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To

Troyce Wilson

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

KAIISTERON: Prince of the Fourth House of the Underearth (called Witch King)

ZIEDE DAIYAHAH: High Teacher in the Mountain Cloisters of the Khalin Islands (called the Scourge of the Temple Halls)

TAHREN STARGARD: an Immortal Marshall of the Blessed Lands (called the Fallen)

DAHIN: Tahren’s Lesser Blessed sibling

GRANDMOTHER: an ancestor of the Saredi of the grassplains, once a Captain of Scouts, who negotiated a treaty with the forces of the underearth and married a demon prince

The Present

SANJA: a street child of the Mouth of Flowers

TENES: a Witch of unknown origin, captured as a familiar by Aclines

BASHAT BAR CALIS: current Prince-heir of Benais-arik, foremost of the Rising World Coalition Council, former Emperor

RAMAD: personal vanguarder to Prince-heir Bashat

MENLAS: an unfortunately ambitious expositor, deceased

ACLINES: an expositor of great power, deceased

SAADRIN: an Immortal Marshall of the Stargard line, estranged from Tahren

FAHARIN: an Immortal Patriarch, deceased

TANIS: eldest daughter of Ziede Daiyahah

ETEM: a Doorkeeper of the Nibet House at Ancartre, seconded to the Tescai-lin

DOMTELLAN: Chancellor of the University at Ancartre

SURA: an Academician in the History Wing of the University at Ancartre

RAFIEM AND ELENI: Immortal Marshalls charged with finding escaped conspirators

ILHANRUN HIGHSUN: a former Immortal Marshall, branded a foresworn for opposing the Blessed’s capitulation to the Hierarchs

The Past

BASHASA CALIS: the Prince-heir of Benais-arik, sent to the Summer Halls as a hostage for his city’s good behavior (called the Great)

ADENI, VARRA, AND ILUDI: cousins to Enna, of the Kentdessa Saredi

ARN-NEFA: a demon of the Kanavesi Saredi (called Arnsterath)

TALAMINES: a High Expositor of the Hierarchs’ court at the Summer Halls, originally conscripted from Irekan

ARSHA, TELARE, NIRANA, HARTEL, CERALA: Ariki soldiers who followed Bashasa to the Hostage Courts of the Summer Halls, later seconded to Kaiisteron Fourth Prince

ARAVA: cadre leader.

VASHAR, TRENAL: Ariki soldiers of Bashasa Calis’ personal cadre

SALATEL: Second Shieldbearer to Prince-heir Bashasa, later leader of the cadre assigned to the Fourth Prince

AMABEL: the first Witch vanguarder of the Fourth Prince’s cadre

KREAT: Amabel’s young sibling

BARAM, IBEL, MOTHER HIRAGA, ISA: Witches of the Fourth Prince’s cadre

THE DOYEN, HAWKMOTH, NIGHTJAR, SUNROSE, STORMBIRD, KNIFECREST, SHEARWATER, OWLET, SPARROWHAWK, TANGELD: dustwitches of the northeast

CIMERI: an earth Witch, freed from captivity with her spouse Raihar

THE TESCAI-LIN: Great Sage of Enalin and Light of the Hundred Coronels

LAHSHAR CALIS: maternal cousin to Prince-heir Bashasa of Benais-arik

DASARA: the son and heir of Lahshar Calis

HIRANAN: First Daughter of the Prince-heir of Seidel-arik

VRIM: Second Son of the Prince-heir of Descar-arik

ASARA: Second Daughter of the Prince-heir of Bardes-arik

STAMASH: maternal uncle of the Prince-heir of Renitl-arik

KARANIS CALIS: paternal cousin to Prince-heir Bashasa, who was selected by the Hierarchs to usurp the rule of Benais-arik, deceased

VARTASIAS: an expositor tasked to Dashar

The Past: the Spark

It is believed that the name “Rising World” was bestowed on the first formal meeting of the coalition in Benais-arik, but the true first meeting, to be pedantic, actually took place in the Hierarchs’ Summer Halls, which was rapidly filling with water at the time …

The truth as always is more complicated. Alliance war councils sprung up in many places, sparked by the Hierarchs’ defeat at the Summer Halls and the return of the hostages. These councils eventually coalesced around the strong Enalin-Arike force to the northeast with what was left of the population of the Arkai, the Sana-sarcofa, and the growing unified resistance in Palm and Belith, allied with the Grale and Ilver, and other survivors of the southern region and the western coast …

“Rising World” is a mistranslation of a term for “cooperation among many/all” originating in the mountainous western Borderlands (or the Witchlands, as they were called in the east) carried by survivors of the Hierarchs’ attacks as they moved east to join the war …

—The History of the Hierarch War: Volume Four: Gathering the Storm of Victory by An Interested Yet Unbiased Party

The sun was high and bright when Kai rode into Benais-arik in Bashasa’s wake, their cadres on horseback around them. Kai was dressed in embroidered silk with only a few bloodstains on it, disguised as one of the Hierarch servant-nobles who had followed the usurper Karanis to the Kagala Fort. Bashasa wore Karanis’ elaborately decorated coat and the rest of the cadre had taken up the clothes of the usurper’s entourage. The large body of Arike soldiers with them came as themselves; they were the garrison conscripts that Karanis had brought with him.

Fortunately the sun was a good excuse for the broad-brimmed silk hats that the entourage wore. It was hard to make out the all-black of Kai’s eyes from a distance, but he kept his hat tilted down, and his dark curling hair was tied and stuffed up under it. Talamines’ borrowed skin prickled with nerves and he didn’t trust himself to control his expression.

The city outskirts were sporadic copses of trees, clusters of houses—or ruins where houses had stood—and farm fields and gardens. The people working there were all Arike who kept their own heads down or looked nervously askance at the large party of soldiers. Benais-arik had no wall to protect it, apparently having never needed one before the Hierarchs. The legionaries could have built one of their earthworks around it, encased it in dirt and rock like they had the Summer Halls, but either they didn’t value it enough or hadn’t thought there was any chance of an attack.

They would think differently now.

Bashasa led the way down a broad stone-paved road and through the city gate, which was more a symbolic barrier than a strategic one. It stood alone across the road, four tall columns wreathed with carved flowers and vines, crowned by multiple pointed arches. It had been brightly painted once, the colors now faded and weathered. The legionaries who guarded it didn’t salute or acknowledge “Karanis’” passing.

The avenue beyond the gate was broad too, lined with rambling buildings of stone or sandy brick with tile rooftops, some with low walls protecting garden courts, a few two or three stories tall with balconies. It was oddly quiet and they saw more bored legionaries than ordinary people. Narrow alleys allowed passage between some of the structures, but the tension didn’t ease out of Kai’s shoulders until they passed the first sizable cross street; it had felt too much like being herded into a canyon to be trapped.

As the avenue widened further, the carving and paint on the houses was richer, there were more balconies and unshuttered windows, and bright-colored awnings shaded walkways for passersby. They only saw a few legionaries who seemed to be guarding particular houses, probably those where Hierarch functionaries or Arike traitors lived. Kai had seen a map of the city but he wasn’t sure how far they were from the plaza where they meant to meet the others.

Disguised as merchants and laborers, Prince-heir Hiranan should be leading her cadre in from the south as Lahshar led hers in from the west canal-side, the other Prince-heirs and their soldiers split between them. There were two different prisons for Arike dissenters in the city and each group would make for the nearest, ready to liberate it as soon as they saw Bashasa’s signal. Kai wanted to lean over to ask Salatel, who rode next to him, how far they had to go, but it might risk betraying their deception. Others in the disguised cadres spoke casually among themselves, probably to take attention away from those like Kai who were not good at acting and were knotted up with pre-battle tension. He was terrified someone would strike at Bashasa while he was out of reach, but everyone had been very clear on the fact that there was no way Karanis and a Hierarch servant-noble would share a horse.

Speaking in Imperial, a voice called out, “Stop!”

Kai clenched his jaw to keep from swearing aloud; this was his worst nightmare about to happen. Bashasa reined in and his cadre leader Arava held up a hand to signal the rest of the troop. Kai didn’t look back to see if there was any disorder as the group halted. Bashasa kept his hat tilted down. Kai hadn’t had a close look at Karanis until after he was a blood-soaked corpse, but Bashasa was about the same size, broad-shouldered with dark curling hair and warm brown skin. But they didn’t look at all alike in the face.

A person, a man in an elaborate white and gold Arike coat and skirt, strode from the covered walkway toward Bashasa. A server hurried to keep pace just behind him, holding a sun shade over his head, and he was followed by four legionaries and a trailing group of well-dressed people. Kai threw a worried glance at Salatel, who grimaced under the brim of her hat. This was obviously some kind of high official, to be shouting an order at the man he thought was Karanis, the Hierarch-anointed ruler of the city-state of Benais-arik, in public of all places. And the man didn’t look Arike, with skin pale and reddened from the sun, his hair light brown and straight. Which Kai had learned didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t Arike, but it was a more common look for the archipelagoes or the South. Where so many of the Hierarch servant-nobles came from.

The man stopped a few steps from Bashasa’s horse and said, “Where are you going, Karanis?” He sounded confident and amused. “To the palace? You should report to the garrison commander. You know what will happen if you haven’t dealt with that escaped dross.”

Dross was what the legionaries called the Arike and the other eastern peoples. From the low noise Salatel made in her throat, it was clearly worse than it sounded.

Her head lowered, Arava said, “Great One, you are correct, but Prince-heir Karanis has something he must attend to first. He will—”

“Answer me, Karanis!” the man snapped.

Everything went still, even the breeze dropping away, and the silence of the watching mortals sank into Kai’s bones. He felt the breath huff out of his lungs, and one of the horses nearby stamped. There had been so many times where everything could go wrong, where their world could end, where the one painful pitiful spark of hope would die, but those other moments had all gone by so fast they were hard to recall clearly. This one seemed to hang in the air, dangling all of them over the edge of a cliff for an eternity.

“Ah, well.” Bashasa lifted his head slowly and tipped his hat back. He said pleasantly, “I suppose we should start now, as we mean to go on.”

The man stared. “Who are you?”

The server dropped the sunshade. She backed away, incredulous, and said, “Prince-heir…”

“Run,” Bashasa told her, and drew his sword.

She bolted. Others on the street scattered and ran. The Hierarch servant-noble stepped back but Kai saw the flash of a blade as Bashasa’s sword sliced the air. The man fell.

Arava shouted a command and the soldiers behind them roared their reply. Kai snarled in relief and surged forward with the others. He caught a glimpse of the servant-noble on the ground as the clawed feet of his horse pounded over him.

The streets blurred past as Kai concentrated on staying close behind Bashasa. The Arike were almost as good riders as the Saredi and their aggressive horses were fast and nimble. They broke formation for an abandoned cart and dodged to avoid fleeing mortals. A legionary appeared out of nowhere and raised a spear at Salatel. Her horse swerved away and Kai’s beast lunged in and crunched the man’s shoulder in its fangs before Kai could even reach for him. They left the crumpled body behind and raced onward.

Loud pops from somewhere nearby told Kai the signals were going off. The archers among the conscripts were firing arrows with burning firepowder sticks into the air. High overhead, the sticks exploded in bursts of light and noise. Hopefully Hiranan and Lahshar and the others would see them, but now that the action had started Kai felt all worries slip away. If they fell, they would fall fighting, and that was all he could ask.

Around the next corner they plunged into more legionaries gathered to block the way and suddenly the fighting was all around. Kai speared two through their helmets, staying in the circle of riders around Bashasa. Someone shouted in alarm and barely paces away a soldier went down with an arrow in her chest.

“Kai!” Bashasa shouted. He pointed up. A three-story tower loomed above, figures with bows on the balcony. “Stop them!”

Kai grimaced; he wanted to stay and make sure Bashasa got through this alive. But his Saredi scout training took over and he sheathed his spear and turned his horse toward the tower even as every nerve in his body protested.

This would be easier if Ziede was here but she had entered the city by stealth last night with Tahren. They meant to make their way to the tower where the Immortal Blessed well-source, the connection to the Well of Thosaren, was kept. Their goal was to take control of the well-source so no messages for help could be sent to the Hierarchs through it. They had thought first to destroy it, but Dahin had pointed out that answering any messages that came in would buy them more time. Kai wouldn’t know if they had succeeded or not until he saw them again. Or if Blessed ascension rafts arrived to destroy them from the air.

He reached the wall and reined in, and stood up in the stirrups. His horse snorted and danced but he grabbed on to the carved lintel of a window. He pulled himself up and rammed his shoulder into the wood lattice and rolled right through it, and landed on the floor in a pile of splinters. Mortals screamed and fled. He ignored them, scrambling upright and throwing himself through the nearest door into a stairwell.

He raced up past walls painted with dancing figures. At the next landing he heard light steps behind him and looked back, but it was Telare, Cerala, and Nirana. They should have stayed with Bashasa and his cadre, but it was a little late to give that order now. Kai rounded the corner and almost ran into the sword of a richly dressed mortal. He ducked back from the blade and caught the man’s wrist.

Kai didn’t have enough time to draw out all his life, just enough to make him fall down. Every breath of delay might mean another dead ally, might mean Bashasa’s life. He shoved the collapsing body aside and plunged up the last short flight into the top floor of the tower.

Several mortals huddled against the back wall, their fear telling Kai they were non-combatants. Some were children, some adults already bruised and battered. The wide landing was in disarray, cushions flung around, a table broken into splintered pieces. Two legionaries stood near the trapped mortals, guarding a half-open door into a sunlit room. Through that room would be the balcony, and the legionaries armed with bows. Not a problem necessarily for Kai, but he didn’t want his cadre hurt. He had to make this quick and quiet. The gesture shielded by his body, he motioned for his cadre to wait; their footsteps halted on the stairs behind him.

The two legionaries turned and stared, confused by Kai’s appearance; he had moved almost silently and he was dressed like a servant-noble. In that heartbeat of hesitation, Kai strode across the landing. He reached the first legionary and grabbed the lower half of the man’s face; before he could react, Kai took his breath, then his life. The second legionary should have cried out for help, or in warning, but he stabbed Kai in the side with a short spear instead. The blow rocked Kai, but he wrapped an arm around the spear and held it in place as Cerala and Telare rushed up onto the landing.

Telare drove her sword into a gap in the armor over the legionary’s gut and Cerala cut his throat before he could do more than gurgle. Kai let his desiccated legionary drop and wrenched the spear out of his side. Nirana had gone ahead to the half-open doorway. She used a pocket mirror to take a quick look inside, then signaled to Kai that it was clear.

He slipped silently past her. It was another room with tumbled couches and bedding, with open doors leading out to the broad balcony. Half a dozen legionaries stood out there with two servant-nobles. All the legionaries had bows, aiming down at the fighting below. There was no help for it, they all had to go at once.

Kai was close enough, barely two paces away, and he had the pain from the already closing spear wound to power the intention. He crouched, and sketched the design on the wooden floor of the balcony.

Someone swore in Imperial. As Kai set the intention free, he looked up to see an arrow pointed directly at his head. He had never been shot in the head before, and he didn’t want to find out what would happen if he was. He shoved himself back through the doorway just as flames leapt up from the intention. The arrow thudded into the spot where Kai had been and immediately burst into ash.

The fire rolled across the wooden balcony like red glowing liquid. The men were caught almost too fast to scream, their bows snapping from the heat before their clothes caught.

Making the fire limited in its scope, creating it quickly, without having to pore over the design for hours, and stopping it at will had been hard to achieve, but it made the intention more usable. Kai had practiced it with Ziede’s help; she had some success putting out uncontrolled blazes with a sharp gust of air, though it didn’t always work as it should, with nerve-racking results. Being close to the target, and having enough pain to control the result, was a necessity; the water intention that he had accidentally destroyed the Summer Halls with was a warning he wasn’t likely to forget. Though he had no idea yet how to create an intention that powerful; it was easier to steal already completed designs from dead expositors.

The railing dissolved in flames and Kai closed his fist to shatter the intention. The fire winked out like a candle, leaving a wash of heat and a few charred beams that were all that was left of the balcony. Kai stood and caught hold of the singed doorframe, and leaned out far enough to see below.

With their archers dead and the frightening burst of fire above them, the legionary line had broken. Bashasa and the others pushed forward out of the trap. Kai breathed in relief and turned away.

He passed back through to the stair landing, where Cerala spoke rapidly and reassuringly to the unarmed mortals. They watched Kai sweep past with wide eyes.

From the crashing and outcries from the lower floors, Nirana and Telare had rejoined Salatel, Arsha, and Hartel to finish killing the rest of the legionaries in the house. Kai reached the lower floor and saw bedraggled civilians helping the soldiers, pointing out hiding places and going after the legionaries with broken pieces of furniture and cooking knives.

Kai stopped in the central room near the entrance hall, where cushioned couches lined the walls and spilled food and broken dishes had ruined brightly colored carpets. He admitted to himself that there had been more legionaries in here than he had expected and that it could have gone badly for both him and his cadre. But so many of the dead were without weapons or armor, with their clothing open or missing entirely. Kai didn’t think Salatel and the others had the time or inclination to strip the bodies, so the legionaries must have been like that when the cadre arrived. And the place smelled like distilled liquor and rancid wine. He stepped over a half-naked legionary corpse and demanded, “What the shit was going on here?”

Nirana prodded a body with her spear to make sure it was dead and told Hartel, “It’s your turn.”

Hartel explained, “It’s an entertainment house. You pay money to attend, mostly it’s just parties and conversations, music, stories, sometimes sex too. It’s meant to be fun.” She waved at the dead littering the central hall. “The legionaries take the houses over and won’t let the hosts leave, and make them do whatever the legionaries want.”

Kai snarled, wishing he hadn’t asked. The civilians checking the dead bodies and picking through the remains of their home looked more battered than any of the cadre soldiers. “If I’d known that I wouldn’t have made the fire so quick.” He started for the door. “We need to go.”

They found the horses a little way down the street nosing at a dead legionary. As they mounted and started away, other stragglers who had gotten separated in the fighting fell in behind them. Further up the street, civilians had come out on the covered walkways and balconies, all shouting, but none tried to throw things or block their way. Kai was still learning the Arike language and he could only pick out a few words, the emotion and the echo off the stone walls not helping. Two legionaries burst out of a house but they were fleeing, chased by a scatter of civilians with sticks and other makeshift weapons. Telare reined in long enough to block the legionaries’ escape, then hurried to catch up.

The clash of weapons sounded ahead. The walls on either side of the road abruptly fell away and they were in an open plaza, riding up on legionaries on foot who had surrounded the Arike troop.

Bashasa wasn’t visible but Kai could see the banner of the dead city of Suneai-arik, waving wildly from a pole held high over someone’s head. They’re going to have to stop doing that, Kai thought, signaling to Salatel and driving his horse forward. It marked Bashasa’s position and that was not a good idea. This time it was necessary, for the Arike in the city to know who was here, that this was a rescue, not another conqueror.

Kai had two short spears sheathed on his saddle like the other Arike, but his Saredi family had taught him to take advantage of his abilities as a demon, that he was wasted trying to fight like a mortal. He moved forward with the cadre and as they engaged legionaries, he reached out to touch a bare wrist, a neck, brush a cheek. The men had shields to hold off the vicious horses and were quick to block jabs from a bladed weapon, but Kai was fast, taking just enough of their lives to make them collapse or stagger, and letting the soldiers finish them off.

More armed Arike civilians flooded into the plaza from the far side and Kai caught sight of Prince-heir Hiranan and her cadre among them. The legionary formations started to break; bodies on the ground made it hard for them to maneuver while the Arike horses had absolutely no fear of treading on living or dead flesh. Bashasa had told Kai that the Arike had stopped settling disagreements with warfare generations ago because they were too good at fighting, that they would have slaughtered each other out of existence. Kai had thought it was bragging, but maybe there was some truth to it.

The legionaries broke and the fight went from a roiling mass of blood and confusion to scattered groups fleeing toward the surrounding streets. Kai and his cadre cut through a last pocket of resistance and reached Bashasa. He was near the outer edge of the plaza, where the main force of the legionaries had been cut off from retreating into the city assembly hall that they had taken for their headquarters. Arike soldiers pushed prisoners to their knees on the stepped terrace near the richly carved pillars. Bashasa shouted, “If they surrender they will be shown mercy! Lahshar, you heard me!” Lahshar made an irritated snort and wheeled her horse away, her cadre turning after her.

Kai started toward him and Salatel hissed, “Fourth Prince, wait.” She drew even with him and frowned at the broken spear that was lodged above his hip. “Should I…?”

“Go ahead,” he told her. He had various slashes and a stab wound in the right leg from where he had shifted to stop an enterprising legionary from killing his horse. The rest of his cadre were still upright and on horseback, spread out around them in case any legionaries still had the will to attack. “Anyone hurt?”

“No more than you are.” Salatel grimaced and yanked the javelin out.

Kai bent forward over his saddlebow, gritting his teeth through the wave of pain. Just because it healed quickly didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. He was glad Cerala, who was tall and bulky, blocked Bashasa’s view of him. He tried to channel as much pain as he could for the next intention, but it was hard, and much of it seemed to scatter like sand grains when there was no immediate use for it. Another thing he would need to practice.

He took a deep breath and sat up, and nudged his horse forward again. “Fourth Prince!” Bashasa called out when he saw him. “All is well?” He had lost his hat too and his face was streaked with sweat and grime. His right coat sleeve was slashed and bloody but he didn’t appear to notice.

“So far,” Kai answered. He knew what the plan was but he wanted the civilians who had poured into the plaza and gathered nearby to hear it. “What now?”

Bashasa needed no prompting. He pitched his voice to carry. “Now we drive the Hierarchs’ servants from our city!”

Dusk had settled over the day by the time Kai returned to the plaza. Big hanging lamps were lit on the terrace of the assembly hall and he picked out the familiar figures of Arava and Trenal, who was easier to spot now since she was using a crutch after her injury at the Kagala. Garrison officers and others from the cadres gathered near the doors, or stood in guard positions. Kai had only split from them on Bashasa’s orders, again, to check on Ziede and Tahren. It was annoying and a little confusing; Kai had expected to be Bashasa’s bodyguard, to literally put his body between Bashasa and the enemy. But Bashasa kept ordering him to go and do other things. Granted, they were urgent things he was well-suited for, but still.

Ziede rode behind Kai, having finally admitted that she was too exhausted to call more wind-devils to carry her. The soldiers who had been working hard all day had at least had the opportunity to sleep last night, but she had been awake and using her craft since she and Tahren slipped into the city yesterday morning. She leaned against Kai’s back, her head drooping onto his shoulder, wearing Tahren’s unadorned gray coat.

Tahren still guarded the well-source with Dahin and several of the most trusted members of Bashasa’s and Hiranan’s cadres. The well-source was in a tower attached to the house of the Hierarch servant-noble Ilicarat, who had been charged with supervising the late usurper Karanis. He was apparently the person who had stopped their troop in the street and exposed their deception; as far as Kai knew, what was left of him was still there.

Most of Kai’s cadre trailed him, though Arsha and Telare had been wounded and sent to the physicians’ tent that had been pitched in the grounds in front of the Prince-heirs’ palace. There were dozens of lanterns around it now, and several more makeshift tents. That meant the rest of their supply train from the abandoned Kagala had arrived.

Many Arike soldiers and civilians stood or sat around the tents in mostly orderly groups. Kai reined in near the edge of the grounds, where the garrison had set up temporary pickets with feed and water buckets. Salatel swung down and set Hartel to taking care of their beasts. Kai carefully elbowed Ziede, who snorted awake and sat up, demanding, “What?”

“Do you want to stay out here or come in with us?” Kai asked her. The air was mild and it would be safe enough for her to curl up under a blanket near the horse pickets, like a lot of other soldiers were, as long as Hartel was here to keep watch.

“No, I’ll come with you,” she said through a yawn. “I need to report to Bashasa.”

Tahren had told Kai the gist of how their mission had gone but he wasn’t going to argue with her. The sooner Ziede saw Bashasa, the sooner he could find her a safe place to rest.

Kai waited until she slid down, Nirana now hovering nearby to offer an arm to steady her. Cerala sighed and rolled her eyes; apparently Nirana’s developing crush was obvious.

They crossed the plaza and went up the steps to the assembly’s terrace. The doors in the pointed arch were easily twice Kai’s height, and the wall they were set in was carved with hundreds of small figures of people: in a few scenes they were fighting in armies, but in most they were picking fruit, sailing canal boats, stacking stones, hammering wood, carrying giant vases, hauling fish nets, driving oxen, and a myriad of other things Kai had no time to note. Higher above the tall doors, the carving continued, but it was pierced to allow air to flow in.

Everyone turned to stare at Kai and Ziede and the cadre as they crossed the terrace under the lamps, but Kai was used to that. He was still dressed as a Hierarch’s servant-noble, though the hat and fancy coat were gone and the long shirt and skirt were torn and blood-stained, and a little charred at the hems. Ziede they might not even have recognized if Kai wasn’t towing her along behind him. Under Tahren’s coat, she wore an Arike woman’s simple tunic and pants, her long braids tied back.

“It’s an important meeting,” an Arike guard said, moving to block the door. “Cadres are to stay out—”

“These are Prince-heir Bashasa’s advisors,” Arava said while Salatel was still drawing breath to react. She pulled the guard aside and moved to hold open the big door for Kai and Ziede.

“We’ll wait here, Fourth Prince,” Salatel said, waving Kai on pointedly.

Arike politics made Kai tired but he meant to rejoin Bashasa whether anyone objected or not. As he passed Arava, she said, “Straight on through those doors, Fourth Prince.”

Inside was a tiled foyer full of mostly civilians who must have been successfully barred from the meeting, but they were quiet, listening. The inner set of broad doors was open, and the shouting inside was clearly audible. The soldiers at that door also belonged to Bashasa and quickly ushered Kai and Ziede through.

The big hall was round like the building, open all the way up to a pointed dome overhead. It was warm despite the pierced walls, any carving hidden by the large shouting crowd of Arike. Bashasa stood on a raised platform in the center.

Many in the crowd were gaunt, their clothes disheveled and dirty, others were wounded or had clearly participated in the battle. These must be some of the dissenters freed from the prisons that Hiranan and Lahshar had liberated. Others in the city had clearly fared better, wearing the bright colors and embroidery the Arike favored, or dressed plainly for heavy labor. They all looked grim or desperate or furious. Kai’s skin itched to see Bashasa there unprotected.

He started to push forward and Ziede grabbed his sleeve. He almost shook her off. Her expression now wide awake, she whispered, “No, don’t interfere. He knew this would happen.”

Kai grimaced, but Bashasa was as calm as if he was speaking with his cadre, his voice strong and clear. It was in Arike and much of it Kai couldn’t follow; it was too fast and Bashasa was using words Kai hadn’t learned yet. The audience focused intently on Bashasa as he answered their angry or frightened questions, sometimes gesturing out toward the far wall, which was lined with tall windows, the shutters open to look down on the organized chaos in the plaza.

The flicker of lamps showed the upper walls had scars and scrapes on the plaster where things had been removed, and a large mural had been hacked off, only strips of colors and the occasional face or arm of a painted figure remaining. Kai remembered that the city’s formal assembly hall was where Bashasa had meant to have his confrontation with Karanis the usurper.

Bashasa wasn’t speaking persuasively, lightly, like he had explained his plan to attack the Hierarchs in the Temple Halls and die fighting. He was deeply serious, measured, controlled. He had prepared for this. He had wanted to put the question of who the city would follow to the speakers for the people, the way Prince-heirs had settled their leadership disputes since the Arik had given up war. But Karanis had come to the Kagala to kill Bashasa and died there himself, when all his conscripted Arike had turned on him and a server in his entourage had settled the dispute with a knife in Karanis’ back.

Kai caught the Imperial word for demon and Karanis’ name. He couldn’t pick out the speaker. “What did they say?” he hissed to Ziede.

Her brow furrowed as she listened. “That person’s asking if it’s true, that Bashasa has a demon slave of the Hierarchs who killed Karanis for him.”

Bashasa was saying, “That is not true.” Kai understood the Arike for that. “Karanis was killed by a young person of this city who chose to join our fight. The person you speak of is our ally, Kaiisteron Fourth Prince of the underearth, who personally killed a Hierarch in the Summer Halls and defeated many expositors to secure our victory there.”

A cadre soldier standing just below the platform reached out and tapped Bashasa’s foot. Bashasa glanced around and gestured to Kai. “As you see, the Fourth Prince is here.”

The crowd turned to stare. Kai stared back, lowering his brows in a way he knew was particularly effective. The mortals in front of him immediately shuffled nervously away.

“Now,” Bashasa said, turning back to the crowd. “I must insist we suspend this discussion while I confer with my advisors and officers and the city guild leaders. We have many decisions to make. And the rest of you need food and rest. We have much yet to do.”

Kai and Ziede followed Bashasa to the back of the hall into a smaller meeting room. The blue and green painted wall tiles were easy on the eyes, and the pierced vents near the ceiling let in cool air. There were a few gilt and bone inlaid chairs, the kind high servant-nobles used, and no bodies, though there were some smashed glass vessels and blood on the floor. The rest of the invited civilians, Prince-heirs, and officers filed wearily in, finding places to stand, or places to sit for those who couldn’t stand.

Kai had heard in passing that the former speakers of Benais-arik’s artisan guilds had been found in the prisons. He knew Bashasa meant to enlist any surviving city leaders to take all the populace who would go toward the Arkai, by canal and overland. The Hierarchs still hadn’t bothered to occupy that region, even though they had killed most of the Arkai’s population who hadn’t managed to flee or hide. In the strategy meeting before they left the Kagala, Tahren Stargard had told them she had heard that the Hierarchs planned to settle the Arkai by sea with colonists from their settlements in Belith, but that there was a dispute over which Hierarch would rule the new colony or if they should make another.

“Make another Hierarch?” Bashasa had said in horror. “They can do that?”

Tahren had made one of her slight gestures that was the equivalent of a shrug. “It seems so.”

Bashasa had stared into the distance while the rest of the group had watched or murmured in dismay. They were soldiers, dependents, the surviving families of murdered Prince-heirs, and former hostages from other lands who had not been able to return to their own homes or who had nowhere to return to anymore. Kai had met Ziede’s gaze and worked on keeping his expression as neutral as hers. Then Bashasa had nodded and clapped his hands briskly, and said, “Then we must move faster than we planned.”

Ziede had pressed her hands over her eyes briefly, then joined the discussion as if nothing had happened. Kai had managed to keep his flood of relief internal.

It was clear, even to an outsider like Kai, that Bashasa was the only thing currently binding the budding alliance together, at least here in the Arik. If they lost confidence in him, it was over.

Now, standing here in the Assembly Hall, Bashasa was the Prince-heir who had led the hostages from the Summer Halls, freed the Kagala, and had now seized control of Benais-arik. Even if he only meant to occupy it temporarily, a stepping stone to the greater goal of breaking the will of the Hierarchs and driving them from the north and south continents forever.

Bashasa greeted all the freed guild speakers by name, and the others who had been invited in with them. Everyone was quiet as he outlined the plan to abandon the city. “We know we cannot hold any fort or city against them, no matter how strong the walls. Our only recourse is to fight on the run, as our ancestors did.”

Asara, a daughter of the Prince-heir of Bardes-arik, said, “There are people who are going to side with the Hierarchs.” She was shorter and wider than the other Arike, with a sturdy build and a determined expression. She would have looked at home on the back of a Saredi horse on a hunting ride. “People who have accepted the occupation, who believe the lie that if we surrender they will spare us. People who have married legionaries or Hierarch officials—”

“We will not kill our own people,” Bashasa said sharply, with no trace of persuasiveness or conciliation in his voice. This was the Bashasa who had said I don’t give up hope, who had effortlessly squashed Dasara’s attempt to seize power on the bridge. “We will not kill children, we will not kill non-combatants, we will not kill soldiers who surrender. Some of the southerners are fanatics who have dedicated their lives to the Hierarchs; others are conscripts like our own soldiers who were forced to serve Karanis. They were brought here against their will from across the straits. If we give them a path forward, to a future where they have their freedom either to return to their homes or leave and go where they will, they have no reason to fight to the death. Many will see no reason to fight us at all.”

Kai, leaning back against the wall in Bashasa’s shadow, could see objections in so many faces. After the trip here from the Summer Halls, he had a better idea of how the invasion had progressed across the east, how similar it was to what had happened to the Saredi grasslands and the borderlands and the Erathi in the west. The Hierarchs had slaughtered much of the population of the neighboring regions and killed a whole Arike city before subjugating the others. They had captured the coastal land of Nibet and taken the Enalin by the throat, forcing them to turn over the Tescai-lin as a hostage. It was the same with every city and port and town on Bashasa’s maps.

Ziede watched the others with a faint frown. Her home in the Khalin Islands had been destroyed too, but Kai thought she was willing to set aside revenge if it led to victory. Tahren … Tahren’s people, the Immortal Blessed, would be some of those receiving that mercy.

Kai thought of the burning tents of the Saredi and wondered how any of them could agree to this; all he wanted was vengeance. But something about the words “a path forward, to a future” hung in the air. The region of the Arik was greatly hurt but still mostly intact. The people here had a small chance to live through this into a future where the Hierarchs were dead.

The silence held, then Hiranan said, “It sounds impossible but so has everything we’ve done so far.” Her voice was wry and resigned. She was Bashasa’s elder by some years, her dark hair streaked with gray, and fine lines at the corners of her eyes. She leaned on a crutch for support, a permanent injury. “I see no reason for us to stop now.”

Kai had thought he would do anything for vengeance. Maybe what he really wanted was to do anything for that path forward.

“Very good.” Bashasa smiled wearily. “If all agree, we must begin tonight.”

One

They had left the Kagala behind them, flying over the dry plain of the western Arik in an Immortal Blessed ascension raft. Kai curled on the bench with his back against the metal wall of the curtained shelter, facing into the warm wind, trying to ignore the argument. Which was impossible, considering which members of his extended family currently living in the mortal world were here.

Using her heart pearl to speak silently to him, Ziede said, Just don’t jump off the raft.

Too tired to even feel sour about it, Kai replied, I’m going to spend the next fifty years living in the Arkai marshes with Dahin.

The raft was shaped like a curled gingko leaf, and though it was large as such crafts went, there wasn’t much room to get away. Toward the bow, Saadrin and Tahren faced off. Both Immortal Marshalls, they resembled each other in their height and strong build, their features similar enough for a stranger to guess that they were related. Tahren’s hair was blond and a few finger widths long, and Saadrin’s was silver and cropped so close it was just fuzz on her scalp. Her light tawny-golden skin was darker than Tahren’s ivory. Both were missing their armor and their only weapons were scavenged from their mostly dead captors. Their bedraggled clothing had been washed in water drawn from the Kagala’s desert well but didn’t look much the better for it.

And of course Saadrin was a complete ass. With all the confidence of someone whose will was seldom questioned, she told Tahren, “You can’t shirk your responsibilities like a weak mortal.”

Deadpan and as immovable as a mountain, Tahren countered, “I can. And the mortals you call ‘weak’ often have more moral fortitude than the strongest Immortal Marshall.”

Dahin stood at the raft’s steering column, his gaze on the horizon as if lost in thought. A Lesser Blessed, he was small compared to the Immortal Marshalls, light hair tied back in a queue, wearing an equally battered Arike-style tunic and skirt. He said, “Kai wouldn’t let me stab Aunt Saadrin and now he regrets it, don’t you, Kai?”

Kai sighed. Tahren didn’t react, but she caught Kai’s gaze across the raft and her left eyelid twitched. Kai sympathized. Dahin hated other Blessed, especially the ones he was related to. Maybe I’ll live alone in the Arkai marshes, Kai thought.

Saadrin ignored Dahin except for an exasperated grimace. Still trying to glare Tahren into submission, she said, “Even you won’t ignore your role in this farce of a treaty and let the consequences fall on the Blessed, no matter how forsworn you are.”

“I might,” Tahren said, with no detectable sarcasm whatsoever. After a beat, she added, “I find myself more inclined to it with every passing moment.”

It was always strange how the Blessed would refer to Tahren as if she were something to be scraped off their boots when the rest of the Rising World considered her a hero and savior. Kai touched Ziede’s heart pearl and said, You and Tahren should come to the marshes with me.

That’s not helpful, Ziede Daiyahah replied. She stood beside Tahren, absently tapping her nails on her folded arms. She had wrapped her long dark braids up in a scarf, and her dark brown skin was without makeup, her long tunic and pants as bedraggled as the rest of their clothes. It made her look oddly bare and stripped down to essentials, ready for a battle. She added, Tahren is fucking furious.

Good, Kai told her. Tahren had every right to be fucking furious. When they had first rescued her from the Witch cell in the abandoned Kagala fortress, Tahren had assumed Ziede and Kai had been searching for her the entire time she was missing. The power written into the walls of the cell had left her in a waking dream, and she had no idea how long she had been imprisoned. Then Ziede explained that she and Kai had been captured at the same time, entombed, and had only recently escaped.

“You have to admit, Aunt Saadrin,” Dahin said conversationally, idly making a minute adjustment in the raft’s direction as the wind tried to shove it sideways. “The Blessed have certainly asked for any consequences they get. It’s rather a habit of the Blessed, asking for consequences and then whining once they get them, isn’t it?”

Saadrin’s jaw set. She didn’t look at Dahin, but her answer was clearly directed at him. Which was a mistake, Kai could have told her. She said, “It was not all the Blessed who did this. Only a few are foresworn.”

Dahin laughed. “Oh, Aunt Saadrin. Someone’s going to have to teach you about irony. Maybe it’ll be me.”

Tahren knew Dahin too well to respond to him when he was like this. Still focused on Saadrin, she said, “If only the Blessed did not have a history of blaming the many for the actions of the few.”

Kai snorted quietly in appreciation. Tahren knew how to hit Saadrin where it hurt. Not that it was helping anything.

The argument was about where they would go next, and who would go there. Kai and Ziede had assumed Saadrin would want to return to the Blessed Lands with her prisoner, the Lesser Blessed Vrenren. He was currently sitting on the floor of the raft, tied up with rope meant to restrain the Immortal Blessed, and watching the argument with wide eyes. As one of the few survivors of the Immortal Blessed faction of the conspiracy, he apparently had too much sense to contribute.

Kai thought Saadrin would have been eager to return to the Blessed Lands and report all the perfidy to the Patriarchs. Reporting on other people’s perfidy was one of the few things Saadrin seemed to truly enjoy, as far as Kai could tell. Instead she wanted to go directly to Benais-arik.

Benais-arik, where the real plot had been hatched.

They didn’t have to go with her. Dahin could take them to the nearest canal outpost where they could leave Saadrin to continue her journey with the raft while they made their way home to Avagantrum by boat. But Saadrin wanted Tahren to speak to the council at her side.

Saadrin’s whole face had tightened at Tahren’s last comment. Obviously trying to pretend it hadn’t hit home in the worst way, she said stiffly, “This is no joking matter.”

Tahren’s sense of humor was dry as dust but it was obvious she was deadly serious now. She said, “I am not known for joking. I am known for dispensing justice.”

“Justice except for what you owe to your own blood kin—”

“You are lucky I’ve spared you justice. If I gave you what you were owed—”

Ziede, Scourge of the Temple Halls, said aloud, “I’m unsuited for the role of peacemaker and if I’m forced into it, you will all regret it.” She added through her heart pearl, Kai, and you know how much it pains me to say this, Saadrin is right about going to Benais-arik. The Rising World council should see Tahren.

Kai grimaced. Tahren was a lynchpin of the relationship between the rest of the Rising World and the Immortal Blessed. The Arike, the Enalin, the Grale, the Ilveri, and all the other members would be much reassured to see her, and to hear her speak about the end of the conspiracy. Saadrin’s involvement in Tahren’s rescue would show that there were still Immortal Blessed who kept their word and upheld the treaty. The Immortal Marshalls who represented the Blessed Lands to the council would be indebted to Tahren and furious about it. Kai had to admit all that was true. He didn’t have to like it, but he had to admit it.

Saadrin twitched toward Ziede and started to speak, then took in the change of expression on Tahren’s face. The change of expression that said, be rude to my wife and I will end you. Saadrin clearly wasn’t afraid of Tahren but she must be all too aware what fighting her would be like. She changed whatever she had been about to say to, “You may all be more than ready to turn your backs on the Rising World, but the Blessed and the mortal lands—” She waved a hand toward Sanja and Tenes, sitting just inside the doorway of the little domed shelter behind Kai. Sanja watched avidly. Tenes frowned in concern. “—bear the consequences.”

Tahren’s gaze narrowed. She turned her head slightly. “Sister Tenes, young Sanja, what do you say, as representatives of the rest of the known world?”

Sanja’s expression was a mix of confusion and suspicion. She was small, barely old enough to be called an adolescent, with the brown skin and tightly curled dark hair common to most of the east. She didn’t know Tahren at all yet and nothing in her former life as a street child in the free city at the Mouth of the Sea of Flowers had inclined her to trust. She looked at Tenes for help.

Tenes was a Witch. She looked young, with light silky hair and lighter skin, and she might have been from anywhere to the south or west or north of the whole world. An expositor had taken her as a familiar and she had lost her memory and her voice to him. All Kai could tell of her past life was that she was probably from a borderlander witchline. She looked from Tahren to Saadrin and signed, I follow Kaiisteron.

“Me too,” Sanja added belligerently.

Tahren faced Saadrin again. “And me.”

Dahin waved a hand without turning around, currently guiding the raft through a particularly tricky vagary of the wind. “And me. You know, mostly. As much as I ever do anything.”

That was that. Kai uncoiled from the bench and stood. The wind pulled at his hair and his dusty tunic and skirt. He said, “Tahren, would you speak to the Rising World council if I ask it?”

“If you ask it, yes,” Tahren said without hesitation.

“I ask it. We’ll go to Benais-arik.”

“So we shall.” Tahren turned from Saadrin as if she had suddenly ceased to exist.

Saadrin folded her arms and looked away, and managed to keep the sour cast to her expression to the minimum. She was getting what she wanted and she obviously hated the fact that she owed it to Kai.

Ziede stepped to Kai’s side. He could feel her relief and gratitude through her heart pearl, though she didn’t let it show in her expression. She had just gotten Tahren back, she didn’t want to see her have to fight her Blessed relatives, even Saadrin. Kai told her silently, We need to handle this very carefully.

Ziede’s brow furrowed as she considered potential strategies. We can slip into the city and go straight to Nibet House. That was the residence that the Enalin delegation used in Benais-arik. They’ll offer us hospitality without question and Tahren can ask for an escort to the council.

Kai let out a long breath. They needed to send a message to Avagantrum. They needed clothes and supplies, having lost everything useful they had collected during their canal journey in the flood at the Summer Halls. It would be a longer trip home from Benais-arik, especially if Saadrin wanted to keep the ascension raft. Tahren still needed time to recover, whatever she said. There was one place where all this could be done conveniently and safely. We can stay at the Cloisters until Tahren’s finished with the council.

Ziede said, that will work, then ruined it by adding, Ramad will know better than to look for you there.

Kai glared at her. I’m not worried about seeing Ramad.

Ziede squeezed his shoulder and didn’t comment.

If Kai was traveling here for the first time and had no idea they were about to reach the outskirts of a city, Benais-arik would still announce its presence well in advance.

First the converging of small canals into a big one lined with rushes and scrub trees but with the water free of any overgrowth that might obstruct boats. Then the roads curving in across the grassy plain, some well-traveled and dotted with occasional resting places, usually a copse of trees shading a few wooden shelters or a stone dome protecting a well. From above, the old roads were still etched on the landscape. These had been the main routes before the Hierarchs, but they led to places that didn’t exist anymore. From the surface they were mostly buried under grass and dirt, only the occasional boundary stone visible.

The raft passed over a few tumbled ruins that had once been villages or large farmsteads, but the signs of life—long canal boats or flitting skiffs, ox-drawn wagons and striding wallwalkers—was a reminder of survival that Kai would never grow tired of watching.

Then farmlands overtook empty fields, with scattered trees pruned into cone-shapes to shade the delicate greens and other plantings, with the hardy crops stretched out around them in concentric circles. Dry stone walls enclosed clumps of houses. Little cookshops and tiny temporary markets sprung up along the widening road.

Then finally bustling caravanserais with gardens and stables as in the distance the domes and towers of the city rose up, golden in the glow of late afternoon. Sentry posts had marked their approach already; Kai caught flashes of light reflected off mirrors that meant messages were passing below. It wasn’t uncommon for ascension rafts to come and go, especially during the coalition renewal. But the news about the conspiracy must have spread through the Rising World cohorts by now, and the presence of a raft and where it would land would be reported to the city garrison.

Dahin dropped the raft a little lower and slowed to follow the main eastward canal in over the city’s outskirts. It was mostly houses below now, older extended family compounds with their own gardens, interspersed with clusters of two- and three-story dwellings of sun-dried brick, constructed for refugees and ex-soldiers. The streets were shaded by acacia and eucalyptus trees, interspersed with the basins of the canal docks and the water markets where boats drew up to sell their goods.

Closer to the city’s center, the streets were wider and lined by larger stone buildings. Domes were carved and painted in traditional designs, scenes, and figures from Arike legends and history, though with everyone’s clothes and hair and armor and weapons far more elaborate and unwieldy than anything anyone would ever have had in reality. The curved walls were dotted with latticed windows and balconies to allow the wind to weave through the rooms and corridors. Benais House was in the central cluster, along with the older city assembly and law courts. The envoy houses were all in the same area, interwoven with the grand market and public gardens and clumps of private houses that had survived both the Hierarchs and the post-war rebuilding. The Rising World’s Assembly didn’t stand out next to the far more elaborate Arike buildings, but that didn’t disguise its importance. Other coalition cities had Rising World Assembly buildings, but Benais-arik’s was the oldest and largest.

As Dahin brought the raft around, Kai caught a glimpse of the old palace on the far side of the city center. It was enclosed in walls that had been outmoded even in Bashasa’s time, a relic of the Arik’s martial past. That had been over long before the Hierarchs arrived, and the palace had been partly a home for the current ruling Prince-heir’s family and partly a place for housing and entertaining important guests. It was still that now; Bashat lived there.

Their destination, Nibet House, was on the outer edge of the circle of envoy houses. It was only two stories tall, built of local sandy gray stone and heavy wooden beams brought down from the forests of Enalin. The low stone wall around the entrance garden and a scatter of olive trees hid the view of the first level but the big windows on the second floor were all open to catch the breeze off the canal, their carved wooden screens and storm shutters propped open. From the House’s undisturbed calm, and the general air of business as usual from the streets around it, Kai thought Bashat must not have given in to any impulses to challenge Enalin over its failure to support the Imperial renewal.

Dahin aimed for an open stretch of grassy land between Nibet House and a copse of tall trees. There were no supplication towers in Benais-arik, or any other Arike city-state, since the last one had been burned and toppled during the war, so it was as good a landing place as any.

Warned by the raft’s slow descent, an Enalin official came out the open gate from the House’s walled garden. They were a short and heavyset figure, with dark brown skin and long dark ringleted hair tied back. They wore a light yellow Enalin-style caftan with painted designs, but no formal robes. In this season, the afternoon was a rest period for most of the city, when the sun was too hot for any strenuous activity. It wasn’t a custom the Enalin practiced in the cooler climate of their home region, but all the envoys followed it here.

As the raft thumped down on the grass, the official watched with a quizzical expression, but didn’t speak. This was Enalin hospitality, which allowed guests time to sort themselves out and declare their intentions before questioning why they might be here. A few curious house pages, all children around Sanja’s age, appeared in the doorway.

Tahren opened the gate in the raft and stepped out. She lifted a hand in greeting and said, “Tahren Stargard asks the gift of a favor from the Warden of Nibet House.”

“Please address me as Setar-en, and Tahren Stargard has no need to ask, any assistance will be gladly offered.” Setar-en’s gaze was alive with curiosity now. They had clearly recognized Tahren and probably Ziede as well. Dahin had slumped down on the bench beside the steering device, his face turned away. “Is the matter urgent, or is there time for the House to extend its welcome to you and your companions?”

That might have been a polite way to say that they appeared to be a disheveled group that looked obviously in need of some sort of help. Tahren said, “The House’s welcome would be a gift indeed, but Immortal Marshall Saadrin has a prisoner who we must present to the Rising World council immediately.” She didn’t bother to gesture to Saadrin, who had just dragged Vrenren out of the raft. “This concerns the conspiracy between rogue factions from Nient-arik and the Blessed Lands that I understand was revealed during the coalition renewal.”

Setar-en’s brow furrowed in concern. “I will assemble an escort and accompany you myself. The ambassador is attending the council in the assembly hall today. The Tescai-lin was called to affairs in Belith, at Ancartre, but we will send word to them of your safe return.”

“That would be much appreciated,” Tahren said. It would be much less awkward for Tahren and Saadrin to drag an Immortal Blessed prisoner through the streets with an escort from Nibet House.

Ziede stepped out of the raft and Kai started forward, but Dahin, still crouched below the railing, grabbed a handful of his battered coat and stuffed something into the inside hem pocket. It was flat, like a book or a packet of paper. Sanja and Tenes, following Ziede, hadn’t seen. Kai sighed and stepped down from the raft. Whatever it was, he would worry about it later.

As Setar-en turned back toward the House, Kai said, “I would ask if a message is to be sent to the Tescai-lin, that they could also be told that Kaiisteron is with Tahren Stargard.”

Setar-en met Kai’s gaze, startled, then recovered their poise quickly. “Of course. And this House is always open to Kaiisteron, in whatever form he takes.”

Kai hadn’t expected to be turned away, and if he had been it certainly wouldn’t have kept him from sending his own message to the Light of a Hundred Coronels. But he still felt the tension in his shoulders ease.

Setar-en invited them to wait in the shade of the House’s garden while an escort was summoned, and then strode back inside, sending the young pages scattering on various errands.

Kai and the others were led through the gateway to a set of stone benches and chairs under the shade of a large neem tree. Sanja was the only one who plopped down into a seat. Saadrin stopped just inside the gate with her prisoner. Either she disliked the idea of hospitality predicated on being one of Tahren’s companions, or was too polite to sully Nibet House’s grounds with Vrenren.

Ziede told Tahren, “I’m going with you.” Her expression was conflicted; she obviously didn’t want to let Tahren out of her sight, but the ongoing political storm wouldn’t be improved by either her or Kai’s presence. “I don’t want to be seen in the assembly, I’ll wait outside for you. Just don’t get kidnapped again.”

Tahren took Ziede’s hand and squeezed it. “Take your own advice.”

Tenes watched them with a worried frown. She signed, I’ll wait with Sister Ziede. It’s always safer with two. She turned to Kai. Will you be here?

Kai said, “I’ll go on to the Cloisters.” Flying so long in the raft with the wind whistling in his ears made his head feel like there was a vise tightening around it. He wanted to get away somewhere he could make plans and not worry about being seen. At least he didn’t have to decide what to do with the ascension raft. Dahin hadn’t followed them into the garden and Kai expected that he and the raft would be gone by the time Setar-en reappeared with Tahren’s escort. He kept his sigh internal; either Dahin would turn up later or he wouldn’t, there was no telling. “I’ll walk from here.”

Sanja jumped up and grabbed Kai’s hand. “I’m going with you.”

Kai looked down at her, lifting his brows pointedly. He had meant to send her with Tenes and Ziede. Sanja was not intimidated and her face set in a stubborn glower. She added mulishly, “I don’t want to stay here.”

Kai realized the conversation with Setar-en had taken place in formal Nibetian, and that Sanja hadn’t understood it. She hadn’t seemed worried about being abandoned anywhere else, but maybe being back in a city again had woken suppressed fears. He said, “You’re not staying here.”

The tense set of Sanja’s shoulders eased minutely but she didn’t let go of Kai’s hand. Take her with you, Ziede said silently. Perhaps she’ll keep you out of trouble.

Hah, Kai replied. He had carted Ziede’s daughter Tanis around for a year when she was younger than Sanja, when the Immortal Blessed were still trying to kill Tahren, and it hadn’t kept either one of them out of trouble. But there was a first time for everything. He told Sanja, “You’ll come with me to the Cloisters.”

Sanja’s frown smoothed but she was apparently too tired and cranky to let the impulse to argue go entirely. She demanded, “What’s that?”

“You’ll find out when we get there,” Kai told her.

Ziede said, “We’ll go ahead, then. Meet us in the plaza outside the hall.” She kissed Tahren and walked out the gate. Tenes signed a quick farewell-for-now and followed. Saadrin busied herself dragging Vrenren out of their way, probably so she could use it as an excuse not to make any formal farewell to Ziede that might indicate that their temporary allyship was in any way permanent.

Using her pearl, Ziede told Kai silently, Dahin’s left with the raft. Are we surprised?

No, Kai told her. He knew she had also told Tahren, when Tahren let out her breath in the nearly inaudible sigh, the one most associated with whatever Dahin had done now. Kai said aloud, “He’ll be back.”

Tahren said, “You’ve known him better than I have, over the years.”

If she was anyone but Tahren, Kai would have said her expression was bleak. He said, “Are you all right?”

She glanced down at him and admitted, “I am torn between the overwhelming desire for a hot bath and an anger so intense I could bite through my sword blade.”

That was better. “If you bite any councilors, be sure to make it count.”

Setar-en’s promised escort of four Enalin warriors hurried out of the wide doorway. They wore the knee-length version of Enalin formal caftans over wide pants and tough boots. They didn’t carry weapons, since that wasn’t encouraged within Arike city borders, and in the diplomatic center of the Rising World not even the Prince-heirs’ cadres were allowed to go armed in public. Setar-en strode out after them in a formal robe hastily thrown on over their caftan. Tahren nodded to Kai and said, “I’ll see you later.”

Adjusting the fold of their collar, Setar-en said, “You will not accompany us, Kaiisteron?”

“Not at the moment.” As entertaining as appearing suddenly before the council and creating a sensation similar to a firepowder-filled gourd tossed into a legionary’s campfire might be, Kai wasn’t tempted. It was much better to let Tahren handle this. He added, to stop any possible argument, “I’m going to the Cloisters.”

Setar-en glanced down at Sanja, who was drooping a little now that the excitement was over. Then they kindly offered the use of one of the House’s hired canal boats. Kai decided not to be an idiot and accepted it. There would be far less chance of anyone intercepting them along the way.

Setar-en sent another page to arrange the boat, then gestured for Tahren to take the lead. Kai found himself a little uneasy to see Tahren walk away and said, “Careful.”

She lifted a hand in acknowledgment and fell into step with Setar-en and their escort as they walked out the gate. Saadrin followed her, dragging Vrenren in her wake.

A page brought another Enalin official, a tall person who by their wrinkled caftan had probably been taking their afternoon rest. They introduced themself as Second Warden Amren-nar, and they led Kai and Sanja through the garden and around the side of the House, through a gate to the private canal dock.

The stone dock was shaded by water trees, and the boat waiting there was a light pole skiff used for quick journeys. It was piloted by two women who had the light olive-tinged skin of Palm but the dark curly hair and dress and accents of the Arik. They were clearly used to doing Nibet House’s formal commissions; they didn’t try to speak to Kai, and they didn’t react to him at all except for the polite interactions necessary to board and get settled under the boat’s little awning. They might have no idea that he wasn’t a mortal; Amren-nar solved the problem of Kai being spotted as a demon by handing him their own sun hat, made from coiled braids of scrap grass silk. It shaded Kai’s eyes enough to make recognition difficult, especially from a moving boat.

With the cool breeze and the warmth of the afternoon sun, Sanja fell asleep almost immediately, slumped against Kai’s side. The pilots poled the boat swiftly along out of the city center.

They took a branch of the canal that angled away through the tree-shaded parkland, passed a cluster of docks for the market, then under a bridge arched high enough that the pilots didn’t have to duck. Then an area of streets lined with tall trees and old stone structures that had once been cargo storage and merchant centers before being turned into post-war housing. From the many small boats tied up along the canal’s walkway, the awnings for temporary outdoor workshops, root gardens planted on the balconies and rooftops, and the number of goats wandering around, these areas were well occupied and usually busy, but they were quiet and drowsy in the afternoon.

They left the life of the neighborhoods behind for more docks packed with canal boats, equally sleepy during this lull in the day, in-use cargo houses, and grain silos. Then vine-wrapped trees closed in on the banks and three tall arches loomed up. They were the crumbling remains of an old bridge, its reddish stone pitted and broken. Water still fell from the third broken arch, the end of the aqueduct it had once carried.

The bridge led to a high wall along the bank, battered and cracked, with a collapsed earthwork below it, flowering plants and thorn brush growing amid the tumbled blocks at its feet. The wide stone landing platform for barges was strewn with rubble and overgrown with water weeds. Near it, a jagged opening had been knocked through the fortification to form a makeshift gate. To one side of it stood a stone bench shaded by a scrub tree, where offerings had been left—beads, braided grass bracelets, lizard skulls, tiny cloth dolls, figures made of clay or carved wood, wilting flowers, small bowls of grain, and a lot of fruit, most of it relatively fresh. Kai gently nudged Sanja awake and said, “Here is fine.”

The pilot in front glanced back, brows lifted, but didn’t comment. They poled the boat over toward the bank. The silence was broken only by the rising hum of the cicadas in the trees.

The current wasn’t strong, and the two pilots held the boat steady as Kai swung Sanja over to the platform and then stepped up after her.

Sanja looked around, already alert. A life on the streets had given her the ability to wake immediately. “This is where we’re going to stay? What is it?”

“The Hierarchs had it made as a place to worship them when their usurper took over the city,” Kai explained.

As they made their way off the cracked platform to the shore, one of the pilots called out, “Are you him?”

So much for his disguise. Kai stepped to the offering slab and picked up a couple of figs. He tossed one to Sanja before he turned to regard the pilots, head tilted in inquiry.

One made a quick respectful salute, looking away. The other said, “My grandmothers were at Saisun Breach.” She nodded, and pushed the boat away from the platform.

Kai watched the pilots guide their boat back into the current. She hadn’t said what side her grandmothers had been on, but it didn’t matter much now. Kai took Sanja’s hand to lead her through the makeshift gate in the wall.

Past the earthwork, there was a field of more rubble, broken down until it was no more than knee-high at best. Kai took the path through, its twists and turns invoking various local spirits to discourage anyone susceptible to their mild influence. Anyone who wasn’t a Witch.

At the end of the path was a set of broad steps leading up to the foundation of a large building. Atop it now stood nothing but a few weathered pillars, the remains of a once grand colonnade, all in ruins now. But the archways built into the foundation, bracketing the stairway, were open into dark passages that led inside.

Kai felt the little spirits in the rubble plucking at his coat and skirt. Sanja twitched a little and brushed a hand over her hair, as if something had tugged on it. To distract her, he said, “To make this place, the Hierarchs tore down a very old hospital that was here, the first one in the city, and a school that Bashasa’s father had built. Anyone could go there to learn how to draw and paint and do carving.”

And it was where artworks were exhibited for all the world to see, anyone in the Arik or outside it, no matter their station, Bashasa had said, one late night huddled beside a banked fire, waiting for the right moment to start an attack. All that work, done by so many hands, over so many years, all broken to dust and kindling, or stolen for their servant-nobles’ pleasure.

Kai finished, “So when we killed the Hierarchs, the people of Benais-arik destroyed this place, and gave it to the Witches for their own.” I want them to dance in it, Bashasa had said, to grind the Hierarchs’ finery under their heels.

“Bashasa is the one who was your friend, right?” Sanja said as they climbed the steps toward the leftward passage. “The one Ramad kept asking all the questions about?”

“That’s right.” Ramad hadn’t seemed to realize just how much Sanja had eavesdropped.

She said, “Anything you say about him, I won’t tell anyone.”

It struck Kai so hard that he stopped in his tracks and stared down at her. She looked up at him, her face solemn. He squeezed her hand, and they walked on.

Once they passed under the arch into the cool gloom of the passage, the spirits’ invisible hands fell away. Guttering candles made of bayberry and palm oil were stuffed into various niches to light the way, dancing shadows over the tile of the barrel-vaulted ceiling high overhead. Kai threaded their way through the passage, past a set of arched doorways that led deeper inside. It was quiet, but it was the hush of listening, not the silence of an uninhabited place. His return hadn’t gone unremarked.

They came to a chamber where wide steps led up past pillars where the carvings had been methodically bashed away, then to a long, high-ceilinged space. It had been a private audience room, mostly used for rewarding or punishing the Hierarch servants who had been given control of Benais-arik. Half columns lined the walls and on the north side were floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the earthwork and the canal. Even though the louvers were open, there were only a few dead leaves and some windblown dust in the corners, which meant someone had been taking care of these rooms. Probably the Cloister Witches who lived here year round. The cool air carried nothing except the scent of wet earth and sun-warmed grass and trees.

The gray stone paving the floor had held up well and was only a little cracked, and the blue glass inlay in the wall tile was still bright. All the gold and inlaid jewels and the murals on the coffered ceiling had been scraped out when the Hierarchs had been driven away, leaving hollowed-out sockets and raw stone. At the far end, there was a dais with three broad steps, where the Hierarch or their servant-nobles would have stood to pass judgement. Kai walked up the steps and through the archway beyond, into the smaller anterooms that led into the rest of the suite. The wooden panels were still closed over the windows back here and it was darker and dustier.

Sanja trailed after him, asking dubiously, “You used to live here?”

Kai stopped in the large retiring room and started to wrestle the creaky shutters open, dislodging spider webs, lizards, and some angry beetles. There was a dais here too at the back, supporting a wide curved bench carved out of stone, all the inlay and carvings bashed off it. He told Sanja, “For a while. And we’ve been back off and on.” As he got the windows uncovered, light and a fresh breeze flooded the room, illuminating the faded mural on the far wall. It had once shown the Hierarchs bringing the gifts of civilization to the primitive north, which was a fairly standard subject for the places the Hierarchs had built for their servant-nobles to rule from. By the time Kai and the others had first seen this one, someone had scratched off the Hierarchs’ heads and daubed red paint around their necks. Dahin had called it “bringing the historical record up to date.” Kai added, “It was meant as a summer residence and it’s not especially comfortable in the rainy seasons.”

“Is that why you live somewhere else now?” Sanja pushed a broken floor tile back into place with her sandaled foot. The wooden chests they had left behind were still sealed, stacked back against the mural wall so any rain that got through the shutters wouldn’t reach them. Two large squat metal braisers stood on either side of the room, the preferred Arike method for heating during the cooler months, both empty and swept clean.

Kai started to say yes, then he thought of what Sanja had said earlier, and about confidences. He said, “Bashasa died, and I didn’t want to live in this city anymore.”

Sanja glanced up at him, then nodded matter-of-factly. They wandered through the rest of the suite, and Kai opened more shutters. Leaving Sanja pulling on the pump lever in the bathing room to chase the ants out of the basins and drains, Kai went back to the carved chests in the retiring room. They were actually Immortal Blessed preservation chests, abstract sun symbols carved around the rims inset with flaked gold. When Kai broke the seals and opened them, the decades-old orchid petals scattered on the top layer released a breath of clean fragrance.

Inside were rolled blankets and rugs, cushions, copper pans and two kettles, a drinking set, some heavily embroidered silk coats and other clothing, a lot of stray jewelry, some bags of old coins, Benais-arik tokens, bundles of old maps and bound books, carefully wrapped bath powders, and a small carved box of tiny jars and vials for makeup and oils. Ziede would be pleased to see that; she might not have any idea it had been left here. He reached for her pearl lightly, just to check on her, and got a sense of a shaded spot somewhere out in the plaza to one side of the Rising World Assembly, near a vendor selling fruit water flavored with sugarcane and spices.

Ziede was distracted, probably listening to the council meeting through Tahren’s pearl. Hopefully she and Tenes wouldn’t have to wait long. Knowing Tahren’s current mood, perhaps she would say what she had to say, then just walk out, leaving Saadrin to answer any questions.

Kai opened the bag of tokens and sifted through it. Each one was a memory, and some were almost smooth, worn down by their years, just like he was. A light patter of footsteps sounded from the audience room and Kai dropped the bag back into the chest and pushed silently to his feet. By the time he reached the archway, several Cloister Witches, veiled and wearing an eclectic mix of colorful clothing, gathered in the room. On the dais they had left two clay pots with lids, a ceramic jug, and a basket of palm fruit and water apples. As Kai leaned down to examine these offerings, the package that Dahin had jammed into his hem pocket thumped his knee, reminding him it was there. One pot held lentils with what smelled like turmeric, garlic, and onion and the other was a bean porridge with fried peppers scattered on top. The jug held saffron-spiced goatmilk. He called, “Sanja, come and eat.”

The Past: the Fire

It was not realized at the time that the Arike cavalry was much feared by the southern legions. They made a strange whooping cry before attacking, not always from the direction in which they were advancing from, and the Hierarchs’ people learned to fear it. The Arike had always prided themselves on the fact that their ancestors had ceased warring with each other because they were in danger of wiping out their own cities. It is not known how many outside the Arik believed this until they saw them sweep down on a legion and leave it a field of corpses for their horses to eat.

—Account by an Ilveri scholar, traveling with Prince-heir Hiranan

Kai lifted a hand to make the Saredi signal for hidden enemy ahead. Somewhere behind the rise of the next hill and its scarred rocky slope, a booted foot had slipped on gravel.

Behind him, he heard Salatel slide almost soundlessly out of her saddle. The knee-high grass muffled the footsteps of Arsha and Telare and the clawed, padded feet of their horses. It was barely after dawn in the grassy hills of the Northern Arik and they were hunting an expositor.

Kai slipped off his own horse and dropped the reins. The animal made a quiet huff but didn’t try to bite him. Arike horses were omnivores, though they could subsist on grasses and grains; it was relatively easy to teach them to be quiet and stand still on command, since that was how they stalked mice and lizards.

Kai moved forward, placing each foot carefully. He was barefoot so he could feel the rocks through the grass, and he had tucked one side of his long skirt up through his belt. Nirana and Hartel were further back, watching the stretch of road the expositor had been foolish enough to try to make for. Cerala currently limped down that road, leading her horse, pretending to be injured prey for an expositor desperate to leave this area quickly.

He doesn’t know how stupid he would have to be to want that horse, Nirana had said earlier, leaning away as the beast in question tried to bite her head. We should let it eat him.

Kai edged around the steep side of the hill without starting any small avalanches of dirt and pebbles. This was one wall of a small defile, and the grass was full of sediment carried by a little seasonal stream that ran down from a spring further upslope somewhere. Ahead, where the defile opened up, the dusty stone of the road stretched across the more even ground heading toward the next clump of low hills. Cerala limped slowly into Kai’s view, making her apparently painful way along with her disgruntled horse.

Between Kai and the road was the expositor.

He was a tall, muscled figure, dark hair bound up in an elaborate bun and dressed in the southern style of clothing, very like what Arike men wore, but the long shirt went down nearly to his knees and the skirt barely reached past it. Bright threads in the weaving caught the sun, even under the dust and bloodstains. The expositor had stopped where the trickle of the stream hit a half-buried boulder, entirely focused on Cerala. Then his right hand moved, fingers bending in a way that looked painful, unnatural. He was building a design for an intention.

Kai couldn’t approach quietly down the streambed—not and reach him before he set the intention loose. But it wasn’t like Kai’s fighting technique relied on subtlety. He crouched and leapt.

He landed halfway down the slope at the water’s gravelly edge. As the startled expositor swung around and in reflex threw the intention, Kai dropped and slid down the muddy stream bed. The intention went over his head in a cloud of concentrated malice. Kai catapulted upright and threw himself forward.

He hit the expositor’s midsection and they both flew downslope. They struck the rocks to the side of the stream, Kai on top. The expositor shoved and punched at Kai’s head, almost knocking him sideways. Kai was lean where this man was bulky, but fighting fair had never been part of the plan. Kai ducked, wrenched the expositor’s collar down until his knuckles brushed bare skin, and drew out his life.

The man made a strangled cry and sagged. Kai pressed his forearm to the expositor’s throat and pinned the flailing hand that wasn’t twisted under his knee. The expositor gaped up at him, shocked and offended even through terror. He gagged, throat working as he tried to speak.

Bashasa was always trying to pound into everyone’s brains that if it was possible to get information before killing a high-ranking Hierarchs’ dog, then get it. Kai eased up enough on the man’s windpipe for him to be able to speak.

“Demon,” the expositor gasped out. “How dare you— Let me up, I command you— Who allowed you—”

Kai sneered, trying to look like one of the captive, subjugated demons who fought for the Hierarchs. He had never managed to see any yet; if there were any in this region, they weren’t sent out with the legionary patrols. He said, “Clumsy on someone’s part, to let me loose. Guess who it was?”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Is Vartasias your master? Did he send you after me?”

This was the first time Kai had managed to get another expositor’s name, and it was even more intriguing that it was one apparently associated with captive demons. “I wouldn’t be a very obedient demon if I revealed all my master’s secrets,” Kai stalled while trying to think of what else to say.

“Is he at Dashar now? What does he want of me?”

Dashar was a fort near Descar-arik on the coast. “Are there demons at Dashar?” Kai knew it was a mistake as soon as the words came out, but it was too late.

“You weren’t sent…” The man’s face went on a whole journey through outrage, horror, disgust. “The dross have their own demons.” He said it in realization, not as if he was talking to Kai. “How do they control you, tell me—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kai tried.

The expositor’s expression turned cunning. “I can be a valuable prisoner. Take me to your masters, they’ll surely reward you.”

If only that were possible. Expositors were just too dangerous to keep alive. “Maybe, if you tell me what that intention does.” But Kai felt the stir of another intention forming. He huffed out an annoyed breath. He couldn’t afford to let the expositor set an intention on him, no matter how much information the man might have. “I’ll just have to figure it out for myself.” And he drained the rest of the man’s life.

The body sank into a desiccated husk, and Kai clambered to his feet, trying not to slip on the wet rock. At least he hadn’t landed in the stream, which might have made the fight more difficult. Though with the underearth still closed to him, it was hard to tell. Salatel was at the top of the defile now. She said encouragingly, “Did he say anything, Fourth Prince?”

“A little, he gave me a name.” Kai wasn’t pleased with his effort. He should have been able to prolong the conversation but subterfuge wasn’t something that came naturally to him. “Don’t come down yet, there’s an intention here somewhere.”

She signaled that she understood and retreated back to gather the others.

Kai searched for the intention, stepping back and forth over the stream and slipping on the slick mud along the shallow bank. He found it sunk deep in the grass just above where his first leap had taken him. Invisible to mortal eyes, it looked to Kai like a word in a language he didn’t understand, written in sunlight melted over the green stalks. He poked it a little, but he would have to unravel the design to understand what it did, and that took time. He lifted it carefully and set it on his chest for safekeeping, along with the four others he was saving from the battle last night. “You can come down now,” he said, and Salatel and the others started the awkward climb to join him.

Arsha and Telare went ahead to join Cerala, stepping matter-of-factly past the corpse. They were well used to Kai’s method of fighting now; he wasn’t sure how much they had been appalled by it, since the first time they saw it he had been killing Cantenios, an expositor who would have murdered all of them. However they felt, they had never objected.

Kai and Salatel searched the corpse while Nirana and Hartel kept watch further up the hill. There would be scatters of lost legionaries out here too, survivors of the running battle that had started in the south toward Seidel-arik.

After the evacuation of Benais-arik, Bashasa had been luring the legionaries to places where he wasn’t, making them split and exhaust their forces in this part of the Arik, setting traps where he could. This battle had been aimed at distracting the Seidel-arik legionary garrison and allowing the artisan guilds in the city to smuggle out refugees and supplies.

Kai dug through the pockets in the expositor’s richly embroidered coat, tossing things to Salatel to look at more closely once he was sure they were safe for her to touch. “No maps, no letters,” he concluded, pushing to his feet. He stretched his back with a wince. Until he had ended up in this body, he had no idea how much being even ten or so years older affected mortals. This was probably part of the reason Bashasa drank.

“I wonder how much they’re trusted with valuable information,” Salatel said, dusting her hands as she stood. “I think the expositors they send out on patrols are not much prized.”

“The stronger ones aren’t going to leave a city, even if there’s not a Hierarch there.” Kai squinted at the lightening sky, where gray was just beginning to give way to blue. They needed to get moving. “Let’s get his body away from the stream.”

Flies already buzzed around them as they dragged it down the defile into a gully toward the side of the road. They stripped it, and Salatel bashed the face in with a rock. If it was found by legionaries, they would have no idea who the man had been. It was an important part of keeping the Hierarchs’ forces in the Arik guessing. If they could throw doubt into the legionary command, make them think their expositors were taking opportunities to leave, all the better. Salatel tossed the bundle of the expositor’s clothes to Arsha, who stuffed them in a bag.

They buried the corpse under a shallow layer of loose gravel and brush, which would keep it from being seen from the road, but not stop the lizards and other carrion scavengers from finding it. With that finished, Kai climbed back on his growling horse. He didn’t need to give many orders, the soldiers knew better what to do as a cadre than he did; all he had to do was indicate to Salatel what he wanted to do next. He said, “Let’s get back to the others.”

