looking over Fia’s group.

Finally, after some more back and forth, the guard turned and went inside.

“That’s a good sign, right?”

“Probably has to clear it with the local leadership,” Fia said.

“‘It’ being what?”

“Either bringing us in or attacking us,” she said.

“Great.”

A commotion started up inside of the thatched buildings, and Fia tensed a little, but a short while later, one of the buildings disgorged a group of people wearing well-made woolen coats trimmed with fur, one of them carrying a large elaborate staff, and she relaxed. Good. The People With Authority had arrived.

The staff-wielder came up to them, and a woman’s voice came from behind the winter mask, in clipped, heavily accented but understandable tones. “I greet you, Eastern Travelers. You seek an audience with his Highness, King Fakarat the Fourth?”

Fia bowed. “We do. We are coming on behalf of King Luitpoold the Second of your neighboring kingdom of Westerfellsen, on the other side of the mountains,” she said, breaking out her most formal tones and hoping that there wouldn’t be a formal dinner. She’d gotten better under Faalk’s tutelage, but she doubted that the table manners would translate between the two cultures.

“Good. Then you have our hospitality. Come in and know that no harm will come to you in our households so long as you swear to threaten none and break no laws. Once you have been rested, fed, and bathed, we will dispatch you to the King.”

Fia relaxed. “I have a deathspeaker here with me. Given… recent events, would you take it as insult if I asked that she bind us to that promise?”

The woman scoffed. “In ordinary times? I would. But these times are far from ordinary. Cast your spells to bind my oath and then come inside. It is cold out here!”

Oksyna smiled and stepped forward. “All right then…”

#

Zoy

“They’re worried about something.”

Zoy nodded as she squeezed some of the sweat out of her hair. “Yeah, I got that too. What did you notice?” she said to Oksyna. The younger woman was seated on one of the wooden benches in the sauna, scrubbing; the five of them had been given sole use of the sauna, and Zoy was enjoying it. The small wood-lined room was hot, filled with steam and dimly lit by lanterns of eastern manufacture; all in all, it was so nice after so long out in the cold, and it gave them time to talk and plan.

“Impressions, mostly. A lot of them are looking at us like they’re scared… but also hopeful?”

Stylio, leaning against the wooden wall with her eyes closed, spoke. “There are a great many of them awake for this size of a settlement at this time of year. The buildings are overcrowded. They do have sleepers underground, assuming that they can be trusted when they told us where not to go and why, but they’re clearly stretched.” She shifted slightly, making her tattoos flex. “I don’t know what the problem they are facing is, but something has happened.”

“I wish that they’d just say something?” Fia said grumpily from her corner of the sauna, where she sat in a towel, her legs up on the bench and her eyes closed as well. “But no, we have to go see their king.”

“Yeah. If you want, I could try sneaking out and listening in…” Zoy offered.

Fia cracked open an eye and looked at her. “And that would work how when you don’t understand their language?”

Zoy frowned. “Point. Damn.” She shook her head and turned to Yufemya. “You all right? You’re looking like you’re a thousand miles away.”

The other woman blinked and shook herself, sending the gem she wore around her neck bouncing above her towel. “Sorry. Woolgathering. And I have nothing to add, really.”

“Fair enough. So where do we go from here?”

“Well, they fed us already and Raavi is getting scrubbed down somewhere. So apparently next we get some napping in before they send us off with an escort to their king. And then we finally find out what is going on,” Fia said.

“Indeed. So while this sauna is quite nice, I suggest we finish up and get going. Time is wasting,” Stylio said, and rose. Fia’s eyes flicked over her, and Stylio noticed. “There a problem?”

“Admiring your ink,” she said. “I never could get any, for obvious reasons. They look… significant.”

Stylio nodded and shared a glance with Zoy. “Yes. Yes they are. A reminder of where I came from and who I was.” She wrapped a towel around herself and rose. “I believe there is a pool of cold water next. Should be bracing.”

“I never understood that part,” Oksyna said. “You spend all of this lovely time warming up and then you go and plunge into some cold water? Sounds masochistic to me.”

Zoy glanced at her. “How are you not sweating?”

“Necromancer. Tolerance to heat and cold is one of the fringe benefits,” she said with a smile. “I am sweating, but not like you are.”

Scoffing, Zoy said, “Then a cold water plunge shouldn’t bother you at all.”

“Just because I can tolerate it doesn’t mean I enjoy it.” She leaned back, picked up a bundle of grasses and started to use them to scour her skin. “This is much better. We’ll be cold enough for long enough soon enough. I’m going to bask like a lizard on a rock at midsummer while I can.”

“You’re not what I expected from a necromancer,” Yufemya said with a smile.

“What? You expected someone to make compliments about your skeleton or deliberately being as unsettling as possible? Someone who looks over random passersby like they’re picturing them tied to an altar or something?” Oksyna smirked as Yufemya shrugged and Zoy snorted.

“That’s a vivid word picture. Are most of your… colleagues like that?”

“Nah. Oh, sure, most of them play it up for expectations and maybe a few of them really go for it, but those of us who I’ve met are pretty businesslike over the whole thing.” Oksyna shrugged. “I think some of it is also just… blending in?” She waved the bundle about a bit. “Like if your milk turns sour and the chickens die, the man who dresses in black and decorates with skulls is probably going to be first on your list of suspects.” She got back to scrubbing with the bundle, a small smile on her face. “On the other hand, if everyone expects it of you, you might as well go for it, and since they’re going to be treating you with suspicion anyway, it can be fun to mess with them.”

Zoy gave her a flat look that made Oksyna snicker. “So how much have you been messing with us?”

“Very little, in fact. But I will admit that when I was fourteen, I experimented with entering towns with a big creepy staff covered in bones and weird carvings and bellowing ‘Who hath summoned me, foolish mortals!?’” She shrugged. “That… didn’t end too well.”

“Oh, but now I’m curious,” Yufemya said with a grin, leaning in and putting her chin on her hands, which were folded on top of her knee.

“Not much to say. Torches, pitchforks, rioting townsfolk… still solved their revenant problem.” She shrugged. “Kind of sad, really. Neglected man, swore revenge on the town… honestly, I would have said that he was in the right, but, well. If he’d had some specific complaint or goal, I might have helped satisfy that, but general animosity was a bit too much.”

“Can’t imagine why…” Yufemya breathed, her tone dust-dry. She turned to Zoy. “So, up for going for this cold plunge with me? Since Oksyna is doing her lizard impression?”

Zoy grinned. “All for it.”

The two of them made their way out of the sauna, and, bracing themselves, jumped into the icy water. It was a shock, but Zoy embraced it with gusto, and it was fun to watch Yufemya flail a little as they sat in the pool of chilled water, which had chunks of ice floating in it.

“Ahhh! I think I’m going to freeze bits off!”

“Nah, you’ve got a few minutes before that happens,” Zoy said with a grin. “Come on, back in before Stylio complains that she has to fix frostbite.”

“G-g-good idea,” Yufemya said, shivering.

The two of them climbed out of the pool, and went back in, and found the others sitting outside of the sauna. Switching from towels to robes, the two of them took their own seats.

“So, I did some thinking,” Stylio said.

“And?” Zoy prompted.

“Here we have a more controlled space and we’re about to go and meet the Gehtun king on his own territory. Now, while I did some predictions back in Westerfellsen when we had stops in the cities, I think that it would be wise for all of us to do our best after we next wake to try to ask a question.” She nodded towards the crystal around Yufemya’s neck. “I brought mine, and I see that you brought yours. What do you say?”

Yufemya blinked and then nodded. “I’ll try to remember. I’m never very good at remembering to hold my Breath when I wake up in unfamiliar places.”

“That’s fair,” Fia said. “So what sorts of questions would we ask?”

“‘Are we walking into a trap if we go to this king?’” Zoy offered.

“Good one. Nice and simple, yes or no. Given that our setup is going to be simple, we should also aim for the same. Others?”

“‘Is there a way for us to broker peace?’” Fia suggested.

Stylio shook her head. “Too broad. So long as there’s a way, the die will probably come up ‘yes’.”

Fia frowned and sighed. “I hate how loopholed these can get.”

Oksyna snickered. “You should try my job. And I have a suggestion. ‘On a scale of Negligible to Mortal Peril, how dangerous will it be to get the oathwalkers to return to their homeland?’”

“That’s… starting to get beyond the realm of what we can handle with what tools we have here,” Stylio said. “And don’t say that you brought more. I know that you didn’t.”

“Point. Maybe we can ask the locals for help in that regard?”

“Are you sure they even have the same tradition of Waking Breath Fortunes?” Stylio asked.

“Why wouldn’t they? They have Breath, don’t they?”

“I… don’t know.”

Zoy frowned and glanced at Yufemya. “Do you know?”

She shrugged. “We can just ask them.”

“But can we trust the answers? They’re refusing to tell us anything about the king.”

“Indeed,” Stylio said. “And I think that Oksyna’s question is good, but can use some refinement.”

They discussed it around for a bit after leaving the sauna and rejoining Raavi, and then prepared to sleep in shifts, so that they could help the sleepers wake up and use their Morning Breath to cast predictions. Raavi, for his part, admitted to having brought his own die and a small pouch of sand, giving them that much more capability.

Looking around the small room they’d been given—bigger than their tent, but not by much—Zoy saw Yufemya smiling at her as her head hit the pillow. And she couldn’t help but smile back.

The next thing she was aware of, Stylio was helping her up and holding her hand over her mouth and nose. “Breathe,” she instructed, holding up the small quartz die.

Zoy Breathed out her first Breath upon waking, the colors different, meaning that it had worked. The gem glowed, and she sagged. “Urgh. I hate that.”

“I know. Ask your question, quickly.” Stylio pointed to the tray of sand.

“Uh…” She shook her head of sleep-woven cobwebs, divided the tray in half for yes and no, and asked if they were going into a trap.

The die landed on no.

But the face…

Stylio leaned in. “Uncertainty.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that probably others are also attempting to divine the future, and it’s growing cloudy as a result. But I’ll take it,” she said, and stroked Zoy’s forehead gently. “Well done.”

Zoy basked in her praise and her attention. They had a long way to go, for sure, but this was a good omen.

#

Raavi ava Laargan

“All right, I wasn’t expecting this,” I said as we sailed over the snow and ice, the wind at our backs. The Lynx was making a good ten or fifteen miles an hour between the wind and the downhill slope. Going back was going to be achingly slow, but for now, we were going at a good clip. And so was our escort.

“Makes sense, though?” Oksyna said, nodding towards the skiing Gehtun men and women around us; laden with packs, they were going cross-country on their skis with the ease of practice. “They’ve got an even better terrain for it than you do. Very few trees.”

“Oh, it makes perfect sense. I just wasn’t expecting it,” I said, even as I steered us around a mound of snow that could have been anything from a random lump to a boulder. But the land was very flat, and the wind blew across it without anything to really slow it down. None of the careful groves that typified my homeland were visible anywhere in the view that stretched for miles. Even the mound I had just steered us around had been only a few feet high.

“Where do they get oilsap, or tree-wool or anything else like that from?” I pondered. “You can get some textiles from other plants, but what are they burning for fuel if they don’t have access to trees?”

“I have a theory, but you won’t like it,” Stylio said.

“I’m listening?”

“They have sheep and horses. Dried dung.”

I blinked. “Ewww.”

“I said you wouldn’t like it!”

“But why not just plant some nice groves?” I asked.

“Water, probably. An oilsap grove needs a lot of it,” Stylio said. “And this land is supposedly mostly grassy.”

“Lot of snow on it now,” I pointed out.

“And that’ll melt in a few months, and it depends on how much rain it gets in the summer,” she responded. “And snow doesn’t melt down to that much water.”

Frowning, I thought of the summer thunderstorms coming off of the Center Sea, that routinely drenched my home with pounding rain and wind. Wouldn’t they just go over the mountains and hit here? I’d have to ask, but it seemed fair to say.

A cluster of lights appeared on the horizon off to our left, and I waved to one of the skiers to draw their attention. They shifted course to come over to us, and I pointed towards the lights.

They shook their head and pointed in the direction we were going.

I sighed.

“Guess we still have a ways to go,” Lady Fia said from her spot manning the sails.

“I guess,” I said, and nodded towards the skier, who threw me a thumb’s up and returned to their place in the formation. I bit down on some complaints about the tedium; I, at least, got to sit, unlike the Gehtun.

Finally, hours later, a light ahead of us appeared on the horizon, and the skier came over and pointed.

“Looks like we’re almost there!” I called out, and keeping my eyes forward, I watched the light.

But over the next hour, it became apparent that it wasn’t another village or town, like the one we had rested at. The light rose over the horizon, slowly, a dim glow that grew brighter as we drew closer to it at the speed of a galloping horse.

I gasped when I realized what it was.

Perhaps half the height of the King’s Tower, overlooking a thin grove of trees on the shores of a frozen-over lake, was a glorious sculpture of a woman, wrought in crystal and immortal glass, her hands outstretched and holding a bowl of glowing flames, her robe streaming into the winds.

“It’s beautiful…” Oksyna breathed.

Several smaller buildings around the woman’s ankles resolved themselves as we approached, and the skiers signaled for us to stop and hold back.

We did so, looking up at the woman-building. “Did anyone know about this?”

Stylio shook her head. “Hmm. I did not. Someone back in your kingdom might have known, but whatever diary or report or academic monograph they have on it never reached general circulation.”

“And why not?” I said, my eyes tracing over the lines of the woman’s figure. Whichever long-ago sculptor had crafted it, he had had an eye for symmetry and proportion. I was willing to bet that if I actually looked at the sculpture as a whole, it would seem disproportionately large at the top… but from down here, it looked perfect.

It was beautiful, and I hoped that I would get the chance to sketch it before we left.

“I’m betting because people dismissed the idea,” Yufemya said softly. I turned to look at her. “Think about it,” she said. “Outside of the Dormelion Empire, there are perhaps a hundred of these buildings around the entire Center Sea, each of them famous and iconic. And since everyone knows that…”

“Who would believe the tall tale of another one on the other side of the mountains?” Zoy finished with a frown. “Good point.”

I nodded and turned back to look at the gorgeous work of ancient art before me.

Then the escort arrived, and we were brought inside, into the ancient palace-sculpture of the Gehtun.

<<<<>>>>

Raavi ava Laargan

The Lynx slid to a halt, despite the wind howling at our backs.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to get any further,” I said, and slammed one hand into the other. “Damn it!”

“We’re still miles from the pass,” Yufemya said, the rustling of the map audible as she consulted it.

“I know!” I said, leaning back in frustration. “The slope is too steep, that’s the problem.”

“Can we try pushing the Lynx? Get out, open the sails a bit, and push?” Stylio suggested.

“We could, but, well…” I waved up the side of the mountain. “Look.” Visible in the glow of the Night-Light, the mountainside was steep. Not as sheer as some of the others we could see, but the way to the pass was still too steep for the Lynx.

Oksyna stood and closed her eyes. Spreading her hands out, she motioned in front of the Lynx. I watched, fascinated despite my frustration, as the snow in front of us started to compact down. It didn’t turn to ice, but it was definitely closer to older snow than fresh.

The Lynx moved forward a few yards, and sort of rocked back and forth on the compacted surface.

Yufemya and Zoy jumped out and started trying to push as Oksyna continued to crunch down the snow, and then Stylio and I hopped out to join them as well.

It wasn’t as heavy as carrying the Lynx up and down canal locks, but our progress was still slow, even with the wind at our backs and Lady Fia manning the sails, and Oksyna packing down the snow as best she could. I could feel the difference down by my boots—the light, windblown snow had packed down into something denser, like the snowflakes had fallen apart, which was probably what happened. I wondered how well that was recharging her reservoir of entropy. I did have to say this much—having a necromancer along made getting logs lit for the fire nice and easy. I would say ‘almost too easy’ except that it was cold enough that I was glad not to have to mess about with kindling and tinder.

We were maybe fifty or sixty yards along from where we’d stopped when I heard Yufemya gasp.

I turned, and saw about thirty or forty revenants standing behind us, down the slope, weapons in hand.

“Oksyna…” I said, staring. But I couldn’t leave the Lynx, or it would start to slide down towards them.

“On it!” she shouted, and raised her hands, holding a small gem in her left hand. Black and purple light started to stream out of her right hand in a nimbus, forming what looked like runes in the air as she moved her fingertips above the gemstone.

The revenants started walking forward, and then one of them held out a spear in front of the others, making them halt.

They started speaking among themselves, and I was eyeing the weapons they held. “Oksyna…”

#

Oksyna Mykyetyav

“Raavi, let me work,” Oksyna said, trying not to snap as she focused. With one finger extended, she drew the runes above the stone, mindful of her limited supply of Entropy. This was going to be delicate, unless she wanted to do something drastic to refuel. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much around unless she wanted to kill some trees.

Finished with the first motion, she gently lobbed the gemstone across the slope to the oathwalkers. Awkwardly, it hit the snow halfway down the slope and vanished with a plop. If not for the gentle glow, it would have been lost.

Now came the ticklish part…

One of the oathwalkers—the one with the spear—spoke to the others and, with a visible sigh, another one of them slogged up the slope and retrieved the tiny gem.

“What’s going on?” Raavi asked as they all watched the oathwalker carry the gem back to its companions.

“I’m negotiating,” Oksyna said. “While I could break their contracts with sheer brute force, it would require more power than I have to spare right now. So I’m hoping for something more voluntary.” She’d tried this before back with that other group, and they’d responded fairly well, but the size of that group had been taxing. And this one was even larger.

So she’d started with a simple proposal for a binding promise that neither her side nor theirs would begin a conflict, and hoped that they weren’t under direct strictures or orders to attack. The fact that they hadn’t as soon as they’d seen the Lynx was a good sign…

The oathwalkers clustered around the gem, and she could see the runes floating in air over it. After a brief moment, the leader touched the gem, accepting its provisos, and then passed it around.

She relaxed. “Okay, they’re bound not to attack, but if any of us starts anything, we’re in trouble.”

“Define ‘trouble’?” Zoy asked.

“I’m oathbound to whack whoever starts anything. So don’t.”

“Got it. Put the weapons down, people,” Fia said. “Oksyna, you’re the expert. What do you need?”