Salatel lifted her hand in a signal and led the way down the defile toward the plain. Kai waited for his horse to hack up an undigested pellet of rodent and lizard bones, then nudged it to follow her.

It was late morning when they caught up with Bashasa’s troop. The sky to the west was filling with gray clouds, a cool breeze making the grasses ripple over the hills. Kai saw a flicker of movement in the brush as they rode down out of the rocks. It was one of their scouts, who the Arike called vanguarders, trailing the main troop to keep watch for pursuit. Salatel acknowledged the movement with a subtle hand gesture. Kai shook his head to let the hood of his coat fall back, mostly for the benefit of any wind-devils Ziede had sent to keep watch, so she would know it was him.

Kai had made sure he was recognizable. The soldiers wore long tunics and coats and loose leggings of cotton and grass silk, in sun-faded rust or brown-green, pale yellows and tans, colors that faded into the landscape. Kai wore the male version of the same, with a split-skirt made to be easily tucked or tied out of the way. But he had taken a black embroidered coat from one of the expositors he had killed in Benais-arik, now mottled where the bloodstains had been mostly washed out, and he wore Talamines’ emerald pins in his long mane of hair. Everyone, from Bashasa through to the people who were too old or incapacitated to fight, but who made the camps and tended wounds and managed the supplies, had told him that it made him a target. Which was Kai’s intention. He wanted their allies and enemies to see him, Bashasa’s demon prince. To know they would have to go through Kai to get to Bashasa.

They headed down to a wide strip that cut through the edge of the rocky terrain, running along a gully carved by a fast, shallow stream, and sheltered by the scrub and tree-covered hills rising all around. According to the maps it was an old trade route that had been long abandoned, its stones buried under decades of dirt and growing things. The legionaries brought to the Arik from across the straits far to the south were unlikely to know it was here, and it allowed the troops to move faster.

Once they were down on the road, Kai urged his horse to a quicker pace and Salatel and the others followed suit. After a little distance, Kai spotted a wallwalker, its dark-furred bulk disappearing where the road curved around a rocky bluff.

Kai and the cadre reached the rearguard, the soldiers waving greetings, then passed it and drew even with the wallwalker. He still hated the things, the stink of their fur and their lizard-like hide, their giant teeth, the crushing step of their clawed feet. Even the angry Arike horses were better.

A supply officer hung off the wallwalker’s cargo netting, handing out fresh waterskins and bags of food to returning patrols. Kai nodded to Salatel and she split off with the rest of the cadre to get their share. Kai continued up toward the front, past the other wallwalkers and the riders alongside them, a mix of now-familiar Arike soldiers and civilians who had joined them from the cities and towns along the way.

They had withdrawn from Benais-arik two months ago as planned, leaving the evacuated city behind them. As Bashasa had led them north, killing the legionary patrols they encountered, he had sent vanguarders to warn villages and towns and isolated farmsteads.

The disheartening thing was that many of those villages and towns were empty, and others were barely populated at all, often only with people who had fled the cities looking for shelter with family or friends, and had found their homes empty. Other times, the vanguarders didn’t even know they were approaching the burned ruin of a settlement until they realized the horses were walking through overgrown plowed plots, or unharvested crops left to rot on the ground.

While some of the Arike soldiers tried to tell themselves many of the missing might have left on their own, Kai and most of the others thought the more obvious explanation was the right one. Despite the agreements, supposed treaties, and sending of hostages, the Hierarchs had started to kill off the inhabitants of the Arik region that they didn’t see a use for, and they had begun this at least a year before the destruction of the Summer Halls. The Arike city-states were running out of time.

With this knowledge, Bashasa enlisted everyone they encountered who would listen as fighters, vanguarders, messengers, or spies. Those who couldn’t fight were sent off to find hiding places to retreat to, to create hidden caches of supplies, to warn others and to recruit them in turn or lead them to whatever safety they could find.

He had also split his original force into smaller bands, to move more quickly and come together at prearranged meeting points only known to the sub-Captains. The Arike had always used cavalry to fight each other, but their ancestral battles over land had been much more formalized confrontations, with rules agreed to by all parties concerned. Kai had explained the way the Saredi had organized their attacks on the Hierarchs in Erathi and their alliance with the borderlanders, and Bashasa had listened intently, the way he listened to everyone, and used it to build his strategy. “The Hierarchs have studied us, and their legionaries know how we fight, the way our ancestors fought,” Bashasa had explained to the Arike soldiers and the other Prince-heirs. “They won’t expect this from us.”

As Kai passed the supply train, he was aware how many people watched him, some startled or wary and some matter-of-fact, depending on when they had joined the troop. He caught motion out of the corner of his eye, and glanced up to see Dahin waving wildly from the palanquin atop the lead wallwalker’s back. Kai smiled and waved back.

He found Bashasa and Ziede past the wallwalkers at the front. Grouped behind them were Tahren, Bashasa’s cadre, and the band of soldiers the Arike called the outguard, who led the attacks. Mixed in among them were some Ilveri and Grale and a dozen others whose appearance and dress Kai couldn’t recognize yet. And a group of three Enalin, their robes dusty with travel, riding to one side of Bashasa’s cadre. Bashasa had been sending messengers back and forth to the Tescai-lin for the last few months, but Kai thought this trio looked recently arrived.

The outguard parted for Kai’s horse, and he rode up alongside Ziede. She was saying to Bashasa, “We can’t continue to use Kai only as a vanguarder. We can’t continue to use me only as a vanguarder—”

“I know this,” Bashasa agreed, more in commiseration than argument. He had left his white finery behind and wore sturdier clothes in brown and faded red, a long shirt and skirt under a coat embroidered in shades of browns and yellows. The blue-and-gold brocaded coat he had worn in the Summer Halls was apparently Kai’s now, and packed into the small bag that constituted his belongings. Bashasa gestured eloquently. “And you know I know this, Sister Ziede. It’s only that the solution eludes us.” He glanced over and smiled. “Ah, Fourth Prince is back. Were you successful?”

Kai said, “Mostly. We found the expositor, but he didn’t have anything useful on him.”

Tahren nudged her horse up closer to listen.

“Good! And did he tell you anything of worth, since I assume you questioned him, as I reminded you to do?” Bashasa prompted.

“He thought I was a Hierarch’s demon who had been sent to find him or kill him or something by another expositor called Vartasias. I tried to go along with it to see if he’d say more, but he figured it out pretty quickly,” Kai explained.

Bashasa took this in with a thoughtful expression. “Interesting.”

“Did he say where Vartasias was?” Tahren asked.

“He asked if Vartasias was at Dashar now. Then he realized I was lying and called me a dross’s demon and then I killed him,” Kai admitted.

If Bashasa was disappointed he didn’t show it, but Ziede began in exasperation, “Kai…”

“He wasn’t going to say anything else,” Kai said pointedly. “I got a new intention off him.”

Ziede was skeptical but Bashasa said, “No, you’ve done well, Fourth Prince.” He stared into the distance, brow furrowed. “This could be useful. I have plans for Dashar. We must speak of it more later.”

Kai was glad to put off that discussion. They had heard the Hierarchs used enslaved demons to fight in Belith, but that was a long way from here. He wondered how many of the demons they had tried to free from the Cageling Court had actually escaped; that failure still hurt. He said, “What’s the problem with the vanguarders?”

“Some of our more important messages are not getting through. Amabel is the best at it, but they can’t take on every task,” Tahren told him.

Ziede added, “We need more Witches.”

“That would be the easiest solution,” Tahren said. Ziede turned to side-eye her and Tahren sighed a little. “That wasn’t sarcasm, I was agreeing with you.”

Amabel was one of the party of Witches who had joined Bashasa’s wallwalkers at the river crossing on the way to the Kagala. Kai and Ziede had sought those Witches out after Karanis’ death, hoping that they could help fight. But though the family could trace their line back to the borderlands, most of the group could only do small cantrips, to ease pain or find lost objects, and they were mostly too young or too old or their health was too bad to do any other kind of fighting. Bashasa had explained to Kai that he could make them part of his cadre, until they found somewhere else to go, so he had done that. They helped with camp chores and with translating or copying maps and other things that needed doing. The personal cadres and soldiers who formed the core of Bashasa’s troop had gotten used to Kai and Ziede, and had even less trouble getting used to Witches who could find water by sniffing for it and could sometimes make the wind calm a little if they tried very hard.

Amabel was the only one who could swift-travel, something that Ziede said was rare this far east. It used air and earth spirits in a way even the teachers of the Khalin Islands hadn’t understood. It made Amabel the best messenger and vanguarder Bashasa had.

“More Witches?” Lahshar Calis, Bashasa’s cousin, guided her horse up beside Bashasa. She was Bashasa’s age though she looked older than she had in the Hostage Courts, her curly dark hair pulled into a bun on top of her head. She wore much the same clothing as the soldiers, of finer material but just as covered with dust. She must have recently returned from patrol with her cadre. She waved a hand toward Kai and Ziede. “Are these not adequate? I thought one was supposed to be a demon?”

“Should I prove it to you?” Kai said. The problem with Lahshar was that she was probably the quickest thinker among Bashasa’s extended family who hadn’t been murdered or was still trapped in a Hierarch prison camp somewhere. She understood the tactics and strategies Bashasa and Prince-heir Hiranan came up with well enough to argue about them and make good suggestions. But she hated expositors even more than the rest of the Arike did and by extension hated Kai, stuck in this expositor’s body. He knew by now that letting her insult him didn’t help and about the only way to deflect her was a direct attack. “Do you volunteer as a demonstration?”

“Please say yes.” Ziede gave her a long look.

Bashasa interposed, “Lahshar, you must be kinder to our allies. It was isolationism that led us to this pass in the first place. If we had come to the Arkai’s aid, if we had listened to the tales from the archipelagoes and southern Belith, we might have had a chance to resist before we were brought to this point.”

“And you are the expert on strategy now? Because before this you didn’t pay attention to anything except your clothes and your liquor,” Lahshar snapped.

It was brutal enough that even Tahren blinked and Ziede’s nose wrinkled, but Bashasa didn’t flinch. He smiled and said, “Don’t wave a torch in a grass house, cousin.” He turned back to Ziede. “Now, the vanguarder situation…”

By afternoon they came into sight of the meeting point, an old deserted traveler’s refuge far to the east of Seidel-arik. It was a round tower of brick and stone, only a few levels high, sat astride the remnants of the road, the lower part forming an arch over it like a gatehouse. The upper two levels were ringed by terraces and balconies to catch the cool breeze. Open paddocks for riding animals surrounded it, their stone walls crumbling, with a few scattered stone sheds and small wooden guesthouses that had begun to collapse with age.

The vanguarders who had first reached it several days ago had reported that the place had been deserted for years, but its troughs and basins were still filled by the nearby wellspring. It was a perfect rendezvous point. To Kai’s eye it was also indefensible so it was a good thing Bashasa didn’t intend to stay long enough to need to defend it.

The troop moved into the overgrown paddocks and began to set up camp, something they were all very familiar with by now. A vanguarder arrived and reported that Prince-heir Vrim’s troop was not far behind her. Bashasa left his horse with the outguard’s wranglers and headed in to the caravanserai with his cadre to meet with the advance vanguarders who were already here. Kai and Ziede split off with Kai’s cadre to help set up an outer perimeter while Tahren went with the outguard to plan sentry posts.

They started the long loop around the caravanserai’s outer paddocks, Ziede using her wind-devils to see for longer distances over the fields and Kai watching for any threats lingering near the ruined buildings or half-tumbled walls. There was so much death in these lands now, it attracted unwanted attention. From things that had long been dormant in the silent isolated places of the world, from things cut off from the underearth when the Hierarchs closed the passage to it. Creatures that might have been harmless but had been transformed by hunger, or from being cut off from the forms left behind there.

Kai was a creature cut off from the form he had left behind there, but he had been in a mortal body too long to feel any kind of urge to eat mortal flesh. He missed his mortal family, all dead, and his grandmother, who was trapped in the underearth now. Trapped there forever, since the legionaries had burned her mortal body.

And he missed the sense of being able to shift shape, to travel effortlessly. He shook off the useless thoughts as Cerala called him over to look at something strange, which turned out to be a cache of dead lizards.

Kai rode back to Ziede, who wore a preoccupied expression as she listened to the wind-devils. “Not a lizard-killing horror then,” she said absently.

“Not today.” They were about three-quarters of the way done, and the sky was beginning to cloud over. Kai was getting hungry enough that the unseasoned millet porridge the supply train would make for dinner seemed appetizing. They needed to kill an expositor who happened to be carrying some bags of peppercorns. “They’re doing well, though, looking for signs of things they haven’t seen before.”

“Ibel has been helpful, teaching the outguard what to watch for.” Ibel was one of Amabel’s relatives. She spoke Imperial well enough to teach, though her lungs were bad and it kept her from being able to work as a vanguarder. Ziede added, “I find it somewhat encouraging that there are any Witches left east of the mountains. I thought they were all dead.”

Ziede had taught in the cloisters of the Khalin Islands, which had been completely wiped out. From what Kai had been told, the Hierarchs had attacked the archipelagoes and barrier islands first. He wondered if there was anybody still alive on any of the islands on the Erathi trade routes. He said, “Most of the Witches west of the mountains are dead too.”

Those Witches had lived with the borderlanders who came to fight the Hierarchs with the Saredi. That alliance had moved swiftly, driving the occupying legionaries out of the Erathi coastal towns and then chasing them into the hills. But they had no warning of the power of the Well of the Hierarchs, and had been destroyed almost in one stroke. If the Saredi captains had had any concept of the Hierarchs’ great weapon, they would never have allowed the borderlanders and the clans to gather in force. They would have stayed in their hundreds of small groups and harried the legions until the Witches and their allies in the underearth came up with some way to destroy the Well or defend against it. But the grasslands had never traded much with the east past the mountains; they hadn’t even known of the invaders until the Hierarchs had come ashore in Erathi.

Bashasa is right, Kai thought. Like the Arike, isolation had killed the Saredi too.

“There have to be other Witches in this region,” Ziede said, turning her horse to continue on their route.

“The smart ones are hiding somewhere far away from here.” Kai knew more about scouting than he did about being an expositor or a Witch, and his attempts to use intentions didn’t always work. When an Immortal Blessed ascension raft had appeared in the sky as they were leaving the Kagala, he had tried to set it on fire and failed. Ziede had used wind-devils to force it to crash, and then Tahren had killed the two Immortal Blessed who had survived, but she only reached them after they killed seven Arike and wounded a dozen others. Ziede meant to teach Kai more about Witchcraft, but they had been fighting or moving continuously since the Kagala, and there hadn’t been much time.

Ziede’s glance was dry. “Are you saying we aren’t smart, Kai?”

“I’m saying we’re something and smart isn’t it.” He squinted up at the sky. Damp was settling into the air like a wet cotton veil. The wind had died away and gray clouds sank down low over the grassland. “Sky’s about to break.” On the Saredi plains, weather like this meant soon thunder would crash and rain would plunge down to drown the gullies and flood the riverbeds. Over by the rubble of the outer wall, late arrivals from Prince-heir Hiranan’s troop were hurrying to get the tents staked down and their gear under cover.

“Hmm,” Ziede commented. She sniffed the air. “Perhaps.”

When they finished their circuit, Nirana took Kai and Ziede’s horses so they could join Bashasa in the caravanserai.

The grass in the paddocks was already stamped down, and the scent of it left a drift of sweetness on the air, despite the horses, wallwalkers, and sweaty people. Most of the tents were up, their placement organized by the cadres and the outguard.

Kai and Ziede walked up to the main building where it arched over the old road. In the righthand arch, two heavy battered wooden doors had been wedged open. These led into a big half-circle hall where high narrow windows let in enough daylight to see elaborate piecework metal lamps mounted on the walls, now rusted and broken. A stone stairwell in the back curved upward. The tile floor was mostly covered with drifts of dirt, but there was no smell of decay, or a sense of anything foul. It was just an empty shell, now filled with a lot of people standing around talking or being sent off on various errands.

Most of the remaining furniture was broken and shoved off to the side in a pile, but some intact wooden tables had been stacked up to make a map stand. Kai would need to look at it later; right now it was surrounded by vanguarders taking notes and making annotations.

“I wonder what that’s about,” Ziede murmured.

Kai saw Bashasa stood near the stairwell, speaking with Prince-heir Hiranan. From their faces … “Nothing good,” Kai said. She leaned on her crutch, her face tense and intent. And that was not the expression Bashasa wore when he was absorbing important information; it was the one he wore when he was hearing something potentially disastrous and trying not to react to it.

Arava, Bashasa’s cadre leader, strode through the crowd. “Sister Ziede, Fourth Prince, the Prince-heir asks for you to attend the meeting about to be called.” She gestured them to another open doorway, this one leading into a smaller side room.

It was equally dusty but empty except for some baggage piled up against the far wall. Some group probably intended to sleep here, from the bedrolls and packs. There were also supplies needed by all the troops, like maps, more maps, cases of writing and mapmaking supplies and paper. It wasn’t Bashasa’s belongings; he traveled as light as Kai and Ziede did, using the same shoulder bag one of his cadre had carried for him from the Summer Halls. Though Kai knew that he had saved some things belonging to his family and had cached them somewhere outside Benais-arik before they left.

Bashasa came in almost on their heels and said, “Thank you, Arava, if you could summon the others?”

As she left, Bashasa gestured them away from the doors and said, “Quickly, before the others arrive, it’s not good news. Renitl-arik is in revolt. They have killed their usurper and are fighting in the streets.”

“What?” Ziede said, keeping her voice low. “The fools—Do they have any idea of the risk?”

“I thought Prince-heir Stamash said he wouldn’t do that,” Kai said, thinking he didn’t seem like an idiot. Stamash had been with them in the Hostage Courts, though Kai had never exchanged many words with him. After the Kagala, he had gone to his city with his cadre to raise support for Bashasa and organize the city guilds. There had been messages from him, but nothing about this. Allowing the usurpers to believe they were still mostly in control of the cities was the only way to keep the Hierarchs from ordering their destruction. The only other choice was to evacuate. Bashasa had made that choice for Benais-arik, since it was bound to be the Hierarchs’ prime target. “What happened?”

“I’m not sure. He must have lost control of the situation.” Bashasa was grim. “If Stamash has done this on purpose, he is making a shit job of it.” He shook his head. “We could lose all of them.”

He meant all of Renitl-arik, and any of its surrounding villages and towns that hadn’t been destroyed already. Kai wished he was better at comforting people. Bashasa always seemed to know what to do and what to say. Kai said, “We’ll have to move faster,” and winced at the inadequacy of it.

Bashasa squeezed his shoulder absently. “My thought as well.”

“Are you going to tell the other Prince-heirs?” Ziede asked. Her expression was already resigned. Her home had surrendered, and still been wiped out. She knew better than anyone how many lives hung on a Hierarch’s whim.

“After we finish speaking to the envoys,” Bashasa told her. He seemed to realize he still had his hand on Kai’s shoulder and removed it. “I don’t want to delay that meeting, it would not look well for us.”

Trenal, who had stationed herself at the doorway, coughed to warn them just before Lahshar entered with Dasara on her heels.

Lahshar looked around with a grim expression, as one of her cadre followed her in and began to arrange some folding camp stools. These turned out to be for the envoys from Belith and Ilver and the three Enalin messengers, who arrived next. Clearly still disturbed about Renitl-arik, Ziede started to pace, the fabric of her wide cotton pants swishing as she walked. Kai couldn’t let himself think about it, he had seen too many burned ruins, too many empty places that had been full of life and possibility.

Tahren came in and took a position back against the wall where chipped and faded paint was all that remained of a mural. She frowned a little worriedly in Ziede’s direction, as if she could tell something was wrong. Kai had seen Dahin briefly in the supply train, helping some of the physicians unpack.

Hiranan and Vrim and the shield-bearers of the outguard entered last, and Bashasa waited for them to greet the others before pulling a cloth map out of his coat pocket and unfolding it. Two of the shield-bearers came to take the map and hold it up against the wall so everyone could see it. Tahren caught Ziede’s arm to stop her pacing. With a pinched expression, Lahshar drew breath to speak, caught Hiranan’s gaze, and let the breath out.

Kai watched Bashasa put a confident, serious smile in place and turn to the envoys. “Our southern allies know we are waiting for the Enalin forces to join us before we can begin moving southwest. But there is something we must do first.” He stepped to the map. “There is a Hierarch fort outside Descar-arik. It is called Dashar, as was the town the legionaries destroyed near it.” Kai didn’t need to lean forward with the others; he had already memorized this map. The city was on the eastern coast, and the fort was just outside it. “They use it to control a junction of trade roads and canals that converge on Descar-arik for its sea trade. If we are to follow our plan to strike toward the fighting in Palm and join the rest of our allies, we have to pluck it off our back.”

There was murmuring among the envoys, some of which was on the dubious side. The leader of the Belith waited for the initial reaction to die down. She said, “Take the Hierarch fort, but not the city?” Her gaze flicked to the other Arike leaders. “This is acceptable?”

Kai still didn’t know much about eastern politics, it was just too different from how the Saredi settled disputes and how demon Houses of the underearth did anything. But he thought it was obvious the Belith wanted some kind of confirmation that the Arike city-states wouldn’t use the growing militias to free their own territory and then leave everyone else to suffer the consequences. As if that would work, Kai thought. As if the Hierarchs wouldn’t come back for the Arike once everyone else was dead.

Vrim, who was the son of the murdered Prince-heir of Descar-arik, seemed to understand her reluctance. He said, “Our people know what happened in the Summer Halls and the Kagala, our vanguarders made sure of that. Descar-arik will wait until the legions are drawn away by the fighting to the southwest, then the city will rise.”

Hiranan said, “As Seidel-arik plans, as well.” She leaned on her crutch, not bothering with the camp stool someone had set out for her. Kai had never seen her sit when anyone else was standing. She added, “If we stop to help our own cities, it will give the Hierarchs time to come for us. Time in which they may decide our labor isn’t worth the risk and slaughter all of us. The way they have been destroying the smaller settlements all through this region.”

Bashasa nodded agreement, and turned to the Belith envoy to add, “Removing this fort is one of the ways we protect our cities. But the effort of our primary forces must focus on attacking the Hierarch strongholds in Palm and Belith. We must eliminate the individual Hierarchs. They are the only ones who can use the power of their Voice to slay whole cities.” Bashasa made an open-handed gesture toward the map. “Aside from the other considerations, we need more horses, and more wallwalkers for fast movement. This fort will give them to us.”

The meeting ended with agreement on the points that Bashasa needed it on and the envoys showing some evidence of being reassured, as much as any reassurance was possible now. The Enalin messengers hadn’t commented but they were only here to take news and information back to the Tescai-lin and their forces in Enalin.

When the envoys left, Bashasa told the Prince-heirs about Renitl-arik. He finished with, “This news Hiranan has brought us is very grave, and will change our timeline. But our attack on the fort will have the added benefit now of a distraction for Renitl-arik. We can hope it will give them time to…” Bashasa made a helpless gesture.

“Follow the damn plan before they all die,” Lahshar muttered.

Kai had expected the others to be more vocal, more upset. Maybe even to try to advocate for changing the plan to go to Renitl-arik’s defense. It would be hopeless, but that didn’t mean no one would suggest it. But no one did. Even Dasara, who could usually be counted on to repeat things other people had already said. Hiranan watched with an opaque expression, Vrim rubbed his face and looked away. The others were quiet, resigned.

Bashasa nodded. “It’s getting late, and I know you all have tasks. We will speak again together tomorrow.”

The Prince-heirs and their soldiers left, and Ziede followed Tahren out. Kai stayed behind, busying himself with folding up the maps Bashasa kept on his person. Someone had brought Bashasa a portable writing desk and he sat down on the floor with it in his lap, making his last notes. Lahshar’s people had carried off all the stools, which was typical. Outside the light was starting to fail, the room growing shadowy. “Ah, it really is getting late.” Bashasa squinted at his lapdesk in annoyance. “I only said that to get them to leave.”

Dusting off his hands, Kai glanced over at him. “Do you want me to get a lamp?”

“No, no, thank you, Kai. I’ll just finish this and go.” He bent to his work again. “I need to check over the camp.”

Kai sat down across from him, watching Bashasa finish a last line, then start fanning the ink to dry it. The main room was quieter, as most people had left for duties or dinner. The groups meeting there now were some of the civilians who helped manage the supply networks between the troops and the refuges for city dwellers and villagers who had fled their homes. It seemed a good time to ask a possibly pointed question. “I know why Lahshar hates me, but why does she hate you?”

Bashasa lifted his brows in mock surprise. “Lahshar hates you?” At Kai’s expression, he sighed. “She was passed over for much of her youth. Her martial skills were never up to the standards of the others. My sister, years younger than her, would win every time they were matched. Because of this, her family gave precedence to her brothers, and Lahshar fell behind in the accomplishments expected of Prince-heirs because her education was neglected. My and my sister’s educations were not neglected, and we were held up as examples to her of what she should strive for but it was always implied she would never attain.” He shrugged. “I was also a very annoying person, when I was younger, I suppose.” He started to collect his papers, sorting which ones to stuff in his pockets and which to tuck inside the lapdesk.

Kai pretended to find this dubious. “Only when you were younger?”

“I learned the error of my ways, as some of us have.” Bashasa rolled up a document and used it to lightly bop Kai on the head. “It probably bothered her the most that I did nothing with my accomplishments except go to parties. And sit in the city assembly and occasionally nod off.”

“And that’s why you’re both still alive.” From Bashasa’s wry expression, it was the correct guess. Kai pushed to his feet, suppressing a groan. The bruises from rolling around in the rocky streambed had healed almost immediately but Talamines’ body seemed to remember them too well. He stretched, trying to get the muscles in his back to release. “Karanis didn’t see you or Lahshar as threats.”

Bashasa was looking up at him with a half smile. “In his defense, I didn’t see him as much of a threat either. Which is why the Hierarchs chose him.” He asked, honestly curious, “And do you hate Lahshar?”

“Not really.” Kai found himself smiling. Lahshar was not the least hesitant to be rude to his face, she wasn’t afraid of him. Which meant they could work together. “Not compared to the Hierarchs.” He held out a hand. Bashasa took it and Kai hauled him to his feet. “She’s just a very annoying person.”

Bashasa swayed a little as if Kai had pulled him up too fast, and Kai steadied him.

From the doorway, Trenal said, “Prince-heir, the Enalin messengers want to meet with you.” She sounded a little incredulous. “They said a bird just brought a message?”

Bashasa huffed out a breath, as if irritated at the interruption, and stepped back. “Yes, I’ll come right away.”

Two

Kai retrieved some cushions from the chests and slumped comfortably in the Hierarch’s carved chair on the dais in the retiring room, eating palm fruit and reading.

The Cloister Witches returned to carry in some rolled-up mattresses. Then Sanja took charge and unpacked all the chests, and with the Witches’ help seemed to be setting up the rooms to her satisfaction. She went in and out wearing various combinations of the stored jewelry, sweeping, rolling out rugs in the retiring room, finding charcoal for the braisers, unwrapping the drinking set. Then two Witches moved a carved wooden divan to the retiring room from the back of the suite, and Sanja directed them where to put it. It appeared she had learned enough Witchspeak to give people orders. Kai told her, “You know they aren’t servants, they just live here.”

“I know,” Sanja said as the Witches stuffed the frame with cushions and another pair carried in a second divan. “I tried to give them some of our money, but they wouldn’t take it.”

Kai gave up and went back to his reading. Dahin’s package had turned out to be a sheaf of pages stitched together with heavy thread. At first Kai thought it was the beginning of another history, like the ones Dahin had written years ago, but more personal; it started with a recollection of Dahin’s time in the hostage courts of the Summer Halls. But it was more than that; it was an explanation of his theories about the Hierarchs’ homeland, which had always been thought to be somewhere in the Capstone of the World near Sun-Ar. Dahin had said his thoughts were unformed; this manuscript, written in neat Old Imperial with a lot of crossouts, was where he had evidently been trying to organize them.

The theories Dahin had outlined to Kai didn’t seem unformed; they built toward a conclusion that just needed a little more proof to seem inevitable.

Sanja reappeared wearing a silk wrap-tunic with beaded hems and a pair of cotton pants only a little too big. Someone had helped her fix her hair back into twists and she wore a figured gold head band set with tiger eye and carnelian which Kai had last seen on the dead body of the Hierarch servant-noble in charge of destroying the contents of Benais-arik’s scholars guild libraries. He hoped whoever had cleaned the gore off it had done a good job.

Sanja carefully set a cup of saffron milk on the arm of the throne. It was from the drinking set, a very fine one of clear glass veined with brilliant red pigment with polished copper holders. Odd how Kai remembered that hair band, seen for only one fraught moment, but not this drinking set. Was it his or Ziede’s, had it been a gift? Had he ever actually seen it before it had been packed away or had he used it every day and just forgotten it, along with everything else he had tried to forget?

Shaking him out of his thoughts, Sanja said, “Do you know when the others are going to be back? Satli said they want to make fried cakes.”

Kai reached for Ziede again, felt a sense of disgruntled relief that wasn’t his own. “I think they’re on the way.”

When Kai heard the others come up the steps into the audience room, late afternoon had just touched the edge of evening and the hooting of tree frogs had joined the cicada chorus. Ziede had used her pearl to tell him that all was well, but it was still a relief.

Ziede swept in and through the anteroom, waving a hand. “Is the bath working? Good.” She vanished through the archway into the back of the suite, Tenes in her wake. Tahren followed at a more sedate pace and dropped down onto the divan near the windows, letting out her breath in a long sigh.

Kai closed Dahin’s book, marking his place with a finger. “How was the council?”

She frowned, rubbing the bridge of her nose. Kai had seen Tahren in various states of exhaustion, repressed fury, and frustration, and this was definitely a combination of all of those. She said, “The effect of the failed Imperial Renewal was obvious. The council hall had been rearranged, to remove Benais-arik’s seat from the center of the circle and return it to its old place among the rest of the speakers. Bashat was very good at pretending nothing particularly unusual had happened, and all the other speakers seemed very polite about it. If a throne had made an appearance at any point, it had been discreetly removed.”

Though Kai had the Enalin ambassador’s word that Bashat’s bid for Imperial control had failed, it was unexpectedly reassuring to have this confirmation, seen with Tahren’s eyes if not his own. “Good. And Bashat must have been delighted to see you back so soon.” They knew Bashat had revealed the Nient-arik faction’s conspiracy with Immortal Blessed Faharin and his people just before the failed Imperial renewal vote. Bashat would have expected Tahren to return with Ramad, who had been tasked with locating her. Bashat was a strategist who kept his head; he might not have anticipated that the conspirators would panic and make their situation worse when they realized they had been discovered. And Ramad had had no opportunity to send a message until Kai left him at the river trading post yesterday.

“Bashat was expert at concealing his consternation.” Tahren’s expression turned sardonic. “Vanguarders had been sent to search for me throughout the coalition, and the speakers were expecting reports of their progress, not for Saadrin and me to walk in with the warden of Nibet House and one of the conspirators’ minions as a prisoner.”

Kai almost wished he had seen it. “It caused a sensation.”

“It did. Saadrin took the speaker’s circle at the Enalin ambassador’s invitation and told the story as she knew it. Then she vowed to find every member of the Blessed who had participated in the treachery and bring them to justice before all the Rising World.” Tahren grimaced. Like Kai, she had worn out much of her interest in vengeance over the years. “It will keep her busy, at least. Setar-en said the speakers for Nient-arik had already offered formal apologies and reparations on behalf of their erring countrymen. Setar-en thought they were sincere; two are from the artisan and farmer guilds, only one is a Prince-heir.”

“That’s interesting.” If the old Prince-heir families were losing ground in Nient-arik, that would explain why a faction had split off and made this bid for power. Besides the fact that Bashat’s own bid for power had stirred up old feuds and given hope to greedy fools like the Immortal Blessed Faharin. “They must be scrambling to clean their house.”

“One would hope.” Tahren continued, “The Immortal Blessed speakers maintained deeply embarrassed stoic silence, for the most part. They were horrified to see Saadrin. One of them is Garoden, a distant relation. He tried to take the speakers’ circle at one point and a speaker for the Cahar Mountain Alliance suggested that he not ‘make it any worse.’ Amazingly, he heeded their words.”

That would have been a joy to see. In this new body, if Kai had found a way to disguise his eyes, it would have been easy. Vrenren’s eyes had been available, but their temporary truce with Saadrin probably didn’t go that far. “Did Saadrin explain how Faharin died?”

“She said he was killed by a companion who was defending her person.” That was an Immortal Blessed code that meant revealing the name would cause an internecine war, so it was better not to. It was unexpectedly generous of Saadrin; Dahin didn’t need any more attention from the Immortal Patriarchs. The Rising World council wouldn’t care, as they would have turned Faharin over to the Blessed for justice anyway, if he had been brought in as a prisoner. As Vrenren would be, once he testified. Tahren added pensively, “They will assume it was me, which is well enough. Saadrin also did not accuse you and Ziede of stealing that Blessed ship, which frankly surprised me.”

“We did steal it,” Kai said, but they had stolen it from the expositor Aclines, who had received it from an Immortal Patriarch for the purpose of helping destroy the treaty between the Blessed Lands and the Rising World, so Saadrin had possibly not wanted to dwell on that any more than she already had.

“She did tell them you and Ziede freed both of us from the conspirators, though not how. She can’t, without telling them that a finding stone still exists.” Tahren’s expression tightened. “Many suggestions had been made as to why you and Ziede had disappeared before the Imperial Renewal. That you were searching for me, that you were in league with the conspiracy, that you were pretending to be in league with them in order to destroy them.”

There were days when Kai missed his fangs. “That sounds like Bashat’s work.”

“Indeed.” Tahren’s voice was hard as steel. “I clarified that you and Ziede had also been imprisoned, and that you had taken a new form because your former host had been destroyed.” There had been no reason to withhold that information, since Ramad and Cohort Leader Ashem knew and would report to Bashat soon enough. Tahren looked away, pressing her lips together at an unpleasant memory. “I made sure I was meeting Bashat’s gaze. He knows I know.”

Maybe it was better that Kai hadn’t been there after all. Watching Immortal Blessed squirm wasn’t quite worth it. “Bashat must have been relieved when you didn’t denounce him.” Only partly joking, he eyed Tahren. “You didn’t, did you?”

Tahren’s mouth did not quirk even briefly. “I did not. He can stew in uncertainty until his spy Ramad arrives and tells him the rest of the story. Then he can stew in uncertainty forever, knowing that you can destroy him with a few words. Or he’ll try to have you killed.”

Kai shook his head, dismissing it. “He’s not that unwise.”

Tahren didn’t comment on that. “As we were leaving, the Enalin envoy indicated that there was not as much support for Benais-arik’s Imperial ambitions as Bashat might have hoped. Once the Enalin’s opposition was announced, most of the other speakers followed their lead.”

Bashat must have had some inkling that his plan wasn’t favored. “That’s why he wanted to use the Nient-Blessed conspiracy to promote himself.”

“Yes.” Tahren met Kai’s gaze. “I know you were once charged with Bashat’s protection, but I would like to strangle the little shit.”

At that opportune moment, Ziede walked in, her brow furrowed in confusion. Her hair was wrapped up in a towel and she wore a bathing robe. She looked as if she might have just flung herself into the bath basin and climbed out again. Sanja trailed out after her, yawning. Ziede demanded, “Did we leave it like this? I thought everything was packed or stored.”

Tahren frowned down at the divan she was sitting on as if she had just noticed it.

“Sanja and some of the Cloister Witches unpacked,” Kai told her.

“Good.” Ziede smiled down at Sanja, then did a double take. “Take off that hair piece, I’ll find you a better one.”

As they were sharing out the food that the Cloister Witches had brought, Ziede made everyone take real baths, with soap and the fragrant oils for hair and skin, not that they needed much persuading.

By the time Kai finished his, the twilight sky had darkened and the breeze turned cool, and someone had lit the old stone candlelamps. Once he had wrangled the still damp curling mass of his hair into some sort of order with a couple of bronze pins from the assortment Sanja had unpacked, he walked back out to the retiring room. Sanja had gorged on fried cakes and fallen asleep on a divan, with an old silk court coat for a blanket. Ziede and Tahren sat on the other divan, leaning into each other, and Tenes curled on a stone window seat looking out onto the moonlit canal. She was wrapped up in an Enalin-style painted caftan, which Kai also had no memory of seeing before, let alone packing it away when they left this place. Kai took the opposite side of the window seat and signed to her, feeling better?

With the dirt washed away, the bruises stood out against her pale skin, but she signed an assent. This place is lovely. Will we stay here long?

For tonight at least, Kai told her. Why? Did you want to stay?

I spoke to some of the Cloister Witches. One called Adenhar thinks I look like someone she knows in the stone hill country of Palm. She said that there are others there who can speak to the earth like I do, and some have my eyes.

“That’s good news,” Kai said aloud, but she seemed a little troubled by it. He signed, Isn’t it?

She hesitated, and signed, I also wish to stay with you and Ziede and Sanja.

If you can find your family, you should, he told her. There had to be people missing her. Unless Aclines had killed them all, but he wasn’t going to say it. There was no way that hadn’t already occurred to her. Even if you decide to leave with us again afterward.

She still looked uneasy. What if they don’t want me back? I was an expositor’s familiar. I’m afraid of what they might think of me.

Families are terrifying, Kai agreed. He couldn’t reassure her on that score. Think about it, there’s no hurry.

“I don’t want to move, possibly for the next century.” Ziede yawned. She nudged Tahren. “Do you think you’ll need to return to the council?”

“They may still have questions. I’m not sure I have much intention of answering them,” Tahren admitted. “The situation seems stable now, from what I was told and what I observed. Before Saadrin and I interrupted, the council was in the process of finally admitting the Cloud Islands as a full member of the coalition.”

Ziede told Kai, “There was no attempt to suggest any replacement for Bashat. Apparently getting yourself voted in as emperor and then decisively voted out again was not a journey any of the other speakers are eager to embark on. Not that they’d be able to. If the Grale speaker tried something like that the whole southern region would simultaneously burst into riot.”

Kai wasn’t so sure of that. “In the old days, maybe.” The Arike Prince-heirs were in the best position to pull off a power grab, as evidenced by how far Bashat had gotten. The members of the Rising World coalition were governed in many different ways, and many of the speakers didn’t have that kind of inherited power and support. “Too many of them don’t remember anything but the Rising World. They’ve gotten complacent.”

The clever thing Bashat had done in his tenure as emperor was that he hadn’t fundamentally changed the way the Rising World coalition worked. Bashasa’s post-war food distribution schemes were still in place, coalition resources still went to all the various ministrant guilds, to teaching archives and libraries, to safeholds and hospitals. The rules governing trade and criminal punishments and forbidding indenture and slavery were the same. The coalition still settled disputes by arbitration in assemblies and not by force. Anyone could still go to a Rising World council hall and appeal for help or redress. But Bashat, through means subtle and blatant, had made himself seem the source of all that. That these things were gifts instead of something that had been fought for, as they had taken the world back from the Hierarchs step by blood-soaked step. Instead of something built by years of work by Bashasa and the Tescai-lin and Prince-heir Hiranan and all the others across the Arik and Enalin and Palm and Belith and Ilveri and Grale and beyond who had made the coalition into something that could last.

Kai said, “Do you want to leave tomorrow?” He could make that happen. He knew where to go to find someone willing to lend or rent them a boat that could take them to Bardes-arik on the canal, and from there they could buy their own transport under less scrutiny. “There’s something I need to do tonight, but we could start off in the morning.”

Tahren glanced at Ziede, smiled, and said, “Let’s decide that when we wake up.”

Ziede eyed Kai. She had obviously noted that he hadn’t said what he needed to do. “What did Dahin give you so surreptitiously?” Tahren lifted her brows in surprise. She hadn’t seen Dahin pass the package to Kai.

“It’s a journal of what he’s been working on.” Kai explained, “He was at the Summer Halls trying to uncover a wall carving in one of the Hierarchs’ sanctuaries. There was a map there. He thought it might show the Hierarchs’ home, or the route they took to get here.”

Tenes was listening alertly. Kai wasn’t sure how much of her education Aclines had left her when he took her memories. Much of this might be new information to her. She signed, Didn’t they land in the Arkai, at the deserted city we saw?

“That was one of the places, yes.” The Hierarchs had first landed in the Arkai, then spread out north and west overland, while hitting multiple cities along the east and south coast. Dahin had theories about that too. “And we know they came through the south continent. But before that, it’s all speculation.”

Ziede watched him thoughtfully. “From your expression, this isn’t just another history.”

“Wait.” Tahren’s brow furrowed. “When you say uncovering—”

“He was diving in the flooded rooms. Not under the weed mat, but still. He obviously thought it was important.” As a Lesser Blessed, Dahin wouldn’t be infected by any of the number of waterborne diseases that caused mortals to vomit or shit themselves to death without proper treatment. He could still have drowned, though.

“The weed mat.” Tahren winced but didn’t otherwise comment. “And did he find what he was looking for?”

“Partly. He has a lot of sources noted here. He was searching archives all over the east.” So many archives had been destroyed by the Hierarchs, it made this kind of search difficult. It was one of the reasons that Bashasa had made sure the Rising World put resources into rebuilding the libraries as soon as the war was over. “He thinks the Enalin who went to Sun-Ar were wrong about where the Hierarchs came from.”

Ziede’s expression was closing in, turning worried; she clearly saw the direction this was going. Tahren, exhausted and liking to have things clearly spelled out, said, “And he thinks this is important because…”

It still gave Kai a chill in his spine to say this aloud. “Because if the Enalin were looking in the wrong place, then they were wrong about there being no trace of the Hierarchs in the Capstone of the World. They could still be up there.”

The Past: the Hazard

… it should be known, the first great war was between demons and the mortals who became witches …

—Scrap of document in written Saredi, found in Ada-behar archives, in the Witchlands

It still hadn’t rained by nightfall and the air was damp and pent with energy when Kai started a last round of the encampment. He liked to make certain that everyone he was directly responsible for was where they were supposed to be or otherwise accounted for, and that they had some opportunity to eat or sleep if possible. It was habit from being Kai-Enna, a Saredi chief of scouts who led demons and mortals.

This entailed visiting his Arike cadre at their various posts. They always urged him to go rest himself, but they didn’t seem to mind it when he stopped to check on them. Before the Hierarchs, the Saredi hadn’t fought a war since Grandmother’s treaty with the underworld, but the captains understood the value of making sure everyone knew in their bones that they would be missed and searched for if something happened to them.

So tonight Kai walked out past the paddocks to check with Arsha and Hartel at their sentry posts and then headed back into the main camp. No one was allowed open fires after sunset and by this time the encampment was blanketed in darkness. Kai’s ability to see in the dark had been left behind with Enna, though he thought he was still a little better at it than most mortals. The moon was full somewhere above the clouds and just enough light came through to outline shapes. Kai found himself navigating more by the scents: oiled canvas and leather, pungent crushed grasses, the nutty soap most Arike used, the lavender oil that was supposed to keep bugs away, and traces of horse dung on boots. The horses liked to bury their dung but they tended to not be very good at it.

The civilians from the various city guilds and the envoys had made their camps inside the caravanserai’s shelter. Bashasa and Hiranan and the other Prince-heirs kept to their usual practice and slept with their cadres and the outguard and the rest of the troops in small nondescript tents, now pitched in the field on the caravanserai’s north side.

Kai walked around to the supply train where it was camped up against the innermost paddock’s wall. He circled around the field where the giant wallwalkers munched on waist-deep grass; it only came up to the tops of their clawed feet. With the breeze negligible, their musky stench hung in the air.

The jumbled collection of supply train tents were domes of oilcloth staked into the flattened grass, and most were closer together than the soldiers pitched theirs; some of the Prince-heirs’ various cadres were still divided by old rivalries that didn’t seem to matter to the rest of the Arike. Only a few carefully shielded candlelamps lit the way between the tents, groups gathered around each one, talking quietly or drinking or finishing up a late meal. They watched Kai go by, but only the sentries walking their patrol acknowledged him.

Kai crossed in front of a tent where the group gathered outside all went silent as he passed. Amabel sat alone outside the Witches’ little collection of tents, cradling a battered metal cup in their hands. Kai sat down in front of them, catching a scent of anise. Amabel smiled and signed in Witchspeak, All is well, Fourth Prince. They were young, short like an Arike but with the more amber skin that was common in the borderlands and the west. Their dark hair had been braided into a neat cap around their head. They were wearing an Enalin caftan and robe, probably to make them less conspicuous on their journey or just because their old clothes had finally worn out.

Are you in for the night? Kai signed back.

No, I am to patrol later. Amabel offered the cup of anise-flavored water to Kai.

Kai refused it with a thank-you gesture. Has Mother Hiraga read any more messages? They were the elder who had seen the fall of the Summer Halls in running water and had guided their family to meet Bashasa at the river. To meet the future, Kai reminded himself, because the exact wording of these things was important.

Amabel’s brow furrowed. Mother has not. They haven’t been talking lately. Isa says Mother has dust in their throat but they can’t figure out why.

That was concerning for more than a few different reasons. Does Isa think Mother needs a mortal doctor, or is it a portent?

From Amabel’s expression, they had been asking themself the same question. Fourth Prince knows portents are unreliable at best. And if this is one, it defies all our effort to interpret it. With the air of coming to a decision on a thorny issue, Amabel added, Perhaps a mortal doctor might be for the best.

Tonight? Kai asked. There were several physicians among the Prince-heirs’ followers, and Kai actually almost trusted Bashasa’s. I can bring one.

Mother is asleep and won’t like being woken. Tomorrow is soon enough. Amabel smiled again. Fourth Prince cares for us.

That made Kai wince, possibly because his failure with the demons of the Cageling Court still sat in his heart like shards of rock. He said, It’s my duty, as a sub-captain to Prince-heir Bashasa.

Unimpressed, Amabel snorted, and made a throw-away gesture, refusing Kai’s words

Kai wasn’t going to argue with them. He signed a good night but before he could stand, an Arike from the group at the nearby tent came toward them. The person, young, dressed like a man, hesitated a few steps away, then eased closer and said, in broken Imperial, “Amabel, would give him this?”

Amabel nodded and held out their hand. The Arike moved close enough to drop something into Amabel’s palm and then retreated hastily back to his own group.

Amabel held it out to Kai, who leaned closer to see. It was a little metal trinket, barely the length of the tip of one of Amabel’s calloused fingers, shaped vaguely like a sitting person. It had an elaborate headdress or helmet, and something like a javelin gripped in one hand and an urn-shaped vessel in the other. “What is that?” Kai said aloud.

Amabel shrugged. They said in Imperial, “They give them to us, different shapes. Are they coins, luck tokens, spirit symbols?” They shrugged again. “We have nothing to give back.”

Kai knew the supply train had been grateful for the Witches’ ability to find springs and to chase away the malevolent spirits that sometimes clustered around them. Whatever it was, it seemed harmless and well-meant. He held out his hand and let Amabel drop the little figure into it.

Kai knew his cadre had set up a tent for him and Ziede to one side of Bashasa’s and for Tahren and Dahin on the other, though he hadn’t been by that part of the camp yet. They did it for Tahren because she had refused the offer of a cadre—partly because she didn’t need one and partly because there were a host of political ramifications around the idea of putting Arike soldiers under the command of an Immortal Marshall, even a disgraced Immortal Marshall who was a traitor to the Blessed. Apparently nobody had ever given a cadre to a demon before so those political ramifications didn’t apply to Kai. Ziede hadn’t accepted one because she did most of her scouting from the air and could only carry one or two people with her, and that not for long. Also, Kai suspected she just preferred to work alone most of the time.

Kai found his way through the clumps of tents in the dark. The occasional glow of a shielded lamp lit the stamped-down grass, and it was quiet except for rustling and soft half-heard conversations. As he neared Bashasa’s camp, he heard familiar voices.

“My friend Cerala, how many Hierarchs’ heads did the good Prince-heir of Descar-arik take, do you recall?”

“My memory is excellent, friend Nirana, I believe it was exactly none.”

Kai sighed, and followed the sound to a narrow corridor between sheets of canvas that led into a circle of tents where a little candlelight glowed. He stepped around one of Bashasa’s cadre, who nodded to him as he passed. She was expertly coiling extra tent rope around her right forearm, which ended in a stump.

Only two shielded lamps were lit, but it was enough to see Nirana and Cerala outside Kai and Ziede’s tent, and Bashasa’s cadre busy straightening up the area, packing away unneeded gear, and stowing bedrolls.

Nirana continued, “Yes, I believe you are correct, friend Cerala.” Her audience seemed to be several soldiers and civilians lurking on the far side of the circle. “I recall it because exactly none is the same number of expositors that the good Prince-heir of Descar-arik has killed—”

“It isn’t a fair comparison!” a younger voice objected, and Kai snorted a laugh. “The Prince-heir of Benais-arik had help from a demon prince—”

Cerala and Nirana both leapt on that like horses on a snake. “Unfairness! Descar-arik concedes our point and pleads unfairness because they don’t have a demon prince too—”

Someone from Bashasa’s cadre contributed, “I weep for them! Such sadness—”

Another one said, “Excuses aplenty!”

“How do we know that’s true?” a voice said out of the dark. “Isn’t it a lie, so your drunken Prince-heir can stay in command?”

Stillness crashed over the camp like an upended cart. Almost in unison, Bashasa’s cadre turned toward the speaker.

Cerala, her voice suddenly even and deadly cold, said, “Shut your teeth, or I’ll ram them down your throat.”

“I was there, I saw it with my own eyes, you puddle of piss!” Nirana grabbed up a bucket and swung it back to throw.

“We need that bucket.” Kai walked into the dim light.

Nirana stumbled but managed to arrest the bucket’s motion just before letting it fly. The shadowy group of presumably Descar-arik soldiers and hangers-on hastily vanished into the night, and everyone else in the little camp immediately found tasks that needed their attention.

Kai walked past them all and ducked inside his tent. There was a glass lamp already lit in the overhead holder and his and Ziede’s bedrolls were stacked on the ground cloth with their few bags. Kai started arranging things the way they always did, his mind more on that last insult from the Descar-arik, or from whoever it was who had come into the camp with the Descar-arik. He had known for a while that it was a problem, but he had no idea what to do about it.

He had their bedrolls laid out and had sat down on his blanket when the flap rattled. Bashasa’s voice said, “All is well?”

Bashasa made his own rounds to check that all his people were present and accounted for, though he usually confined himself with speaking briefly to the commanders of the different troops and upper cadres. Kai said, “Yes, come in.”

Bashasa ducked inside and threw himself down to sit. His shoulders slumped a little in weariness, and he looked far more tired than he had after the meeting. “Ahh, it has been a long day.”

Kai absently rustled though his bag, old muscle memory from being Kai-enna insisting that when someone visited your tent you had to offer them food. He realized what he was doing and gave up; he didn’t have anything with him, anyway. “There was news from Enalin?”

“There was, and it is somewhat troubling.” He correctly interpreted Kai’s expression and said, “It’s not as bad as what we heard of Renitl-arik. The message came from the commander who is gathering their forces in the northeast. They say the Tescai-lin still wants to join us, but some of their people are reluctant.” Bashasa’s mouth twisted, and the confidence he always wore in public dropped away like a veil. “There are many Enalin who wish to try to retake Nibet first, even though it is of no strategic value at this time.”

Kai winced. It was like the Arike in Benais-arik who had at first wanted Bashasa to free the city-states, with the Hierarchs still waiting to come right back in and conquer them again, or more likely destroy them utterly. There was no point in saying if the Enalin don’t come we’re dead because Bashasa clearly knew that better than he did. Literally dead, as the Hierarchs would continue their plan to wipe out the population of the west, east, and north to take the land and everything on it for themselves. “They have to understand that won’t work.”

“Their commanders certainly understand, as does the Tescai-lin. Perhaps the others understand in their minds but not their guts. The place is sacred to them.” Bashasa rubbed his eyes tiredly.

“Lots of places are sacred. Were sacred,” Kai said.

Bashasa made a gesture. It looked like indifference to Kai, but he knew it was the way the Arike expressed something that seemed to mean yes, but what can anyone do? “The road through this caravansarai used to lead there, did you know? Long ago when Nibet was the home of the first people to call themselves Enalin, before they spread further northwest. It eventually became the center for their worship. Nibet’s ports became closed to trade, only open for pilgrims coming from up and down the coast to visit the place, so the trade all shifted to the roads further west, into the central part of Enalin.”

Kai tried to picture it. “So the whole land was like a temple?”

“Something like that? But people still lived there, as guardians of it. It had become a replica of the sacred country where the Enalin go when they die. So each bit of it had a special meaning, this mountain is such and such, this lake is so and so, down to every pond and stream and rock, I think. And all those who lived there cared for it, and kept the sacred fires alight. It is, or was, a great honor to be born there, but no one was allowed to die there, from what I understand.”

Those rules wouldn’t have stopped the Hierarchs. Kai thought a great many people must have died there. “Did you ever see it? Before?”

“I meant to, for I’ve heard it is—was—a place of great beauty. I am not entirely sure what the Hierarchs did there, if they spared anyone or simply took what they wanted, as usual.” From Bashasa’s expression, he wasn’t thinking of a place he had never been. Kai had seen the state that Benais-arik was in, and he knew how it would feel to someone who had grown up there. The Hierarchs apparently made a great many promises about how the inhabitants of the captured Arike cities would be treated, and very few if any of those promises had been kept.

Bashasa seemed to shake off the memory and added, “The Hierarchs used Nibet as a corridor for invasion, and they captured the Tescai-lin there, which was how they got the Enalin by the throat.” Sighing, he took a flask out of his coat pocket and pulled the cork from it.

As soon as the distilled stink hit the air, Kai was furious. He leaned over and grabbed the flask out of Bashasa’s hand. He said, “No.” He had no plan for this, but he knew it needed to be done, and now was as good a time to start as any.

Bashasa’s expression flashed from incredulous to angry, his brows drawing together. “Kai, give that back.”

Kai didn’t move. “No.”

Bashasa huffed in frustration. He sat back and Kai watched him bring his temper under control. He was obviously marshaling his powers of persuasion. He said reasonably, “Kai, let’s not fight.”

Kai assured him, “No, we’re going to fight.”

Bashasa pressed his lips together in annoyance. Then he tried his flat death glare. It didn’t have anywhere near the impact when he didn’t mean it, when deep down he knew he was in the wrong. “Kai. I am a Prince-heir of Benais-arik. I am due respect.”

Kai tilted his head deliberately. “I’m a Prince of the Fourth House of the underearth. And both our titles are worth nothing until the Hierarchs are dead.”

“I realize that,” Bashasa snapped. Then he blew out a long breath and looked away. They sat in silence for a fraught moment. The fact that Bashasa had no real argument to make said more than Kai could. Bashasa finally said, “Who is the Third Prince?”

Wary, Kai frowned. “What?”

Bashasa clarified, “If you’re the Fourth Prince, who is the third Prince?”

“Tashiatieron of the Third House.” Kai knew Bashasa was de-escalating the situation like the master he was, but he had to add, “I never liked her.”

Bashasa met Kai’s gaze, letting some of his chagrin show. It might have been effective if Kai didn’t know he was just checking to see if Kai’s resolve had failed yet. Bashasa drew breath to speak and Kai said, “I know all your tricks. They don’t work on me.”

Bashasa slumped a little, pretending defeat to try to lure Kai into relaxing his guard. “I don’t use tricks,” he said, grumpy. “I am a reasonable person, I speak reason to others.”

The fact that that was true didn’t change the way Bashasa could wield candor like a weapon. He wasn’t ambitious, he didn’t seem to want anything from anyone that they weren’t willing to give, he had never had anything to conceal. Lahshar tried to stab at his hidden wounds, not realizing Bashasa was more than willing to expose them to the world if it got him closer to his goal. Fortunately for all of them, that goal was keeping as many people alive as he could while destroying the Hierarchs. Kai said, “Then as a reasonable person you know there is no way you can reason me into giving this back to you.”

They stared at each other in silence. Kai saw the moment Bashasa gave in. Actually gave in, not just pretended to give in as a trick. Bashasa’s shoulders relaxed, and he shrugged. “It’s just a crutch. I admit this. Sometimes a person needs a crutch.”

“The wooden thing Hiranan uses to walk is a crutch.” Kai lifted the flask. “This is poison.”

Bashasa’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t try to argue. “I would say it is hard, but of course you know that. It’s hard for everyone.”

Kai snorted, half amused, half wry. “You knew it would be hard. It’s always been hard.”

“I did not expect to be alive for this long!” Bashasa flung his hands in the air. “Who knew this was going to work? That we would get even this far?” He ran a hand through his hair and said, serious this time, “A great many of our people are going to die in this fight, despite all our plans, all our efforts. Even before taking Renitl-arik into account, a disaster in the making I can’t lift a finger to prevent.”

And there were Arike who even now wondered if the fight was worth it, who thought it might be true that the Hierarchs would spare the rest of the Arik city-states, as they had promised. If they only submitted enough, if they gave the Hierarchs what they wanted, if they let the Hierarchs take everything the land had and grind its people into dust. Kai had heard his cadre talk about it. None of them believed the Hierarchs intended any mercy, the cynical veterans of the Hostage Courts that they were. Arsha had said sarcastically, Of course, just because they massacred everyone in Suneai-arik and the Arkai and the Sana-sarcofa and the Witchlands and all the way up the coasts to the north and east and south and west, I’m sure they’ll let us live.

Telare had added seriously, People say the Hierarchs left the far south alive, but those messengers from Palm, they say that’s only what the southern legionaries are made to believe. The coastal traders haven’t seen a civilian southern ship since last summer storm season.

It made Kai’s blood cold. That mortals might huddle in their cities hoping to be safe until the Hierarchs decided to take the land to build another temple to themselves, and came to slaughter every living thing in the way.

Kai pulled the tent’s groundcloth aside and started to dig into the grass and roots. “You have to make them see what you and I and the others see. This isn’t a war like any story from history. This is not something any of us live through, unless we kill the Hierarchs first.” He was just a Saredi scout, when it came down to it, and he didn’t know how to convince anybody of anything without threatening to kill them. “You’re the only one who can do it for the Arike. Like we have to hope the Tescai-lin and the other hostages convince their own people.”

Bashasa’s expression was complicated as he watched Kai pour the contents of the flask into the hole, push the sod back in, and smooth the groundcloth over it again. He seemed to debate what to say, then reached forward and took Kai’s hand, absently brushing the dirt off. “Kai, I have meant to—”

The tent flap pulled aside and Ziede stepped in. Bashasa dropped Kai’s hand and said, “Ah! You’re here!”

Ziede lifted her brows at him. “Yes, you knew I was on my way. Trenal said Vrim’s shield-bearer has a question for you.”

“Yes, of course, of course.” Bashasa pushed briskly to his feet. “I’ll speak to you later. Tomorrow, I mean.” And he ducked out of the tent.

Taking a seat on her own bedroll, Ziede eyed Kai. “Did something happen?”

Kai admitted, “He was going to drink, I took it away from him.”

“Oh.” Ziede looked thoughtful, pulling her bag over and starting to sort through the contents. “Kai, that kind of thing can take up every moment of your time, a whole mortal lifetime.”

Kai picked dirt out of the fringe on his blanket. He knew she was right. “I’ve got a lot of mortal lifetimes to go, I need something to do. Oh, do you know what this is?” He dug in his coat pocket for the little metal figure the person from the supply train had given him. “If it’s a curse, it’s not a very good one.”

“Oh, those are luck tokens, Trenal told me that.” Ziede opened her bag and pulled out a handful. Kai leaned forward to look. Most were the same figure he had, though in slightly different metals and sizes, as if they had been made by different artisans. Some were dissimilar figures entirely, like pieces for a game. Ziede continued, “I try to tell them I don’t have anything to give in return, but they just run away like they’re afraid I’ll give it back. Tahren has been getting them too, since we left Benais-arik.”

Kai rubbed his thumb over the little figure. He still couldn’t feel anything from it. “Are they giving us luck or are they getting the luck from us, in exchange for this?”

Ziede’s laugh was more than half groan. “I have no idea. Are you tired or do you want to work on intentions?”

“Work on intentions, if you want to. They’re starting to pile up and I haven’t had time to figure out what most of them do.” Kai put the figure away and smoothed down his blanket. He carefully set out each intention he had collected that day.

They lay on the brown striped cotton, each one no larger than his palm, wavering bits of thick air marked by those writhing unreadable characters. With a lot of trial and error, he was learning how to pick them apart and read the designs that the expositors had woven to create them. Talamines’ memories had helped, at the beginning, but there was a lot Kai had to figure out for himself.

“How many are new?” Ziede dug a roll of writing paper out of her bag, unwrapping the protective leather cover.

“Four, just from today.” Kai cautiously poked at one, trying to sink into it to see the underlying structure of the design. Even with practice, it was still an uneasy task. These designs had come from the minds of expositors and they were cold and sticky, like falling into pond slime.

“That’s a good amount for one patrol.” Ziede set out her ink and took up her pen. “When you’re ready.”

Kai woke up with Amabel’s sister Kreat leaning over him. He had grabbed her wrist in reflex but his grandmother had trained him too carefully when he was Kai-Enna; he hadn’t taken any of her life just because he was startled, giving him time to recognize her voice and the sense of her presence. She hissed, “Help.” It was one of the few words in Arike or Imperial that she admitted to knowing, usually employed while pointing to something she wanted the soldiers to move for her. He realized she had been repeating it over and over again.

“Help who? What happened?” Kai let her go and sat up, shoving his blanket aside. They had put the light out before going to sleep and it was too dark inside the tent to see Witchspeak. The most recent dead expositor’s life was still hot in Kai’s veins and he held out his hand and called a flame.

A sharp gust of air nearly blew it out as Ziede’s blanket flew aside and she was on her feet.

“Help Amabel,” Kreat said, backing away as light washed over the tent. She looked frightened, brown eyes wide and the color in her skin washed out by the bright flame. She wore what were probably sleep clothes, a too-thin tunic and pants that barely went to her knobby knees. Her hair was wrapped in the gauze scarf she usually used as a veil. Her hands moved rapidly, signing, I went out to keep them company as they walked in patrol. Shapes came out of the east, silent, I don’t know who, why.

“Where is this happening?” Ziede grabbed her coat and shrugged into it, fumbled for her shoes.

Kai shoved to his feet, not bothering with his. He had slept in his shirt and skirt and that was enough to fight in. He flipped open his pack to get to the piece of leather where he had been storing the intentions taken from the dead expositors. He and Ziede had only had time to unravel and interpret one of them, but at least it was a helpful one. He scooped it off the leather and set it on his chest.

Outside the paddock gate to the east, Kreat signed, and darted out the tent flap.

Kai bolted after her, Ziede on his heels, into a night that was ominously quiet, air heavy with the storm still a suppressed, violent energy above them. A flustered Hartel watched Kreat run through the circle of tents in the wan light of the single lamp. She said, “How did she get in? I didn’t see her!”

Kreat might not have much ability to communicate with spirits but she was still Witch-born and had demon in her bloodline, if very distantly. Kai wasn’t surprised she could make herself extremely difficult to notice, even in close quarters. He said, “There’s an attack outside the paddock gate to the east, tell Salatel and Trenal.”

Hartel lunged toward Salatel’s tent and Kai continued after Kreat. Ziede caught his arm and the ground underfoot dropped away as they rose upward.

The wind-devils whirled around them in a rush of air, not even visible as patches of deeper shadow as they flew through the night toward the east end of camp. Hartel’s warning set off a silent wave of darting movement below, as sentries signaled each other with whistles across the dark camp. Shadows moved as soldiers scrambled out of tents. The bulk of the caravanserai seemed quiet, undisturbed. Straining his neck to look all around, Kai couldn’t see any lights on the plain or in the hills, no sign of an approaching army. Legionaries weren’t usually this subtle. “The vanguarders, the sentries,” he remembered. It was taking his brain some time to catch up with his wide-awake body. There should have been more warning than Kreat. “They must have sent in an expositor. More than one.”

“There’s something strange in the air,” Ziede muttered, distracted. “Something’s pulling at the wind.”

Kai was still surveying the camp for signs of panic or attack. The purposeful movement had spread to the supply train’s tents showing how fast the warning was moving through the troops. There was no sound of disturbance from the horse lines or the wallwalkers. “Do you think it’s—”

A crosswind buffeted them, snatching the air out of his lungs. Kai lost his grip on Ziede and tumbled wildly.

He hit the roof of an outbuilding barely visible in the darkness. It cracked under his feet and he let himself collapse into a crouch, keeping his balance. Old wood creaked ominously. Ziede landed far more lightly, like a drifting silkweed blossom. At least Kai had his bearings; they were at the far end of the caravanserai’s old east paddock, probably atop a dilapidated fodder shed. He could hear air rushing in an otherwise still night, the pad of bare feet running on dirt and grass, a gasp, a shout. He whispered to Ziede, “An expositor stole your wind-devils?”

Her voice tight with fury, Ziede said, “No expositor could do that, that was a Witch. More than one.”

“What?” Kai hissed. Then from the ground below, he heard a choking gurgle. He stretched to grab a splintered beam at the roof’s edge, even before he realized it was someone fighting for air.

He swung down and landed in a crunch of dry brush, not caring if anyone heard. He hoped their attackers heard, he hoped they came for him. The clouds overhead still obscured the moon and starlight but there was just enough diffuse glow that he could make out three shapes sprawled on the grassy dirt.

He ran to the one that still clawed feebly at their throat. He felt for a garotte or a neck wound, found nothing, then flipped her over and pounded her on the back. She shuddered in his arms, still straining to breathe. He shifted her so she sat upright and wrapped his arms around her to give her one sharp squeeze. She spit something out and wheezed in enough air to gag. He released her, steadied her when she almost collapsed. She retched and coughed horribly, but she was breathing again. From her battered leather armor, she was an Arike soldier, probably a sentry on patrol, but she was covered with fine dirt or sand, as if she had been buried and dug her way out.

Ziede stood up from checking the two unmoving bodies. “They’re our vanguarders,” she whispered grimly, “both dead.”

Fury came over Kai in a wave, driven by fear. All he could see was the camp of the Saredi and borderlander alliance, slaughtered by the Voice of the Hierarchs. The burned heap the legionaries had made of Kentdessa Saredi. He couldn’t face another overrun camp, another field of familiar dead faces.

He stood and strode forward, away from the paddock wall into the open field beyond. Wind rose out of nowhere, laden with sand. It struck him in a haze of pinprick pain, flattened his clothes to his body, tore through his hair. Not hard enough to throw him off stride, more like a threat, a promise. Kai ground his teeth, wishing he had someone’s neck to bite, and went to the tall pillar that marked the caravanserai’s long collapsed outer gate. He put his hand on the pitted stone and used his pain and fury and the last dead expositor’s life to call heatless fire.

The pillar burst into flame and lit the grassy field like daylight. Kai stepped away from it, letting his eyes adjust. Thirty or so paces away a dozen figures froze, arrested in mid-motion by the sudden unexpected wash of light.

At first Kai couldn’t tell what they were. Wreathed in dust, they looked like spirits, like something strange that had risen out of the ground, drawn by all the death the Hierarchs had brought to the world. He walked forward, the tall grass and sticky seed pods catching at his skirt.

One started toward him, moving further into the circle of light. Kai realized this was a person, or at least something that had taken mortal shape. The dust that floated around their body coated veils worn over the kind of long wrap tunic and wide pants common to the east, the colors obscured. Arike used their clothing to show their gender, but Witches didn’t, at least the Witches Kai had known from the borderlands.

And this had to be a Witch.

The edge of her influence felt like a breath of metallic dust, an itch in the back of Kai’s throat. He had never had a Witch try to exert power over him and it wasn’t one last stick on an already abraded back, but it was close. He smiled a little, not kindly, and said in Imperial, “Are you trying to put a cantrip on me, Sister? I can barely feel it.”

As they drew closer together, the sand and dust rose like curtains around the two of them. It would obscure them from Ziede’s sight and the view of anyone rushing here from the camp, though Kai didn’t bother to turn around and look. The firelight glowed through the walls of shifting dust, throwing gold reflections. He couldn’t see what the other veiled figures were doing, but it hardly mattered.

Kai and the Witch stopped barely two paces from each other and her power swelled like a wave. It tasted of ashes on Kai’s tongue. He said, “That’s better.” He wanted her to take that last step into arm’s reach herself.

“Confident expositor,” she said in the same language. Anger seethed under the amusement in her soft voice, her unfamiliar accent. “So young and pretty to be out here alone.” She took the last step and reached for him. “How lucky for me.”

The firelight was to Kai’s back and must be throwing his eyes into shadow. Even through the dust it was bright enough on her veil that he could see her features through it. He had never heard a Witch of the borderlands comment on someone’s appearance, or equate it with their power. It was an incredibly foolish, deadly foolish, assumption to make. Kai took her hand as she reached for him, the callous on her palm catching on Talamines’ still soft skin. He said, “How unlucky for you that I’m not an expositor.” He caught the life in her and lifted it free of her being. Just enough that it froze her in place. A strangled noise left her throat, of shock, disbelief, fear.

The swirling curtains of dust slowed, particles drifting, as the almost imperceptible wind that carried them died away.

His voice deceptively even, Kai said, “You killed my people. Are you Hierarchs’ slaves, that you attack mortals for them? Your ancestors in the underearth would tear you apart.” He was a heartbeat away from turning her into a desiccated corpse. He kept hold of her hand but allowed her just enough life for her knees to give out; she thumped to the ground, half upright.

Shouting rang out, someone screamed a name. Movement in Kai’s peripheral vision. With his free hand, Kai swiped the first intention off his shoulder and held it out. It was a small one, meant to hurt more than kill, but between containing the fire to the pillar and holding off the Witch’s attempt to pack his lungs with dust, he didn’t have the concentration or the power for more. Not unless he ate this one’s life, but the last shred of his self-control held him back.

A figure burst through the dissipating dust wall and leapt for him, arm raised. Kai let the intention go with a flick of his fingers. It struck her in the chest and knocked her backward. She hit the ground and rolled, gasping and clawing at her front. Another figure grabbed her arm and staggered, collapsing as the intention spread to her. Others rushing forward stumbled to a halt, then scrambled back in fear.

The taste of ashes intensified, the sensation of something soft and smothering clumping around Kai’s teeth. It didn’t come from his captive, but one or more of the others around him. He drew out a little more of the Witch’s life and used it to push back at that unfamiliar power. The sensation eased and someone shouted, “Stop, it’s a demon!” It wasn’t in Imperial, it sounded more like a dialect of Arike, close but not quite the same as the way the Benais-arik spoke it. But the word for demon was the same.

Kai raised his voice and said in the Arike he knew, “I serve the Free Arik, under Prince-heir Bashasa bar Calis of Benais-arik. Why did you attack us without provocation?”

Someone eased forward out of the shadows ahead, another figure wrapped in dust gray fabric. She threw a glance toward the two under the intention. They writhed and panted on the ground, the others afraid to go near enough to help. She said, “The expositors take Witches and strip them of their will, bend them to their own uses, make them slaves, what they call familiars.” She was deliberately speaking in a way more understandable to Kai, a version of the language closer to that spoken by the Benais-arik. “They do this to demons, too.”

He had never heard of this before, he wanted to say it was a lie. But the demons who had been kept in the Cageling Courts of the Summer Halls now fought for the Hierarchs in the southwest. He had been afraid the demons had joined the Hierarchs of their own will, or because they had been tortured to numb obedience. But if they had been somehow mentally enslaved by expositors … “Not this demon,” Kai said. “Answer my question.”

He expected her to say they had thought they were attacking legionaries, or at best Hierarch partisans. It was a worthless excuse at best, but it was the obvious one to choose.

She said only, “Let them go and we’ll leave.”

Kai laughed. It was as good as admitting they had known what they were doing, there had been no mistake. “If you hold any of my people who still live, give them to me now. I want blood for blood.”

“The Witchlands,” another voice said. “He’s from the Witchlands.”

These people spoke an Arike dialect and used the eastern name for the borderlands. In a way it was a relief, that these weren’t borderlander Witches who had betrayed everything their lineages had taught and lived for generations. Kai said, “Where are you from? Where did they teach you to murder helpless mortals?”

Another voice from further out in the dark, deeper and rougher, laughed. “You think you can stand against us alone?”

The one who had tried to bargain with Kai twitched. The others drifted closer.

Kai felt his jaw tighten. It was time to drain his captive and just start killing all of them.

Then icy claws caught in Kai’s tangled hair, but this breath of power was familiar and welcome. It was the weightless cold of a wind-devil wrapping around him, a warning of what was about to happen. He said, “What makes you think I’m alone?”

A whoosh-thump like igniting firepowder shook the ground. All the Witches advancing on Kai slammed down to the flattened grass under the force of it. The drifting dust disintegrated in the blast of wind, but Ziede’s wind-devil had created a column of air around Kai, and it remained undisturbed.

The intention on the other two Witches ran its course and dissipated. Without that draw on his concentration, Kai was able to turn and drag his captive back toward the fire pillar.