A nice midden pile or a compost heap, or maybe the pile of rejects behind a pottery kiln would be nice. Something I can just reduce down to crumbled chunks of dust without any guilt. Perhaps some paintings someone’s embarrassed by? That hunter squad’s outfits were barely enough. Rather than voice that, she said instead, “For the moment, space to let me work.”

“You got it.”

“And keep the Lynx from sliding into them,” she said, hopping down and landing nearly knee-deep in the snow. Joy.

Pulling herself higher up into the snow, she started slogging over to the group of oathwalkers.

“Oksyna?” She turned back to see Raavi looking at her worriedly. “Be careful.”

She smiled, feeling a moment of warmth despite the frigid chill around them. “I will be.”

Turning back to the oathwalkers, she trudged towards them. Thankfully, under the direction of their leader—and judging by the fancier clothing that one wore, they were the leader—they were stacking their weapons off to the side.

Giving thanks to the Silent and the Quiet that they were reasonable, Oksyna stopped several paces away, and held out her hand.

The leader walked towards her and placed the gem, now exhausted, into her palm.

Now that they were face to face, Oksyna gave the oathwalker an examining look. Old—at least a few hundred years old—and dressed in finely woven and dyed woolens in the form of a cloak over a poncho. A leather bandolier crossed their chest under the cloak, with leather pouches sewn to it.

She bowed politely. “Do you understand me?” This would be ticklish at best, but if all she could do was propose motions blindly, she’d exhaust herself quickly.

The leader frowned—the aged skin surprisingly supple, they apparently took good care of themselves—and motioned back to their group, barking an order.

Another oathwalker stepped forward, dressed in the same cloak-and-poncho woolens, but the weave was less fine and less dyed. Rank hath its privileges even in death, as usual.

It spoke. “What want you, deathspeaker?”

Oksyna relaxed a hair. All right. She could do this. “To find out why you are attacking this kingdom suddenly. My leader,” she motioned back to where Fia and the others stood, “wishes to parley with your king on behalf of hers.”

The oathwalker nodded and spoke to the leader. The two of them conversed for a moment before the translator looked back to Oksyna. “Speak much cannot we. What can do you?”

“I can give you a temporary respite from your oaths. Say, a hundred hours, maybe a hundred-fifty,” she said, judging how much of a reserve she had and the number of oathwalkers. “Enough to give you time to act and explain. It is good that you speak my tongue, or I would have to propose these blindly.”

Again the translator turned to the leader and spoke. Resisting the urge to pull up the wording of their oaths and start running through it to see if she could spot any loopholes, Oksyna fidgeted as they spoke back and forth.

The translator was waving their arms while the leader had theirs crossed, eyes narrowed, and said something curt that agitated the translator more.

Whatever their tongue was, it wasn’t one that she recognized—not that it meant that much. Both her own homeland and the Kalltii kingdoms had been under the thumb of the Dormelion Empire for long enough to leave its stamp on their languages, so coming here had mostly been a matter of learning the differences for the local dialect. But the Gehtun had never been conquered by the Dormelion.

Who were you, she wondered as she looked at the two oathwalkers, when you were alive? Warrior? Scholar? Artist?

She’d spent half of her life as a necromancer. She hadn’t known anything else. So she had to wonder, what would it be like to live a full life and choose to be an oathwalker at the end of it?

The translator hung their head and scoffed before turning back to her. “Complicated things are. Swear you will that our king no harm mean?”

“I can put that in, yes, but I know that I mean him no harm,” she said. “I’m neutral and just want the fighting to stop.”

The translator frowned and spoke again to the leader.

As they spoke, Oksyna took the gem and started inscribing more runes with it. Carefully, delicately.

Once she was done, she turned around. “Fia! Come down here please!” She looked towards the pair of oathwalkers. “The leader of this group will swear that we will give no harm to yours.”

Fia arrived a moment later and bowed politely. “Negotiations going all right? Raavi’s about ready to burst between worry and curiosity. I have him checking over the Lynx to distract him.”

Oksyna smiled a bit, hiding it behind her hand. “Of course he is. And yes, we seem to be doing all right.” She nodded towards the runes. “This is a provisional contract for the next hundred hours that these oathwalkers will be temporarily suspended from their oath and bound to help us—specifically guiding us to their king—and neither side can harm the other. At the end of it, their existing oaths resume.”

Fia nodded. “Sounds good to me.” She looked towards the oathwalkers. “What do you say?”

The leader frowned again and spoke, and then the translator, their eyes narrowed, said, “What catch?”

“No catch. But if you were that interested in attacking us, you would have already. So I’m here to help.”

The two of them spoke again, and as they did so, Fia leaned in. “I wonder what the issue is?”

“Could be anything. Showing weakness, some loophole or conflict in their oath, internal political crap…”

Before Fia could respond, the oathwalker leader barked something to the rest of their group, who marched up behind them.

“Is that good or bad?”

“We’ll find out. We’re still under a truce, though.”

The leader extended a hand and, in painfully mangled but recognizable words, forced out, “We accept.”

Fia reached out and shook without hesitation—which was impressive from Oksyna’s perspective. Most people didn’t like shaking the hands of revenants, or touching them at all. And with that, Oksyna pushed out what remained of her Entropy, binding the contract she had proposed; it cost a lot, especially the part where she suspended their existing contract’s wording, but it was worth it. With them in the binding, she wouldn’t have to sustain it herself.

“All right. So… first off.” Fia glanced up the slope. “Can you help us get over the pass?”

#

Raavi ava Laargan

I gasped for breath and leaned against the rock wall of the pass; at least the snow here was thin, but the rocks underneath were loose and liked to shift.

“Yeah. The air is so thin up here,” Lady Fia said, rubbing her head.

“Oh! I bet that’s part of the reason why the Lynx couldn’t get up the slope!” I said. “Thinner air! It makes sense!”

Zoy’s voice came from behind me. “Raavi, your brain is an interesting place. You’re barely able to breathe, and what do you think of? Puzzles.”

I turned. “Is that bad?”

She shook her head. “No. Just interesting. Come on.” She walked on and I followed after.

The oathwalkers had helped in the most direct fashion possible—we’d broken down the Lynx for portage, and over a dozen of them had hoisted it on their shoulders, while the rest of us carried the supplies, tent, skates and runners. The pass was miles long between two of the mountain peaks; we’d passed the border fort a while earlier. It had been gutted by fire, and abandoned.

But now these oathwalkers were helping us. According to Oksyna, at least. And I trusted her.

A flicker of light came from up ahead. Rounding the bend, my back aching from the pack I was carrying, along with all of my tools, I blinked as I saw the campsite. Several of the oathwalkers were busy raising the tent, and a few others were building up a fire. Where they’d gotten the logs, I had no idea, but the clean woodsmoke was nice. Another group was examining the Lynx where they’d set her down.

My exhaustion forgotten, I hurried over to see what they were doing.

Four of them were clustered around one of the brackets I’d made to hold the skates and runners in place, pointing and exclaiming. One of them held one of the runners, and was latching it in and taking it out before doing it again.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

The one holding the runner turned and held it up before speaking in its language. I tried not to look too closely at the gray-purple skin it had, stretched tightly over its skull. It motioned towards the runner and asked a question. At least… I thought it asked a question.

“I don’t understand you.”

It pointed towards my belt and spoke again.

“Huh?”

It shook its head, put the runner down in the thin snow, reached over, and pulled my small hammer off of my belt.

“Hey!”

Crouching down, it motioned for me to follow, and I did so, resisting the urge to snatch the hammer back.

Gently, it took the hammer and tapped a loose pin back into place, and then handed the hammer back. I took it on reflex, and then it pointed to the pliers that were several places over on my belt.

Staring, I handed those over.

Using them, the oathwalker delicately bent the pin back into place before handing the tool back.

I picked up the runner and carried it over to the Lynx. Slotting it back into the bracket, I realized that the pin had worked itself loose—probably from all of the portages we’d been doing—and would have fallen out soon.

I turned and looked back at the oathwalker, who was smiling in a satisfied way at their work. “You aren’t a warrior at all, are you? You’re a craftsman!”

#

“But why are they sending craftsmen and weavers after us!?” I demanded. We were sitting around the fire that the oathwalkers had helped construct, a cup of soup in my hands.

“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out,” Oksyna said, frowning as she sipped at her own soup and then giving it an appreciative look. “Also, add cooks to that list. This is good.”

“I guess if you’re working at something for a few human lifetimes, you pick up a few things,” Zoy said dryly before taking a sip of her own cup. “And damn, seconded. Can we keep that one?”

“No!” Oksyna said. “They’re not mine to give away!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Zoy said before turning to Yufemya. “So what’s your guess?”

“On?” Yufemya replied, sipping at her own cup.

“Why they’re sending so many worker-types after the kingdom instead of, you know, fighters?”

Yufemya frowned and took another sip. “I don’t want to guess. I feel like that would run the risk of having us start assuming.”

Zoy cocked her head and then shook it. “All right. You know, you can just say ‘I don’t know.’”

“‘I don’t know’,” Yufemya parroted, mimicking Zoy’s tones perfectly.

“Huh. I don’t believe you. You’ve got to have some idea!”

Yufemya frowned as I looked around, and I said, “Well, they’re not saying anything beyond that we’ve got to talk to their king. So we’re going to have to do that.” I looked at Oksyna. “Can you tell us anything? I know that you can’t talk about some things, but can you at least tell us how oathwalkers work?”

She frowned and nodded. “Yes. That I can do. In generalities.”

“I’ll take it,” I said, and the others nodded.

“Yeah, anything solid right now will help,” Fia said.

Oksyna rubbed at her cheekbones with her thumb and forefinger. “Give me a moment to get everything in order up here.”

“Of course,” I said, and took a swallow from my cup before looking around again. The oathwalkers were busy. A group of them were cleaning their tools and weapons, another group were darning and repairing their clothes, and another group were, to my continued surprise, spinning thread from wads of fiber that they had been carrying around in bags. Those last ones were using old-style spindles and distaffs, but that didn’t stop them from producing thread so fine that it left me in awe at their skill. As Zoy had commented, I guessed that if you worked at something for a few lifetimes, you got good at it.

“All right,” Oksyna said. “So, Raavi.”

“Yes?”

“I need to use you to help me here. Nothing permanent, I promise.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “All right…”

She grinned and shuffled next to me. “Good. Do I have your permission to touch you?”

“Sure…?”

She punched me in the arm.

“Ow!” I put my hand over the spot and looked at her, more hurt at the shock and surprise than at the pain. “What was that for!?”

“You said that I had permission to touch you!” she said, and there was a smile on her face that confused me.

“A punch is not a touch!”

“Says who?”

“Uh, most people?”

“Ah, but who?” Her smile went away and her expression turned serious. “And that’s the basis of what I do.”

“What, punch people?”

She reached over and gently put her hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, but you’ll see my point in a moment.”

Giving her a suspicious look, I nodded. “I’m listening.”

“So you and I disagree—for the sake of argument—on whether a touch equals a punch or just a touch like this.” She very slightly squeezed my arm.

“I’d say so! But what does that have to do with oathwalkers?”

“Because being an oathwalker—or any other form of spirit that continues on after they’ve died—is because they’ve made a promise, a contract, an oath. And such things depend on understanding the language.” She looked around the circle. “And that’s what I and my fellow necromancers do. We edit, amend, interpret, and adjudicate the oaths and contracts of the dead.”

“On whose authority?” I asked, fascinated.

“I can’t answer that,” she said. “I’m not allowed to answer that.”

That puzzled me for a moment, and then it clicked. “Oh! Because you have to make a contract with them yourself? And not revealing the details about it is part of that?”

She relaxed a little and nodded. “Yes. And I can’t say more than that, or I have to pay penalties.”

“What form do those penalties take?”

“Entropy… or Breath. And yes, before you ask, I can die that way.”

I winced.

“I also can’t kill anyone with my Entropy directly, outside of immediate self-defense or a few other specific circumstances,” she said. “I know that other necromancers have abused that in the past, and either they’ve got looser or vaguer contracts than I’ve got or they were playing with fire.” She shrugged. “Of course, making someone’s clothes disintegrate when it’s this cold out is fair game.”

“Ouch,” I said with a wince. I didn’t know exactly how cold it was, but I knew that someone without shelter or clothing would be dead in minutes from exposure. “Have you done that?”

“Once. To the leader of a group of bandits. The others ran away when they realized that the little girl they were threatening could kill them all.” She shook her head. “But that’s beside the main point. So for a ‘normal’ revenant, they swear to do something with their dying Breath.”

“Like see their daughter get married,” I said.

“Exactly. Or get vengeance on the ones who killed them… or wronged them, which often turns messy. But let’s take your example,” she said. “Let’s say that revenant, when their daughter’s wedding date is set, realizes that they’ll die right after the ceremony. Which would put a damper on it, to say the least. So someone like me could amend their oath to give them a few more days afterwards… or possibly amend it entirely.” She shrugged. “That’s how Nightshade and others like her managed to get their armies of revenants together, by amending their oaths to swear loyalty to her, and enough of them were scared of dying forever that they accepted.”

“Which is why I asked if she was ‘recruiting’,” Lady Fia asked. “Of course, most of Nightshade’s revenants still went insane after just a decade or two.”

Oksyna nodded. “Where oathwalkers differ from your standard revenant is that they have a formalized contract, inscribed on… well, it’s usually a gem or sheet metal, to which they sign their names before they die. The structure of the contract helps keep their minds intact.”

Blinking, I put that together with what I knew of oathwalkers. “So how hard is it to make those contracts?”

“And that’s something I can’t share. Suffice it to say that I can’t make one, and it took a lot of power for me just to temporarily amend their terms with it.”

As I considered that, Stylio commented, “But as I understand it, these oathwalkers are bound by the terms of their formal contract?”

“Exactly.”

“So what could have made them suddenly start attacking Westernfellsen?”

“That,” Oksyna said firmly, “is what I want to find out.”

#

Emerging from the pass, the first thing I saw was… nothing.

It took a moment for things to resolve themselves into a vast open plain of snow underneath a black, cloud-speckled sky, the Night-Light’s glow illuminating the landscape. There were no trees, no hills that I could see beyond the mountains we had just emerged from, no… nothing.

It was disorienting—to me, at least. The oathwalkers helped us reassemble the Lynx from portage, and loaded everything in. After looking for a bit, I saw that the tips of plants were sticking up through the top of the snow, and there were occasional rocks emerging as well, and there were long divots that looked like paths.

While I’d been looking around, the oathwalkers had produced snowshoes. From where, I hadn’t seen, but they strapped themselves in with an air of long-practice and started helping haul the Lynx up to speed.

“Do we want to start just going?” I asked.

“We don’t know where to go, and we don’t have room on the Lynx for any of them,” Stylio pointed out.

“Right,” I said, frowning and looked over the group of them just hauling the Lynx along like they were dogs pulling a sled. “Maybe we should just extend out the sail a little, just to help?”

“And with one good gust it will run them over. And then we’re on default for Oksyna’s parley.” Stylio patted me on the shoulder. “I know that you want to hurry as much as possible, and I think it’s good, but we need to go at their pace for the moment.”

I nodded, slumping a little, and fell into step with them. For the first hour, it was difficult; the oathwalkers lent us snowshoes, but walking in them was tiring, especially as I wasn’t used to it, and my lungs reminded me that the air was thinner at this altitude.

I found Oksyna walking alongside me; she seemed to be unbothered by the exertion.

“So…” she began to say.

“So?” I echoed, after she trailed off.

“So I was wondering where the idea for the Lynx came from. You mentioned back in the city that it was from something you read?”

“Oh, yeah! I was reading this travelogue on the Slaekkaruune tribes who live down at the equator, and their ice-fishing techniques on the pack ice. They have these leather and wood sailed-canoes that can travel both in water and across ice that use skates carved from whalebone. They use them to travel across the ice to hunt and trade and migrate. Apparently they move across the equator north to south depending on the season, so they basically go from summer to autumn to summer all the time.”

She raised a hand. “Wait a moment. Back up. What do you mean? I’m from Endanchoria, and I know that there’s ice south of there in the winter, and some of it never melts even in the summer. But what do you mean ‘summer to autumn to summer’?”

“When it’s summer here in the north, there’s winter in the southern half of the world, and vice versa,” I said. “They stay on the icy area around the equator. The sun is only overhead for a few days around the Equal Nights in Spring and Autumn, so they basically follow it back and forth; they spent half of the year in twilight and the other half with a day and night like the rest of us.”

She cocked her head. “But… doesn’t the ice melt in summer?”

“No, it’s all about the angle of the sun. Sunlight is coming in so steep at the equator during the summer that it gives barely more light than the Night-Light. Certainly not enough to melt the ice.” I made a fist and held it up so that it was lit by the Night-Light. “Our world is tilted hard on its side. We don’t know why. None of the other planets we’ve studied through our telescopes are tilted like this. If I remember right, it’s something around eighty degrees away from ‘upright’, while all of the other planets around the sun are within ten or so degrees of upright, like a top that’s still spinning at full speed.”

“You mean top speed?” she asked, and I laughed.

“I was resisting making that joke!”

“Good! So I got to make it instead!” She chuckled. “So continue.”

“So since we have such a high tilt, the sun moves back and forth, lighting one half of the planet at a time for each season. On the other planets, they have a day-night pattern all year like we have in Spring and Autumn.”

“That’s so weird to think about,” she said. “How would they tell the seasons apart? When do they sleep?”

“At night, presumably?”

“Huh. So you were explaining about the ice?”

“Yeah, so during the summer, there’s a band around the equator that gets just a little light every rotation, but not enough to melt the ice. So the Slaekkaeruune live there, moving back and forth across the equator in their ice-boats to follow the sun. So when the summer ends in their current hemisphere, becoming autumn, they move to the other one.”

“Amazing. And that’s where you got the idea for the Lynx?”

“Yup! I made my skates out of steel rather than bone, of course, but the idea is the same.”

She smiled at me and we chatted a bit more—and then I saw light coming from nearby, down in what looked like a ravine or valley.

“What’s that?” I moved away from the group a bit towards the light.

“Raavi, come back here!” Stylio called, and I slowed to a halt, but not before getting a look down into the valley. “Raavi!?”

I heard her walk up behind me. “Raavi, what is… it…”

She came to a halt next to me and looked down as well.