Ziede stood in front of the flames, outlined by the light. Her scarf had been knocked aside at some point and her braided hair hung free. Her arms were lifted as she drove her wind-devils like a wave over the field. Arike soldiers were outlined behind her, at least four or five cadres’ worth, some on horseback, some perched on the ruined outbuilding and wall with crossbows. Kai was glad they hadn’t sent more soldiers; the others would need to guard the rest of their perimeter to make sure this wasn’t a distraction for a second attack.

Ziede came forward, swishing through the grass, and met Kai halfway. His captive tried to struggle; he felt odd energies stir in the air. He drew just enough life to make sure she wouldn’t be able to fight anytime soon, or use her power, wherever it came from. She went limp and he dropped her. He told Ziede, “You were right, they’re Witches.”

Glaring down at the huddled figure, she said grimly, “Yes, it’s disappointing. We still need to find Amabel.”

Kai hissed out a breath and looked back at their attackers. The firelight cast flickering shadows and the figures fleeing back into the fields were barely visible. One stood watching them, Kai wasn’t sure if it was the one who had tried to bargain with him or not. The figure turned away and followed the others into the dark.

“Fourth Prince?” Salatel’s voice called out and Kai signaled her that it was safe to approach. She and Telare and Arsha rode up, their restive horses huffing out breaths as they sniffed for prey. Salatel reported, “Three more vanguarders are missing, Fourth Prince. Two said they were saved by Vanguarder Amabel but there’s no sign of them.”

This was infuriating but unsurprising. Kai jerked his chin toward his captive. She huddled on the ground, panting, fighting to stay conscious. “Watch her. Send for Baram and Ibel from the Witches’ tent to help you. If she moves, kill her.”

Arsha passed her reins to Telare, swung down from her horse, and put her spearpoint to the Witch’s throat.

Ziede took Kai’s arm and the wind-devils lifted them into the air. They sped into the dark, over the field where the grass was still flattened by the force of Ziede’s power. “I should have realized,” she muttered. “The strangeness in the weather, that was their meddling.”

“Who are—” Kai started to ask, but he spotted movement to the east. A person stumbled and thrashed their way forward through the waist-deep grass, but he recognized them from their size and gangly flailing. He swore in annoyance. That was all they needed, someone running off to become another hostage. “There, that’s Kreat.”

Ziede made a noise of exasperation. They swooped lower and dropped to the ground. Kreat spun and almost fell backward in surprise. Kai caught her coat to pull her upright. Ziede said, “Kreat, go back, stay with Salatel. We’ll find them.”

Clearly half out of her mind with fear, she snapped, “No! No, I don’t believe you—Easterners lie! I—”

Kai was in no mood to be argued with. He turned her back toward the camp and gave her a push. “Do as your elder says!” As she turned to glare at him he repeated it in Witchspeak, where the gestures gave it a far more emphatic meaning.

Kreat wavered, sobbed once, then ran back toward the pillar of fire and the paddocks. Her lack of trust was a problem. She must have gone to Kai and Ziede as a last resort to ask for help for Amabel, running past any number of sentries to reach them. It was infuriating. Seething, Kai turned to Ziede. “Can you believe this? This is supposed to be a shitting army.”

“Children these days, I swear on my forebearers’ ashes,” Ziede agreed, and took them into the air again.

Kai was going to have to think of a way to gain Kreat’s trust: Amabel’s family were part of his cadre, his responsibility, but that would have to wait.

This far away from the fire pillar, the plain was a black sea below and the hills only outlines against the lighter darkness of the cloudy sky. Ziede rose up further for a better view, and Kai caught a flicker of fire light. He whispered, “There.”

Ziede leaned forward, urging the wind-devils to go faster, using the little flicker as a beacon. As they rushed closer, the light resolved into a small bowl lamp, sitting on a flat rock in the low cut of a dry creek bed. It had been shielded by the rise of the creek’s banks, invisible except from the air. Just out of the candle’s reach, shadows moved, person-sized as well as some kind of riding animals, though not leggy and lithe enough to be Arike horses.

A shadow crossed in front of the lamp. In the dim flicker they could see it was carrying a person. Then the shadow slung the limp body over the back of a riding animal.

It might be an injured Witch, but it might not. There was no time to hesitate or be subtle; Ziede dove. She let Kai go and he landed on dry pebbles, the scrape of his bare feet the only warning the Witches had. With a clatter, two riders took off up the creek bed and something swept over Kai’s head, hopefully Ziede. Animals squawk-snorted in indignation and loose rock rattled down a slope.

The first Witch who rounded on Kai got punched in the face. They must have removed their veil because the feel of bone crunching under his fist was satisfyingly tactile. The second grabbed his shoulder and he felt the sting of a cantrip sink into his bones.

Ziede had taught Kai about cantrips though he had been too busy working on intentions to try any yet. Witches used them to do things their affinitive spirits couldn’t, but the power to make them came from those spirits, that connection to the underlying life and flow of the world. It was, Kai had realized, a lot like creating a design for an intention, but without the need for an artificial power well of death and pain.

This is something we should have practiced, Kai thought as he shoved the Witch off him. He grabbed his shoulder where the cantrip had landed and cold sunk into his flesh. It stung and ached and that gave him a little power of his own to tap, though he wasn’t sure how best to use it. He tried the only thing that might work and reached for the wispy structure of the cantrip like he would an expositor’s design.

It felt insubstantial, dissolving under his grasp, like trying to pick up a spider’s web. But when he managed to get a grip and tug at the strands, it came loose; a heartbeat later it was there in his palm, a fading handful of pin-sharp ice, about to melt away. Warmth rushed into Kai’s blood again and he did the next obvious thing: he slammed the cantrip into the Witch’s chest and pushed his own pain in after it.

The Witch cried out and stumbled, clawed at their tunic where the cantrip must be burrowing in. The Witch Kai had punched came at him again and he sensed movement to his left. He ducked under a swipe from something like a club and came up under it to brush the wielder’s arm. He snatched some of their life and they yelped and scrambled away through cracking brush and grass.

Someone shouted desperately and suddenly everyone around him was running. Kai lunged after them and his foot caught on something soft. He staggered, pitched forward, and hit the ground. He shoved himself up, cursing, pebbles grinding into his forearms. Talamines’ feet were bigger than Enna’s and it shouldn’t be a problem since the rest of his body was in proportion, but somehow it was. And he should be used to it by now but somehow he wasn’t. He tried to get up but his foot was still caught on something like fabric. Kai sat up and felt around, and touched cloth and leather armor. One of the vanguarders, Kai thought, simmering with anger. If she was dead, somebody was going to pay for it.

Kai got to his feet and went to the candle bowl where it sat beside a coil of rope. He carried it back to see two of the missing Arike vanguarders lay beside the stream bed. He crouched to quickly check them. Relief swept over him when he found both were breathing.

They were unresponsive, probably unconscious, and tied at the wrists and ankles. The Witches had obviously meant to take them captive as hostages. Hopefully as hostages. The other things Kai could think they might do with mortals were a lot more worrisome.

Hooves crunched over the pebbles but the candle showed it was Ziede, riding one animal and leading the other. The creatures were more like oxen, short and wide and apparently more docile. A limp body lay draped behind Ziede’s riding pad and another across the back of the animal she led. “Is one of those Amabel?” Kai asked.

“Yes, and they’re alive, both of them.” Ziede slid down from the beast and Kai went to help her ease first Amabel and then the other vanguarder to the ground.

The vanguarder seemed to be breathing well enough but Amabel was gasping, unconscious and soaked with sweat. Kai couldn’t see any blood and couldn’t feel a cantrip, though there had to be something causing this. Ziede pressed a hand to their cheek and said worriedly, “I need to take Amabel back now. They need a physician.”

Kai agreed. “I’ll stay here with the others. Send a cadre for us.”

“Keep an eye out.” Ziede gathered Amabel against her. “They may come back.”

“I can hope.” Kai pushed to his feet. He hadn’t even been this angry at the last expositor he had killed.

Ziede didn’t answer, just lifted up into the air with Amabel.

Kai needed to tend to the other vanguarders. He was too unsteady to try to dessicate the ropes. He felt his coat pockets for a knife then remembered he wasn’t wearing a coat, he had come out here half-dressed. He fumbled around the streambed until he found a sharp enough rock and crouched to start sawing through the bonds on the first vanguarder’s wrists. Another stirred and blinked in the dim candlelight. She slurred out, “It’s the demon.”

“That’s me.” Kai freed the first one’s wrists and moved on to the ankles. The Witches had stripped her boots off. “We’ll get you back to camp soon.” He didn’t think he would be very good at being reassuring now, so he just worked at getting them out of their bonds.

“He killed that shit-beetle Karanis,” another bleary voice said.

“No, it was the server bringing food who killed Karanis,” Kai corrected. He got the first’s feet free and she rolled over, still half conscious but groaning in relief. He moved on to the next. “I killed the second Hierarch in the Summer Halls, after Bashasa killed the first one.”

From their wondering murmurs, this was news to everyone who was coherent enough to understand it. The bleary one added, “They caught someone else, that Witch vanguarder.”

“Ziede took them back to camp already,” Kai explained. The rock had been dulled by the tough ropes and he had to get up to go find another.

When he came back and went to work on the third one’s bonds, she seemed more awake, and asked, “Demon Prince, why did they take us?”

“That’s a good question,” Kai said. “Maybe they eat mortals.”

“Ugh,” the bleary one commented weakly. “Don’t joke, Demon Prince.”

Kai hoped it was a joke. With Witches who would interfere with mortals, who would attack other Witches, they might be capable of anything.

Three

After the revelation of Dahin’s theory, Ziede had declared that she was going to sleep. She steered a half-conscious, grumpy Sanja to one of the beds in the back of the suite, then she and Tahren retired. Kai had moved again to the cushions on the stone chair and was close to finishing Dahin’s book. He wanted to get to the end before he left on his errand, just to make certain he hadn’t missed anything.

Some Cloister Witches had returned, an older group than the ones who had occupied Sanja this afternoon. They sat on the mats on the other side of the room in a cluster mostly centered on Tenes. They were talking rapidly and silently in Witchspeak. Kai had paid enough attention to know the conversation had started with Tenes’ possible origin, and ways to track down anyone who might know who her family was. Then Tenes abruptly stood up.

Kai paused on the book’s last page and gave the group his whole attention. Tenes had come to her feet like she was lifted by Ziede’s wind-devils. Her expression as she glared down at one Witch was all cold fury. The others went still.

Tenes signed, Take back your words before I take them from your mouth.

The other Witch rose to her feet slowly, deliberately. Kai said, “Tenes?”

Tenes signed rapidly, She said you were lying to me, that you had used your power to trap me and cloud my mind.

That was predictable. Kai said, “That’s because she’s a dustwitch who calls herself Albre, pretending to be a Cloister Witch. She thinks I don’t recognize her.”

The other Witches stood in a whisper of movement, the faint sound of fabric brushing tile. As one, they stepped back from the confrontation. Albre dragged her veil off. Her attention on Tenes, she said to Kai, “I thought you knew, clever snake.”

Albre had enough demon blood in her line that she hadn’t aged much. Her dark hair was cropped to a tight cap, streaked with gray, and there were only a few lines around her eyes. Her contemptuous expression was the same.

Her gaze still locked on Albre, Tenes signed, What is a dustwitch?

Kai set Dahin’s book aside on the chair’s stone arm and sat forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “They come from the dry plains of the east. They’re not like borderlander or Cloister Witches. Because all they can do is kill.” That was unfair, but Kai had no desire to save Albre’s feelings.

“I’m not here to threaten you or your new pet,” Albre said, a challenge aimed at Tenes.

That is good. For you. Tenes closed her fist on the last word and the stone tile under Albre’s left foot cracked.

To her credit, Albre didn’t flinch. She tilted her head in an acknowledgment of Tenes and stepped back, her motions slow and measured. She half turned to Kai and said, “I only came to see what plans our master has for us.”

“Witches don’t have masters.” Kai leaned back in the stone chair, lounging in the place where Hierarchs had rested after dispensing death and reward when they had owned this city and everyone in it. “Do you really want to fight that battle again? I changed my body, not my mind.”

Albre swayed toward Kai, started to speak. Tenes took a step toward her. She had been challenged, and she wasn’t willing to let it go. After what Aclines had done to her, it wasn’t unexpected. She was just as wary and damaged as Sanja, though better at hiding it. Tenes signed, Leave.

Albre glanced at Kai to see if he would countermand the order; he didn’t. She tilted her head again and went toward the door. She didn’t give Tenes a wide berth, but she didn’t make any effort to encroach on her space, either.

Tenes followed at a distance, out through the anterooms. When she returned, Kai said, “She won’t come back, the others know who she is now. She just wanted to poke at us and see if we’d tell her anything.” Tenes still looked worried and he added, “The eastern Witches were important to the war, but they were never liked in this region. Not like in the borderlands.” The Cloister Witches had settled back on the floor. Even veiled, he could tell they were watching all this with interest. The Cloisters probably hadn’t had this much excitement in a long time. “The dustwitches keep their eyes on the Rising World, because it protects them.” He pushed to his feet. “I have to get something before we leave the city. I’ll be back before morning.”

Tenes accepted that with a nod. Should I keep watch?

He remembered that she had slept most of the day away in the raft. “Only if you want.” He nodded to the other Witches. “You can trust them.”

One signed to Tenes, Sister, you are still among friends. Tenes didn’t look so sure, but that was something they would have to work out among them.

Kai went to the nearest window, picking up the grass silk hat on the way. He had fixed a dark gauze veil to it earlier, when he had changed out of his battered traveler’s clothes. Most of the clothing in the chests was meant for Rising World assemblies or events, with finer, heavier silk and embroidery, which was why it had been left behind here. But he had found a blue cotton shift and an overcoat with spilt skirts in front and back, with only a little floral decoration along the hems. He wore it with his somewhat water-stained belt and sash. The veil would draw some attention, but that was unavoidable. They weren’t as common in Benais-arik as they had been in the past, but people would assume he was either a Witch or a traveler from the west.

He stepped to the stone sill of the window and dropped down to the grass at the base of the foundation, and walked toward the dim shape of the earthwork wall.

Kai had wandered Benais-arik in the dark too often to get lost, even if things had changed. He didn’t want to make it obvious he was coming from the Cloisters so he went out the other side of the broken earthwork and wove his way through a clump of large squat grain silos until he came to a westward canal dock. A long canopied market boat was taking on passengers and he tossed a small coin in the pot to ride on the stern. The boat shoved off and cut across the city, passing dark streets and then lamplit ones, neighborhoods noisy and awake now that the day’s heat had broken. People clustered around open air communal kitchens and laundries, loud talk and music carried on the breeze.

Kai leapt off the boat when it bumped up against a lamplit dock for a cluster of workshops. All had shut for the evening and it was too dark to see any guild affiliation marks painted on the walls, but they were probably for pottery and weaving, judging from the smell of dye vats and the shards swept up into piles on the edge of the footpath. Kai found his way through the little maze of alleys and courtyards, then out into the street that circled the wide terrace around the City Archive. The building had closed at sunset and was quiet now, all the scholars and librarians and students headed for home or the markets. Kai passed the low wall around Gral House, then hit the edge of the market where the next two streets crossed.

The crowd was as eclectic as Benais-arik itself now, in looks, dress, speech. Between the fire-catcher performing in the center of a scatter of stalls and all the people buying evening meals or treats from food venders cooking on smoky charcoal braziers, Kai didn’t get much attention, even with the veil. Two city ministrants in the all-white clothing of their calling stood on the edge of the crowd around the fire-catcher, waiting to provide medicine and aid if there was an accident. The air smelled of burnt sugar and a heady mix of spices; Kai wasn’t hungry but it was still a mouth-watering scent.

He turned at the corner of Bardes House, and avoided the more brightly lit street of permanent stalls that sold paper and ink and books. He cut past the little pavilion in the center of the forum with its bored honor guards; it was where the Hierarchs’ preserved heads were kept for public view. The guards faced the pavilion, their backs to the plaza, symbolically alert for the Hierarchs’ return.

Once Kai was past them, he entered the Old Palace grounds.

It served as another public park now, the tall trees with spreading canopies making it a good spot for passersby or frustrated city officials and Rising World Assembly speakers to cool off during the heat of the day. There were stone benches and a fountain with basins at waist-height for drinking and set into the ground for foot-washing or watering animals. During the afternoon, there were sellers of salted or sugared nuts and fried cakes. At night it was quiet and as dark as a cave.

On the far side, the Old Palace wall was visible, the gray stone furred with crawling vines. About fifty paces down, the little plaza in front of its open gateway was bright with lamplight, and a scattered crowd of people were chatting, clearly having just left some dinner or other gathering. There would be a lot of events like that, with the Rising World council in session.

There was nothing stopping Kai from walking in the front gate during the day, when the palace archives were open. Except that after seeing Tahren and Saadrin today, Bashat would know Kai and Ziede were here somewhere. He would have people watching for anyone concealing their face, and be braced for some sort of confrontation. That was one of the reasons why Kai didn’t want that confrontation; like Tahren had said, he wanted Bashat to stew in uncertainty for the rest of his life, if possible.

And he preferred to keep what he had to say behind his teeth.

Dahin, I hope you appreciate this, he thought. He went the other way, down along the wall until it changed from the weathered brown stone of the old fortifications to a stretch that was barely half again as tall as Kai and constructed of much smaller blocks, so new the lines of mortar were still sharp and clear. He found fingerholds in those lines and climbed to the top. On the other side was the kitchen garden, clumps of lush growth with a few trees to shade the more delicate planting. He dropped to the soft dirt and found the paths by feel in the dark. He brushed through some of the fragrant herb beds and his clothes started to smell like dinner.

The archway that led through into the fire-lit kitchen court was the only way out of the walled garden, but from the talk and laughter the cooks and scullery workers were having their own dinner inside the long building on the far side. Kai drew the barest wisp of a chimera around him, weaving it out of the ground mist and the scent of the garden. He stepped into the court as a shadow. It wouldn’t work if someone was actively alert for intruders, but there were too many people whose business took them through this court.

Under the large lighted windows, a scatter of young children played a game with wicker balls and wooden cups. Three soldiers congregated in the doorway, talking idly, waiting on their own meals. Kai walked silently and unnoticed past stacked pots waiting to be washed, still-warm clay ovens. The conversation and clatter of dishes continued unabated as Kai went out through the door into the open service gallery. He followed the brick path past the big cisterns and wash tubs and the web of drying racks and through another archway into the central atrium.

The Old Palace wasn’t large; long ago Bashasa had told Kai that it had started as a fortified family home, been turned into a fortress, eventually became an administrative center for the ruling Prince-heir, selected by acclaim in a complicated negotiation between the artisan guilds, merchants, the noble families, and the garrison. When the city assembly had moved to its own purpose-built structure, it had been demoted to family home again, but the bar Calis family archives were still kept here along with those of all the other past Prince-heirs.

This open stone-paved court let air flow through the wide windows and doorways in the three stories of rooms, and was lined with tall pots of flowering jasmine. Lamps hung from various balconies or flanking archways and doors, but the shadows were deep; the awnings that protected the atrium from the heat of the day were still stretched from the rooftops. The little lamps around the long rectangular pools in the center had already been extinguished, hiding the cushioned benches and the water lilies. With the guests leaving, the place was already deeply quiet. Kai knew how private it could be here, with the extended bar Calis family scattered to duties in different parts of the Rising World.

On the first floor were old assembly chambers that had been turned into spaces for gatherings and meetings. The big windows into those chambers glowed with light and through the lattices he caught sight of figures in bright fabrics. A steady but low buzz of conversation and no music told Kai the gathering was winding down.

Above it were two floors of guest suites and to the east the household rooms and the Prince-heir’s offices and the archives. Kai kept the chimera around him like a cloak and went through an archway on the family side. He passed a couple of strolling servers, released from their duties for the evening, and started up the stairs.

Two soldiers of Bashat’s cadre were stationed in the first landing, behind a latticework screen. They were talking quietly and so technically awake and alert, but didn’t notice Kai as he ghosted past wreathed in the chimera. Nobody tried to kill Prince-heirs anymore and the soldiers chosen for their cadres were picked for diplomatic astuteness or family connections now. Not like the cadres in the bad old days, who would have been alert to deception and strewn gravel or salt on the stair landings to hear the crunch of footsteps.

Kai had chosen this stairwell because from this direction, the entrance to the archive chambers was twenty good steps before the turn into the first receiving room in the family’s private suite.

The latticed door was fortunately set into an archway, so he was able to open it without the two soldiers in the stairwell seeing it move apparently by itself, which would have broken the illusion. As he slipped through, the chimera started to fade. It was built of mist and the life of the kitchen garden, and this far from the ground, it lost its vitality. Kai let it dissipate and made his way through a shadowy workroom with benches against the walls and writing desks scattered around. It opened into a foyer and the heavy bronze doors to the archive itself.

The lock was a cylinder set with a code based on the Arike poem The Clash of Hearts; Water Against Rock, which was actually not a romance but something about duty to the people and the land. Kai had never understood any of the metaphors, but he knew it well enough to open the lock, not that it had really been designed as a serious deterrent. Coded locks like this had once been meant to bar entry to anyone not a “true” scholar but now they were basic exercises for teaching.

The room on the other side of the door was dark, the air warm and still now that the outside vents were closed for the evening. Kai called an imp from the underearth, its tiny body no bigger than a dragonfly, and set it to light the way.

The tall room was filled with metal shelves that came up to Kai’s shoulder, all decorated with scrollwork. They held books and ornate metal boxes, each containing papers owned by previous Prince-heirs. He found the shelves where Bashasa’s notes and journals were stored. The metal was painted black and chased with gold, something accorded to only a few of the much older, revered founders of Benais-arik. He read the Arike characters inscribed on the labels and quickly found the right box.

Kai had never been much of a scholar; he learned what he needed to know, and what interested him at the moment, but he had read every scrap of paper on this section of shelves. He sat on his heels to go through the box, the imp landing on his shoulder to watch curiously. He tried to read only what he needed to find the right documents; he didn’t want to sink into these words again, that familiar writing, the warm voice. There was no whisper of surviving scent, just the odor of old paper.

Kai was biting his lip by the time he located the right folio. He tucked it away inside his coat and replaced the box, ignoring the way his hands trembled.

He dismissed the imp before he spun the lock to reseal the inner door, then slipped out to the empty corridor. He had taken four steps toward the stairwell when a familiar voice spoke and a group of people abruptly turned off the landing right in front of him, barely ten paces away. The man in the lead was Bashat.

He was speaking to the woman beside him, “It’s worth the discussion, anyway. If you could find out if the—” Two cadre soldiers trailed him, along with three other finely dressed Arike. Kai froze like a startled lizard, like a fool.

Bashat glanced up and stopped, in mid-step and mid-sentence, at the unexpected sight of a veiled figure. The guards tensed, the other Arike stared, nonplussed but not afraid.

Kai set his jaw. He could run back down the hall and to an outside window and escape. It would make him an unknown intruder who had broken into the Old Palace; that would muddy the already dirty political waters as everyone assumed Bashat had been targeted by either the Nient-arik or the Blessed. The easiest way to avert that was to play to Bashat’s ego. Kai swept his hat and veil off.

There was a moment where Kai saw Bashat wonder if he faced a lingering guest he didn’t recognize or an intruder. As their gazes met, the moment turned sharp and still; Bashat realized who Kai was.

For one unguarded heartbeat he was shocked. In the next instant, his expression was under control. He had seen Tahren at the council and heard her report; he knew Kai was in the city, and that Kai no longer occupied his old body. But he had clearly not expected to be confronted with him, at least not here. He flicked a hand in a subtle “stand down” signal to his cadre. Still facing Kai, he said to his companions, “Forgive me. This is an honored guest.”

Kai said, “Am I?” It had always been a relief that Bashat had never had more than a familial resemblance to Bashasa. He had the classic Arike looks, the dark eyes and warm brown coloring, as Bashasa had, but his curling hair was a finer texture, and he wore it shorter and pulled back at the nape. The shape of his eyes was different, his nose narrow and straight, his lips thinner. Bashasa had been a generous man with a generous face; Bashat was not. He wore the more formal version of traditional Arike clothing, all in black silk heavily embroidered over in red and gold. “I wasn’t invited.”

Bashat said, easily, “Then you mistake me.” To the others he said, “If you would excuse me? I must speak to an old family friend.”

Kai could tell Bashat’s companions had recognized him as well. They assented readily, making polite gestures as they turned to retreat downstairs. As they left, Bashat gestured ahead down the hall. “We can talk in the salon.”

Kai turned and walked toward the family quarters. It gave him a chance to brace himself for this confrontation. If Bashat had struggled just a little more, if he had betrayed any confusion, it would have been more bearable. But after that moment of shock, he had himself under such tight control that even his tension was invisible.

Kai turned into the open doorway. It wasn’t a large room but it was a comfortable one, with a couple of long low divans, a scatter of floor cushions on the richly colored rugs. Arike-style murals covered the walls, antique ones, nothing to do with the Hierarchs’ war. They depicted old conflicts, from ages ago when Prince-heirs and the cities of the Arik fought each other with weapons instead of words and trading contracts. They weren’t very good murals, but this place hadn’t been redecorated in a long time, not when Benais House was now considered the city seat. Kai wondered if Bashat had meant to renovate this old home, to turn it into a palace meant for the Emperor of the Rising World.

Bashat followed him in, the cadre taking up guard positions outside.

Bashat took his seat on a floor cushion at the table and gestured Kai to the opposite side, so they faced each other. He must have planned to have a private conference, or maybe the people who had been with him were friends. There were wooden serving plates with cakes and other sweets and a glass drinking set with several cups on the low table. Like the politician he was, Bashat went for the first move. He smiled. “You look well.”

“Don’t test me,” Kai said. He wasn’t a politician, or a warrior, he was a killer, and he didn’t waste time. “Tahren knows the whole story, but I’ve asked her not to speak of it to the council.”

Bashat took in a breath. This was a moment when he could say knows what? and try to put Kai on the defensive, turn this into a conversation of accusation and deflection. To forestall that, Kai said, “I’m not here to kill you, if you’re worried about that. And you should be worried about that.” With deliberate calm, he added, “It would be my turn, after all.”

He watched the flicker in Bashat’s gaze as he considered several different responses, then settled on saying mildly, “Do me the courtesy of knowing you better than that.” He lifted the carafe, filled with a clear liquor. “Would you like a drink?”

Kai tilted his head, knowing a mortal would read the motion as snakelike, but Bashat deserved it for this. It wasn’t wine, at least. “You must be joking.” He added, “Albre was lurking in the Cloisters so I assume she made the pearl for you. I hope you’re being careful with your own wine.”

“Since we’re speaking so plainly.” Bashat poured himself a cup. The scent of distilled apricot rose in the air. It was a drink that was only served at night in Benais-arik, after business and work were done for the day. “I assume I have you to thank for the loss of Enalin’s support during the coalition renewal.”

“You’re welcome,” Kai said, and smiled, small and mean.

Lifting the drink to his lips, Bashat stilled for a moment, as if whatever response he had expected, that wasn’t it. He took a sip to recover and said, “And if you had not succeeded? Would you go to war with me?”

He kept his tone light, but Kai could smell the suppressed anger now. Kai said evenly, “I think we’ve already been at war, you just didn’t tell me about it.”

Bashat laughed a little wryly, shifting his tactics without hesitation. “I think I made you my enemy without knowing it. It must have taken some time—months? Years? To gain the cooperation of all the Enalin leaders and their people.”

He’s really angry about that, Kai thought. Good. “We aren’t Hierarchs’ puppets, Bashat, we can oppose each other politically without resorting to murder. At least I thought we could.”

“I don’t remember those times.” Bashat regarded him with just the right amount of gravity. “I did not realize we opposed each other politically.”

That was disingenuous. “Then you weren’t paying attention.” Because he really needed to hear the answer, he said, “But I know you always pay attention. You were raised in a world without empires, how can you want to create one out of what we have now?”

Bashat let a little frustration show. “I don’t understand. I never have. You never opposed me as Prince-heir. Why oppose me in taking a larger role?”

“A larger role?” Kai repeated. “Is that what you’re worried about?” Bashat could lose the leadership of the Benais city-state and its position as the capital city of all the Arik, if he lost the support of the other Prince-heirs, the merchants, the artisans’ guilds, the farmers guild, and enough of the population. If the news that he had used the Nient-arik conspiracy for his own advantage got out, the city might not be pleased with a Prince-heir who wanted to govern the Rising World more than he wanted to govern Benais-arik, who permitted a conspiracy to unfold in order to accomplish that goal. Even for those who didn’t remember the days before and during the Hierarch occupation, when powerful Arike families had been manipulated into assassination and infighting when they should have been uniting against the invaders, a public airing of the truth could mean a new Prince-heir taking the seat. Which made Bashat all the more dangerous right now. Fortunately, Kai had been dangerous far longer than Bashat had been alive.

“I’m worried about what is best for Benais-arik. We are the seat of the Rising World. It began here, it should be ruled from here.” Bashat’s expression was earnest, and it hurt that Kai knew it wasn’t a pretense, that Bashat really believed this.

Kai said, “The leadership of Benais-arik isn’t my business anymore.” That was disingenuous too; Kai had fought for this city, he didn’t want to see it hurt. He added more truthfully, “I’ve always thought you were a good Prince-heir. You’ve kept Benais-arik not only prosperous, but happy.” Bashat had not only been wise enough to keep Bashasa’s innovations to the Arike way of governing, but he had refined some and added others. He was a good Prince-heir, who knew how to listen to wiser heads and the people’s wishes, when to embrace change, when to temper it with caution. It was why he probably thought he would make a good emperor for the Rising World. Not understanding there could never be any such thing as a good emperor.

Bashat’s brows lifted incredulously. “Are you mocking me?” It was a genuine question.

Kai wondered again what Bashat thought of him. He had known that their understanding and opinions differed. He had never thought they were enemies, but apparently he had been a complete fool. He let himself smile again. “I’ve never been called subtle before. If I thought you would lead Bashasa’s city to ruin, you would have known about it before now.”

“Then why not support me?” Bashat set his cup on the table with a clink and leaned forward, allowing a glimpse of his real passion to show. “If you think I’m a good leader? Give me a chance to show you what the Rising World could be.” His expression took on an edge. “If you were displeased, you could always destroy me later.”

Ramad had said Bashat wasn’t power mad, he just wanted the best for the Rising World. Just because that might be true didn’t make Bashat’s ambition any less dangerous. “It’s not me you have to worry about. Empires subjugate, Bashat, they aren’t coalitions of equals. Try to subjugate Enalin and they will rise up and sweep across the Arik like a wave. The other lands would take sides, you would tear us apart and leave us vulnerable.”

“Vulnerable to what?” Bashat snapped. “There are no more Hierarchs! Just expositors rooting for scraps like carrion birds, just the free cities, refuges for pirates and marauders. You, all of you long-lived ones, you are living in the past!”

“Oh, like the Immortal Blessed who plotted with Nient-arik against Benais-arik?” Kai retorted. “That past, what, three days ago?”

Bashat had the audacity to look offended. “I would never have let them succeed.”

Kai laid his hands on the wooden surface of the table, feeling the old nicks under the new polish, and let his fingers curl into claws. “You murdered me. You had Ziede buried alive. You walled up Tahren Stargard—” He forced himself to stop. He had a well of bitter anger inside him, and it was all so pointless. Bashat’s expression had turned conflicted, his control slipping a little. Kai made his voice cold and continued, “If not for us you would never have been born. This city would be a mass grave in a wasteland, and this is how you repay us. Oppose us all you want, argue with us, fight everything we stand for, but you threw us away like vermin into a midden.”

Bashat pressed his lips together and looked away. His throat moved as he swallowed, then he said finally, “Our information said the conspirators did not mean to kill or harm you. Not you, not Ziede, not Tahren. I would never have let it happen if we had any hint an expositor was involved—”

It was like breaking through a wall, pulling a smothering hood off, to hear him actually admit it. Kai gestured sharply to his body. “I didn’t do this for my own amusement, Bashat. I was dead! If another idiot expositor hadn’t broken the seal on the tomb because he wanted me as a familiar, we would still be there. Do I have to tell you how bad it would have been for Benais-arik and the entire known world if he had succeeded? An expositor with my power at his command could make himself a new Hierarch.”

“That was not my intention.” Still not looking at Kai, Bashat winced as if at his own words. He must know that was a weak response. “I thought they meant to keep you away from the coalition renewal. I sent a vanguarder to make sure you were released—”

Kai made a derisive noise. “Your vanguarder Ramad?”

Bashat’s mouth hardened. He slid a look at Kai. “Is he still alive? Tahren did not mention him.”

Kai felt his jaw tighten. “I don’t kill allies.” It was infuriating that he had to say this. Except that sinking sensation in his gut wasn’t fury; when had everything gone so wrong with Bashat? “We left him behind on the way to the Kagala. Dahin even landed the ascension raft before we put him out.”

Bashat snorted an unamused laugh. “That was kind of Dahin. Under the circumstances.”

There is no point to this conversation, Kai realized. He stood abruptly, ignoring Bashat’s controlled flinch. “I’ll make my intentions clear. I’ll tell no one else, and I mean to leave this city soon and never return. But only on the condition that you leave me and mine alone.”

That, of all the things said tonight, seemed to cause Bashat the most consternation. He began, “I don’t—” He shook his head. “Of course, I wouldn’t—”

Someone stepped into the doorway with a soft throat-clearing noise. “Prince-heir?” It was one of the cadre soldiers.

“Meital, please, whatever it is can wait,” Bashat said tightly.

“I apologize for interrupting,” Meital said from the doorway. “Prince-heir, a messenger has come to call you back to the council chamber for a special meeting.”

Kai found himself exchanging a wary look with Bashat, who said, “Did they say who was calling the meeting?” Tahren wouldn’t have broken her word not to expose Bashat’s part in her own and Kai and Ziede’s disappearances. If the council had found out … Kai had an image of Dahin deliberately talking loudly about it near a window and the word somehow getting to someone who wouldn’t treat it as a wild rumor. Bashat added, “If it is not so urgent I would prefer to stay to finish speaking with Kaiisteron.”

That was news to Kai. He honestly had no idea what else Bashat wanted to say to him.

“The message came from Seeker Orai,” Meital said, persistent. That was the Rising World speaker for Belith.

Bashat didn’t look away from Kai. “I see. I’ll leave in a moment. You and Vitael wait for me downstairs.”

Bashat waited until Meital’s steps faded, then rubbed his face tiredly and muttered, “Fuck Belith.”

Kai forced himself not to kneejerk defend Belith. It was to the south across the straits, and had been brutally attacked by the Hierarchs and used as a staging area against Palm. It had fought as best it could, and even after more than sixty years, was still recovering.

Bashat looked up at Kai and said, “I can be confident this summons is not your doing?”

“Not everything that happens in the Rising World is about you, Bashat.” Kai started toward the door. He had been an optimist to think that he could leave without coming here. Bashat would not have let this go without a confrontation and some sort of assurance that Kai wouldn’t expose him.

Bashat stood and said hurriedly, “Then would you like to accompany me to the meeting? Surely you don’t really mean to leave and give up all political connections.”

Kai controlled the urge to growl and thought, Only the ones who murder me. He stopped, his back to Bashat. “I told you, don’t test me. I won’t expose you, but I won’t walk in at your side like nothing’s changed.” Bashat only wanted it as security against any possible rumors of his involvement with the conspiracy. If the Witch King was clearly still his ally, then any claims that he had known about the attack on Tahren Stargard must be baseless.

“Nothing has changed. You left.” Behind him, Bashat’s voice was flat. “He died, and you left.”

Kai’s muscles locked, trembling on the edge of the step that would take him out the door.

The silence hung in the air, then Bashat let out a breath that just sounded weary. “Kaiisteron, I—”

Kai took that step and walked away.

Kai left through the Old Palace’s front gate and didn’t bother with the veil, ignoring the ripples of consternation as he passed the other departing guests.

It was a relief to get outside into the cool night air. Retracing his path through the trees into the plaza, Kai found Dahin standing under a lamp near the pavilion that held the Hierarchs’ heads. He was eating something that looked like a lump of red-glazed sugar on a stick. As Kai reached him, he held out a second one. “Here. They have fruit inside.”

Kai took the treat and bit into it. There was indeed a slice of plum in the center. He noticed some of the honor guards craning their necks to stare at them. One was hissing at the others to turn around and look.

There were paintings of Bashasa and the other wartime Prince-heirs on the inside walls and rotunda of the little pavilion, along with the Tescai-lin, various leaders of the coalition factions and other prominent figures, like Tahren, Ziede, Kai, and Dahin. Of course the painted version of Kai looked nothing like he did now, but Dahin hadn’t changed much. Physically, at least. Ignoring the guards, Kai asked, “Did you follow me because you thought I was going to start a war?”

“If you did, I wanted to be there for it.” Dahin looked over at the honor guards and raised his voice to say, “Yes, he’s a demon and I’m a Lesser Blessed, but we’re not who you think we are. Pay attention to your job, the heads might make a break for it.”

Kai looped his arm through Dahin’s and drew him away toward the shadow and noise of the market. “Let’s go.”

Dahin glanced back at the Old Palace. “Why are the lights coming up? Oh, is Bashat going to chase us? That’ll be interesting.”

Kai didn’t look back. Bashat wouldn’t come after them. “He was called to the council for something about Belith.” He couldn’t help adding, “He asked me to go with him.”

Dahin didn’t need the politics of that explained to him. He turned his back on the Old Palace with a derisive snort. “The little shit. I’ve still got the raft, if you want to leave immediately.”

Kai huffed out a breath. “You’re very confident that I have what you want.”

Dahin stopped, suddenly alarmed. “You do, don’t you? You did read my treatise?”

Kai considered teasing him but Dahin sounded genuinely worried. “Yes, I read it. And yes, I have Bashasa’s notes on the Enalin expedition to Sun-Ar.”

“That’s a relief. How soon will you and the others be leaving? I need a chance to read the documents.” Dahin gestured with his fruit stick toward the fire performance in the market plaza. “Not that I don’t enjoy this city.”

That sounded like Dahin was possibly considering leaving with them. Kai didn’t want to push too hard on that point. He said, “Tahren will have to decide if she wants to stay and keep talking to the council or not.” The political maneuvering around Tahren was always intense when she came here, but the revelations about the conspiracy and her abduction would just make everything that much more agitated.

Chewing candied fruit, Dahin made a noise of reluctant agreement. He swallowed and added, “There’s a meeting called by Belith? Tonight?”

“Yes.” They had reached the edge of the market, and the opening of a street that led back toward the canal. Kai faced Dahin and said, “Why do you ask?”

Dahin visibly considered a lie, then sighed and said, only a little evasively, “Belith figures in my research. I might go and have a listen. Just in case.”

Dahin was more than capable of getting into the closed council meeting without anyone noticing. Kai pulled the folio from his coat pocket and held it out. “Come to the Cloisters when you can. There’s a bed there for you and we can talk about it in the morning, if you want.”

Dahin started to reach for the folio with the hand still clutching the syrupy stick. Kai held it out of reach, lifting his brows pointedly. “Sorry, sorry,” Dahin muttered, tossing the stick into a nearby Sweepers Guild bin. After he scrubbed his hands on his coat, Kai surrendered the folio.

Dahin tucked it away and turned to head back toward the plaza and the Rising World Assembly. He waved at Kai as he slipped through the crowd.

Kai hesitated, watching him go. Dahin’s treatise hadn’t said anything about Belith. He should follow along too, see what the meeting was about. But he was tired, an ache all through his back and shoulders, and the last thing he wanted to do was accidentally encounter Bashat again. Because he might say, You’re right, I left you. I shouldn’t have, but I did. He died and I wanted to go with him, leave the mortal world. Anything to not feel that loss like a gaping hole in his chest.

Kai turned back to the street that led toward the canal.

The Past: the Offer

The Hierarchs had not cared overmuch for Benais-arik’s civic workings when they ordered their palaces built, and the city’s canals, aqueducts, water wheels and drainage were in disarray, occasioning much tedious reconstruction and displaced persons needing shelter … the rumor that the Witches were stealing children was occasioned by the number of orphans temporarily housed in the Old Palace who would play in the surrounding streets and often attracted children who were not orphaned to join them, and who were swept up with the others in the evening. It became custom not to retrieve them until the morning, since they were assured of a good evening meal …

—Letters of Sargetha, Archive of the Artisans Guild of Benais-arik

Kai and the injured vanguarders didn’t have long to wait. Soon Hartel and Telare arrived out of the night with a cadre of wary outguard soldiers, and they gathered up the groggy vanguarders to carry back to camp. They had brought Kai’s own horse since it was the most used to him by now, so there was no need to try to convince an animal unfamiliar with demons to let him mount it.

As they rode up out of the creek bed and across the plain, Kai saw the pillar of fire had extinguished on its own, probably when he had been temporarily caught by the cantrip. Lamps and torches were lit along the old paddock wall now and as they arrived Kai saw the captive Witch had been moved. Hartel told him, “Sister Ziede had us take her into camp to a tent, so if her people returned to spy on us they wouldn’t know where she was.”

“Good.” Leaving her in the open would be too tempting to rescuers and even Kai wasn’t angry enough to want another fight tonight. They rode around to the next gate in the tumbled wall, where more soldiers had reinforced the camp perimeter. Of course, they had thought the camp perimeter was reinforced before, Kai reflected grimly, that no enemy army could approach without being detected by the vanguarders or Ziede’s wind-devils.

It hadn’t been an army, though. Kai had counted only twenty-eight or so moving figures. It would be less now if the ones who attacked him died.

They rode through the broken paddock gate, and across the trampled field. More lamps were lit and people hurried among the tents and back and forth to the caravanserai. The camp was like a disturbed termite hill, but at least it was a quiet orderly disturbed termite hill. The outguard broke off to carry the injured vanguarders to the tents near the supply train where the physicians would be waiting, while Kai followed Hartel and Telare to where the captive Witch had been taken.

This was deeper into camp, in a tent on the edge of the outguard’s area surrounded by a ring of wary soldiers. Ziede and Salatel waited outside by the curtained doorway. Kai swung down from his horse and asked, “How is Amabel? Will they recover?”

Like Kai’s, Ziede’s clothes were streaked with dust, but she had wound her braids up under a scarf again. A scarf which looked suspiciously like one that Tahren sometimes wore around her neck. She reassured him, “Hurt but alive. Mother Hiraga came to help the physicians tend to them. Apparently it was a cantrip to stop their heart, but someone released it before it could kill them.”

“Someone?” Kai asked, not understanding. “Isa, or—”

“No, before we found them. If whoever cast the cantrip was killed before it ran its course, that would release it. Or someone meant it as torture.” As Hartel led their horses away, Ziede added, “A cantrip like that is a great deal more deliberate than dust in the lungs, like what they did to the other vanguarders. Whoever cast it knew Amabel was a Witch and wanted them to suffer.”

Kai grimaced, and did not set anything on fire. Salatel said, “Fourth Prince, Prince-heir Bashasa asked for you and Sister Ziede to speak to the captured person at your convenience. He will be here as soon as he can but he asks that you send to him any information you think is important at any time.”

“Good.” Kai didn’t want to wait. Bashasa would be meeting with the shield-bearers and the leaders of vanguarders, and Hiranan and Lahshar and Vrim, and doing a hundred things at once to deal with this attack. Including deciding whether to move camp or not. He was probably receiving many reports right now, but Bashasa liked to know everything as soon as possible and was one of the few people Kai knew who could take it all into account immediately. He asked Ziede, “Do we know who these people are at all? How they made your wind-devils leave?” If Ziede could be made even temporarily vulnerable, it was going to make fighting these Witches so much more difficult.

Ziede’s gaze went to the tent, her brow furrowed. “I can’t be certain until we get this one to talk, but I believe they’re dustwitches, from the north. They were probably forced to flee this way by the Hierarchs. They don’t commune with spirits like we do, but they have some command over the weather. They were able to confuse the wind-devils so they couldn’t hear me.” Her expression was sour. “I didn’t realize what I was dealing with. The power they draw from, it’s part of the earth, but it’s not aware and responsive, like a spirit. It’s the energy they can draw from rockfalls and the power that causes the ground to move, fissures to open up, volcanos.”

Listening intently, Telare asked, “Sister Ziede, why would they do this to their own people?”

Kai saw Salatel give Telare an admonishing glare, but Ziede didn’t appear to mind the question. Her voice dry, she said, “They must not consider us their own people. Kai and Amabel’s family came from the west, from the places you call the Witchlands and the Grass Kings’ plains. I’m from the Khalin Islands, which were originally settled by borderlanders—witchlanders. Even though all witch lines can be traced back to the Saredi, dustwitches went to the north generations ago.”

Telare didn’t seem to think that was reason enough and neither did Kai, though the distance of kinship between the north and the west had nothing to do with it. But right now, the source of the dustwitches’ power was more important, and how the dustwitches had used it to fill up mortal lungs with windblown dirt. Kai said, “They tried to kill me like they did the vanguarders, but it didn’t work. Though they got me with a cantrip that could have done a lot of damage.” He wondered if it was the same one used on Amabel.

“Hmm.” Ziede was puzzled. “I have no idea why you would be immune to dust in the lungs. You have to breathe like anyone else.”

Telare said, “Fourth Prince, you should ask Mother Hiraga.”

Mother Hiraga had cured Telare of a dangerous spider bite so now Telare thought the elder Witch knew everything, though asking Hiraga’s opinion on this was certainly not the worst idea Telare ever had. Then Kai abruptly remembered Amabel saying Hiraga felt like they had dust in their throat. “Telare, go to Mother Hiraga and ask if I can speak to them in the morning.”

Telare said, “Yes, Fourth Prince.” As she hurried away, Kai told Ziede, “I think Mother Hiraga may have had a portent, but nobody understood it.”

“Well, that’s typical of portents,” Ziede admitted wearily.

Kai jerked his head toward the tent. He thought he knew enough now to start the questioning. “Has she said anything?”

“She was pretending not to understand Arike or Imperial or Witchspeak, when last I saw her.”

“She spoke to me in Imperial.” Kai wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t really funny. “Does she think we’re stupid?”

Ziede eyed him. She asked in Saredi, “Are you calm enough to do this?”

“I’m so very calm right now,” Kai assured her in the same language.

Ziede’s eyes narrowed and she was clearly unconvinced, but she said, “Then let’s go ask her some questions.”

Kai stepped into the tent with Ziede and Salatel. It was a larger one, meant for meetings, and the dustwitch sat huddled on the ground cloth. She had lost her veil, probably when Kai had dragged her through the grass. She was surrounded by the rest of Kai’s cadre, three outguard soldiers, and Amabel’s relatives Baram and Ibel.

Baram was close to Amabel’s age, with the same warm brown coloring, but their curly hair was cropped close to their head. They had been struck by a wasting disease as a child, and it had badly affected their stamina and their ability to walk any longer than short distances. Ibel was older, her brown skin more weathered and her long dark braids threaded with white. She was probably the strongest in the family next to Amabel, but she had fought off an attack by an expositor’s construct several years ago when the family was in hiding in the Sana-sarcofa, and it had left her with a withered right arm and a lessening of her ability to see and hear spirits. Neither would be much help if the dustwitch tried to attack, but they would know immediately if she attempted anything subtle. Both Witches had hastily dressed and had left behind their veils, so their expressions of grim judgement were plainly visible.

The dustwitch lifted her gaze to glare at Kai. He flashed the Witchspeak word for failure. She spat at him.

“So you do understand, then,” he said.

She bared her teeth, clearly embarrassed at the slip and trying to cover it with anger. Without the veil, he could see she was young, light-skinned and with a narrow face. Her hair was a washed-out brown, braids loose from struggling. He hadn’t taken enough of her life to shorten it, just enough to weaken her for the next day or so, but she might not realize that. She said in understandable Arike, “I have nothing to speak about to an expositor’s pet demon.”

Kai said, “The only expositor here is dead.” She glared, not understanding. Which was odd, as she seemed to know what demons were. Or she thought she did, at least. “What is your name?”

She huffed a noise of pure contempt. “As if I would give you that power over me.”

Kai found himself exchanging a baffled look with Ziede. Ibel flicked her fingers to get their attention and signed, It’s a superstition in the north, I’ve heard. The dustwitch faced the other way and didn’t see Ibel’s comment.

Ziede’s expression turned thoughtful. “I’ll give you our names, and if you think you can do anything with them, you’re welcome to try. I’m Ziede Daiyahah and that is Kaiisteron.” She paced to the opposite side of the tent from Kai. As she passed Baram, they made the Witchspeak gesture of respect to her that meant welcome to an elder’s wisdom, and Ziede’s hand moved in a polite acknowledgment. The dustwitch took this in with a suspicious glare. As if she doesn’t know what it means, Kai thought. This was very strange. She’s young but she’s not a child.

Ziede folded her arms and faced their prisoner again. “Why would dustwitches attack an Arike troop who had made no gesture, no word, no action of hostility toward them? An attack by stealth, stealing lives like thieves.”

The dustwitch’s face turned scornful. “Are you from past the middle mountains, too?” she asked. “The Witchlands?”

“I’m from the Khalin Islands,” Ziede said, watching the dustwitch carefully. “You haven’t heard of it.”

“Why should I? It means nothing to my family.” She grinned at Ziede, clearly trying to provoke her.

“Why did you try to steal our people?” Kai asked. He needed to stay on track, ask things that they needed to know. Because Ziede wasn’t the one who was easy to provoke. “What did you mean to do with them?”

Her expression shifted and she lifted her chin. “When will you kill me?”

“She has no idea,” Ziede said, managing to sound almost bored. “Her education seems severely lacking. Her elders probably don’t tell her their plans.” Baram and Ibel both signed agreement.

“I don’t need to know anything,” the dustwitch sneered. Cerala, standing back against the tent wall behind Ibel, had been stone-faced up to this point but that remark apparently caught her by surprise. The sound outside had fallen away a little as the camp calmed and her involuntary snort of laughter was loud in the quiet. That seemed to set the dustwitch off the way nothing else had. “Mortals are like cattle to us,” she spat. “We do with them as we want. Our blood is superior! And the Witches who are slaves to them, who scrape and bow and let themselves be taken as familiars, they are nothing to us!”

She sounded like a shitting expositor and up until this moment Kai had thought Ziede was wrong, that he wasn’t so angry that he was in danger of losing control. Ziede had been right, as she often was.

It wasn’t just the vanguarders the dustwitches had killed, and Kai’s fear for Amabel and the others here. This attack was a violation of everything the Saredi ever were, the war they had fought that brought the underearth together in harmony with the mortal world. His jaw was starting to hurt and he realized he had been gritting his teeth since he stepped into the tent. He said, “There is a treaty with the underearth. You do not use its gift in your blood to war with each other. You do not war with mortals unless you are first attacked. You do not—”

“The treaty is as dead as the Saredi!” the dustwitch shouted over him. “Hierarchs sealed the underearth, the Witchlands are empty. Their treaty is nothing to us, there is no one to force us to bend to the will of the dead and gone—”

Her words cut off with a strangled gurgle as Kai’s hand curled around her throat. He hadn’t been aware of moving, of pulling her up off the ground until he felt her life pulse under his hand. He said, “I am Kaiisteron late Enna of the tent of the Kentdessa Saredi and Prince of the Fourth House of the underearth. You will hold the treaty as a sacred bond or bend to my will. And I don’t take familiars, I take lives.”

Her eyes were blown wide. Talamines’ blood pounded in Kai’s temples and his skin felt like it was on fire.

Then someone touched his arm lightly, and Bashasa’s voice said, “Kaiisteron’s grandmother negotiated that treaty. So you see, it is very much a factor in our relations. Whoever has told you that it is not is much mistaken. Let us speak about that.”

Kai managed to uncoil his fingers and the dustwitch stumbled backward, clutching her throat. She dropped to the ground, shaking.

Bashasa squeezed Kai’s biceps, a light reassurance, and continued, “Perhaps our guest would like some water? Yes, Trenal, set it down beside her. Do not think of hurting Trenal, or any others of our people. Fourth Prince would not like it and neither would I.”

The dustwitch huddled unmoving as Trenal set down the water flask and retreated. They all waited a long moment, until she snaked out an arm and picked up the flask. Her hand trembled as she drank. She kept her gaze on Bashasa, who was as disheveled as the rest of them, his curly hair loose and his beard stubble pronounced, though he had managed to throw a coat on.

Bashasa waited until she set the flask down, then said, “There is no need to be offensive, and try to anger anyone. If you want to die, you need only ask. But I would prefer you answer our questions so I can decide whether to send you back to your people or not.”

The dustwitch took that in, and wet her lips.

Bashasa asked, “Who is it who told you that the treaty is not in force?”

She seemed puzzled by the question, and Kai realized Bashasa was starting with information that would seem unimportant to her, to get her used to talking to them. Kai and Ziede had tried that, sort of, badly, but it hadn’t worked for them. She answered, “Our Doyen.”

Kai didn’t react but saw Ziede’s brows lift in surprise. He hadn’t heard a Witch use a title like that before, either.

Taking the cue from Ziede, Bashasa frowned a little, as if the answer surprised him too. “Why does your Doyen think this?”

“Because the west and the Witchlands are all…” She threw a wary look at Kai. “She said they were all dead.”

Bashasa shrugged and gestured to indicate Kai and Ziede. “Demonstrably they are not. And even if they were, why should you throw your world and culture and way of life away, just because the Hierarchs came to destroy you? Is this not a way of surrendering to them?”

Confused, she hesitated. “Yes, but…” Her gaze hardened and she lifted her chin. “We forge our own way.”

“Who decided what that way would be?” Bashasa’s brow knit in slight consternation. “Did you all speak of it together and come to a decision on how you would live, like other Witches do?”

“The Doyen and the elders decided.” She looked away, tilting her head at an angle that Kai didn’t quite read as a lie, but as reluctance.

Kai didn’t need to glance at Bashasa to know that he had seen it too. Bashasa asked gently, “Why is it so at odds to the old way? That you would attack us, who had no idea you existed before now?”

She met his gaze, more secure in this answer. “The old way didn’t work, it fell to the Hierarchs.”

“Did it not work?” Bashasa countered. “It worked for uncounted years, long enough for Witches to spread over the earth and build lovely places like the Khalin Islands. Is it not the Hierarchs who are to be blamed for destroying it, the way they destroyed all the south and east? Without the Hierarchs, everyone, Witches included, would continue to live as they always had, and decide things for themselves.” He added, “This is what Amabel, the young Witch person your people tried to kill with their magic, fights for. What the three Arike vanguarders your people killed fought for. Would you like to know their names?”

The dustwitch looked away, shaking her head stubbornly.

“What is your name?” Bashasa had judged his moment well. “I am Bashasa bar Calis of Benais-arik.”

She frowned at the worn ground cloth. “I will not give you my true name. You can call me Hawkmoth.”

“Hawkmoth,” Bashasa said. “If I release you, would you ask your Doyen to meet with me, so we can discuss our interactions here as equals?”

She looked up, startled. She obviously hadn’t believed him earlier when he had said he might release her if she answered his questions. But clearly this was too tempting, Bashasa’s manner so candid, that she wanted to believe it. She hesitated, as if wary of a trap, but unable to see it. Sounding surprisingly honest, she answered, “I … I don’t know.”

Kai took Bashasa’s arm and said in Imperial, “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

They withdrew outside the tent, leaving Baram and Ibel to watch the dustwitch with the soldiers. The night was quieter now, just a little noise from the still wide-awake camp, most of it covered by the wind rushing through the grass past the paddocks. It had taken most of the damp out of the air and kept the night insects from clustering around the lamps, and Kai suspected if they could see the sky past the lamplight, the clouds would be breaking up.

Kai told Bashasa, “You can’t seriously mean to release her.”

“I do mean to,” Bashasa assured him. “We cannot afford to fight on two fronts at once, not now. I need to meet with her people. They must agree to leave us alone or they must join us, there is no other choice.”

“Join us?” Kai was startled by how visceral his reaction was. “You think that’s remotely possible? After what she said?”

“I agree, there is something odd there.” Bashasa tapped his chin thoughtfully.

“That’s putting it mildly.” Ziede seemed honestly disturbed by the dustwitch’s story. “I’ve never heard any hint that there were northern Witches that behaved this way. She didn’t even believe her leader would agree to a meeting to get her back.”

Kai had noticed that too. It made a vivid contrast to Kreat, running into the dark after Amabel. Even if in her panic she had doubted them later, her first impulse had been to come to Kai and Ziede because as Witches she knew they would help her.

“Interesting.” Bashasa frowned. “Hawkmoth reminds me of the young people from the far south, across the Belith straits, who would come to the Hostage Courts. They had been taken from their families as children and were being raised as high servants for the Hierarchs. They were very sure in their convictions that everything the Hierarchs said and did was moral and righteous to an extreme. Trying to talk to them was like talking to a myna bird, except a myna bird listens to you and has more ability to retain information.” He shook his head, dismissing the thought. “This Doyen seems to have imposed their own way of thinking on Hawkmoth’s people, but we can’t know that for certain until we speak to them.”

“It sounds pretty certain to me,” Kai disagreed. If Hawkmoth had come up with it all herself, she would at least be able to argue her vile points more effectively. “The Doyen could be a Hierarchs’ Servant, an expositor, pretending to be a Witch.”

Bashasa’s glance at Kai was sympathetic. “Or just a Witch who desired power over others.”

Kai looked away, setting his jaw to hold back his first knee-jerk response. Because he didn’t want to believe it was possible didn’t make it an unlikely answer.

“If they want to sit in the windy plains and complain to each other about what’s left of the rest of us, that’s one thing.” Ziede flexed her fingers on her folded arms. The candlelight outlined the hard cast to her expression. “But directing children like that to attack and kill mortals and other Witches is … a vicious distortion of what we are.”

Ziede said it much better than Kai had. He said to Bashasa, “And you think this Doyen, the person who would do this, is worth meeting with?”

Bashasa said patiently, “Perhaps not, but the others may be a different story. Hawkmoth is a young person, naive and obviously under the influence of stronger wills. These dustwitches … their way of life seems divisive, and I must think relatively new to them, if even Hawkmoth knows of the Saredi and the treaty and the way things were before the Hierarchs.” He shrugged. “People, all people—mortals, immortals, for the most part—like their lives to be secure and calm, they do not like the constant tension of fear and uncertainty and death coming at any moment. If they are made to understand that a better life is possible, they can be reasoned with, they will cooperate to get it.”

Ziede regarded Bashasa with a flat stare. Kai pressed his hands to his face, trying to control his immediate impulses. Yelling would do no good, stamping away would do no good. Killing Hawkmoth would do no good, and now that he saw she was about as sensible as a confused goat, it wouldn’t even feel good. Ziede said pointedly, “You think these people can be reasoned with.”

“Most people can be reasoned with, when they understand that there is nothing to fear from reason and cooperation.” Bashasa was completely serious and completely undeterred. “Particularly if you remove anyone who causes divisiveness for their own benefit from the conversation, if necessary.”

Kai looked up. “Like cutting the heads off Hierarchs.” He was still skeptical, but this was starting to sound more practical.

“Exactly, Fourth Prince.” Bashasa looked pleased. He squeezed Kai’s shoulder approvingly.

That was a little better. Kai nodded. “You want us to kill the Doyen.”

“No, Kai, no,” Bashasa said hastily. “We will not consider that until we have taken their measure, and heard what they mean to do. If they are willing to treat with us fairly, it will be the easier course.”

That was disappointing. “It won’t,” Kai muttered. He would rather just track the Doyen down and kill them, as a lesson to the others, but that was apparently not an option. Yet.

“So I take it you do mean to send Hawkmoth back alive, even if they don’t agree to meet with us?” Ziede asked, not sounding pleased.

“Of course,” Bashasa told her. “She is just a young person who has been used. If violence becomes necessary to defend ourselves, we want the one who gave the orders, who controls her and the others.”

This seemed to be what they were doing, then. Kai folded his arms. “I hope we don’t regret this.”

“Oh, we probably will,” Bashasa admitted readily. The fact that he was realistic about their chances somehow made it worse. “But we would regret it more if we did not try.”

“‘We’?” Kai exchanged a pointed look with Ziede.

“Fine.” Bashasa shrugged. “I would regret it more.”

In the borderlands there was an old tradition of sending messages using braided knots and twigs. Ziede made one to convey Bashasa’s offer of a meeting, and added a sheet of paper with the message written out in both Imperial and Arike, to be safe. Bashasa was hoping the different versions, the first traditional for the borderlands and the second common for the Arike, would convey their united purpose. Kai wasn’t so sure. But at dawn he and Ziede and his cadre took Hawkmoth to the edge of camp, to the east of the paddock wall where the attack had taken place. Kai held out the message bundle to her. “That’s for your leader. Now go away.”

Her glare at him was wary. She hesitated, eyeing the message bundle suspiciously. Ziede said, “We told you we were releasing you, and now here we are. Get on with you, we don’t have all day.”

Hawkmoth’s glare turned into an uncertain frown, then she finally took the bundle. Lifting her chin defiantly, she walked out into the field.

At first, from the tension in her shoulders, she clearly expected a crossbow bolt in the back. And her deliberate pace was probably an attempt not to be seen as a coward. Kai sighed and folded his arms.

“Why is she so slow,” Nirana muttered behind him. “We fed her.” Last night they had given her some of the lentil dhal leftover from dinner, which Ibel had doctored with a small amount of a sleeping draft, so she would sleep the rest of the night and the soldiers wouldn’t have to worry so much about her trying to murder them.

Salatel hushed Nirana, but it was more by rote. Everyone was weary after the long night.

Finally Hawkmoth started to run, and Ziede set a wind-devil to watch her until she was out of range.

The morning light was still dim and gray when Kai and the others returned to their camp, where Bashasa’s cadre was making ready to eat their morning meal. Kai sent his cadre off duty, and they all headed into their tents to sleep. Tahren’s tent was empty, and Trenal said she was on patrol and Dahin had gone off somewhere earlier. Ziede seemed to want to putter around, either waiting to see if Tahren would appear or just too anxious to settle down immediately, but Kai convinced her to go rest too.

Which was a bit ironic, because Kai was too anxious to even attempt to sleep. He was still sitting at the firepit when Mother Hiraga came into Bashasa’s camp, leaning on the arm of Isa, one of their grandchildren. They were a short but upright figure, stocky under a dun-colored coat that was too big for them and the concealing drape of their veils. Isa hadn’t bothered with a veil. She was younger than Kreat and stocky like Mother Hiraga, though taller.

Kai stood, brushing grass off his skirt. He felt guilty, not having meant to disturb them so early. “Mother Hiraga, you should have sent word, I would have come to you.” A soldier hurriedly put down a blanket next to the banked coals in the small firepit and Kai went to offer his arm.

Hiraga gripped his forearm tightly as he and Isa helped them sit down. Kai took a seat next to them as Arava brought warm cups of basil tisane. The supply train had found the wild remnants of the caravanserai’s gardens so even the pot of millet porridge sitting in the coals smelled appetizing. Hiraga said, “Fourth Prince, I am not so old as to forego my obligations.” They were speaking in Saredi. Most of Hiraga’s family knew some of the language, but Hiraga spoke it almost like a native. They folded their veil back just enough to reveal the deep wrinkles around their mouth. They tasted the drink, and gave Arava a nod of thanks.

Arava handed a cup to Kai and asked in Imperial, “Should we leave, Fourth Prince?”

Kai wrapped his hands around the warmth of the metal. “No, go ahead and eat, all of you.” He switched back to Saredi to ask Mother Hiraga, “Is Amabel all right?” The word had come earlier that the other surviving vanguarders were recovering well.

“They woke this morning and were able to eat and speak. They will be well,” Hiraga answered. “They told us what happened. On their patrol they found a dustwitch killing one of the vanguarders and tried to stop her. They thought she had mistaken the vanguarder for a legionary and tried to explain. Others attacked them without warning.”

That was what Kai had heard from the other vanguarders. “Did Baram and Ibel tell you what the dustwitch we captured said?”

“Yes, a strange and disturbing story.” Hiraga sipped their drink thoughtfully, watching the soldiers pass out the bowls of porridge. “Our Chief-Captain means to treat with them?”

Chief-Captain was the closest Saredi could get to Prince-heir. “Yes, he hopes they’ll listen to reason, and leave us alone. Or join us.”

“Hmm.” Hiraga exchanged a doubtful look with Isa. “And if not?”

There was no reason not to be honest. “I’ll kill their leader. Hopefully the others won’t force me to kill them too.”

Hiraga sounded regretful. “A waste. But they bring it on themselves.” A hand tremor made the cup shake, and Isa reached to steady it. “Take care, Fourth Prince. Their dust has gotten into their brains.”

“I will,” Kai assured them. He remembered what he had originally wanted to ask about, and added, “Amabel said you felt dust in your throat. Is it still there?”

“It is.” Hiraga reached over and closed their hand around Kai’s arm. Their grip was strong and urgent. “There is danger here, a turning point.”

The danger was obvious and everywhere, but Kai hated turning points most. “Like the one you saw at the river.”

“Not like that one. That one only had one trail to follow. This one has many, and none lead to safety. No, all fall into the dark.” They patted Kai’s arm. “I’ll go now.”

Kai and Isa helped Hiraga to stand, and the pair made their way out of the circle of tents. Kai sat down again. Trenal, who was on clean-up duty this morning, came to collect the empty cups and asked, “Was that helpful, Fourth Prince? Telare swears that old person knows everything.”

“It was helpful,” Kai admitted. Not in the way he had hoped. But it was nice to know that his already low expectations were valid.

Trenal gauged his expression. “Ah,” she said sadly, and sighed. “Like that, then.”

Kai sat for a while. The camp was quiet in the growing light, the sky back to its more usual cloud-streaked blue. Everyone was either patrolling, on sentry duty, or resting. Even Bashasa had been persuaded to sleep through the morning unless something important happened. Kai was still too awake, with too many things to worry about. He slipped into his tent quietly, so as not to wake Ziede, and collected the pile of their washing and carried it off to the caravanserai’s bathhouse.

It was built against the far side of the lowest level and was mostly a ruin, with a wooden roof that had partly collapsed. But the pumps and pipes leading from the spring still worked and the first people to take advantage of it had scraped all the dirt and dead bugs out of the basins. There were no coverings over the broad windows, but someone had hung up some canvas tarps around the section with the bigger tubs to use for bathing. No one else was here now, and Kai took off his coat, left it folded on one of the stone benches, rolled up his sleeves, filled a basin, and started scrubbing dust and blood out of his and Ziede’s clothes. He needed to take a bath, too, but he would get the clothes washed and hung up first.

There was a view to the open prairie from here, down the slope past the horse lines, where the sentries on this side were stationed. The grass flowers grew all around the walls and the air was sweet with their scents. The combination was entirely different from the western grasslands, but there was still something familiar and homey about it. That and the soldiers and civilians passing by hurriedly or sleepily, the low hum of voices from inside the caravanserai.

Dahin wandered up, eating a handful of seeds. He wore Arike men’s clothes too now in soft unobtrusive grays and browns, but he was too pale, the kind of pale that meant the north, that meant the Blessed. Kai had seen tawny-skinned Immortal Marshalls—briefly, because they had been trying to kill him—but when easterners thought of the Blessed they thought of people like Tahren and Dahin. People with very pale skin were common toward the south and in some of the archipelagoes, and showed up all throughout the east, more so after the Hierarchs’ invasion. But at least they tanned like old ivory in the sun or turned blotchy pink; Dahin didn’t. Even his freckles were too pale, and his shorter straw-colored hair stood out too. He watched Kai for a moment and said, “Since you’re doing laundry I’m assuming nothing has happened yet.”

Kai wrung out a skirt and hung it over a line someone had strung up. “Not yet. We’re waiting to see what happens when they get the message. Or attack us again.” He remembered he hadn’t seen Dahin in camp until now. “Were you out with Tahren last night? I know she was patrolling.”

Dahin sat down on a stone windowsill. “Oh, ha ha. My sister wouldn’t let me go out on patrol with her. I was tucked up in the caravanserai with the children from the supply train like a good little piece of baggage.” He sounded offhand, but the bitterness in the word choice told a different story.

Kai paused, elbow deep in water. “Are you mad at your sister?”

Tellingly, Dahin didn’t looked affronted or surprised. He squinted at the morning sun on the rippling grass of the prairie and smiled. “Of course not.”

Kai reminded himself he didn’t know Dahin very well, that he had never imagined a situation where he would want to know a Lesser Blessed. And it would be easier to say nothing and change the subject. But Dahin was young and, under his flip exterior, upset. As an observation, not an accusation, Kai said, “You’re lying to me.”

Dahin’s brow quirked as if Kai had made an odd joke, but he didn’t protest. He dusted the remains of the seed shells off his shirt. “Can you tell I’m lying because you’re a demon?”

“I can tell you’re lying because I can see your face with my eyes and hear your voice with my ears.” Kai hesitated, considering. Tahren clearly felt Dahin was in danger here with the rest of them, which was perfectly true. The only reason there were any children with the army now at all was that they had been swept up during the last village evacuation, and there hadn’t been an opportunity yet to send them safely to one of the refugee hiding places. But Dahin wasn’t a child; there were apprentice vanguarders and soldiers here not much older. There had to be a reason Tahren had Dahin with her, instead of hiding him somewhere up north in or near the Blessed Lands. Surely she wouldn’t have brought him to the Summer Halls with her if she had any other choice. Kai guessed, “You aren’t safe with your family.”

Dahin’s shoulders dropped, releasing the antic tension in the muscles. He tucked his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, his gaze on the basin instead of Kai. “Were you?”

A few months ago, Kai would have been certain of the answer. “I thought I was,” he said. “But they’re all dead, and a Saredi demon I rescued from the Cageling Courts tried to kill me because I took this body.” Not just any demon; Arn-Nefa had been a friend, a mentor he had looked up to when the war had started and he had first been given his duty as a scout. There had been worse hurts, but that rejection had settled deep in his heart. Ziede was the only one who had any idea what had happened or what it meant, and he hadn’t even really spoken to her about it. He had tried not to think about it and the shock of it was still a knot of pain in his chest. “So I’ll never know, maybe they would have tried to kill me too.”

Dahin turned his head, watching Kai. It was a little hard to meet his gaze, suddenly. Maybe because his eyes held so much understanding. He said, “Because it was—it might have been—the young woman that they wanted, Enna. And not you.”

Kai wrung out a pair of leggings and hung it up. “Exactly.” He would never know now, and it had been Arn-Nefa who had taken that certainty and sense of belonging away.

Dahin was quiet for a time. “They were going to hand me over to the Hierarchs. My family. I know Tahren explained that, back in the Summer Halls, that it was why she joined Bashasa. But … They were really going to do it.”

Before being dragged into the east as a prisoner, Kai had known very little about the Blessed. Before the Hierarchs came, they were just a rumor among the Saredi, stories from the borderlander traders who crossed the mountains for eastern goods. It wasn’t until the war started that the Saredi had known them as enemies. It wasn’t until Kai had met Tahren and Dahin that he had known them as people. He frowned, absently rubbing blood out of a hem. The skin on his fingers was getting wrinkly from the water, and that this was somehow normal was one of the odder things about being in a mortal body. “They were that afraid?”

Dahin nodded, not lifting his head. “We don’t fight for the Hierarchs because we want to. Well,” he added more matter-of-factly, “maybe some of us do. But the rest of us don’t have a choice. We’d always been the most powerful people in the world. Nothing could touch us.” He said this without any pride but as though it was immutable, like the sky being blue or the rain wet. “Then the Hierarchs came and they swept across all the mortal cities, and no one could stop them. Then they came toward the Blessed Lands. The Well of Thosaren keeps out invaders, they shouldn’t have been able to cross our border, the Patriarchs said they wouldn’t be able to. But they did, their Well was more powerful. We couldn’t stop them…” He swallowed and took a sharp breath. “No one knew what to do.”

Kai had seen a Raneldi Saredi Captain pick an Immortal Marshall off the deck of an ascension raft with a longbow at easily two hundred paces. The Blessed metal armor was strong but the gap where the breastplate met the area under the arm was just as vulnerable. He wasn’t going to say that to Dahin; not now, anyway. It didn’t change Dahin’s point, that the Blessed had thought themselves invulnerable and had made no plans for what to do if they weren’t. “Did they ask for many of you?”

Dahin’s eyes were bright, and he wiped at them and looked down at the tears on his fingers as if they had personally affronted him. “One for every hundred. The families with Immortal Marshalls volunteered, because at first we thought they were to be hostages. Then the Hierarchs’ Hand said they had to be young, because they would join the priesthood. Then the Patriarchs who took them to the Hierarchs found out … It’s not like the Well of Thosaren, it’s not … Once the Hierarchs’ Well takes you, it’s not you anymore.” He rubbed his hands on his skirt. “Then the Hierarchs’ Hand came back, and said this time it would be one in fifty.”

“And the Patriarchs had given in the first time, so they gave in again.” Kai wondered if the Saredi had ever been offered any bargains. He had never heard any hint of it. Maybe they hadn’t been considered useful enough. Or too dangerous. The eastern territories seemed to think the Saredi were strange wild people who ran around the grasslands encouraging demons to eat their children. The Hierarchs had seemed to think them little better than talking animals.

“Do you want to know a secret?” Dahin said.

Kai wrung out another set of leggings. “Only if you want to tell it.”

Dahin’s smile was painful. “I wasn’t surprised. That the Patriarch of our family was willing to give me up. I’m different. I ask too many questions.”

Kai had suspected it was something like that. He mulled over how to be comforting, and had no real idea what to say. Dahin was probably right, and there was no argument to make. He said, “In the Saredi, if you ask too many questions, they just make you go to the elders and learn things.”

Dahin’s brows quirked. That was clearly not the response he had expected. After a moment, he asked, “What things?”

“History, medicine, how to read the stars, how to tell stories, how the world works.” Kai shrugged. “All the important things. Do you want to help me do the laundry?”

Dahin considered, biting his lip in thought. He stood up. “Sure.”

They finished the washing and Kai took a quick bath and washed his hair, and persuaded Dahin to also take a bath, something he thought Tahren would probably be thankful for. That was about the time the arguing started in the caravanserai.

Four

Kai woke with Dahin leaning over him, saying, “Did you mean what you said?”

“Probably.” Kai pushed Dahin back so he could sit up. He had slept on a couch in a back room of the Cloisters suite. The dim sliver of light falling through the open shutters told him it was barely dawn and he felt like he could sink back into the cotton-stuffed mattress and not move for the rest of the day. This relatively new body had its own quirks, and it obviously liked sleeping in beds more than on the rotting planks of a ghost canal boat. He yawned, “What?”

Kneeling on the bed beside him, Dahin’s eyes were bloodshot and his clothes disheveled and his hair undone, the dampness in the air making it hang lank around his head like a depressed willow tree. “When you said the next time I want to do something stupidly dangerous to come and get you and you would help and wouldn’t ask any questions. I’m paraphrasing.”

Oh no, Kai thought. He rubbed his face, trying to rally himself for what was apparently going to be a very busy day. “Yes, I meant it.”

Dahin took a sharp breath. “I need to go to Belith. You need to go with me. You need to convince Tahren and Ziede to go too.” He grimaced, shook his head a little. “We could use more help from Avagantrum, but there’s no time.”

Kai stared at Dahin, who stared back expectantly. Kai did have questions, so many questions, but he had promised, and Dahin looked genuinely … Not frightened, exactly. It took a lot to frighten Dahin. Urgent was the word. He looked urgent, and desperate.

“Right.” Kai swung his legs off the couch. After the confrontation with Bashat, he had just wanted to retire from the world. He had thrown off his coat and slept in his shift, leaving a lamp lit in the outer chamber in case Dahin came in. From his bloodshot eyes, he wondered if Dahin had stayed up all night reading Bashasa’s notes, if that was why they had to go to Belith so urgently. Or that council meeting in the Assembly, Kai remembered suddenly. Idiot, you should have gone with him.

His heart pearl told him that Ziede was in bed curled around Tahren, still asleep but not deeply, the approach of dawn drawing her out of her dreams. He broke into her consciousness rudely, saying, Ziede, we have to leave for Belith now. It’s urgent.

Ziede snapped awake. Kai. What? Why? He felt her sit up and shake Tahren. What’s happened?

I promised Dahin if he asked I would go with him and not ask questions. He says we all need to go to Belith now.

I knew you’d regret that. Ziede’s tone was resigned. Hold on, let me tell Tahren. After a moment, she reported, Tahren says that was a stupid thing to do, Kai.

She did not say it was stupid.

No, she said it was ill-advised, but that’s what she meant. Kai felt Ziede’s sigh in his bones. Is there time to dress and eat first or will we have to run out the door barefoot in underclothes?

“Ziede says they’ll go with us,” Kai told Dahin. “They want to know if they can dress and eat first.”

Dahin bounced off the couch like a weight had been lifted off him. “If they hurry!”

Dahin had set the ascension raft down on the roof of the Cloisters, on the open stone platform that had once been the floor of a grand Temple Halls for Hierarch worship, so it was easy to load it. Kai had been able to slow him down enough to not only let everyone eat but to pack clothes and food. Dahin insisted that there was no time to wait for the markets to open, so they had to pack from what was left in the chests, with no chance to search out more nondescript travel clothing. Though they would be flying in an ascension raft, so realistically that squashed any hope of traveling discreetly.

They had no idea how far south they would be going, so Ziede unearthed a stash of brocaded coats with padding and warm linings and some Lesser Blessed garments that had been left behind when some of Tahren’s distant family had decided to leave the Blessed Lands. The Lesser Blessed weren’t as impervious to cold as the Immortal Blessed, so while the coats looked like thick well-woven linen, they were just as warm as heavy Enalin wool.

Tenes had approached Kai and asked to accompany them. Are you sure? he replied. We’ll be crossing through Palm. That would take you much nearer to where your family might be.

I want to help you, then look for them. Dahin’s task seems urgent, she said. After it is done, I’ll leave to look for my family.

Kai couldn’t argue with that. And they were the only familiar thing in her world at the moment; maybe she needed more time before striking out alone. He said, Your help is invaluable.

They were taking Sanja with them too, because Kai wasn’t happy leaving her anywhere unless it was at Avagantrum with Tanis and the others. Ramad could be here within the next day or so if he hurried, and Ramad knew Sanja could be used as a lever against Kai. She was safer with them, no matter where they were going or why.

As the raft lifted off, some Cloister Witches came out to wave. Kai hadn’t told them where they were going, just in case anyone had reason to ask.

Now they had been in the air long enough for the sky to go from gray dawn to cloud-streaked blue, and they had left Benais-arik’s farmlands behind for rolling plains. Dahin’s manic air had simmered down into a controlled calm, and the raft wasn’t fighting the wind today so the steering seemed much easier. He had even laughed a few times and pointed out some old battle sites to Sanja and Tenes.

Kai, lounging on the raft’s bench, nodded to Ziede. He had promised not to ask questions, but she hadn’t. She said, “Dahin, what should we be prepared for in Belith?”

He eyed her sideways, obviously not lulled into a state where this conversation would be easy, despite appearances. Everyone in the raft picked up on the tension, especially Tahren, who had taken up a position in the back near the shelter and was pretending to be very much interested in the clouds toward the east. Sanja and Tenes had been kneeling up on the bench to look over the side, and both now turned around to watch. Dahin said finally, with only a slight air of accusation, “What do you mean?”

Undaunted, Ziede clarified, “Are we going to steal something, kill someone, free a prisoner, what?”

“Not any of that.” Dahin hesitated. “It’s … research.”

Kai contributed, “I told Ziede and Tahren about your treatise.”

Dahin’s brow furrowed. He absently adjusted the steering column. “You never said if you liked it?”

“I thought you were right.” Kai added, just a touch of teasing, “The prose was a little dry, but it’s a first draft, isn’t it.”

Dahin gave him a half-hearted glare.

“It’s us, Dahin,” Ziede said gently. “You can tell us, we won’t panic.”

Sanja mouthed the word “panic” at Tenes, who signed back, Wait and listen.

Dahin’s shoulders relaxed a little, in defeat or relief, it was hard to tell. He said, “There was a meeting last night in the Rising World Assembly. Seeker Orai from Belith called for an emergency hearing from the council about the expedition that went to Sun-Ar. They sent back messages with their findings.”

Kai hoped it was all right for him to ask questions now because he had no idea what that meant. The only expedition to Sun-Ar that he knew about was the Enalin one that had returned decades ago. “What expedition?”

Dahin explained, “The one that left two years ago. And there was something about Ilhanrun Highsun helping them.” His mouth twisted in annoyance. “That’s all I could hear. I was up in the writing gallery and a proctor came along and almost caught me and I had to climb out a window. But I heard enough to know that the envoy for Belith, the others on the council, thought it was urgent.” He glanced at Kai. “I read Bashasa’s notes last night and I put the folio in the Chief Archivist’s letterbox at the City Archive, so it’s safe. He described the artifacts he saw in detail. It’s more support for my theories, though it wouldn’t be enough to make the trip without—” He hesitated, clearly conflicted. “I thought I had more time.”

It was reassuring that the folio was safe, but Kai was still confused. “Who sent the new expedition? The Enalin? And I didn’t know Ilhanrun Highsun was still alive.”

“No, no, this was the Scholars of Ancartre in Belith, don’t you remember?” Dahin huffed impatiently. “And of course he’s alive, Kai, how could he help them if he was dead?”

Through her pearl, Ziede said, Two years ago? You were in Nibet and I was helping Tanis in Avagantrum.

That’s right, Kai replied, events now slotting into place. He knew about the scholars of Ancartre. The universities as well as the contents of the libraries and archives of Belith and Palm had all been destroyed by the Hierarchs. Ancartre was where they had been gathering any remnants that had survived, trying to rebuild what was left of the great university there as a new seat of learning for the south. Did you know Ilhanrun Highsun was doing this?

I had no idea he was doing anything, let alone working with mortal scholars in Belith. Tahren had no idea, either, Ziede added. Tahren still leaned silently on the railing, gazing off at the hills in the distance as if uninterested in the conversation. She was clearly worried that participating or even showing too much attention would make Dahin stop talking, or veer off into an argument.

He did ask for her to come, Kai thought. Which was a good sign. Or maybe it just meant that Dahin knew whatever they would face, they needed Tahren with them. He prompted Dahin, “What does Ilhanrun Highsun have to do with it?”

Kai hadn’t had reason to think about Highsun in decades. He was another Immortal Blessed apostate like Tahren. He had refused to accept the agreement between the Immortal Blessed Patriarchs and the Hierarchs and was imprisoned in ice rock. It was the same punishment that Tahren had been threatened with for turning on the Patriarchs to save Dahin from being consecrated to the Hierarchs’ Well. Highsun had been freed after the Patriarchs who supported the Hierarchs were deposed and disgraced, and he had supposedly left the Blessed Lands.

Dahin let go of the steering column long enough to wave a hand, as if illustrating the vagaries of scholars. “Apparently he came to Ancartre to help unravel ‘mysteries of the Hierarchs,’ or so Seeker Orai said.” He snorted in derision. “They could have asked me. I was available.”

A line formed between Tahren’s brows, and Ziede’s expression tensed. She asked, “Mysteries like what they did with the pieces of the lighthouse they stole from Teramythis or mysteries like how to use the artifacts they left behind?”

“I don’t know. I have no idea why Highsun does anything, obviously,” Dahin admitted. “But these Belith scholars have been in Sun-Ar, following the steps of the original Enalin expedition, trying to locate and speak with survivors of the Sun-Ar people, and—” Dahin stopped, jaw tightening.

They all fell quiet for a moment as the raft flew. Sanja shifted around on the bench, frowning. She said, “I don’t understand. I mean, Sun-Ar’s near where the Hierarchs came from, I got that part. But if someone already went up there and didn’t find anything, why does somebody else have to go?” Her expression cleared. “Oh wait, is there stuff left up there that somebody might steal? Special magic things?”

Kai wondered if Dahin would answer her. This was the key question, the one he had been reluctant to ask, in case Dahin decided it violated their pact. It had to be what Dahin had heard in the emergency meeting that had alarmed him to this point.

Dahin half turned to look at Sanja. Quietly, seriously, he said, “They found signs that the people the Hierarchs came from—the people they were before they started to conquer the world—might still be there.”

Sanja’s face turned incredulous. She looked at Kai, then Ziede, then Tenes, taking in their expressions to make sure this wasn’t a joke. Dahin, to his credit, had shifted into his teaching mode. He had always been a good teacher, particularly with young students. He waited patiently for Sanja to ask, “But the Hierarchs, they’re dead. So these people are just people? They’re not even Witches? Right?”

Dahin explained, “The Enalin who went to Sun-Ar never found these people, or the Hierarchs’ original Well of Power. The Hierarchs had Wells down here that they created, like the dead city you saw in the Arkai, like the mortals trapped by the expositor on the stolen Immortal Blessed ship. You understand those are Wells, created by concentrations of pain and death, yes?”

Sanja nodded, biting her lower lip. “Yes. Ziede told me.”

“We know a few things about the original Hierarch Well in the Capstone of the World, even though we don’t know where it is. During and after the war, scholars, like the people I need to see in Belith, found mentions in some letters and documents left behind by Hierarchs and their servants. We know it was created when the Hierarchs’ people fed the pain and lives of most of the people of Sun-Ar into it. And we know they used the power that it generated to make one of their leaders into the first Hierarch.”

Sanja nodded again, in understanding and a tinge of fear. “So it’s still up there, that Well.”

Dahin leaned forward to check the position of the canal cutting through the plains below and corrected the raft’s course minutely. “We have to believe it is. Such a powerful Well wouldn’t fade after only sixty or seventy years. Especially if there were people up there who still fed it occasionally.”

Tahren’s jaw tightened but she said nothing. Kai felt cold creep up his back like the stinging tendrils of an intention. Dahin’s words sparked a vision of the remnants of a people who were once so proud they thought they deserved to own the world and everyone and everything in it, tending their Well for years—perhaps with ritual sacrifices, with their own pain.

So many of the mortals who had formed the Hierarchs’ legions had been swept up unwilling because their own lands were conquered, because all their choices had been taken away, or because they had been raised from birth to believe in the superiority and sacredness of the Hierarchs’ mission. But there must have been a core of true believers, of the people who had decided it was right and proper to destroy the neighboring Sun-Ar in order to create power. To invest that power into one of their own who would wield it for all their glory and greed. Some of those people might never have left their homeland. Some would have fled back to it as the south fell and all their grand plans came to nothing around them.

With a troubled expression, Sanja sat back against the railing, and Tenes put an arm around her. Sanja said, “If they’re still up there, and the Well is still up there, they can make another Hierarch.”

“Exactly,” Dahin said. He let his breath out and just looked weary. “There’s no sign to say for certain that they’ve done it. I don’t even know if the scholars managed to find traces of the Well. But we have to be ready, we have to know.”

Ziede said, gravely, “Thank you for letting us help, Dahin.”

Kai added, “Thank you for trusting us.” At least now they all understood the urgency.

Even with the raft’s speed, it took days to reach the Belith city of Ancartre. Kai hadn’t taken the overland journey from Benais-arik to the south coast for a long time, and though he knew the years had changed the countryside, part of him had still expected to pass over a mostly empty landscape.

That made it a good surprise to see that over the last few decades, the renewed trade and travel along the old roads had given birth to scatters of villages and farms, many large enough to be called towns. The Rising World Cohort Post on the river roughly halfway between Benais-arik and Stios had grown not only a caravanserai, but enough farmsteads, dwellings, and markets to sprawl out into a small city. It warmed something deep in Kai’s chest, to fly into the night and to see the little clusters of lamplight appearing where only darkness had been before.

Dahin’s talk with Kai and Ziede, and maybe especially with Sanja, had calmed him down enough that he didn’t protest when they wanted to land in order to camp for the night, or for a chance to buy fresh food from a trading post, or just to relieve themselves in a thicket of brush rather than the lidded bucket kept in the raft’s shelter. The wind from the south coast was cooler and their passage through the air stole body heat; both Sanja and Tenes needed breaks from it. The rest of them could have endured a faster trip, but Kai was just relieved that they didn’t have to. Flying like this still gave him a headache.

They could also have made better time if they crossed the Gulf of Stios but it was prone to storms at this season and no one wanted to drown. Even Dahin was willing to admit it was too chancy. Once they reached the coast it was safer to skirt it until they could cross the Belith Straits where the gap between the two continents was at its narrowest point. Stios itself, once a major port for the Hierarchs, and a place where some isolated Immortal Blessed families still lived, they decided to make a wide circle around.

“As nice as it would be to stay in an actual guest house,” Ziede said, “we don’t want to make the mistake of running into a Blessed who is going to ask a lot of questions.”

“‘Where did you get the ascension raft?’” Kai said by example. “Oh, we stole it from the Immortal Blessed we killed, but he was a traitor to the Rising World so the council said it was fine.”

“I can live without seeing Stios again for a while,” Tahren agreed dryly.

Dahin didn’t join the discussion, but he glared at the gray clouds building to the west and made the course change without protest.

The coastal landscape below was mostly marsh, and the villages they passed over were the stilt-houses of fishers. Floating wooden docks extended out into the shallow water for their small boats, and walkways stretched back onto solid land for the trader wagons that came to buy their catches.

They stopped at one floating village to buy a midday meal. Kai stood on the pier with Sanja and Tenes, watching the fishers cook crabs while Ziede and Tahren took a turn along the walkways. The fishers didn’t seem too frazzled by the raft; they were familiar with Immortal Blessed traveling to and from Stios. Though not Immortal Blessed in the company of Witches.

Kai wore his veiled hat to keep from causing any more consternation. It had been a long time since demons had been forced to fight for the Hierarchs in Palm but it wasn’t worth the trouble to test the waters. A few people came up and asked him and Ziede to touch protective charms made of sea glass and string, since contact with a Witch would make the charm more effective.

So close to their goal, Dahin was antsy at the stop and stayed with the raft, but Kai brought him a spiced crab pie and that seemed to mollify him.

Waiting for the others to return, Kai took a chance and said, “One of the cloister Witches thought Tenes might have family in Palm, near the stone hill country. We’re close to that now…” Dahin looked up from the pie, his face set in an anticipatory wince, and Kai knew what the answer would be.

“Better to do it on the way back,” Dahin said, sounding mostly reasonable. “She didn’t ask to stop, did she?”

“No,” Kai admitted. While Tenes might be reluctant to ask the Witch King to set off across the continent on a hunch to find her family, she might be more willing to look now that they were so close. But there was no telling how far the search would take them. Kai didn’t want to suggest she do it alone; she was still in his care. “All right,” he agreed. “We’ll talk to her about it on the way back.”

When the coast curved into the straits, it grew more rocky, with more bluffs than marshes or beaches. It was obvious when they came within sight of the best point for the crossing.

Palm-Miahfra was a busy trading port of timbered steep-roofed buildings sprawling to either side of a wide channel that had been dug into the shore. It formed a harbor deep enough for larger ships, and a number were anchored along its sides and at the long stone docks. The mouth of it was further protected by a breakwater of piled rocks curving out from the shore. In this land where reminders of war were everywhere, there were still big, slowly rotting hulks of Hierarch ships lodged in sandbars just off the narrow beaches to either side of the channel.

With the strain obviously wearing on Dahin, they had managed to convince him to let Tahren take turns guiding the raft. She was at the steering column and as she slowed the raft to a hover, Kai asked, “Ziede, is it safe to cross?” The sky was blue and bright, the clouds white and puffy, and they were all wrapped up in scarves to keep the wind from stealing their sun hats. The wind wasn’t as strong as it had been yesterday, but Kai had never trusted coastal weather, whichever coast it was.

Ziede’s brow furrowed as she consulted the nearest wind-devils, then she leaned out to check the weather and tide flags flapping on the tall narrow tower at the tip of the harbor’s artificial channel. The symbols carved around its parapet indicated it was part of Palm’s Coastal Watch, which had formed at the end of the war. Now instead of guarding against roving bands of legionaries, the Watch rescued lost traders and fishers who came to grief in sudden storms.

Dahin said impatiently, “Well?” He pointed toward the far shore, where hazy white towers were just visible against the blue sky: the city of Ancartre. “It’s not that far.”

“Storms come up fast down these straits—” Tahren began.

Dahin’s jaw went tight. “Of course, I know that—”

“Or—” Ziede cut them both off. “We could just hold our arguments until I answer Kai’s question. Yes, it is safe to cross now.”

Tahren gave Ziede an apologetic glance and Dahin subsided reluctantly.

As the Belith coast drew closer, Ziede asked, “Dahin, where should we land? Outside the city? Or near the university?” She pushed her hat back to peer toward the domes of the city center. “It’s been decades since I’ve been here and I’m not sure I ever knew where the university was. Didn’t someone say they moved it?”

Kai caught the flicker in Dahin’s expression that said he hadn’t given this any thought yet. “I know where it is,” Dahin said. He stepped up to the raft’s steering column, not making eye contact with Tahren.

Tahren shifted aside enough to let him take the steering if he wanted to, but said, “We have no authority here, except what the Rising World lends us. Should we land first at the Assembly Hall?”

Kai could see Dahin wrestle with the urge to snap at her. But he only said, “I have authority, I’m a famous scholar.”

Kai pointed out, “The Rising World council called an emergency meeting for the news about the expedition. That means the local Cohort Leader will have been told and probably all the Rising World envoys in Ancartre have already met about it.”

There might not have been time for word of Tahren’s return and Kai and Ziede’s reappearance to arrive yet, but it wouldn’t be that many days behind them. Rising World couriers traveled fast. Appearing officially anywhere, especially at the university which had already asked for assistance, without announcing themselves to Ancartre’s local Rising World council first, would cause a lot of comment and strife and delay. But announcing themselves to the council would cause even more comment and strife and delay.

Tahren gave Kai an ironic look. “You have a plan.”

Tahren knew him too well. Kai said, “The Warden of Nibet House said the Tescai-lin was in Ancartre.”

“Oh!” Dahin brightened. “Do you know where?”

“Probably staying with the Enalin envoy.” The members of the Rising World didn’t keep formal envoy houses in every city, just the largest. Like the others, the Enalin envoy had probably taken a private house for the purpose. It would be close to the Assembly, and probably well known to the local vendors. “We’ll have to ask someone.”

Before the invasion, Ancartre had been a city of white stone, of towers and domed temples dedicated to learning and art, wide processional ways lined with obelisks. Bashasa had told Kai that his father had visited it several times in his youth, and taken inspiration from it for the school he had built in Benais-arik, wanting it to be a center of study that would draw people from all over the known world.

Early in the Hierarchs’ invasion, Ancartre had been overcome by an overland attack and used as a staging point for advancing on Palm. The Voice of the Hierarchs had slaughtered much of the city’s population but left the buildings intact. It was the combined forces of the surviving people of Belith, Palm, the Enalin and the Arike and the rest of the new Rising World coalition who had done the structural damage, fighting to drive the Hierarchs out.

As they flew in low toward the busy harbor, much of it had been rebuilt, the rubble cleared away. Twin stone breakwaters with a two-story colonnade walkway atop them extended out to form a graceful half circle, like arms reaching to embrace and shelter arriving ships. Tahren lowered the raft even more so they could fly under the curving carved arch that framed the harbor entrance, to make it clear they were not attempting to enter by stealth.

They passed over a small flotilla of western archipelago boats with colorful sails, then the long stone piers where the large and sturdy square coastal traders of Belith were anchored. Ancartre was supposedly built of marble, and it glared white under the bright sunlight like it very well might be. Kai had always thought privately that some of it was whitewash or limestone, but he didn’t have any proof of that. Along the shore were white buildings with cylindrical roofs that must be warehouses, trading factors, boat-builders. Among them were open arcades busy with people coming and going. The cool wind brought the smell of charcoal smoke and fish. Above the harbor were low hills covered with more two- and three-story stone structures, with neatly paved streets, then the domed temples that circled the city center.

The houses and city structures that had been rebuilt were smaller, their coloring brighter and less weathered; from the air the difference let Kai trace the path of destruction where the Rising World’s forces had pushed through from the harbor up the gentle hills toward where the Temple of Merciful Philosophy had been turned into the Hierarchs’ residence. Firepowder and Witches like Tenes who could convince spirits to move the ground and break stone had carved that path through the City of Enlightenment. Carved out the Hierarchs like a physician cutting out a festering boil.

The Temple of Merciful Philosophy had never been fully rebuilt; possibly the Belith felt that the Hierarchs had corrupted it, or that the slaughter of the Hierarchs inside it by the Rising World had corrupted it, or both. The dome of the circular structure was cracked like an egg, half of it collapsed away, open to the air, and the other half was shored up with heavy timbered scaffolding.

They came down over the busy harbor front, where people were loading and unloading cargo on the docks, scraping hulls or mending nets for the fishers, walking along the broad terraces, or lying in the sun on the decks of their ships, taking a rest from work. Some noticed the raft, pointing at it, but no one seemed panicked or upset, which Kai took as a good omen. Tenes signed, Where should we go? Should we land on a dock?

Ziede nodded. “If there’s a place in the city for landing ascension rafts, there may be Immortal Blessed there and we don’t want to have those conversations.”

Kai pointed. “There’s an empty one.” The dock had stone pilings and should be sturdy enough. The rafts weren’t as heavy as they looked.

“Just don’t tell them who we are,” Dahin muttered as Tahren wrestled with the steering to make the raft’s descent as gentle as possible. Kai could tell it was a struggle; ascension rafts hadn’t been designed to be subtle. A curious crowd gathered on the broad stone walkway above the dock. “We need to come up with some sort of story, some explanation of why we’re here.”

Tahren said, “I honestly don’t think we do.”

Below, someone called out, “Hail the craft! Are you landing?” They spoke Old Imperial, but in the thicker accent of southern Palm.

“If you permit it.” Ziede leaned out over the rail. “Will the dock hold us?”

“Ah, it should! Land away!”

Tahren managed to set the raft down gently, with only a little creaking from the thick hardwood planking. Kai had stuffed his veil up into his sun hat and now pulled it down as a person walked up the dock toward them. They wore a long shirt with rolled-up sleeves and wide pants, which were common everyday clothes in Belith and Palm, but had one of the long stoles wrapped around their chest and shoulders that officials wore here. The stole was blue and a little weathered, so Kai guessed this was a port official. They wore their sun-bleached hair in the most common Belith style, cut short in front and braided down the back. They had the traditional facial tattoos and Kai thought the curled designs along the cheekbones were considered masculine, but it had been so long he wasn’t certain.

They approached the raft with wary politeness, and introduced themselves as a dockmaster, with the e suffix on the end of the word in Belithan that signified male gender, so that answered that question. The dockmaster said to Tahren, “Hail to you. Immortal Blessed?”

It was obvious from the fact that she was piloting an ascension raft, if not her height and build. “Yes.” Tahren pushed her hair back, tumbled by the wind, and made a vague gesture to the rest of them. “With my family.” Sanja, who was much better at deception than Tahren, popped up onto the bench and tilted her hat back so the dockmaster could see she was a child. “I’m sure there’s a fee to use the port. We’re not sure how long we might need to stop here.”

“Ah, yes.” The dockmaster had clearly seen enough to know that Immortal Blessed families did not usually include mortals or veiled Witches, even if they were all dressed like well-off Arike. Which would probably explain why they were not continuing on to land wherever ascension rafts normally did, probably the nearest Immortal Blessed enclave. “Just a day’s fee, then, for now we’ll say.”

There was a pause as they had to remember where the money pouch had gone and turn out a couple of bags before Kai realized it was in his coat pocket. Then he had to count out the amount in a mix of Rising World currency from Benais-arik and of local coins from the various trading posts they had stopped at. At least Dahin just stood around making exasperated noises instead of hiding under the steering column like he had in Benais-arik. By the time Kai finished paying, the dockmaster was a good deal less wary. Presumably he thought Immortals on the run with a stolen ascension raft would be better organized.

Not that Kai was sure whether they were on the run or not, or if there was anyone still alive who wanted to claim this ascension raft.

Once the dockmaster had gone, Kai turned to the others. “I’m going to the city center to look for the envoy houses. I’ll send a message when I know anything. Where will you be?”

Ziede folded back her hat brim to study the arcade above the harbor walkway. A number of shops stood under the curved tile roofs, places selling imported goods and supplies for ships. Signs indicated various wash houses, a free one maintained by the city and a fancier one that cost coins to enter, another sign for a free sailors’ hostel in several different languages, and pots and grills hung up to indicate small cookshops. She pointed to a large place with awnings shading its terraced seating, with carved and painted fish over the pediment of its entrance. “That one.” It was a good choice; they would be able to watch the raft from there and see if anyone official took notice of it.

“So we’re just going to stop and have lunch?” Dahin demanded.

“Yes. We won’t be able to meet with any scholars today anyway,” Kai said reasonably. It was getting toward late afternoon and Belith kept strict hours, with everything except food sellers shutting down at what they considered the day’s end.

“And I have to pee,” Sanja contributed.

“The child has to pee,” Tahren seconded.

“I heard her,” Dahin snapped.

Ziede winced and rubbed her temple and Kai didn’t need to touch her heart pearl to tell she had a headache from the wind and sun. And he was suddenly done being reasonable. He said sharply, “Dahin, do you trust me or not?”

Dahin looked away. He rightly understood that Kai was not asking for an argument. He let his breath out and said, “Yes, of course. And I’m sorry I’ve been…” He made a loose gesture. “I’ve been … thinking about this a long time. I thought … I’d have more time.”

Kai hadn’t expected to get that much of an apology, at least not now. The fact that the apology was toward him and not Dahin’s sister didn’t do more than take the situation back to the already unpleasant status quo. He just said, “Good. I’ll send to you as soon as I know anything.”

Kai left the raft and started up the dock. He had almost reached the walkway when familiar steps sounded behind him and Dahin caught up. “I’m coming with you,” Dahin said, and didn’t sound surly at all, which made some of the tension go out of Kai’s shoulders.

“Did Ziede tell you to come?” he asked.

“No, it was Tenes.” Dahin sounded mildly amazed. “She said I was acting like a bull’s anus and since being here was all my doing I shouldn’t let you go alone. And she’s right, the two of us will draw less attention than a veiled witch walking alone.”

It required a very rude gesture to say bull’s anus in Witchspeak. “So a veiled witch and a Lesser Blessed walking together will draw much less attention.” He nodded to the remainder of the audience who had gathered to watch the raft land, now sitting around on a pile of baskets, chests, and sacks waiting to be loaded on the square cargo ship at the next dock. They were still watching.

“I’m in disguise,” Dahin protested.

Kai glanced sideways at him and saw he had put on an embroidered Arike coat over his tunic and pants. “If you’re pretending to be an Arike, remember you’re an Arike woman.”

“Oh, right, I forgot.” Dahin jammed his sun hat further down on his head as the wind tugged at it. “I’ll pretend to be your wife, then.”

Kai gave up on being angry. He put his arm around Dahin’s shoulders and squeezed. “I would rather throw you into the sea than marry you.”

“That’s probably wise of you,” Dahin admitted readily.

The Past: the Choice

How the Hierarchs established a chain of pain wells down through the south, by slaughtering the inhabitants of cities and towns … the Enalin expedition to Sun-Ar tried to follow this trail toward the capstone but it proved unreliable. Small wells faded with time, others had been created by ambitious expositors both before and after the Hierarchs’ invasion … There are rumors of scholars and immortals who had found ways to diminish or destroy these wells, as a way to fight the influence of expositors who harried the south …

—From Post-War Journals, by Academician Yanellet Eanochin, Restored Temple of Justice and Antiquity at Ancartre

Kai knew that Bashasa had expected to briefly explain his decision about the dustwitches to the other Prince-heirs and commanders and then go on with their preparations for the strike to the south. He wasn’t surprised that that was how most of the army’s leadership ended up in the main room of the caravanserai arguing. It was good that they had started the meeting fairly early in the morning, because it gave them all the better part of the day to work out what part of the plan they hated most.

Bashasa had released Hawkmoth on his own authority, which was considerable, and everyone admitted that since Kai, an officer in Bashasa’s personal cadre, had captured her, it was up to Bashasa to make the final decision about what to do with her. But no one else had to like it and they were vocal about how they very much did not. The Arike had their hierarchy but they also had the right to complain about the decisions they objected to.

The Prince-heirs were as dubious about the idea of an alliance with the dustwitches as Kai was, so he found himself torn as to what side of the argument he should be on. Everyone was at least in agreement on the idea of a non-aggression pact, which had apparently been common among Arike city-states, but they wanted to decide what to do if the dustwitches didn’t accept it. Which Bashasa didn’t want to discuss yet.

Finally, an exasperated Hiranan used her crutch to lever herself out of her seat. She said, “Sister Ziede.” Her battlefield voice cut through the arguing and everyone managed to stop talking to listen. “Can you tell us how these Witches are likely to respond to an offer of alliance? If we are able to make an agreement with their leader, will they abide by it?”

Every Prince-heir in camp was present, most with their shield-bearers, as well as the head vanguarders, the guild artisans who ran the supply train and worked with the hidden refugee camps, and even Amabel, who had been on their way back from being checked over in the Physicians’ tent and had been swept in with everyone else.

Ziede had been pacing near the far wall, listening with a pinched expression that said she shared Kai’s doubts but didn’t like to see the leadership this divisive. Kai felt that way too, and had no idea what to do about it either. She stopped and said honestly, “Prince-heir Hiranan, I have no idea. My people in the Khalin Islands did not have a leader like this Doyen appears to be. We respected each other’s opinions and our elders and we made decisions together in counsel, we did not have some sort of cult leader who told us all what to think.”

Tahren, leaning against the wall nearby, frowned as if that was the oddest thing she had ever heard. From what little Kai knew about the Blessed, he wasn’t surprised. The other Prince-heirs took Ziede’s words in with a mix of doubt and incredulity.

Prince-heir Vrim turned to Amabel and Kreat, sitting on a stone bench under the far window. “Vanguarder Amabel, your family has lived in the east for some time, true? Do any of you know how these Witches might react?”

Kreat’s brow furrowed in confusion; she was pretending she couldn’t understand Imperial. Kai didn’t know whether to feel annoyed or envious that he couldn’t pull that trick. Amabel took the question in with a faint frown, then turned to Kai. They said in Saredi, “Fourth Prince, will you translate? I can’t say all this in their language.”

“I will,” Kai said. Amabel had been teaching the other vanguarders Witchspeak and Kai had taught some to his cadre. Bashasa had learned a few basic words, but had very little time to put to doing anything that didn’t directly affect their survival.

Using Witchspeak, Amabel said, These Witches are not like my line or my family. We don’t give each other orders. We respect the experience and wisdom of age and we respect knowledge, we speak and we listen. We do not have leaders. I do not know what the dustwitches will do.

As Kai translated, he could tell the rest of the room was receiving this with some dismay. Hiranan considered it with a worried grimace. She said, “But then who are we taking Prince-heir Bashasa’s offer of alliance to? Can this Doyen even make that decision?”

“Hawkmoth at least seemed to believe that the Doyen can,” Bashasa said. He had been standing back with his neutral listening expression, reading the room. The others who didn’t know him well probably thought he was being persuaded by their objections. Kai knew he was looking for weaknesses and planning his attack. “We have only her word to go on. I understand all the concerns, but I will proceed as I mean to, and offer the alliance first. The matter of these dustwitches must be settled before the Enalin arrive. We cannot let them distract us from our goals.”

There was uneasy shifting among the vanguarders and soldiers present, and narrowed eyes and opaque glances among the Prince-heirs. No one said, if they arrive, which could be good because no one was thinking it except Kai, or bad because everyone was thinking it so didn’t feel it needed to be said.

Then Lahshar, who had been quiet or at least not openly dismissive up to this point, said, “Rumor says these dustwitch creatures prey on travelers all through this area. The attack on us was not some mistake or act of fear. Sending overtures to them will be a waste of time.”

Bashasa’s face went tight. Yes, Kai thought Lahshar had been holding that in reserve too, ready to deploy it at the most opportune time.

Tahren pushed off the wall and regarded Lahshar steadily. Her expression was still even, but there was a trace of displeasure in the line of her mouth. She said, “Is this fact or story?”

Tahren did not participate much in their councils unless she had a direct question or someone appealed to her for an opinion. Her answers were always sensible and she was respectful to everyone, calm and never hesitating, the same as she was in battle. She had everyone’s attention now.

Lahshar eyed her. Despite the respect for Tahren, many in the army were wary of her as an Immortal Marshall, the way they were wary of Kai and Ziede. But Lahshar was nearly impossible to intimidate. She said, “It is fact. Last night I sent my cadre to ask if any of our recruits had heard of similar attacks in this region. The drovers who joined us from north Seidel speak of it. Go ask them yourself if you don’t believe me.”

Bashasa’s gaze had gone heavy lidded and he was smiling faintly, though he still had too much self-control to lose his temper.

Did he know about that too? Kai wondered. He thought Bashasa would have discussed it with him and Ziede if he had, though he might have only heard it this morning. Knowing what he did of the Arike now, and particularly the few surviving members of the bar Calis family, he felt certain Bashasa had someone in Lahshar’s camp who would pass along this kind of information.

Hiranan turned to Lahshar, frowning. “This should have been shared earlier.”

“I’m sharing it now,” Lahshar told her, unrepentant. “There have been attacks on caravans in the past few years, one of which these drovers saw with their own eyes.” She hadn’t glanced at Bashasa, possibly because she knew what she would see. “There were bodies with mouths full of dirt, choked on dust, like what was done to our vanguarders.”

Ziede met Kai’s gaze with a grimace. Kai was also sure Lahshar was telling the truth about this. He hated it when she was right.

Bashasa relaxed and spread his hands, as if the solution was obvious. He didn’t make the mistake of arguing with Lahshar. He said, “Nevertheless. We are fighting a war, and we need allies. It will certainly be a waste of lives not to make overtures.”

The argument went on, with Prince-heirs Vrim and Asara and some of the shield-bearers bringing up relevant points and Hiranan refusing to give in until she had all her concerns answered. Since Bashasa couldn’t actually answer those concerns, they weren’t getting anywhere. Hiranan was the one he really had to convince. The others trusted his leadership but Hiranan was the oldest here, the most experienced, and she was thoughtful and incisive in her decisions. Even Lahshar would shut up if Hiranan supported the plan.

After a while, Amabel and Kreat slipped out. Kai gave up and went to sit on a bench under the window near the outside doors. The afternoon had turned warmer and the buzz of insects risen as the wind died. He could smell the cookpots from the camp, ready to feed everyone early in case they were attacked again tonight. He didn’t have anything helpful to add to the discussion, and the fact that he half agreed with Lahshar left a bad taste in his mouth.

Kai let his thoughts drift. After a time, the conference broke up and Bashasa sat down beside him, saying, “We are taking a break.” He sounded like this was something they had planned on rather than an emergency measure to keep anyone from starting a fight.

“That’s probably a good idea.” The others had all withdrawn to opposite corners. Ziede and Tahren sat on another bench talking together.

“Our people are very stubborn,” Bashasa added, low-voiced, his gaze moving over the room.

“They are,” Kai agreed. Bashasa could out-stubborn a stone wall himself but he was also lightning quick to adjust his thinking to take account of new facts. That others were unwilling or unable to do this was somewhat baffling to him.

Bashasa glanced down. “Ah! Did someone give you that?”

At some point Kai had taken out a luck token and was absently rolling it between his palms. “Lots of someones.” He dug in his coat pocket and pulled out a small handful. While he and Dahin had been doing the washing this morning, several more tokens had appeared on his folded coat, left there by others going in and out of the bathhouse to fetch water or wash something. Some had been handed to him earlier by soldiers in Bashasa’s cadre, or the outguard, as he walked around camp. “They’re giving them to Ziede and Tahren, and the Witches, too. They’re for luck?”

Bashasa leaned forward, lightly touching Kai’s hand. “Not luck, exactly, though that’s a simple way to say it in Imperial. They’re more like cynosures.” He indicated one, the same design as the first Kai had been given while visiting Amabel near the supply train. Most of the tokens in Kai’s collection were that shape, though there were a few different ones mixed in. “That is for Benais-arik. Each city has a different one. They were signs of affiliation, of a sense of belonging, given to visitors from other city-states, other places, as a sign of welcome, a remembrance.” He was smiling at the figures, a genuine expression of pleasure.

This explanation was even more puzzling. “Why are they giving them to me? So many, all of a sudden?”

Bashasa lifted his brows, as if it was obvious. “Because they saw you create a pillar of fire to defend our camp. Because they saw you and Ziede plunge into the dark in pursuit of our attackers, to bring back our captured people.” He looked at Kai for a long moment. “Would you speak on my behalf, Fourth Prince?”

Kai snorted. “To who? Nobody in this room who isn’t listening to you is going to listen to me.”

“To the dustwitches,” Bashasa clarified.

“That’s not any better,” Kai said. “They think I’m an expositor’s familiar.” And he didn’t know any more about them than Ziede and Amabel did. Less, even.

Bashasa nodded to the Prince-heirs and the others, conferring in different clumps. “The only thing we have managed to agree on here is that if the dustwitches consent to a meeting, I should not be the one to go to it.”

They had got further along than Kai realized. He wondered if anyone understood that Bashasa must have subtly shifted the conversation in that direction, so that now they were talking about what to do when the meeting took place, instead of arguing about whether it should take place at all. “You didn’t think that through.”

“I was rushed,” Bashasa admitted ruefully, with that devastating candor. “I didn’t realize their objections to me going would be so well-considered. But Sister Ziede and Tahren Stargard have offered to go in my stead. It gave me pause, because I wasn’t certain how the rest of the army would accept their leadership in this. I know they are respected, but I thought they were still seen as outsiders.”

“Like me,” Kai pointed out. He was the most outside outsider in the army. Possibly in the whole Arik.

“True. But this…” Bashasa stirred the tokens in Kai’s hand. “This is a sign that that is changing. That they may accept them, and you, not just as officers in my cadre but as leaders.” Bashasa met his gaze, serious. “You could be a leader. A leader of Witches.”

Kai felt his brow furrow in consternation. “You want me to kill the Doyen and take their place?”

“No, Kai, as we discussed before, may I remind you, I don’t want that.” Bashasa let out a breath. “The Doyen seems to have great control over their people. If you can convince them that they will benefit by an alliance with us, if you can find out what they want, and make with them an agreement we can trust, they could become part of your cadre, give their allegiance to you.” He nodded to himself, forming new plans even as Kai watched. “You and Ziede will know best what to ask, how to evaluate the truth of their answers.”

“Give their allegiance to me?” Kai repeated, as skeptically as possible.

“Yes, to you.” Bashasa made an openhanded gesture. “Who else? They will not consider giving it to a mortal, will they? Not with the attitude Hawkmoth spoke of.”

Kai would rather just kill the Doyen. He was pretty certain that when he met them he wasn’t going to like them. Still groping for objections, he said, “Why me and not Ziede?”

It was the wrong question. Bashasa just got more confident. “Ziede is a Witch. As she said, it is not her way to rule other Witches.”

Kai protested, “It’s not my way either.”

“Is it not?” Bashasa tilted his head to the side, and Kai knew he had lost the argument. “From what you have told me, the Saredi ruled themselves justly and with consent, but the captains they chose for themselves had the authority to make decisions for all. And your mother in the underearth ruled your house. And your Saredi grandmother ruled far more than that, though it seems she never took a title for herself.”

Kai tried one more time. “I was just a scout.”

Bashasa nodded patiently. “Who was charged with leading and teaching other scouts.”

Kai thumped back against the wall in exasperation. “Do you remember every word I say?”

Bashasa actually looked hurt. “Of course I do, Kai.”

Kai sighed, rubbed his face, and gave in. “I was supposed to be your bodyguard.”

Bashasa smiled at him. “Were you? That would be such a waste, when you could be so much more.”

The answer to the message came just as early twilight touched the sky with purple, when the sentries spotted a lone figure walking out of the plain toward the field where the attack had taken place. They moved at an even, unhurried pace, and stopped just at the rippled line where the grass was still recovering from Ziede’s wind-devils.

They had come from the direction of the creek bed where Kai and Ziede had found the injured vanguarders. The wind-devils had seen no one else in that area, or any of the other approaches to the encampment. Ziede had pointed out that there were ways to use chimeras to conceal movement, and that the long twilight was an ideal time to attempt it, but the whole camp was already on high alert for that.

As agreed, reluctantly on some of the Prince-heirs’ parts, Kai, Ziede, and Tahren walked out to meet the dustwitch.

“Bashasa probably planned this from the beginning,” Ziede said as they walked through the paddock gate.

“What beginning?” Tahren asked, her tone only a little ironic. “The middle of last night?”

As Ziede glared at her, Kai said, “No, I saw him get the idea. He really wanted to come out here himself.”

“I know,” Ziede said. “That’s worse.”

The breeze was gentle and filled with the call and flutter of evening birds and insects. They were past the packed earth in the paddock now, and the long grasses, even after being knocked back by the air blast, dragged at Ziede’s and Tahren’s pants and Kai’s skirt, and grasshoppers fled their approach. Kai had put on the blue embroidered Arike-style coat Bashasa had given him, hoping it made him look a little less like an expositor. It was also better for holding intentions.

Ziede could have flown them out here, which would have been very dramatic, but might have been taken as an attack. Kai didn’t want to ruin the whole thing at this point, since Bashasa would probably just make them start over with another message.

Ziede continued, “Bashasa is a master at talking people into things they probably shouldn’t do. If he wasn’t, we’d all be stuck in the Summer Halls, dead or wishing we were dead.”

“Are you arguing for or against what we’re doing right now?” Tahren asked, sounding honestly curious.

Ziede’s mouth twisted in a rueful grimace. “I don’t know anymore.” She had said she was conflicted about the idea of trying to ally with the dustwitches. Kai thought Hawkmoth’s disdain for everything that the Khalin Islands had stood for, let alone the Saredi treaty with the underearth, had shaken and hurt her more than she wanted to show anyone, or maybe even admit to herself.

Which made it odd when she had refused to participate in Kai’s attempt to mock the whole idea of getting the dustwitches to join his cadre. Ziede had said, “Why do you think the borderlander Witches answered the Saredi’s call to unite against the Hierarchs? They followed the demon blood.”

Kai had never thought of it that way, and wanted to argue. But he remembered the war captain that Kentdessa had chosen, and the signs of her demon ancestry in her eyes.

They were about forty paces away from the dustwitch when a voice called out in Imperial, “I will only speak to the demon.”

Kai recognized that voice. It was the dustwitch who had spoken to him after he had trapped Hawkmoth. Maybe that wasn’t a surprise, that she was the one to come to the meeting. She had tried to bargain with him even then.

Kai let his breath out in resignation. “Wait here.”

“Kai…” Ziede hesitated, either having too much to say, or not enough. “If one of these idiots hurts you, I will remove their liver with my bare hand and shove it down their throat.”

“We’re doing this after I cut their head off?” Tahren asked, her voice dry.

“How would that make any sense?” Ziede said witheringly.

Tahren countered, “I didn’t say I didn’t want you to do it.”

Kai felt a lump rise in his throat and bit his lip to control the abrupt rush of emotion. It struck him that he had somehow not expected anyone to care about him like this again, that it was something he had accepted as lost the day he had seen the smoke rising from the burning Saredi tents.

Going into a negotiation with a powerful and deceptive enemy would not be helped by tears in his eyes. Much as it might confuse the dustwitches. His voice was still rough as he said, “I’ll be careful,” and started forward.

The dustwitch didn’t move as he crossed the field toward her. Kai stopped about five paces away, and said, “Are you the Doyen?”

“I am her … officer, called Nightjar.” She used the Arike word for officer, perhaps because she didn’t know the Imperial word. At least it was confirmation that they had been right about the dustwitches embracing a hierarchy. She wore Arike women’s dress, pants and a long shirt in faded blue-gray, under a gray veil that went nearly to her knees. It was an ostentatious size, for a veil that was so transparent that Kai could see her features, her lighter skin and long straight nose. Was the Doyen’s veil even longer? It was such a funny image that he almost laughed. Something in his expression must have given that away, because her voice hardened as she asked, “What are you called, demon?”

“Kaiisteron, Prince of the Fourth House of the underearth.” Kai kept his voice even, though in the western grasslands—and the Arik, for that matter—that wasn’t exactly a polite way to ask for someone’s name. He already had the feeling that this wasn’t going to go the way Bashasa hoped. “Why did you attack us?”

Nightjar’s smile was a faint movement of her lips, barely visible past the veil. “And who is your master?”

Kai quelled his first and second impulse, and said only, “Why do you think I’ll answer your questions if you won’t answer mine?” Then he felt the rise of power under his feet.

Kai had taken the precaution of stabbing himself before he had left the encampment. He had done it low in his right side where it wouldn’t interfere with his ability to walk. The wound had already closed but he was getting better at holding the power it gave him in reserve, like the lives of the expositors he ate. He started to reach for one of the intentions on his coat, but nothing happened. His arms had gone rigid, his muscles frozen.

Whatever was coming out of the ground at him, there was nothing in it to grasp, nothing to use the pain on. It wasn’t a cantrip or an intention, there was no design to pick apart, no shape to pluck whole out of his body, if he could have managed to move a hand to do it. He had a moment of wry despair; Tahren would get to see Ziede rip out someone’s liver after all.

A tendril coiled around his wrist. He thought it must be trying to wrap around him, shatter his bones. He peered down at it, but could still see nothing like the mark that gave away the presence of an active design. It felt like water on the bare skin of his wrist, a little dank and cool and gritty from passing over the ground. He squinted hard and thought he saw a shadow, hard to make out in the twilight. A tangible darkness, curling up around his legs, tangled around his other arm. The scent was rich loam and decay and death and the potentiality of life about to sprout in the spring.

Ziede had said the dustwitches’ power was different, it came from the earth, not like the animate spirits that other Witches could interact with, but from the earth itself, from rockfalls … From decay? What was dust but dirt, and every living thing that had died in it, ground to a fine powder? Dust was transformation. And demons were born of transformation.

Kai took a little of his stored pain and imagined pulling at the cloud of darkness like it was a shroud.

A tug of resistance, and it came free of the ground, spread and resolved into a fine mist of dust. Like the cloud Hawkmoth had surrounded him with last night.

It explained why the dustwitches hadn’t been able to clog his throat and lungs, the way they had the mortals. Stealing life was just drawing energy out of one place and putting it somewhere else until it was used and transformed again. Dust was the final form of that process.

Kai took a breath, inhaled swirling dust, and blew it out again. His hands pricked and his muscles warmed and he could move. He lifted his hands and the dust cloud lifted. He guided it up into a spreading canopy, thinner and more diffuse. The mild evening breeze caught it and scattered it away.

He looked back to Nightjar. The light was failing slowly but he could still see her expression. It was dismayed. Her lips curled in frustration and she said, “How did you do that?”

Kai laughed aloud this time. “I’m beginning to think you don’t know what a demon is.” The trick now was to continue to seem confident. Nightjar should have brought a few companions with her and tried cantrips; the one he had been hit with in the dark last night would have killed this body and left Kai drifting in the ether with nowhere to go, if he hadn’t stopped it. A dozen at once would work too quickly for him to pluck out.

But maybe they didn’t realize that. If the dustwitch who had cast that cantrip had survived, all she would know was that it hadn’t worked, that he had turned it back on her. If she hadn’t survived, all the others would know was that one of their number cast a cantrip on him and died.

He and Ziede had to make time for more witchcraft lessons; putting it off in favor of working on intentions was only exposing him to more situations like this.

Nightjar’s expression hardened into an opaque mask. “Perhaps we don’t.” She stepped back and started to turn away.

She was leaving? Kai was incredulous. And furious. “Take one more step and I will eat your life and send your body back to your sisters as a handful of your own dust.”

She stopped, her back a rigid line of tension. That threat hit home.

Kai said, “You came to this meeting thinking to take me prisoner? What, you’ve seen the expositors and their enslaved demons and thought what a good idea it was?” Belatedly, the memory of Hawkmoth’s reluctance to give her name hit him, and he didn’t know whether to laugh or set something on fire. “You thought that would work because I told you my name.”

She turned to face him, her posture now stiff with offence. “They say you were a demon in the Hierarchs’ lair and you took the power of an expositor to escape.”

“We didn’t escape,” Kai told her, his voice sharpening almost against his will. He didn’t want her to know the barb had hit flesh. We left the Summer Halls a ruin where the bodies of legionaries and Hierarch nobles rot in flood water, Bashasa had said at the Kagala. It was the truth, and it was the source of Bashasa’s power, the foundation that everything they had done since was built on. “We destroyed them. And if you’ve heard that version of the story, you’ve been talking to legionaries and servant-nobles.”

Her voice was cold. “We do not consort with Hierarch kind.”

“Neither do we. We kill them. We’re going to kill them all and drive them into the southern ocean.” This was pointless and he was impatient to get it over with. Clearly she hadn’t really come out here to negotiate. “Do you want an alliance or not?”

He expected a flat no, but that question seemed to annoy Nightjar more than anything else, like it was a ridiculous thing to ask for. “Why do you want an alliance with us?”

“So we can kill the Hierarchs and expositors faster.” How could she even ask that question? What else was there right now? Did the dustwitches mean to hide out here in the grass and dirt forever, until the legionaries stumbled on them and slaughtered them all? “Why did you attack us? Why do you attack mortals?” Witches stealing from people was almost as unbelievable as Witches killing unprovoked, but Lahshar’s drovers had been right about that caravan. “Did you think you were going to steal from us?”

As if it was a child’s question, she said, “It is how we survive.”

Kai reined in his temper with effort. He didn’t want to disappoint Bashasa, to go back and say he had been too angry to talk to her. Because Bashasa was right, there was something very odd here. At least he had Nightjar talking, and apparently convinced his questions were ridiculous, so there was no reason to stop asking them. “What did you want with Amabel? The Witch you tried to capture? And the three mortal vanguarders?”

Something changed in her expression; Kai had struck some nerve. Had they been after Amabel all along? The dustwitches couldn’t know them; Amabel’s family had never been this far northeast. They didn’t even speak Arike.

Nightjar had said that stealing was how they survived, but she hadn’t said what it was exactly that they were stealing.

The dustwitches had killed the other vanguarders that Amabel had tried to save, but then took three alive. And someone had removed the deadly cantrip from Amabel after it had rendered them too weak to fight. The dustwitches had seen that Amabel valued the lives of the vanguarders, so they took hostages. Three hostages, so they could kill at least one or two if Amabel resisted, Kai thought.

The dustwitches might have originally crept up to the camp to steal food or supplies, not caring how many people they hurt in the process. But they had encountered Amabel and decided to steal them, instead.

“We won’t attack again,” Nightjar was saying. “You need not fear us.”

She was trying to prod him into anger, but Kai was too interested in unraveling this puzzle now. “You never answered my question about an alliance.”

“We have no need for an alliance. We are strong, we—”

Kai didn’t want to listen to a justification. “Strong, like carrion birds and lizards. Feeding off helpless people.”

This time there was real heat in her voice. “And why do you care what happens to us?”

“Because you could be so much more.” The words came out almost without his volition. Kai wasn’t even sure he believed it or wanted to believe it, but it was Bashasa’s answer.

Nightjar huffed a breath that sounded like contempt, or despair. She turned sharply and walked away.

Kai allowed her to go this time. He stood there for a little, just enough to make sure it wasn’t a trap, that no cantrip would come at his back. Then he returned to Ziede and Tahren.

He would bet his life that that trick with the dust hadn’t been meant to kill him. It had been meant to catch him, like they had caught Amabel. How they meant to ensure Kai’s good behavior, he had no idea. But then they had thought that knowing how Kai’s name was spoken on the mortal plane gave them some power over the essence of a being born of the underearth. Even if names had some effect on Witches or mortals, which he doubted, it was ridiculous to expect it to have any effect on him.

Kai thought about the destroyed caravan that Lahshar’s drovers had seen, the rumors of more. Amabel’s family had come west from the borderlands, fleeing the Hierarchs. They wouldn’t have been the only ones to escape.

It was foolish to think that Amabel was the first Witch the dustwitches had tried to capture.

“Are you all right?” Ziede asked as soon as he reached them. She was frowning in concern and some frustration. Tahren’s level gaze was on Nightjar’s retreating back.

“I’m fine,” Kai said absently, still making plans. They couldn’t use the wind-devils; the dustwitches had taken control of them once already. Ziede was alert to that possibility now, but it still meant that the dustwitches must be able to tell when the wind-devils were near. “Can you make a chimera to hide us, and maybe some of the vanguarders? Something the dustwitches can’t see through? We need to find their camp.”

“Maybe, probably.” Ziede’s frown deepened. “Why do we care about their camp?”

“Because I think they have more prisoners.”

Five

Kai and Dahin found their way to the various ramps that led outward from the port, where the streets curved up the gentle hills. Kai’s veil got a few side glances but not as many as he had expected. Ancartre was almost as cosmopolitan as Benais-arik now; he saw people from the archipelagoes, the far south, the far north, every skin color and every sort of dress.

White stone walls lined the streets, and arched gateways led into the homes beyond. It wasn’t barren, there were tubs and troughs of greenery and flowers along most of the walls. Unlike the large open places at the harbor, the shopfronts they passed were narrow and set deep back into the walls, with only a counter at front for the proprietor to sit at. Very unlike Benais-arik, where if a seller had enough goods for space in a building rather than a market stall, it was always big enough for customers to come in and sit down among the wares.

Soon the street opened up to a large plaza dotted with tall spreading pines, with the domed Temple of Merciful Philosophy at the far end. It towered over its surroundings, standing even higher because it sat atop a series of terraces, each lined with more of the polished white stone. The cracked section missing from the dome looked worse from the ground. It had weathered like an old scar, a shocking wound in what was otherwise an elegantly proportioned structure. The heavy timbers shoring up the curved outside wall looked permanent.

Two- and three-story houses lined the plaza, rising above their courtyard walls, with large windows and vines climbing their white stone. There was no sign that the Rising World assembly was nearby, which was good. Kai wanted to avoid it if possible and hopefully it would be somewhere else in the city, in a spot more convenient to Ancartre’s rebuilding process; maybe in the old complex of libraries and temples spread out to the west.

Dahin pivoted in place, frowning. “They don’t believe in street vendors here, do they,” he commented. “It doesn’t give us anyone to ask for directions.”

In an Arike city, this shaded plaza would be full of little carts selling food and drinks. There wasn’t even a fountain for drinking water or washing hands and feet or any of the other things people needed to do in the middle of a major city. “That’s inconvenient,” Kai said. He started toward the Temple of Merciful Philosophy. There were people gathered on its terraces, sitting and talking, or walking slowly along looking at the carvings on the steps. Most were dressed in the more formal Belith styles, in long gowns with sashes or stoles wrapped in layers. The bright colors of their clothing and facial tattoos contrasted wildly with all the white polished stone.

As they drew closer, Kai saw the terraces were just dirt, packed flat and hard from so many feet over the years. But when they reached the first, he realized the carved cubbies on the stone-lined steps weren’t decoration; they were little death shrines. Each would contain bones or ashes collected in a small container.

Some visitors were leaving offerings of flowers or trinkets. Kai stepped back off the terrace and paced alongside it. The Memorials could be for people who died in the Hierarch invasion and the fighting afterward, or those who died when the Rising World armies had come here after the Hierarchs. Kai didn’t want to know.

Dahin had wandered off a little and was politely asking someone for directions. Kai waited where he was.

Then a person who had been leaving offerings on the upper terrace left their group and approached him. They were older, with white hair wound up in a bun and wrinkles so deeply etched that Kai couldn’t read their tattoos. They came to the edge of the terrace, leaned on their walking cane, and said, in Belith-accented Old Imperial, “Are you here for the Memorial, Sister?”

“No, elder, we just arrived in the city and didn’t know it was here,” Kai answered, feeling like he was Kai-Enna again and being required to explain why he had wandered off instead of finishing his chores.

“It’s for the honored dead of the War, the people who tried to defend the Temple when the Hierarchs came to seize it,” the elder explained.

“I’ve heard of the Temple, elder,” Kai assured them. “It was for settling disputes and arbitration.”

“Yes!” the person looked pleased. “Where do you come from?”

“Benais-arik, elder.”

“Ah.” Their gaze turned worried. “They said the emperor of the Rising World was deposed.”

“He was. It’s fine, he agreed to it.” Under his veil, Kai couldn’t help smiling.

It must have been obvious from his voice, because the elder smiled back. “Ah, it was for the best, then.”

Dahin returned, hanging back several paces to avoid having to be polite again, signaling Kai impatiently. “I have to go, elder. Thank you for your instruction.”

The person lifted a hand in farewell and Kai joined Dahin, who hissed, “We don’t have time to chat with random mortals, the envoy houses are over this way.”

The Enalin ambassador’s house was in a more open area, the streets less formal and more meandering. All the buildings here looked new, probably built atop an area destroyed during the war. The Ambassador’s house had the white wall protecting it from the street, with tall pines looming above it. It seemed forbidding, except for the plaque that indicated that this was also a free hostel for any Enalin or other travelers who needed shelter.

Dahin tugged on the bell pull next to the gate. After only a few moments, it swung open.

An Enalin in a dark blue caftan and a Belith-style stole stood there. They had very dark skin as most Enalin did, and their dark hair was braided and held back by silver rings shaped like orchids. Their smile held polite inquiry, which was hiding curiosity; they had probably not expected to open the gate to a Lesser Blessed dressed as an Arike woman and a Witch. Using Old Imperial, they said, “Welcome, travelers. I am Etem, a Doorkeeper of the House of Nibet and Enalin in Ancartre. Do you seek shelter for the night, or…?”

Kai said in formal Nibetian, “I was told the Lord of a Hundred Coronels and the Light of Enalin was staying in this house. If that is true, please tell them that Kaiisteron Fourth Prince of the underearth is here with Dahin Stargard, and hopes to speak with them.”

Etem blinked, stared, and then managed, “The Tescai-lin will be told at once. Please accept our hospitality while I inform the Senior Doorkeeper.” They stepped aside and gestured for Kai and Dahin to enter.

It was a relief. If the Tescai-lin hadn’t been here after all, they could have gotten help from the Enalin ambassador, but it would have been more awkward and probably required more explanation. And the ambassador would have to inform Belith’s Rising World council.

The scene that met Kai after stepping under the gate’s arch was not what he had expected at all. He had assumed there would be a courtyard with a garden, conventional for Belith city houses, whether they were home to one family or several. Instead there was a bridge over a large stone well, that must have once been the lower level of a monumental building. The spreading pines grew out of the bottom of it somewhere, tall enough to shade the well and the rest of the open space, their long red trunks flakey with age. They must have been planted not long after the war. Etem explained, “This was the prison the Hierarchs had built here during their occupation. After the war it was razed and given over to the people of Enalin for their use.”

Kai had to stop and look over the railing, and even the impatient Dahin lingered for a glance. What must have been a maze of prison cells had been rebuilt into two levels of multiple dwellings, roofed with tile, with little balconies and a communal kitchen in the center. It was well occupied, from the people moving around on the ramps and the amount of laundry hanging out to dry. He could hear running water, and the strongest scent was something cooking with saffron. “The drainage must have been a problem,” he said.

“It was,” Etem agreed, with only a little surprise. “The prison was not much concerned with hygiene. But the Belith engineers devised a clever system for it.”

Dahin tugged Kai’s sleeve. “You can compare notes later.” He explained to Etem, “He lives in a well.”

“It’s a big well,” Kai said defensively as they continued down the bridge.

The envoy house at the end had been built in the far northern Enalin style, out of smooth wooden tree trunks supporting a jumble of steeply pitched tile roofs and glass windows. The bridge led through a series of open gates with pointed arches, decorative rather than secure. Etem led them to the side, where a sheltered platform was set up as a waiting area for guests. It had a low square stone stove in its center, a welcome warmth rising from the coals inside, and it was ringed by wooden benches with cushions. “Please wait here,” Etem said, “while I carry your message inside.”

They took seats, and Dahin commented, “Not the hospitality of the house. They’re being cautious.” His left knee started to jiggle impatiently. “Do you think they’ll keep us waiting long?”

“Have you got something else to do tonight?” Kai asked. There were other Enalin, probably more Wardens or Doorkeepers, lurking near the pointed arch that led into the house’s main entrance, trying to snatch curious glances while still being polite.

One emerged from the house and came over to offer a tray with two ceramic cups, a tisane made from fenugreek seeds. Offering a drink was an old custom, going back to a turbulent past that had long faded into history. Like the martial paintings of the Arike that celebrated the city-state wars, even as they settled all their disputes in councils and assemblies now.

They barely had time to finish the drink, when Etem returned with another person. They were older than the rest of the Doorkeepers and attendants, their hair silver and gray and the lines of weather and laughter etched into the skin around their eyes and mouth. They said, “I am Reanis, the Senior Doorkeeper of this house. The Tescai-lin asks Kaiisteron what Bashasa bar Calis never lost.”

It was a test, which Kai expected; it was only sensible after Kai had been declared missing, and was turning up here in a different body. It also told him the Tescai-lin was actually here, since they were one of the few still living who would know to ask this question. But this particular test hit him harder in the heart than had probably been intended. Still, he pulled his veil off and said, “Hope.”

Reanis smiled. “Please accept the hospitality of the house.”

Reanis led them through the last gate and into the foyer. It was high-ceilinged with dark wooden walls, lit by pierced copper lamps. There were basins set into a stone table where they could wash their hands. As quiet as the house looked from outside, from the foyer Kai could hear voices speaking the more informal Enalin dialect, laughter, and more distantly several stringed instruments. Faces peered over one of the balconies in the upper half of the room; children, drawn by the sound of visitors being greeted.

Next they were taken to an enclosed court with a fountain pool. There were more benches here lined with cushions, and low tables. Crane messenger birds stood elegantly in the shallow water, coolly eyeing the visitors. Two young Doorkeepers were just setting down trays. There was a carafe and glasses of what looked like hibiscus water and some traditional greeting sweets that were triangular pockets of dough filled with dried fruit and nuts and honey. Reanis said, “Would you speak to the Light now, or accept hospitality first?” They eyed Dahin, who had gone to hover over the table with the pastries. “I don’t know how long your journey has been.”

Kai told them, “I’ll speak to the Light now, if they are ready. The rest of our family is waiting in the port. Could they join us here?”

“Of course. The house is open to any companions of Kaiisteron,” Reanis assured him.

Dahin waved, hastily swallowing a bite of pastry. “I’ll arrange for the raft. You go ahead, soften them up for me. I mean, apprise them of the situation so far.”

As Reanis frowned dubiously at Dahin, Kai touched Ziede’s heart pearl briefly and sent her the direction of the house. With the prison ruin turned into a hostel visible from the air, he didn’t think they would have any trouble recognizing it. Her acknowledgment was wordless, but it was enough for him to know they were well, and had been eating fresh fishcakes in front of a firepit at the port cookshop.

Reanis led Kai deeper inside the house, down a couple of broad corridors. The walls were all of the same dark rich wood, sometimes with painted panels of forests or fields, or views from cliff tops of storm-tossed seas. They passed an open door that led to a balcony, looking out on the garden of another house, and Kai twitched at the lack of security. He had to remind himself that they weren’t at war with anyone and the Tescai-lin and the Enalin ambassador to Belith would have their own protections.

They reached a foyer with a waterfall fountain and Reanis stopped, gesturing him to go ahead. Kai noted that the play of water was just loud enough to keep anyone from overhearing a conversation, even inadvertently.

Past it was a room lined with paintings of a city, or maybe several cities, and Kai recognized the architecture of Nibet: delicate towers and onion-shaped domes, the bridges and ornamental waterways. It was Nibet as it had been once, lush with gardens and shaded by parasol trees, filled with scholars and students and pilgrims.

In the center of the room, the Light sat on a cushioned platform a few handspans off the floor, padded with pillows. They gestured Kai to another couch opposite. Kai stepped onto it, sat on the pillows, and put his feet on the wooden rest. It felt awkward; this body didn’t have the sense-memory of dealing with the different configuration of formal Enalin furniture.

It was also a little awkward to be dealing with the different configuration of the Tescai-lin, Lord of the Hundred Coronels and the Light of Enalin. The Tescai-lin of the Hierarchs War had died some years ago and had been reborn into a new body. They were currently a small youth with the same dark skin and eyes but with more delicate features and shorter hair that had been woven into a tight cap of intricate braids. Kai had only seen them once since it happened and he still wasn’t used to it. As they took in Kai’s appearance, their sharp brows quirked with amusement. They said, “Kaiisteron. Now we are both somewhat different from what we were.”

Waiting on a low table was an Arike glass drinking set with delicate spirals of blue woven through it. “Somewhat,” Kai agreed, smiling as the Light poured and handed him a cup. It was one of his favorites, a blend of milk and sesame. “I wondered why you had gone to Belith with the Rising World council still in session, then I heard about the Ancartre expedition to Sun-Ar.”

The Light acknowledged that with a nod, setting the carafe aside. “I thought that might be why you were here, with Dahin Stargard. Are the others well and with you?”

“Tahren and Ziede are here, with two others you haven’t met yet, on their way from the port.” He hesitated, but the Light was still waiting expectantly. “Do you know why the Belith envoy called an emergency meeting of the council? Did something happen to the expedition?”

“I have some knowledge of it. No harm has come to the scholars as far as I know. They consulted me before they left, since I am one of the remaining few with personal knowledge of the original trip to Sun-Ar.” The Light eyed him. “But first, I would hear what happened to make you and Ziede Daiyahah miss the failure of Bashat’s Imperial renewal. I know how much you were looking forward to it.”

“Ah.” Kai had to smile. The younger Tescai-lin sounded so much like their old incarnation. “What have you been told?”

The Light sat back. “A story was reported to me, told by the once emperor now Prince-heir again Bashat, during an unusually exciting meeting of the council. I felt there was more to be said, but I would hear the rest from you.”

Kai would rather the Light hear it from him too. He said, “My version is a little different from Bashat’s,” and started at the beginning, with him and Ziede waking in their tomb prison. The Light listened in increasing consternation, until Kai reached the end. They held up a hand and said, “Bashat informed the council that Tahren Stargard had been abducted, but was less forthcoming about where you and Ziede might be. He let these conspirators take you? He let them murder you? This person who wanted to become our emperor?”

Kai had been against that even before Bashat had betrayed him. “The Enalin consensus didn’t let that happen.”

The Light’s jaw tightened. It had an entirely different effect in their young body than it had in their old one. “If the consensus had known this, they would have achieved their decision much more quickly. As a rule, we do not look well on those who murder their allies in cool blood. And you are an immortal who acts in service to the lives of all; there are laws written in our sacred bones about this. If I were to list every moral principle this has broken—”

Kai interrupted, “That’s why you can’t tell anyone this part.”

The Light regarded him, and despite the younger face, the altered features, Kai knew that look. They said, “Kaiisteron.”

This was one of the reasons Kai had wanted to turn his back on the Rising World and go back to Avagantrum. “I don’t know if it was him, only that he was there with me in Benais House before whatever it was happened. And Ziede had no memory of it at all. He must have thought neither of us would remember any of it.” Kai thought, or maybe he just hoped we wouldn’t. Or maybe he didn’t care. “And he said that he thought we wouldn’t be harmed, just imprisoned like Tahren was.” That Ramad would release them once the conspiracy had been revealed and no one would know that Bashat had stood by and let it happen. That was what Ramad had said. But even if Kai believed him, there was no way to know if Bashat had revealed all his intentions to his vanguarder. “He may not have understood that what the Nient-arik and their expositor did would kill my body.” The Light looked elementally unconvinced by any of those equivocations. Kai persisted, “I’ve thought about this. I have to let it lie. I asked Tahren not to tell the council this part, and Immortal Marshall Saadrin doesn’t really know or care what happened to us before we called her to the stolen Immortal Blessed ship.”

The Light considered him gravely. It was hard to tell what they thought, they had always cultivated a deliberately opaque expression. Sitting in judgement of thorny moral problems was part of their reason for existence and Kai felt there was a great deal of judging going on right now. The Light said finally, “Then why tell me at all?”

“I can’t lie to you.” Kai let his breath out. He corrected, “I could, but I don’t want to.”

The Light tipped their head in acknowledgment. “Then what do you want me to do with this information?”

That was easier to answer. “If he kills me again, you’ll know what happened. And act as you feel warranted.”

“I see.” The Light digested that. It was a less fraught silence, but not by much. “And if he kills me?”

That was something entirely different. “Then I’ll bring the Enalin consensus his head in a bag.”

“So you would.” The Light’s gaze was ironic, but Kai thought they understood now. “And I should not do the same for you?”

That one was easy. “You believe in justice but you won’t take a life in exchange for a life.”

The Light sighed a little and leaned back. “And what about this expositor Arnsterath. Was she truly a demon, one of your kin?”

“In a way.” Kai dropped his gaze to the table. This part was still hard to talk about. “She was Arn-Nefa of Kanavesi Saredi.”

The Light considered that for a long moment. “One of your own people? You had no idea such a person still lived in the mortal world?”

“No, I had no clue.” Kai swirled the dregs in his cup. “I know some of the other demons released from the Cageling Court survived long enough to return to the underearth. She wasn’t one of them. I thought she had given up, and drifted from her human body. She wasn’t—” He had to stop and swallow down a lump of guilt and angry bile. “She gave me to understand that she would never seek another human host.”

The Light’s gaze went distant as if they tried to recall the events of that day. “Her opinions seem to have radically shifted since then. She has committed crimes by participating in the conspiracy, by subjugating a person, even an expositor, as a familiar. When you were Kai-Enna, did it seem that she lacked empathy for those who were different from herself?”

Kai stared at the carved wood of the couch’s platform, tracing the line of a kingfisher’s wing. “I didn’t think so.” Had he just never understood Arnsterath’s character, all those years ago when they were both Saredi?

The Light refilled both cups. “Would you find her to bring her to the council’s justice, or find her to see if she would accept your help?”