Below, down in the valley, there was a shrine. More than a shrine—a temple. Large stones, carved with runes, seemed to glow under the lights from torches and bonfires, the sources of the light that had drawn my attention.

Around them, I could see oathwalkers. Hundreds of them.

And they were tending to the dead.

Large stone tables lay within the perimeter of the outer circle of stones, and on them, the oathwalkers were cleaning the bodies, using pitchers of water—from melted snow, I suspected—and wrapping them in shrouds with their hands folded across their chests and blindfolds around their eyes. One group—I squinted—was ladling small spoonfuls of liquid from steaming pitchers into the mouths of the dead. Still more were carrying the wrapped, shrouded bodies into a passage that cut into the side of the valley.

“Your ways we know not,” said the voice of the translator, and I turned to see it standing there. “But our best we do.”

I glanced back down below and then pointed down, even as I looked back to him. “Wait, those are my people?”

“Yes. Those by ours killed. We show what respect we can.” It turned back to the Lynx before saying quietly, “Not much it is, know I. Sorry I am.”

I looked back and forth between the piles of the dead and the translator. “Why? Why have you done this?”

“Explain the king will. Me I cannot.”

“Damn you!” I spat.

“Already I am.”

That made me pause, and I looked back down at the bodies. Why?

I felt Stylio’s hand on my arm. “Come on, Raavi. Let’s go. We can get answers.”

Scowling, I nodded. “Yes, we will.”

<<<<>>>>

Raavi ava Laargan

We continued down the length of the canals, speeding along in the winter night, slowly making our way up the length of the kingdom towards the White Mountains. We were almost out of Fia’s duchy, although, ironically, we’d be reentering it later on further to the west due to the winding paths of the canals. We were starting to get into the foothills of the mountains now, and the terrain was becoming more and more rolling. Forests were becoming more common too, rather than just the tamed orchards and groves of the lower plains. That was both good and bad, as it meant that we had shelter when we stopped, but the trees also blocked the wind, so our speed dropped to ‘only’ about fifteen miles an hour. Which, as Stylio pointed out, was still faster than a horse could sustain even in full summer. And the clear and relatively straight path of the canal also helped channel what wind there was, so that helped too.

Then, up ahead as we cleared a cut through a hillside, I saw light.

Up on the top of a hill in the distance, a fire glowed.

“What’s that?” a few people chorused, and the rustling of paper came from Yufemya as she unfurled the map.

“Uh… it’s the… um…”

There was more rustling of paper and Zoy’s voice came a moment later. “It’s the ‘Starkwaldhuugel Shrine’.”

“Wait, really?” I blurted. “Prepare to pull the brakes!”

“Raavi—” Fia started to say.

“It’s famous, and given, well, everything, I figure asking for some help can’t hurt!”

There was a pause, and Fia, sighing and chuckling, said, “All right. Let’s take a break and Raavi can go give some offerings.”

I tried not to hear that as indulgent, but instead focused on the light ahead as it drew nearer and nearer. In a matter of minutes, we arrived at a small artificial lake jutting off of the canal; numerous docks, sized for the standard canal boats, stood empty and waiting in the night. Stone steps set into the side of the hill were mostly swept clean of snow—by the wind, judging by how the drifts lay in the corners on the leeward side. The steps themselves were not made of the same hardwearing stone that made the stairs down to the caverns in my town, and had visible dips and wear from feet climbing up and down them.

“I guess we’ll make camp and you’re going up the hill?” Fia asked. “Who do you want to come with you?”

“Wait, what do you mean?”

“Raavi, there are roving bands of revenants at large in this kingdom and we’re in the area where they’ve been operating. What happens if you run into a group of them up at the shrine?” Fia responded as she hauled the tent out of the back of the Lynx.

“Oh. Uh… that’s a good point.” I considered. For a moment, I almost said Zoy, but, well…

The Dormelion Empire had tried to destroy or profane my people’s shrines after they’d conquered our lands, and forced us to worship their gods. It felt… wrong to bring one of them up to one of the holiest sites in the entire kingdom.

“Oksyna? Feel like coming with me? If we run into any revenants, you’ll be able to talk with them.”

She grinned. “Sure.”

I smiled back and grabbed a pouch of sandwiches and a flask of beer from the supplies, and stuffed them into my coat pockets. With that, the two of us started up the stairs.

While I was sure that in the summer they were easy and comfortable footpaths, in winter they were more than a bit treacherous, and our progress was slow. Around us, trees rattled and whispered, mixing with the sounds of the chimes and bells hung among the branches. It was beautiful and peaceful, and as we reached the first landing on the stairs, we paused just for a moment to listen.

But the moment passed, and we started up the second flight of stairs. Part of the way up, Oksyna commented, “This place must be gorgeous in the summer, all green and alive.”

“Oh, definitely.” I looked around; the stairs were bordered by carved stone railings, and even though they were obscured by snow, I could see that they were beautiful works of art. It was a little hard to tell, because the stone itself was also a near pure-white, probably from the White Mountains. I knew that they were named for the color of the rock. In the monograph I’d read that had inspired me to build the Lynx, I’d found that there were mountains around the equator of the world that were covered in ice and snow year-round, and the first explorers who had gone there had thought that they were just more of the same geology as the White Mountains here. Finding that they were covered in glaciers was a shock to them.

Reaching the top of the stairs and feeling a bit winded from the climb, I blinked. What I had assumed would be another landing was instead a wide setback that appeared to encircle the entire hill. It was a good twenty yards wide and filled with ornamental trees, and what I guessed were planters of flowers, judging by the hummocks of snow between the trees.

“Pretty,” Oksyna said approvingly. “So what would people be doing here anyway? Or can you not say?”

“Generally? Bringing offerings, praying, giving thanks to the spirits. But I don’t know the specifics; you have to be an inducted member of the local circle to learn that.”

“Amazing. And your people managed to keep it all going, despite the Empire’s best efforts.” She dragged a hand through a pile of snow, revealing the remains of some flowers; I’d been right on that count. “It’s… nice.”

Confused, I gave her a glance as I started towards the next set of stairs. “Nice how? I don’t understand.”

She sighed. “So my homeland is right next to the Empire’s homeland. From what I’ve read, before they came and conquered us, we venerated the Sun, the Moon, and the Night-Light. But that’s all gone now, beyond what some scholars wrote down.”

I nodded. “The only reason we managed to keep our ways is because we hid our wise men and women in the caverns specifically so they could pass down what they knew.” As I put my foot on the first step, I turned and looked at her. “Does… does the situation with the Sacrem in the Empire…”

“Bring me any joy?” she asked, and shook her head. “No. But that’s a talk for another day. Come on. Let’s pay homage to your people’s ways, and not talk more about others.” She started up the stairs, and we again fell silent, trying to avoid slipping. A single handrail in the center of the wide stairs was the only security we had against falling on the omnipresent ice.

Even so, it only took a few minutes to reach the top, although we were both out of breath by the time we got there.

But we were both speechless for a different reason.

I stared.

Eight arches of shining braided metals made an open dome reaching at least a hundred feet in the air, if not more, suspended over a terraced bowl in the center, with a central raised altar at the nadir. At the very top of the dome, suspended hundreds of feet above the altar below, was the bowl of fire that we had seen in the distance.

“Wow…” Oksyna breathed.

Nodding was the only reaction I could make, even as part of my mind tried to determine the stresses and tensile strengths of the arches; I knew that this place was thousands of years old—as old as the King’s Tower, really—and had remained standing for all of that time.

Then my eyes narrowed.

“Look.”

“What?”

“There’s no ice or snow inside the dome.”

She did a double-take of her own, and her eyes widened. “How? It’s open.”

“Let’s go look.”

Together, we went across the open space—the top of the hill, aside from the shrine itself, was flat and paved with stones—and then we reached the edge of the dome. There was a distinct line between inside and out, between snow and bare… stone? Metal? What was that material? I couldn’t tell.

I shared a look with Oksyna and we both took deep breaths together and then stepped over the line.

“Well… that was anticlimactic,” she commented when nothing happened.

“Yeah. I don’t feel any difference in the wind or anything,” I said, and then crouched down. “But there’s no snow on here. You’d think a bowl like this would be full of it…” I shook my head. “The ancients sure knew what they were doing.”

“That’s for sure.”

We went down the terraced steps; looking around, it was fairly obvious that it was intended for thousands of people to be able to sit and see the central altar. At the center, the floor flattened out into a ring around the altar. It was a single piece of crystal, with a bronze bowl mounted on top of it.

Feeling grossly inadequate all of a sudden, I gently placed the bottle of beer and the sandwiches into the bowl before stepping down from the altar and onto the flat ring around it. Going to one knee, I gave thanks.

“Spirits of the land, we thank you for your blessings, your help, and your insights into our journey. While we have little to offer, know that whatever assistance you can muster will be received with gratitude.”

There was no answer, but I still felt better for having made the offering here, in this sacred place.

Oksyna came over to me a moment later. “We should get going. But thank you for sharing this with me.”

I rose and smiled at her. “Of course. Now… I don’t know about you, but I’m tempted to try to slide down the hill rather than risk those stairs.”

She grinned. “Sounds great!”

#

Zoy

The sobbing scream jolted her awake; palming a knife on reflex, Zoy leapt from the waystation’s bed. Landing in a crouch, she scanned the dark room that she was sharing with Yufemya and Oksyna, and quickly pinpointed the source of the sound.

Yufemya was moaning and babbling in her sleep as she thrashed in the blankets; despite the near pitch-blackness of the room, Zoy could see beads of sweat on the other woman’s face as she grimaced and contorted in her sleep.

Summoning up all of the sympathy she could from years of being Stylio’s ward, Zoy went over to Yufemya. “Hey,” she said softly, touching Yufemya’s shoulder with her free hand. “Hey, wake up. You’re having a nightmare!”

Yufemya didn’t rouse, even though her babbling turned more coherent. “No, no… you can’t… it won’t work… everyone’s going to die…”

Zoy grimaced, and set her knife aside before putting her other hand on Yufemya’s other shoulder, as the woman mumbled something about “hubris” and “ambition”, her tone sounding accusatory.

“Is she all right?” Oksyna’s voice came from the side; she sounded sleepy but concerned. A candle hissed to light from nearby, apparently spontaneously, which would have been intimidating if Zoy hadn’t already seen Oksyna perform the same party trick several times now.

“She’s having a nightmare but I can’t get her to wake up,” Zoy said, and secured her hands on Yufemya’s shoulders. “Hey! Hey Yu! Wake up!” she said a little louder, giving Yufemya a small shake.

Yufemya’s eyes bolted open and she gasped before grabbing Zoy in an embrace, flinging her arms around her as if she was drowning and Zoy was a piece of driftwood.

Awkwardly, Zoy patted her on the back even as Yufemya heaved for air. “You all right?”

Wordlessly, Yufemya shook her head, her hair brushing against Zoy’s face.

“Sounds like it was quite the nightmare.”

In a croaking voice, Yufemya replied, “It was.”

“Want to talk about it?”

Again, Yufemya shook her head; the motion made the crystal die hanging from her necklace bounce against Zoy’s chest.

Glancing down at it, Zoy said, “At least it wasn’t a prophetic dream, right?”

“Wha—?”

She motioned to the die. “I haven’t seen you use that in the whole time we’ve been traveling together. So you’re not getting prophetic dreams. So whatever it was that you saw, it’s not going to happen.” Zoy tried to smile reassuringly at Yufemya with this; everyone knew that overuse of forecasting ran the risk of uncontrolled prophetic dreams. Some people looked at that as a positive, and it was certainly an occupational hazard for career seers, but Zoy had seen too many people turn to drink to try to forget what they had seen to think of it that way.

Slowly, Yufemya nodded. “You’re right. Yes.” She swallowed and slowly let Zoy go. “Yes.” She swallowed, the sound harsh and painful, before leaning back onto the bed and tucking her knees up under her chin and putting her arms around them. “Yes. It won’t happen. It was just a dream.”

Giving Yufemya an encouraging smile, Zoy patted her on the knee. “Yeah. Try to go back to sleep. We’ll be getting back onto the Lynx in a few hours.”

Yufemya nodded, the tension in her face and neck starting to fade. “Yes. You’re right.” She took a deep, bracing breath and let it out slowly. “It was just… quite horrible.”

Oksyna spoke up. “If you want to talk about it, we’re willing to listen.”

“It… it was… I saw people dying. So many people dying… because I… because we weren’t fast enough. Because we made some mistake… and they all paid for it.” She swallowed harshly. “The bodies… they filled the streets, rotting… nobody buried them, because there was nobody left alive…”

Zoy grimaced. That was a bad one. Reaching out, she put a supportive hand on Yufemya’s shoulder. “And it won’t happen. You’re just tired and stressed and your brain is playing tricks on you after all of the stuff we’ve seen. I know that I’m feeling uneasy about that seeress from where we picked up Oksyna. The stakes are high, but we’ll get through it.” She put a smile on her face, and even though it felt as fake as anything, Yufemya seemed heartened by it. “Besides, between Stylio and Fia—and Raavi—do you see anything getting in our way?”

“What about me?” Oksyna asked with a chuckle.

“You’re just scary in a different way,” Zoy said honestly; while the younger woman was certainly affable enough, there was no question that if she wanted to, she could cut a swathe of destruction with ease. A lot of the stories Zoy had heard about the old tyrant Nightshade were making a lot more sense now that she’d met an actual necromancer and seen her at work. And, sure, Oksyna said that she didn’t want to kill anyone directly, but the obvious loophole of ‘make their clothes disintegrate and let the elements kill them’ stood out to Zoy. But that honestly made her trust Oksyna more, as she could have easily killed the townies back when they’d first encountered her. The fact that she’d held back from that was a major point in the ‘won’t go crazy and kill us all out of boredom’ column.

Oksyna grinned. “Thank you. Coming from someone with that many knives on them, I’m taking that as a compliment.”

“Wait, you can sense them?”

“With my eyes, yes. Also Raavi told me.”

Yufemya gave a watery snort at that. “It was quite the moment.”

“I bet.”

Zoy coughed and turned the conversation to safer waters. “So… you and Raavi?”

Oksyna gave her a sidelong look. “What about him?”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time together, that’s all,” Zoy said innocently.

With a sigh, Oksyna said, “He’s nice, and I adore how he doesn’t treat me like a walking murder threat. Also giving me some ideas on how to use my abilities with even more panache has been a treat.”

“He’s certainly a clever young man,” Yufemya said softly, and slowly released her knees from where she’d been hugging them. “I don’t think that more sleep is on the table for me, though.” Slowly and shakily, she stood, and stretched.

Zoy considered as well; she was probably past the point where she’d be able to get to sleep easily at this point. “I’m done too. I’ll nap on the Lynx, I think.”

Yufemya glanced at her with an apologetic grimace. “I’m sorry for waking you.”

“It’s all right.” Zoy stretched as well, and, aware that the other two women were watching her, deliberately overstretched, touching the back of her head with her pointed toes as she stood on one foot.

“Show-off,” Oksyna said, and rolled over in her blankets. “I’m going back to sleep. Take the candle with you when you leave.”

Zoy grinned and did so after throwing on a few more clothes. Candle-holder in hand, the two of them went out into the waystation’s common area. A few people were out and about, but the room, which was sized for the crowds of canal-barge crews that would be coming through in the summer, felt mostly empty. The comparatively small waitstaff were mostly dealing with their own local crowd and a few couriers coming through with reports of more raids.

“I’m glad we shifted from making camp to using waystations,” Zoy said, casting about for something to talk about as they sat down at a table.

“Probably saved us time, and definitely saved us resources,” Yufemya said in agreement. “Resources that we’ll need when we cross the White Mountains.”

“Have to agree there,” Zoy said, and leaned in. “So… I’ve been wondering.”

“About?”

For a moment, Zoy considered just flatly asking why Yufemya was here with them, what her motivation was. Zoy’s was easy—Stylio was here, and where her mentor and guardian went, Zoy followed. There was also the whole impending apparent cataclysm issue, and as someone living in the apparent blast radius, Zoy took exception to that happening without trying to stop it.

But why was Yufemya here?

However, rather than ask that, Zoy changed direction. “So you’re an amazing shot with the bow. Like when you nailed that one man’s hand. How long have you been training with it?”

Yufemya relaxed visibly. “Since I was a little girl. How about you and your knives? I saw you deal with the Duke’s men; two trained guardsmen and they didn’t even see you coming.”

Zoy exhaled. “Also since I was a little girl. You know how it is in the Kasmenarta underworld.”

Yufemya winced. “I do. Were you with one of the gangs?”

“I was.”

Silence, awkward, painful silence, before one of the waitstaff blessedly came over, bringing a tray of some waking foods and drinks for the two of them.

As they started to eat, Yufemya asked, “So… how did you get out?”

“Stylio. I followed her out.”

With a nod, Yufemya exhaled softly. “That makes sense. She’s… she’s quite something.”

“She is.” Her head bobbing in a slow nod as memories replayed behind her eyes, Zoy repeated, “She really is.” She spooned up some of the porridge and ate it before pointing the spoon at Yufemya. “Look. Can you promise me that you don’t mean her any harm?”

Yufemya nodded as she took a bite of her own food. “I can promise that. I’m here to help as best I can.”

The two of them sat and ate in companionable silence after that, and then Yufemya nodded towards one of the walls. “Care for a round or two while we wait on everyone else to wake up?”

Zoy turned and saw what Yufemya had gestured towards. Turning back, she nodded with a grin. “You’re on!”

Putting their empty dishes back onto the tray, the two of them headed over to the small alcove where a series of gaming tables and other equipment were waiting for players.

“What to play, what to play…” Zoy mused as she looked around; there were felt-covered tables for cue games, a pockmarked set of wooden targets over by one wall with a rack of small throwing knives, and some more esoteric equipment for other games.

Yufemya went over to the throwing knives and held them up. “Interested?” she asked with a grin.

Smirking, Zoy went over and claimed her set of four knives. “Loser buys the next round?”

“Given that we’re getting all of the food and drink for free based on those royal papers, I don’t know how that would even work,” Yufemya pointed out.