“Accept my help?” Kai knew what Ziede would say about that, and she wasn’t wrong. “Arnsterath abandoned me, when she was Arn-Nefa.” Saying it aloud scraped open an unexpectedly raw wound. He had never known if the Saredi would have rejected him because he had taken a host by force from an enemy. Arn-Nefa and the other demons had been all that was left, and they had rejected him, so it was hard not to believe he would have fared any better with Enna’s family.

“She did indeed,” the Light agreed, watching him with that far-too-knowing gaze. “You were barely more than a child.”

Kai almost snorted. “We remember that differently.”

“A youth, then,” the Light conceded. “She didn’t know if Bashasa would have exploited you, or killed you or allowed you to be killed.”

“She didn’t ask me to come with her.” Kai had never said that part aloud before. She had never given him a chance. “She tried to drain my life, like I was…” A legionary, an expositor, a Hierarch. An enemy.

The Light said, “She was as wounded and demoralized as you. She was not acting with a whole heart or mind. We all react to such things in different ways. Some of us are tested, and some of us fail.”

From anyone else, this conversation would have been filled with thorns and bitter annoyance, but Kai had seen the Light struggle not to fail their own tests. With so many of the Enalin’s chosen leaders already executed by the Hierarchs, the Light had been the one to lead Enalin and Nibet and the remnants of the northeast into battle. But the real purpose of the Light’s existence had always been justice and reconciliation. Kai knew how difficult cleaving to that purpose had been, after the war when the destruction the Hierarchs had left behind had seemed insurmountable. Kai said, “You think I should give her the benefit of the doubt?”

“Not then,” the Light said. “She rejected you, you owed her nothing.”

“And now?”

The Light made an open-handed gesture. “It will depend on whether she comes to you as an enemy or not. If not, you have to ask yourself what we owe to each other as living beings.”

Kai rubbed his eyes and didn’t say, I don’t want to do that, I want everything to be simple. Nothing was ever simple. “I’ve answered your questions, now will you answer mine about the expedition?”

The Light’s expression turned pensive. “The rest I’ll wait to say until the others are here, but the reason the envoy called for a meeting was a particular artifact, found in one of the abandoned dwellings the expedition is exploring in Sun-Ar. It was a badge for a Hierarch’s expositor.”

Unease ran in prickles along Kai’s back. The Light read his expression and said, “It’s disturbing, but it could be from long before the war, an old symbol repurposed for the Hierarchs’ invasion. There are many such symbols, from Nibet, from the old tribes of Enalin before we united, that have changed their meaning over time. But we must be certain.”

Kai pushed the surge of nerves away. “Would you speak to Dahin now? He’s been working on this for a while.”

Dahin walked into the room and stopped abruptly. “Well, you’ve changed,” he said, planting his hands on his hips. “This seems a little one-sided, going into scholarly battle with a child.”

“You have not changed, sadly.” The Tescai-lin’s expression was cool. “And only a Blessed would consider a scholarly discussion a battle.”

“Oh, there you are.” Dahin was pleased. “I knew you were still in there.”

While Dahin was setting out his maps and papers in front of the Tescai-lin, Kai let Reanis conduct him to the guest quarters so he could take advantage of a bathing room that included the luxuries of warm running water, privacy, soap, and scented oil. From Ziede’s heart pearl, he knew the others had just arrived, that Tahren was carefully lowering the ascension raft to a tight landing on a small plot of ground in a kitchen garden that was currently lying fallow. Kai told Ziede, I think Dahin was lying about coming here for research.

I thought so too, she replied, when he didn’t demand that we put together our own expedition to Sun-Ar immediately. But there didn’t seem a point in starting that fight before we got here.

Kai agreed, but he wished he knew what Dahin was up to. And why he couldn’t just tell them. But Dahin had been like this for years. Kai shouldn’t be frustrated by it. He was, but he shouldn’t be.

The others had been shown to the guest quarters by the time Kai got out of the bath, and he found one of their hastily packed bags waiting in the outer room. Digging through it, he found a pair of plain brown leggings, but the only clean shirt and skirt was of a rich blue, and the coat stuffed under them was embroidered in faded silver over black brocade all along the hems and cuffs. There was a black veil in the pocket, cobweb fine and just translucent enough to conceal Kai’s eyes. He knew Bashasa had given it to him, though he couldn’t remember when. Bashasa had had a habit of producing a thing when Kai needed it, as if it was just something he happened to have with him. Kai thought it might have been this veil, when Bashasa had never worn veils even in the places where they were in fashion, that had finally made him realize that all these casual gifts had been carefully chosen at some point.

This was more of an outfit for a formal event for Benais-arik’s court, but the heavier fabrics were sturdy and strong and would feel good in Belith’s cool evening weather. And everything else they did in this city would now be with the blessing of the Tescai-lin, so there was no point in concealment anymore. He tucked the veil away in the coat pocket.

Kai was already in the reception room, eating stuffed olives, when the others came in. It was an area with less difficult furniture, meant for more intimate guests who wouldn’t consider informality an insult. It was getting cooler as late afternoon approached evening, and round metal braisers had been lit for warmth. Two Doorkeepers set out more plates of food and carafes and cups on the small tables. “You see,” Tahren said to Sanja. “He didn’t drown.”

The Tescai-lin walked in, with Dahin saying, “But you agree that the—”

The Tescai-lin said, “Stop talking while I greet your family.”

After being introduced to the Tescai-lin, Sanja retreated to Kai’s side, plopping down on the couch next to him. As the others exchanged greetings, she whispered, “Were they a kid when you first met them? Because from the stories I thought they were a lot bigger.”

“No, they were an adult.” He handed her a stuffed olive and nodded to a set of razor-edge spears mounted on the wall. “That’s the kind of weapon they fought with.”

Sanja eyed the spears. “What are they going to fight with now?”

“Their brain. They’re good at that, too.”

Dahin managed to let the Tescai-lin finish expressing relief for Ziede and Tahren’s survival before he said, “Yes, we’re all very lucky the Nient-arik trusted Immortal Blessed who are as incompetent as they are malicious, but we raced to get here ahead of the Rising World council’s response and at this point they can’t be more than a few days behind us. So—”

“They found artifacts with Hierarch symbols,” Kai said, because there was no point delaying. “Including a Hierarch expositor’s badge.”

Ziede was briefly startled. “That bad?” As she leaned back against the pillows, she said silently to Kai, Somehow I thought it would all be exaggerated, a mistake. Tahren squeezed her knee, her own expression grim.

Kai answered the same way, I think I did too.

Tahren asked, “Where in Sun-Ar did they find it?”

“I was told to the northwest of the place the scholars believe was a seasonal gathering point,” the Tescai-lin said. “I have not been shown the location on a map.”

“Northwest.” Tahren considered it, her gaze going to where Dahin had moved some dishes to the floor to spread his map out. “I assume they couldn’t tell how old it was, or we would not be here having this conversation.”

“They could not,” the Tescai-lin admitted.

Tenes sat forward and signed, Learned Leader, I apologize but I have forgotten much of what I was taught. Did the Hierarchs create the expositors?

Kai had a flash of memory, camped along a river road somewhere in the Sana-sarcofa, watching Amabel’s younger sibling—it had been so long her name had slipped away—teaching the Tescai-lin Witchspeak. She had moved the fingers of their much larger hand to show them how to shape the symbols.

The Tescai-lin answered, “They did. At least, the expositors who spoke of it believed they did.”

Dahin glanced up from the map and added, “They created them to control the raw power of the Well.” Sanja drew breath to speak and he continued, “Before you ask, the expositors didn’t kill the Hierarchs because to be a Hierarch, they had to bathe in and be forged in the depth of the Well. They were impervious to its power.”

Kai said, “But not to sharp blades. Or dull ones, if you’re not in a hurry.”

“Which is why we’re all still alive,” Ziede finished.

Tahren’s brow was furrowed. Bringing them back to the point, she said, “This badge could have been left by survivors who fled to the far south after the war.”

“Yes, fled back to where the Hierarchs’ Well is,” Dahin said pointedly.

A little of Tahren’s exasperation slipped out. “I am not disputing that. But there are many ways a piece of jewelry could end up somewhere that don’t prove that another invasion is imminent.”

The Tescai-lin jumped in before it became an argument, and the conversation became quickly mired in detail. Tenes followed it, frowning intently, but Kai had already been over most of it in his own mind.

Ziede said through her pearl, Expositors, tinkering with the Well all this time? Surely we would know about it before now, surely they would have attacked in force, somewhere in the Rising World.

I know, Kai thought back. He added, And they’ve never been good at cooperating with each other, especially if there’s not a Hierarch holding the whip over them.

He couldn’t imagine expositors, even with some new Hierarch to keep them in line, calmly sitting around up there biding their time. Except, of course, that was what they had done the first time, wasn’t it—built up their strength gradually, subjugated the lands of the far south first with tricks and then with force …

Sanja shifted around, distracted by a shout from the attached atrium. From the noise, the children of the house were playing in there. “You can go join them if you want,” Kai told her quietly. She had only taken one of the little blackcurrant cakes, which showed how much she had probably put away at the port cookshop.

She eyed him suspiciously. “You won’t leave me.”

“No,” Kai told her. She hadn’t seemed concerned about that at any of the places where it would have been truly terrible to be abandoned. It said something about her estimation of Kai’s character, that she only worried about being left behind at safe places like here and Nibet House in Benais-arik. “I don’t leave my discarded children with the Tescai-lin; that’s considered very rude in Enalin.”

Sanja gave him a withering look. Then she scrambled off the couch, collected some fried hand pies stuffed with spiced cabbage and chickpea into a napkin, and went out to the atrium.

“But do we know if anything has happened since the object was found?” Tahren was asking. “It must have been months ago, if they had to send back word of it all the way from the Capstone.”

“Much more recent than that.” The Tescai-lin’s expression was somewhat wry. “When Highsun joined the effort to make the trek to Sun-Ar again, he also brought Immortal Blessed anchor stones.”

Kai said, “He what?” which was drowned out by Tahren and Ziede’s startled exclamations. Dahin shushed them all, waving an annoyed hand.

Kai thought, he’s not surprised. He must have had some inkling of it. But why hadn’t he mentioned it.

The Tescai-lin continued, “He apparently taught at least some of the mortal scholars to use them. That’s how they’ve been getting messages back to Ancartre so quickly.”

Tenes sat forward and signed in Witchspeak, What are anchor stones?

Preoccupied, Ziede told her, “They let Immortal Blessed travel quickly, very much like the way Saadrin came to us on the ship. But more portable.”

The anchor stones were tied to the Well of Thosaren, like the well sources used to power ascension rafts and Immortal Blessed ships. They were like portable well sources themselves, and Immortal Blessed could use them for transport over long but limited distances. They had to be placed in prepared locations in advance, before they could be used; Ilhanrun Highsun must have planted them along the route the expedition had taken across the southern continent. How he had taught mortals to use them, Kai had no idea.

Tahren muttered under her breath, “Mother of Thosaren.”

“Right?” Dahin agreed, glancing over at her, his enmity apparently forgotten for once. “And they called you an apostate.”

“Did you know about this?” Tahren turned to Dahin, knotting her fingers together. Normal conversations with Dahin were not something she took lightly. Kai was aware Ziede was holding her breath.

“I suspected.” Dahin shrugged. “From what I overheard in the council meeting, it sounded like they were getting information surprisingly quickly from a group of people so far away.”

“Yes, of course,” Tahren murmured. She added, “Highsun was always full of surprises.”

It was almost funny. All that effort the Patriarchs had expended to keep the secrets of their Well of Thosaren and here Highsun was, equipping a bunch of mortal scholars with one of the most rare and powerful Blessed devices in existence. Kai said, “It’s too bad Saadrin isn’t here.”

The Tescai-lin lifted their brows skeptically. “Is it?” Immortal Blessed, other than Tahren, weren’t exactly welcomed by the Enalin, even after all these years.

Dahin snorted a laugh. “I know, but— To see her face when she hears about it!”

Kai gave them all a moment to imagine that. He looked out toward the atrium. The children had settled on the floor near the archway. Sanja appeared engrossed in an elaborate game with the others, played with tiny ceramic figurines. It’s not the same, he reminded himself. We’re not the same. If something comes down from the south, we’ll meet it head-on this time. He said, “What does the expedition know about the Well? Highsun would have told them something, if not everything.”

Tahren’s voice was acerbic. “Why wouldn’t he tell them everything? He seems to enjoy sharing information.”

“He may very well have.” The Tescai-lin conceded that with a nod. “Being scholars of history, they already know more than most mortals. They know it existed, and how it originally fed the Hierarchs’ power. But, as far as I know, they believe it was destroyed. Once the first expedition found that the people of Sun-Ar had been massacred, it was impossible to tell if the Hierarchs originated near there or somewhere further south. They found no traces of the Well to guide them. It had gone quiescent long before the last Hierarch was killed, and they had no way to track its location.”

Tenes signed, So these scholars don’t know to be careful. Unless the Immortal Blessed warned them.

“Surely he warned them,” Kai said. Highsun must understand more than most about the danger of anything left behind by the Hierarchs. You would think, he reminded himself. The Blessed weren’t best known for anticipating the consequences of their actions.

“That’s not even the worst of it.” Ziede’s brow furrowed in increasing concern. “If someone wanted to find the Well, going along with the expedition, or following it up there, would be an excellent way to do it.”

Dahin shrugged and poked at the remains of a cabbage pie. “They would have been alert for that. And expositors aren’t good at hiding what they are for very long.”

It wouldn’t necessarily be an expositor, Kai thought. Every land, every culture had people who might become monsters given the right opportunity. All it would take was for one to stumble on the right information about the Hierarchs’ Well. He wondered why Dahin wanted to dismiss this extremely valid concern. He sent through Ziede’s pearl, Does Dahin seem cagey suddenly? More than usual?

Yes, he does, Ziede responded with grim resignation. Tahren watched her brother with a faint line of consternation between her brows.

Dahin reclaimed his map and tucked it into his bag. “Anyway, I’m not surprised neither expedition found anything to point them to the Well. The Hierarchs were all too aware they needed to keep it and their homeland hidden, even before they left to conquer the world.” He met the Tescai-lin’s gaze. “Light of a Hundred Coronels, I need to speak to the scholars that are here, the ones working on the expedition’s findings. Before Benais-arik sends their official delegation. With your blessing, perhaps in written form, I could go there tonight, and no one else need be bothered.”

Kai was incredulous. So now Dahin suddenly wanted to continue alone, after dragging them all the way here.

The Tescai-lin regarded him skeptically. “And why would Dahin Stargard, the noted scholar of history, not be welcome in the official delegation?”

Dahin sighed. “Bashat wants to be an emperor, still, doesn’t he, even though the coalition has already said no once. Too many people know that, and it’s already stirred up more trouble than the Rising World has faced in years. The Nient-arik faction allying with the Immortal Blessed renegades can’t be the only conspiracy, just the one that got caught. To find the Well and destroy it, it has to be someone trusted. I trust me. And you, obviously. And them.” He jerked his head toward Kai and the others.

“Thank you for including us,” Tahren muttered, and oofed softly as Ziede elbowed her.

The Tescai-lin said, “I thank you for putting me second in that illustrious list. And in the morning—”

Etem, the Doorkeeper who had first greeted them, came into the room at a hurried pace. They sat down on the couch next to the Tescai-lin and leaned in to speak to them in a low whisper.

Kai watched the Tescai-lin’s expression sharpen in worry and had a bad feeling. He finished his last bite of pie and dusted crumbs from his hands.

The Tescai-lin asked a question, nodded at the whispered answer. Then they said, “A messenger has come from Chancellor Domtellan, who oversees the scholars who work on the expedition’s findings. She says a delegation purporting to be from the Rising World has arrived, but their circumstances are suspicious. Two Immortal Blessed accompany them.”

Dahin made a noise like the air had been punched out of him. “It’s them.” He shot to his feet in alarm. “It’s the conspirators!”

Kai wasn’t sure he believed that, but they had to find out. He came to his feet in time with the others. He said, “We can take the raft and be there quickly, if someone can show us the way.”

“Etem can guide you,” the Tescai-lin said. “I’ll follow with the ambassador’s guard.” With grim certainty, they added, “Whoever it is, they will explain themselves.”

The Past: the Prelude

It’s said very little is known about the origins of the Witch King, but I stipulate that it is more true that little is known now. During the war, among the leadership of the coalition and the Enalin-Arike forces, outguarders, and vanguarders, the Witch King’s origins in the west would have been common knowledge to some extent … Many of the Witches who joined the early fighting were said to have fled the Witchlands, and they spoke Saredi … In the east, the Saredi were called the Grass Kings, and no one remembers why. It was certainly not what they called themselves …

—Commentary on the First Histories, from the City Archives at Seidel-arik

With an irony Kai certainly appreciated, it was the mortal vanguarders who figured out where the dustwitches’ camp must be.

Kai met with them later that night on the second floor of the caravanserai, where they had staked out an area for their use. They had scrounged some tables for stretching maps, and the new map they had made of the area was spread out on boards in the center of the room. Manah, a young Arike woman, told Kai, “They have to be near a spring, and there are at least three in the hills, here, here, and here.” She tapped the locations on the map. She had a scar on her face, from the corner of her eye to her chin, and had joined the army after being released from a Hierarch prison in Benais-arik. “Then we narrow it down by possible shelter, and how far away from our encampment each one is.”

The vanguarders had covered the windows so they could light enough lamps to read the maps without turning the caravanserai’s tower into a beacon. They all gathered around the makeshift table, careful not to bump shoulders with Kai, but not showing any excessive fear of him either.

“They weren’t here before us, for the advance vanguard saw no sign of them … what, twenty-seven days ago?” Nadoch asked. He was older, with the darker skin of Enalin and his hair in tight braids around his face. He had been in the farmers’ guild of Seidel-arik, and ended up in a prison camp outside the city because of it. “They made a thorough search of this whole area, to make certain there was no one else already holed up here.”

There was a murmur of agreement from the others about the timing. “They must have moved here after that,” someone in the back said. “If they’d come before us, they would surely have taken over the caravanserai, and we wouldn’t have told the Prince-heirs this was a good spot for the encampment.”

“I think they followed one of our larger parties in, maybe Prince-heir Asara when she took her cadre to pick up those refugees from Old Desrona. That’s close to the north trade routes,” Nadoch said, and Manah nodded grimly. Kai agreed, it fit with what Lahshar’s drovers had witnessed and heard from that area. “Then they would have seen Asara’s party meet up with the rest of the army.”

“Would Witches know other Witches were nearby?” another vanguarder asked. “Would they have known Amabel and all they’s family was with us? There wasn’t any Witches with Asara then.”

“Some can.” Kai had seen some borderlander Witches able to know how close and in what direction their friends were, but it hadn’t seemed to be a universal skill. “But we know the dustwitches can sense Ziede’s wind-devils, so they’d have known at least one powerful Witch was with Bashasa’s force.”

More murmurs of agreement, and someone in the back whispered that anybody who tried to take on the Scourge of the Temple Halls had a death sign in their heart. Kai hid his smile. They weren’t wrong.

Manah traced a route on the map, as if committing it to memory. “Before that, they may have been following Asara hoping to steal supplies.”

“After they spotted the army, most likely they would’ve cut this way when they saw where we were headed, and settled up along in here.” Nadoch sketched the path with a calloused finger. “I would make it this spring here, where there’s shelter, and enough grass for their beasts.”

Manah added grimly, “Biding their time.”

“Well, that was a mistake on their part,” Kai said, mentally sorting out how they could best approach the area. “You agree they’re most active at night?” Their attack pattern, at least what he knew of it, seemed to point to that.

There were general nods from the vanguarders, and Nadoch said, “If their usual prey is caravans, it makes sense.”

“You think they wanted our Witches, like Amabel?” Manah asked, her sharp brows drawing together. “That’s why they came at us?”

“I think so,” Kai told her. “I’ll know when we find the camp.”

“Ser’ our Witches,” another voice commented from the back. “Atta dur hands.”

“She says they’re our Witches, they keep their hands off,” Manah translated.

Kai and Ziede set out that morning with two vanguarders, with Tahren and Nirana and Telare from Kai’s cadre following in reserve with extra horses. Ziede would be able to conceal herself and the vanguarders with a chimera, an illusion that shifted to make them blend into their surroundings. Kai would wait until they were well away, then follow a little distance behind Ziede’s group, watching to make sure they weren’t detected. He didn’t need a chimera, having been a scout in much worse territory than this. They would have to move slowly on foot, and it would probably take them until noon to reach the part of the hills where the camp might be located. Tahren and the soldiers would be some distance behind Kai, ready to come up if they sighted prisoners.

Bashasa had disliked the idea of sending out a Witch to look for people who appeared to be stealing Witches, but had agreed there didn’t seem to be a choice, and that Ziede was certainly the most formidable Witch to send. He had said, “If the dustwitches are holding anyone against their will, we must free them. Even better if it leads to contacting other Witches who might wish to join us.”

Kai rode for the first part of the trip with Tahren and the soldiers, taking the old trade road for a little distance as a distraction for any dustwitches spying on the camp. Ziede’s group had already slipped into the brush and was well on its way.

The sky was laced with high, light gray clouds and the breeze had a little dampness in it, as if it had rained somewhere to the south. They were all wearing straw sun hats and Kai had left his coat off, draped over his saddlebow. He didn’t know if any spying dustwitches would recognize him at a distance, but for the moment he would be as nondescript as possible.

They rode at a walk, as if they had a long journey ahead and saw no reason to push their horses. The road curved away from the caravanserai’s paddocks and between the scrub-covered hills. “Dahin said he spoke to you,” Tahren said suddenly.

“He did.” Kai hesitated, reluctant to share anything Dahin had said in confidence. “We talked about … families.”

“Families and betrayal, and the destruction of trust,” Tahren added wryly.

Kai snorted. So Tahren was not trying to find out what Dahin had said, she already knew. “He’s very good at pretending not to be upset.”

“He is. It’s a family trait.” She let out her breath. “I think he’s better than he was. In the Hostage Courts, Bashasa’s people were wary of us. Here, he’s just another…” She seemed hesitant to choose a word.

“Grubby kid who talks a lot,” Kai supplied.

Tahren’s lips twitched in a smile. “Yes. He’s been helping in the supply train, fixing things. He’s always been clever with his wits and his hands.” She hesitated. “There are Lesser Blessed who work to make devices, you would call them. Objects or tools that use the power of the Well of Thosaren to perform tasks.”

“Like ascension rafts,” Kai said, not letting his voice sound too dry. The things that came near-silently out of a dark sky to rain death on you from above, for the Hierarchs.

“Like that, yes. Dahin always wanted to tinker with them, to make new things, change their function to be more helpful, useful. He was interested in mortal lands, what was happening there. In writing down stories and histories of the wider world.” Tahren’s lips thinned at some memory. “But our family did not permit that. They thought it beneath us.”

Kai didn’t have any idea what life for the Immortal Blessed was like, and he still wasn’t sure he wanted to. He asked, “Is he the only reason you left the Blessed Lands?” Then he thought it was a stupid question. As if saving your sibling from a terrible enslavement to the Hierarchs’ Well wasn’t a good enough motivation for leaving.

Tahren didn’t seem to mind the crassness of the question. “Yes. If not for him, I might be fighting against you all,” she admitted. “I’m not sure I would have forced myself to confront the hypocrisy of our way of life, otherwise.”

That was a more honest answer than Kai had counted on. “If it hadn’t hurt you personally.”

“Correct. Even if you have always known in your heart, that your way of thought, your … belief in your own superiority, has foundations of straw and not stone, it is still a shock to have it collapse so quickly.” Tahren’s voice was rueful.

Kai felt the soldiers listening, and asked the question he thought they might want to have answered. “You thought the Blessed should have fought the Hierarchs.”

“I know we should have.” Tahren’s resignation seemed old and well-worn, as if it had been her companion for a long time. “But the Patriarchs were convincing in their cowardice.”

They rode for a time, and Kai watched black carrion birds high overhead, lazily wheeling on the wind. “Had you ever lived with mortals before? Did you know what they were like?” Kai had almost said what we’re like. He had lived with mortals since his first breath drawn in this world, since leaving the underearth. He wasn’t sure he could imagine what it would be like not to. He also realized his vision of what the Blessed Lands were like was vague at best.

“No, not at all. Before the Hierarchs only the Lesser Blessed traded with mortals, and not many of them. Our way was always to try to keep them at a distance.” Tahren’s smile was small and not at all ironic. “This has been an interesting learning experience.”

“Uh-huh. Interesting.” Then it occurred to Kai what experience Tahren might be thinking of. “Like meeting Ziede.”

Tahren arched a brow at him, then looked away with a regretful expression. “If only she thought I was interesting.”

Kai had to laugh. “If she didn’t like you, I think you’d know.”

Tahren slid a look at him, alert. “Has she spoken about me?” Kai stared at her, flummoxed. She shook her head self-consciously and said, “That was wrong. I shouldn’t ask.”

“Are you not—?” Kai started, then reconsidered. “Do you really not know—”

Ahead, Telare said suddenly, “Fourth Prince, it’s time.”

Kitar, one of the vanguarders who had gone ahead with Ziede, stepped out of the brush. Kai reined in and slipped off his horse, taking his coat with him. Kitar took the reins and mounted as Kai walked into the scrub trees.

The sun was high overhead by the time Kai crawled up to where Ziede was braced in the shadow of a rock ledge above the dustwitches’ camp. One of her vanguarders had gone to get Tahren and the soldiers, the other was tucked into the rock just below her. It was Manah, watching to make sure nothing crept up on their position from behind, since Ziede couldn’t use her wind-devils and the chimera cantrip had run its course. She had been so motionless against the dusty stone that Kai almost hadn’t seen her. The other vanguarder Kitar was back in the thickets below the ridge, finding a good place to hide the horses once Tahren and the others arrived.

The direct sunlight was hot but in the shade the stone was cold and dank, even through Kai’s clothing. He handed Ziede a bag with some dried fruit and flatbread and a flask of water, passing another down to Manah. “Thank you,” Ziede whispered. “We ran out a while ago. Having to move so slowly is terribly inconvenient.”

“It is.” Kai squinted down at the camp. It was a scatter of battered tents in a bowl-shaped depression, sheltered by the curving rocky ridge and shaded by a few bushy trees. The riding animals were stabled a little further down the side of the hill, where there was more grass and trees next to the small spring that had given their position away. Some dustwitches sat in front of the shaded tents, but most must be inside. The ones who were moving around, keeping watch, seemed desultory, which fit in with what the vanguarders believed, that the group slept through the day and was most active at night. They probably had excellent night-vision, something Kai had lost with Enna’s body.

The only others who looked awake were a small group of five who sat under the shade of a gnarled tree and an open lean-to. They wore the same dusty Arike-style travel clothing as the dustwitches, but no veils. Two looked small enough to be children. One lay on their side, sleeping or ill, the others huddled together. Kai asked Ziede, “Those are the prisoners?”

She capped the water flask and said, “Yes, I think they’re the mortal hostages. Possibly the Witches they’ve taken prisoner are in that tent.” She pointed to one in a less advantageous position, toward the middle of the camp with no tree to shade it. “The dustwitches keep a watch on it, and the mortals look toward it fairly often. And I saw that Nightjar go in and out once. I think—and this is an even more chancy guess—that the Doyen is in that tent.” She indicated one toward the edge of the camp, under the tree cover. It was larger than the others, and a few dustwitches sat outside it. “Of course, I could be wrong, and it’s the other way around.”

“If it is, at least I’ll know right away.” Kai was ready to get this over with. “You and Tahren and the soldiers get the mortals out, and I’ll get whoever’s in the prison tent.”

Ziede huffed a critical breath. “You’re just going to walk right into the middle of them, aren’t you.”

“It’s too hot to run.” Kai wiggled backward and down to the ledge just below where Tahren and the others now waited.

“You can’t mean to go alone,” Manah said, her frown pulling at her scar.

“He does.” Tahren was matter-of-fact. Telare and Nirana exchanged a wry look.

“We’ll go with you, watch your back,” Leshan, Ziede’s other vanguarder, added. He was a stocky Arike, as compact and strong as a boulder. “You’re Prince-heir’s…” he trailed off.

Kai lifted his brows. “I’m Prince-heir’s what?”

Manah shifted her position so she could kick Leshan lightly in the shoulder, and Leshan declined to answer.

To make it plain, Kai said, “If they kill one of you, I’ll kill all of them, and Bashasa would be disappointed with me.” No one liked to disappoint Bashasa, he was too nice about it.

Ziede slipped out of the rocky cleft and said, “Everyone will do what I say. I need Manah and Leshan to wait so they can help the prisoners once we bring them out. Kai, I’ll signal you when we’re in position.”

The vanguarders didn’t argue again, and Kai picked his way silently down and around the pebble-strewn slope, using the grass clumps and dirt for purchase. Once he was out of sight, he slipped a small knife off his belt. He braced himself against the rock, pulled his shirt up, and stabbed himself. The pain doubled him over. His head swam and chills coursed through his body; he must have hit a particularly bad spot. He leaned against the dusty sun-warmed stone, and let the heat revive him.

Stabbing was still better than rolling in one of the spiky plants that grew among the rocks and grass; he had had to do that once in an emergency while out with his cadre. But it would never be easy. The fact that it wasn’t easy helped fuel the intentions.

Ziede and Tahren, and probably Dahin—though Kai had never talked about it with him—knew how he sourced his power; the mortals didn’t and Amabel’s family was too polite to ask. Even when people knew, he would rather not do it in front of them. It felt oddly personal, and he also knew how disturbing the sight was. As the pain pooled into the place where he stored the lives he drained, Kai took a deep breath and continued his climb down the slope.

He knew where the dustwitch sentries were, Kitar had pointed them out earlier, and one of their positions would make an excellent place to enter the camp.

On the flatter ground near the spring, the drowsy riding animals were tethered. They were some variety of ox: big, stocky-bodied creatures, shaggy around the shoulders, better for pulling wagons than riding. Luckily they seemed slow to react to Kai’s presence, flicking their tails at the buzzing flies. The veiled sentry faced the approach to the ridge from the grassy hills, not expecting attack from the rocky slope behind her. Her whole slumped posture suggested sullen boredom.

Kai leapt on her from behind and stole just enough of her life to leave her unconscious, then lowered her silently to the ground. The nearest animal lowed and a few others shifted nervously. Kai crouched behind a tree and after a while they settled into sleepy silence again.

Kai waited for the signal, reflecting that this would be easier if he and Ziede had some silent way to communicate. Then somewhere past the slope, dry grass and leaves rustled as the wind changed. A gentle weight with ice-prickle claws settled on his back, then slipped away.

The dustwitches who could sense wind-devils would realize one was near; it was time for Kai to draw their attention.

He stood, cast aside his straw hat, pulled the pins out of his hair so Talamines’ curls fell loose. He had come out here wearing his expositor’s blood-stained coat. He didn’t want any confusion about what he was here for. He strode up the path directly into the camp.

Dustwitches who had lazed outside the tents were on their feet, alerted by the sudden change in the wind. A voice cried out an alarm and they all turned toward Kai.

He didn’t stop, he didn’t speak. There was no point; he wasn’t here to bargain or argue. Dust rose under his feet in a cloud, dust prickled in the back of his throat, and he drew the power out of it and swept it away with a gesture. Had Nightjar even told her companions that it was useless to try that trick on him? They had wasted time that could have been used for something, anything else.

He felt a tug underfoot, then stabs of sharp pain, like a thorny vine had wrapped around his leg. It was a cantrip; outside the nearest tent, two dustwitches had crouched down, scribbling a pattern on the bare dirt. Kai pulled a dormant intention off his coat, imbued it with some of the pain of his still-healing wound, and flung it toward them. He didn’t bother to watch the result, the screaming told him all he needed to know. The cantrip fell away and Kai kept walking.

Other dustwitches ran toward Kai, not realizing the cantrip had failed. He flung another intention that would scramble the wits of anyone who got within twenty paces of it for the rest of the day. They scattered in confusion, some falling to the ground. Dust rose in walls; it interfered more with the dustwitches still trying to attack than it did Kai. Someone slapped a cantrip on his shoulder and he plucked it out and turned it back on her before it could do more than singe his skin.

Angry shouts and pain-filled cries told him somewhere across the camp, Ziede and Tahren had arrived. He glanced up and saw Ziede in the air, the two child-sized mortals tucked under her arms. More dustwitches screamed; probably they had run into Tahren and her sword as she covered the other mortals’ escape.

The dustwitches running afoul of the confusion-intention started to attack each other. Kai reached the prison tent and the two still trying to guard it sensibly fled. Kai pulled the flap open and stepped inside.

He saw immediately that Ziede’s guess had been right. It was almost bare, except for a bucket and a water jug. Two people huddled on a thin pallet, their hands bound. They were dressed as Arike women, in long tunics over pants, their clothes torn and dirty. One had tightly curled dark hair wrapped in a scarf and the other’s was a lighter brown hanging in lank waves. They had the brown skin and slightly rounded features that could be from anywhere to the west, borderlands to the coast. They looked up at him, wide-eyed and shocked. One breathed a word Kai didn’t understand.

He knelt, put a hand on each set of ropes binding their hands, to leach out the little life left in the fibers so the bonds rotted and fell away. It was a good thing they hadn’t been bound with chains; iron should be just as much a part of the cycle of decay and rot as plant matter but somehow all metals resisted this interpretation, no matter how logical it was. In Imperial, Kai said, “I’m Kaiisteron Fourth Prince of the underearth, I was once Kai-Enna of the Kentdessa Saredi.” He saw recognition spark at the word Saredi. “Prince-heir Bashasa of Benais-arik invites you to his camp. I’ll still take you out of here if you don’t want to accept that invitation, but it’s better for now if you come with us.”

A dustwitch burst into the tent behind him and Kai was already up and turning. He caught her arm before she could finish the cantrip, drained enough of her life to teach her a lesson, and tossed her away.

As he turned back, one prisoner staggered to her feet, clearly weakened and sick. She tried to speak and bent over in a racking cough instead. The other stood to steady her, then shook her head hard and said in halting Imperial, “Can’t … they capture, they kill—”

Kai signed in Witchspeak, My friends are freeing your companions. Ziede Daiyahah of the Khalin Islands already has the two little ones out.

The two exchanged a look of wild hope. The coughing one croaked out, “We’ll go. I’m Raihar, she’s Cimeri.”

“Call me Kai.” The quick decision was a relief, because they didn’t really have time to discuss it anymore. “Stay close, stay behind me.” He stepped to the tent doorway and looked out.

An angry storm of dust raged, the air choking and coarse, as the dustwitches tried to overwhelm Ziede and Tahren, and Ziede blasted them back with her wind-devils. Up by the trees where the mortals had been held, Kai caught the flash of Tahren’s sword. He spotted Ziede carrying another mortal away, hopefully the last one. He knew there was a chance that the dustwitches down here had had time to regroup and plan, that the one who had burst in was the brave stupid one and the others lay out here in wait.

But they had to go now. Kai stepped out. A dust cloud swirled and three dustwitches burst out at him. The pinprick pain of their cantrips crawled across his face and he reached for his last intention. The one that in his heart of hearts he didn’t want to have to use on these misguided fools, the one that would do the most damage.

Then Cimeri reached past him, extended her hand, and the ground cracked open. The rock split under the dustwitches’ feet, folding down into a fissure more than waist deep. Two fell in and the third caught her foot and fell flat on her face at Kai’s feet. “Should she close it?” Raihar yelled. “Should she crush them like bugs?”

“Stop!” someone called out in Arike.

Kai had no intention of stopping. He circled around the fissure, Cimeri matching his pace and Raihar behind him, holding on to a fold of his coat.

The dust storm fell away in waves as they walked, dustwitches scrambling out of their path. Kai had to swing out to avoid the spread of the confusion-intention; it made their route longer but at least kept anyone from coming at them from that direction.

Nightjar appeared out of a drift of dust to the left. Cimeri flexed her hand and sent a spiderweb of cracks through the ground. Nightjar leapt back and spat, “You go with that, Raihar? You can see he’s an expositor in a demon’s skin.”

“I ate an expositor.” Kai kept walking. “So it’s the other way around.”

“Go drown in shit, Nightjar,” Raihar responded.

They made it past the confusion-intention and to the top of the path that led to the spring. A dustwitch waited there, tall and straight, her veil pulled back to show a face with light-brown skin gently lined at the corners of her eyes and mouth.

Cimeri groaned under her breath. Raihar whispered, “That’s the Doyen, their leader. Careful.”

Kai told the Doyen, “Don’t make me go through you.”

“I’ll stand aside, Demon. But first make that stop.” She lifted a hand toward the scatter of dustwitches trapped in the area of confusion. Most were sprawled on the ground, flailing as they tried to stand. “And we will talk, you and I.”

Her voice was soothing and convincing, her gray eyes kind, and something deep in Kai’s chest pulled toward her. Not a cantrip, not a spirit, but however she did it, it sounded too much like an order to charm Kai’s temper. He said, “We offered you a chance to talk, to make an alliance. You sent Nightjar to trap me instead. Now get out of my way.”

Alert at his side, Cimeri watched the tents and dust clouds to the left, wary for anyone trying to flank them. Raihar, one hand still gripping Kai’s coat, had turned all the way around so they were back to back, watching for anyone creeping up behind. This was how borderlanders and Witches had fought the legionaries, in tight units that relied on each other, often with a Saredi demon along. These two had fallen into it like they had done it before and it swayed Kai’s heart more readily than the Doyen’s attempts at manipulation.

“I sent her to free you from the mortals.” The Doyen stepped sideways, slowly, gracefully. Something in her voice still lured him, the way her body moved soothed fear. It just made Kai itch to kill her but it must affect the dustwitches differently. In gentle reproof she said, “Nightjar was supposed to ask you to join us.”

Kai wondered how Nightjar liked being painted as the one who caused all the trouble, but he was too cautious of the Doyen to even flick a glance in her direction. He paced forward as the Doyen moved away, the two Witches moving with him. “I won’t be a Hierarchs’ slave, you think I’ll be yours? Who would you hold hostage against my good behavior?”

“A misunderstanding.” The Doyen shook her head. “Not a slave, not a beast of burden for the mortals. You could fight for us.”

“Fight who? You’re hiding from the legionaries when you should be killing them.” Cimeri squeezed his arm in warning and Kai realized he had stopped without meaning to, letting himself be drawn into an argument. The fight on the other side of the camp was over, more dustwitches were coming this way. Whatever power the Doyen had, it was real. He took another step and it was as if his feet were stuck in mud. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to take another step, and another.

“Prove to Nightjar you are no expositor, then we can talk,” the Doyen urged him.

Kai was mildly horrified that it sounded like a good idea, even though he knew it wasn’t. He pushed forward toward the path downslope and growled, “I can prove I’m a demon. You pick out which of your people you like least.”

Air whipped up, cold and sharp. Ziede landed a few paces away. She was as light as a drifting feather, as menacing as a roll of thunder. Dust blasted away from her, whipping their clothes and hair, laying the campsite bare. Kai took a sharp breath; he hadn’t realized how much dust had collected on him until it was gone. It made it easier to think. The air went abruptly still. Ziede said, “Tell me I’m an expositor.”

The sharp words cut through the Doyen’s haze of benign omniscience. The other dustwitches had fallen silent. Kai hadn’t realized they had been murmuring, like wind stirring leaves, until that moment. It sent a chill through his skin. He took the last few steps, drawing the two Witches up behind Ziede.

The Doyen said, “I will not apologize for caution.” Her gaze went to Kai again. “He uses power like an expositor.”

That was a little stab to the gut. But Ziede seemed to know better than to be drawn into an argument. She said, “Think twice before you speak to imply I’m a liar.”

The Doyen didn’t betray any annoyance or impatience. “We are not here to make enemies.”

“A little late for that,” Kai said.

Raihar whispered, “Kaiisteron said you freed our family?”

Ziede answered, “Yes, they’re safe with our friends.”

“She lies.” Nightjar laughed. “They have an Immortal Marshall with them. They are Hierarch slaves.”

“We offered you an alliance,” Ziede said, ignoring Nightjar as if she didn’t exist. “Before we knew you treated your own people like prisoners, holding their families hostage. Our mortal allies will not treat with thieves who are little better than the Hierarchs.” She added in Saredi, “I can only take two of you and they’ll be on us as soon as I move. Will you use the death intention?”

Kai still didn’t want to, despite everything. There were Witches like Hawkmoth here, barely more than deluded children. He replied in the same language. “I won’t. Take them, I’ll fight my way out.”

Raihar said in Saredi, with possibly the worst accent Kai had ever heard, “Cimeri get us out. Kai fly ahead.”

Cimeri nudged Kai’s arm and nodded.

Kai said, “Ziede, take Raihar. Cimeri, let’s go.”

Ziede wrapped an arm around Raihar’s waist and shot into the air. The dustwitches surged forward but the ground shifted with an alarming rumble and spikes of bedrock broke upward in showers of dust. Cimeri grabbed Kai’s wrist and they ran.

Two dustwitches came at them as they reached the trees just below the camp, and both found out why you don’t try to grab a demon. Kai paused only to rot away the ropes holding the riding animals while Cimeri ran at them waving her arms. As the creatures lowed and bolted in panic, they followed into the scrubland.

Six

Kai leaned on the railing as the ascension raft flew low over Ancartre. It was a cold twilight, and the raft paced a breeze laced with woodsmoke and the occasional scents of peppery fish stew. They were flying far more slowly than anyone wanted, but the Belith authorities did not look fondly on Immortal Blessed anyway, and if they had to be alerted to this situation, the Tescai-lin wanted it to be done by the Enalin ambassador, via the envoy to Belith’s Rising World council. “Not because Immortals are careening wildly around in the air,” the Tescai-lin had stipulated. Dahin had agreed far more readily than Kai had expected.

Tenes leaned on the rail beside Kai, though they had managed to get Sanja to stay behind at the envoy house. Mostly because she had seen Dahin leave his manuscript with the Tescai-lin, and knew he would be back for it. Etem had come with them to point the way and introduce them to the scholars. They clutched the railing next to Tenes, watching the ground below with the fascination of someone who had never flown before.

The new university wasn’t too far from the Enalin envoy house, past the Temple of Moral Philosophy and to the east. Which was a blessing since it didn’t give them much time to argue about who these Immortal Blessed might be. “It has to be the conspirators,” Dahin said scornfully. “When have the Blessed taken an interest in history or anything but their own—”

“Our own,” Tahren corrected with weary patience. She thought it was important never to deny the connection, whether for herself or Dahin or any of their family who had rejected the Blessed Patriarchs’ rule. She had told Kai and Ziede, a long time ago, that rejecting the Blessed and what they stood for did not erase their past. “And they could be Marshalls sent here after Ilhanrun Highsun.”

“Sent after him for what?” Dahin demanded.

Tahren lifted her brows. “Giving anchor stones to mortals?”

Dahin gestured extravagantly over the steering column, as if that transgression wasn’t even worth mentioning, despite how gleeful he had been about it earlier. The raft jerked alarmingly and dipped up again. Etem gasped and Tenes grabbed Kai’s arm. He patted her hand absently.

“Dahin, you have to admit that’s far more likely.” Ziede sounded exasperated. “I don’t know why the conspiracy would come here at all.”

Kai didn’t either. But the Blessed had a long time to notice what Highsun was up to. He still had the feeling this was something else.

Her jaw tight, Tahren said, “If you let go of those controls one more time—”

Dahin glanced back at her. “You’ll do what?”

Ziede groaned under her breath.

Kai stopped listening to preserve his own temper. He hadn’t realized the new university site was so close to the old until the street below opened up, the walled houses on the far side giving way to a forest of tall cedar and smaller brushier trees, the shadows under them darkening as the light failed. On the opposite side was a wall, scarred and pocked by time, the carvings that had once ornamented the top cracked and bashed away. Beyond that boundary, even in the growing dark, the shapes of what had been foundations were easy to trace in the overgrown grass and brush.

It had been a large complex, a maze of buildings, roads, walkways. Most of the stone had been hauled away, except for some small stelae, white against the green grass. Kai thought they were just remnants of debris until he saw there were hundreds of them, some grouped together in patterns he didn’t understand.

Kai realized Dahin and Tahren had fallen silent. “Those are markers for graves? Or Memorials?” he asked Etem. This part of the city was quieter, the breeze sharp with cedar and pine from the forest.

“Memorials mostly, for the people who were known to be in the complex the day the Hierarchs razed it,” Etem said. The way they spoke about it, it was clear they were too young to have seen it happen. Enalin were generally long-lived, and sometimes it was hard to tell their age from their appearance. “The Hierarchs wanted to take them as slaves, but they refused to surrender, and this was the Hierarchs’ answer. After the war, the Belith searched it for remains, and interred everything they found on the site, so some are graves.”

“I imagine they weren’t able to identify many of them,” Ziede said. Tahren stood beside her, her expression closed and thoughtful.

Tenes watched the apparently endless graveyard disappearing into the dark with a pensive expression. There are no earth spirits, like the ground was laid barren to the bedrock. There must be so much pain still, she signed to Kai. Can you feel it?

Yes, Kai signed back. This part of the city must be more than a little haunted by it. The death well is fading, but slowly.

Etem’s glance over at Ziede was a little shy. “Did you ever see it before the destruction, Sister? Or you, Fourth Prince? I’ve seen drawings, but since coming here I’ve wondered what it was like.”

“No, none of us had traveled much, before the Hierarchs came,” Ziede admitted. She leaned into Tahren’s side. “I wish I had seen it.”

The street had been slanting gently upward, the forest beside it sloping down into a large ravine. Now the old wall fell away to reveal another open area dotted by large shade trees and broken up by a scatter of one- or two-story white stone buildings, some domed, others with cylindrical or flat roofs, many of the windows glowing with light. They were linked by broad stone pathways and small tree-filled gardens. The road curved through them, leading over a stone bridge above a wide running stream, and to the larger structure of a three-step pyramid, partially built into the hill behind it. Broad terraces extended from each level and a dome capped the top. A few people still moved along the paths, but the raft was so silent no one looked up.

No wall around this one, Kai thought, and wondered if it was because the wall around the old university hadn’t protected it.

Etem pointed out the way and Dahin guided the raft over the bridge, the sound of the stream rushing through rocks in its deep channel. Past it the road broke off into multiple pathways, one leading around the right side of the larger pyramid, to a much smaller stepped structure sitting in its own paved court. “That’s it,” Etem said quietly.

Lamps were lit on the pillars to each side of the entranceway, and on the low wall separating it from the path, but it was too dark now to see a good landing spot except for the court. Ascension rafts were tough but sitting down on a piece of statuary or a boundary stone would do more than a little damage. Tahren must have sensed Dahin hesitate, because she said, “Just land in the plaza. They may hear us but it won’t matter.”

Dahin gave a tight nod and the raft sank toward the ground.

Kai went over the railing as they landed, the others following, and they started across the court. A stone porch with long benches framed a spill of light from the wide doorway. Kai heard somewhat agitated voices speaking, but too low and distorted to make out the words. “Sounds like a noisy discussion more than a fight,” Dahin muttered, mostly to himself. “Maybe Tahren’s right.” If there wasn’t the chance of setting Dahin off again, Kai would have pretended to clutch his heart and stagger. Oblivious, Dahin continued, “If it’s the conspirators, why come here so openly—”

Kai, Ziede’s inner voice was sharp.

Kai squeezed his arm and Dahin stopped. Ziede and Tahren had halted a few paces behind them, staring off to the right. Tenes pointed at something past the low wall, among the bushes in the garden. Lamplight had caught on the almost invisible shape, reflecting off metal. Kai realized it was the railing of another ascension raft.

It should be no surprise, they knew there were Blessed here. But something about it gave Kai a jolt, he had no idea why. He whispered, “Etem, could it belong to Ilhanrun Highsun?”

Etem shook their head. “I haven’t seen a raft here before, and I visited with the Tescai-lin only seven days ago. Immortal Blessed Highsun was still in Sun-Ar, so we were told.”

A Rising World delegation might arrive in an ascension raft, if the Blessed envoys to the council were trying to be helpful and buy back a little grace after the embarrassing conspiracy incident. But Kai had a bad feeling that he had asked for this situation by not being more decisively violent when he’d had the chance.

Ziede whispered, “Tenes, stay with Etem. If it is a fight, get them safely back to the Tescai-lin.” Tenes signed a quick assent as Tahren drew her sword.

Kai strode toward the porch. Up the two steps and into a large room, well-lit with lamps high along painted and carved stone walls and more hanging overhead. More than a dozen people stood there in the midst of an argument, most gathered around a stone-topped worktable piled with rolled manuscripts and loose papers. Some looked like natives of Belith, while a few were clearly from the South or the further archipelagoes, light-skinned and light-haired, while the others could have come from anywhere, including the Arik. Most wore work clothes with formal stoles that looked like they had been hastily pinned on. One person, older with graying hair and a short beard, wore the full formal caftan and long stole. Kai had expected to meet scholars so none of this was a surprise.

Ramad stood in their midst.

Kai had half expected that.

Ramad was currently speaking in Old Imperial to the older person. “Chancellor, I cannot show you a written warrant of authority from the Rising World council, because as you very well know, the Well of Thosaren’s message devices do not supply paper documents.”

Flanking Ramad were two Immortal Blessed. The surprise, the cold wash of shock, was that Arnsterath stood with them.

Through Ziede’s pearl came a wave of emotion like an unvoiced snarl.

Arnsterath wore the same body, with light-brown skin, straight nose, and thin lips, her dark hair held in a loose braid. Her clothes were light-colored linen meant for travel, in the same style as the two Immortal Blessed, a knee-length split tunic and close-fitting pants. The Arike coat she wore over it was too big for her, and plain except for the embroidery on the hems, probably borrowed from the cohort post.

With the air of someone who had taken a position and had no intention of budging from it, the Chancellor said, “You arrive out of nowhere, you claim to have the authority of the alliance, at a time when rumors of conspiracies and Benais-arik’s imperial ambitions—” She broke off to stare at Kai. “Who is this?”

Ramad glanced up and froze. Arnsterath’s dark gaze went to Kai and she smiled, a small satisfied upturn of the lips.

Kai said, “I am doing you the courtesy of allowing you one chance at an explanation.” It had been a long time since he had actually trembled with rage, but he was doing it now.

The room was very quiet suddenly. Instinct warning even the mortals that they were in the presence of something dangerous.

Ramad held up his hands, like someone trying to forestall an argument, or a calamity. “Arnsterath has surrendered to the Rising World.”

Kai wasn’t certain what expression his face was making but it made his jaw hurt. One of the Immortal Blessed put a hand on their sword hilt.

Undeterred, Ramad continued, “From the beginning, then. I went to the cohort post downriver from where you left me, and sent a messenger ahead to Benais-arik. Then I took a detachment back toward the Summer Halls to see if any of the conspirators had survived. On the way we were joined by an ascension raft with these two Immortal Blessed. They had been sent by their Rising World envoy to help with the search for Tahren Stargard and apprehend any Blessed who had been involved in her disappearance. We found Arnsterath on the road and she agreed to submit to our custody.”

In Kai’s head, Ziede’s furious voice said, Of course she shitting did, just like she agreed to submit to all those dead conspirators.

Kai grated out, “And what did you offer her in exchange for her cooperation? The next expositor you catch?”

“She has sworn to take no familiar, even if it means she can no longer use intentions.” Ramad glanced at her, his expression turning grim. “She knew she had no choice.”

Kai didn’t laugh. “She’s always had a choice.”

Arnsterath’s expression betrayed nothing. Some mortals said a demon’s gaze was “soulless,” as if souls lived in the pupil of the eye. Facing Arnsterath, Kai felt less uncharitable toward that superstition.

“I too had a choice,” Ramad countered. “I meant to resign my service, but when my Immortal Blessed companions contacted Benais-arik through the Well of Thosaren on their raft, we were told about this situation…” He gestured back toward the scholars gathered in the room, all watching the conversation with different degrees of confusion and alarm. “And we were ordered here to investigate and provide assistance.” He added more self-consciously, “I decided to wait, to help if possible, before resigning.”

Both Immortal Marshalls were young, which was more apparent in their lean builds than in their unlined faces. Using the Blessed language, one said, “Apost—Former Marshall Tahren. I am Rafiem and this is Eleni, we are Acolytes Major to Marshall Sodor Targildsun, speaker to—”

“I don’t care,” Tahren replied evenly, in Old Imperial.

“That is Tahren Stargard,” the Chancellor said, as if grasping at the one fact that seemed certain. Rafiem and Eleni had the audacity to look startled, as if they hadn’t expected a mortal scholar to understand, or even pick out Tahren’s name. The Chancellor turned back to Ramad accusingly. “You told me she was missing.”

“Obviously she has been found,” Ramad said, his voice betraying just a hint of irritation. “This is Kaiisteron, Fourth Prince of the underearth, called Witch King, and Sister Ziede Daiyahah, Scourge of the Temple Halls. This is Domtellan, she is Chancellor of Ancartre’s Scholars Archive.”

Her voice cold and calm, Ziede said, “Chancellor, we came here from the house of the Tescai-lin, in answer to your request for assistance. We had come to Belith to meet with you, after hearing about your expedition’s findings. I think you understand our concerns.”

“I do, of course. The Tescai-lin—” Chancellor Domtellan began.

Then Dahin strode in and plopped his bag on the nearest worktable. “We’ve been told that you’ve uncovered artifacts, including one you identified as the badge of a Hierarch’s expositor. Can you tell me where it was found?”

It was done with such calm confidence, one of the Belith picked up a rolled map case and started toward the table.

The Chancellor held up a hand. “I ask you wait.” Her brow furrowed but she was much calmer about all this than Kai. If Ramad had expected to bully his way into taking charge, he had picked the wrong bureaucrat. “Are you a scholar?”

Etem stepped forward from the doorway and said, “Chancellor, this is Lesser Blessed Dahin Stargard, who is an accomplished historian.”

Dahin turned and said in polite formal Belithan, “Yes, I am as Doorkeeper Etem says, and have been working on a theory relating to your expedition’s endeavors. I felt it was past time we combined our efforts.”

The Chancellor was immediately mollified. “Then please continue.” Her sideways glance at Ramad was arch. “All who seek knowledge are welcome here.”

Through a haze of rage, Kai noted Dahin’s ability to behave with perfect courtesy if he thought it would get him what he wanted. He said, “Dahin.”

His tone of voice must have gotten the message across. Dahin left the table and came to stand close to Kai. He took Kai’s arm and said, low-voiced, “I know, I know, but he couldn’t have followed us, so he must have been sent here as he says, and he couldn’t leave her roaming loose. We came here to help these people and find out what’s lurking above Sun-Ar. The two of them being here changes nothing.”

Kai, he’s right, Ziede said through her pearl.

Kai managed to unclench his jaw. He said, “Don’t let her get near you.”

It was an unnecessary warning, but Dahin just squeezed Kai’s arm before he returned to the table and motioned the scholar with the map forward.

The Chancellor watched the interaction with a faint thoughtful frown, but said to Ramad, “Strange how one party comes with nothing but weapons and a prisoner, the other comes with well-known names and a noted scholar, and the support of the Tescai-lin.”

Ramad didn’t allow any frustration to show. The skin under his eyes was bruised, probably from lack of sleep. It was hard enough to sleep on an ascension raft; sleeping on an ascension raft knowing Arnsterath was only paces away had to be nearly impossible. Ramad said, “Chancellor, I am perfectly willing to share this inquiry with Fourth Prince and his family, who are obviously more qualified—”

“And who is that?” It was Arnsterath’s voice, quiet but somehow seizing attention.

Kai didn’t need to glance back. Tenes had come in with Etem. Kai answered, “That’s Sister Tenes, the Witch who broke the Summer Halls again and caused the flood that foiled all your master’s plans.”

Surprisingly, Arnsterath’s left eyelid twitched. “He was not my master.”

The Immortal Blessed Rafiem shifted his staff, not pointing it at her, just a reminder that it was there. It was an Immortal Blessed weapon, though Kai didn’t recognize it. Rafiem said, “You can speak your evidence to the Rising World council, not here.”

Chancellor Domtellan grimaced in distaste. “This is all very disruptive. Vanguarder Ramad, would you take your charge, and your Immortal Blessed, and please go away?”

“No, Chancellor Domtellan, as I said before, I will not.” Ramad was still apparently calm but the strain showed around the set of his mouth. “And Arnsterath is not a prisoner, she is cooperating voluntarily with the Rising World council’s investigation.”

“Cooperating voluntarily,” Kai said, making his voice cold and ironic. “That’s why your Immortal Blessed have a weapon that would fell a wallwalker, let alone a demon.”

Rafiem didn’t react except to press his lips together, but Eleni moved a hand to the covered bag at her side. Kai thought he had recognized the curve of the stock that shaped the light material. It would have been foolish to go after Arnsterath without something stronger than a curse-breaker, and it wasn’t something the Rising World Cohort post would have lying around. And it was an indicator that the Immortal Marshalls had known exactly what they would be dealing with when they set out. There were a number of reasons for that, the most innocuous that the Immortal Blessed faction of the conspiracy had unraveled in the Blessed Lands as well, and the Marshalls had been warned about Arnsterath.

Then Dahin said, “Kai, Ziede.”

Kai threw a look back to check that Tahren still stood in a deceptively relaxed stance, aware of every movement in the room and able to reach anyone who attempted violence in a heartbeat. Tenes stood in the doorway beside Etem, wary and alert. Kai went to the worktable Dahin had conscripted, beating Ziede by only a step.

Dahin stared down at a scroll of light wood with a large square of paper pressed into it. On the paper was a drawing. It had been sketched with charcoal and then drawn in with sharper lines of ink. Notes in the scripts used in Belith and Palm had been neatly scratched in the margins. Some were strings of numbers that were probably measurements.

It depicted the low rising mound of an earthwork, the sides covered with patchy grass. Next to that was a sketch of the interior, where lines of tumbled rock marked where walls had stood. Kai realized the shape at the foot of the outside view of the sloping earth wall was a person, drawn there to show the scale. It was probably a fourth the size of the Summer Halls.

An apt comparison, as this was a Hierarch earthwork.

“You recognize it. It’s the same design as the Summer Halls,” someone said in accented Old Imperial. “You weren’t with the Enalin who had gone to look for Sun-Ar, were you?”

“No, he wasn’t,” Dahin answered for Kai. “You know this is more like the sort of earthwork the Hierarchs had their legionaries construct for their forts, than the Summer Halls.”

There were murmurs of assent and someone added, “We have many drawings of the old forts, and the Summer Halls to compare, though none of us have seen it for ourselves—”

“Don’t go there, it’s too dangerous, trust me on that,” Dahin said. “How old is this drawing?”

“Sura brought this back from the expedition site seven days ago. It was done there, not so long before she left. Sura can tell you more.”

Another scholar hurried up, this one a woman in Arike dress, bearing a map case. “Here is the most recent map we have, Scholar Dahin. It was annotated when—”

“Yes, yes, show me!” Dahin leapt on the map and pulled it and the scholar over to a clear table. A few of the others drifted after them.

“How old?” Kai said. His throat was full of bile. The expedition wouldn’t send a messenger back through the Well of Thosaren’s anchor stones for an ancient ruin. That would be an interesting curiosity, not an emergency, not a reason for Belith to alert the Rising World council in Benais-arik, right after the failed Imperial Renewal, with rumors of conspiracy flying … He pointed at the drawing without touching it. “This structure. How old is it?”

A scholar said, “We think it was abandoned no more than ten years ago. The scar was still there where the builders dug out the earth for the walls. The rings in the trees that were felled to make the beams gave us the estimate of the timing. The remaining timber showed signs of a fire, it may have been why it was abandoned.” The speaker hesitated. “You’re really him, aren’t you? The Witch King. And Ziede Daiyahah, Scourge of the—”

“Call him Fourth Prince,” Ziede interrupted automatically. “Call me Sister Ziede. You said ‘us.’ You were there when it was found?”

Kai looked up. Chancellor Domtellan stood beside the table now, with the other scholars gathered around. She said, “Yes, this is Academician Sura, she is the messenger from the expedition.”

Sura shifted uncertainly, but didn’t retreat. She was tall, with the dark hair and light brown skin of far southern Belith, so similar to the Erathi. Her stole was a little dirt-stained, and looked like she had been using it as a towel. Kai said, “You’re certain.”

“As much as we can be. There were artifacts—” Sura turned and waved. Another scholar hurried forward with a light wooden box.

Sura took it and laid out the contents with quick practiced movements. There were broken pieces of pottery, with a red glaze and chips of gold embedded. Things made of polished wood, a silver jewelry setting with no gem inside, broken silver chains, tiny enameled silver plates, the smallest the size of a fingertip, the largest no bigger than … Kai grabbed Sura’s wrist. She flinched, then opened her hand so he could see the symbols in the black enamel.

“That’s a Hierarch’s Servant badge.” Ziede looked up at Sura. She seemed outwardly calm, but Kai knew how unnerved she was. “The one Seeker Orai went to Benais-arik to tell the council about?”

“No, there were six so far, when I left to bring word back here,” Sura said. Kai realized he was still holding her wrist and let go. She was focused on the question now and didn’t seem to notice, setting the badge down and explaining, “Some of the metals and gems must have been brought from northern and eastern lands, they aren’t often seen in the far south. And there were remains under the collapsed section of the structure, the burned section. Bones, you understand. These artifacts were found with them.”

At the other table, Dahin was placing various instruments on the map with the help of the Arike scholar, and two others were writing furiously on chalk slates. Measurements of distance? Calculations? It didn’t make the cold hollow in Kai’s stomach feel any better. “Were they small people?” he asked, holding out a hand well below his shoulder height. He knew he was grasping at straws now.

“Like the people who lived in Sun-Ar, before the Hierarchs killed them?” Sura understood immediately what he was getting at. “No, they were around our height, not much different from the people in this room.” She admitted, “The situation would be less alarming if these people were from Sun-Ar or somewhere nearby, who used these same symbols, or the Hierarchs had adopted the symbols and the building style from them. But this is nothing like the structures left behind by the Sun-Ar. It looks as if at least some of the people who occupied the earthwork are descended from those who fled back to the south after the war.”

Ziede started to touch one of the gem settings, then pulled her hand back. “And the only ones who would need to flee that far south would be expositors and Hierarchs’ servants.”

Sura’s expression suggested that she was glad someone else had said it. “Obviously, the people who lived there would have been descendants of those survivors, so we can’t surmise anything about their character—” She stopped, recalling that she was speaking to a room currently occupied by four Blessed, two demons, and two Witches. “Some of them, anyway,” she corrected hurriedly. “We can’t ascertain that with the information we have here. The others were continuing the search, so they will have found more by now.”

Found more. Kai exchanged a grim look with Ziede. This was far worse than any find of a single expositor’s badge, which as so many had pointed out, might have arrived through trade or a refugee.

Dahin was right about the urgency, Ziede responded. I wish we had been able to get here faster.

Kai wished they had been able to beat Ramad here. They were just lucky that Chancellor Domtellan was so stubborn. He said to Sura, “But you haven’t found any living people?”

“Not yet,” she assured him. “The destruction of Sun-Ar—I don’t know if you’ve heard much about it, but there were many changes the inhabitants made to the land to support their population. Crops grown underground, homes built in caves, herds of winter ox, bred to survive on the local grasses. These are things that have to be maintained, for anyone to survive there. When the Sun-Ar were killed before the Hierarch War, all that would have gone away, some of it quite quickly. The people who are living up there now haven’t been thriving. We found little sign of agriculture near the earthwork settlement; they must be, or have been, living off herds and hunting, and so on. With the destruction of their settlement, they may have had to break up their group to survive, or perhaps moved further back to the north, where the land is more hospitable.”

“No one has shown the Tescai-lin this drawing, or explained this reasoning,” Etem said, peering over Ziede’s shoulder. They sounded indignant. “Why was this information withheld?”

“We intended to, but—” Sura threw a look at the Chancellor, clearly asking for help.

Domtellan said, “The university’s Head Scholar thought it best to notify Seeker Orai, who is a Rising World envoy, before anyone else, so that he could take it directly to the Rising World council. Or the Emperor, or both. I think it was the Emperor at the time, but I believe that situation changed rapidly. We are still waiting for word from Seeker Orai as to the council’s advice on what to do next.” She didn’t look pleased by the length of the wait. “I believe the Head Scholar thought it would cause undue panic to spread the word too widely, and I believe she is right about that.”

“Undue panic?” Ziede repeated blankly. “What about perfectly justified panic and time to prepare?”

Ramad cut in to say pointedly, “I would like to remind you all I was sent here by the Rising World council—”

Domtellan turned to him sharply. “But you don’t have any more idea of what to do than we do, and you’re dragging along this person you’ve imprisoned and Immortal Marshalls—”

Dahin strode back over and two scholars shifted readily to make room for him. With renewed urgency, he said, “Kai, Ziede, that little problem I discussed with you earlier—”

This would be easier if Dahin had agreed to take a pearl. Kai signed in Witchspeak, Is this close to where you think the Well is?

Too close, Dahin signed back. Whoever is living up there, if they have an expositor, they know where it is.

We have to get there, Kai told Ziede.

Ziede said silently, Yes, it’s the only way.

Kai turned to the Chancellor. “We’re going to join your expedition. Can you take us through the anchor stones?”

“What?” Ramad stared. “Why?” The obvious answer must have occurred, because his expression changed. He turned to Dahin. “What did you see in that map?”

Sura cut to the heart of the matter. “You think there’s an expositor up there?” She didn’t sound afraid enough, was Kai’s first thought. Her expression was grave and serious, none of the scholars gathered here were taking this lightly. But they weren’t afraid in their bones, they had been born too late to really understand.

Domtellan added, “We have of course discussed the possibility of survivors, before the expedition discovered the earthwork and the artifacts. Ilhanrun assured them that he could deal with any problems.”

Kai did not grit his teeth. They would be lucky if one expositor was all they had to worry about. He glanced at Dahin, but couldn’t read his expression. Kai said, “If you’ve actually found the location of the Hierarchs’ homeland, there will be things up there that are dangerous.”

Domtellan opened her mouth to argue, but Ramad interrupted, “I must go as well. As the Rising World representative—”

“No,” Kai said, and managed to sound calm and not grate the word out.

“Why?” Ramad demanded. “It’s only sensible!”

A little acid in her voice, Ziede pointed out, “And what will you do with your prisoner, Ramad? Leave her with your Immortal Marshalls?”

Ramad threw a look at Arnsterath as if he had forgotten she was there. It would have been funny in almost any other circumstance.

Arnsterath watched him critically. “You promised me I would have a chance to prove my value to the Rising World. This is just that opportunity.” Her glance at the two Immortal Marshalls was brief enough to be contemptuous. “My parole is with you and the Prince-heir of Benais-arik. I have no reason to trust the Blessed Lands.”

Less reason than most at the moment, Ziede said silently.

Kai replied, She’s not a fool. There might be Blessed who would be only too happy if Arnsterath was not around to give her testimony to the Rising World council.

Ramad’s jaw tightened. “The council will be sending a speaker and other officials here. They can’t be more than a few days behind us—”

Kai had known that had to be the case, but hearing it in so many words was not pleasant. More mortals who didn’t understand the danger would just make this so much more complicated.

Arnsterath eyed Ramad with cool distrust. “Much can happen in a day.”

Eleni was offended. “We are not forsworn.”

Rafiem frowned at her, and she threw a quick embarrassed glance at Tahren.

Tahren ignored them, but Ziede’s expression turned sardonic and she said, “I see, I’d want to get rid of those two at the first opportunity as well.”

Ramad’s mouth twisted in irritation, but he told Arnsterath, “Then I’ll take you with me. And the two Immortal Marshalls.”

Sura’s brow had furrowed in consternation. Domtellan said pointedly, “That is a very large party for such a journey. And it is not without risk. We also have supplies for the expedition that must be sent along. We cannot be swayed in this. Ilhanrun Highsun has given the key to the anchor stones to Sura on behalf of the university and it is our decision who uses them.” She added grimly, “Unless you intend to take it by force.”

That, fortunately or unfortunately, was when the Tescai-lin walked in with two senior Doorkeepers and an escort of Enalin ambassadorial honor guard warriors.

All conversation stopped immediately. Even Kai had a moment, because Sanja was with them, which he hadn’t planned on, and she was only slightly shorter than the Tescai-lin, which just felt wrong. Kai was beginning to have some sympathy for his friends when he was forced to change bodies; it really was disconcerting at times.

The Tescai-lin didn’t take a seat on the council anymore but their authority in the Rising World had never diminished. Even Bashat, when he had wanted to style himself emperor, knew he could push the Tescai-lin only so far. No one would be able to fault the university for taking advice from one of the most revered figures in the Rising World.

The Tescai-lin took in the situation for a silent moment. Then they inclined their head to Domtellan. “Chancellor.”

Domtellan recovered swiftly. “It is an honor to be visited by the Light of a Hundred Coronels.” She indicated Ramad, Arnsterath, and the two uneasy Immortal Marshalls with an eloquent gesture. “We hope your wisdom can help us understand how to proceed.”

The Tescai-lin said, “I will speak to Kaiisteron first.”

Kai followed the Tescai-lin outside, to the stone benches in the open foyer. Insects sang in the dark, in the gardens past the lamps along the low stone wall. The Tescai-lin said, “Is that Arnsterath?”

They spoke in formal Enalin, though that wasn’t a guarantee of not being understood while in the middle of a place dedicated to learning. Kai kept alert for any movement at the edge of the lamplight, that might be someone trying to move into earshot. “Yes, Ramad persuaded her to surrender, supposedly.” He quickly explained what else had been said. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell Ramad he can’t go?”

The Light shook their head, not regretfully. “I can’t deny the vanguarder. Despite the chancellor’s disbelief, he was obviously sent here by Bashat with the authority of the council to investigate.” The Tescai-lin had no illusions about the extent of their influence, even in this much younger incarnation, but the fact that they wouldn’t misuse that power was one of the reasons that they were so widely trusted to settle disputes. “Dahin admits he all but witnessed the meeting where it must have been decided, when he overheard Seeker Orai in Benais-arik.”

Kai huffed a laugh and rubbed his face. “That’s the second most unfortunate thing about this.”

“But I can persuade them to allow you to go as well. Who else will you need with you?”

That was a good question. Ziede, obviously. And if Kai had to choose, he would rather take Tahren than Dahin, not only for her brains and fighting ability, but the sheer intimidation factor her presence always invoked. But Dahin would probably lose his mind and they might actually need him to find the Well once they got up there. “It’ll have to be Dahin, and Tahren and Ziede if possible.”

“We’ll see if that is not too many for the journey. I will make sure Arnsterath and the Immortal Blessed stay where they are put and cause no trouble here.” The Tescai-lin glanced toward the doorway. “Do you believe she has truly surrendered and will keep her word?”

“I have no idea.” Kai had thought if he saw her again, it would be when she tracked him down to try to kill him. If he didn’t find her first. “I didn’t expect her to be that … politically aware.”

The Tescai-lin agreed. “The Nient will do everything they can to regain the council’s favor. They would have been just as likely to turn her over to the Rising World themselves.” If there was any part of the Nient-arik faction of the conspiracy that hadn’t fled, they would not be so eager to see her again. If any of the conspirators had ever had any trust in each other, it must have been long broken. “And she is right to fear the Immortal Blessed. Some will blame her for the death of the traitor Faharin, some will wish to eliminate her for anything she might know about their involvement.” The Tescai-lin frowned. “Why did she never return to the underearth? Is she barred from it?”

Kai wished very much that Arnsterath would just vanish, but returning to the underearth was just as impossible for her now as it was for him. “She took a different host while the passage to the underearth was sealed by the Hierarchs, so she lost her connection to it. Her original body there would have died, like mine did. The other surviving demons from the Cageling Court did manage to return, because they hid and waited the war out, until the passage reopened enough for them to get through. Arnsterath didn’t wait. At least not long enough.” She had said she had been attacked by Hierarch legionaries and had to abandon Nefa’s body. Maybe Arn-Nefa—Arnsterath had panicked. Kai realized that she hadn’t said anything about the other demons who left the Summer Halls with her; he had always thought that they had all fled together. She had given no indication of why she had left them. Or why they had left her. Her story was filled with gaps.

But then she had spent something like fifty years imprisoned in a Witch Cell; maybe her memory had been affected. Kai had never spoken to any of those other Cageling Court survivors because he had never wanted to see any of them again. Now he might have to, just to get his questions answered.

He didn’t know what Arnsterath wanted, if she had hated him or was just doing as the mortals who had rescued her wanted, for lack of any other purpose in life. If she hadn’t before, she might hate him now that he had freed her expositor familiar and put her mortal patrons in disarray. But whatever she felt, he didn’t want her near the Witches and mortals and Lesser Blessed in Avagantrum. Or anywhere, actually, but mostly in Avagantrum. “Maybe it’s safer now that I know where she is.”

The Tescai-lin was unhappy, something it was easier to see on this younger face, a face that had never spent years concealing feelings from Hierarchs and their servants. “You and the others must take care on this journey. The Well itself will be dangerous enough.” They watched Kai with concern in their dark eyes. “Come, I will speak to Domtellan and persuade her that you must be allowed to make the trip.”

“You go ahead,” Kai told them. “I need to take care of something first.”

The Past: the Testament

The Immortal Marshalls of the Blessed were in an unusual position during the surrender to the Hierarchs. They were sworn to uphold the faith of Thosaren, and advance the cause of justice in the Well’s name. In practice, they were subject to the Patriarchs’ whims, though perhaps not as much as the Lesser Blessed, since martial prowess, strength, and power to access the Well were required to be made a Marshall. A few objected openly to the capitulation and were made examples of …

—The History of the Hierarch War: Volume Two: An Introduction to the Civilizations of the North and East by An Interested Yet Unbiased Party

Their late afternoon arrival in the encampment was quiet, and they slipped through the ruined paddock gate and into the shelter of the tumbled walls. Kai sent the weary vanguarders back to their tents, keeping only Nirana and Telare with him to help their exhausted guests stay on their horses. Ziede said, “We’ll take them to the physicians, you go report.”

Kai gestured an acknowledgment in Witchspeak and started to break off. Before his horse could get more than a pace away, Raihar stretched to grab Kai’s coat sleeve. She had one of the children bundled against her, and her expression was panicked. He signed in Witchspeak, It’s all right. They’re taking you all to food and medicine. I have to report to my captain, then I’ll find you again.

She blinked, as if coming back to herself, then released him with an embarrassed nod. She followed the others, and Kai headed for the horselines.

Bashasa was there as he expected, sitting in a circle of camp stools with one of the older drovers from the supply train, next to a wallwalker’s palanquin. The harness that normally attached it to the beast lay in coiled piles beside it, in the process of being cleaned and repaired.

Kai handed his horse off to another drover and walked over. Apparently the two were trying to figure out if they were related, because Bashasa was saying, “My second great-uncle married an Ileshar, and it isn’t a common name.”

“Was this in Benais-arik proper?” the drover asked. “Because my grand-aunt Ileshar—” She looked up at Kai’s approach. “Here’s your Grass King now.”

Bashasa jumped up. “We will continue this later!” He turned to Kai. “Fourth Prince! All was well?”

“We got them out,” Kai said as they started to walk. Bashasa led the way to the shortcut path through the outguard camp. “Two Witches held prisoner, with five hostages, probably mortals.”

“Good, good.” Bashasa nodded. “Your speculation was correct. Did you encounter the Doyen?”

“Yes, and that was as odd as you thought it would be.” Kai described the encounter, the strange controlling effect the Doyen had exerted, apparently through her voice alone.

“Concerning,” Bashasa commented, his brow furrowed in thought.

That was putting it mildly. Kai’s skin itched from the dust, and without the pins his hair was a tangled mess, sweat-plastered to his forehead. He shoved it back and shook it out.

“We will have to see what—” Bashasa glanced at him, then stopped abruptly and faced him. “You’re bleeding.”

Kai stopped too, and realized Bashasa had seen the blood stain on his shirt. The wound had closed before the ride back to the encampment, but the blood had soaked the light-brown cotton from just above his hip halfway across his midsection. He pulled the fabric tight to see the extent, and he had to admit, it did look bad. “It’s not bleeding anymore.”

Bashasa was not reassured. “You’re injured. You should have gone to the physicians too.” His eyes widened as he took in the size of the blood stain. He reached for Kai, as if to support him. “Kai, this is a stab wound!”

“No, no, it’s fine.” Kai tried to elbow Bashasa off without hurting him.

“It is not fine. You’ve lost a great deal of blood—” He was distressed, confused. “Doesn’t it hurt? Is it gone numb?” He touched the back of his hand to Kai’s forehead. “You aren’t feverish—”

“Bashasa.” Kai lowered his voice. They were still in the outguard camp, on a path wide enough to walk fractious horses between the lines and the supply train. Most of the soldiers were on watch or patrol or sleeping, but a few scattered groups sat outside cleaning weapons and gear. “It’s how I use intentions.”

“What?” Bashasa’s quick mind answered his own question before Kai could. Fortunately he lowered his voice too. “The expositors, the intentions that you take from them. The ones you make.” Alarm gave way to consternation. “They need blood?”

“No.” Kai hesitated. But having started this explanation, there was no stopping now. “They need pain.”

Bashasa stared at him for a taut moment that stretched almost long enough to make Kai fidget. Then Bashasa turned to the soldiers sitting outside the nearest tent, who were uncomfortably pretending not to watch the altercation. “Is anyone in your tent? May I borrow it for a moment?”

The soldiers assented readily, jumping up to move packs out of the way and shifting some drying laundry and scrambling to find something to do to make them look busy and totally uninvolved in whatever was happening. Bashasa put an arm around Kai’s shoulders and walked him into the tent.

It was the same size as Kai and Ziede’s, bedrolls and belongings neatly stacked, smelling of the soap and oil the Arike used to clean and condition leather. Bashasa sat down on the battered mat that covered the dirt and flattened grass, drawing Kai down with him. “It’s not still bleeding?” he asked.

“No.” Bashasa hadn’t asked him to prove it, but Kai pulled his shirt up to show him the wound, covered with dried blood but obviously already scabbed over, healing far more rapidly than a wound on a mortal. Kai tried not to sound exasperated by all the fuss. “You know it doesn’t affect me like a mortal. You’ve seen it.”

“I’ve seen it, but the other wounds you’ve taken have never bled like this,” Bashasa pointed out. Kai wasn’t going to mention that it wasn’t usually this bad but that he had been in a hurry and worried. That seeing the dustwitches hold mortals as hostages like that, using them against other Witches, had rattled him and he hadn’t realized it until later. Lying didn’t feel right and the only defense against Bashasa’s perspicacity and persistence was to not talk, something that the other Prince-heirs hadn’t figured out yet. So he said nothing. Bashasa asked more gently, “Do all Witches do this?”

Now that was just annoying. “Only me. They get their power from other places. I thought you knew that.”

“I thought I knew several things I apparently do not,” Bashasa retorted. He shook his head, clearly reevaluating some assumptions. “You did this to destroy the bridge? You did this to flood the Summer Halls?”

“Yes, the bridge,” Kai admitted. “A legionary stabbed me for the Summer Halls. I didn’t ask him to, it was in the back.” He rubbed his face, tired and not sure how he had gotten into this conversation, if they should have had it earlier or if he should have tried harder to avoid it. “How did you think I was doing these things?”

Bashasa sat back, gesturing as if it was self-evident. “Because you were a demon!”

“Power has to have a source.” Kai dropped his hands. “Witches use the spirits that live in the earth, the wind, the water. The dustwitches use decay. The Immortal Blessed use the Well of Thosaren.”

“Expositors and Hierarchs use their Well, created by who knows how many years of death and pain.” Bashasa’s tone hardened into anger. “Your source. Is stabbing yourself.”

“It’s pain.” Kai stiffened, tried and failed not to sound defensive. “Hierarchs kill mortals for power. I’m using my own pain.”

“I am not questioning the morality of it, Kai. I am questioning…” Bashasa said wearily, “Why someone who means to do good should have to hurt themselves in this way. It’s…”

Kai felt the tension drain out of him. It was a relief, that Bashasa didn’t see it as something worth condemning. There was no other choice. Using the Hierarchs’ Well would mean being enslaved to it, or worse, becoming like a Hierarch himself. Torturing and killing legionaries and Hierarch servant-nobles was certainly an option but Kai felt too much of it led to the same place in the end. Besides, there weren’t always going to be legionaries available whenever he needed them. Using his own pain was the only real choice. And it was his, to do with as he wanted. He healed so much faster than a mortal, it was an ideal solution. He said, a little wryly, “Are you going to say it’s unfair?”

“Do not make light of this, it is a terrible thing to go through.” Bashasa stood and went to the door flap. He leaned out and Kai heard him quietly ask the soldiers for water and a clean cloth.

“No,” Kai corrected, unwilling to let it go. “Because it’s my choice. Terrible things are when other people stab you.”

Bashasa turned back with a flask of water and a bowl full of folded pieces of toweling. “I am not going to debate the philosophy of self-stabbing with you. Much as I might want to.”

“Good,” Kai muttered.

Bashasa sat down and arranged his supplies, and gestured for Kai to lift his shirt again. Reluctantly, Kai did, and Bashasa gently sponged away the dried blood, with movements as careful as if he was trying to clean an open wound. It didn’t hurt anymore, except for a mild ache in the flesh behind the scab. Kai could have taken the cloth away from Bashasa and briskly cleaned it up himself. But he didn’t.

It had been a bad day, in many ways, and this was … nice.

“Is it because this person, this body, was an expositor?” Bashasa asked, most of his attention on his task. “Does it help with using the intentions?”

“Talamines. Because the way I … He wasn’t dead, when I took his body. His memories were all still there. It wasn’t like that with Enna.” Even though all the Saredi might be dead, he wanted to make that clear, to make sure it wasn’t forgotten, that it wasn’t the Hierarchs’ slanderous account of the Saredi that survived.

“To be sure,” Bashasa assured him calmly. “For the Saredi, it was a ritual of mourning, correct?”

“A way to save what was left of the person.” Bashasa had said before that he understood, but it was still a comfort to hear it again. “Talamines’ memories were there, but they were fading. I had to make them my memories before it was too late.” He shook his head. “If I could do it over again I’d have a better idea what I needed to look for.”

Bashasa sat back, wringing out the cloth in the basin. “Which is why you and Ziede must study the intentions you capture from expositors. You could not retain all his education on these matters.” His cheeks were a little flushed. Kai wondered if he had found this nice too.

“Right.” Kai tugged his shirt down and found himself hesitating again, not sure he wanted to ask this question. “Are you going to tell the other Prince-heirs?”

Bashasa eyed him, absently folding the unused cloths. “Yes, because discussing delicate matters such as these with Lahshar is my favorite way to punish myself for all my mistakes.” He added more seriously, “It is none of their concern how you do what you do.” He set the bowl aside, frowning. “It is my concern, because you are my officer, and I must understand the full implications to you of anything I ask you to do.”

When he put it that way, it made a lot of sense.

“And though I’m not sure how this could be used against you, it is better we do not take a chance that word might spread to our enemies.”

Kai nodded and shrugged agreement. He couldn’t think of a way either but that didn’t mean some knowledgeable expositor couldn’t.

Bashasa sighed. “Is there anything else I should know?”

“I think that’s all,” Kai said honestly. “So far.”

Bashasa studied him, his expression conflicted. “Kai, how old are you?”

An interesting question that Kai had no real way to answer. “We don’t count days and hours in the underearth like you do here.” He still looked conflicted, so Kai continued, “Enna was old enough to get married. They wanted me to wait, though. Because I hadn’t been a mortal long enough.” Kai had not been taught by either the Saredi or the Fourth House of the underearth to be shy, but he was suddenly shy now. He finished awkwardly, “If the Hierarchs hadn’t come, I would have married my cousin Adeni by now. Him and Iludi and Varra.”

“Oh.” Bashasa’s face went through a journey that Kai couldn’t follow, but it ended in sympathy. “I am sorry. You have lost so much.”

“So have you. So have all of us.” Everyone had lost so much, everyone was sorry. Kai needed to turn the conversation; thinking about Enna’s family was the kind of pain he couldn’t take. “Are you done being angry with me now?”

Bashasa was not in the least distracted. “I am concerned, not angry. Will you tell me if there is something I need to know?”

“Yes.” Kai managed to make it not grudging and not overearnest, despite every inclination.

“Very well.” Bashasa collected the basin. “We should go, and let these good soldiers have their tent again.”

Bashasa had not needed any advice on how to deal with traumatized Witches. Before Kai and the others had returned to the caravanserai, he had already gotten Mother Hiraga’s permission to put the new arrivals next to their camp and had a tent set up for them. It was already stocked with blankets and cushions, spare clothes from the supply train, water to wash with if they didn’t want to go to the caravanserai’s bathing house yet, soap, brushes, shaving tools, and other things the Arike thought necessary.

Ziede stepped out of the tent as Kai and Bashasa arrived, and said, “They’re ready to talk to you. It’s just the Witches and the children, we had to leave the mortals with the physicians.”

“Are they very unwell?” Bashasa was worried. “I hope we can reunite them tonight.”

“I think two of them will probably be recovered enough in a day or so. It’s obvious they’ve all been starved and ill-treated, but one is hardly reacting at all, and I’m not sure he even understands that he’s in a different place.” Ziede frowned, looking toward where the physicians’ tent stood closer to the caravanserai. “The other two adults, they’re called Adin and Katha, were also hostages for Raihar and Cimeri, they’ve been with them since they were children, since their family had to flee the borderlands. They said the last adult was already there when they were captured.”

That was disturbing. Kai exchanged a look with Bashasa, and said, “Was there another Witch held prisoner?”

Ziede shook her head with a helpless shrug. “They don’t know. Adin said he never spoke, that the dustwitches who fed them sometimes called him Arkat. Raihar said they never saw another Witch prisoner.”

“A mystery that we can hopefully unravel later,” Bashasa said. He told Ziede, “Go and rest, Sister, you’ve had a long day and accomplished much.”

“I will.” She lifted a brow and added, “Don’t keep Kai out too late.”

Bashasa was flustered for an instant that Kai almost missed while he was glaring at Ziede. Bashasa said, “I’ll keep that in mind,” and ushered Kai into the tent.

Kai sat beside Bashasa as Raihar told them how she and the others had been kidnapped. “They attacked the caravan we traveled with, it was coming down the old North Sarcofa road, trying to avoid the legionaries.” Her voice went hoarse again and Bashasa refilled her cup from the pot warming on the brazier. The Arike physicians had made up a mixture of date syrup in hot water, saying it would help with the chills and clammy skin all the freed prisoners seemed to have.

Raihar signaled thanks, drank from the cup, and continued, “The dustwitches killed everyone but us, our children, and Adin and Katha. They wanted us to join them, but … they killed everyone. Like shitting Hierarchs, they killed everyone.” Her voice rose, as if the memory was playing out in front of her eyes again. “Even after the head drover said they could have all the supplies if they would leave us in peace! They choked them all to death with dust.”

Bashasa held up a calming hand. “You needn’t speak of it if you don’t want. We know what they do.” When she had taken a deep breath and sipped from the cup again, he said, “Did you learn why they were kidnapping, and thieving for that matter?” He nodded to where Ibel sat near the lump bundled in blankets that was the two children. Warm date syrup and bowls of lentil dhal had left both children sleepy and a little calmer. Kreat lay beside one blanket lump, staring intently at it. “The Witches who accompany us seem to have no trouble finding resources, even in desolate country.”

After escaping from the dustwitch camp, when Kai and Cimeri had reached Ziede and the others, Kai had thought the children would be crying, from fear of strange people and the shock of the fight to rescue them. But the two had talked in whispers, even to Raihar and the others, and seemed afraid to make any sound. He understood the implications of that all too well, and shoved the anger down inside himself as more fuel for the seething furnace already there.

Both hands wrapped around the cup, Raihar tried to find words to explain. “The dustwitches aren’t like us, they don’t…” Her expression said she found this baffling. “They can’t see the small spirits that make up the world. Only the big ones.”

“Like Ziede’s wind-devils,” Kai told Bashasa. “The dustwitches could take control of them for a short time, but only until they slipped away and went back to Ziede.”

“Because Ziede is their friend,” Ibel clarified. “Like Baram can hear the run-belows in the water talking.”

Kai wasn’t sure if that analogy was helpful but Bashasa nodded understanding, and muttered, “Power and domination over other beings seems to be their way, doesn’t it.”

Raihar sighed and let go of the cup long enough to push her hair out of her eyes. “We decided to try to pretend we would go along with them, would do what they wanted, so we could slip away later and free the others. But I was raised in the old way, I can’t lie for piss.” Cimeri patted her arm in forgiveness. “They didn’t believe me. And they threatened our own.” She let out a shaky breath as her gaze went to the two children. A little hand had slipped out of the blanket and was playing with the clay beads on the end of one of Kreat’s braids. “They seemed to have plans to make a home somewhere. Maybe in a city, a deserted mortal city. They thought the Hierarchs would kill all the mortals and then leave, and then they would live wherever they wanted.”

Cimeri nodded in troubled confirmation. She had difficulty speaking, and sometimes hesitated when forming signs in Witchspeak, though she clearly understood it, Imperial, Saredi, and some Arike. Raihar had explained that it was nothing the dustwitches had done to her; it was something that had been with her since she was a child. Cimeri said, “Hoping. It would happen.”

There was silence as they all took that in. Bashasa let out his breath. “I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“I can.” Kai kept his voice even, not wanting to frighten anyone. “What kind of sense does that make? At what point is that even a vaguely sensible thing to think?”

“Because you are practical, and have not a trace of the fanatic within you,” Bashasa told him. “I have the fanatic in me, though I keep it tightly under control. But it is how I recognize the failing in others.”

Kai frowned, and resisted the impulse to glance around to make sure he wasn’t the only one who was somewhat shocked by this admission. He said, “Are the Hierarchs fanatics?”

“No, frighteningly enough.” Bashasa was deeply troubled. “From what I observed, and heard from others, they are as pragmatic as you are. But they deliberately breed fanaticism in their followers. Like the legionaries who die rather than betray them, even when we offer alternatives.”

Raihar’s expression was dubious, though Cimeri gestured her understanding. Then a cadre soldier lifted the tent flap and said, “Prince-heir? Prince-heir Hiranan has sent to tell you a messenger has just arrived.”

“Ah, I must go.” Bashasa pushed to his feet. “Raihar and Cimeri, I will leave you now to Kai, the physicians, and Ibel and her family, who will help you rest and recover.”

“Wait…” Raihar looked up, her expression knotted in concern. “What will happen to us?”

“You are guests here,” Bashasa said firmly. “If you choose, you can leave us as soon as you are able. If you wish, you can go with those of our people who cannot fight, to a place of relative safety, and wait there with them until we achieve victory over the Hierarchs or die in the attempt. Or, you can travel with us, as part of the Fourth Prince’s cadre, under his authority, and fight the Hierarchs. I would give you more choices if I could, but that is all there is at the moment.”

Cimeri and Raihar looked at Ibel, who moved a hand in the Witchspeak for we fight. Raihar hesitated, and Bashasa said, “There is no need to make the decision now. Rest and recover first.”

After speaking more with Raihar and Cimeri, Kai left them to sleep, hopefully reassured about their situation. The long twilight had started to fall, darkness gathering around the tents as the fires were banked for the night. Without the woodsmoke and cooking smells, the cool wind was scented with flowers and a sharp cedar-like tree from the hills. Kai would need to get back to his cadre. It was possible the dustwitches might try a counterattack, and they had to be alert.

The two Witches had given him a lot to think about, though little of it seemed helpful. The key to the group had to be the Doyen, but Kai had no idea yet how to deal with her. Trying to bargain or reason with her seemed a good way to get killed. But killing the dustwitches’ leader didn’t seem like any way to get their help. Especially with the mental and emotional sway she seemed to hold over the group.

Kai patrolled with his cadre for half the night, then got a little sleep before waking alone in his tent in the pre-dawn light. He dressed in the clothes he had washed the other day and pulled on his battered expositor’s coat. Most of the soldiers were still asleep so he picked his way quietly through the circle of their camp. Trenal, back on camp watch for the morning, told him that several messengers had come in over the course of the night and that Bashasa had stayed in the caravanserai with the other Prince-heirs, going over the new information, and that Ziede had woken earlier and gone to join them.

That sounded like something Kai needed to catch up on. He followed the path through the encampment, deeply wrapped in the gray shadow before the first touch of sunrise, quiet in the cool morning air. The only movement and voices came from soldiers who were on cooking or latrine duty or getting ready for their turn at patrol.

When he passed the caravanserai’s bathhouse and came to the stone archway where the building straddled the old road, he heard Lahshar’s voice, sharpened to wound.

She was saying, “Why this infatuation with the demon? Those who saw him before he turned expositor said it was because he must remind you of your sister.”

Kai went still, one foot half lifted for the next step. He knew who she was talking to, of course. From their voices, they were near the outer doorway that led into the caravanserai’s large ground floor hall. That door was closed, because no light shone from the archway.

Bashasa’s reply was equally sharp. “My sister was not a young lady of the Saredi who was technically dead when I met her.” Under the sting, he sounded flustered, though Kai wasn’t sure anyone who didn’t know Bashasa well would be able to hear it. Unfortunately, Lahshar was one of those people. “And if you were not so thoroughly unlikable, you might understand that what you call ‘infatuation’ is the normal growth of fellow feeling and affection that people engaged in the same enterprise often develop for each other.”

Lahshar started to reply, but Bashasa cut her off. “We have much to do today. Find something useful to occupy you.” Light spilled across the road as the door to the caravanserai swung open. Footsteps crunched on gravel, heading this way, then Lahshar swept out from under the arch. She stopped abruptly as she saw Kai, barely a step away. The two cadre soldiers behind her flinched and one actually dropped a hand to her punch-dagger.

Kai tilted his head. He said, “Anything you’d like to say to me?”

Lahshar had been caught by surprise, unprepared to see him, and she obviously hated that. She lifted her chin. “You should remember your purpose here.”

“My purpose,” Kai said, holding her gaze. “Is what Bashasa says it is.” He added, “If your soldier wants to stab me, tell her to go ahead. I won’t even kill her afterward.”

Lahshar flicked an irritated look to the side and snapped, “Come on.”

She strode away, the two soldiers following.

Kai stood there, breathing in the dawn air touched with smoke and dung and the sweet scents of the grasses, until the anger faded a little. He rolled his shoulders to release the tension and went into the caravanserai.

The central hall had clearly been the site of a lengthy meeting. A makeshift map table had paper and writing materials still scattered on it. A soldier walked around collecting forgotten cups and water jugs. From the voices coming down the stairwell, parts of the meeting had shifted upstairs, though Hiranan sat on a bench against the wall, leaning back and dozing. Some of her cadre sat beside her or on the floor nearby, glum and tired.

Bashasa stood at the table, looking down at it, arms folded and shoulders tense. Kai stepped up beside him, his attention caught by the map stretched on the boards. It was the fort at Dashar, the obstacle they had to remove once the Enalin arrived. It sat on the outer tip of a half-circle harbor, the city of Descar-arik occupying the curved opposite shore. From what Kai had heard, the fort was on a built-up mound surrounded on three sides by shallow water, and reached by a short wooden causeway over dunes and seagrass. But when the Hierarchs had taken it, they had dredged out the shore and made it a true island, with a more substantial bridge guarded with gates and a tower. Bashasa’s plans to get past the bridge included Ziede’s ability to fly and Tahren’s to kill a lot of legionaries quickly and quietly.

Bashasa realized someone stood next to him and turned, a distracted smile wiping out a grim expression. “There you are! Ah, then.” Fortunately he seemed too self-conscious to notice Kai’s self-consciousness. He took a sharp breath, seriousness settling over him like a pall. “There is news. It is not good.” He touched Kai’s shoulder, drawing him further away from the door and the others still in the hall.

Kai didn’t want any more news right now, he had had about all he could take, but he followed anyway.

Keeping his voice low, Bashasa said, “Vanguarders have returned from both Renitl-arik and our speakers to the Enalin. That fool Prince-heir Stamash has finally, belatedly, started the evacuation, but it won’t be in time—” He shook his head, looking away.

Bashasa struggled to overcome a wave of emotion, and it made cold prickles travel down Kai’s spine. We’re going to lose Renitl-arik, he thought. Or more importantly, lose everyone not fast enough or lucky enough to get out of the city in time. With this, the weary resignation of Hiranan’s soldiers, Bashasa’s pointless argument with Lahshar, all slotted into place. Kai swallowed and said, “I’m sorry.”

Bashasa squeezed Kai’s shoulder and visibly wrenched himself under control. “We don’t know what will happen yet. At least they are forewarned, this time.” He looked like he was steeling himself to reveal even worse news. “That’s not all.”

Kai’s stomach dropped. “The Enalin?” he asked. If the Enalin didn’t come, he had no idea what they would do. Try to hold out in the Arik, and die bit by bit probably.

“Yes. They have word from the Philosopher Tifar of Palm, who was a hostage with us in the Summer Halls. She has managed to place spies among the people conscripted to serve the legionary camps near the southern coast, and has word from them.” He hesitated, and plunged on. “You know there was some indication—like the expositor you killed who thought you had been set on him by a rival—that some demons who were being used in the fighting against the Ilveri and in Palm and Belith might have been brought here.”

“Bashasa, just tell me.” While Kai had been imprisoned in the Cageling Court, he had assumed the demons who were taken from it had died, their Saredi bodies discarded and their consciousness drifting untethered, unable to return to the underearth with the passage closed. He had thought that would happen to him. But from what the other hostages had seen, the missing demons had been tortured into submission and forced to serve the Hierarchs. That it was the whole point of the Cageling Court’s existence, not just cruelty and amusement for the servant-nobles.

Bashasa said plainly, “The indications were true. A number of demons were put onto ships and sent to Dashar. They arrived there some ten days ago.”

Kai swallowed in a tight throat. He had known since the Summer Halls that he could end up facing enslaved demons in battle. That if the plan worked and they were able to join with the Enalin for a sweep to the southwest, that it would end in fighting demons acting as flesh shields for expositors and legionaries. But he just hadn’t wanted to think about it. “Do we know why?”

“They will be used to defend the fort and maintain its control over Descar-arik’s harbor, while the bulk of the legionaries stationed there will board the ships and be sent along the coast to Nibet. The Hierarchs obviously know of the Tescai-lin’s efforts there to raise the Enalin forces. They mean to subdue Enalin and kill or recapture the Tescai-lin.”

Kai took that in. This had to be the response to the drowning of the Summer Halls, the retaliation they had been expecting. The Hierarchs had decided to direct it strategically, against the places they knew were raising forces against them.

Bashasa continued, “Once the demons are established at Dashar and the legionaries are ready to take ship, a Hierarch will arrive. To use the Voice on Renitl-arik and then in Nibet and Enalin. The Tescai-lin’s advisors have made it clear their troops will not leave their land undefended, with certain knowledge of legions on the way.” He ran a hand through his already disordered curls. “We must attack the fort at Dashar now, without the Enalin.”

Kai agreed. It was the only way forward. “When do we leave?”

“In one day’s time.” He hesitated. “We know Renitl-arik has not been attacked yet but…”

Kai saw it too. “They’ll expect us to hit them there. To try to protect the city.”

A flash of pain crossed Bashasa’s expression. “And we cannot play into their hands, no matter how many we lose. It would be the death of the east, west, and north. We have to attack Dashar and eliminate the forces there before the Hierarch arrives.”

What was left of the east and north, the west was already dead. It was easier for Kai, who knew Renitl-arik only as symbols on a map, to possibly sacrifice it for the rest of the world, when everyone he cared about who still lived was in this encampment. But he knew what that choice would feel like for Bashasa and all the other Arike. Like choosing to cut off an arm to save the body it was attached to. He said, “I’ll think of something. How to kill the Doyen and make the dustwitches fight for us. Against the demons.”

Bashasa seemed more concerned than relieved. He said, “The demons will be given the same choice to surrender that we give to the legionaries. Though whatever was done to make them serve the Hierarchs … Surely if they are offered an opportunity for freedom…” He hesitated, and Kai knew he was unwilling to make false promises, when they had no idea what kept the demons enslaved, if it was possible to free them at all.

“I know,” Kai said. “And I knew this would happen, I’d have to fight them eventually. But I won’t hesitate. If I have to kill them, I will.”

“Kai, that wasn’t what concerned me. I know the depth of your loyalty and commitment to our cause, to…” Bashasa hesitated and shook his head, for once unable to find words. “I would … If you…” A cadre soldier strode into the hall with an air of urgency and stopped, uncertain at seeing Bashasa occupied. Bashasa grimaced and said, “I should go. Come to me, or send to me, if you need anything.” He squeezed Kai’s shoulder again and walked away.

Kai left the caravanserai for the cool dawn over the hills and fields. He walked a little distance out into the grass to let the sweat on his face dry, and wondered what in all the wide bowl of the sky he was going to do, how to fulfil his vow.

Two familiar figures approached from the direction of the outguard camp. It was Ziede and Tahren, walking slowly along the path, either talking or just tired. As they drew close, he could see their expressions in the gray light. They both looked worried enough that Kai didn’t have to ask if they knew. Tahren said, “Did Bashasa tell you about the demons from Palm?”

“Yes.” Kai put both hands in his dusty hair, ensnaring his fingers in the curly tangles. As highly motivated as he was to kill the Doyen, there was still the problem of gaining the loyalty or at least the cooperation of the dustwitches. A group who had gone against every tenet of the Saredi treaty between the underearth and the mortal world, everything important and sacred to the blood of Witches. But he couldn’t help the Arike fight troops of legionaries and enslaved demons without them. “He was right from the beginning, we’re going to need the dustwitches.”

Ziede’s expression of resignation and disgust told him she agreed. She said grimly, “Pity, I just washed my hair.”

Tahren’s quiet snort was clearly a repressed laugh. Ziede narrowed her eyes at her. Tahren didn’t shy from the glare. “You meant it to be funny,” she said pointedly.

“Tahren, please don’t laugh at Ziede’s jokes, she doesn’t like it,” Kai said absently. He was thinking of what Mother Hiraga had told him, that this was a turning point and none of the trails led to safety, all fell into the dark. He thought he understood that now. At least, if the portent applied to him. He hoped it didn’t apply to anyone else.

“The plan was always to kill the dustwitches’ leader, if she seemed likely to continue her attacks.” Tahren’s brow furrowed, as she realized there was something she didn’t entirely understand. “And to try to get the others to join the fight. Wasn’t it?”

“It was.” Ziede watched Kai with concern. “But we thought we would be fighting legionaries and expositors.”

“If we can get the dustwitches to join us,” Kai said, “I’m going to have to teach them how to kill demons.”

“Ah.” Tahren looked away into the distance, as if the conversation had turned too personal. As if she wanted to give him some privacy for this moment, as if watching his expression was too intimate. “Are you willing to do that?”

The question might have been provoking, distrustful, coming from one of the Prince-heirs or officers. From Tahren, who had turned against her own people, she knew exactly what she was asking. Kai said, “Yes.”

He thought there might be a little fanatic in him, too, it was just that Bashasa hadn’t seen it. Yet.

Seven

When Kai walked back inside to the Belith scholars’ workroom, it felt more crowded, even with the Enalin warriors standing against the walls to keep out of the way. The Tescai-lin had taken Chancellor Domtellan aside to talk, and Kai went over to where Ziede and Tahren stood with Tenes. Dahin was still over by the table with Sura and the other scholars. Sanja was beside him now, looking curiously at the artifacts. A couple of the younger Doorkeepers had joined the group. Kai said softly, “The Tescai-lin won’t stop Ramad from going, but they’ll make sure I go too. And Dahin and you two, if there’s room.”

“Good,” Ziede said. She glanced at Tahren, concern furrowing her brow. Tahren watched Dahin with an air of consternation.

Tenes touched Kai’s arm and signed, I would go too, if possible.

Kai told her, “I would have you go too, but I want you to stay here, with Sanja, if you’re willing.” He was reluctant to leave Sanja even with the Tescai-lin, who would be certain to make sure she was cared for and taken to Avagantrum. What Bashat had said had left a pain in his heart, like a little shard of glass. He didn’t want her to think she was being abandoned, even temporarily. “I don’t want to leave her with someone she doesn’t know.”

Tenes looked toward Sanja, troubled understanding in her expression. I see. I will protect her with my life.

“I’ll leave you a note for my daughter Tanis at Avagantrum,” Ziede told Tenes. “If we don’t come back, the Tescai-lin will help you go there, and you’ll be welcomed.”

You fear you will not return, Tenes asked, glancing at each of them with concern.

Ziede’s voice was wry. “If things go badly, walking back from the Capstone of the World might take some time.”

Tahren turned her attention to the two Immortal Blessed and Arnsterath, but she said, “I’m worried about Dahin.”

The scholars still clustered around the artifact table, though a few had broken off to talk separately or sit down on one of the benches to take notes. Now all Kai could see of Dahin was a glimpse of his light-colored hair as he moved around in the crowd, talking animatedly.

“He’s doing his ‘important scholar’ act, isn’t he.” Ziede frowned. “I don’t know why it has to be an act, since he actually is an important scholar. But you’re right, he’s more … antic than he should be.”

“He’s getting what he wants,” Kai said, but he knew in his bones that something had been wrong with Dahin since this trip started.

Ziede said silently, Oh good, here comes Ramad. Just what we need.

Kai turned, and he knew his expression was not welcoming. Ramad stopped a few paces away. He said, “Can I speak to you?”

Kai was about to say of course not, when Ziede prodded him through her pearl. He’s distracted and tired. He may tell you more than he means to.

Kai did not make any reply because he knew he would sound like a sulky child. He just stepped away far enough to give the illusion of privacy.

“Thank you,” Ramad said, and he did sound tired.

In his own very weary heart, Kai thought Ramad truly intended nothing but good for the Rising World. Ramad was also in the process of bringing Arnsterath to Benais-arik. Bashat had already disposed of one intractable demon; that he might want another who could be more amenable to persuasion was very possible. She had acted as an expositor and participated in a plot against the Rising World coalition; the council would not be inclined to treat her as anything but a criminal, especially the members whose lands were more plagued by wandering expositors than the Arik. Becoming Bashat’s pet demon might not be her only option, but it was the best one. Kai said, “Talk. I’ve already said everything I had to say.”

Ramad let his breath out. He looked around, as if hoping the situation had changed in the last few heartbeats. On the far side of the room, the Tescai-lin was still speaking to Domtellan, who had taken a seat on a low bench so they would be closer to eye level. Arnsterath stood at ease, staring at nothing, while the Immortal Blessed watched her warily. He turned back to Kai. “I thought you were going to your home.”

“So did I,” Kai agreed, then bit the inside of his cheek to remind himself not to give so much away. It might be gentle provocation, but it was still provocation.

Ramad watched him, something of frustration, something of concern in his expression. “I can’t leave it like this between us. We have to work together. The Tescai-lin is arranging for you to go with me.”

“The Tescai-lin would prefer it if you didn’t go at all,” Kai corrected. “They don’t trust you either.”

Ramad rubbed his face wearily. “Well, Bashat does, but I know that isn’t much of a recommendation.”

Kai wanted to growl. If only Ramad wasn’t so shitting reasonable.

“You have a reason to want to get there first,” Ramad said, his voice low enough that it was almost hard to hear under the noise of the other conversations. “I could help you if you’d let me.”

Kai let all his skepticism bleed into his face. “I’ve broken with Bashat. You haven’t. We don’t want the same things.”

Through her pearl, Ziede commented, This would be easier if he was stupid.

This would be easier if Bashat was stupid, Kai corrected her. It wasn’t Ramad they needed to worry about.

Sanja appeared at Kai’s side and made the Witchspeak sign for important.

Kai signed back, Tell me.

Sanja signed, Dahin took something out of that teacher person’s pocket and went away.

Kai’s gaze went to the artifact table, where the other scholars were still talking, then the rest of the room. Dahin was gone. A hundred shitting asses, Kai thought. He had known, he had known something wasn’t right.

“What?” Ramad said, frowning at Sanja. “Where?”

Of course Ramad could understand Witchspeak. As Sanja glared at him in affront and didn’t answer, Kai raised his voice to a battlefield carry and said, “Sura! The key to the anchor stones, where is it?”

Everyone fell silent. Sura, leaning over the map on the table, jolted upright, her hand going to the pocket of her tunic. Her expression turned horrified. “It’s gone. I had it here—”

Tahren strode toward her. “Where is the first anchor? The vessel?”

Alarmed, Domtellan pointed toward the archway at the back of the room. “That way, outside and up—”

Kai ran.

The room erupted in chaos around him but the scholars scrambled out of his way and he made it to the door first. In his head, Ziede said, Go, hurry, we’re behind you.

Kai ran through two more rooms, a short passage, and shoved open a heavy wooden door. He was outside in another paved garden area, lit only by a few guttering stone lamps. No sign of Dahin, but Domtellan had said up. Kai turned back and saw the narrow stone steps up to the next level terrace of the pyramid just as Ramad and Sura stumbled out the door. “This way!” Sura called out and started for the steps.

Kai elbowed Ramad aside and passed Sura before she reached the second level. He saw the next set of stairs going up toward the domed enclosure on the building’s roof. Ziede cursed angrily through her heart pearl. From the bare glimpses he got, Arnsterath had run in the confusion, bolting out the front. In trying to chase her the Immortal Marshalls had managed to block Ziede’s way. It had slowed down everyone who might have been helpful, and Tahren had thrown one Blessed into a wall and was now dragging the other by the hair. Arnsterath taking the first opportunity to run was predictable and absolutely not Kai’s biggest problem at the moment.

The stairs opened inside a lamplit dome that must have been for watching stars at some point. It had sliding metal panels in the curved stone ceiling, some partially open. In the center was a small ascension raft, barely ten paces across. Stacked next to it were heavy canvas bags of supplies, ready to be lifted aboard. Kai hissed out a breath. Of course, Ilhanrun Highsun would have come here in an ascension raft, and of course would have used it to help transport the expedition on the first long journey to the Capstone. Then he had employed it to allow the mortals to pass unharmed through the anchor stones. There was no way the raft could have gotten into this chamber otherwise; the openings in the dome weren’t large enough.

Some bags had already been put onboard, blocking Kai’s view of the interior. Then Dahin stood up from behind the pile, something cradled in his hands. He stepped toward the steering column. Kai said, “Dahin, what are you doing? We’re all going, I—”

Dahin whipped around, a full-body flinch, and grimaced in annoyance and guilt. He started to speak. Running steps sounded behind Kai as Ramad and then Sura slammed through the doorway.

Dahin’s expression hardened and he lunged for the steering column. Kai flung himself forward and vaulted over the rail into the raft.

He landed on the metal deck and felt it shudder under him, as if the raft was trying to lift up. Dahin yelled, “Dammit, Kai!”

Ramad leapt over the side and landed beside Kai. Sura tumbled over the bags of supplies and slid to the deck. The raft lifted off the floor, shuddering. Something started to howl, like a wind through a deep narrow canyon.

“You— This is not—” Dahin snarled at Ramad. “How dare you—”

“Then stop this and let’s speak about it,” Ramad shouted back.

Sura said, “He can’t, it’s too late!” She grabbed on to a strap bolted to the raft’s floor. “Hold on!”

Kai crouched and caught hold of a cargo net. He exchanged an irritated glare with Ramad, who did the same.

The raft rose toward the dome, rotating in a way that Kai was sure ascension rafts weren’t supposed to. A force pulled all the air from the room, as if a pit had opened up and their little part of the world poured into it.

A thump overhead jerked Kai’s attention upward to the open roof panels. The raft around him dissolved just as Arnsterath landed beside Sura.

Kai expected a jolt. He didn’t expect the sudden sensation of plunging off a cliff. His vision went black for a heartbeat that lasted far too long. It wasn’t like falling, it was faster, like being pulled, dragged, careening helplessly down a mountainside, ripping the breath out of his lungs—

It ceased so abruptly the sudden absence of sensation was almost more disorienting. Kai found himself crouched on the deck of the raft in near pitch dark, his heart pounding. He called an imp by reflex. It appeared almost immediately, reassuring him that they were still in the mortal world with its channels to the underearth.

The imp’s wan light fell on the raft. Ramad sprawled next to Kai, Dahin still standing but wide-eyed and pale, with a death grip on the raft’s steering column. Sura huddled next to the net holding the bags of supplies. And Arnsterath next to her; Kai hadn’t imagined her abrupt appearance.

Kai lunged an instant before Arnsterath reached for Sura. He tackled her and bowled her over, caught her wrist before she stabbed at his eyes. His first impulse was to throw her over the side, but they might be in the center of a city, and he couldn’t risk that. He wasn’t sure when he had decided to kill her but evidently he had decided.

The heartbeat of indecision about heaving her out of the raft gave her a chance to throw him off. Kai rolled into a crouch and she scrambled to put her back against the far railing.

“Stop! Kai, stop!” Dahin snapped. “We’ll move again in a moment, I can’t stop it once it’s started. If you keep moving you’ll throw us off balance and we’ll all die.”

After Arnsterath, Dahin was next to be thrown off the raft. Kai stayed where he was, seething.

Sura thumped back against a supply bag. She stared in alarm at Arnsterath, then blinked up at the imp. “Is that— What—”

“Kai called an imp,” Ramad said. He focused on his prisoner, ally, new friend, whatever she was. “Arnsterath, what are you doing?”

“You promised me a chance to prove myself to the Rising World,” she said, her wary gaze on Kai. She had fought him when all he had wanted was to escape with his companions. She had never fought him when his only thought was murder.

Kai looked away, swallowing rage down. He admitted to himself that throwing anybody off the raft would be counterproductive, no matter how badly he wanted to. “Prove yourself,” he sneered. “That’s why you reached for the closest mortal as a hostage.”

Sura edged further away, flicking a frightened glance from Arnsterath to Kai.

“I have no reason to trust anyone here.” Arnsterath turned a hooded gaze on Ramad. “I wasn’t going to let you leave me behind.”

Frustrated, Ramad said heatedly, “I didn’t intend to—” He stopped, and visibly took hold of himself. “Dahin. Why did you do this? The Tescai-lin was arranging for you to make the trip.”

Dahin had clearly been forming a strategy. He began airily, “Address me as Scholar Dahin—”

His voice as flat and cold as death, Kai said, “Answer the question.”

Dahin froze, swallowed, and looked away. “I’ll … explain later. We don’t have much time here.”

Kai gritted his teeth and instead of throwing Dahin out of the raft and interrupting the anchor stone and killing them all, he sat up enough to look out over the railing. He could tell now that they were inside something, a large cave or structure. An opening to one side, a squared-off doorway, was large enough for a wallwalker. Outside it was the lighter darkness of a night lit by starlight. The raft sat above the ground, on some sort of platform or pillar. The air was dry, cold but with none of the sea scent of Ancartre, just the smell of rock and sand and some lightning-like bitterness that probably came from the anchor stones.

“This is an old fort in Ecrea,” Sura said softly. “We camped here on the way to the Capstone and Ilhanrun placed the first anchor stone.”

“A good spot, isolated but sheltered.” Dahin’s gaze flicked around the raft, anywhere but at Kai. “How many stops?”

Sura’s glance at him was suspicious. Dahin had stolen the key from her, stolen the expedition’s only means to move easily between Sun-Ar and safety. She admitted, “Six more.”

Dahin nodded. “I see. Quite big jumps, then. I would’ve thought a quantity of small hops rather than a large distance—” He took a sharp breath. “Hold on, we’re going.”

Sura gripped the netting again. Dahin pressed himself back against the rail, keeping one hand on the steering column. Arnsterath settled on the floor, still watching Kai warily. He sat on the deck and banished the imp, because there was no reason to put it through this too. Then the world dropped out from under him again as the next anchor stone wrested them away.

After first hearing about the anchor stones, Kai had expected it would be like normal travel only far more disturbingly fast. He hadn’t thought time would be snatched out of their lives in abrupt and upsetting pieces. It certainly didn’t change his opinion on Blessed devices and how they seemed designed to wring the maximum discomfort out of anyone who used them. It explained why so many of the Immortal Blessed were so cranky.

It also didn’t give him any time to process his anger.

They weren’t able to see much of the countryside they passed through, which otherwise would have been a fascinating and distracting journey. Ilhanrun had chosen other isolated spots for his anchor stones—an immense dripping cavern, a rocky island obscured by cold sea mist and loud with the cries of unfamiliar birds, a bluff above a desert of gray sand and freezing wind, a bare foundation looking down on the tumbled stone ruins of a flooded city, an empty clearing in a forest of snow-covered impossibly huge pine trees. The different angle and strength of the sunlight at each stop should be a way to tell how much time and distance had passed, but Kai had no idea how to figure that out.

The raft shuddered to a halt on what should be the last stop and Kai blinked away the haze over his vision. The light was bright and clear, the blue sky cloudless. Kai felt a deep ache in his bones, a lead weight in his stomach, and a chill on his skin.

Ramad said, wearily, “I think I’ll walk back.”

“Me too,” Dahin groaned from his huddled position at the base of the steering column. He had been trying to engage more with Ramad and Sura over their brief stops, presumably as a buffer against Kai’s silent, furious hostility.

“That was worse than usual.” Sura pried her stiff fingers off the supply netting.

Kai found himself meeting Arnsterath’s dark gaze. She looked sick, sallow, her cheeks hollow, as if she felt as bad as he did. He thought the mortals and Dahin had come through the journey better. There might be something about demons and anchor stone travel that didn’t mix.

Ramad had, of course, noticed this too. “Kai, are you all right?” he asked, frowning.

“Yes.” Kai forced himself to uncoil and stand, pretending his immediate need to lean on the rail for balance was normal. They were in a large bowl of rock, like the caldera of a dead volcano, but one side had collapsed, allowing a view out onto a plain that seemed to be all low scrubby trees and shrubs. The dry cold wind chilled his skin and carried the scents of unfamiliar plants. There was no sense of a death well here. But then Kai had never felt the Hierarchs’ Well until one of their trained expositors had called on it to destroy something.

“Where’s your camp?” Dahin asked Sura.

“It’s down that way.” She pointed to a rough path that wound down the slope out of the caldera. “Away from the anchor stone, so no one comes near it accidentally.”

This raft was more utilitarian than the one they had taken from the conspirators, and had no gate to make getting in and out easy. Dahin clambered over the railing and Sura, with a wary look at the rest of them, followed.

The cold air was clearing Kai’s head, though it wasn’t helping his aching body. He swung over the railing, and as Dahin turned to say, “I need to talk to Highsun first so—” Kai caught him by the collar of his coat and dragged him away across the rocks.

Kai stopped, possibly out of earshot, he didn’t really care. He said, “Give me the anchor key.”

Dahin, infuriatingly, looked guilty. “Kai, I know how this looks—”

Kai shook him, once.

Dahin grimaced in defeat and dug in his pocket. He pulled out a round palm-size stone, with a Blessed metal inset in the center. It had the icy touch of Thosaren on it, more so than any other Blessed tools Kai had come in contact with. Still he held it up and raised his voice to say, “Sura, is this the key?”

“Yes!” she called back. Ramad and Arnsterath stood a little distance away, Ramad watching Kai with a furrowed brow and Arnsterath looking off toward the path.

“I know you’re angry,” Dahin began.

Kai put the key in the pocket inside his coat and started away. He headed toward Sura, possibly because she was the only person here he didn’t want to kill, or at least maim, or leave abandoned in a remote part of the forsaken hills of Sun-Ar. He had no idea what he wanted to do next; the anger and the misery of the trip, and the fact that he couldn’t trust Dahin, had made a hash out of any tentative plans.

Sura had moved to the top of the path, one hand lifted to shield her eyes from the glare. Kai reached her side and looked out over the plain that was mostly scrubby yellow grass and flowering sedge in light-colored sandy dirt, dotted with the occasional low, spiky, wind-twisted tree. Not far in the distance was a line of rocky hills and bluffs, sand-colored again with darker brown and gray streaks. The path curved a short distance down the shattered caldera’s slope, toward a small camp, tucked close to a ridge of debris to shield it from the wind.

It was a group of sturdy tents reinforced with wooden poles, their oiled canvases painted with Belithan florals. Five riding animals grazed nearby in a sprawling makeshift corral made of the spiky tree branches; it didn’t look sturdy enough to keep an Arike horse in control, but these animals were stocky and placid, with long shaggy coats and short curving horns, similar to the winter ox of the Enalin highlands. Two slight figures in padded coats were tying down a canopy over what was probably a pit dug to keep supplies. Some folding wooden camp stools had been arranged around an unlit central firepit, but there was no sign of anyone else.

“That’s Timai and Rohas, our drovers. We hired them when we reached the lower mountains and needed riding animals accustomed to the climate,” Sura said, a tightness in her voice. “But there’s no one on watch. And the animals, so many are missing. The others must have gone somewhere but that would be almost everyone—”

Kai suppressed a growl. They could be too late already, even with their precipitous arrival.

Ramad came up behind them and stopped, several prudent steps away, as if he suspected Kai would not react well to being startled. He said, “What’s wrong?”

Kai left Sura to explain and started down the path. The wind whipped at his coat and he pulled it closed and buttoned the tabs. The others followed, Ramad questioning Sura about the state of the expedition when she had left seven days ago. “Everything was fine,” she was saying, her tone growing more anxious. “There was a site they were going to explore to the south, but they were still making preparations. But not everyone was going, that doesn’t make sense. We have two work groups, and one always stays behind—”

To the south, Kai thought, where Dahin thinks the Well is. The ground around the camp was gravelly and he didn’t bother to try to walk quietly. If something had gotten in here and killed most of the expedition members he would rather fight it outside than in a tent. Though the fact that the two drovers had survived seemed to weigh against that.

One heard Kai’s approach, looked up and called out. Then the flap on a tent near the firepit flew open and a figure burst out, calling, “Hello!” in Belithan.

Kai stopped, waiting. The person was short and sturdy, bundled up in a padded coat and fur hat, and their face had similar tattoos to Sura’s, which should indicate that she was a woman. As she started forward, her gait was uneven; she wore a wooden brace over her right knee. Then she saw Kai and their gazes met. She halted with a startled cry.

“It’s all right! Veile, it’s fine!” Sura ran forward, her steps loud on the gravel. “They’re from the Rising World.”

“Oh,” Veile said, still struggling with the shock. Her hands trembled. The two drovers ran to join them, wide-eyed and staring. With an obvious effort, Veile dragged her gaze from Kai to Sura. “I apologize, I—”

Ramad started to speak and Kai interrupted, “It’s perfectly all right.” He spoke in formal Belithan and Veile blinked at him in surprise. “No harm was done.”

Sura made hasty introductions, hesitating when she came to Arnsterath, who said complacently, “I have no title yet.”

Kai turned to look pointedly at Ramad, who set his jaw. Dahin muttered, “Oh.”

Sura finished, “This is Veile, she is in charge of the camp. But where are the others?”

“Ilhanrun led a group to the southern tor, the one we scouted before you left. They were supposed to come back … no, it’s been another day. Three nights ago.” Veile wiped at her face, clearly more distraught than she was trying to appear. “There was a storm the first night, so we thought they’d decided to take shelter where they were instead of trying to make it back here. But the next day there was no sign of them either. Colibar led the second group after them, thinking they must be trapped somewhere.” She made a helpless gesture. “They haven’t returned either.”

Kai hoped they were trapped somewhere. “How far is this?” he asked. “Is it near the earthwork you already found?”

“No, that was off toward the west,” Veile said, pointing. She still sounded distressed, but she was over the shock of Kai’s appearance and now seemed to be hopeful that they could help. “We hadn’t done much surveying to the south yet. Ilhanrun and Scholar Niera wanted to get it at least a little done before we had to leave. In a month or so, the season will start to change and the winds rise, and we’ll need to be gone by then.”

“Can you show us?” Dahin stepped up, shifting his bag around to pull out his map.

While the two drovers got riding animals saddled for them, Dahin planned their route, and Ramad took Arnsterath off to talk about whatever it was they talked about. Kai took the chance to speak privately to Sura by the corral gate.

First, he took out the anchor key and put it in her hand. “Take the raft and go back for Ziede Daiyahah and Tahren Stargard.”

Sura’s pinched expression shifted to relief as she tucked the key away, probably because the return of it was a sign the expedition had not been completely taken over by demons and Rising World vanguarders and Lesser Blessed with obscure and devious motives. “I’ll have to unload the supplies, but the drovers will help and it won’t take long. I’ll be gone at least two days, to get there and back.” She looked up at him, her brow creased with worry. “Do you think the others were attacked by expositors?”

“Possibly,” Kai said. He wanted her and Veile and the young drovers to be warned, to be careful. He didn’t add or worse, because from her expression she understood the danger very well.

She nodded sharply, then hesitated. “Fourth Prince, you said that Arnsterath would hold me hostage.” Her expression had all the weight of Belith’s history with demons, the ones enslaved by the Hierarchs to put down attempts at rebellion in Belith and Palm. “If she’s that dangerous, why is Vanguarder Ramad giving her parole? Did the Rising World really agree to it?”

Kai kept his wince internal. “There are a lot of people who make up the Rising World council, and I don’t think most of them will know about this yet. The vanguarder is acting under orders from … one official in particular.”

Sura watched him carefully. “Not you.”

“No, not me, no.” Kai looked toward where Ramad and Arnsterath stood. Ramad was doing a good job of pretending not to be harried as he spoke, and Arnsterath listened patiently, a faint smile on her face. Kai missed his fangs again.

Sura sighed a little. It had the feel of an at least one of these strange people is rational sigh, or at least Kai would like to think so. He didn’t feel particularly rational right now. She added, “Do you know why Scholar Dahin did this?”

“I have no idea,” Kai said. Near the firepit, Dahin rolled up his map, nodding as he listened to something Veile was telling him. “But I’m going to find out.”

According to Veile, the ride to the site would take more than half the day, but Sura had said the daylight lasted longer here. The riding beasts were big but placid, and fortunately for Kai not much disturbed by demons. Their strong legs moved steadily, eating up the ground.

The plain wasn’t nearly as empty as it had looked at first: birds wheeled in the sky, and in the distance, long-legged tan and white herd animals trotted away. Kai and the others were headed toward the higher ground to the south, the hills that lined the horizon above the plain. The ground would rise up to become rocky, then smooth out into low rolling hills and slopes. Feeling the strong wind and hearing that it would rise higher when the season changed, was the first time the earthworks the Hierarchs had constructed started to make sense.

They didn’t make sense for the middle of the Sana-sarcofa, but the Hierarchs had meant to remake the rest of the world into the shape they wanted.

According to the expedition’s map, the tor stood by itself in one of the open shallow valleys, and the first work group had gone to examine it to see if it was natural or a construction. They had first spotted it with their distance glasses, and had noted the resemblance to some of the Hierarch earthworks, though it appeared to be made of stone.

Kai was betting it was not a natural rock formation.

Arnsterath and Ramad were riding together, Kai a short distance ahead. Dahin nudged his beast up next to Kai’s and said, “I’m sorry.”

Now this apology, Kai didn’t believe. He said, “No, you’re not.”

Dahin sighed, more weary than theatrical. “You’ve got me there.”

“What are you trying to do, Dahin?” Kai asked, his frustration bubbling over like a burning pot. If Dahin had been lying to them all along … “Is it even true that the Well is here?”

“Of course it’s true, I showed you all my evidence!” Dahin weathered Kai’s skeptical glare, then his mouth twisted in resignation. “It’s here.”

Kai admitted that Dahin would never have the patience to document the evidence in that treatise if he didn’t think it was true. But there had to be something he had intentionally left out. “Why did you drag us all the way to Ancartre if you wanted to come here alone?”

“I didn’t know about the anchor stones. I thought I’d have to fly all the way up here in an ascension raft and I—” He stopped speaking as if he had hit a wall. Or thought of a very good reason he couldn’t finish that sentence the way he had meant to. “I didn’t want to go alone,” he finished, and winced, as if well aware how inadequate it was.

“You went to the Summer Halls, a stinking flooded death well, alone, and stayed there for months, diving in putrid water—”

“I know, I remember!” Dahin snapped. He took a deep breath and clearly decided to take a different approach. “I don’t want to lie to you—”

“But you did,” Kai interposed. “I thanked you, thanked you, for trusting us!”

“—we’ve been friends forever. You helped raise me during the war, when Tahren was busy…”

Yes, I did, Kai thought bitterly. I helped raise you and I helped raise Bashat, and look how that turned out. At least Ziede’s daughter Tanis had never tried to kill him. Though she was only five decades old now, there was plenty of time for that later, he supposed. He said, “If you don’t want to answer my questions, then I don’t want to talk.”

Dahin made a sulky humph noise, which did not help the situation one bit. Kai nudged his beast into a faster walk, and Dahin didn’t try to follow him.

They reached the higher ground and stopped briefly to rest the beasts and themselves. A small spring poured down in multiple rivulets over a wide stretch of rocky ground. It was surrounded by short grasses with tiny white and yellow flowers and small bushes that looked related to the woody silver sage from the Saredi grasslands but probably weren’t. While Dahin watered the animals, or stood by while the animals watered themselves, Kai looked for tracks.

Rain was apparently infrequent here but the ground near the springs was damp. Kai found plenty of signs of hoofprints from riding animals and human boot prints. So the two work groups had stopped here the same way they apparently did whenever they went up toward this area, before they discovered the tor. Kai wasn’t sure what the tracks told him, except that Veile and the drovers were telling the truth, and nothing odd had happened to the scholars until after this point in their journey. He looked up to see Ramad pacing thoughtfully around on the far side of the stream, examining the tracks over there. Kai should check that area himself, but Ramad had no reason to lie about what he found. All his reasons for lying were about other things, not the lost scholars.

Kai sat down on a rock, facing into the chill wind, and reminded himself it would be two more days at least before Sura could return with Ziede and Tahren.

Dahin was chewing something from one of the supply bags the drovers had packed onto their beasts and pretending he needed to study the map. Arnsterath eyed Kai from across the stream, then started to pick her way over toward him. Kai considered waiting until she was a few paces away and then getting up and moving, but he was too tired for petty games.

She stopped and said, “Are the anchor stones supposed to do this to demons?”

Kai didn’t have to ask what she meant. He said, “Probably.” He had felt sick since the raft reached the first anchor stone, but the others hadn’t shown any sign of lingering discomfort. He had seen Dahin hide illnesses before, and he wasn’t showing any of the signs of it.

Kai had had some water and some of the hard flatbread from the supply bag on his saddle and it hadn’t helped much. This body was also obviously unaccustomed to riding and his muscles ached. It was enough discomfort to be annoying but not enough that it would be helpful toward powering an intention.

Arnsterath grimaced faintly and looked away.

Kai decided he might as well make the effort, and asked, “Where did your body come from?”

She turned to him, her brow furrowed, apparently honestly taken aback by the question. It was such a funny reaction, Kai laughed. Though something in the tone of it made Dahin and Ramad look up, startled. Kai said, “What, do we not talk about that, we foresworn Saredi demons who take our mortal bodies by force? At least my first was an expositor.” He lifted his brows. “Oh, this one isn’t your first either, is it.”

She bared her teeth and said, “It was just someone on the road. Injured, dying. I admit it. Are you happy now?”

“I’m delighted,” Kai told her honestly. “We’re hypocrites together.”

Offended, she countered, “What is your friend Dahin trying to do?”

Kai shrugged. “Ask him. I have no idea.”

She watched him for a moment and then smiled, that thin-lipped arrogant smile he couldn’t remember seeing on Arn-Nefa’s face. Though maybe he had just been too young and naive to notice it then. She said, “I want to prove myself to this Arike Prince-heir Bashat. He seems interested in what I can do.”

If she was hoping for a reaction, Kai didn’t give her one. It was a very bad idea, but Kai was beginning to think if Bashat was going to ask for trouble like this, maybe he should just get what he wanted. “Good luck with that,” he told her. He pushed to his feet and called to Dahin and Ramad, “Let’s go.”

The Past: the Trap

The truth of Nibet is that the Enalin tried negotiation. They ceded it to the Hierarchs in return for peace, much the way our Arike cities were invaded by soft words and lying offers of self-governance. What happened next is sometimes attributed to a misunderstanding in the terms the Hierarchs offered, a mistranslation, but that is just one of the many myths that surround this time. The Enalin thought the Hierarchs wanted Nibet for its beauty. The Hierarchs wanted Nibet to make a show of what would happen to those who thwarted their desires.

—Letter from Bashasa bar Calis, in the Old Palace Prince-heirs’ Archive at Benais-arik

As the sun rose into a cloudy gray sky, Tahren went to rejoin the patrol, and Kai and Ziede went to the supply train camp to consult with the other Witches. Wrapped in a long gray jacket that Kai was fairly sure belonged to Tahren, Ziede said glumly, “We had a library at the Mountain Cloisters that—” She cut herself off. “Well, never mind that now.”

Kai didn’t need to ask what had happened to the library when the Hierarchs had taken the Khalin Islands.

They spent the long morning with Amabel and their family, sharing a breakfast of lentil porridge, then working to make a list of cantrips that would best affect demons. Kai described the ones that had almost worked on him, and how he had defended himself. Mother Hiraga and the others tried to identify the precise cantrips.

There were three they were sure of, and Kai practiced them carefully. It was helpful, though of those here, only Amabel, Ibel, and Baram actually had the power to make cantrips like these work. And of that group, only Amabel was fast and strong enough that Kai would even consider sending them into battle against a demon.

Sitting on a battered grass mat outside the tent, Kai watched Ziede and the others sign rapidly in Witchspeak and scratch notes on fragments of scavenged paper. Raihar and the two older rescued mortals hadn’t emerged from their tent, and Arkat, the hostage who was nearly catatonic, was still being cared for by the Physicians. Cimeri had come out to sit with the other Witches, and become absorbed in the task. Her and Raihar’s children were playing a game with Kreat a little distance away, something involving a diagram sketched in the dirt and pebbles, which Kreat was apparently playing in a way that made them laugh. They hadn’t let them mix with the other refugee children in the supply train yet, as they were still getting used to their new surroundings. When the drovers over at the next camp dropped a tool they were using on a bent wheel, the two children scattered, ending up hiding behind Ziede in a huddle.

While Cimeri comforted them, Kai made little stacks of his welcome tokens and worried. He couldn’t see how this was going to work. Watching the preparations going on among the soldiers and the officers, he felt the whole encampment was shifting into the mental space they had occupied in the Summer Halls—that the plan was hopeless but they were going to do it anyway, because the consequences of not doing it were worse.

He didn’t think the luck they had had in the Summer Halls was going to repeat itself. Worse, he didn’t think Bashasa thought so either.

“Fourth Prince!”

Kai swept his tokens back into his coat pocket and looked up as Cerala approached. She crouched beside him and said in a low voice, “There’s a dustwitch in the field outside the paddock gate. It’s the young one that we let go before.”

Kai caught Ziede’s eye and told Cerala, “We’ll go. Can you send for Tahren?”

It was Hawkmoth, stalking back and forth in the field about fifty paces from the paddock perimeter, wringing her hands.

Kai leaned on the half gate that still stretched across the opening in the crumbling wall, propping his chin in his hand. “Well, what do we think this is?”

Soldiers and a few vanguarders gathered along the wall, watchful and wary, and the whole encampment had been alerted in case this was a distraction for an attack. Arms folded, Tahren watched the young dustwitch critically. “It could be a trap, obviously. But she looks … distressed.”

Kai snorted. “You were going to say ‘deranged.’”

“I was not,” Tahren corrected.

“I’ll say it, she looks deranged.” Ziede frowned. “Did that naive child strike you as able to lie with her body like this?”

Kai agreed that she hadn’t. Hawkmoth had struck him as someone who was thought of as disposable, someone the Doyen would send off on a task and not care overmuch if they didn’t come back.

“As much as I distrust these people,” Amabel said, reluctance heavy in their voice. “I don’t think this is a trap.”

“No, probably not,” Kai conceded. “I’ll go see. Alone,” he added, as Amabel reached for the gate latch.

Tahren lifted a doubtful brow. “That’s unnecessary. They’ve attacked you once already when they came to supposedly talk.”

“No, it’s fine.” Ziede’s mouth was set in an ironic line. “We’ll just stand here and watch.”

“You do that,” Kai said, knowing that if he needed her she would be there in a heartbeat.

Kai swung over the gate and walked out into the tall grass. Hawkmoth’s erratic presence had driven off the birds that fed on the flower seeds and insects; the only other thing that moved in the field were the gray-green grasshoppers, flitting away from Kai’s feet.

At his approach, Hawkmoth looked up. Her face flushed with emotion and she started forward.

Kai reached for the first intention on the shoulder of his coat. Working fast, he had put together two designs, one fairly mild if Hawkmoth attacked him alone, and one considerably more violent if she had help. But she stopped abruptly, recognizing the gesture. Then she dropped to her knees in the grass.

Kai set his jaw. Saredi, and Witches, didn’t do that, and it just annoyed him all the more. He strode the last of the distance to reach her and snapped, “Get up!”

Hawkmoth shot to her feet, wide-eyed. “Demon—”

“Call me Fourth Prince.” Kai had realized at some point this morning that if he really was going to lead Witches, as bizarre as that seemed to Saredi sensibilities, he had to commit to it.

“Fourth Prince.” Hawkmoth corrected herself without hesitation, but then she was partly under the mental and emotional sway of a charismatic leader already, so she wasn’t exactly a good test of Kai’s leadership skill, what there was of it. “We … we need help. I was sent to ask you. To beg you. Help us.”

That was not what Kai had expected to hear. Not that it didn’t smell of a trap. “Who sent you, the Doyen?”

“The Doyen is dead.” Hawkmoth shook her head, light hair flying. “Nightjar sent me.” There were tear tracks on her cheeks, he noticed now. “Almost everyone is … distraught, and wild with it. Worse than your cantrip that made everyone confused about which way was up or down.”

Kai huffed in disbelief. “That was an intention, not a cantrip, what are they teaching you that you don’t know the difference.” If this was a lie, it was a better one than he would expect from the dustwitches. It was exactly the stroke of luck that he and the others had hoped for and not expected to get. He had told Nightjar the dustwitches could join them, and it must have been obvious that the possibility would make tempting bait in a trap. He kept his voice dry and disbelieving and said, “Nightjar is so confused she thought I would care?”

Miserably, Hawkmoth said, “Nightjar killed the Doyen.”

Ziede flew toward the dustwitch camp, Kai’s arm tight in her grip. Tahren, Amabel, and Kai’s cadre followed on horseback, but Ziede’s wind-devils easily outpaced them. Kai couldn’t stop turning over all the possibilities. If it was true, the insurmountable odds against attacking the fort would become a lot less insurmountable. But that felt like too much optimism to be real. “If Hawkmoth is lying,” he began, and Ziede cut him off with, “Unless you have a different way to finish that sentence than the last three times, please stop. We’ll know when we get there.”

Kai forced himself to keep quiet. She was right, they would know soon enough.

They reached the curving ridge that sheltered the camp and Ziede slowed cautiously. The day was still cloudy but there was really nothing to hide them up here. Kai had suggested a chimera but Ziede thought it would be a waste of time when the dustwitches were already expecting them.

As Ziede skirted the ridge to allow them a glimpse down into the camp, Kai saw it was in disarray. No woodsmoke, a couple of tents knocked down, and he could hear … “Wailing,” he whispered to Ziede. Pain-filled, heartbroken wailing and sobbing.

“Mourning?” Ziede wondered, and took them around and down to the lower entrance by the spring. “The connection the Doyen had with them, broken abruptly … Even if they didn’t care for her in their true hearts, it would hurt.”

There was no sentry this time under the twisted shade trees, just some of the riding beasts, grazing peacefully on the other side of the spring. Not quite as many as there had been before. Either the dustwitches hadn’t been able to recapture all of them after Kai and Cimeri had driven off the herd during the raid, or some members of the group had taken some and left.

Ziede’s wind-devils set them down gently and swept once around her, restless. For Kai it was like being brushed by clouds of wind-driven ice, and strangely reassuring. He started up the trail, Ziede following, the dirt churned by so many running footsteps it was like climbing a sand hill.

The furrows in the earth that Cimeri had made were still there, but they weren’t what had caused all this chaos. Two tents had been knocked down, apparently in a frenzy, random belongings scattered, spilled food drawing clouds of flies. Several dustwitches sat outside the intact tents, while others huddled in the shade. Some were wailing or weakly sobbing and some just sat in silence, reacting to nothing.

“There are tents missing,” Ziede said quietly. Kai had noticed that too. There were at least three places where the disturbed ground indicated tents had once stood, but there was no sign of discarded belongings or torn canvas. Narrowly observing the camp, she continued, “There are fewer people here, unless they’re dead or hiding.”

The Doyen must have done even more to keep the dustwitches with her than they had speculated. This was disturbing, far more disturbing in some ways than Bashasa’s example of the young Hierarch servant-nobles, trained from birth to believe utterly in everything they were told. Kai said, “Some of them broke and are just stuck here, some were able to pack their things and leave.”

“That’s a pity because the ones who left were probably the smart ones,” Ziede muttered.

Kai agreed. No one looked inclined to attack them, so he raised his voice and called out, “Nightjar!”

The wailing cut off abruptly, as if the group had really been unaware until now that two enemies had walked into their camp. Dustwitches flinched and looked up, wary. Others didn’t react at all, just watched with vacant eyes. One pointed woodenly to the tent that Kai had thought was the Doyen’s. It sat back under the shade of a tree, removed from the tumult.

Kai realized he had made an error, because standing here waiting for Nightjar to come out would make him look weak, especially if she didn’t. He took a sharp breath and asked Ziede, “Stay out here? In case you need to rescue me.”

“Just make sure the Doyen is actually dead,” Ziede whispered. “If she doesn’t have a visible wound, just stab her quietly somewhere—”

“I know, I know,” Kai assured her. He went to the tent and pulled the flap open.

It was dark inside, too warm, buzzing with flies, and smelled of rotting flesh. He called fire to the palm of his hand.

Light shone on an interior that was surprisingly orderly, with a pile of richly colored blankets marking the sleeping place, a few small baskets and leather saddle bags for belongings. The Doyen lay in the center, on the square-patterned ground mat. Face down, the white-handled knife still stuck in her back. The pool of blood soaking the mat was rust-colored, a contrast to the brighter red of the fabric.

Nightjar sat on the other side of the tent, staring at nothing, limp as if she could barely hold herself up. Her veil was crumpled in one hand.

Kai hooked the flap over the peg on the tentpole to hold it open, and stepped inside. He moved to the Doyen, circling her to keep the body between himself and Nightjar. She wore no veil, and he crouched to lift away the hair curtaining her face. She was dead, it was no trick. It had probably happened sometime in the night, to judge by the flies and the stench of the body.

He looked up to see Nightjar watching him with dull eyes. She wet her lips and said, “Where’s Hawkmoth?” Her voice was the rasp of someone who hadn’t spoken in hours.

“At our encampment.” Amabel’s family were acting as Hawkmoth’s wardens, which in her current state had meant a calming herb and date syrup drink and having her lie down in a dark tent with a damp compress on her forehead. It’s like she has been under a geas, a fugue, like someone trapped in darkness trying to face daylight again, Mother Hiraga had said. “Why did you kill the Doyen?”

Nightjar shifted and winced, as if she hadn’t moved in a long time. “You took Arkat away.”

Arkat, Kai thought. The other hostage, the one that still can’t talk or move. “So? You don’t care about mortal lives.”

Nightjar wiped at a smear of dried blood on her forehead. “He was held hostage, to keep me here.”

It was an interesting lie, if it was one. “How long?”

She blinked, as if the concept of time was startling. “Seasons, years. It happened in the Northwest, before we came here.”

Kai was torn between belief and denial, an urge to grab for something that would help Bashasa win, help them all win, and the looming sense that being handed this chance at salvation on a plate was just too convenient to be true. He would have to tell these dustwitches how to fight demons, and the thought still made his stomach try to turn. He had to be sure, as sure as he could be without seeing inside Nightjar’s mind.

He wiped his fingers on the hem of his skirt and stood. “Why send for me? What do you want?”

She looked up at that, the dull expression giving way to a small furrow between her brows. “You said you would help us.”

“I didn’t say that.”

The furrow grew. “You— When I spoke to you—”

“Spoke to me?” Kai corrected pointedly, “You mean when you tried to trap me, and thought you could use my name as a leash like a superstitious mortal. Did the Doyen tell you that would work?”

Her expression darkened to fury. The Doyen had told her that, then. Nightjar must not have had much teaching as a child if she had thought it was true. Or maybe it only worked on dustwitches, or they were so isolated that they thought it did. She snapped, “Then why did you come?”

Kai shrugged as if none of this mattered. “To see what was left of you, to see if this was another lie or another trap.”

Nightjar pointed to the Doyen’s decaying corpse with a grimace. “It’s no trap. I killed her to free myself, free all of us. You said—”

“I asked for you to join us. As Witches, able to fight legionaries.” Kai waved a hand toward the disordered camp. “Not whatever that is.”

Her incredulity turned to outrage and Kai strode out of the tent. Ziede stood nearby, idly examining her fingernails. Some of the less vacant and more surly dustwitches had crept near, though not too close, and had probably heard at least the latter half of the conversation. Neither Kai nor Nightjar had been trying to be quiet. He said to Ziede, “Let’s go. There’s nothing for us here.”

“Good,” Ziede said. But instead of grabbing Kai’s arm and letting her wind-devils sweep them away immediately, she turned toward the path down to the spring. She knew they were bargaining.

Kai thought it could go several ways. He could lose all the dustwitches to Nightjar, who without the Doyen’s powers of persuasion wouldn’t be able to keep the group together. There were probably dozens of festering grudges, smothered by the Doyen’s tight control. His refusal could unite them under Nightjar and they could attack the encampment again as the army was preparing to head for the fort. This could cause even more trouble than before.

Then from behind them, Nightjar said, “Wait.”