“Hmm. Point. So, Breath or no Breath allowed?” It was a standard question for these sorts of contests of skill. Someone suitably skilled with Breath—like Stylio—could enhance their abilities games of dexterity to absurd heights, but of course it came with a cost of pain. That was taken as a feature for some varieties of games, where it wasn’t just about the skill of the player, but their ability to maintain focus.

“I’d allow it,” Yufemya said. “I’d love to see what you can do.”

Zoy grinned and, stepping back behind the line that was thoughtfully set into the floor, hefted the throwing knives. She had better ones herself, but this set wasn’t bad; the leather of the grips was well-worn with long use, but the balance was decent, and the points were sharp enough to get into the wood of the targets.

Taking a deep breath, she focused her Will and started to hum. A faint and thin stream of blue-white Breath began to stream from her nose and mouth, wreathing her arms in a filmy aurora.

Then, moving quickly, she threw the first knife, quickly followed by the second, third, and fourth, knocking down all four targets in a rapid clatter.

Yufemya clapped as Zoy ended her spell; her body was aching slightly, but she’d had worse from catching that one man back in Raavi’s town.

“Well done! My turn!” Yufemya said, and set the targets back up again; Zoy smugly noted that she’d managed to get nearly dead center on each of them, with the knife blades being a good inch deep into the wood.

Yufemya threw her own knives, and while they all hit their targets, only three of them were hit hard enough to be knocked over, and none of them were as accurate as Zoy’s hits.

Making a face as she picked up the still-standing target, the knife having buried itself in the lower quarter of the wooden block at an angle, Yufemya said, “Well, later we’ll have to have a rematch with hay bales and bows.”

Zoy snickered. “Want another round?”

“Maybe later. Come on, let’s try something that you don’t have such an overwhelming advantage at.” She motioned to the felt-covered tables, with the racks of balls and sticks waiting for someone to play with them.

They set up the balls and wooden pins quickly, and with a smile, Zoy let Yufemya break first.

Yufemya exhaled, and hit the black-and-white ball into the hexagon of white and black balls, sending them scattering. One of the white balls rolled into a side pocket, barely missing the four wooden pins standing guard around it.

“Looks like I have black,” Zoy said with a grin.

Yufemya nodded, her forehead creased with focus, and moved around the table. “I… I think… can I…?” She leaned over, exhaled, and hit the black-and-white cue ball into a cluster of three other balls, two white and one black.

The two white balls rolled off from the impact, one of them going into another pocket with an odd spin that made it curve as it went—clipping a wooden pin on its way in, but not knocking it over—and the other standing in a prime spot to be sunk on a subsequent hit.

Zoy whistled. “Impressive, but you know that you’re supposed to call it!”

“Well, I wasn’t sure if I could do it, and besides, if I’d said that I’d be able to do it, you wouldn’t have believed me!”

With a snort, Zoy said, “True enough. All right, it’s still your ball.”

Yufemya nodded, and sank the ball she’d set up on the previous hit—calling it this time—but her next attempt knocked over two pins and didn’t manage to get the ball into the pocket she’d tried for.

Smiling, Zoy took her turn, and managed to sink four balls before giving Yufemya an unenviable setup with her last hit.

“You’re a sadist, you know that?” Yufemya said, scanning the table.

“Nah, just a pragmatist. I don’t enjoy hurting people; I’ll just do it if I need to.”

Yufemya glanced at her and took a deep breath. “I can understand that,” she said softly. “Black ball four, side pocket,” she announced, to Zoy’s disbelieving scoff, before sending the cue ball scurrying across the table, knocking into the number four black ball, which, to Zoy’s astonishment, bounced off of the side bumper and sailed cleanly into side pocket.

Staring for a moment, Zoy shook her head and said, “If you’re ever back in Kasmenarta, I have some taverns for you to go hustle. We could clean them out.”

“Well, I don’t know if I can keep that up,” Yufemya said with a shy smile.

Zoy motioned with her stick to the table. “Well, it’s still your turn.”

Yufemya grinned, and looked across the table with an analytical glean to her eye. “Black ball seven, corner pocket.”

An hour or so later, with Yufemya having won four out of their six games, Zoy was still struggling with her disbelief. Most of Yufemya’s calls had paid off, but some had clearly been too ambitious for her.

“What’s this?” Stylio’s voice came in from the side, her voice filled with amusement.

“Relaxing before hearing that screee noise for hours on end,” Zoy said, watching Yufemya lean over and prepare to strike.

“White ten in the corner pocket,” she called, and sure enough, despite Zoy’s disbelief, the white ball in question slid into the corner pocket, neatly avoiding the wooden pins.

Stylio whistled, impressed. “Well, finish your current game; we’re making preparations to continue on. The others are awake and eating.”

“Well, I guess I might want to just call it now,” Zoy said. “Even if I won this one,” she motioned to the table, where eight of the ten black balls stood starkly against six—then five—of the white ones, “I would still be a game behind.”

“Consider it a learning experience in humility,” Stylio said.

Before Zoy could respond, a commotion broke out at the front of the room, as a familiar accent boomed across the room. “She should be in here!”

Zoy saw Stylio’s eyes go wide at the sound of a Dormelion man shouting orders. Crouching low, she looked out of the gaming alcove to scan the rest of the room.

“We’ve got… ten… no, twelve men,” she reported in a hushed voice. “Hunter squad, I think. They’re not wearing uniforms, but they’re moving like they’re military. They’re all armed with swords and batons. Fia, Raavi, and Oksyna are at a table near the wall. Fia is watching the men carefully and speaking to Oksyna and Raavi. The waitstaff are angry, but standing back; most of the other people are upset.”

“Can’t blame them,” Yufemya muttered.

“It is rather blatant, given that this is another sovereign kingdom,” Stylio said, “and probably making the Kalltii think of some old history.”

“They’re coming this way. They’re sticking together rather than spreading out,” Zoy said, watching the men sweep the room. They clearly had training; two men were standing by the door with their weapons out as the rest went around in a show of force, checking the patrons one at a time.

She wondered who they were here for. It had been years since the last hunter squad had tried to track down Stylio, but it wasn’t out of the question. They were tenacious and took their high success rate as a point of pride; Stylio having slipped out of their fingers was undoubtedly a personal insult to them.

Well, it probably wasn’t Oksyna. Given how the Dormeli people felt about necromancers, they would have come in much larger numbers and with many more weapons if she was their target. And not Raavi, because of the specified gender.

That left…

Well, Fia, as a former pirate, Stylio, with all her history, Yufemya, who had admitted to killing someone from the upper ranks of Imperial society, or Zoy, as Stylio’s ward.

She caught Fia’s eye, and saw Fia hold up four fingers.

Zoy cocked her head. Four what?

Then Fia curled in a finger.

Ah.

“On the count of three, apparently,” she said. “One… two… three!”

To Zoy’s utter joy, she saw that her earlier guess had been dead on accurate, as the hunters’ clothing all disintegrated, unraveling, rotting, and in a few cases, bursting into sudden brief gouts of flame, even as their weapons corroded in their hands.

There was an abrupt sound of many, many chairs being pushed back as the other patrons rose, fury in their eyes.

Half an hour later, Zoy and her group were back outside by the Lynx. The Dormelion unit had been taken into custody by the city’s mayor, who had been none too happy to find a group of Imperials trying to arrest someone on his doorstep. And even if he had been inclined to accept their arrest warrant, it had crumbled to ash from Oksyna’s spell. Despite getting a beating from the assembled patrons, they had refused to identify their target, but Zoy had seen their eyes follow Yufemya and Stylio, which was good enough for her purposes.

“How did they know where we’d be?” Raavi asked as he checked the Lynx for any damage or surprises that the hunter squad might have left.

“That part is easy,” Zoy said.

He looked up over the side of the ice-boat. “Easy if you know it already. I don’t know these things, remember?”

She shrugged. “Point. Hunter squads like that have a commander-seer; he wouldn’t have followed them in, so he’s somewhere around here, but it’s his or her job to do forecasts to find out where their target will be.”

Raavi grunted as he ducked back under the Lynx. “Well, they won’t be able to catch up now.”

“They won’t need to; they’ll know where to wait for us to pass by,” Stylio said. “Not that it will matter much more. We’ll soon be up by the Gehtun, and I doubt that the hunters will be willing or able to follow us over the mountain passes.”

“And if they’re waiting on the way back, then we’ll deal with them then,” Fia said. “We good to go, Raavi?”

His hand emerged from underneath and he hauled himself up. “I think so. I don’t see any damage.”

“Good, let’s get going, then.”

Getting the Lynx in motion was second nature by this point, and Zoy found herself pondering as they pushed it up to speed.

If they had been here for Yufemya…

Who had she killed?

<<<<>>>>

Questions! So many questions! ^_^

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Zoy

The snow crunched under Zoy’s feet as they walked through the mostly-empty streets back to the canal. Watching Fia through the corner of her eye, she saw the older woman shooting glances back the way they’d come.

“Worried about being followed?” she prompted, pitching her voice so that the overwinterers they were passing wouldn’t be able to overhear.

Fia turned to her. “Sure. That’s it.”

Yufemya cleared her throat softly. “If I said that I’m sure he’ll be all right, would you believe me?”

“I… don’t know. His father…”

Zoy frowned. “If you want, we could go back, wait for his father to take a nap, and make your man there the Duke.”

Fia laughed bitterly. “Oh, yes, sure, that would work! If stabbing the old monster was the solution, I would have done that already, but it isn’t. If there was any hint of foul play, the King is required to launch an inquiry and then Faalk would be jailed and possibly executed, while his younger brother would inherit, and he’s cast in his father’s mold.”

“Married the black sheep in the family?” Yufemya asked.

“Yeah.”

“I can imagine what that’s like. So, what is your plan for dealing with the old goat? You’re hoping to get the King’s backing when we’re done with this mission. What does that get you?”

Zoy cocked her head. That was a good question.

“Protection, for starters. I was able to hire a few guards specifically for the three of us, but being able to, say, join the King’s court and be under his protection instead, would be helpful. Also, official recognition that I’m still alive. And I could lay attempted murder charges on the Duke. There are enough witnesses that I might be able to win. Sure, my… abilities would get outed, but that would be worth it, especially if he’s forced to step down that way.”

“All of that is assuming that the King honors his word, though,” Yufemya pointed out. They turned a corner onto a nearly-empty street, with only a horse-drawn cart laden with crates visible.

“Yeah. I know. And it’s also political. I know that the Duke has a lot of allies. But if we manage to stop these attacks, the King will owe me, and I can use that.” Fia sighed. “Thankfully this Dormelion princess Faalk was supposed to marry is missing. Wonder what happened to her?”

Zoy blinked and then scoffed. “A Dormelion princess? All the way out here? To a duke? What did she do to get that kind of exile?” In the back of her mind, she considered for a moment trying to figure out which one of the Imperial family was the unlucky bride, but discarded it after a moment. Even when she’d still been living in the Empire, she hadn’t paid much—or really any—attention to their goings-on beyond what it had affected her. She vaguely remembered that there were about twenty or thirty princes and princesses of the blood at the moment. Which, after reflection, might explain why one of them had been offered up for marriage so far from home.

“Beats me,” Fia said. “But if she’s gone missing, then she’s bought me time, so for that I’m grateful and hope she’s all right and hasn’t run afoul of Dormelion politics.”

“Usually they just say that the ‘princess is retiring to an estate’ or something like that,” Zoy commented with a scoff. “If she’s missing, then that’s a whole other thing.”

“You’d know better than I,” Fia commented. “The only times I had to deal with the Empire was boarding their ships and sneaking through the Straits.” She turned to Yufemya as they turned another corner; there wasn’t anyone visible, but cheery light and laughter issued from within a tavern halfway down the block. “You have anything to add?”

She shook her head. “Nothing of any substance that’s believable, sorry.”

“You’re Dormelion too, though.”

“Ah yes, and in an Empire of, what, fifty million souls two thousand miles across, certainly everyone is personally acquainted with the goings-on of the high imperial family? Is that the thought?” She turned to Zoy. “So do you know any of the Imperial Family?”

Zoy smirked. “Once I was in the same room as the Emperor. All the way at the back.” She’d stolen a fair number of purses that day.

Fia scoffed. “Fair enough. And I guess it doesn’t matter. I just want my husband to be safe.”

Glancing at Fia’s sad smile, Zoy couldn’t help herself. “You really love him, don’t you? What’s that like?”

“I… torn gods, how do I even say it? He’s my other half. He makes me smile, he makes me laugh. He reads me terrible romances and sings love songs off-key. He’s my co-conspirator, my partner… he was terrified of the water and trusted me to take him sailing, he… he trusts me, and I trust him.” She smiled. “He’s clever, he’s well-read, well-spoken, a man of integrity…” Her expression grew distant, and Zoy wondered what memory she was reliving. “I would be happy to hang up my pirate hat and sword and just grow old with him.”

Yufemya spoke up. “That sounds wonderful. I hope you can have that.”

Zoy nodded in agreement. Personally, she thought that Fia was a big sap, but it seemed real. Once she would have thought that such a relationship of mutual trust and understanding would have had to be fake, that they would have been a con or something, that anyone who gave a damn about someone else was just setting themselves up to be exploited.

But she’d learned that there was more to existing—to living—that watching for everyone to betray you. That not everyone looked at everyone else to see how they could be used.

“So, where did you meet a necromancer before?” she asked Fia, to change the subject. They were most of the way back to the lock-port inn where the others should be, if she had her bearings down right.

“He was the bonded court necro for the Republic of Ossadu. The First Minister had a scandal that he needed help with—some thieves had absconded with the Jewel of State—and hired me and my crew to help get it back quietly, and sent the necro along both to help and as insurance that we’d return it.” Fia shrugged. “He was a nice enough guy. Kind of fatherly, really, once you got past those robes and the skull on his staff and the rest of it, but let me tell you, I read the terms of that contract with a magnifying glass before I let him bond us to it. And when we were out at sea, I managed to get some details out of him on how necromancy works. Most of it went over my head, though.”

Zoy nodded. “So you trust Oksyna?”

“I do, at least to the point that she wants to find out why these oathwalkers are crossing the border and raising all of this chaos. More than that, we’ll see.”

They continued on, their boots crunching on the ice and snow; as was usual for a wintering city, most of the buildings they passed were dark and silent, but there were still a fair number that were lit, with the sounds of people, or labor, or other activities coming from inside. They passed one where the sound of half-familiar chanting came from inside, making Zoy give it a more thorough look. To her surprise, she saw what she recognized as Daibueri lettering on the sign.

“Now there’s an unfamiliar sight,” she commented, just as they turned the final corner and she stiffened. “Uh oh.” There was a crowd of people—at least thirty, probably more—clustered near where they’d tied up the Lynx. “What do you think? Trap?”

Fia pulled up her scarf to cover her face more thoroughly. “Possibly. Let’s just saunter on over and see. It could be people coming to see the ice-boat that sailed in out of the cold winter and nothing official at all.”

“Do you think so?”

“I’d give it even odds. But let’s be cautious.”

Zoy nodded and palmed a knife, just in case, as the three of them made their way over. It definitely looked like a random crowd of people curious to see the strange new sight that had arrived in the middle of winter—there were people at the edge of the crowd craning their necks to get a look and others eagerly talking to their neighbors. Mostly they were standing on the sideway, although there were at least two men that she could see down in the canal itself looking over the Lynx with interest. It didn’t look like people were looting anything, thankfully…

Uh oh.

Now that they were closer, she could see a man dressed in the same livery as the guard she had stabbed standing guard over the Lynx. There was a bubble of people around him.

“By Stylio’s seat, on the walk,” she muttered.

“I see him.”

“Any idea where Stylio and the others are?”

“Either in the inn or in custody.”

“I think that if they tried taking Oksyna into custody, there would be more damage.”

“Unless she’s lying low.”

“Possibly, but—”

The sound of Stylio’s voice made Zoy relax a hair, and she had to fight a smile as her guardian’s words—in the clipped polite tones of ‘I Am Dealing With Aggravating Officials’—came through the chill air.

“I do not see what the problem is, sir.”

“Where did you say the rest of your party was?” another voice came through the crowd, making Fia tense.

Zoy gave her a sidelong look as Stylio responded. “They are out in the city, but again, I do not see what concern that is of yours. Have we been charged with a crime?”

Fia mouthed a profanity, and Zoy nodded in agreement as Joorgen, the captain of the guard, replied to Stylio. “You have not—yet—been charged, but you have to admit that it is highly suspicious that you and your party arrived in the middle of winter and did not identify yourselves or present yourselves to the proper authorities!”

“I was unaware that traveling in winter was suspicious,” Stylio replied as Zoy followed Fia around the crowd towards where Stylio’s voice was coming from.

“You don’t? Truly? Especially when traveling in such an unprecedented manner?”

Zoy could picture her guardian putting her hands on her hips, and was gratified that her imagination was right when Stylio, with Raavi and Oksyna standing behind her in their winter cloaks, came into view, some guardmen’s lamps casting a yellow glow over their group. The guardsman dressed in the fancy cloak with the big shiny pin was probably Joorgen.

“It’s not unprecedented!” Raavi spoke up, and Zoy had to hide a smile at his energy. “I built it based on descriptions of similar craft from the southern tribes who sail across the equatorial pack ice!”

Zoy bit back a laugh as she watched Joorgen blink and cock his head at Raavi. Even from behind his scarf, the captain's bafflement was clear. Then he shook his head as if to clear it. “You have not paid tolls, nor passage fees, nor docking fees, nor presented authorization! By all rights, I should impound your ‘boat’ in the name of the Duke!”

“You can’t—!” Raavi started to protest, and then he saw Zoy standing there.

Joorgen followed his gaze—and then his eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

Fia sighed and pulled out her sword. “What’s wrong, Joorgen? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

He staggered back, shakily pulling out his own weapon.

Then Raavi shouted, “Oksyna, the lamps!”

Zoy grimaced and covered her eyes as the guardsmen’s lamps essentially exploded into gouts of flame—but then Raavi sang something, and the light vanished.

She squinted to see something delightful—Joorgen and his flanking men were standing embedded in ice that came up to their ankles, with little clouds of fog billowing around their legs. The crowd was pulling back, shouting, leaving the men standing there, unable to move.

Wondering what Fia was going to do, Zoy watched with interest as she stalked towards the men, her sword drawn.

“Well done, Raavi,” she said, not looking away from Joorgen, who was straining, trying to pull his feet from the ice. The guardsman who had been standing by the Lynx drew his weapon but didn’t move.

“We were talking about ideas—”

“Tell me later. First… hello Joorgen. Surprised to see me?”

He stared at her. “Impossible. You’re dead.”

“And how would you know that? Are you admitting to trying to murder the wife of your ducal heir?” she asked sweetly. The crowd was watching, Zoy noticed—albeit at a bit of a further distance—while the guardsman who had been standing over the Lynx was staring at his own weapon as it disintegrated into red flakes of rust in front of his eyes. Fia shook her head. “Come on. We’re leaving.”

“Aren’t you going to kill him?” Zoy asked, surprised. If someone had chopped off her head, she’d return the favor. Well… assuming she could survive getting her head chopped off. It was the principle of the thing.

“That would be murder. He’s not a threat.” She leaned in. “But Joorgen. When I come back, if my daughter has been hurt in any way, I will see to it that you experience the same.” She punched him in the gut, making him gasp and double-over, and then smashed his face with her knee before hauling him upright. “Understood?”

His head wobbled in a vague nod, and she let him go. With his feet frozen to the ground, he couldn’t fall over properly, and he dangled from the waist, half-insensate.

Fia turned. “Come on. Time to go.”

#

Raavi ava Laargan

We were about ten or twenty minutes out from the city when Lady Fia said, “That was a well done Fire Siphon, Raavi.”

I smiled behind my scarf. “Thank you. But without Oksyna breaking the lamps and igniting all of the oil, I wouldn’t have had the heat needed to melt the ice.” My shoulders were twinging from doing the Fire Siphon, but it wasn’t too bad. On the scale of things, it had only been a pint or so of oilsap, and I’d been trained to help put out a fire large enough to melt the contents of an entire crucible. “And she was the one who made the water freeze again.”

“I was only able to do that because of Raavi,” Oksyna said with a… well, I couldn’t call it anything other than a cackle if I was being honest.

“Oh? How so?”

“We were discussing how ice and water and steam work in relation to entropy,” I could hear the smile as she said her new favorite word, “and I can’t make ice melt with my powers because while water has higher disorder to it, you need to add heat to get it to melt.”

“Hence the Fire Siphon,” Stylio said, “which uses Breath and Will to draw heat away from the fire as it breathes and into something else.”

“Exactly. And making water freeze is reducing entropy, so I couldn’t do that either. But…” she drawled, sounding inordinately pleased with herself, “steam is water with high entropy. So after Raavi did the Fire Siphon, I moved all of the heat he’d pushed into the water into steam.”

“Ah! So that’s where that fog came from?” Stylio asked.

I grinned as I steered us around a snow drift that had inched into the canal. “Yep!”

“Great teamwork, you two,” Lady Fia said with a chuckle. “I’m glad you didn’t break Raavi’s brain, Oksyna.”

“It’s a very good brain, I have to say,” she commented, and I felt my cheeks heat behind my scarf.

Scrambling for something to change the topic, I asked, “So… did you see your husband?”

There was a pause, and I glanced back, about to repeat myself, not sure if she’d heard me, just as she replied, “I did. And my daughter. Hopefully dealing with Joorgen won’t cause him problems. But given that Zoy and Yufemya left two dead bodies in the hall, I think he might get suspicious.”

I looked back to the rear of the Lynx and saw Zoy shrug. “It was either stab or let them find Fia in bed with him.”

“Zoy…” Stylio said admonishingly.

“Besides, they were two of the ones who helped chop up Fia in the first place,” Yufemya said.

I cringed and saw Oksyna cock her head, but before I could say anything, Lady Fia barked, “Raavi, eyes forward!”

Whirling back around, I saw a raised fissure in the ice coming up and pulled the tiller to the side; the Lynx tilted alarmingly as our left runner lifted up over the crack, but we didn’t break anything.

We continued on for a while; the canal was filled with drifts and ice cracks along this stretch, and a part of my mind was pondering why. Was it the surrounding topography? That we were getting deeper into the winter and the ice was freezing solid? Maybe the water depth? I wondered if anyone had studied it before. The canals dated back to the Dormelion Empire, so they were several centuries old, there had been plenty of opportunity… but on the other hand, who would have been out here in the middle of winter to study them?

Time seemed to just… drift after a while and my world seemed to shrink, down to the walls and ice of the canal, glowing white under the Night-Light, and the surrounding hills and fields. Trees came and went as darker blobs along the sides of my view. When the first lock appeared, some time later, it was almost a shock. However, we’d gotten practiced by now, and Zoy and Yufemya engaged the brakes as Lady Fia furled the sails.

We came to a smooth halt twenty feet from the canal lock, and looked up.

“How bad is this one?” Stylio asked.

“Pretty bad,” Yufemya said. “According to the map, there are six locks here over the next mile, rising almost three hundred feet.”

I cringed.

“But. If we go cross-country again from here, we can get to another canal in about fifty miles to the north-west, and then it’s less than two hundred miles to the closest canal head by the mountain passes.”

“How far have we come from Rechneesse?”

“About ninety miles.”

“They won’t catch up even if they sent pursuit after us immediately.” Lady Fia hopped out of the Lynx. “Let’s make camp, rest, and tackle this hill afterwards. And then we make for the pass.”

#

Lord Faalk ava Geroold of House Rechneesse

Stoor sleeping in his arms, Faalk pushed his way into his father’s office, flanked by one of his own guards. “Father, this is outrageous!”

His father looked up from his paperwork and frowned. “What is?”

“Two of the guards stabbed each other outside of my suite!” Faalk blustered with as much theatricality as he could manage. “I know that you prefer to keep a full complement of staff awake during the winter, but they are so on edge!”

Duke Rechneesse blinked and then his frown deepened before he set his pen aside and interlaced his fingers, his elbows on his ironwood desk, the pointed dagger of his neatly groomed gray beard nearly brushing his fingers. “We could simply dismiss your guards, if you are so worried. They’re an unnecessary expense, after all.”

“Ah yes, after two of your men murdered each other outside of my rooms from cabin-fever? No thank you, I’ll keep my men,” Faalk said, grateful that Fia had found guards for them. They were a bit… unconventional, but they knew their stuff.

“I see. And why is my granddaughter out of her creche? You’re risking waking her,” the Duke said.

Faalk gently stroked Stoor’s cheek and the reddish hairs on her head. “She’s fine. And after losing Fia… I feel it is best that she remain with me. I’m afraid. I know it’s not rational, but what harm can it do?”

His father’s eyes narrowed, the old man’s craggy skin shifting, but before he could say anything else, another guard came pounding at the door. “Sir! Sir!”

“What is it, man?”

The guardsman—half-melted snow on his shoulders and hat, and a large rust-red stain on one sleeve—came in and saw Faalk standing there. He paused and swallowed. “Uh… Lord Faalk, can I ask you to leave, please? I wouldn’t want to repeat this around your daughter.”

“She’s asleep. Whatever it is that you have to tell my father, you can tell me as well,” Faalk said, trying not to let his worry show too much. Fia had been spotted, he knew it. Of course, the primary question in his mind was the body count…

The fellow looked trapped, and Faalk watched his father’s posture out of the corner of his eye. The Duke was irritated but not angry… so he likely didn’t know that Fia was alive. If he had, he would have been much more agitated.

“Um, uh, all right then, sir.” The guardsman bowed towards the Duke and said, “With your leave sir, of—”

“Just make your report. Now,” the Duke said with a scowl.

“Ah, yes, sir,” the guardsman said, and Faalk took a moment to enjoy the man’s squirming. “Captain Joorgen and his men were assaulted down in the canal-front district by a group of vagabonds who were apparently proficient in Breath. He’s badly injured and we’ve called for the healers.”

Faalk did his best to give an expression of concern for Captain Joorgen’s wellbeing as the Duke scowled. “Is this something to do with this sled that came in earlier?”

“Uh, yes sir. The occupants of it were the ones that assaulted him when he ordered the craft impounded.”

“Then send some of our men after them and arrest them. Their draught animals won’t be able to get too far.”

Faalk considered for a moment volunteering to join the party of pursuers, just to see how the guardsman would react, but the man said, “That… will be difficult, sir. It… had a sail. And it’s quite fast.”

“Huh. Sounds like they won’t be our concern anymore,” Faalk said. “Is the Captain going to be all right?”

“Uh… with the attentions of the healers, I don’t see any reason why he shouldn’t make a full recovery.”

“Good.” Faalk turned back to his father. “Now, as for these two guards that killed each other in the hall…”

He kept arguing with his father over the disposition of the guards, and floated the idea of taking up residence in one of the townhouses away from the manor, with Stoor coming with him and his and Fia’s men securing the place. According to the clock on the wall, it was a full hour later when he finally conceded to his father that he wasn’t going to move out before spring and the arrival of the Dormelion delegation.

Figuring he’d bought Fia and her people enough time, Faalk bowed his head to the Duke. “By your leave, Father, I’ll return to my suite. Thank you for entertaining my concerns.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Dismissed.”

Faalk stepped out of the door and paused before craning his neck, holding Stoor as if he had to adjust his hold on her.

Sure enough, the guardsman didn’t bother to check to see if he was gone before saying, “Sire, there’s a problem. The people who attacked the Captain? The pirate was leading them, and she’s the one who beat him.”

“What? How is that possible?”

Faalk hid a grin and listened as the guardsman described Fia beating Joorgen to a pulp; apparently the man’s knees would need repair after his feet had been frozen to the ground and then he’d been knocked over, and the rust-red stain on the guard’s cloak, which Faalk had taken as blood, was in fact rust… from his weapon having literally dissolved in his hands.

He didn’t know how Fia had managed that, and he was going to have to ask her when he next saw her.

And he was going to see her again.

<<<<>>>>

Raavi ava Laargan

I fidgeted with the screw of my wrench as I stood in the back of the mayor’s office. Yufemya hadn’t killed anyone, but most people weren’t nearly as understanding about being hit with an arrow as Lady Fia could be.

“I want to know where you people came from, and why you attacked!” Mayor Williibard growled, his face furrowed like a farmer’s field in spring.

Lady Fia sighed. “I’ve told you twice now, but hopefully the third time will be the charm. We’re on a mission for the king, investigating these attacks.” She motioned with a nod of her head towards the necromancer, who was standing between two guards in the corner, her arms folded and her shoulders slouched. “And the deathspeaker there will undoubtedly be helpful. It’s a stroke of luck to have run across her, but I’ll take it—and her, and get her off your hands.” She snorted. “If she is one—”

“I am,” came from the corner.

“—then you won’t be able to hold her anyway.”

Mayor Williibard scoffed. “She was still dealing with enemies of the kingdom. Do you really think she won’t betray you?”

Lady Fia sighed. “That’s my problem. Look, release her into our custody, our healer will take care of the wounded, and we’ll be gone and you won’t have to deal with us or her.”

“Hmm.”

The door opened, and a young man around my age came in. “Sir?”

“Yes, Theodoor?”

“My mother’s ready for you and the… travelers,” he said, glancing at us.

“Good.” The Mayor rose and gave the group of us a flinty glare. “Come with me.”

“For what purpose?” Lady Fia asked.

“While I might not have papers purportedly from the King for the purposes of riding roughshod over anyone who gets in my way, regardless of their rights, I do have my own resources,” the Mayor said. “Namely, in this town resides one of the greatest seeresses in the entire duchy.” He smiled thinly, and it didn’t feel friendly to me. “And she just woke from a nap, with my question in her hand.”

Lady Fia sighed. “All right. If that’ll get through your thick skull that we mean no harm, then I have no problem with it.”

“Good, because I wasn’t asking.” He went out the door, and the guards motioned for us to follow.

The seeress’ house was right near the Mayor’s modest mansion, and a well-trodden path through the snow showed that it got regular traffic.

We entered what looked like a side building attached to the main house, and, after passing through the mudroom with its inner and outer doors, found ourselves in what was obviously a seer’s chamber. Books lined the walls, many of the spines well-thumbed, along with a workbench and a plush armchair. In the center was what I could only call a mechanism. Easily one and a half times my height, it reached up nearly to the ceiling, with a brushed pit of sand underneath it; next to it knelt a woman around my mother’s age, her hair braided with a purple ribbon and silver hairpins. On a small tray next to her was a set of crystal dice, glowing the distinctive green-yellow of the first Breath upon waking.

“Hello there, Mayor,” she said. “I was just about ready for you.” She took a dowel from a stand of sand tools and used it to make circles in the sand pit, and then divided them into quadrants. “Your question is a good one. So, here,” she motioned to the innermost circle, “immediate, before the end of the season. Then middle term,” she motioned to the next circle, “into Spring, and then Summer, and then after. Then for the quadrants, we have benefit, mild or major, or danger, mild or major.”

The Mayor nodded, while I just stood at the back of the group, trying to both see what was happening and her mechanism, and, at the same time, staying out of the way. Somehow, I accomplished neither of these.

“All right then,” said the seeress. “Now for the question. If Mayor Williibard does not release the necromancer that he has in custody into the custody of the travelers in this room, or does not allow any of them to leave until such time as a response from the King can be received, what will be the result for this town?”

I saw Lady Fia stiffen, but she didn’t say anything as the seeress climbed up the small ladder to the top of her mechanism, and dropped the dice in.

Down and down they clattered, and I could feel the tension in the room rise, and rise.

“Taking longer than normal,” the Mayor noted after perhaps a good half minute of this.

“Yes. That’s interesting.”

“What does it mean?”

“I’ll tell you later,” she said, just as the first die ejected itself from the machine, and landed in the Middle Term-Danger segment of the sand rings. A few moments later, the next one followed, landing next to it, and then, after an even longer pause, the next, and the next.

It took nearly five minutes, but the dice landed in a neat row in the midst of the sand.

The seeress leaned over, and I could see the blood run from her face. She pulled the Mayor over, and pointed at the dice.

“Are you sure? You said—”

“Williibard, let them go.” She pulled him over to the far side of the room, and started pulling down books.

As she flipped open one and showed him a passage, I couldn’t help my curiosity any longer, and leaned in. “How bad is it?”

The seeress scoffed, and motioned to the dice in the pit.

I glanced around, and since nobody was stopping me, I cautiously stepped forward.

“Come on, lad, they won’t bite,” the seeress said, and turned back to the Mayor, arguing in a low whisper, even as she pointed into the book.

Heartened, I leaned down and looked. “Oh.” I swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth. “Oh.”

“Raavi, what does it say?” Lady Fia asked.

“‘Complete Destruction.’” I took a deep breath. “If I recognize the runes correctly, it’s the sort of thing you normally have that predicts something even beyond war. Like… a natural disaster or something on that level.”

Silence reigned for a moment, and then Lady Fia sighed. “Well. No pressure there.” She coughed to clear her throat and said, “Mayor Williibard, my offer of your injured people being healed and letting us go on our way still stands!”

#

Half an hour later, under the watchful eyes of the townsfolk, we made ready to go, without their help. Rumor had apparently spread quickly, and they were eager to see the back of us, so the mayor had agreed to release the necromancer into Lady Fia’s custody.

“Sooo…” the necromancer said, looking the Lynx over, “this is different.”

“You can sit here, next to me,” Stylio said, patting her usual bench. “It’s loud, but you get used to it.”

She glanced it up and down one more time, and nodded. “So it’s basically a sailboat on some skis?”

“Runners, but yes,” I said.

She looked at me, and smiled at me from behind her scarf. “Oh, you’re a pedant! This’ll be fun!” She looked me over. “My name is Oksyna Mykyetyav. And you are?”

“Raavi ava Laargan,” I said, eyeing her hand skeptically, and then figuring that she’d be right behind me anyway, so I shook it.

“Rahh-vee,” she said, rolling it around in her mouth a few times, exaggerating it. “It’s a good name. Very Kalltii, with the double vowels and all.”

I shrugged. “It’s how we do proper names around here.”

“Let’s handle introductions later,” Lady Fia said. “So… I hate to do this, but Oksyna?”

“Yes?”

“I need you to swear an oath that you will bring us no harm or lead us into harm’s way until such time as we’ve had a chance to debrief you.”

Oksyna jerked back a little at that, and then her voice went much more formal. “You’ve had dealings with necromancers before?”

“I have. And I know what I’m asking, but given that we’re taking you where you said you wanted to go, I figure this is fair.”

I looked back and forth between them a few times, not understanding what was going on, before Oksyna sighed. “Fine. I swear, on the powers I have been granted, that I will bring Lady Fiaswith and those under her guidance and command no harm nor lead them into harm’s way until such time as I have been released from my oath.”

There was a flash of purple light that left afterimages in my vision, and she grimaced. “Satisfied?”

“Yes. Both of your oath… and that you are what you say you are.”

Oksyna nodded slowly and said, “Well then. Since I don’t want to get hit with an accidental violation, and you’re literally planning on going into harm’s way, shall we get going so you can debrief me?” She motioned to the townsfolk. “Ordinarily, I like the local food and architecture, but for now, I want to move on.”

“Yeah. And we have a long way to go,” Stylio said. She looked a little tired, her shoulders hunched from her normal upright posture.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Shouting like that took more out of me than the healing did,” she said, grimacing. “I am currently experiencing a significant amount of pain, especially in my arms and legs.”

“Why don’t you sit in the Lynx?” I suggested. “We can get it up to speed without you, especially if Oksyna helps. And you can help her in if she has trouble.”

“Oh, I would feel like an imposition—”

“Stylio. Sit. You kept everyone from getting stabbed. You can take a break and let the young people push the boat.” Lady Fia pointed, and the two of them locked eyes for a moment, before Stylio sighed.

“All right. This time. I’m not an invalid.”

“No, you just drained enough of your life force that your body is screaming at you for the insult,” Lady Fia said. “You need food and rest. If any of the rest of us stretched ourselves that far, you’d do the same.”

Stylio frowned and hauled herself into the Lynx, commenting under her breath, “Fia, if you could manage to drain yourself this far, I’d be terrified.”

“Also impressed,” Zoy commented from her spot on the other side of the Lynx.

“That too. Shall we?”

“Yes. Let’s get going. Time’s a-wasting!”

We started to push the Lynx into motion, Oksyna joining in with a will. By now, we had this down, and Stylio helped pull her in when we got up to speed. Lady Fia unfurled the sails, and we were off.