Eight

When they came to a hilltop for their first close view of the tor, the light was dimmer but only because gray clouds had drawn in overhead. It lay at the far end of the valley, a tall rounded shape, apparently of rock and dirt overgrown with grass, with flat slabs of stone lining and supporting it at the base. It was bigger than Kai expected, even from the glimpses they had gotten on the way here with the distance glass. He thought it was close to the height of the Temple of Merciful Philosophy, but much wider in circumference, because the outer wall sloped down.

Dahin said quietly, “That’s not a natural rock formation. It’s an attempt to make something look like a natural rock formation. But when you’re close enough to see the base, it’s obvious.”

“Yes,” Kai agreed. It was also almost surrounded by the springy, flowered brush that cloaked most of the shallow valleys in these hills. Unlike bare earth or more delicate grasses, it didn’t show much disturbance from the passage of humans or animals, no matter when they had walked through it.

“The Well wouldn’t be inside a structure,” Arnsterath said.

“How did you know—” Dahin snapped, then bit the words off as if they left a bad taste on his tongue. “Of course. You didn’t know. But you do now.”

Arnsterath lifted her brows, as if what he had said was absurd. “You didn’t come up here to look for broken pots and the bones of mortals dead and dust for decades.”

Ramad, to his credit, didn’t look surprised either. He said, “A death well has to be outside?”

“If it’s a big one,” Kai said. The one Aclines had made aboard the stolen Immortal Blessed ship had been small, not meant to last long. “A Well big enough to be used by the Hierarchs and expositors as far away as Enalin or the Blessed Lands would have to be at least the size of Benais-arik.”

“Not necessarily. Most of the Well of Thosaren is underground,” Dahin offered. “Though it does have a large outlet on the surface. Its core was formed naturally by the action of the earth, then it became a place of worship…” He trailed off, his voice turning thoughtful. “But, that … I’d never thought … Huh. What if—”

Ramad said quietly, “Kai.” He had dismounted and was looking off to the side, at something across the gorge to their left.

Kai slipped off his beast and stepped close enough to see. On the other side of the rocky divide was a depression with a flat grassy area. Peacefully grazing in it was a small herd of long-haired riding oxen, some still wearing their saddles and packs, some just in their bridles. There was no sign of anyone left behind to watch them, no sign of a camp. There were at least enough animals to account for all the missing mortals.

Ramad said, “At some point they dismounted and were lured, or taken, inside, and the beasts allowed to wander off.” He looked at Kai, his mouth set in a grim line. “Whoever is in there isn’t worried about hiding.”

“They know how many people were in the expedition, that only a few were left at camp,” Kai agreed. And they had captured Highsun too, probably the most formidable fighter. “I’ll go in alone and see if anyone is still alive.”

Ramad inclined his head. “I wish you wouldn’t, but I see the necessity.”

Before Kai could say that the necessity was none of Ramad’s business, Arnsterath said, “I’ll go with you.” She had dismounted and walked up behind them. Kai felt her presence like an itch on his skin.

“No, I want to see what’s in there first,” Kai said, without turning around. “Then you can come in and prove you’re a good little demon who can do what you’re told.”

“You want me to stay out here?” He heard that smile in her voice again. “With your vulnerable mortals? What if I decide I’m hungry?”

Kai turned and grabbed the front of her coat. She bared her teeth and caught his wrist. As her hand grazed his bare skin, she hissed in pain and jerked away.

At the university, when the Tescai-lin had gone back inside to speak to Domtellan, Kai had taken the chance to prepare a few designs for intentions, and to stab himself for the pain to power them if necessary. Intentions were easier to keep in reserve than cantrips, and these were designs that had been used against him in the past, so he knew how well they worked on demons. He said, “If you try to take hostages against me again, I’ll peel your skin off and wear it.” He added in Saredi, “You need to stop thinking of me as the boy you abandoned, and remember I’m the monster the Hierarchs feared.”

Her expression went sullen for a flash, then condescending again. She replied in the same language, “You always considered yourself a special little creature, didn’t you. Grandmother’s pet. What would she think of you now?”

“I can show you how to send your shade to the underearth, and you can ask her yourself,” Kai retorted.

Arnsterath looked away and folded her arms. Kai wasn’t surprised. The underearth tolerated a lot of transgressions, but demons who took familiars was not one of them. And Arnsterath had done the bidding of a renegade Immortal Blessed, against the Rising World. Even after the destruction of the Saredi, the Houses still considered Grandmother’s treaty to be sacred and were not forgiving of anything that might look as if they countenanced a violation of it.

Dahin said, “I’d also like to remind everyone that I am not mortal.” He flipped his coat open to show a Blessed weapon, very like those that the two Immortal Marshalls, Rafiem and Eleni, had carried.

“Did you steal that too?” Ramad asked, his voice dry.

“Oh no, I brought this with me from Benais-arik,” Dahin said. “It also works a treat against expositors. Don’t pretend you’re not carrying a cursebreaker or two, vanguarder.”

Now that everyone’s ability to kill each other was sorted, Kai needed to get moving. “You should all get under cover. We don’t know if they have patrols or sentries posted somewhere.” He started away. He would have to backtrack a little to get down out of these hills and into the cover of the valley floor. This would be easier with a Witch to help; any Witch, but especially Ziede.

He was aware of Dahin watching him go, his expression conflicted. But whatever Dahin wanted to say, he obviously didn’t want to say it where Arnsterath and Ramad could hear.

Ramad caught up when Kai had only gone a short distance down the winding slope. Ramad said, “I’m not here to argue, I just thought you should take this.” He held out a small pack with a water flask tied to it.

Kai couldn’t think of a reason not to, and sadly Ramad was still his most trustworthy ally at this point. He slung the bag over his shoulder. He didn’t know how long this would take, and they still didn’t know how long the daylight lasted here. He said, “If I’m not back by tomorrow—”

“Then someone else will be making the decisions.” Ramad, being Ramad, managed to make it sound reassuring. He added, “Take care.”

Kai walked away.

Crawling under brush without leaving any sign that you were there was something Kai had done many times as a Saredi scout. His body had also been smaller and more limber then.

Fortunately the bushes were high enough that he could crawl without having to lie flat, the ground underneath mossy and carpeted with decaying leaves and not anything too sharp. Stinging insects did not much care for demon flesh and the small rodents fled at his approach. It was still not an enjoyable trip.

Kai had worked his way to the opposite end of the valley first, and found what he was certain had been a road at one point, coming in from the hills to the west and curving across the valley to the base of the tor. A higher vantage point would have told him more, but he could still see how the vegetation that had grown over it was subtly different even after all this time. If the scholars weren’t already certain that they had been looking at a ruin from the regularity of the stone around the base, this would have been a definitive clue.

Kai had chosen to go in near the road as the easiest way to find an entrance. And the scholars had taken this route too, though the only sign of their passage now was a few broken branches and some boot prints in the disturbed bracken. Boot prints that went toward the tor, none going away.

It made an odd contrast to the drawings of the abandoned earthwork the expedition had found earlier. That had looked like a place people lived; Hierarch people, but still. This didn’t. And even this close, there was still no sense that this was a death well at all, let alone the Hierarchs’ Well.

Kai felt broken paving stones under the layer of decayed leaves as the ground sloped up to the tor. He slipped out from under the brush to crouch in the shadow of a broken slab. It was surrounded by tumbled rock, concealing a hollow opening into the base. Kai couldn’t see inside the shadowed hollow without calling an imp, and he was reluctant to risk it. There was no sense of inimical spirits, no heavy pall of death, but that didn’t mean whatever was in there couldn’t sense even a brief touch of the underearth.

Kai picked his way carefully into the hollow and started to feel along the dirt-encrusted stone. He searched methodically until his hands found a smooth section. Someone had knocked the dirt and grime away not very long ago. Feeling for the edge, his hand slid into a square depression, and he pulled at it.

Kai stepped back as with a faint creak the slab pivoted outward. He looked down a large square hallway, lit by firelight, shadows dancing as the wind rushed in through the now open passage. He stepped in hastily and let the slab close behind him until it thumped him in the back; he didn’t want the change in the air to alert anyone further inside. He moved forward, fast, in case it already had.

As soon as he stepped onto the tiled floor of the hall, he felt it.

Like walking into a stone wall made of sulfur, the aftermath of a lightning strike, bone dust, the lingering scent of rot. A death well. A powerful, quiescent death well.

Dahin was right, Kai thought, and shivered as cold settled over him like a shroud of damp silk. It’s underground, it’s always been underground. The survivors of the Hierarchs’ retreat had covered its opening to the surface to hide it.

He forced himself to keep moving. The mortals might already be dead but he had to see who was here, to see if there was a Hierarch and expositor still capable of using the Well.

Dirt and dust on the floor showed signs of different foot marks, though it was hard to tell in the flickering light. Carved niches probably meant for more elaborate lamps held little clay pots burning something that smelled like dried dung, but with a tang of rot to it. It made the air hard to breathe, though if the inhabitants had died from a stupid lack of ventilation, it didn’t explain who had taken the lost scholars.

The likeness to the Summer Halls made Kai’s hackles rise.

The height and width of the corridor, the turn to the right at a certain distance from the entrance, had a cold familiarity. He came to a large room where a carved stone balustrade separated a square space of dirt floor, most of it in darkness, the earth churned up with rubble and wood debris. Sometime in the distant past it had been a garden court, like those in the Summer Halls, he was sure of it. The resemblance made prickles of ice run up his arms. He looked up but the little pots didn’t give off enough light to see the ceiling. There could be a sun and air shaft up there, now filled in when the rest of the structure had been covered over with dirt. Kai shook off the oppressive sense of the past repeating itself and kept moving.

He had never known the Summer Halls as well as Ziede or Bashasa, but he remembered going through the courts to the hall where the Hierarchs had kept their lavish quarters. He found the walkway along the back wall of the destroyed garden and took it to the next corridor, and found another court, and a set of empty, mold-covered interlinked rooms. This was the same layout as the Hierarchs’ quarters, just on a smaller scale.

The acrid smoke took on a heavier odor of decay, so Kai was half prepared for what he saw around the next turn.

Something lay against the wall, a spot of color against the dark stone. Kai went still, but it was a huddled human shape. It wore felted boots and a long padded wool coat in blue and red, like the drovers and Veile, back at the camp. He crouched beside the figure. A stole of office was wrapped around the neck as a scarf; he pulled it aside and touched the cold skin briefly, just to make certain, but the life there had long fled.

Kai pulled the body over a little so he could see the face. It was pale-skinned, with blond hair peeking out from under a knitted cap, but the forehead and cheeks bore Belithan tattoos. Not the ones for male or female, so this person must be—had been—the Belithan third or fourth gender. One side of their face was bashed in, the fine bones broken under the sunken, discolored skin, blood dried on the stone tile beneath. From the decay, they had been dead as long as three days, so maybe this person was from the second work group who had come to look for the first. Someone had just bashed them into the wall, a blow hard enough to kill almost instantly. And then left them in the corridor, like discarded trash.

The body seemed unmarked by insects, and there were no signs that rodents or lizards had tried to get through the clothing. But since stepping inside here, Kai hadn’t seen any sign of the omnipresent gnats that clustered everywhere that was sheltered from the wind. Even the most desperate scavengers knew better than to enter this place.

Kai eased to his feet, hissing between his teeth. He had a bad feeling that he knew what else he was going to find in here. Something that didn’t need to eat, something strong enough to kill with one blow.

He followed the corridor.

Kai found three more bodies, all Belithan by their dress and tattoos. The first was a woman, her hands scraped and bloody and her fingers broken; she had fought her captor, but had no weapon to give her a real chance. He didn’t examine the other two except to check that they were dead.

Then ahead, down a corridor that should lead to another open court, he heard low, unintelligible voices. Kai slipped up to the next corner and took a cautious look.

The short corridor ahead led to an archway that opened into a huge shadowy hall, with a few fire pots making isolated pools of light, just enough to see curved walls stretching up. This felt like the heart of the building. And that meant the entrance to the Well.

Moving silently, Kai went ahead to the archway for a better view. There was something in the chamber’s center, stone steps leading up to a raised platform, almost Kai’s height. It seemed to take up most of the middle of the circular space and he couldn’t see well enough to tell if there was anything on top of it. He could just make out some long shapes, much higher up, looming over it. A criss-cross of stone arches, maybe? That has to be it. The entrance would be in the center of the platform. And it had to be open, because Kai could feel the concentrated weight of it as a dank chill on his exposed skin.

He had felt the Well of the Hierarchs every time he had been nearby when they used the Voice. After that first time when the Saredi and borderlander forces had been destroyed, he had never forgotten it. But he had felt it too when he had taken Talamines’ body, the body of an expositor, a living weapon, enslaved to the Well through a Hierarch. That connection had still been there, and all he had had to do was accept it, to wield limitless power and lose every part of himself.

Water dripped somewhere, echoing in the almost-silence. It felt like a much larger chamber than his eyes were telling him …

Movement in the shadows snatched his attention back, and he heard the voices again. Even with the echoes, he could tell it was someone speaking Belithan. Kai shivered. He had been young and innocent when he had taken Talamines, but not stupid, fortunately. But he was still glad this body didn’t have any trace of that old connection to the Well.

Kai slipped around the side of the arch and along the wall until he caught a scent of excrement and unwashed bodies. The shapes in the darkness resolved into a series of pens, or cages, each barely tall enough to stand up in. Inside were figures, some upright, some huddled on the floor. He could hear slight movements, a groan, whispers.

Kai edged up to the nearest cage and sank silently to a crouch. The bars were set close together. Running a hand along one, they felt smooth, like a polished hardwood. The nearest figure stirred, probably subconsciously sensing a living body close by. In formal Belithan, Kai whispered, “Don’t shout.”

It jerked in surprise, drew in a hiss of breath, then whispered, “Who—How—”

“I came with Scholar Sura, sent by the Light of the Hundred Coronels of Enalin and Chancellor Domtellan.” Kai kept his voice as low as possible. The rest of the shapes in the cage had gone dead silent, except for one choked sob of relief. Frantic whispering sounded from the next cage over. “My companions waiting outside are sent by the Rising World Council in Benais-arik.”

“Praise Mercy, Praise Reflection, Praise—” the figure muttered. “Take care, these creatures, they don’t feel pain, they can’t be fought—”

“Anything can be fought,” Kai said absently. He pulled on a bar, testing it. “What is this made of?”

Someone else scooted closer and whispered, “It’s like a reed, like bamboo, but doesn’t need water. They’re hard as rock once they’re cut, we use them in camp. I’m Kaeter and that’s Tael, by the way.”

Kai found a join and wrapped his hand around it. There was life still in the wood, just a little. He drew it out and felt the hard substance shrivel under his hand. “Are you all here? I found four dead in the corridors.”

“Yes, all of us that survived,” Tael said, grief and despair thickening their voice. “They put Ilhanrun in a separate cage, further along the wall.”

Kaeter added, “We think he’s unconscious, we call to him but he hasn’t answered since—I don’t know, at least a day?”

“Longer than that,” Tael said.

Kai huffed under his breath. He had been hoping Highsun would be useful, but apparently not. He found the next join and drained it. “When I let you out, go back against the wall by the archway and wait for me.” He didn’t want to send them through those corridors without protection. Even if they remembered the way out, if they ran into what guarded this place, they wouldn’t have a chance.

“But how—”

“We’ve tried and tried to break it—”

Kai yanked the weakened section of bars out.

“Oh,” Kaeter breathed.

The mortals inside scrambled to move, whispering and bumping into each other in the dark. Kai went to the next cage. Those inside seemed weaker, and as he was draining the wooden joins, he asked, “Have you had any food or water?”

“Only what we brought with us,” a voice rasped.

With bitter amusement, someone added, “We rationed it, but we weren’t expecting to be gone this long.”

“You just have to get outside,” Kai told them. He pulled the pack Ramad had given him off his shoulder and passed it through the bars. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

“Who are you?” the first one asked.

“I was sent here by the Light of the Hundred Coronels and Chancellor Domtellan,” he repeated. He got the section of bars off. For all their questions, they didn’t hesitate; the first prisoner climbed out and reached back to help the next.

“But what’s your name?” someone persisted.

“Call me Kai.” He stepped away to look for Highsun. The next cage was further down the curve of the wall, the light from a fire pot falling on a slumped figure inside.

Then the sound of footsteps—slow, deliberate—came from around the curve of the Well’s platform.

Kai flung himself to the floor and started sketching out the fire design in the grime and dust. It was a trickier version of the one that had set the weed mat in the flooded Summer Halls alight, but it would need less pain to power it. As he fed stored pain into it, the lines took on the faintly luminescent, floating quality only an expositor could see. He didn’t like to think about how many lives he could have saved during the war if he had had the skill to make something like this back then.

From behind him, Kaeter’s voice whispered, “What are you doing?”

“Setting a fire.” Kai finished the design and pushed to his feet. The steps were closer. The slower mortals, more weakened by deprivation, were out of the cage and moving or being helped toward the archway. Kai would put the lives of fourteen mortals above one Immortal Blessed who he had never met, but they seemed attached to Highsun and he didn’t think he could keep their cooperation if he told them to leave without him. The confusion and darkness were keeping the scholars under control for now but it was a tenuous situation. When they heard the approaching footsteps, they might panic. “Lead the others down the corridor, I’ll catch up.”

Giving Kaeter a job did the trick and they darted back to get the others moving. Kai ran to Highsun’s cage and started to drain the joins between the bars. He kept his gaze on the bowl light further down the wall, and saw the instant a large figure stepped into that flicker of firelight.

Kai had known there must be expositors’ constructs here, but he had never seen one so big or so old. At least three people had gone into its making, as well as something with moldy rank brown fur. Its patchwork skin was a gnarled gray, and it had three legs, five arms, and its eyes were in its chest where the breastbone should be. Its uneven gate accelerated as it spotted Kai and the empty cages.

Kai ripped the weakened bars out and reached for the slumped figure. He touched the limp body’s head and felt the life still there. He grabbed the shoulders of Highsun’s coat and hauled him out of the cage. Highsun was almost as tall as Tahren but wider. If Kai had to carry someone out of here, he would rather it be anyone other than an Immortal Blessed, but there was no help for it. Cursing, Kai heaved the heavy body up, ducked down, and let it fall over his shoulder.

Straightening up was awkward and running was worse, but he had to get out of the chamber before the construct reached the spot where the design was drawn into the floor.

Near the archway, he stumbled on a rough paving stone and almost fell. The grubby crowd of mortals gathered under the bad light of a fire pot niche, their clothes torn and dirty, some streaked with dried blood. All stared doubtfully at Kai. Tael said, “Here, help him!” and two grabbed for Highsun, taking his weight as Kai dumped him unceremoniously.

Kai’s back protested with a sharp spike of pain and he braced himself on the wall, keeping his chin down so the shadow would hide his eyes. Despite the urge to feed the pain into the incipient intention, he gritted his teeth and tucked it away. He was sure to need it on the way out. Unfortunately, storing it or fueling an intention with it didn’t mean you stopped feeling it.

“Run, now,” Kai told them, remembering at the last instant to speak Belithan. He was certain most would understand Old Imperial, but Belithan would be more reassuring. “I’ll catch up and show you the way.” He pushed off the wall and moved to the side of the arch, leaning on the carved stone. The construct picked up speed, barreling this way. Another came into view behind it, smaller but no less hideous. Shadows moved in the dark behind them.

Kaetar called softly, “Come on!” The two carrying Highsun moved, the others following, helping each other.

Tael, who was a tall woman, the fire light catching her harsh features and the marks of her tattoos, stepped up beside Kai. She said, “There’s ten of those creatures, at least.”

“The fire will slow them down,” Kai assured her, watching the construct get closer and closer. It had to get near the intention, so the design would know what to attach itself to. Otherwise all the mortals would be dead, Kai would lose his body, and someone else, as Ramad had said, would be making the decisions.

“You can’t—” Tael sounded more honestly puzzled than argumentative. After being stuck in the dark for days, menaced by constructs, with little food or water, she might not believe this escape was actually happening. “You can’t set a stone structure like this on fire?”

“It’s not the stone I’m going to burn,” Kai said. Not long now.

The construct’s foot landed barely a pace away from the design, and Kai released the intention. There was that moment of pent energy, like the heartbeat between a too-close lightning strike and the crack of thunder. Then a terrible red wave of flame shot up the construct’s legs, flowed over its gray skin. It staggered sideways, all its arms waving.

“Oh, you’re a Witch,” Tael said blankly.

Past the first, another figure burst into flame with a whoosh, like a pile of the driest rushes catching light. Then further back another, and another. Kai counted six whooshes by the sound and burst of light; some of the constructs were still on the far side of the Well’s platform. There was no screaming. Expositors never gave their creations mouths. Probably afraid of what they might say, Kai thought.

He took Tael’s arm and pulled her away from the door. “You said there were ten?”

She followed him, looking back toward the archway. “I counted ten, I think.”

She didn’t sound certain at all. Kai knew that being terrorized and held captive didn’t do much for anyone’s memory or accurate grasp of events. There could be anywhere from none to twenty constructs still lurking somewhere. “The others will burn too, but it’ll take a while for the fire to find them.” It would spread through the corridors, searching for creatures like the first one it had touched. As long as Highsun and the mortals were not secretly expositors’ constructs, it would ignore them.

Towing Tael behind him, Kai caught up to the others in the first court. He let her go and hurried to the front of the group, hoping no one would look too hard at his face. Then he made the mistake of glancing back to make sure Tael was keeping up.

Someone gasped and stopped abruptly, another bumped into them. Kaeter looked at Kai and drew back hastily. “You’re a demon!”

Kai set his jaw and said, “I’m a demon sent by the Tescai-lin. If you want to get out of here, keep moving.” He turned and kept walking.

He didn’t make the mistake of looking back again but he could hear that they were following, though some needed to be urged along by others. Tael was telling them that they were mistaken, Kai was a Witch.

“He has the hollow eyes!” someone objected.

“There are no demons anymore, not since the war.”

Sounding uncertain, Kaeter said, “He said he was here with someone from the Rising World council—”

The rasping voice from the second cage said, “He said his name was Kai.”

“Kaiisteron?” someone else said tentatively.

Kai stopped and turned to face them. He knew Belith remembered him as the implacable creature who had led the Witches across the straits, the battering ram for the Rising World forces to drive the Hierarchs out of their cities, leaving ruin in their wake. Just because the Belithan leaders had agreed to it didn’t mean they had understood what it would look like afterward. He said, “Yes. If it distresses you, you can stay here, and I’ll send a mortal vanguarder in after you.” Ramad would do it, too, and probably die with the rest of them. But Kai had no intention of leaving them behind. He wasn’t going to walk out there empty-handed in front of Arnsterath and look like a fool. He would get them out of here if he had to frighten them half to death to do it.

Kaeter hesitated, clearly torn. Someone said, “If Ilhanrun was awake—”

“No, no,” Tael said from the middle of the group, decisive and certain. She took hold of the two younger scholars on either side of her and pulled them forward, plowing through the others. “We’re going, no one is staying. Go, go all of you, now.”

Most started forward, probably glad for a decisive voice that they trusted, so Kai led the way into the next corridor. A few still argued, though it didn’t sound as if Tael was taking any criticism of her decision. As long as they could argue and walk at the same time.

The scholars didn’t go quiet until they reached the first body. One broke into sobs and tried to drop down beside it, but others caught them and pulled them onward. The two carrying Highsun were toward the middle of the group, and Tael was in the back, helping one of the weaker ones to keep moving. “Make sure no one falls behind,” Kai said.

Kaeter added, “Isai, help Tael with Aran.” They lowered their voice and said to Kai, “Ilhanrun is waking.”

It was hard to tell in the flickering shadows, but Highsun, still supported by the two scholars, lifted his head a little. Someone patted his cheek with a corner of their stole, trying to rouse him. Kai wasn’t impressed. “Not fast enough, they’ll still have to carry his”—he thought but didn’t say useless carcass—“him out of here.”

Kaeter’s expression was conflicted, as if that hadn’t been their point. Oh, Kai thought, that was a little test to see if I’m afraid of the righteous Immortal Blessed. He managed to keep his sneer mostly internal.

Then Tael called out, “They’re behind us!”

Kai spun to see the far end of the corridor ablaze with fire. It wasn’t the stone walls; a construct engulfed in flame charged toward them. Other constructs, not yet caught by the fire intention, crowded behind it. He snapped, “Run,” and stepped back as the scholars plunged past.

The corridor was wide and open, nothing to block it with. The construct on fire staggered as a limb fell off, the connecting tissue burned away, but the others pushed past it.

As Tael and the last two scholars passed him, Kai took a calming breath, ignoring the stink of burning flesh and fear sweat. He had two prepared intentions left and a limited amount of pain to make them work, and they still had a good distance to get through with many spots ripe for ambush. Better to use the intention already in action.

He closed his eyes and reached for the completed design that was weaving itself through the breadth of the stone and dirt of this structure. He sank into it, drew those tendrils to this half-lit corridor, careful not to rush, not to tug the design out of shape and send the intention wildly exploding everywhere, setting everything on fire …

He felt the design shift into its new configuration and opened his eyes. Just as a construct lunged within arm’s reach and swung a heavy gray limb toward his head.

Kai ducked and flames rushed up over the construct’s patchwork of stolen flesh. He fell back and scrambled away until he could roll to his feet. His face felt hot and singed. He pounded out the smoldering bits of flesh that had landed on his coat. More constructs crowded into the hall, all on fire now, ramming into each other and the walls. The one that had already been alight fell to bits, charred black chunks dropping away. Kai ran.

He caught up with the mortals and got them past two more turns before more constructs appeared. Then it was a wild scramble to get through the next corridor and a dead garden court.

At the next turn a construct lunged out of a dark corner, too far ahead for Kai to block it. It grabbed a young scholar just as its legs burst into flames. Kai reached it and slammed a hand into its midsection, releasing an intention that would have turned a mortal’s guts to liquid.

The construct’s legs and lower torso collapsed but it didn’t let go of the scholar and Kai didn’t let go of it. It dragged them both to the floor and Kai struggled, too aware that if he didn’t get away from this thing the rest of the mortals would be caught. But he was unwilling to leave another crumpled body in this corridor.

Then hands and feet and shouting scholars were all around him, beating at the burning creature, grabbing their friend and trying to wrestle her out of its grip. Kai managed to pin down one mottled gray arm and stomp on its shoulder until it finally released its prey. He staggered to his feet. Helping to knock the burning fragments of flesh off everyone’s clothes, Tael gasped, “I was wrong, there’s a lot more than ten!”

Breathing hard, Kai told her, “We’re almost outside.” The struggle had given him enough pain for his last intention, the one he had let Arnsterath have a taste of.

When they turned into the last corridor, more constructs bore down on them, only a few alight. But there was nothing between the mortals and the door, and Kai shouted, “Go, get outside, run!”

They were holding on to each other to stay together, to keep the injured and weak moving. The fire intention’s design was set to end at the structure that contained it, and if the constructs followed the mortals out, it wouldn’t be able to reach them. During the war, civilians would have known to scatter in different directions, hoping at least some would survive. This group was sure to stay together, and the brush around the tor wasn’t easy to run through; Kai would have to stop the constructs.

Kaeter reached the slab door first and wedged it open for the others as they stumbled through. Constructs charged the corridor, not burning fast enough. Kai faced the onslaught, backing up almost to the outer door’s foyer as the mortals carried or pushed or dragged each other to safety. He spread his hands and waited as the lead construct, with half a torso and limbs stuck into it almost at random, plunged toward him.

Its grasping hands brushed him and Kai let the intention go. Warmth shot through his body, a burning sting that should shatter the thing’s bones, delay it at least enough to let the fire take it.

But then Kai felt the rise of potential in the air, the building power of something horrifying and familiar.

He hadn’t forgotten the Well; the suspended fog of its malign presence hung all through the corridors, but he had been too busy to dwell on it.

But someone was here who could use that power, and the outer door was open now to let it free on the world.

Kai shouted something, a garbled warning. He turned and flung himself at Kaeter and the last two mortals. They tumbled out of the door together and rolled into the dirt and brush. Kai struggled upright, shouting, “Run, it’s coming!” He reached deep inside himself for the power to impose his will. He had only ever used it on enemies, like the Nient-arik conspirators who had been with Aclines. He had no idea if this would work but it was their only chance. He put all his strength into it and yelled, “Scatter!”

The scholars stumbling away from the door bolted in different directions through the brush. Kai sensed something behind him and started to turn. A heavy blow struck him across the back and knocked him forward. He fell into the flattened brush, tried to push himself up, and something in his shoulder snapped. Kai gasped at pain like hot nails driven into his skin. People screamed, shouted; he was certain he heard Dahin and Ramad. Then something grabbed his foot and dragged him back. Toward the doorway. Toward the Voice of the Well.

Kai twisted around to see a construct that was mostly torso and rotting limbs looming over him. He curled up and grabbed the pale human hand locked around his ankle and wrenched at it with all his strength.

It let go and stumbled. Kai shoved to his feet and ran to the side, hoping to get far enough out of the path—

The world went black, then gray.

Kai swam up through a haze of pain to realize he lay on his back on broken brush, staring up at a cloudy gray sky. He tasted blood in his throat. His head rang and everything hurt, like his body was made of shattered glass. He knew, distantly, that the glass was actually his bones. Then a shadow leaned over him and the world dropped again into darkness.

The Past: the Dawn

The Enalin were long thought of as a peace-loving people with no history of martial endeavors against other territories. Both are true to a certain extent. What they do have is a long history of not being harried or dominated by The Blessed Lands, and a large factor in assuring that was making combat and tactics a part of the education of all their people, along with literature and sums and so on. They also possessed their own powers, passed down through their various priesthoods, which they keep to themselves even now.

—Journal of Hiranan Desal, late Prince-heir of Seidel-arik

It took over a day to get the dustwitches organized and moving. Nightjar was actually helpful, which was a continual surprise to Kai, who had thought the chances of her turning on him violently were still pretty good.

But maybe she needed him as much as he needed the dustwitches, at least for the moment.

All those who hadn’t taken the Doyen’s death as a sign to leave didn’t seem much interested in Nightjar as a leader. Possibly because the community was already fraying apart without the Doyen’s influence and Nightjar had nothing better to offer them. The lack of trust was obvious from the sidelong looks and grim expressions. Nightjar clearly hadn’t bothered to take their opinion before she had killed their leader.

After sending Ziede back and forth with messages, Bashasa had incorporated the dustwitches into his plans. He agreed with Kai that they needed to build more trust between the two groups before they let the dustwitches travel with the Arike forces. At least that was how Bashasa put it. Kai knew they needed an opportunity to winnow out the troublemakers, one way or another, before letting them near the cadres and the others under Arike protection.

The plan was that Kai would lead the dustwitches to Dashar and meet with the vanguarder waiting there who had been watching the fort. He would hold the dustwitches in reserve until the Arike army started the attack. Then Kai and the dustwitches would handle the demons and any expositors as the army engaged the legionaries.

Kai had spoken to the dustwitches and offered them revenge against the legionaries and Hierarchs, and a guarantee of food and protection with the Arike army. He gave them the same choices as Bashasa had given Cimeri and Raihar: stay with the army and fight, leave if they wanted, or go to one of the hiding places for non-combatants. Kai had done it because he knew Bashasa would offer these choices as soon as he spoke to the group himself. But that wouldn’t happen until after they took the fort, and since Bashasa wasn’t here now, Kai made the offer of food and protection contingent on coming to the fort to fight the demons.

“Like we fought you?” one asked skeptically. She was older than Nightjar, and hadn’t put her veil back on like some of the others.

Kai said, “No one taught you how to fight. I will.”

There was a stir at that, maybe interested, maybe just doubtful. But Nightjar said, “Whatever anyone chooses, we need to pack our goods and put our supplies in order.” She gestured to one of the downed tents. “We can’t live like this anymore.”

The appeal to practicality worked. The dustwitches began to move, slowly at first and then purposefully, taking down the camp and taking care of their riding animals and generally getting ready to leave. Kai tried not to show what a relief this was.

Tahren and Kai’s cadre had followed Ziede back with supplies for the dustwitches to sweeten the offer, but now they had to return to the army encampment to take up their places in the outguard. “Be careful, and don’t trust any of these lying shits,” Ziede told him quietly as she and Tahren prepared to leave.

“You be careful,” Kai retorted. “You’re not invincible, and remember they have archers.”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to fight,” Ziede said, and pulled him into a tight hug.

Kai hugged back, burying his face in her shoulder, trying to memorize the sweet scent of her hair. She was the closest thing to home he had left.

When Ziede stepped away, Tahren gripped his shoulder. “If any turn on you, I’ll come back and kill them all.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Kai said, meaning to make it a joke and add just kill a few as an example to the others.

But Tahren interrupted, “I do. You took Dahin from the grasp of a Hierarch and sent him back to me. If you agree, I will send him to you when we draw closer to the coast, to be under your protection until we take the fort.”

Kai lifted his brows. “Is that a good idea?”

Tahren didn’t quite wince. “He isn’t listening to me. I’m afraid he won’t stay back with the supply train as I’ve told him to, but will come forward with the cadres that follow the outguard.”

It wasn’t as if Dahin hadn’t done something like that before, and been captured in the Summer Halls when he should have been safe with Bashasa’s dependents.

“No place is safe, but I can’t watch over him while in battle, and no one who can make him obey will be free to do so.” Tahren added, damningly, “He listens to you.”

“He mostly listens to me,” Kai corrected. “But he can come to me once we get to the coast.” He did not add aloud, and I’ve had a chance to get rid of the dustwitches I don’t trust.

“Thank you.” Tahren watched him, her gaze direct. “If I did not make this clear before, I consider you my brother.”

“Oh.” Kai didn’t know how to take that and was so thrown that he blurted out the truth, “I don’t want to be a Blessed.”

“Many of my family feel the same.” Tahren pulled him into a hug.

Sending his cadre away was much harder. None of them wanted to go. They stood in a reluctant and somewhat sullen group, holding their restive horses, as Salatel tried to convince Kai it was a bad idea.

“No, again,” Kai told her, trying to make it clear that no persuasion would change his mind. “I need time to deal with the dustwitches. I don’t want any of you held hostage against me.”

“We fight well together,” Salatel protested. Unlike the other times they had disagreed on something, she sounded actually upset. “We are not yours to protect, we are yours to guard your back and fight your battles. That is how it is with the Arike.”

Kai said, “No, you are mine to protect. That’s how it is with Witches.” He added pointedly, “And you’re supposed to do what I say, so I’m telling you to go back and ride with Bashasa’s cadre. He’s yours to protect, too. I’ll send for you once we reach the fort.”

Salatel grimaced and looked off toward the dustwitch camp, and finally said in resignation, “Yes, Fourth Prince.”

While Kai waited to see that they got onto their horses and actually left, Cerala made an attempt at a last-moment rally, saying, “You ask us questions all the time. What if you need to know something? Maybe just one or two of us should—”

“Get on your horse and go,” Kai told her.

The dustwitches were both harder and easier to manage, once the camp was broken down and they were almost ready to leave. Nightjar grew frustrated as some responded readily to instructions, and others just became angry and obstructive. It made Kai wonder if Nightjar had ever lived in a true community of Witches before. Witches didn’t live in hierarchies, and they didn’t like having been forced into one. Particularly as many were probably only now realizing that they had been manipulated to do things against their will. To distract Nightjar from another argument with them, Kai asked her, “Where did the Doyen come from?”

“I don’t know.” Her brow creased, as if this was something she had just realized. “She said once that her mothers were Saredi. It was why she was so strong.”

That was intriguing, if it was anywhere close to the truth. “Which clan?”

Nightjar shrugged. “She also said she had been held prisoner by Hierarchs and killed them to escape.”

Kai said, “That part’s a lie.” There were only so many Hierarchs and the alliance had been sending a lot of vanguarders back and forth to make sure they knew where they all were, as far as it was possible. “Did she say she learned how to use that … persuasive voice from them?”

Nightjar frowned at the dustwitches who were almost dragging their feet like children as they loaded their packs on the riding beasts. She seemed reluctant, and Kai thought she didn’t want to say I don’t know again. Finally she admitted, “She said it came from having a strong will.”

Maybe a strong will had something to do with it. But Kai bet at least one of the Doyen’s Saredi mothers had been a demon. It would explain a lot, if that was where the Doyen’s strength had come from. It might mean Kai could learn to use that persuasive voice too. It wasn’t something demons would be taught, since imposing your will on Witches or mortals or other demons was against Grandmother’s treaty. But Kai could see how useful it would be for interrogating expositors and Hierarchs’ servants.

The dustwitches weren’t accustomed to being treated well either.

The Arike had the same practice as the Saredi, of issuing supplies of dried meat and fruit, flatbread, and other easily portable food, so everyone could eat quickly at rest stops. He found a dustwitch called Sunrose packing the food supplies onto Nightjar’s spare riding animal. He told her, “No, divide this up. Make sure everyone has theirs with them before we go.”

“The Doyen kept the food separate,” Sunrose said, startled. Nightjar stood nearby, eyeing them but not objecting.

“She’s dead now, so she doesn’t get a say,” Kai told her, making sure Nightjar and the others around heard him. “And no one here is a child, you can all manage your own portions.”

At dusk, when they were almost ready to move out, the lookout signaled that someone was approaching. Kai walked down the path to see it was two figures on Arike horses. He huffed in annoyance. Amabel was supposed to come back with Kai’s horse and ride with them for the first day or so. Their affinity for fast travel meant they could carry messages back and forth between Kai’s group and the army as it advanced. The light was too dim and they were still too far away to recognize, but if the second person was one of his cadre returning … It was exactly the sort of thing Cerala might do …

Nightjar joined him, and stiffened abruptly. Then she threw Kai a look of forced amusement. “So you thought you needed help? Or perhaps you were lonely?”

Kai made a noncommittal noise. His ability to see night almost as clear as day had been left behind with Enna so he had no idea who was coming, which made Nightjar’s jabs stingless. From the relative heights, the second person wasn’t Ziede or Tahren. The figures approached cautiously, and he moved down the path and waved. As they urged their horses into a trot, he realized that it was Cimeri with Amabel.

As they drew near, Amabel said, “Prince-heir Bashasa sent Cimeri, Fourth Prince.” They smiled and added, “Salatel said to tell you immediately before you got angry.”

“Good,” Kai said as Amabel dismounted. At least one Witch here would be on his side. He didn’t want to admit that it made something in his chest less tight, to have that support.

As Cimeri swung off her horse, Nightjar said, “So you return to us after all.”

Cimeri regarded her with a faintly challenging smile, and said, “Not you.” Nightjar’s expression was enigmatic and Kai didn’t have to glance around to know most of the dustwitches, no matter what they were occupied with, were watching. This was why Witches didn’t like hierarchies, even the way the Saredi did it, with all the members having a say as to who led them and when. Among mortals, shifting power balances could mean turmoil and violence. Among Witches, with all the varied ways they could draw power from the world, it would be far worse. Kai signed to Cimeri, You volunteered?

Cimeri signed an assent. She said aloud, “Raihar stays behind. With children.”

Still trying to prod her, Nightjar said, “You fear for your precious children among the Arike mortals?”

Cimeri smiled at her again and flicked a series of signs in Witchspeak that Kai hadn’t seen before. Something something stop your mouth.

Nightjar took it with an ironic tilt of her head. Kai said, “No fighting,” and flicked the Witchspeak sign for yet.

With a nod, Cimeri said, “Fourth Prince,” and signed, Ziede says watch your back.

Watch my friend, too, Kai signed, with a head tilt toward Amabel. They are a sibling to me.

As one to me, Cimeri signed.

Nightjar, still pretending she found all this amusing, said to Kai, “When do I meet this great mortal leader of yours? Or are you afraid I’ll supplant you?”

Cimeri huffed a laugh and then clapped a hand over her mouth. Amabel pretended to be busy settling the horses. Kai just said, “You’ll meet him when we take the fort. But I don’t think he’ll like you very much.”

They rode through most of the night, with Amabel scouting ahead. At dawn, they stopped in the shade of a cluster of trees along a gully to eat and rest.

Most had put off their veils, with only other Witches and Kai around them. The group as a whole still radiated tension. Kai felt it was probably time to talk to them, and after they finished tending the animals and eating, he reluctantly called them together.

Their expressions were mostly curious and a little wary, though a few still seemed confused or mulish. Kai said, “How many of you have killed expositors?”

There was a little stir, but no one responded. Cimeri, seated on the dry grass near where Kai stood, looked over the group with a dubious expression.

Kai fought the urge to sigh. “Or demons?”

“Some of us tried,” someone muttered.

“You’ll need to try better next time,” Kai said. Then began to tell them what he had learned about killing expositors. He would save the lesson on what cantrips to use on demons for later.

The more he talked, the more interested they all looked, until one called Knifecrest said, “How are you any different from an expositor?”

Kai felt his jaw set. They obviously knew his sore point now. He hadn’t wanted this body. He had reached for Talamines as a last gesture of defiance at the Hierarchs, thinking he and Ziede and Bashasa and Tahren and all the others were about to die. That they hadn’t was mostly luck, but it had left him like this.

He made his expression bored and said, “We’ve gone over this before. If you need telling again, ask someone else.” That was probably enough lesson for now, anyway. “Get some rest. We’ll be leaving by afternoon.”

As he turned away, Kai heard a step behind him. Cimeri cried out, “Hey!” as Kai felt the grit of dust on his skin. He was already exhausted with the whole idea of dustwitches, and they had a long way to go. He turned to find Knifecrest standing behind him with a challenging glare. He tapped her cheek lightly, taking just enough life to make his point. She stumbled back. Another dustwitch caught and steadied her.

Cimeri was on her feet, watching incredulously. “Stupid,” she said succinctly.

Kai let a little of his impatience show. “We have an alliance. You’re not prisoners. If any of you want to leave, go now, I won’t stop you. Honestly, I can’t wait to see the back of you.” No one left. He noticed a few, but only a few, looked at Nightjar to gauge her reaction. Her expression was hard to read, but there was something there Kai recognized. She looked like Lahshar did, when she was calculating her moment to interrupt Bashasa. She started to speak but Kai talked over her, saying, “Anyone else want to test me?”

No one apparently did, and Kai went to find a place to rest.

Later in the day, when most of the others were asleep, Knifecrest took her riding animal and left with two companions. Kai was awake to watch them go, sitting back against a tree. Cimeri curled up asleep on a bedroll beside him, their horses tethered nearby.

Another dustwitch came over to Kai, her footsteps crunching in the gravelly dirt, loud in the quiet. The day had grown warmer and even the flies seemed to be asleep. She hesitated as the two Arike horses growled at her, and Kai motioned her to come closer. She sat on her heels and, keeping her voice low, said, “We talked to Knifecrest and told her to leave.”

That was a little unexpected. Kai said, “You didn’t trust her?”

The corner of her mouth twitched in what might possibly be a smile. “We just didn’t like her.”

She started to get up, and Kai asked, “What’s your name?”

“Tangeld.” She shrugged, rueful. “I gave up my dust name.” Then she said, “The youngers ask if they can bathe in the stream before we leave.”

Kai stared at her. Next they would be asking him if they could piss and shit. He said, “They can bathe, they can do whatever they want as long as they’re ready to leave when it’s time and they don’t fall behind.”

She lifted her brows, thoughtful. “The Doyen made us get permission.”

“To bathe? No wonder you all stink.”

“You’re not fragrant yourself, Fourth Prince.” She hesitated again. “You shouldn’t trust us yet.”

“Oh, I’ll never trust you,” Kai assured her.

“Never’s a long time,” she said, and pushed to her feet and walked away.

Two days later, in the late evening as they rode by moonlight, Amabel returned from taking a message to Bashasa, and brought Hawkmoth with them.

They were riding along a low hill above a creekbed, and Kai decided it was time to rest the animals anyway. The dustwitches greeted Hawkmoth more enthusiastically than Kai had expected, and seemed astonished that she was still alive.

While Kai greeted Amabel and read Bashasa’s message, Hawkmoth stood patiently. Finished, Kai closed his hand around the rough paper and leached the life out of its fibers until it crumbed to unreadable yellow fragments. They never left anything with instructions on it intact, so it couldn’t be lost and stray into legionary hands. He said, “The Prince-heir said you wanted to come.”

“I want to fight with you and my sisters against the Hierarchs,” Hawkmoth said, earnest and aggressive at the same time. “If you will allow it. And I apologize for my previous behavior.”

Kai managed to conceal some unflattering surprise. He said, “What brought this on?”

Hawkmoth shifted awkwardly and looked very young. She threw a look at Amabel, as if asking for their reassurance. They nodded kindly and she said, “Being with Mother Hiraga and Ibel. Sister Ziede. I liked it. And I want to show you I’m worthy of their company.”

Now it was Kai’s turn to feel awkward. He said, “Well, go and join the others.”

Hawkmoth nodded seriously. “Thank you, Fourth Prince. I have apologized to Raihar and her family, I’ll go and apologize to Cimeri now.”

As she left, Amabel lowered their voice and said, “Sister Ziede said all the child needed was to get that ‘monstrous creature’s claws’ out of her head.”

“Huh,” Kai commented. It almost made him feel optimistic. Almost.

The next morning, they rested in the caves and crannies of an area of water-sculpted rocks, while the animals grazed nearby. That was when Nightjar tried to kill him.

It wasn’t wholly unexpected. Hawkmoth had been talking to the others about her experience with the Arike forces, especially what Ziede and Mother Hiraga, Baram and Ibel and Kreat and Isa and all the other Witches had told her. She knew more about the Doyen and the hold the woman had had on her mind than anyone else, and the others seemed eager to hear it. A couple of dustwitches had made a small fire, long enough to warm up some bean dhal sent over with Amabel on their last message run. Kai came over with the others to get a portion. Sunrose, who was ladling it out into bowls, was accidentally elbowed. Two dustwitches leaned forward to stop any spilling, and in the confusion someone passed Kai a bowl.

Kai waited until the others were settled with their portions, seated comfortably on the dusty stone slabs, then said, “Nightjar.” He held out the bowl. “Taste this.”

Everyone went still. Cimeri set her bowl down. Others who had already taken a bite spat it out into their hands.

Nightjar held Kai’s gaze. But the reaction of the other dustwitches, their willingness to immediately assume the food was poisoned, told the tale more plainly than anything Kai could have said. She set her own bowl down, and she and Kai stood in unison. “You saw me,” she said.

He had seen her pass the bowl under the lapel of her coat, and then make sure it was handed to him. He said, “I’ve been waiting for it. I know you lied about the mortal. He was never a hostage against you.”

Her gaze flicked around at the rest of the dustwitches. Cimeri said uncertainly, “Arkat?” Her hands moved in Witchspeak, He never woke.

“He’s been with us as long as I remember,” Hawkmoth said, watching Nightjar with a narrow gaze.

“He was with us when they found me,” an older dustwitch called Stormbird said. “The other mortals from that time died.”

“You never asked about him, never wanted to see him,” Kai pointed out. It didn’t say much for her that she had thought them too stupid to notice. It had been obvious to Kai and Ziede from the beginning.

“I’ve never been sentimental,” Nightjar said easily, as if being caught truly didn’t concern her. “I’ll fight you for the leadership.”

Kai wished she had done this earlier, before they left the dustwitch camp, and saved all the trouble of watching her so closely on this long trip. “Or you can just leave, before I kill you,” he said.

“Leave,” Tangeld said, her voice loud against the overhanging rock. “Give up your name and leave.”

“Leave,” Hawkmoth said, angry.

“Leave,” someone else echoed. Then Sunrose and Stormbird and Shearwater, then Owlet and Sparrowhawk took it up. Then the whole group was chanting, “Leave. Leave.”

Nightjar bore it for long enough that Kai thought he was going to have to kill her. Then her mouth twisted into a vicious snarl and she said, “I curse you all.”

Kai lifted a hand, and said in Saredi, echoing it in Witchspeak, “No curse of yours will touch my kin.”

She spit at the ground and turned away. In silence they watched her grab her bag from the ground and walk to her riding animal. Kai noted she didn’t try to take her spare—useless to her now since they had distributed the transport of the supplies among the whole group. As she saddled the animal and rode away, Tangeld said, “Her name is Albre.” The others looked at her in confusion, and she elaborated, “I heard the Doyen call her by it at night.”

“That’s…” Hawkmoth began, then frowned, as if reconsidering her own words. “Against the rules,” she finished finally.

Tangeld gave her a gentle push to the head. “The rules were for us, not the Doyen.”

The group was silent for a time, contemplating this, as Albre rode out of sight. Kai said, “We’d better leave now.” He thought she was too smart to betray them; approaching a legion would mean being killed on sight. And she would have to find one first. Bashasa had chosen their route very carefully. But there was no point in taking the risk.

“Might as well,” Sunrose said, and poked the pot sourly. “She’s ruined dinner.”

Cimeri snorted a laugh, Hawkmoth echoed her, and it was truly surprising to Kai how many of the others laughed too.

Once they wove their way down out of the hills, they were riding through plains broken only by the occasional gully or copse of trees. There were fewer places to rest under cover during the day. But at least the dustwitches didn’t complain; they were clearly used to hard travel. Kai continued their lessons, and reluctantly brought up how to kill demons. It was a little easier now than it had been before. He actually would prefer most if not all of them to survive now.

When they reached the edge of the territory of Descar-arik, Amabel returned, and they brought Dahin and Kai’s cadre, who seemed glad to see him and also still miffed that they hadn’t been along from the beginning.

“Still alive,” Kai told Salatel, who replied grimly, “So I see, Fourth Prince.”

“Was there doubt?” Dahin said, disgruntled. “No one tells me anything.”

There were roads near Descar-arik, once used for trade and to bring in crops from the now empty farms and deserted small towns. Now any other movement around them was sure to be a legionary patrol, and the closer they got to the fort, the worse it was. From Amabel’s reports, Kai knew the rest of the Arike army was somewhere behind and north of their position. Kai’s group would reach the meeting point first on schedule.

They had been crossing a marshy coastal plain since late afternoon, and reached the rendezvous point just as the sun was setting. Kai had been following the map carefully but was grateful for Amabel’s ability to parse out the most difficult terrain and hazards and circle back to help guide them through it. The steady breeze from the east didn’t dispel the sharp scents of saltgrass and mud, or the clouds of nightflies and other insects. The mortal legionaries must hate this place.

When the sound of sea waves rolling onto the land started to compete with the wind, Amabel appeared out of the high grass near Kai’s horse and whispered, “Kai, it’s just ahead.”

With relief, Kai slid down off his horse, boots squelching in the damp ground. It snorted and angrily nipped at a fly. “Is anyone there yet?”

“No, but the vanguarder posted here left a sign so I know it’s the right place.” Amabel assured him, “They should be waiting somewhere, watching to make sure it’s us.”

Tangeld came to take Kai’s horse as the others fell into their now accustomed routine for a brief rest. Kai followed Amabel, Salatel and Dahin falling in beside him.

The meeting place was a little distance across the marsh, secluded by high grass and the tumbled stone blocks of what had once been a sea wall or wharf, standing about as high as a tall mortal. Not far past it the sea rolled up the long sandy curve of the beach. “You can see the fort from here,” Amabel said, and started to climb what was left of the wall.

Grass and flowering ground cover had grown up between the stones. Kai climbed easily, shooing away a startled snake. The fort of Dashar was visible in the fast fading light, far enough down the narrow curve of beach that it looked ethereal. It appeared as tall as a miniature mountain in the distance, but Kai knew part of that was the stone mound it stood on. The bridge stretched across the dredged shoreline, more than a hundred paces, according to the Arike map. The waves washed against its stone pillars, the tide casting spray up onto the wooden walkway. The gate and tower that protected the shore end wasn’t visible from here, hidden behind the high curves of the dunes.

Kai had a better view of the front face of the fort itself. It looked larger than the Kagala, its shape more proportional, with a three- or four-story square tower in the center front, rising into two spires like horns.

Amabel handed Kai a distance-glass. “The inside isn’t well defended, from what I’ve heard. The Arike hadn’t used it as a fort for a long time. It was mostly houses for merchant and sailor families and places to store cargo from the ships. The vanguarders said there were rumors the Hierarchs built some palaces in it for servant-nobles, but they weren’t able to get inside to see for themselves.”

Kai had a copy of an old map of the fort, supplied by Bashasa, but if the interior had changed he wasn’t sure how helpful it would be. He focused the glass and glimpsed the gates, right before the short twilight passed into nightfall. They were tall and ironbound, but the walls to either side had the distinctive decoration of carved figures that the Arike liked to put on their large buildings. The faces of many had been bashed in, though that just made the wall easier to scale. Not that anyone should have to. Bashasa had firepowder to blow the gates open.

Kai handed back the distance-glass and they started to climb down. “The harbor is behind it?”

“Yes, a very large one,” Amabel said. “There’s no wall on that side, it’s open to the docks. Descar-arik is on the far side of the harbor.”

Back in the sheltered hollow, Amabel paused to light a tiny shaded lamp, giving them just enough light to see. The air was damp and warm, fragrant from the flowering grass, and chirping insects fled the light. Salatel kept watch just below the wall, and Dahin sat down on a fallen block. He looked preoccupied, rubbing his arms as if comforting himself. Kai sat next to him and nudged him with an elbow. “Are you all right?”

“Hmm? Oh, it’s fine.” Dahin put his hands on his knees and took a sharp breath. “We’re very close to the fort, aren’t we?”

“You can see it from the top of the wall,” Kai told him. Dahin had been quiet much of the day, as if thinking things over. Kai hoped it was a good sign but was fairly certain it wasn’t.

This was proved right when Dahin said, “Did Tahren send me to you to get rid of me?”

Kai didn’t laugh at the dramatic phrasing, though it was an effort. When he and Dahin had first met in the Summer Halls, they had probably seemed about the same age. According to Enna’s father, she had always looked younger than her actual years. He said, “This is a safer position and you’ll stay here when we go into battle. She hasn’t been hiding you from the Blessed and the Hierarchs just to get you killed now.”

“It was a trick, because she didn’t trust me to stay with the supply train.” Dahin’s voice was deeply offended. “Being sent to you made me feel like I’d have a chance of being useful. But this was just a way to keep me from annoying her.”

Kai could tell from Salatel’s body language she had just rolled her eyes. He agreed, but didn’t let his voice show it. “‘Annoying’ is an interesting way to describe seeing your sibling killed in front of you.”

“I want to help,” Dahin said, his voice low and intense. “It’s not fair that I should be here and not risk myself like everyone else. Especially because I’m a Blessed. She should either send me away with the other children or let me help!”

Kai hid a wince by looking toward the tumbled wall. Dahin was right, his position here was privileged though he did his best to mitigate that by working where he could in the supply train.

Then Salatel whispered, “Someone’s coming.” Amabel walked out to the break in the wall, then returned a moment later with another person. They said, “This is vanguarder Ilanu.”

She was an Arike woman, gray threaded through her dark curly hair, and her face was weary. Her brown and gray tunic and pants were stained and torn in spots, her coat threadbare. There were bruises on her hands, standing out against her brown skin.

Amabel brought her over to the light, gesturing for her to sit down. Salatel stayed in her position on the wall, warily alert for anyone else approaching.

Amabel named each of them in turn, and added, “Kaiisteron Fourth Prince captains this force.”

Ilanu seemed a little disconcerted. “The force is all Witches?”

“Plus Kai’s Arike cadre,” Dahin answered before anyone else could. “And I’m a Lesser Blessed.”

Kai said, “You have news?”

Ilanu put aside her astonishment and said, “Bad news. The Hierarch arrived yesterday.”

It was like a slap in the face. Kai forced himself not to react, not to curse. Amabel made a pained noise, Dahin drew in a sharp breath, and Salatel shifted uneasily. Kai swallowed down his first burst of panic and made his voice stay even as he asked, “Are you certain?”

Ilanu’s expression was too worn and exhausted to be anything but certain. “I saw a barge with two escort ships, about a legion’s worth of troops between them. The barge had two decks, dozens of rowers, gilt on the carving, red curtains hanging everywhere. I didn’t see it dock, or who came ashore, but a few days beforehand they brought in a work crew from the camps outside Descar-arik and made them build what looked like a bridge from the fort’s wharf. I couldn’t tell what it was for. Seeing the barge, I think it was a special dock, so the Hierarch didn’t have to walk on boards fouled by the likes of us.” She hesitated. “Or the likes of me, I mean.”

Hierarchs wouldn’t want to walk on boards fouled by demons or Witches either, but Kai was too distracted to correct that assumption. “But you didn’t see the Hierarch?”

“No.” She waved a weary hand. “But who else could it be?”

Amabel sat back, hope fading from their expression as the reality set in. Kai wasn’t ready for that reality yet. He asked, “The legionary troop bound for Nibet. Did they board yet?”

She shook her head. “No, but they loaded supplies.”

Kai hissed out a breath and rubbed his face. This was bad. They expected to have a few more days at least until the Hierarch arrived. The spies in Palm had been wrong. He needed to think. He fumbled in his coat pockets for the map until Dahin pushed it into his hands. He asked Ilanu, “Do you need water, food?”

“Me?” She looked surprised at the offer, as if she hadn’t expected it from Witches. “If you’ve enough to spare.”

Amabel slung their satchel around and pulled out a wrapped cloth packet of the hard dry lentil cakes they had all been eating for the past few days. Dahin passed over his flask of water. Amabel smiled and said, “Sorry, no pepper sauce.”

“It’s better than what I had yesterday,” Ilanu assured them, biting into the cake.

Kai unrolled the map but the dim lamp wasn’t enough for him to read it. Especially when so much of his attention was going toward suppressing his agitation. Even with his lack of experience, he knew this was a bad time to show his dismay. “I need a better light,” he said to Dahin.

Dahin dug immediately in his bag and set out a small rounded piece of clear glass or crystal. He ran his finger across it until it started to emit a white glow. Kai flattened the map on the rock.

From the wall, Salatel asked, “How bad is it, Fourth Prince?” She sounded bleak.

Kai had marked Bashasa’s last position when Amabel had reported it yesterday. Hoping against hope, he measured with his fingers, estimating the distance the army had traveled and the ground they had left to cover. “The Hierarch is here too early.” The Arike were swift, too swift. “The army will reach position before dawn,” he told her. “If they begin the attack the way we planned, the Hierarch will go out to the fortress wall with an expositor and kill us all.”

Still chewing, Ilanu asked, “What was supposed to happen?” She sounded so resigned. It didn’t help the sense of desperation Kai was currently drowning in.

Dahin leaned down to study the map. “After we took the fort, we were to wait for the Hierarch’s ship. Ziede thought she could drive it against the rocks with wind-devils, then get aboard with my sister and kill the Hierarch.”

Ilanu’s mouth twisted. “That might have worked.”

Kai said through gritted teeth, “Stop talking about it in the past tense.” There had to be a way. “I can try to set fire to the whole fort.” And just hope the blaze distracted the Hierarch enough to keep them from using the Voice. Except it was an old Arike fort, made mostly of carved stone. Kai couldn’t set stone on fire, much as he might want to. His store of intentions was still so limited, he could think of nothing that would help.

Ilanu swallowed the last bite of cake and said uneasily, “The people from the work camps are still in there.”

Kai’s huff of exasperated breath possibly sounded more like a snarl. Bashasa’s forces couldn’t retreat, they had to take this fort. Nibet, the Enalin, the slim chance of Renitl-arik’s survival, their attack on the southwest, everything depended on it. “Then I have to go in before dawn and kill the Hierarch.” It was the only thing that might work.

Dahin was startled. “Alone?”

Amabel shook their head. “Not alone. I’m going with you.”

“No, you aren’t.” Kai folded the map. The decision made, he felt calm settle over him. There were a lot of things he was afraid of. Being captured again and turned into a Hierarach’s slave. His body dying and drifting for eternity, trapped in the mortal world. But at least if those things happened, they would happen while he was fighting. “You’re going to Bashasa, right now, and report all this.”

Amabel grimaced unhappily, but didn’t argue.

“Then you go with us,” Salatel said. She sounded calm now too, no hint of hesitation in her tone. Maybe she felt much as Kai did. “We’ll go in together, the cadre and the dustwitches.” She added, more quietly, “We fight together, Fourth Prince.”

Ilanu watched them all, wide-eyed, a stirring of hope in her expression.

Still studying the map, Dahin said thoughtfully, “Can we trust the dustwitches?”

“Most of them,” Kai admitted. He would like to say no, to send them away, but he wasn’t a fool. If he didn’t succeed, they would die in the fighting anyway. “Then we’ll all go. But we need to get past the bridge gate.”

Dahin said, “I think I have a plan for that. I can go to the gate. I’ll be a messenger who was attacked on the road and lost my escort.” He must have read Kai’s expression because he continued quickly, “I’m a Lesser Blessed. It can’t be anyone else here but me, not an Arike, certainly not a Witch. We even know the name of an expositor who might be at Dashar, that one Var—Vartasias. From the other expositor that thought you were sent to kill him.” Dahin’s gaze gleamed with excitement as the plan came together. “What’s his name’s body was found by Immortal Marshalls, and they sent me to deliver some documents or something that he had on him, to Vartasias. I don’t have to convince anyone important, just get them to open the gate, and you all can do the rest.” He added a little desperately, “Kai, please say something.”

The thing Kai hated was that it was a good plan. “Your sister wants me to protect you.”

“You outrank her, you’re Bashasa’s officer,” Dahin persisted. “It’s your decision.”

So it was. Kai let his breath out. “Tahren will skin me.”

Dahin dismissed that. “Ziede won’t let her.” Then his tone turned serious. “We have to make this work, any way we can.”

“He is right, Fourth Prince,” Salatel said. “Not just for the sake of the Enalin. We can’t back away now. After the Summer Halls, the Kagala, Benais-arik, the unrest across the west, the legions must be a little afraid of us. We have to press our opportunity.”

Kai looked down at the map and all it represented. Salatel and Dahin were right: he couldn’t afford to turn down help, to fail, because he wanted to protect Dahin. Kai said, “I want them to be more than a little afraid.”

Nine

In flashes of awareness Kai heard Dahin’s voice, which was reassuring. Then he was riding with someone, leaning back against them, someone larger than Dahin. The arm around his waist that kept him from falling off the horse was warm and solid. Familiar, but not Ziede or Tahren. And the light was odd, dark but gray, not with moonlight. Like a twilight suspended in the moment between light and darkness. Half drifting, Kai slurred, “Bashasa.”

“No, no. It’s me, Ramad.” The words were soft, a little hasty and embarrassed. Or some other emotion, but Kai drifted again before he could parse it.

He dreamed Ziede was holding his chin, looking into his eyes, and saying with a hiss, “If you die, I’m going to kill Dahin with my teeth.”

Poor Dahin, Kai thought, better not die. Drifting helplessly around the mortal world had always sounded terrible.

When Kai woke for real, his head hurt like something had cracked his skull open and run a hide-scraper through his brain. His body felt intact, but still healing; he could feel a grinding in various places, particularly his right kneecap and elbow, that meant the bones were still easing into place. He remembered falling, his back slamming into hard ground. The headache was probably from a cracked skull knitting itself back together.

He breathed air that was crisp and cold and smelled of ox dung; he remembered they were in Sun-Ar. He opened gummy eyes to see daylight illuminating a dull brown stretch of waxed canvas above his head. He hoped sincerely that he had been captured by some enemy, he didn’t particularly care who, because he really wanted to kill a lot of people right now.

He sat up, bracing himself upright on a low camp bed piled with heavy blankets. He was in a large square tent, one wall rolled up and open to a view of the Belithan scholars’ camp. Ziede sat on the next bed, wearing a padded wool coat and a scarf, looking through a small wooden box. The day was sunny and clear, and outside the scholars were going back and forth carrying various boxes and bags. Packing to leave. His voice a rasp, Kai said, “That was the Hierarchs’ Well.”

“Yes, yes, it was. Dahin admitted that much.” Ziede lifted what looked like a dull bronze coin and examined it thoughtfully. “All the scholars got out. You were the only one badly hurt.”

Kai buried his face in his hands. Relief helped calm his temper. At least this battering hadn’t been for nothing. He took a deep breath and looked up. “Did Dahin know what was there when he let me walk in?”

“No.” Ziede’s certainty made something in his heart unclench. “Whatever reason he had for this, he isn’t that far gone.” She set the box aside and stood. “You should have some of this tea.”

She picked up a copper pot warming on a braizer, poured a cup, and passed it to him. It was red and sweet and milky, tasting like the tea with horse milk that the Saredi had made, all those years ago. It was comforting. Kai wasn’t sure he wanted to be comforted right now.

“We haven’t been able to get anything out of him.” Ziede took her seat again and propped her chin on her hand, pensive. “He wanted to wait for you, to tell us together.”

Kai drew breath and Ziede said, “Finish that first.”

Kai obediently continued to drink. It eased the ache in his skull a little, soothed his stomach. More fragments slipped into place, in his bones and his memory. He finished the tea and set the cup aside, and said, “Sura brought you and Tahren?”

“Yes, and we rode out just in time to meet you and all the others coming back.” Ziede stood up to refill the cup and get one for herself. She looked tired, probably because she had been up for the past two days. Or three, Kai had lost count. Then she added, “Tenes and Sanja came with us.”

“Sanja?” Kai stared at her. He had asked Tenes to stay behind with her. “She should have stayed with the Tescai-lin. They—”

“You’ve let her make her own choices this whole time and now you can deal with the consequences,” Ziede told him, unsympathetic. “She said if there were Hierarchs up here she wanted to help kill them. She didn’t want to wait down there for them to show up and kill everyone again.”

Kai sighed, and accepted the cup Ziede pressed on him. Sanja wanted to stay with the only people she knew. Kai could understand that all too well. “Anyone else?”

“Ramad’s two interfering Immortal Blessed. They complained the entire way.” She paused, listening to her pearl. “Tahren says they can’t help it, they have nothing else to talk about.”

“What happened after I was crushed?” Kai frowned, trying to recall the last clear moment before everything had gone black.

“Arnsterath killed the construct that was attacking you and carried you away from the Voice’s area of effect. Then the entrance collapsed and that seemed to stop it, or it stopped just before that. No one could tell.”

Kai stared at her. “Arnsterath? No. You’re serious?” He had trouble imagining she hadn’t been eager to see him die.

Ziede’s grim expression made it clear this was no joke. “Ramad said she was the only one who could. The Voice cut a swath through the trees and brush in front of the entrance. The few mortals who were still on the edge of its path were flung away into the brush and that’s what saved their lives. Possibly being funneled through the entrance interfered with the Voice’s power.” They had seen that happen before. The scholars had been very lucky they had been thrown clear and had something to land on that broke their fall. “Both Ramad and Dahin tried to get to you. Ramad said it was like running into a wall. A freezing cold wall studded with glass shards. He couldn’t get through, Dahin only made it a few steps further. Then Arnsterath tried. She made it in, forcing herself slowly, step by step.”

“That’s vaguely familiar.” Kai winced and rubbed his eyes. Another piece of his skull slotted back into place with a sting that reverberated down his spine.

Ziede grimaced in agreement. “Not unlike what you did in the Summer Halls, but there was no Hierarch to kill.”

Kai remembered that moment vividly. If there had been one more expositor in there to help Talamines, the Hierarchs would be ruling the world today.

“Channeling the Voice inside a small space has to be tricky.” Kai bit his lip, considering. They didn’t have many examples of the Well being used inside a structure, mostly because whoever it had been used on hadn’t survived. The Voice was a weapon meant to be deployed against whole cities, whole armies. Using it inside a confined space was clearly a desperate measure, even for trapped Hierarchs. The force of it traveling through the tor would have destroyed any surviving constructs, or any other living thing, in its path. It was a weapon that didn’t discriminate between allies and enemies. “To use it at all, there had to be at least one expositor and one Hierarch in there somewhere.” That was the terrifying part. There was no way around it, that was the way the Voice worked.

But Ziede tilted her head in the equivalent of a shrug. “As far as we know. But we don’t know much at all, do we.”

She was right, and it was time to know more. “Can I talk to Dahin now, please?”

It was Tenes who came first, slipping into the tent with the air of someone who knew she had some explaining to do. She went to Kai’s cot, taking a seat on a campstool, and signed, Fourth Prince, I didn’t do as you said.

“I see that,” Kai said dryly.

After what happened, I thought it best to go with Sister Ziede and Tahren. And you said not to leave Sanja with someone she didn’t know well. She hesitated. Are you angry?

Kai sighed. “No.” It was hardly the first time a Witch had done something other than what he had told them to do, though he still wished Sanja hadn’t come here. He added in Witchspeak, Call me Kai.

Tenes smiled, relieved. Ziede reached over to squeeze her hand in reassurance and said, “I told you he wouldn’t be angry.”

Kai finished what he was sure was a direct quote, “‘And that none of us would care much if he was.’”

“True,” Ziede conceded. Then she added, “Tahren’s here with Dahin.”

Tenes jumped up and retreated to sit behind Ziede. She obviously knew this discussion would not go as easily.

Kai had expected brash confidence, but instead the Dahin who walked into the tent was pale and drawn, his whole body tight with tension. Tahren nodded to Kai as she followed him in, and moved to sit on the cot next to Ziede. She didn’t show her tension like Dahin did, but Kai could sense it, thrumming through her veins in time to her heartbeat. Ziede leaned against her and Tahren slipped an arm around her waist.

Dahin didn’t glance at them. He was trying to look at Kai, or at least next to Kai. He seemed to have difficulty forcing himself to make eye contact. He stood there uncertainly, until Tahren hooked a stool with her foot and pushed it toward him.

Dahin took it and sat down, cleared his throat, and began, “I was wrong. About the location of the Well. I thought—” He shook his head with a bitter half laugh. “We were looking at the tor, and I actually thought, maybe the Hierarchs’ Well is like the Well of Thosaren. Maybe it’s partially underground. It explained so much! Why the Enalin had never found it, why no one has been able to feel its presence in so many years. But I didn’t think they would build on top of it.” He shook his head a little. “Until it opened and we felt it.”

Kai rubbed his face, glad Ziede had made him drink all that tea. It made him feel more grounded, less likely to lose his temper. A little less likely. “Tell me why you wanted to come here alone, Dahin. The truth.”

Dahin let out his breath, but it wasn’t a petulant sigh. It was shaky, resigned, reluctant. A pained expression creased his brow. “It’s part of the reason I started to look for the Well in the first place. I’ve been studying the Blessed Writings about the creation of Wells, you may remember.”

No, Kai didn’t remember. Why everyone expected him to recall everything that had ever happened, particularly things that had happened while he wasn’t present, he had no idea.

Dahin forged on, “There were piles of writings about death wells, I’d been going through them for ages. There were indications, theories, that…”

Kai grated out, “Just tell me.”

Dahin hesitated, then his jaw set. “Promise me—”

Before Kai could snap, Tahren said, “Brother. Kai is not negotiating with you. Just tell us.”

Dahin threw a wincing glance at her but didn’t argue. Clearly Tahren had had a talk with him already. Kai wasn’t sure if they had been treating Dahin too gently all this time or not gently enough. He wished he knew how they had come to this pass.

Then Dahin seemed to steel himself and said, “A death well can be destroyed by an Immortal entering it. It’s a clash of two opposing forces. It destroys both.”

Kai was caught so by surprise that he couldn’t do anything but stare at Ziede. She sat up, her brows drawing together as if she couldn’t decide if she was more baffled or more angry. She said, “A sacrifice. You’re talking about a sacrifice.”

Kai didn’t know which question to ask first. “What? How? They feed people into it, that’s why it’s a death well—”

“Yes, people, but only mortals! And they don’t throw them into it, like cordwood into a fire,” Dahin said, frustrated and sounding more like himself. “They feed pain to it, they torture them, let it draw their lives out. Like the scholars you rescued, they were letting them starve first—”

Tahren cut him off with a sharp slash of her hand. If she had been holding a sword she would have stabbed it into the dirt. In a voice of cold anger, she said, “An Immortal. You. You were going to— This is why you wanted to come here alone.”

There was a heartbeat of appalled silence. Tenes got up and walked out of the tent, clearly not wanting to intrude on what had suddenly become a much more private conversation.

Ziede looked horrified. She said, “Oh, Dahin, no.”

Kai burst out, “You were going to jump into the Hierarchs’ Well? For a theory?” He found himself adding, “You didn’t say anything about this in your manuscript.”

“Of course not! I didn’t want anyone to know! And it’s not a theory.” Dahin looked annoyed. “This is how someone could destroy the Well of Thosaren.”

Tahren turned to Dahin, startled. “You want to destroy the Well of Thosaren?”

“Of course not!” Dahin’s pointed exasperation was a relief. “But it’s the same principle. No one wants to hear it, but the Well of Thosaren and the Well of the Hierarchs are the same in almost every respect.” Tahren made a faint sound of protest but Dahin ignored her. “The Well of Thosaren is a Well of nurture, made from centuries of faith and worship. The Well of the Hierarchs is a Well of pain and death that probably only took them a few decades to create, if that! We’re the Blessed because we’re consecrated to the Well as babies; its power can be used for all kinds of incredible things. They’re consecrated to their Well and it turns them into Hierarchs who can use its power to hollow out other people and turn them into mindless dolls, kill whole cities…” Dahin huffed a weary breath. “Any Blessed could destroy the Well of Thosaren by entering it and giving it our death. Any Immortal can destroy the Well of the Hierarchs by entering it and giving it their life.”