“Wahoo!” I heard Oksyna whoop behind me with glee.

I grinned, and turned the tiller to head down the road. “Yufemya, directions please! Let’s get back to the canal without running into any more problems?”

“I think we can manage that. It looks like we’ll have… a few intersections to deal with, and…” I heard the rustling of paper behind me, “Uh… okay, we might want to stop the Lynx before that section…”

“Why?” Lady Fia asked.

“If I’m reading this right, there are somewhere around four switchbacks on this hill coming up!”

I winced. “Yeah! See if you can find a better route!”

“On it!”

“I hope that I wasn’t a problem,” Oksyna said.

Before I could say anything, Lady Fia commented, “Are you kidding? We desperately could use your skills for this. I feel like we’re kidnapping you.”

“Hmm. Well, you should know that my ransom will be two cups of beer and a warm place to sleep.”

“I think we can afford that.”

“Am I allowed to negotiate the type of beer?”

“Ha! And what would you like?”

“A good Endan beer!”

“We’ll see what we can find in the next city.”

“Uh… Fia?”

“Yes?”

“The next city is Rechneesse.”

#

“So what’s the problem?” Oksyna asked me as we sat around the table by the inn’s fire. I glanced at Lady Fia, who was standing by the window, looking out as she drank her Endan beer. Nearby, Stylio was sleeping on a couch, a blanket covering her. Zoy and Yufemya were off getting supplies as quietly as they could manage.

Figuring that Oksyna should at least know enough about what we were getting into, I leaned in and said, “Her father-in-law, the duke of the city we’re in, tried to have her killed. She survived and she’s doing this mission on behalf of the king so that she can get his support in getting her family back.”

Oksyna glanced between me and Lady Fia before nodding slowly. “There’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

“Yes, but let’s save that for later.”

“Fair. I’ve only known you people for a few hours.” She finished her beer in one long pull and rose. “So, let’s get that briefing done with.” She went over to Lady Fia. “So I’ve been bound in that oath for a few hours now, and I’ve already cleaned out all of the bugs and rodents in this place. Can you please release me from that oath before I have to start on the beer? It’s good beer and I’d hate to make it go flat.”

“I take it that you were spent?” Lady Fia asked, making me glance back and forth between them, confused.

“Completely tapped. Spent it all on talking with the oathwalkers before the town guards intervened. I was just about to start in on their weapons when your friends showed up.”

Lady Fia seemed satisfied by that, so I swallowed my questions, but I was burningly curious. I’d heard about necromancers, of course. Everyone had. Bargainers with revenants, in pacts with spirits of the underworld and afterlife, able to kill with a touch and a look, or dealing with rampaging revenants and Death Curses. But Oksyna didn’t look like any of the necromancers in any of my books. She was plump and young, not old and almost skeletal, and didn’t wear a black robe with skulls on it. Instead, she had a black sleeveless dress with blue and purple ruffles over a white shirt, and black gloves. If not for the fact that Fia had called her a necromancer, I would have just assumed she was a fashionable and pretty girl about my age with a liking for dark makeup that complemented her dusky hair and skin.

“So what is your situation?” Fia asked.

“What do you mean?”

Fia shrugged and crossed her arms. “Freelance or on a mission? What other obligations do you have? Are you in someone’s service? And what are your goals regarding the oathwalkers? Are you planning on recruiting?”

Oksyna scowled. “In order, freelance, no other obligations beyond the oath you put me under, you know I can’t answer that, and I want to know why a few thousand oathwalkers suddenly decided to cross the mountains and attack every settlement in reach in the middle of winter. Something happened, and that puts it in my wheelhouse. And, no, I’m not planning on ‘recruiting’. Fixing, yes, and I’ll need their help for that, but I have no interest in becoming Nightshade reborn.” She crossed her arms and humph’ed as I winced at the mention of the legendary ancient necromantic tyrant. “Too much paperwork.”

I snorted, and she smiled at me.

Lady Fia nodded. “So what do you know about these oathwalkers?”

“Not much. I heard that they were on the rampage—luckily I was overwintering in the region—and went to investigate. The group I ran into was the first that I came across. Went to negotiate, and I was just getting through to them when those guardsmen jumped out and started with the arrows and axes.”

“How come they didn’t kill you?” I asked.

“Who? The walkers or the townies?”

“Either? Both?”

“I was easily able to suspend things with the walkers, and when the townies attacked, they went for the walkers first and then captured me when they realized who and what I was.” She shrugged. “And I didn’t want to kill them, but it’s good you showed up when you did.” I looked her over, trying to spot a weapon or a wand. She saw me and did a little pose, which made me flush. “Like what you see?”

“Uh…”

“No breaking Raavi’s brain, we need it for the Lynx,” Lady Fia admonished, but she smiled a bit. “And I know that you could have killed them if you wanted.”

“Easily.”

I leaned in a little. “How? Is it true what they say about necromancers?”

Oksyna glanced at me with a small smile. “What? That we can kill with a touch?”

“Yes…?” I said a bit hesitantly, my voice cracking a little at the end, hoping that I hadn’t just upset her.

She smirked and reached out with a pointed fingertip, brushing the side of my cheek. I flinched, but she just smiled. “See? No dying.” She then reached over to the slightly battered table nearby and ran the same finger down the length of the wooden board.

Smoke curled up from the surface as small flames spread—but not in a natural way, as they burned intricate patterns into the wood.

I glanced at Oksyna’s face, and saw that she had her eyes screwed up in concentration, her tongue sticking out and held between her teeth. After a moment, she lifted her hand up, to reveal a flower scorched into the wood.

“Very nice!” Lady Fia said appreciatively.

Staring at the flower—it was a rose, complete with thorns on the stem and distinguishable petals—I said hollowly, “That’s amazing. But… so… wait. You can just touch someone and do that?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to. First, you cannot believe the paperwork. Second, I’m not a murderer. I work with death, but I don’t want to hurry it along unless I have to.” She glanced at Lady Fia. “Which reminds me. Am I free from that oath?”

Lady Fia nodded. “You don’t have anything else to add?”

“Nope.” She folded her arms and shrugged. “You probably know more about what’s going on than I do, if you’re working for the King.”

“Well, we may still need you. So, yes, you’re released from your oath.”

Taking a deep breath, Oksyna closed her eyes and there was a flash of that black and purple light. “Phew. I was nearly tapped dry.”

“Of?” I asked plaintively.

“I don’t use Breath for my other abilities,” she said. “I need something else. Call it… Disorder, Rot, Decay, whatever. With it, I can deal with revenants, bind oaths like Lady Fia here just did. And while I get a steady drip, the best way to fill up on it is to make things around me break and decay, burn, and die.” She frowned. “So there are now no more mice, rats, fleas, or bedbugs in this inn, and I had maybe an hour or two left in my reserves before I would have had problems.”

I swallowed. “Oh.” I thought. “So that’s the black-and-purple light? Your… Entropy?”

“What’s that mean?” she asked, crossing her arms and cocking her head with interest.

“It’s a thing from engineering, on energy lost when you change one kind of energy to another,” I said. “Like when a clockwork machine ticks away, not all of the energy from the spring or the weight goes into making the gears move; you get the gears rubbing against each other, the parts hitting each other, and more. The parts warm up from the wasted heat. Or when you heat up a crucible to melt metal or glass; the crucible and the room heat up too, and that fuel goes to waste. We call that entropy, and it’s wasted because we can’t get it back to do anything else useful.”

She blinked and then a smile crossed her face. “That’s pretty much exactly what I do.” Her smile shifted to a grin. “That’s a nice word. ‘Entropy.’ Much fancier than ‘Disorder’. I like it. So yes, that light is my Entropy, and I use it for necromancer spells like how you use oilsap in a lamp.”

“Huh!” I sat down in the chair next to the fire. “So what about that?” I motioned to the burning logs in the hearth.

“What about them? I could make them burn faster, sure.” The blaze in the hearth suddenly shot up, and then calmed again. “But it usually gets me yelled at for wasting fuel. They just think that I’m using Breath.”

“Fascinating,” I said, and, clasping my hands together, leaned forward. “And you can get extremely precise?”

She nodded her head towards the table with the burned-in rose. “You saw that. That didn’t cost me anything, in fact, because the wood burned. Sure, just a little itty bit, but it still burned.”

I put my hand on my chin, thinking. “Lady Fia, what do you think about experimenting with this?”

She didn’t say anything, and I looked around. “Lady Fia?”

I stood and scanned the room.

She was gone.

#

Lady Fiaswith of House Rechneesse

Fia dropped over the side of the wall, landing behind the large hummocks of snow that were bushes in the summertime. The sharp spikes at the top of the wall hadn’t bothered her that much, between the snow and ice covering them and her own healing.

Cautiously, crouching low, she moved towards the darkened manor house. In the summer, it was a white and gold beauty, full of flowing lines and impressions of flowers and vines carved into the stone and scrollwork, with iron fences cast in waves. Now, in winter, it was a hunched lump of barely distinguishable whiteness that glowed under the muted Night-Light from where she shone behind the clouds.

Perfect.

Fia worked her way around the perimeter, remembering how the guards patrolled, keeping herself low, and her hand on the hilt of her sword.

There.

The window was lit.

She raced across the snow-covered garden, and leapt up and onto the hummock of snow that, in summer, was an iron table cast with the duke’s crest. Not slowing down, she jumped and grabbed hold of the balcony railing above, the ornamental iron vines and flowers giving her grip, and hauled herself upwards.

And then she was there.

Heart pounding, she crossed the balcony, towards the door, and tried the doorknob.

Locked.

She tried rattling it, but to no avail.

She was just considering smashing the window and unlocking it when she heard the lock click open—and the door opened.

Her husband stood there, the smell of alcohol on his breath, his face haggard and unshaven, his collar open and askew, his shirt stained with sweat and food.

And then his face lit up like spring had come months early.

She had never seen a more beautiful sight, and tackled him.

#

Some time later, she said quietly, “Thank you.”

Faalk rolled over and kissed her on the temple. “I knew you’d come back.” He swallowed. “And I’m sorry for doubting. It was… just hard in the dark to believe it all the time.” He shivered. “They showed me your head.”

“I know. I… I could see and hear.”

His eyes went wide, and he started to breathe heavily—in fear, rage, or nausea, she couldn’t tell.

She put a hand on his chest and said quietly, “It’s all right. I’m alive. Stoor is alive.” She motioned to the cradle in the corner of the bedroom, where their daughter lay sleeping. “We’ll figure everything else out.”

He swallowed and nodded before hauling himself upright, and starting to dress.

“So what next?”

She sighed. “Next I need to go.”

“But… but… you just got home!”

“And if I stay, your father will arrange another death for me and toss my body in a furnace this time,” she said, shaking her head.

“Then I’m coming with you!”

“Faalk. Love.” She rose and embraced him, his chin resting just below her shoulder. “You can’t. Stoor can’t travel safely in this cold and you have to protect her. Stay with our guards; they should still be loyal to you, even if I’m not here. And you can’t leave, not without your father either disowning you, meaning that your brother gets the duchy next, or them chasing after you, where it would be too easy to arrange an accident for our girl.”

He scowled and twisted his face away. “I hate this.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know. And I love you. But the only reason we didn’t flee before is because of your duty.”

He snorted. “My duty.” He looked up into her eyes. “You know that my father wasn’t even going to let me have a mourning period?”

“Oh?”

“Yes, but—”

The sound of a body hitting the floor came from the hall, and Fia whirled, putting Faalk behind her. Finding her sword on the floor, she bent and picked it up before heading over to the door.

“Are you done?” Zoy’s voice came through the door.

“You followed me!?” Fia demanded, outrage and respect warring inside her.

“As if it was hard to figure out where you were going! Now come on!”

“Did you kill someone?”

“Yes, a guard, but between him and the other one, we’ll be able to make it look like they killed each other,” Zoy said.

“Wait, what?” Fia threw the door open. “What ‘other’?”

Zoy walked in, wiping down her clothes with a blood-stained towel completely nonchalantly. “That one.” She tossed her head back, and Fia glanced past her into the hallway, to see a pair of bodies in her father-in-law’s livery slumped on the floor, both of them leaking blood onto the floor, a knife on the ground. Yufemya was artfully posing them, and gave a polite nod to Fia before finishing.

“Figure we can make it look like they had a wintertime fight, stabbed each other, so sad,” Zoy said. “So, you coming back?” She glanced at the floor. “After you get dressed, that is.”

Yufemya came in. “I think they’re ready, but I have no idea how long it’ll take before they’re found.”

“A while,” Faalk said a bit hollowly, and stepped out into the hallway as Fia pulled on her pants, and followed him as she pulled on her corset. He was standing over the bodies and scowling.

“Well, that’s no loss.”

Fia felt her chest tighten at the sight of the two faces in the lantern light. “I need to go.” She turned and went back to the bedroom as quickly as she could, with Faalk following behind her.

“You all right?”

She nodded. “Yes. I just… those two… I recognized them.”

“Yes, they’re my father’s men. He won’t be happy, even if it looks like an accident, and neither will Joorgen.”

Seeing Zoy’s raised questioning eyebrow, Fia said, “My father-in-law’s captain of the guard.” She motioned to the pair of bodies. “And one of them held down my left arm and the other my right leg when Joorgen readied the ax,” she said.

Faalk blinked and then his eyes narrowed. “If I go and kick them, will that make it look wrong?”

“Probably,” Zoy said.

Yufemya nodded in agreement. “They found your tracks outside and came in to investigate,” she said. “So they’ll eventually be missed, and you’ll have to figure out why they were in here for your story.”

“Oh, I will. Thank you.” He looked over the two of them. “So who are these two?”

“Adventurers helping me… possibly because they have a deathwish,” Fia said, and gave Faalk a quick overview of their meeting with the King and his task as she finished dressing.

At the end, he frowned and then nodded. “Fine. It’s not like the King is that fond of my father and his ambitions. But if this doesn’t work out, we’re taking Stoor and sailing away from here to your homeland.” He motioned to the cradle.

Fia nodded and went over to look at her daughter. She was sleeping next to the stuffed dragon toy she’d gotten for her first spring. Reaching down, she stroked the little girl’s cheek. “I’ll be back when you wake. You’ll never even know I was gone. I promise.” She looked up to Faalk. “Will you be all right?”

He nodded. “Yes. Now that I know you’re alive? Yes, a thousand times yes. And you’ll be back.”

She smiled, only to have it falter. “You said something about your father not even letting you have a mourning period?”

“Yes. He was all set to have me married off for his precious alliance, but apparently the princess I was supposed to marry has disappeared.”

“Smart girl, wherever she is,” Fia said with a scoff.

“Well, to be fair, my father wanted her, so he probably wouldn’t try to have her killed off,” Faalk said, and sighed before rubbing at his forehead. “Go. Please. Before my heart breaks, or my resolve. But if you’re not back here by Equal Nights, I’m coming to find you with Stoor.”

Feeling her own tears leak from her eyes, she bent and kissed him.

He put his arms around her, and for a brief moment, it was bliss.

And the moment ended. A lingering touch, a last look, a sad wave and a door closing behind her.

As they climbed back up over the fence, Fia turned back, and saw the light go out.

<<<<>>>>

Prologue | Chapter 9 | Chapter 11

~~~

Thank you all for reading!

Now, as much as I wanted to keep up a consistent weekly posting schedule, Real Life might be interfering. In short, due to RL Issues, my spouse and I will be moving again. This will be my 10th move in 11 years, and just when I thought that I had stable housing at last. So due to the fact that there is a good chance I might have a period where my computer is in pieces, or have no internet, I might end up taking a few weeks for downtime while completing the move. If that's the case, I will keep everyone informed here, and I hope not to have the period be too lengthy.

Raavi ava Laargan

As the fire crackled in the hearth of the inn, I sat back in the chair and tried to keep from falling asleep. It was difficult, though, since the innkeeper—a kindly grandmother—had apparently taken it upon herself to ensure that we would remember her place fondly, especially after seeing our royal passage papers.

“Here, Raavi,” she said, coming out with another tray. “You should try this.”

“Omma Minna, I caaaan’t,” I moaned, even as I sniffed appreciatively at the air. “I can’t eat any more.”

She smiled at me and put the bowl down in front of me. Even as full as I was, my mouth watered at the sight of dumplings in a rich brown sauce next to some meat cuts. “You should eat more! You’re going to be getting back out into the cold and who knows when you’ll get a warm meal next time!”

Looking between the bowl and her grin, I didn’t have the heart to protest, so I picked up the fork and took a bite.

It was delicious, and she patted my cheek before turning and going back into the kitchen.

I slumped and looked across the table at Zoy, who was on her fourth bowl of stew and mashed potatoes. “How do you still have room?” I asked incredulously. “I feel like I’m going to burst over here.”

She grinned and hummed, a little Breath leaking out.

I stared for a moment, listening, and then my jaw dropped. “You cheat! You’re using Breath to speed up your digestion?”

Her mouth full, her cheeks stretched, she said thickly, “What, are you saying the Nightfest… sorry the Sundown Feast is cheating? Same basic idea. And stocking up on food now can make the difference between surviving and dying out there.”

I frowned a bit—it felt wrong, like singing a spring choral in autumn—but as I eyed the bowl in front of me, my mouth watering painfully, I gave in and started to hum along with her, focusing the Breath with my Will to where it was needed. It wasn’t anywhere as easy as it was with the Sundown Feast, but I could still feel it working. Soon my stomach was feeling much less stretched, and I could give the choice cut of tender meat in front of me the attention it deserved.

Of course, then Omma Minna noticed and brought out more, smiling at me as she did so, and bringing out another bowl for Zoy, but she didn’t get the same treatment, instead just having the bowl placed in front of her with a smile that was… not as warm as the one she gave me.

“I don’t think she likes you as much as she likes me,” I said to Zoy after Minna went back in.

“You’re right,” Zoy said, not that that stopped her from digging in.

“Why?”

“You’re Kalltii. I’m… not.” She flicked her blond hair with a couple of stiffened fingertips.

I frowned. “Do you want me to talk with her?”

“And get my cheeks pinched? Nah. It’s fine. I think that’s kind of funny, to be honest.” She continued eating.

Before I could ask another question, Yufemya came over, one of the maps in hand, and put it down on the table. “All right, hear me out. I have an idea.”

“Listening,” Zoy said through her mouthful before swallowing hard.

“All right. So we’re going up and down the canals because they follow the flattest path, not necessarily the most direct path.”

“With you so far,” I said, taking a bite of my own food.

“So I found this,” she pointed to a spot on the map. I craned my neck to see where she was indicating, as did Zoy. There was a large hill and long ridge that would take the canals close to five hundred miles to go around, along with around fifty locks. “We could put the runners on the Lynx and go over this rise, and do in twenty miles what would otherwise take us five hundred.” She motioned along one spot. “We can even aim for this area, where there’s a spur line for the canal that extends towards this side and use that to cut the distance we’d have to travel cross-country.”

I swallowed my mouthful and peered at the map. “Slope’s a little steep, and we haven’t tried using the runners yet.”

Zoy leaned over as well. “We could try over here,” she said, pointing to one section, where the contour lines were more spaced out. “It’s further for cross-country, but less steep, and then move up this way and then downhill to the spur line. And there are some towns along the way where we should be able to get help if we get stuck.”

I leaned back and took another bite of my food, thinking. “We could. But what if that costs us more time?”

“I think it’s worth the risk,” Yufemya said. “And we’ll need to test the runners sooner or later. Better we do it here, where there’s easy—or at least easier—access to help in case we can’t make it work, rather than discovering that up in the mountains.”

Nodding, I hmmed in acknowledgment of the point, and continued to eat. Omma Minna came back out and put a plate of fritters and a small cup of sauce in front of Yufemya, on top of the map. She blinked and stared at the plate. “Wait, you made tormanakos? Just for me?”

Omma Minna smiled. “My daughter married a Dormelion man, and I had to learn because they’re my grandchildren’s favorites.” She gently ran her fingers through Yufemya’s curly dark hair before laying her hand on her cheek. “You have their coloring. You also from a mixed family?”

“Uh… in a way, but I was born and raised in the Empire,” Yufemya said, looking down at the plate. “Thank you.”

“Of course.” Omma Minna withdrew her hand and came over to Zoy, placing another bowl in front of her. “And here you go, dearie. I didn’t know what to make for you, but don’t think you’re being neglected.”

Zoy glanced at Yufemya before smiling at Omma Minna. “I’m not. Thank you.” She reached over and stole one of Yufemya’s fritters, making Minna laugh and Yufemya give her a look.

Zoy popped the fritter in her mouth while looking at Yufemya challengingly, waggling her eyebrows. “These are good. Just like home,” she said, her own Dormelion accent growing more pronounced.

“Thank you, dearie. I’ll start up another batch then.” Omma Minna left, smiling, and Yufemya pointedly took one of her fritters and dipped it in the sauce before eating it.

Then she started to cry a little as she chewed.

“You okay?” Zoy and I both asked.

She nodded, small teardrops dotting her lashes. “Yes. I’m just… it’s a taste of home, you know?”

I nodded. Even though I’d barely been away from home, I was starting to get a feel for what she was going through.

Yufemya swallowed her fritter and nodded. “Well, I’ll be relishing these. But I’d rather not talk about it, though.”

“All right. So, for this diversion, I think you’re right, and look, there’s a road here,” Zoy said, pointing at a notation on the map, “so we can hopefully follow that as best we can…”

We continued planning, and then I noticed something on the map a little further up, close to where my home was. “Oh, hey.” I pointed to a name. “Isn’t that Lady Fia’s duchy?” I glanced around a bit belatedly to make sure that she wasn’t in the room, but she was still off meeting with the city mayor.

“Yeah. I hope she can restrain herself from doing anything… foolish,” Yufemya said softly.

“I think we’ll be all right,” Zoy said. “She’s…” she winced. “I was about to say that she has a good head on her shoulders.”

I cringed. At our last rest stop before arriving in this city, Lady Fia had had a screaming nightmare about the trunk, and had run out into the snow, gasping for breath and clutching her head. Thinking quickly, I said, “So what is the deal with the duke? Why does he hate Lady Fia so much?”

“I’m not too familiar with local politics,” Yufemya said, her relief showing clearly on her face, “but based on what Fia said… he’s pretty obviously playing the dynastic game.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll walk you through it. Lady Fia said that her husband was under a Death Curse that his first wife would die a horrible death. Why would you give someone a Curse like that?”

I shifted a bit in my seat and took a bite of my food in order to buy myself some time to think. “Because you don’t like them?”

“To put it mildly. To do a Death Curse, you have to truly believe in it,” Yufemya said, dipping another fritter in the sauce and popping it in her mouth. “So someone had to believe that having the duke’s heir lose his wife was the best way to get their revenge. Do you think it’s more likely that they were striking at the duke or at his heir, given what Lady Fia said?”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So if they’re striking at the duke this way, it’s a way to keep him from making the alliances that he wants to make.”

“Fia did mention something about a princess,” Zoy said with a nod before stealing another one of Yufemya’s fritters.

“Exactly. So if Fia wants her husband back… then she’s going to need the King’s help. Or the duke will just do it again. She needs allies. But there are, what… thirteen dukedoms in the kingdom?”

“Fifteen,” I said, “but two of them are royal.” I glanced at the two of them as they both looked at me. “But don’t ask me to name them.”

“So there you go. From the King’s perspective, it’s a win-win,” Yufemya said. “Either he gets rid of Fia and helps the duke, giving him a favor to call in on the man, or she comes back having solved the problem of these attacks for him.”

I scowled. “Well then. We’ll just have to make sure that the duke doesn’t get what he wants, now don’t we?”

Omma Minna came back out and put a plate of the Dormelion fritters in front of Zoy with a smile—and then a laugh as Yufemya stole several.

“You three need anything more?” she asked.

“Our friends should be coming back soon—I hope,” said Zoy. “Can you have some more of these ready when they come in?”

“And do you know any Singharrow recipes?” Yufemya asked.

“Singharrow? That’s a little far from here, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, but that’s where the Lady is from originally.”

Omma Minna made a little “o” with her mouth and then nodded. “Thank you for letting me know! I’ll go check my cookbooks.” She turned and marched back into the kitchen.

As the door closed, Zoy snickered. “And now she can take a pause from stuffing Raavi until he bursts.” She glanced at Yufemya. “Ate your fill already?”

“No, but I figured I’d have the chance for round two in a bit. I wanted to check the map before Stylio and Fia are done at the mayor’s office.” She turned to look at me. “Are all of the city mayors in this kingdom so… so…”

“Arrogant? Overconfident?” Zoy offered with a smile.

“Blunt? Demanding?” Yufemya added, her own lips curling up a bit.

“Pushy? Pompous?”

“Pretentious? Overbearing?”

I scoffed as the two of them laughed together. “It’s tradition.”

“So you want mayors who act like that?” Zoy asked, incredulous.

“Well, yes! In the old days…” I glanced between the two of them, remembering that they were both Dormelion in origin, “in the old days under the Empire, the cities were first built by… them, and kept our people out. And the Imperial governors were arrogant and highhanded. It was only over generations that we gained citizenship in the Empire and started moving into the cities. They became ours, and the governors became our mayors when we voted them in instead of them being appointed by the Empire. And when the Empire weakened and we broke away, the mayors stood up to the Imperial envoys who came to demand their surrender. It’s expected that a mayor can stand up to a king and do what’s right for their cities.”

“Huh. It’s funny hearing that from the other side,” Yufemya said.

“What do you mean?”

“How we’re taught about your kingdom’s secession is very different in the Empire… unsurprisingly, now that I think about it,” Yufemya said.

I was about to ask for more details when the doors opened and an irked Lady Fia strode in, followed by Stylio.

“—I’m just saying, usually I’m the one getting stabbed. I could have one time where it’s the other guy!”

“And then he’d throw you in prison.”

“You could heal him! It wouldn’t even do any permanent harm!”

“Prison, Fia.”

“We could use the King’s letters to get out!”

“No you couldn’t,” Zoy commented. “Raavi was just telling us that a mayor here is expected to stand up to a king.”

Lady Fia pouted and sat down. “I wasn’t really going to stab him. I was just tempted.”

“We know. What did he want?”

“Torn gods, what didn’t he want?” she asked grouchily. Stylio’s lips turned up at that. “Okay, everything but that.” Lady Fia sighed and leaned forward. “He wanted to know where we were going, why we were going, when we were going, what other attacks we knew about, what risk there was to the city, what the king would want from him, what the duke would want from him…”

“And Fia was wanting to know how long he could survive without air with her hands around his throat,” Stylio said with a chuckle.

We all laughed, and then Omma Minna came out with another tray, and placed another plate of fritters with sauce in front of Stylio, who looked at it with surprise, and then, with a smile, she uncovered a plate laden with roasted potatoes dressed in rosemary and melted cheese, with some fried mushrooms on the side, melted butter and fried onions filling the caps, and put it in front of Lady Fia. “Here you go, your Ladyship. I made this for you.”

Lady Fia blinked. “How did you know?” she asked, looking down at the meal. “I… I haven’t had sprog and squeak since I was a little girl!”

“Your friend here told me. Singharrow food, right? This is what I was able to put together with what I had on hand. I hope that it's okay?”

Lady Fia rose and embraced Omma Minna. “It’s perfect. You might have just saved your mayor’s life; I was about to stab him out of grumpiness.”

Glancing at the plate, Omma Minna put a hand on her chin and moved as if she was going to take the plate back, only to have Lady Fia block the motion. “Nope! Mine now!”

“Ah, well, I didn’t vote for him,” Omma Minna said, grinning, and put her hand on Lady Fia’s cheek. “I’m glad that it pleases you. Let me know if there’s any tweaks I should make to the recipe so I can write it down.”

“I will. It looks delicious. Thank you.” She sat and started to dig in, as Omma Minna returned to the kitchen, moaning as she took a bite. “This is wonderful. Who told her that I was Singharrow?”

“Yufemya did,” I said.

Lady Fia glanced at her. “When did I tell you that?”

“You must have at some point,” Yufemya said. “Also, your coloring isn’t exactly normal for this area.”

“That’s true enough, but I could have been Harrowhorn or Hawnmooth… ah, well. You guessed right.” She stuffed a whole potato, cheese and all, in her mouth and chewed, her expression full of bliss. “Torn gods… can we take her with us?”

“Kitchen won’t fit in the Lynx.”

“Damn. You’re right. We’ll just have to stop here later,” she said, and continued to eat.

“So, we were discussing things, and Yufemya had the suggestion of a different route we should take…” I said, and laid out the plan.

#

“How are we doing!?” Lady Fia asked.

“We’re doing all right, but there’s another drift coming, everyone hold on!” I yelled back.

The runners for the Lynx turned out to be a success… mostly. We were sustaining somewhere around ten to fifteen miles an hour, but that was uphill over snow, which felt pretty good…

Except for the fact that, unlike the canal, the snow-covered road was not flat, and the uneven snow was making us bounce and jump in our seats. Thankfully, nobody had been thrown out yet, but we’d had a close call with some of our supplies almost bouncing out; only quick action from Stylio keeping us from losing them overboard.

We hit the drift, sending loose-packed snow flying, even as the harder-packed snow underneath lifted us up. For a moment I felt like I was floating through the air, and then we came down on the other side with a bone-rattling, teeth-jarring thud!

“The worst part is that this is worth the time!” Lady Fia called. “We’ll be through in an hour, maybe one and a half!”

“I’m going to want to check for damage when we stop, though!”

“Of course! But that won’t take you as long as it would have taken us to go around!”

I nodded and kept focusing with the tiller, trying to do my best to weave us between the worst drifts and stay on the more packed snow, even as the wind blew nearly from behind us. The mechanics of our travel were very different across the snow, too. On ice, we were basically using the skates as keels, with the blade pushing against the ice and allowing us to approach the wind from a variety of angles. But here, the best option was to have the wind nearly from behind us and let it blow us to the north.

We hit another rise, and in the instant before we hit the surface again, I thought to myself that I was going to add straps to help hold us to the benches before we did this again. Thankfully we had already added cushions to them.

“Crossroads up ahead!” I bellowed. “Which way?”

From behind me, I heard Yufemya call back, “Left fork!”

As we reached it, I did my best to coax the Lynx to turn left onto the snow-covered road, only to have Yufemya howl in frustration. “Sorry, sorry! Right fork!”

I swore, but it was too late. We were already speeding down the road, and trying to get up the embankment and back over to the other road would be too dangerous. While there wasn’t a forest around us, this was farmland, and there could be all sorts of things lurking under the drifts. Wells, fences, carts… houses…

I didn’t want to picture what would be left of me if we hit one of them at fifteen miles an hour and I went flying from the front of the Lynx.

“Just try to direct me back to the correct path!” I called.

“All right!”

Before she could say anything more, though, I saw a yellow glow on the horizon—which quickly turned into a town as we sped towards it.

Something inside was burning.

#

Zoy

Hopping out of the Lynx as it came to a halt outside the town, Zoy pulled a pair of daggers from her belt. These two were her favorites in terms of overall balance; they were well-weighted, yet long enough to give her a bit of reach. Next to her, Yufemya had her bow out and an arrow nocked, while Fia had her sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Raavi was staring into the town proper and at the light. It was definitely a fire, judging by the light and the plume of black smoke, and Zoy was grateful that they were upwind from it.

“What do you think? Attack, or rite?” Raavi asked.

Fia glanced at him. “You’re the native. Are there rites for midwinter bonfires?”

“Not that I know of, but it could always be a local tradition,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of those.”

“Right, right, the Kalltii bargain and treat with the local spirits,” she said with a nod before turning away. “Yufemya, Zoy, you two scout ahead quietly and report back. We’ll keep the Lynx secure in case we need to make a hasty getaway.”

“Got it.” Zoy nodded and moved off with the other woman. As they approached the outer ring of buildings, Zoy muttered, “Do you want to go high or low?”

“Roof or streets, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Streets. Roofs will be visible if they look up, and there’s probably ice coating them. Also they’re too far apart to easily jump between them.”

“Good call. You lead, I’ll watch your back.”

Yufemya nodded agreement, and started moving forward, with Zoy following after her.

“So, what do you think we’ll find?” she asked as they reached the first walls. “Pagan rite, or bloody massacre?”

Yufemya said nothing and instead moved around the corner, and Zoy cursed herself. She wasn’t making a good impression. Normally she didn’t have any problem keeping quiet while on a job. But this was different, and she went to catch up.

It was difficult to keep an eye out for potential threats, too. She kept wanting to watch Yufemya and the other woman’s silent tread through the snow. Zoy was skilled—she wasn’t going to pretend for false modesty and say that she wasn’t—but Yufemya managed to walk in near-complete quiet; while there was some crunching of the snow, it was muffled. It was like she knew where the existing footprints of compacted snow already were under the freshly blown powder. At least following in her footprints gave Zoy a reason to watch her.

They moved up through another street towards the light. It was definitely a bonfire in the town square. If it was an attack, then that was new—all of the reports they’d gotten from the regions attacked was that the oathwalkers would sweep in, engage the overwinterers, and then pull back after killing a number of them. Of course, Stylio had pointed out, that might have just been because only those towns and cities where there were survivors would be able to make reports…

Turning a final corner, Zoy got a good look at the bonfire… and was suddenly quite grateful for being upwind.

Bodies burned in the fire, while other forms, reduced to humanlike shapes in the bright light, were throwing them in.

Two more shadows were manhandling a third near the fire, which stumbled and fell. The hood fell back, revealing the face of a woman.

Zoy didn’t hesitate.

“Cover me!” she bellowed, and the cloaked figures all looked up in surprise as she charged.

Throwing a knife at one of the two standing over the woman, she hit the other, who screamed. An arrow hissed overhead, and another person screamed.

“Come on!” Zoy said, pulling the cloaked woman to her feet.

She, at least, didn’t hesitate to take advantage of the rescue, and went with Zoy without question.

“Back to the Lynx!” she called to Yufemya, who nodded—and then loosed another arrow, prompting a shout.

Hurrying through the snow, they retraced their path, with the woman running with them. Behind them, they could hear shouting and sounds of pursuit.

“Who are you?” the woman asked.

“Friends,” Yufemya said breathlessly.

“Couldn’t just stand there and watch you get executed,” Zoy said.

“They didn’t know any better!” the woman said, just as the Lynx came into view.

Even from this distance, Zoy could see Stylio sag, and she could hear the sigh in her mind’s ear. Well, fine. When she heard what the situation had been she’d sign off on it, and she damn well knew that no plan survived contact with the enemy!

They were nearly to the Lynx when Stylio stepped forward and took in a deep breath of air.

Uh oh.

“STOP!” she bellowed, a cloud of Breath coming out from her mouth and dispersing in a wave. Zoy felt a painful clench in her hands that made her drop her knife, even as Stylio sagged, leaning on the side of the Lynx with one hand.

Behind her, Zoy could hear more weapons thud to the ground, and then Lady Fia came up, sword in hand. “I said scout ahead quietly and then report back. What happened?”

“They were about to kill this woman and dump her body in the fire!” Zoy blurted, only to have another voice interject angrily from behind her.

“This deathspeaker was leading the revenants against us!” She turned to see one of the townsfolk standing there, a woodcutter’s ax in hand. He was pointing at the woman they’d rescued. “She was speaking with a group of them, ordering them to prepare an attack! But we struck first and managed to take them all down before they could respond!”

The woman sighed. “I was negotiating with them for a cessation of hostilities when you interrupted and destroyed them all, and now you’ve gotten rid of my best lead in finding out what the cause of these attacks are!” Her voice was accented—Zoy recognized it but couldn’t place it—and now that things were less hectic, she could see that the woman was pretty young. Maybe Raavi’s age.

Lady Fia stepped forward and leveled her sword at the man before looking at the woman. “You a necromancer?”

“I am.”

“And you want to find out what's causing these attacks?”

“I do.”

“Good. That’s our mission,” she said, and turned slightly towards the man, “on orders from the King. So I’ll take this ‘prisoner’ off your hands, I’ll show you my documents, and then she’s not your problem anymore. You already said you defeated the revenants in the area, so this is good for you. One less mouth to feed and you won’t have to try to keep a necromancer locked up.”

The man frowned and turned to one of his companions. “Go get the mayor.”

<<<<>>>>

Prologue | Chapter 8 | Chapter 10

Raavi ava Laargan

Standing on top of the snow drift that hid the stone wall of the canal, I stared into the distance. I fancied that I could see our tracks in the ice, here and there, along the path back home.

But we weren’t going there. Instead, we were turning along a different canal path, one that would lead us southwest, along the kingdom’s central plains.

“You okay?” Lady Fia asked, coming up behind me. “We can take you back to your home, and then continue on. I appreciate you coming and helping this far, but you don’t have to.”

I shook my head. “No. I need to come. No offense, but none of the others would be able to fix the boat if it broke, and then you’d all freeze to death. Well, maybe not you, but I imagine you wouldn’t enjoy it.”

“No, very much not. I hate it when I get that cold. I won’t die, but I still get to suffer a lot of the other fun symptoms,” she said. “Come on. Let’s get back to the boat.” We walked—up, this time, because we were going to be working our way up to the mountains. And that was the whole point of canal locks, after all—the land rose and fell around them, and they lifted the canal barges between the different levels of water, which were flat.

There were three hundred locks on our path to the mountains, which would lift us up by over three miles. But there wasn’t a straight-line canal going up there; it wasn’t practical, with so many hills in the way. So what would have been a seven hundred mile journey by road was going to be a four thousand mile journey by ice-boat along the canals.

Lady Fia’s voice broke into my thoughts. “So, Raavi.”

“Yes?”

“This is your boat… and while it’s small, it’s well made. I think we should give her a proper name. What do you think?”

“Really? You think that?”

“I do. It’s a bit unconventional, but if anyone argues that it’s not a real boat… I’d be happy to take it up with them.”

I laughed a little at that, imagining a queue forming of outraged sailors wanting to take Lady Fia to task for giving my ice-boat an honor only for ocean-going vessels. Would she duel them or drink them under the table or what? Or mix it up a little for variety?

“So what would you call her? Give her an old girlfriend’s name?”

I coughed. “That would require an old girlfriend first.”

“Oh dear. Well then… hmm… we could go whole hog and give her a virtue. Courage or Duty or something along those lines.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, as we came up to the ice-boat, reassembled and reloaded on the higher ground of the upper canal, beyond the lock. “Come on. We’ve got a long way to go.”

“That we do.”

The townsfolk had emerged after the earlier attack, heartened by our report from the capital that the King was going to send out troops to help them defend themselves. With their help, we continued on, heading south-west, away from my home in the north and east.

I didn’t know if I would ever go home again.

But I needed to do this.

For everyone’s sake.

#

Zoy

Sitting at the back of the ice-boat, Zoy found herself fidgeting. Which was annoying; she knew how to hold still for extended periods of time. She knew how to keep watch, how to reconnoiter under stealth, and stay hidden for hours upon hours.

So the fact that she kept finding herself tapping her foot or shifting her arms around was downright bothersome.

It wasn’t the trip in the ice-boat, she was fairly sure. The initial fascination and novelty of Raavi’s creation had already turned to tedium. As amazing as it was to be able to travel at such a speed, Dormelion-built canals weren’t exactly known for their picturesque views even in the summer; in the winter, it was all snow-white under gray and black skies. The fact that they were traveling an average of forty miles an hour now was strictly intellectual when those forty miles all looked pretty much the same, hour after hour.

But even though she was bored by the unchanging scenery, it wasn’t the source of her fidgeting. Nor was it the seats; while they were plain wood, with the only padding being their coats and supplies, she’d sat in more uncomfortable places without any problems. She’d once spent nearly twenty hours straight laid out on a dusty and splintering wooden ceiling beam, waiting for an opportunity to sneak into a back room. That had been loud and obnoxious and smoky, and while the sound of the skates on the ice was irritating, it didn’t even compare.

So it wasn’t that.

What was it? Why was she twitching like some thug who’d overdone it on the stimbark?

She sighed and leaned back in the seat.

“You all right?”

Zoy turned to look at Yufemya. The other woman was looking at her with concern—an expression that Zoy recognized all too well from Stylio, even when it was hidden behind scarves and masks.

A dozen lies came to her lips, everything from the sullen yeah, sure, to the more upbeat of course!, but she pushed them aside. Stylio was right there in front of her, and if she tried to dodge the innocent question, her mentor would be sure to call her on it.

“I should be, but I’m not,” she confessed. “And it’s bothering me that I can’t figure out what’s bothering me.”

Yufemya smiled behind her scarf. “Oh, I know that feeling.”

Giving a smile of her own, Zoy leaned in a little and said, her voice pitched lower, but still loud enough to be heard over the skates, “I’ve been meaning to ask why another person from the Empire is here. You’re… well, not the first, that we’ve run into, but definitely the first we’ve seen who seems to just be another traveler.”

“I notice that you didn’t call the Empire ‘home’,” Yufemya said.

Zoy shrugged. “It hasn’t been for a long time. But you’re from Kasmenarta too, judging by your accent.” Although her accent was definitely not from the poor lower levels of the grand crystal city. “Is it home for you?”

With a shake of her head, Yufemya said, “I’m in exile, to put it bluntly.” She frowned and said, “I… sort of killed someone.”

“Sort of?” Zoy snorted. “What, so it was manslaughter, or murder? Or something else?”

“I didn’t exactly get the magistrates to rule on it,” Yufemya said with a roll of her eyes. “I just knew that I needed to get out and away.”

“Fair, fair. Someone from the upper levels?”

Yufemya sighed and nodded.

“Eesh. Good thing that you got out, then.” Zoy considered just how brutal the city militia would be in hunting for the killer—accidental or otherwise—of one of the capital’s upper ranks, those who lived above their lessers, both literally and figuratively. When she’d been a child, before she’d met Stylio, there had been a case where a young lord—a count’s son or something along those lines—had gone down into the slums to enjoy himself at the pit fights. He’d been beaten and robbed, but not killed. After a week’s intensive search by the militia, the three muggers had been found, and lashed to the exterior of the city to let them die of exposure.

They sat in silence for a moment before Yufemya asked plaintively, “Why do you have so many knives?”

Zoy snickered as Stylio gave an overwrought sigh from her seat; she’d been listening, not that she could avoid it, given how close they all were. “I have them because I can use them, and always having one more can make the difference in a fight.”

“Even the ones…” Zoy saw Yufemya’s eyes glance downward, “even the ones there? How would you even get them out in a fight?”

“Oh, those are the holdouts, for when you’re told to hand over everything… and you do. Almost. Saved our lives a few times,” Zoy said with as light a voice as she could manage.

“I see. Well… let me just tell you that seeing you pull out a small arsenal like that was amazing.”

Feeling her cheeks heat at the compliment, Zoy cast about for a reply, but a call from Fia drew their attention. “Everybody, brace yourselves! We’re about to hit a gust!”

“How—” Zoy started to ask, and then she saw it.

Everyone on the ice-boat gasped as they saw the glowing form flying among the gusting clouds, heading northward like an arrow from a bow.

A dragon.

It was vast, and even from here Zoy fancied she could feel the power it exuded.

The gust of wind hit like a blow, making the sails flap hard, and Zoy felt it as they picked up speed; even though they were heading south, more or less, the way Fia had the sails trimmed let them use the north-blowing wind to speed them on their way.

Zoy kept her mouth shut, watching the banks of the canal rush by at a notably faster pace than they’d been moving before. If they crashed at this speed…

But Raavi and Fia seemed to take it in stride, even as Stylio called out “Sixty-four miles an hour!” as they passed another mile marker.

Next to Zoy, Yufemya swore, and Zoy put a steadying hand on her leg. “We’ll get through this,” she promised the other woman.

Yufemya’s gaze caught hers, and she nodded, even as the little ice-ship rocked from side to side; they were traveling more than a mile a minute, down a corridor of ice and snow, miles from civilization; if they hit anything, they would almost certainly die.

But Zoy didn’t feel any fear, now that she’d had a moment to think. Stylio could heal just about anything, so long as the brain was in one piece, and Fia could probably get the mast through her chest and just whine about it ruining her clothes.

And Raavi, for all that Zoy was enjoying teasing him, was someone whose skill she had grown to trust.

They would get through this, traveling faster than anybody ever had.

The gust passed, as did the dragon, and the ice-ship started to slow with the wind.

“Well. That was exciting,” Fia said. “Yu, can you find us some place to stop and take a break?”

Yufemya nodded and pulled out the map.

Zoy leaned in to help.

#

Raavi ava Laargan

“Do you ever wonder what it is?”

“What what is?” I asked, working on piling the kindling over the mound of tinder I’d ignited with my lighter. The thinner branches caught quickly, thankfully.

“The Night-Light,” Stylio asked. “The Night’s Companion. The Sleepless Eye. The Light In The Dark. The Exiled Sister.” She pointed up into the—amazingly—clear sky, where the Night Light glowed among the glittering and twinkling stars. The moon had set hours earlier, but the Night-Light gave more than enough light to see by, especially with the ground covered by snow. “Do you ever wonder?”

I set some more kindling on the burning branches and added a few logs to the pile, the warmth welcome on my skin. “I have. There’s been some interesting research on that, in fact.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, one of my housemates back home—Emuund—is an astronomer, and he told me about the sorts of things that he and the others were doing and researching.”

“And?” Stylio sat down next to me, sounding fascinated.

“Well, it’s not a planet. The orbit is all wrong for that.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, helping me put on another log; they’d come from a stack of wood under a tarp by the empty village next to the canal lock. The residents were—hopefully—all off in one of the nearby towns or cities, sleeping away in the caverns underneath, having left their orchards of conifurs, beefnuts, and yews to sit through the winter. We were just grateful for the windbreak; Yufemya’s suggestion that we stop here had been well received.

I frowned, doing my best to remember what I’d been told. “All right, so a planet orbits around our sun. There are five of them—two of which we can only see with telescopes—and since we’re orbiting closer to the sun than they are, we go faster. So they seem to ‘loop’ in their motion when compared to the background stars as we catch up and then leave them behind.”

She nodded, especially as I held my fingertips up to show the looping motion as one seemed to ‘overtake’ the other. “I follow.”

“The Night-Light doesn’t do that. It’s apparently locked to our orbit somehow; while it moves around a little, it’s nothing like the other planets. It’s a huge mystery as to what it is, how it’s moving when our math shows that it should be falling behind in its orbit, why it apparently doesn’t have any features we can pick out even with our best telescopes, or even how far away it is exactly.” I frowned. “Why do you ask, though? I thought that the Dormelion Empire… um… discouraged that sort of questioning.”

“Because of the Sacrem?” she asked.

I nodded, and added another log, the previous one having caught, followed by another.

“Yes, they are a problem. But, shall we say, I have left the Empire for various reasons, not the least being their beliefs.” She rose. “Later, when we are done with this, I would like to see the research on the Night-Light if you can find it for me.”

I grinned. “Of course!”

Yufemya came over at that moment with a pack and sat down, warming herself. “Good job getting the fire going, Raavi.” Twisting to the pack next to her, she opened it and started taking out food and a pan.

“It’s not ready yet!” I protested, looking at the blazing logs.

She shrugged. “It’s all right, Raavi. I’m just getting them out and ready. I know to wait.”

I shrank a little. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m honestly surprised you’re still awake. You know you can let one of us take the tiller for a bit, right?”

“But…” I grimaced, trying not to sound too selfish. The ice-boat—which still had no name—was my creation, and I felt so anxious at the idea of giving it to someone else. “It’s all right. I can handle it.”

“Just if you’re feeling tired, feel free to ask one of us to take over,” she said. Then a smile briefly grew on her face as footsteps crunched through the snow behind us, and she turned towards Zoy. “Is the tent ready?”

Zoy slumped next to the fire. “It is. Village checked?”

“It is. No one here, alive or dead. Some tracks through the snow, but they’re at least forty hours old.” Yufemya started rummaging through the pack again. “Also, I looked at the maps, and assuming the surveyors and Stylio’s watch are accurate, we’ve gone close to four hundred miles in the last sixteen hours.”

Zoy whistled and patted me on the knee. “Well done, Raavi.”

A yelp echoed through the trees, followed by Lady Fia’s cursing.

“Everything all right?” I called out.

Lady Fia called back, “Just dandy! Torn gods, I hate field toilet in winter…”

I grimaced in agreement as a chuckle—sympathetic by the sound of it—went around from the others.

Emerging from the trees a few minutes later, Lady Fia was still grumbling as she brushed snow off of herself. “‘Oh, this looks like a sheltered spot! Go here!’ I tell myself… and bumped the tree and the damn thing dropped a whole load of snow on me just as I was finishing up.”

I winced. “That sounds awful.”

“Just unpleasant. It’s not like I can get frostbite, unlike the rest of you, so be careful.” She pointed at Stylio, just as the older woman started to speak up. “Yes, you can heal it, but we shouldn’t depend on your healing if we can avoid it.”

Stylio nodded. “You are correct. But it is still worth noting.”

Lady Fia smiled and gingerly sat down around the fire, before closing her eyes and leaning her head back. “Oh, that’s nice.”

“The fire?”

“That for sure… but also not hearing that screeee sound of the blades on the ice!”

“Hear hear,” I said, and the others echoed me. “I feel like I can still hear it, and I see the canal walls every time I close my eyes!”

We sat in calm silence, only the crackle of the fire making any sound, and then, soon, the sizzle of meats and vegetables in a pan. We had miles to go—a lot of them—but we would do it. I was certain of that. I would make sure we got there.

After we ate, we took the hot stones from the firepit and brought them into the tent to help keep it warm. The thick padded wool of the tent kept the warm air inside. It was cramped inside, but we were all so tired we all fell asleep almost instantly.

#

I woke up, feeling an urgent need for the toilet, and pulled myself from my sleeping pad and blanket. Staggering to the tent flap and managing not to step on anyone on the way, I let myself out.

Wandering away a bit from the camp, I found a sheltered spot—not beneath a tree laden with snow—and did my business, doing my best to ignore the chill and trying not to think of the warm bathroom back in my parents’ house.

I was on my way back when I heard chanting on the wind.

Out here? Now?

I turned in the direction of the sound, and made my way through the snow. It took a little while, but I saw flickering light soon enough, and started heading towards it.

A short while later, I found the source. At the edge of the vast groves and orchards, abutting the forest nearly a mile away from the village, was a massive shrine-stone. It was at least twenty feet tall and carved over every inch. At its foot was a stone bowl, filled with a blaze, with offerings set in niches around it. A group of three men bowed before it, prostrate in the snow, chanting.

And then they stopped.

I swallowed a gasp as the blaze seemed to congeal into a shape. A cat… if cats glowed yellow-white and stood two feet tall at the shoulder. A pair of tufted ears extended up from a squat face above a stocky body ending in a short tail, patterns of spots picked out in yellow highlights.

The fire died down, and the cat padded forward, as if examining the three men, before pausing on the top of the bowl and standing as poised as only a cat could.

“Great Wise One,” said the center man of the three. “We greet you and thank you for answering our summons as always. And our bargain is unchanged: our gifts in exchange for the fecundity of the forest and groves, as we have ever done for you and you have done for us.”

The ethereal cat considered, and I turned and left.

I’d heard about such ceremonies. I’d never seen one, since I hadn’t been inducted into any, but I knew about them. They were private, personal affairs between mankind and the spirits. They were emphatically not gods—the priests had always been very clear about that—but they were beings of power who could be called and bargained with.

The fact that I’d intruded could have broken the whole thing; they might need another man sitting crouched in the trees for next year, and not know it…

I considered going back and telling them. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for breaking their pact with their patron, and it was a beautifully laid out grove. Maybe before we left, so I could have Lady Fia and the others with me, in case they took offense…?

I saw motion out of the corner of my eye and turned, to see a brief glow vanish behind a tree.

Uh oh.

I kept moving through the snow, retracing my steps.

Another glowing blur in the corner of my vision.

I started to sweat, wondering if I was going to suffer a different penalty for my trespass.

I saw it again, and by now I was certain that it was stalking me, and for fun.

Keeping moving as quickly as I could, I kept following my footsteps back. I’d just reached the campsite—I must have been moving faster than I thought—when I heard a sound and turned.

A weight hit me and knocked me to the ground on my back.

I whuffed with the impact, but the snow cushioned my fall. I blinked and looked up to see the ethereal cat standing on my chest. I could both feel and not feel its weight. It was there—I could feel it—but the weight felt less than my own coat.

At the same time, it was unquestionably pinning me to the ground.

I grimaced and said, “Are you going to be upset? I didn’t mean to spy on your summoning. I’m sorry.”

The cat seemed to consider for a moment and sat down on my chest in a classic loaf pattern.

“Urk! How can you weigh so much when you’re made of light?”

It settled in more pointedly, and not having any other ideas of what to do, I reached up and awkwardly petted it.

It purred, the vibration seeming to shake my entire body. I kept that up for a good ten or so strokes before I stopped and it opened a glowing yellow eye and looked at me.

“Got it. So this is my apology for spying on your summoning?” I got back to petting it, and it continued to purr. Somehow it had mass despite the fact that I could see my hand through it, as if it was cloudy glass.

After a few minutes, it shifted and stretched—with long claws extending out right near my face—and then walked off of me.

I rolled and started patting myself down. As I got up, I looked around for it, finding its tracks next to me… but those ended abruptly. And then I saw it on the ice-boat, sniffing inquisitively.

How had it gotten there that fast? It was a good thirty yards away, at least!

It saw me looking, and then, walking lightly along the rim of the boat, made its way to the prow and hopped down to the ice, out of my line of sight.

I trudged over, and looked down.

It was—unsurprisingly—gone.

Turning, I scanned the trees, and saw it standing by the base of one trunk, near where it had toppled me into the snow.

It saw me, stretched, and then pointedly walked into the groves, quickly vanishing from sight.

My heart pounding, I leaned against the ice-boat, and then blinked as the tent stirred. A moment later, Lady Fia emerged, yawning. She went over and started up the fire using a taper from the lamp, before looking at me. “Raavi, you all right?”

I nodded and looked at the shallow prints the cat had left in the snow, before looking again at the ice where it had landed before. In the corner of my eye, I saw the lines from the skates for the ice-boat. “I’m fine,” I said. “And in fact, I have a name for the boat now.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Meet the Lynx.”

<<<<>>>>

Prologue | Chapter 7 | Chapter 9

And there we go!