They were all silent for a time. Tahren shifted uneasily. “How do you know this?”

“Years of study. It’s all there, in the Blessed Scholars’ writings, just not explicitly.” He continued tiredly, “And no, I don’t want to destroy the Well of Thosaren. It’s not the Well that’s the problem, it’s the Patriarchs and the rest of our horrible society.”

Kai wrestled his thoughts back to the matter at hand. “But you came up here to throw yourself in the Well of the Hierarchs to destroy it.”

“Someone had to. And don’t tell me you wouldn’t! That Tahren and Ziede wouldn’t!” Dahin jumped up, knocked over the stool, righted it with a muttered apology. “The chance to close it forever? Not have it hanging over our heads, over everything you saved, all those people, everything they’ve grown and built since the war? You wouldn’t take that chance?” He paced back and forth, frantic to make them understand. “I couldn’t tell you. You see why I couldn’t tell you!”

“No, I don’t!” Kai snapped. “Dahin, if you even think of throwing yourself in that Well—”

Dahin rounded on him. “Who then? Who then if not me—”

“Stop, both of you,” Tahren said, in a voice that expected instant obedience. Kai subsided reluctantly and Dahin sputtered to a halt.

Tahren stood up and strode to the front of the tent, staring unseeing out at the camp, a hand pressed over her mouth.

Kai had reached his limit too. He lay back down on the cot and covered his face with a blanket. I give up, he thought, exhausted with the world. This is the end. I can’t do this anymore.

He heard an uneasy shuffle of feet. Dahin said in a low voice, “Kai, are we still friends?”

“Yes,” Kai said. “Please don’t talk to me right now.”

Sounding weary, Ziede said, “Dahin, come here and sit down.”

For a time, Kai listened to Ziede and Dahin talk quietly. He let their voices blur, not trying to make out individual words.

The obvious solution was that the Witch King should throw himself into the Well. Destroy it, and end his story there. Because the Blessed writings said that would work. Kai wanted to laugh, but his head still hurt too much.

Expositors manipulated power with designs of careful precision, but Witches guided it by instinct and experience, by feel. This theory … didn’t feel right. All Kai’s years of hard-won knowledge of the give and take of power, the undercurrents of the mortal world and the underearth, said that a Well grown to feed on pain would take all of his, and it would be like throwing lamp oil into a furnace.

The question was, was it worth taking the chance?

We could throw one of Ramad’s Immortal Blessed into the Well, Kai thought to Ziede. It was only partly a bad joke.

She replied silently, Don’t think it didn’t occur to me too. But to give the Well a life, the sacrifice would have to be voluntary.

Kai didn’t often ask himself what Bashasa would have done in this or that situation. Mostly because he and Bashasa had had very different ways of looking at the world. He didn’t have to ask himself this time either, because he knew Bashasa, thwarted of throwing himself into the Well by a lack of immortality, would never have let anyone else do it. He would have looked for another solution until he found one.

After a time of trying not to think about anything, some of the conversation started to penetrate the haze.

“They must still be feeding it or they wouldn’t have captured the scholars…”

“But only after the scholars went to the tor. If they wanted mortals to feed it, why didn’t they attack the camp…”

“Or they didn’t know the camp was here…”

“We know there’s at least one expositor in there. Or more than one. Whoever was living in the burned earthwork…”

“They could all be dead now. Using the Voice in an enclosed space…”

“Kai,” Ziede said, “bear with me for a moment. We know expositors can draw directly from the death wells they create, but the expositors who were consecrated to the Hierarchs’ Well still had to channel through a Hierarch to draw power from it to use the Voice.”

Aware he sounded sullen, even while muffled by the blanket, Kai replied, “That’s the way it works.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to work.” Ziede was growing impatient. “But they’ve been up here for decades, trying to survive and not making a good job of it, at least from what the scholars have found. They left themselves hardly anything to come back to.”

More life in his voice now, Dahin said, “The original Hierarchs were dead; whoever returned here couldn’t use their Well. And at that time, the structure over it must have been open. Like the Summer Halls: open at the top, enclosed around the bottom. With all the Hierarchs dead and their best weapon useless, they roofed it over, closed it in, disguised it with dirt and grass. To protect themselves, to keep us from sensing the Well and finding it while they were waiting to make a new Hierarch.”

Ziede said, “Yes, they were waiting. Why are they still waiting?”

Dahin was hesitant. “The tor. They would have to take it apart, or blow the roof off. Somehow.”

Ziede countered, “What if they can’t? What if there’s not enough of them left to dismantle the tor, and not enough victims for their expositors to make constructs to do it for them?”

Kai pulled the blanket off his head. He saw what she was getting at now. “We’ve been overthinking this.”

“We have indeed.” Ziede’s smile was grim. “Kill anyone inside, and seal the entrance. Tenes could collapse the whole structure, bury the Well, if she had enough time.”

Tahren turned, paced back to stand beside Ziede. She didn’t glance at Dahin, but some of the tension had left her. “We would still have to guard it. We can bury it but not destroy it. Someone could return and dig it out.”

“Guard it forever,” Dahin said softly.

Kai propped himself up on his arms. “It is a nice valley.” They would have to consult Tanis and the others in Avagantrum. Some might be willing to come up here to help.

Then another voice said, “Do you mind if I join you?”

Ilhanrun Highsun stood in the tent opening.

The Past: the Conflagration

The borderlands, the Saredi clans, the Erathi sea people have long been at peace, because Witches learned the consequences of war long ago … at odds we were a tragedy, a cataclysm. With one purpose, we were unconquerable.

—Fragment of a transcribed letter, believed to be from a Scholar in the Witchlands, at the Restored Temple of Justice and Antiquity at Ancartre

In darkness like the bottom of a well, Kai walked up the stone-paved road. The sliver of moon was eclipsed by a gently rising haze that had grown over the last hours. Windblown sand brushed against his skirt and coat and gritted under his bare feet. He had left his boots behind in his saddlebags to make his steps as silent as possible, but the endless rush of the waves buried any small sounds of movement. The only sources of light were toward the end of the road: the torches on either side of the bridge gate, the lamps at the top of the short guard tower, and, across the causeway, the fires along the fort’s outer wall. None were enough to make more than small pools of warm brightness.

Dahin walked some distance ahead, carrying the little Immortal Blessed light, a spot of cool illumination that made all the shadows around him darker. He had left his Arike clothes behind, and wore the gray Blessed tunic and pants that had been packed away in his bag since the Kagala. He stumbled occasionally, giving the impression of someone who had walked a long weary way.

The legionaries at the guard tower must have seen him by now, but they let him get almost to within twenty paces of the gate before someone called out to him. Dahin flinched, a full-body motion that staggered him.

Kai stopped; the near-silent susurration behind him said the dustwitches, moving though the grass to either side of the road, halted as well. They had already killed all the legionaries in outer guard positions along the road: silently, with the fine sand off the narrow beach.

Dahin hesitated for too many heartbeats while Kai stood silently. After being caught in the Summer Halls and dragged before a Hierarch and a roomful of expositors and servant-nobles, Dahin had thought walking up to the legionary guard station would be easy. Of course it wasn’t easy, of course he was terrified. Kai’s own terror sat in a cold knot in his stomach, a constant reminder of what would happen if they—if he—failed tonight.

Kai might survive it, but if the others didn’t, there was no point. He would rather lose this stolen body and drift on the wind, his consciousness slowly unraveling, than live alone again.

Then Dahin waved and called back to the guard. He ran the last of the distance to the gate, managing to look like someone who was exhausted and injured, and not having to force themselves onward against a wall of visceral fear.

Kai walked forward again, the grass whispering as the dustwitches moved with him.

He stopped a few paces outside the well of light from the gate’s torches and lamps. The ground sloped away from the road, giving way to sand and rocks, and the sea lapped at the bridge’s stone pillars. From here he could see the salt-rust on the iron gate, the blocky wrongness in the shape of the tower that marked it as legionary work rather than Arike. Would the Hierarchs have buried Dashar under earthworks if it was possible? Would they eventually fill in the sea channel to do it, when they had killed everyone in Descar-arik?

Dahin spoke rapidly to the guards, most of it lost in the rush of the water and the whispers of the grass. He shook his battered bag occasionally to indicate the supposedly important messages inside it. Kai thought he might be name-dropping Immortal Patriarchs who were supporters of the Hierarchs, but it wasn’t until he said the word “Vartasias” that the guards started to move with urgency. Apparently no one asked to speak to Vartasias unless they had absolutely no other choice.

Through the gaps in the ironwork, Kai saw a figure come out of the tower and speak briefly to the scatter of legionaries gathered there. Then a guard moved to the smaller ironbound door to the right of the gate.

That was good. It was important that the fires stay lit, that the gate remained closed, so that any watch from the fort’s walls or tower would see nothing wrong. Kai tensed, closing his fists.

As the small door swung out, Dahin said, “Thank you,” and pretended to stumble against it, pinning it open against the stone jamb. And Kai lifted both hands, palms open.

The dustwitches didn’t hesitate.

A thick wave of sand whipped up off the dunes, as if driven by a strong, sudden gust of sea-wind. Kai walked into it, sand stinging as it struck the exposed skin of his face and hands. The dustwitches rushed past him in a near-silent flurry. The sand cloud rolled over the gate, concealing it, the torches and lamps faintly shining through.

Kai reached Dahin where he braced against the open door, arms pressed over his face to shield him from the sandstorm. Kai tapped his arm in a signal and Dahin ducked and scrambled off the road, disappeared down into the dunes and sea-grass.

Kai stepped through the door, waited for Cimeri to slip past him—she had been down in the dunes, destabilizing them so the dustwitches would have enough sand to raise. Salatel and the rest of the cadre followed her. Kai closed the door but left it unlatched.

Scattered on the ground lay a dozen or so legionaries, and choking gasps sounded from the doorway of the little tower; all its windows had been open to the breeze. Dustwitches dragged bodies out of sight into its lower level. Tangeld had wrapped her arms around the lever that worked the gate latch and Cerala moved to help her, adding her weight as the others slipped away into the dark. Kai waited for them to finish, making sure no last guard appeared. Pushing the lever down lifted the locking bar, though the heavy gate stayed closed. Some sharp-eyed sentry on the wall might see the raised bar, but they had to take that chance.

Once the bar was locked upright, Kai tapped Cerala on the shoulder to tell her to go, and she and Tangeld vanished into the shadows. He swept a look around as he walked after them, making sure there was nothing to betray them as the sand settled in waves and the gate became visible from the fort again. He kicked a last body off the road and broke into a run.

As he crossed the causeway, the fort’s wall loomed, lit by the fires along its battlement and in the caged balconies that extended off its upper levels. The light played over the carved Arike figures with their broken and disfigured faces. More fires lit the sunken stone plaza in front of the gate. As the causeway met the solid earth of the mound, the dustwitches split, half heading left, others right, skirting the firelight.

Kai followed the righthand group, running lightly over broken rocks and tufts of grass. He caught up with the dustwitches at the base of the wall. Those who didn’t think they could make the climb held back, hidden in the dark with the cadre, but two had already started up. Kai climbed after them, feeling for hand and footholds in the carving, appreciating how Talamines’ height and longer arms and legs made this easier.

He was a fast climber and reached the top ahead of the dustwitches. In the bank of shadow between two torches, he eased up just far enough to look through the stone latticework in the parapet. He couldn’t see movement, but he could hear voices, the words muffled by the flap of banners in the sea wind. Kai pulled himself over the latticework and landed lightly on the stone walkway.

The inner side of the battlement was too high to see inside the fort without standing on a ledge to look through the lattice, but Kai kept his gaze on the curved side of the tower’s spire. There was a door there, open with faint lamplight shining from the room inside. With a soft scrabble, Tangeld pulled herself up the parapet, Hawkmoth behind her.

Hawkmoth had a coil of light strong rope over her shoulder, and the two hurried to wrap the end around the stone support of the lattice and brace it with their weight. Shearwater appeared first, then Salatel and Arsha. Salatel signaled Kai that all was well below, and he started for the tower.

Avoiding the pools of firelight, with the rest of his cadre and the dustwitches climbing onto the battlement behind him, Kai reached the tower’s open door.

It was a large lamplit room, open to a central curved stairwell, with two tall narrow windows looking forward out onto the causeway. Half a dozen legionaries stood around, listening to one with an officer’s tail say, “—send down there and ask who that was at the gate. If they’re questioning someone—”

A scatter of sand swirled around their feet, the signal that the dustwitches who had climbed the wall on the other side of the tower were ready. Kai stepped through the doorway into the light.

Startled curses greeted him. The officer turned, staring. Then with a lip-curl of contempt, he said, “What is one of these things doing here—”

Kai leapt forward, grabbed his face long enough to drain his life, and whirled around to the next legionary. Arsha, Cerala, and Telare plunged into the room after him. Between Kai and their short spears, the legionaries were down within moments. The last one managed to get a javelin out of a weapon rack against the far wall, turn, and stab with it. Kai caught it in his shoulder, wrapped an arm around it to yank it from the man’s hands, and grabbed his wrist. As the dead legionary fell back against the wall, Kai yanked the javelin out and dropped it. He looked around to see Salatel taking charge of the tower, sending Cerala and Arsha to guard positions with sharp gestures. The dustwitches crowded into the doorway, staring like they had never seen Arike soldiers and a demon clear a room before. Keeping his voice low, Kai said, “Get down there and kill legionaries.”

Tangeld moved first and they all rushed forward to the stairwell, vanishing down it in a swirl of dust-colored coats and veils.

Kai started down with them, as Cimeri and Nirana and the others from the lefthand side of the tower caught up. “Find the winches that control the gates,” he told Cimeri, and gestured for the dustwitches and the rest of his cadre to go ahead.

The scatter of legionaries in the next two levels died choking as the dustwitches called sand down from the wind outside the tower. Kai killed the legionaries who made it into the stairwell, making sure none could come up on his people from behind.

He got down to a level with a round, domed central room, with multiple doorways and more dead bodies. One arch led to the mechanism that operated the tower’s great gates. Cimeri and a few dustwitches were already there, examining the mechanism. Kai leaned inside. “You can open it?”

Cimeri pointed to the levers and signaled an assent.

“Good, wait for the signal.” Kai turned and met Owlet coming up the steps with the other dustwitches who hadn’t been able to climb the wall. That was good, it meant the map had been right about the small door to the side of the main gates, and that Nirana, Hartel, and Telare had reached it, killed any defenders, and opened it. Hopefully the map would be right about other important things, too.

Kai started to head down but Hawkmoth darted out of a doorway. “Fourth Prince, come and look, it’s strange,” she whispered, sounding disturbed. She had pulled her veil back and her eyes were wide.

Kai’s first thought was that it was a trick, but Hawkmoth was already running back to the doorway and this was a stupid moment for a dustwitch to kill him. He followed her.

The room was set up as a kitchen, with square stone ovens and shafts to let the smoke out, basins and pots stacked on shelves, a trough of water with a pump to fill it. It smelled like grease and smoke. There were also several Arike women, all chained by one wrist to the beams that ran overhead. They stared at Kai and Hawkmoth, baffled and frightened. Almost as baffled as they were, Hawkmoth said, “I don’t understand, are the Hierarchs eating people?”

“Where are the keys?” Kai said. The Arike didn’t move, frozen. He added, “I was sent by Prince-heir Bashasa of Benais-arik.”

The youngest doubled over, sobbing silently into her hands. Another pointed to the door. “A cabinet. Mounted on a wall out there, all the keys are in it.”

Kai jerked his head at Hawkmoth, who ran out. He said, “Do you know where the Hierarch is?”

Some shook their heads, trembling. But one said, “No, but they built something—Here.” She took a jar and spilled flour onto the wooden counter and sketched a map into it. Kai stepped to her side; she flinched away from him but kept drawing. The original map of the fort had shown it had three terraces, each broad half circles, stepping down from the height of the mound to the water level where the docks stretched out, and this rough map showed the general shape was still the same. “They built something here, just above the port, where the merchant houses used to be.” That matched what the vanguarder Ilanu had been able to discover; the confirmation was good to have, there was no time to make mistakes.

Hawkmoth returned with a wooden rack of keys she had apparently just ripped out of the wall. She started to work on the locks, and one woman asked, “Will you take us with you when you go?”

Kai said, “We’re not leaving.” He told Hawkmoth, “Make sure no one hurts them.”

“With my life, Fourth Prince,” she said.

Kai reached a lower level where the stairway split into two, straddling the large passage that led through the bottom of the tower, from the outer gate into the fort proper. The lamps had already been extinguished by dust and sand, and several dustwitches waited there, amid the bodies of dead legionaries. “Something’s strange,” one whispered as Kai stepped past her. “There’s death on the wind.” He went to the edge of the outer archway, where Tangeld stood.

The tower’s passage opened into a large plaza, lit by tall stone lanterns, with steps leading down to the first broad terrace. Two- and three-story buildings extended out from the fort’s walls, with latticed windows and open balconies. Some still glowed with lamplight, but there was an odd hush, not much sense of movement, as if everyone had closed themselves in for the night. “What is it?” he asked Tangeld.

In the faint light her face was etched with fear. “Listen,” she hissed.

Kai concentrated, trying to hear past the waves and the wind. He heard screams, cries.

And he remembered what the vanguarder Ilanu had said. The legions had brought people from the camps outside Descar-arik, to build the dock for the Hierarch.

Kai had meant to go alone from this point on, he had meant to leave the dustwitches here to secure the bottom level of the tower while his cadre waited to open the gates for Bashasa. But to have any chance of stopping what sounded like a slaughter, he would need help. He turned. “Get your sisters. All those who aren’t needed to guard the tower.”

Kai and the dustwitches moved through what had been a small port village tucked into the walls of the old fort, past stone carved houses open to the sea breezes and colonnades that had once sheltered shops and food stalls. It was now housing for servant-nobles and officers, but all the doors and shutters were closed, fear and a waiting silence hanging in the air. As they got closer to the sound, light glowed from torches lining the walkways in the lower two terraces of the fort. A stark contrast to the silence and near darkness of the upper.

Kai came to the top of a broad set of stairs that looked down on the lowest part of the fort. From the map this had been a maze of houses for merchants and sailors and all the soldiers and workers who had maintained the fort and the docks, as well as storage buildings for cargos and workshops for ship repair.

Much of it seemed converted into barracks, the original buildings cleared away and rebuilt as long rough structures with few lit windows, meant to temporarily house several legions. A whole swath down the center of the neighborhood had been destroyed, or dismantled. The stone and brick and wood was still here, just in neat piles, lined up to be taken away for whatever building project the invaders called for next.

Past this, brightly lit by torches, was the port, with two Hierarch troopships anchored not far off the wharf, dwarfing the other ships docked nearby. They were long squat barges, with low superstructures, meant to move along the coast in weather calmed by expositors. Both were reached by the new bridge Ilanu had described, that had been built for the Hierarchs’ barge.

It looked more like a wooden palace than a bridge, with wide scaffolds extending out to frame a large platform. The troopships loomed above it, connected to the top of the platform by dozens of boarding ramps. Past the platform was another new structure, a large building standing in the water on heavy pilings, a square structure with a high, pitched roof and colonnade around the three visible sides, all hung with lamps. Its location matched the rough map the enslaved Arike woman in the tower kitchen had sketched. This was the new Hierarch’s house, built from the remains of the leveled port town.

One troopship was brightly lit, lamplight showing through the open ports along the side and on the cabins above the deck. Dockworkers moved up and down the ramps, carrying aboard bags, clay jars, bales, chests. All the supplies of war for the legions going to attack the Enalin at Nibet.

The other troopship was dark, though the sound coming from it was loud and muddled. Groans, cries. Legionaries were leaving it, dragging limp figures—bodies—down the ramps, along the bridge back to the fort, to be dumped into neat piles on the wharf. Like the neat piles of wood, stone, and brick where the houses had been. So many bodies, a hundred or more, and still more being dragged from the ship.

Kai’s heart said the bodies were demons, empty shells now, their inhabitants driven out by deprivation and torture. But why would the Hierarch bring the demons here to kill them, the demons meant to protect the fort while the legions were sent to Nibet? He said, “I have to get closer. Call the sandstorm. Just enough to conceal, not kill.”

Tangeld said, “We’ll come with you.” There was a murmur of agreement from the others.

“No, the rest of you get back to the tower,” Kai said. He didn’t want this to be true, he didn’t want it. He didn’t want anyone else to see it. Not anyone he intended to leave alive.

“Careful, Fourth Prince,” Tangeld whispered as Kai started down the steps.

By the time he reached the barracks, sand whispered across the stone, smothering the lamps. He pulled the hood of his coat up and kept his head down. The haze grew in a rapid wave, descended in a cloud over the port. It was half-blinding, made the air hot and difficult to breathe, seemed to come from the sea and the land at the same time. It threw the orderly preparations into dismay. Coughing officers called out halts, legionaries retreated to the shelter of overhangs or behind cargo containers. Dockworkers huddled wherever there was shelter.

Kai moved past them all, another dim shape in the haze. He reached the bridge and walked down it as the figures struggled to get their burdens up the ramps and into the shelter of the lamplit troopship. A last few legionaries fled the dark troopship, running across the platform to the other ship or down the bridge to the wharf.

Kai reached the platform and stopped next to a body dropped and left behind like trash. It was a young mortal, an Arike by their hair and skin color, as dried and desiccated as the legionaries Kai had killed in the tower.

Kai’s knees went weak and he folded up and sank down onto the dock, pressed his face to the gritty wood. No amount of will would make this anything other than what it looked like. They were feeding the workers from the Descar-arik camps to the demons in the ship, so the demons would have the strength to fight, so they wouldn’t be tempted to take the legionaries.

He pushed himself upright and went up the first ramp into the dark ship.

The hatch opened onto a lamplit bridge above an open hold lined with wide stalls. Below the pool of light, the hold was shadowy and stank of unwashed bodies and urine and death. There was restless movement everywhere, as the demons in the stalls shifted impatiently. There were no intentions keeping them in, no sigils gleaming in the dark. No diamond chains. What Kai could see of their clothing was worn and tattered, and he didn’t want to look more closely, for fear of recognizing one of them. They brimmed with energy, Kai could feel it from here, tingling uneasily along his nerves. There were still desiccated mortal bodies sprawled in the pathways between stalls, a few legionaries dragging them into piles to remove once the storm eased.

Two officers stood on the platform, close enough to see Kai’s eyes in the lamplight. Staring at him incredulously, one said, “Do you belong to Vartasias? What are you doing here?”

“Is he with the Hierarch?” Kai asked.

“Yes,” the officer said, puzzled. “What did he send you here for?”

“Bashasa, the Prince-heir of Benais-arik, sent me,” Kai said, “to kill you all.” And he put his hand on the side of the wooden hatch and released the fire intention.

He stepped out as the fire washed over the side of the ship in a wave, and the screams started. This was not the heatless fire he had meant to use as the signal to the army’s vanguarders watching for it from the dunes, but the one that burned wood and people and cloth like straw.

He leapt down the ramp before it went up too. The sandstorm was dying away a little, but not fast enough to help anyone caught out on the platform. Kai started up the broad carved steps to the Hierarch’s house.

Ten

Kai was one of the few people still alive who knew that when Tahren, who did not like being surprised at the best of times, dropped her hand to her swordhilt and tightened her jaw, it meant that someone had narrowly avoided death. Unfortunately it seemed that Ilhanrun Highsun had noted it too. His glance at her was wry. He said, “I apologize for overhearing. I meant only to thank the Witch King for his timely intervention.”

“Call him Fourth Prince,” Tahren said, and turned to regard Highsun. “And we asked to be left alone, to have a discussion among family in private.”

Highsun was just under Tahren’s height, his build more burly, and he had pale skin, a broad handsome face that had not been chapped and reddened by weather, and light straight hair that hung past his shoulders. Unlike the usual male Immortal Blessed style, it was tied back in a queue, like a Lesser Blessed. His clothes were Belithan, with bright embroidery on the seams of his long tunic, padded coat, and loose trousers. He had a plain cotton stole wrapped loosely around his neck in the casual way the Belithans did in informal circumstances. Bruises still marred his right temple and cheekbone just above a dusting of beard. If Kai didn’t know he was an Immortal Blessed, he might have thought Highsun was just a particularly large native of the archipelagoes. He wondered if Highsun had capitalized on that, in his wanderings since the end of the war.

“Fourth Prince,” Highsun corrected himself with a nod to Kai. “I believe we met while I was unconscious. I thank you for my life and the lives of my friends.” Clearly aware that Tahren hadn’t accepted his apology, he added, “It was my error. I woke only a short time ago and didn’t realize you had asked for privacy. How can I make up for my transgression?”

Watching him carefully, Ziede said, “You can tell us how much you heard.”

“That you have a plan to render the Well unusable by collapsing the mound and burying it, and then remaining to guard its location.”

Kai carefully did not look at anyone in relief. This was complicated enough without anyone else knowing what Dahin had intended to do. What the Well’s vulnerability was. Though Kai figured the only people nearby whose memory of the Hierarchs’ ravages was vivid enough to make them seriously consider a sacrifice were all in this tent.

Highsun stepped further inside, his caution giving way to curiosity. “Are you certain that burying the Well won’t destroy it?”

Dahin, still sitting beside Ziede on the cot, sagged a little in weariness. “No, it’s like the Well of Thosaren. The surface opening is like the neck of a bottle: stuffing it up with a cork doesn’t affect what’s contained inside.” Dahin had long complained that the higher born an Immortal Blessed was, the less they knew about how everything worked.

Highsun looked thoughtful. “So it is the only way.” He nodded to himself. “I reiterate my offer. I would join you.”

Through her pearl, Ziede admitted to Kai, We can use the help. He’ll certainly be more useful than those two children Ramad brought with him.

Speaking of children, Kai needed to find Sanja and show her that he was alive. And they needed to get back to the Well before any constructs who might have survived managed to dig their way out through the blocked entrance. Kai caught Tahren’s gaze and lifted his brows. She tilted her head in agreement.

Kai’s anklebones had finally knit back together, so he swung his legs off the cot and stood, only swaying a little. He said, “We accept your offer.”

The others had brought along their bags, so Kai was able to dress in fresh unsinged clothing and one of the warmer coats of Blessed fabric. They found Ramad standing outside Veile’s tent, one of a few left in place as the expedition hastily packed. The Immortal Marshalls Eleni and Rafiem sat on stools near a small campfire, watching the mortals work.

The day was sunny, the cold wind pushing the clouds along. The camp was sparse now; from what Tahren reported, Sura had already taken the raft through the anchor stones to Ancartre, with seven of the most wounded. She would return as soon as possible for more of the group. The two young drovers had been laden down with supplies and sent off with most of the riding animals, heading north toward their home, one of the last outposts below Sun-Ar.

Ramad watched Kai approach, something raw in his expression he didn’t seem inclined to try to hide. The Blessed Eleni glanced up and said, “See, the demon lives. We told you it was inevitable.”

Ramad looked at her with something between exhaustion and supreme irritation. Kai found himself taking pity; Ramad had been traveling with these two and Arnsterath for a while, and it had to be exhausting. He said, “We’re going back to the tor to kill whoever’s in there, if you’d like to come with us.”

Ramad’s expression cleared. He came to join Kai. “Do you have a way to get inside?”

“If there’s another way in, Tenes should be able to find it. I’d prefer not to clear the front entrance if possible.” Going in through the front would just invite whoever was in there to use the Voice again.

Ramad nodded sharply. “Good, I’ll find us some supplies and make sure they leave us enough riding oxen. They’re going to release the rest before they leave.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to say something else. Kai lifted his brows, having no intention of making it easy. Then Sanja, barely recognizable wrapped in an oversized coat, ran up. Ramad turned away.

Sanja stopped two paces away, glared at Kai, then stepped over to take hold of his hand. She said, “They said you were all crushed up but they wouldn’t let me see.”

Sanja was not a hugger. Tanis and the other children of Avagantrum were, and Kai found he missed it. He said, “That’s too bad, because it was awful to look at.”

Reassured, she tugged on his hand and grinned at him.

He told her, “You’re going to need to stay at camp with Dahin.”

Dahin, standing nearby with the others, looked offended. “What, I’m not going?”

Tahren pressed her hands over her face and walked away. Shaking her head, Ziede gave Dahin a one-armed hug and followed.

“Right,” Dahin said, embarrassed. “I forgot for a moment. I can see why you wouldn’t—”

Kai sighed and gave up. “Come here,” he said, and when Dahin dragged his feet reluctantly over, Kai hugged him. Dahin huffed in surprise.

They saddled the last of the shaggy winter oxen and loaded them with a few supplies. As they rode across the plain again, Kai thought they might keep the beasts, since they were going to stay.

Ziede and Tahren rode side by side, with Tenes riding double with Tahren. She had never ridden before, as far as she could remember, and it was safer this way. After the Well was buried, Kai meant to send her back with Dahin and Sanja, and charge Dahin with helping her get to Palm where she could search for her family. Dahin would take Sanja to Tanis in Avagantrum and see if any of their family might want to join them up here, at least for a time.

Sanja, Kai suspected, would not take any of this well. But that was a problem for after they dealt with the Well.

Highsun, Arnsterath, and Eleni rode in a quiet group, Highsun distracted and thoughtful, Arnsterath amused, and Eleni watchful and suspicious. They had left Rafiem behind to protect the camp while the rest of the scholars waited for Sura to return with the raft.

Kai hadn’t thanked Arnsterath for retrieving him from the path of the Voice, or spoken to her at all. He knew what her motives were, and concern played no part in them. She hadn’t tried to speak to him, either. For now, she seemed to have given up trying to antagonize him.

Ramad had been riding near Kai, and clearly wanted to talk, and Kai had just enough spite left to neither encourage nor discourage him. But when they stopped for a water break at the spring, Ramad finally said, “I know I have no right to ask you anything, but why is there a rift between you and Bashat? Do you really think him that dangerous to the Rising World?”

Through her pearl, Ziede said, somewhat archly, Is that man bothering you?

No, Kai sighed. It’s fine. The day was turning cloudy and the wind was colder; it felt like the weather was mirroring Kai’s temper. He was too tired to be angry anymore, and having made a firm decision about the Well had settled something inside him. He said aloud, “I don’t think Bashat is dangerous. I think he’s overconfident. The kind of overconfident that makes mistakes.”

Ramad capped his water flask, and his warm smile flickered. “So by opposing him you’re teaching him consequences?”

Kai knew it was Ramad reaching for their old relationship, such as it was. He let out his breath and thought, Why not. Maybe Ramad had earned the truth by now. And if their plan worked as intended Kai would be up here guarding a rock mound until his body disintegrated. “I never thought he would betray me. But he thinks I betrayed him first. When he was a child, when Bashasa died, I left.”

Ramad frowned slowly. He would have been a child then himself. “I remember when Bashasa died, of course.” He hesitated. “You helped to raise Bashat?”

“After Bashasa died, I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Kai found himself admitting. “I didn’t realize … Maybe I did, and I didn’t care. When I went back, eventually, he didn’t seem to care either.”

“He had his mother.” Ramad said it as if thinking aloud, recalling events that were just footnotes in history to him. “I don’t know how close they were. She died before I joined the vanguarders.”

“Lahshar bar Calis never liked me, and it was mutual,” Kai told him. They had never become friends but they had fought on the same side too long to think seriously about killing each another.

“It seems Bashat has a reason to be upset with you,” Ramad said, in a new tone. “But you hardly abandoned him to die on a hilltop. He was surrounded by family. He would be justified in refusing to speak to you, but…” He seemed conflicted, and Kai wondered if Ramad still believed Bashat had never intended to kill Kai and Ziede. Even after talking to Bashat, Kai wasn’t sure what he believed either. Ramad continued, “It’s not as if you’re his father—” Then he stopped, as if struck by a thought, and looked at Kai sidelong. “Are you? Or … his mother?”

“No.” Unfortunately, Kai thought. If he had been either, he would have stayed. Or taken Bashat with him. A Prince-heir had to grow up in the city to be selected by the various councils and guilds to rule. It would have meant Bashat would never be eligible, but there had been plenty of qualified and well-meaning contenders. It wouldn’t have affected Benais-arik’s fate much, and Kai thought Bashat would have been happier.

Then Tahren said, “We need to go,” and that ended the conversation.

They rode through the long twilight and short night, and arrived at the tor’s valley in the early morning. The lowering clouds threatened rain, but so far it was only a light sprinkle, barely felt. Making their way along the hills, they halted when they had a view of the swath of flattened brush and vegetation that stretched out from the collapsed entrance. Kai was a little surprised he had survived it at all.

They rode down most of the way through the brush, since there was little point in concealment now. Kai had a faint hope that a Hierarch or expositor would appear to challenge them, but they had no such luck. For one thing, whoever was still alive in there was probably trapped inside. Tahren remarked, “We’ll have to dig the creature out of there like a pit out of an olive.”

They left the animals to graze under a last copse of trees, and pushed through the brush to the weathered gray stone slabs. They were directly opposite the entrance, which might mean something if the Hierarchs had been interested in symmetry.

Tenes immediately began to check each crack and crevice, sliding her hands into them as far as she could, then moving to the next. Kai walked along ahead of her, just to see if there was anything obvious to the eye. The scholars who were experts at this hadn’t reported noticing any other entrances, according to Highsun, but then they hadn’t had much time to examine the place from the outside.

Ramad set Eleni to keep watch, and she took up a position near the trees. Arnsterath appeared to have appointed herself to that duty too. She stood some distance back from the tor, staring at it. At least Kai didn’t have to deal with her and that was enough for him.

Highsun paced the tor in the opposite direction from Kai, poking along the cracks and crevices, while Tahren followed him. A wind-devil swept Ziede up the side to the top of the structure, then carried her back down. “It’s closed and sealed up there,” she reported, dusting her hands, “as we thought.” Then through her pearl she said, Tenes found something.

Kai turned swiftly and Ramad hastily stepped out of his way. Tenes had moved in Highsun’s direction, maybe twenty or so steps along the tor’s base. She leaned against a slab, her hand pressed to the dirt- and grass-filled gap between it and the next. She turned and signed, There were at least three passages along this side, all filled in with dirt and rock. But this one is still here, only partially filled.

“Can you open it?” Kai asked.

I have to get through this first. She patted the smooth slab of rock beside her. Kai couldn’t see any difference between it and the others. It was about twice the height of a tall person and just as wide, and perhaps had been square before weathering had softened the edges.

Kai registered Arnsterath’s silent approach just before she said, “Surely the one who broke the Summer Halls can crack this stone.”

Tenes regarded her with a cold stare. She turned back to Kai to sign, It will take time to encourage the slab to break.

Ziede shaded her eyes to look up the slope of the tor. “It’s braced on the inside, so the whole thing won’t come down?”

Tenes signed an assent and added, These passages must have been entrances, or perhaps airshafts. It’s a very strange structure.

Highsun returned with Tahren, saying, “That slab needs to be opened? I may have something which will help.”

Tenes gestured for him to go ahead, and he stepped forward, pulling his pack around. He took out a Blessed device, like the handle of a metal winch but with cups attached to it, and a couple of sharp projections. It looked dubious compared to Dahin’s tools, like it had possibly been put together from pieces of other things. Tahren frowned in concern and Kai had a moment of doubt. Maybe he had been stupid to make Dahin stay behind.

No, it was worth having to trust a strange Immortal Blessed, not to worry about Dahin throwing himself into the Well the instant their backs were turned. At least they knew Highsun by reputation.

As Highsun set the device to the wall, Tahren drew Ziede away and Kai hastily motioned for Tenes to back up. She hurried over to stand beside him and Ramad. Even Arnsterath, an ironic twist to her mouth, retreated to a safe distance.

The device made a neat etched outline in the center of the slab, a square shape easily large enough for someone as big as Highsun to step through. As he fiddled with the device again, something cracked sharply, so loud they all flinched back. When Kai looked again, the pieces inside the square had split into shards.

That wasn’t subtle, Ziede commented silently to Kai.

If there’s a Hierarch or expositor anywhere in this valley, they heard that, Kai agreed. Ramad was waving off Eleni, who had started to run to them from her watch post. But then they probably knew we were here already.

True, Ziede conceded. I don’t have a good feeling about this, Kai. Neither does Tahren.

He glanced at Tahren, who gave him a head tilt of acknowledgment, and admitted to himself that he didn’t either. The settled feeling of a straightforward task had left him sometime after they had entered the valley. I’m glad we made Dahin and Sanja stay at the camp.

I wish I’d put them both on the first raft to go back with Sura, Ziede said.

Kai wished she had too, but there was no point in saying it. And at the time he would have made the same decision to let them stay.

“What’s wrong?” Ramad asked, his voice quiet. Tenes watched Kai worriedly.

Because he didn’t want to say I feel like I’m working toward an endgame that isn’t mine, Kai said, “I don’t know.”

Tenes reached over and squeezed Kai’s wrist. Ramad’s brow furrowed. He said, “That’s … worrisome. To put it mildly.”

Highsun returned the device to his pack and started to clear the shards away. Tahren moved to help, and the gray daylight began to illuminate a stone-walled passage, the floor piled with dirt and rubble. But like Tenes had said, it was still high and wide enough for them to make a way through.

Arnsterath stepped nearer and said in Saredi, “Are you talking about me?”

Tenes shifted away from her. Kai said in Old Imperial, “No, I don’t talk about you. I try not to think about you.” Before she could respond, he added, “If you want to help, stay out here with Eleni and make sure nothing escapes.”

Arnsterath actually betrayed real irritation. It was somehow more painful than her façade of cool indifference because it reminded him of Arn-Nefa. She said, “The other door collapsed. I recall that, because I was almost in it when it happened. So were you.”

Kai pointed at the passage. “Make sure the constructs don’t come out this door.”

Her mouth thinned. “You want the credit for killing the Hierarch yourself. Still trying to court Bashat?”

Ramad snapped, “Arnsterath, that’s enough.”

Kai bared his teeth in a gesture she would understand. “If you wanted to kill Hierarchs, you had your chance sixty years ago in the Summer Halls.” He strode toward the passage, calling imps to light the way.

Kai went first, with Tenes beside him, followed by Tahren and Ziede and Ramad, with Highsun last. The light from the imps helped, but the air was bad and close and Kai found he didn’t like the feeling of being buried underground. It was something the Hierarchs had liked, obviously, or they wouldn’t have built earthworks around their own dwelling places, or tried to smother mortal cities with them.

The passage led straight in and they encountered no sign of doorways, blocked or open. And Tenes said the other passages and chambers she could feel nearby had been filled in with rubble. “This place is so strange,” Ramad whispered. “What were they doing here, before they sealed it up?”

“I think they were trying to make a new Summer Halls,” Highsun answered quietly. “Or the Summer Halls was a larger copy of this place.”

“That would make it much older than the scholars believed,” Ziede said.

“Yes,” Highsun agreed. “If the expedition had had time to truly study this place, I think we would have come to many astonishing revelations. It’s a shame to destroy it, but it must be done.”

Kai didn’t want astonishing revelations, he wanted to get this over with.

Ahead, the imps found the passage blocked, and Kai saw it wasn’t a pile of debris; it was cut blocks, carefully stacked to close off a large doorway. He studied it for signs of intentions, but there was nothing. He brushed his hands over the rough brick, just to make sure, then nodded to Tenes.

She slipped forward and put her hand on the center block. Her mouth hardened at whatever the earth spirits told her. She stepped back and signed, It’s a sealed chamber. Something alive inside, I don’t know what.

Kai told the others, “Be ready.”

Highsun said, “Do you need the—” But the blocks crumbled under Tenes’ touch. The brick material had no resistance to her, no spirits claiming it for her to cajole or negotiate with. As the debris crumbled away, white light, unnatural light, shone through the gaps. Tahren pulled Tenes behind her and stepped forward beside Kai.

Past the door was a sizable room that had once been richly appointed. A bed cubby against the side wall was covered with heavy patterned fabric and gray-white fur blankets, but they looked worn and stained. Shelves lined the other walls, full of dust-covered jeweled boxes and metal trinkets and piles of disintegrating paper with wooden bindings that might have been books or scroll cases. Copper dishes and broken ceramic lay scattered on the stone tile floor, and the stale air smelled of rotted food and piss. The light came from an elaborately figured metal bowl in the center with a glowing glass orb; Kai could see the wavering characters of the intention that powered it. Nearby was one of the heavy stone throne chairs that Hierarchs had seemed to prefer, and huddled in it was a gray, wizened figure. It said, in Old Imperial, in the pure accent Kai hadn’t heard in decades, “So you are finally here.”

“We would have come sooner if I knew we were expected.” Kai banished the imps and stepped into the room. “Where’s your expositor?”

“Barbarians, dross, coarse, heathen,” the Hierarch said, and laughed, a dry cackle that ended in a cough. “I don’t need an expositor, this close to the holy cistern.”

Kai thought to Ziede, Could that be true?

If there was an expositor here, I think we might know about it by now, she thought back. She said aloud, “How long have you been here?”

“I was born in the north.” The Hierarch peered at her. “I was the last.”

Kai strolled the periphery of the room, past a small open bathing room that smelled as if the water source had dried up days ago. There was a far door that was also blocked, but it looked recent. Very recent. The broken stone and tile might have come from the collapse of the tor’s outer entrance, and was piled haphazardly. There were two trap intentions on the half-buried sill, and Kai unraveled them without effort. He kept one eye on the Hierarch, alert for an attempt at an attack, but the Hierarch had slumped back in the chair as if exhausted. Kai said, “You should have stayed in the north. You wouldn’t have had to wait for death for so long.”

“Perhaps I should have.” The Hierarch glared at the passageway. “Come in where I can see you.”

A watchful Tahren stepped inside, and Ziede leaned in the doorway and eyed the room with contempt. She said, “Did they wall you up in here because they all disliked you, or were you supposed to do something?”

“Ah, I was waiting. I was the last, the one you didn’t kill. I was destined to destroy you all.” They laughed again, with another choking cough. “Yet here we are.”

Tahren’s expression was opaque, but Kai could read the disgust under it. “You were young, then, for such a destiny.”

“The others didn’t live,” the Hierarch told her. “They put them on the altar block one by one and one by one the holy cistern took their death instead. They were not perfect in its sight. Me, it took as its hand and body and the throat of its Voice.”

Ziede tilted her head. “How nice for you.”

The Hierarch laughed again. “I know who you are, Witch. I was shown sketches. And the forsworn Blessed with you. You haven’t changed.” They twisted in the throne to squint at Kai. “A demon. But you’re different. Are you the Witch King? The Arike King’s creature?”

It made a terrible kind of sense, making a Hierarch who was also an expositor. The Hierarchs had created the expositors to serve them, then abandoned or lost control of them as the war raged on and they were pushed out of the north. Kai used Witchspeak to ask Tenes to come over to him and said, “I am. Are you the only one here?”

“The only one,” the Hierarch said. “Everyone else died. When they died, I made them into servants but some didn’t like it.”

Ziede’s expression sharpened. “You made your own dead into constructs.”

Tenes slipped around the room to Kai’s side as the Hierarch peered at her and said, “They serve. That’s all they’re meant for. There was no dross to use. Until lately. The dross came here and I would have bled their pain into the Well and then made their bodies into servants as is right. We are the height of creation, we are destined to rule, it is our burden to shepherd all other races as our cattle.”

Ramad stepped into the room, his gaze moving over the rotted books. His expression was set and grim, his jaw tight. He seemed to have trouble looking directly at the Hierarch. Long ago, Kai had grown used to facing the monsters who had tried to eat the world, but it had to be hard for someone who had never seen one before. Ramad said, “Not all of your people died. Those who lived to the northwest of here moved away, and left you behind.”

Tahren added, “Maybe they were tired of tending to you for all those years.”

Kai thought of the empty earthwork settlement. Sura had said there were signs the inhabitants had packed and departed. He snorted. “And the Well. Hidden under all this rock, useless.” In Witchspeak he told Tenes, Can you tell what’s on the other side of this door? If this place followed the pattern of the Summer Halls, it would be another court, probably attached to a hall for attendants to assemble to worship the Hierarch. They could use it to get through into the Well chamber and make sure the rest of the constructs were dead. It would take time to bring this place down, and having to watch for stray constructs would make it all the more tiresome.

“Not useless,” the Hierarch said, but there was no heat in it. “I used the Voice to drive you away.”

“You collapsed the entrance and killed all but a few of your servants,” Ziede pointed out.

“The ones I didn’t set on fire,” Kai added.

“Forsworn, dross,” the Hierarch said, again as if by rote. Tenes signed, More rooms, possibly a larger space beyond them.

Tahren moved back beside Ziede, as if she couldn’t stand to touch anything in this ruin. “Why did they wall you in?”

“I told them to.” The Hierarch slumped wearily, as if the brief conversation was almost too much. “You found us. Years of waiting, hiding, you found us and it’s over. Are you here to kill me?” When Tahren and Ziede didn’t answer, the Hierarch turned to regard Kai.

Kai met their rheumy gaze. “Yes, we are.”

The Hierarch’s voice dropped to a bare whisper. “Good. Do it, then.”

Ramad turned with a faint frown. “Could we ask them where in the north they were born—”

Stone cracked so loud it took Kai’s hearing. He felt more than heard the rumble that shivered through the tor. Visceral fear shot through him; he had been nearly crushed here once already. It froze him for half a heartbeat.

Fortunately Tenes didn’t freeze. She grabbed Kai’s arm and slammed a hand against the debris blocking the doorway. It exploded outward into a dark room beyond. Kai jolted back into motion and shouted, “Here!”

Tahren grabbed Ziede and charged toward him. She scooped Ramad up along the way and flung him into Kai’s arms. She reached them just as Tenes planted her hands on the doorway’s stone jambs.

Rock and dirt rained down on both sides of the opening. Ramad’s arms wrapped around Kai’s neck and Kai clung to him as the tor slammed down. A huge slab shifted and fell on the center of the room, crushing the Hierarch and extinguishing the light intention, plunging them into total darkness. Icicle claws scrabbled over Kai’s skin as Ziede directed her wind-devil to snatch the remaining air out of the room and form it into a hard shell around them. It deflected the debris and smothering dirt, but the heavy rock pressed in on it.

Kai’s back was against Tenes’ side. Tahren gripped his shoulder, Ziede pinned between them.

After an eon, the rumbling stopped. They were crushed in on all sides by the collapsed weight. Only Tenes’ control over the solid stone frame of the door and Ziede’s air bubble kept them alive.

Kai called an imp. It arrived with a burst of soft light and a tiny squeak of dismay at its surroundings. Ramad gasped in disbelief. “We’re alive.”

“Yes,” Ziede said breathlessly. She squeezed Kai’s arm. “Don’t anyone jostle Tenes.”

Kai bit his cheek against the useless urge to ask Tenes questions she couldn’t answer without the use of her hands. She would either save them or not, there was nothing the rest of them could do now.

“Highsun,” Tahren said, her voice loud in Kai’s ear. “He isn’t here.”

Ramad’s beard scratched Kai’s cheek as he moved his head a little. “He was still in the corridor. He must have been killed—”

“Was he?” Kai’s voice came out a little strangled and Ramad relaxed his grip a bit. “In the corridor?”

Ziede said slowly, “He didn’t come in the room. A scholar—”

“A historical scholar,” Kai said, stronger now that more air was getting through his windpipe. Not that they had air for much longer; it was already starting to warm with their breath. “Who didn’t come into the room. Where a Hierarch was.”

Coldly angry, Tahren said, “A live remnant of the people, the place he had come all this way to study.”

Ziede agreed. “Ramad wanted us to put off killing them so he could ask where they’d been born—”

“I wouldn’t go that far—” Ramad protested, then hesitated as all the implications struck home. “Surely Highsun didn’t do this.”

“He’s the only one who could,” Tahren said damningly. “There are devices of the Well of Thosaren that can cause more violent effects than the one he used to break the slab over the passage. He must have had one with him.”

“But why try to kill us?” Ramad sounded exasperated. “The plan was to collapse the tor after killing the Hierarch. Did he think you were lying, that you wanted to take control of the Well yourselves?”

For an instant Kai wondered if that was the case. Perhaps Highsun had only pretended to trust them, perhaps he had interpreted their resolve to guard the Well as something more sinister. It would be so much easier to deal with than the alternative. Then Kai felt Tenes tremble against his side, a gasping breath. He said, “Brace—”

The wall of debris in front of Tenes exploded outward. Kai fell into a pile of sharp rock and broken tile, Ramad beside him. Dazzled by gray daylight and the relief of cool air, he could do no more than lie there, hoping the pain in his back was a broken rock and not his bones again.

Ziede dragged at his arms to pull him up. Kai managed to stagger upright. It had already dawned on him that daylight this deep in the tor was a very bad thing so the sight that met him was not wholly unexpected.

A full quarter of the tor had turned into huge piles of broken rock, fine dirt choking the air. It had buried the other rooms that must have been part of the Hierarch’s suite; the door frame and the pillars to either side of it, part of the wall attached to them, were all that was still standing in this part of the debris field. The dome over the central Well chamber was laid bare but unbroken. Made of a gray veined stone that must be stronger than everything around it, the curve of it loomed high over them. If there were any entrances on this side, they were buried under debris.

Tenes stumbled as she climbed out of the shattered door frame. Tahren was already standing, helping a dazed Ramad up.

Kai felt Ziede’s alarm just before she cried out a warning. Highsun stood atop the pile of debris that had been the outer wall of the tor. He held a metal device and Kai thought at first it must be whatever he had used to cause the collapse. Then he recognized the shape; it was a Well of Thosaren weapon. And Highsun was aiming it at them.

“Scatter,” Tahren snapped, and charged forward.

She drew her sword so fast Kai only saw a silver flash; then another as she deflected the shot from Highsun’s weapon. The whine of the device resonated in Kai’s bones, the way it had during the war. There goes any chance Highsun had a reasonable explanation for this, Kai thought as he shoved the slower Ramad into the cover of the rocks and dodged sideways. Tenes tucked herself behind the doorway’s still upright pillars. Ziede lifted upward, her hands guiding wind-devils as she prepared a blast of air to flatten Highsun.

Tahren deflected two more shots and lunged up the debris slope toward Highsun.

Kai felt the second whine before he heard it, out of step with Highsun’s weapon. His warning shout died as Tahren fell backward and slid down the slope of the rock pile. Ramad yelled, “Eleni, no!”

Eleni stood on what was left of the outer wall, some twenty paces from Highsun. She held her Thosaren weapon, her expression conflicted and determined at the same time. It had been her shot that hit Tahren.

Ziede cried out in rage. Wind-devils rushed past Kai with the cold force of a gale. He gathered the pain from his bruised back and reached for the intention on his shoulder. But he was too far away to cast it at either Immortal Blessed with any chance of hitting them. Then the air-blast struck Eleni and knocked her backwards down the wall. Highsun hesitated for an instant, then ran away along the ridge of debris.

Ramad scrambled over the rocks toward Tahren as Ziede caught Kai’s arm and lifted them both up into the air. Kai found he no longer cared about any explanation Highsun might have for this. They would puzzle it out over the man’s dead body.

Ziede carried them toward the ridge of collapsed wall as Highsun fled down the slope. He was making for an intact passage into the tor’s interior. Then Ramad shouted, “She’s not breathing!”

Ziede jerked to a halt in mid-air, gripping Kai’s arm tightly. Her eyes were wide. “Go to her!” Kai said immediately, trying to pull his arm free. Ziede was the one best able to coax breath back into someone’s lungs. “Just drop me!”

She dipped down and let him go just above the debris. Kai leapt forward and clawed his way over the rocks and shifting dirt after Highsun as Ziede shot back toward Tahren and Ramad.

He tumbled down the slope and came to his feet in time to see Highsun disappear into the dark passage. Kai raced after him.

He followed Highsun further into the ruin, darker now that so many firepots were out. Walls and columns were dangerously cracked, though there was no telling if it was from the explosion or the earlier use of the Voice. Kai had an awareness of Ziede, moving air in and out of Tahren’s lungs, keeping the blood flowing in and out of her heart as she tried to coax her to breathe on her own.

Footsteps clattered on the broken stone behind him and Kai whirled into a half crouch. But it was Tenes, slipping on the loose tile as she struggled to catch up. Her face was so pale her skin looked paper-fragile, and scrapes and cuts marked the bridge of her nose; she must have fallen into the rocks at some point. You all right? he signed rapidly.

She nodded and urged him to keep going.

Kai started across the court again, then heard the whine of the Blessed weapon. He grabbed Tenes’ arm in warning and they dropped to the floor. The carving in the wall behind them shattered. The whine continued and Kai counted heartbeats in his head; the buried knowledge of how long these weapons could fire and how long they had to rest in between had surfaced at need. Just before the whine faded he leapt up and lunged.

Highsun was on the other side of the court, framed in the doorway. His eyes widened in startled anger at Kai’s rapid approach. Then he slapped something on the doorframe and bolted. The crack echoed through the rock and Kai slid to a halt just as the doorway and wall collapsed in front of him. He stumbled back, coughing at the wave of dust.

Tenes reached him, almost falling on the broken floor, and he caught her to keep her upright. He asked, “Can you get us through that?”

Tenes stretched out a hand to the rubble, then swayed backward, obviously too weak. Kai steadied her. “No, don’t. We’ll go around.”

She followed Kai back through the court to another passage. Tenes had managed to move a lot of rock in a very short time to get them out of that doorway. It drained the will and the body to get spirits to do a Witch’s bidding, especially to force them to do it quickly enough to prevent your companions from suffocating, instead of gently coaxing them to act in their own time. Kai was covered with bruises and cuts but at least his pain aided his power; Tenes’ pain would just eat away at her concentration and stamina. She signed, I pushed too hard, I just need time to recover.

Kai didn’t think they had time. He said, frustrated, “Why is he doing this?”

Tenes tugged his arm, and when he turned toward her again, she signed, Will he make himself a Hierarch?

That seemed impossible, there had to be another reason. “He doesn’t know how,” Kai told her.

The Hierarch told us how, Tenes signed rapidly. They said they were put on an altar block. It must be here somewhere.

It flashed through Kai’s mind that Highsun had been held prisoner in the Well chamber. He had seen the stairs at the edge of the Well’s platform. He said reluctantly, “You might be right.” The block might be up there somewhere, probably near the opening into the Well. Had Highsun suspected that it was also how Hierarchs were consecrated? He stayed back in the corridor wondering if there was a way to get the answers he needed from the Hierarch, and then the Hierarch just told us. And Highsun had gone to use his explosive device to kill them, to leave the way clear for him to consecrate himself to the Well. “I hope you’re not right.”

Tenes’ expression was grim. I hope so too.

As they found their way past fallen debris and through the next two connecting passages, Kai couldn’t stop thinking about it. Could an Immortal Blessed consecrated to the Well of Thosaren actually become a Hierarch? It seemed unlikely, but Kai didn’t know enough about it. But he remembered that the Hierarchs had demanded Blessed to be consecrated as their Priests. Dahin had been selected as one, and preventing that had been the first reason Tahren turned against her own people. If the Well of the Hierarchs had some affinity for Immortal Blessed …

Kai heard movement ahead. Fighting, a clash of metal.

They turned a corner and found Arnsterath dodging around a wrecked court, hacking at a construct with a Blessed sword. Kai was tempted to just leave her, but Tenes stepped forward and touched the wall. A pillar, broken at the top and already unstable, shifted sideways and collapsed onto the construct. Pinned to the floor like a beetle, it waved too many arms, continuing to struggle.

Arnsterath regarded them warily. “What is happening—?” she began.

Kai started down the next passage. They were close now. Tenes hurried to catch up with him.

Unfortunately Arnsterath did too. She said, “I saw Ziede knock that fool of a Blessed Eleni off the tor.” That explained where Arnsterath had gotten the sword. “Why?”

Kai wanted to ignore her, but it was foolish not to explain. “Highsun betrayed us. He blew the side of the tor open.”

Tenes signed impatiently, He’s going to make himself a Hierarch!

Kai fought the impulse to argue. Just because he didn’t want it to be happening didn’t mean it wasn’t.

Arnsterath peered at Tenes uncertainly. “Highsun? Why would—”

Power flowed down the dark hallway in a suffocating wave. It took Kai’s breath, his thoughts. The next instant he realized he was crouched on the floor, Tenes beside him clutching his arm.

Arnsterath sprawled nearby, both hands pressed to her head. “That wasn’t the Voice,” she rasped out, shuddering. She had been there too, the day the Hierarchs used the Voice to destroy the Saredi and their allies.

Kai pushed it aside, made himself stand and draw Tenes up with him. There was only one thing that could be. “The Hierarch’s dead, there’s nothing, no one—” He couldn’t get the words out because he didn’t want to say them. The Hierarch who had hidden here all those years was dead. There was no one else who could make the Well do anything, except …

Arnsterath looked up at them, her face stark and unfamiliar, her hair loose and disheveled. “He made himself a Hierarch.” Her expression contorted in disgust and anger. “Can you feel it?”

A cold wind swept dry dust down the hall. Kai felt it tug at his mooring to this body, tug at the well of pain inside him. Tenes gasped and signed, We have to kill him.

Kai stared at her. Yes, kill him. “You’re right again,” he said, and closed his eyes briefly, smothering the panic. “Come on.”

As they started down the corridor, Arnsterath stumbled to her feet and followed.

Eleven

They reached the Well chamber through the same archway Kai had used last time. Not that he could tell by looking, because all the firepots had been extinguished and the huge room was now dark. Except for the clear glow of an Immortal Blessed light near the center of the platform. At least that meant that Highsun was still there.

They stood in the archway, silent, listening. Kai could hear nothing except a slight shifting that might be the grate of a boot sole against stone, the crackle of paper. Kai stepped back and whispered, “He’s made himself a Hierarch, but he doesn’t know how to use the Well yet.”

Arnsterath argued, “How do you know he doesn’t know how to use it?”

She was right, Kai didn’t. He conquered the urge to stab her and said, “Because if he does we’re all dead so there’s not much point in doing anything, is there?”

Arnsterath bared her teeth at him. “So what do we do, then?”

Tenes gestured upward and signed, He needs to remove the roof without burying the Well.

That was probably what Highsun was working on, but that crackle of paper had sent a chill through Kai’s veins. Presumably other Hierarchs were available to teach the new ones who were consecrated. If Highsun had managed to find records, accounts written by expositors or servant-nobles that might give him some clue how to draw on that power now … They could stand here paralyzed talking about it or they could do something. He said to Arnsterath, “I want you to distract him while I get close enough to kill him.”

Tenes turned sharply to him. She signed, You won’t—Not what Dahin came here for.

I won’t, Kai told her. He wasn’t sure it would work, for one thing. Killing Highsun was a far better solution. Ziede would kill me.

“Won’t what?” Arnsterath demanded. “Tell me everything, or I won’t help you.”

It took much of Kai’s strength of will not to just stamp off into the Well chamber and attack Highsun alone. But he would only get one chance and he couldn’t waste it. Gathering what was left of his patience, he said, “If a willing Immortal sacrifices their life to a death well, it supposedly destroys it.”

Arnsterath took that in, shaking her head, her expression turning suspicious. “How do I know you aren’t going to throw me in?”

“If I thought that would work, I’d do it,” he told her. Not that they had any proof one way or the other. But Kai couldn’t believe that if it had been so easy as to toss an unwilling Immortal in, someone hadn’t already tried it.

Arnsterath’s face contorted in indecision. Her clear struggle with distrust and fear didn’t endear her to Kai at all. Finally she looked to Tenes. “Are you going to help me?”

She signed, As well as I can. I’m too weak now to talk to the stone.

Arnsterath considered, biting her lip, and her expression was so much like Kai remembered Arn-Nefa, he couldn’t stand it and had to look away. She said, “All right. I think I know what we can do as a distraction.”

“Go toward the right,” Kai told her. “There are cages, and across from them are steps up to the Well platform.”

Arnsterath started away without another word. Tenes turned to Kai, grim purpose etched into her young face. She signed, Be careful.

You as well, he signed back.

She hurried to catch up with Arnsterath, and Kai took the opposite direction, around the other side of the Well.

Moving as quietly as possible, Kai ran, staying close to the wall of the platform. The cold radiating from it stung even through the sleeves and skirt of his thick coat. It was utterly silent and still, more so than any death well he had ever been this close to. It had obviously been quiescent before, even with the constructs ready to feed it with the scholars’ pain. Whether it had been the old Hierarch using the Voice or Highsun who had woken it, it made Kai’s skin creep with its power, the sense of something immense, a giant wound driven deep into the earth. Just the thought of what might be under his feet made his nerves twitch.

Kai would need to be opposite whatever distraction Arnsterath and Tenes created, but he couldn’t be sure where that was until they started. He would have to move fast once it did.

Then Arnsterath’s voice shouted, “Highsun! I bring you one of your enemies. The stone Witch.”

Kai ran another ten paces, then flung himself at the side of the Well, finding a handhold and climbing. The stone was rough and pockmarked, its icy chill stealing his breath.

“That child isn’t my enemy,” Highsun said, impatient and annoyed.

Now he says that, after shooting a death weapon at us, Kai thought grimly. He slung himself atop the platform. It was all in deep shadow except for the light around Highsun. Breaking the empty expanse of the platform was a human-sized block of white stone, knee-height to Highsun, beside a round opening about ten paces across. Highsun had set out his light and some metallic tools next to it. Tenes is right, he needs to destroy the dome so the Well can be used, Kai thought. And protect the platform? Or destroy it too? They didn’t know why Highsun wanted to be a Hierarch, but he might not want anyone else becoming one after him, either.

Arnsterath appeared across the platform, hauling an apparently mostly limp Tenes by the arm. She stopped at the very edge of the light. “Isn’t she your enemy?” Arnsterath asked pointedly. “You brought down half this hill to kill her and Kaiisteron and the others.”

Kai eased up to a crouch and started toward Highsun. He wished Arnsterath hadn’t mentioned him, reminding Highsun that Kai must still be around here somewhere. The platform was broad, nearly half the size of the great chamber. He had to get close enough to cast the intention.

“Where is Kaiisteron?” Highsun said. He glanced down at his tools again, as if distracted and anxious to get back to his task.

“I killed him,” Arnsterath said. “I want to join you, help you.” She moved closer and pulled Tenes with her. “They’ve been lying to me, saying I could find shelter with the Rising World. I need a powerful patron.”

“Stop there.” Highsun jerked his head.

Arnsterath stopped and let go of Tenes, who dropped to the ground as if unable to support herself. They seemed to have Highsun’s full attention and Kai crept closer. He had relied on intentions because of the constructs but now he wondered if he should be preparing a cantrip instead, something to trap Highsun until he could get closer. But intentions were quicker and Kai had three already prepared, this was no time to second-guess himself.

Still preoccupied with his tools, Highsun said. “I will not kill mortals or Witches, or anyone who doesn’t try to stop me. What is it you want?”

“Then who are you going to kill?” Arnsterath sounded honestly curious. Kai had to admit he was too.

“I will bring the reckoning to the Immortal Blessed that they have so long deserved.” Highsun finally looked up and took a step toward Arnsterath. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Kai, Ziede’s voice in his head whispered. Tahren’s coming around. Where are you?

Arnsterath persisted, “I just want to work for the winning side—”

Kai was almost close enough. He let Ziede see through his pearl, then darted forward to cast the intention.

Highsun turned with the speed of an Immortal Marshall, as if he had known Kai was there the whole time. The intention missed him and landed a few steps past, a wavering point of light askew on the stone. Highsun caught up the Thosaren weapon and fired.

Kai had already flung himself sideways but caught the edge of the weapon’s effect. His legs went numb and he crashed face-first into the stone of the platform. A mortal or a Witch would have been killed instantly. Kai snarled in rage and struggled to roll over. Highsun stood over him.

Highsun watched him solemnly, with no sign of triumph or regret. “If I left you like this, you would die slowly and the Well would absorb your pain. But you fought these creatures for so many years, I cannot let that happen.” He lifted the Thosaren weapon and pointed it at Kai’s head. “A quick death—” He choked, coughed, his expression startled. Then he lifted a hand to his mouth and spat out a yellow springflower.

Kai’s laugh was mostly hiss. It was Tenes’ best cantrip.

Highsun staggered, coughing. Arnsterath paced closer to circle him. Tenes stood a little way behind her, her expression hard with concentration.

Then through the freezing stone, Kai felt power gather and rise. He shouted, “Run, the Well—”

The Voice rose from the Well. Kai saw the light of it take physical form, saw it hang in the air like an intention’s design. Instinct made him roll over and cover his head. He waited to die, that instant of sight carved into his eyelids, a column too bright to look at that was somehow the absence of all light at the same time.

The smothering power died away. Silence rang in his ears. Until Arnsterath made a startled noise. Kai tried to struggle upright. His legs prickled with the return of feeling as his body repaired the damage the Well weapon had done, but it wasn’t fast enough. He managed to shove himself into a sitting position.

Highsun still stood, holding the Well weapon. He stared toward Arnsterath, who sprawled on the platform. Tenes stood as well, but she wasn’t moving. Her gaze was fixed, her pale skin turning blue even as Kai watched. In silence, she crumpled to the stone of the platform like an empty set of clothing.

Highsun wiped his mouth. “I had no idea it could do that. A short, controlled burst.” He nodded to himself. “It explains how the original Hierarchs retained so much control over their subjects. In close proximity, if they could use it as self-protection.” He raised the weapon at Arnsterath. “A good test, but I must—”

Arnsterath launched herself at Highsun. She was under his guard before he could fire, clamped herself to his chest, one hand gripping his face. Kai’s yell was wordless, urging her on. He crawled toward them, dragging his almost useless legs, close enough to see into the Well’s living liquid darkness. He wanted to help, he wanted a taste of Highsun’s life before Arnsterath took it all, he wanted to tear the man apart with his hands and teeth.

The Well weapon fell to the stone of the platform. Something crystal in the shaft broke into ice-like fragments. Highsun dragged Arnsterath off his chest and shook her like a doll. He flung her down so hard that Kai heard the crack of bone. Highsun backed away. Blood streaked his face from her nails, the gouges already healing. She rolled to a crouch, one knee at an odd angle, her fingers wrenched out of their sockets from the effort to hold on. She snarled, “I can’t drain him.”

“How?” Kai rasped. He thought he was stronger than Arnsterath. If he could try, or they could try together. He crawled closer.

Highsun just stepped away from him. “Another side effect of the immediate contact with the Well, I presume.” He looked down at the broken weapon, and his mouth twisted in dismay. Then he held out his hands. “We’ll see if my aim with the Well is any better with practice.”

Kai wanted to howl his rage but he reached out through his pearl, found Ziede flying through the corridors, trying to find her way here. He sent, Stay back, he’s using the Well, and added, love you. Then he closed off his mind from her because he didn’t want her to feel him die in this body. What the focused power of the Well would do to him, so close, he had no idea. He thought it might shatter his consciousness entirely.

That sense of depthless power gathered under the platform again. Arnsterath’s face set with bitter anger, then she smiled, and laughed. Highsun’s brow furrowed as he looked at her. Then she rolled backward into the dark pit of the Well.

Kai’s heart froze in his chest. Baffled, Highsun said, “Now what was the point of—”

The platform shuddered and cracked right across. Kai jerked away from the rift that opened next to him and nearly fell in. He scrabbled away a little. He realized the stone under his hands was no longer icy cold. It was just stone, with a dull chill from the lack of sunlight. He lifted his hands and stared at them, wondering if his whole body had gone numb.

Highsun’s face was incredulous. “No,” he said, “No, no.”

Kai crawled to the edge of the pit. The liquid darkness was gone. It was just a gouge in the earth, a crevice of jagged dark rock leading down. On a ledge, just at the edge of the Blessed light, Arnsterath’s body lay, still and broken.

Behind him, Highsun cried out, “How?”

It was an echo of Kai’s earlier question, and somehow that was bitterly hilarious. Kai twisted around to face him and laughed.

Highsun stood there, breathing hard, frustrated and bewildered and so angry. His jaw hardened in thwarted rage and he said, “I should kill you.”

Kai’s only thought was a wail of loss for Tenes. He had enough healed muscle to fling himself forward, if he tried very, very hard. He rasped out, “You should, you absolutely should, just come closer.”

But Highsun wasn’t stupid, and took a step back. He shook his head. “You think Ziede Daiyahah will fare better against me?”

Kai grinned with all his teeth. Hierarchs and Immortal Blessed still needed to breathe.

Highsun wiped his face again, the tracks of where Arnsterath’s nails had ripped into soft flesh already healed. As if talking to himself, he said, “Then I should go.”

He stepped to the tools still scattered on the platform, scooped them into his bag, tucked the papers carefully in. Kai said, “There’s nowhere you can go that we can’t find you.” He meant inside the half-collapsed tor, the valley, the hills and plains around it.

Highsun straightened, slinging his bag over his shoulder. He had something in his hand, a small stone. Highsun said gravely, “Then I look forward to meeting you again.”

The platform blazed briefly with light. Light from the Well of Thosaren. And Highsun vanished.

Kai stared, and then wanted to laugh. Highsun had had a second key to the anchor stone near the camp. Or a different anchor stone entirely. He would travel away from here, stone to stone, to Ancartre or one of the stops near it. He might have concealed another ascension raft at one of those places, they had no way to know.

Ziede swept into the room and landed on the platform, bringing the clean scent of fresh outdoor air with her. Kai hadn’t realized how intense the miasma of death was until then. He said, “Highsun’s gone. He had a Thosaren anchor key.”

Ziede put a hand to her temple. Her clothes were stained with dirt, her face streaked with sweat and tears. “Are you—” she began, and then shook her head helplessly.

No, Kai wasn’t all right. “You saw?” he asked her dully.

“Part of it. Enough.” Ziede knelt beside Tenes. She was a crumbled little bundle, her face concealed by the fall of her hair. Ziede touched her neck gently and her jaw hardened. She pulled her hand back and stood.

“Arnsterath’s in the Well,” Kai told her. “She gave it her life.”

“Kai,” Ziede said, and something in her tone snapped him out of his daze. “She’s not in the Well anymore.”

Tenes stirred and lifted her head. Her eyes were all-black, demon-black.

The Past: the Pledge

The Hierarchs expected us to fight, like crabs clawing at one another to escape a bucket; they never expected us to fight together, all the east and west and north as one.

—The Serdar-kin, Light of the Northern Reach and Bearer of the Memory of Nibet

As the sky lightened with dawn, Kai sat on the steps of what was left of the Hierarch’s house. The clean sea wind was at his back, carrying away the smoke and stench of death.

Most of the platform and the bridge to the port was still there, but the demons’ troopship had pulled part of it down when it sank. Only the bow stood up out of the murky water, the rest had burned to the waterline. The other troopship was afloat but still smoked from the smaller fires that had raced through it. Kai hadn’t even had to help with that, the legionaries had done it themselves by panicking and knocking over lamps. Then most had fled down the bridge to die as they met the Arike troops sweeping into the fort.

Behind Kai, there was nothing left of the Hierarch’s house but pilings. In the panic and confusion of the fire, Kai had killed the Hierarch, and her severed head, somewhat charred, sat on the step beside him. Some of the servant-nobles had gone into the water, but Vartasias and the two other expositors with him had run out to try to stop the fire on the demon ship and died there.

The fort itself had fared better. There were a few plumes of smoke, probably from accidental fires, but most of it seemed intact. Not that they would be staying here long. Only until the Enalin arrived to start the long drive toward the southern coast.

Kai saw movement along the wharf, which resolved into his cadre, who had found him a few hours ago. He had taken their report and they had taken his to give to Bashasa and the other commanders, and he had sent them to get some rest. Salatel had balked, but he had told her why he had to stay out here: to make certain none of the demons managed to find a dead mortal body to take on.

But it had been long enough, now. With the path to the underearth closed, their bodies destroyed by fire and then water, the demons would be drifting now, their minds fading away. It was still a kind of life, probably. Just not the kind anyone Kai knew wanted.

He pushed himself upright, muscles stiff from lack of movement, picked up the Hierarch’s head, and started down the bridge.

Crossing back through the fort felt a little dream-like. Salatel pressed him to drink some water, and Cerala had his black expositor’s coat and urged him to put it on. That was when Kai realized he had lost his brown cotton one, and vaguely remembered having to discard it when it caught fire at one point. They didn’t have a spare bag for the Hierarch’s head, but that was just as well; it was better that as many see it as possible.

They passed through the port, then up along the road past the barracks. There were tired Arike soldiers, piles of the dead, groups of guarded legionary prisoners. Bashasa would have already ordered that the civilians, the workers and servants and families, if any, be released to flee. He would execute only the higher servant-nobles and officers. Everyone went quiet as they saw what Kai carried.

The upper town was still almost deserted, since most of the fighting had been in the lower part of the fort. Amabel, Tangeld, Isa, Hawkmoth, and Shearwater and some of the other Witches fell in with the cadre, trailing after Kai as they made their way through the streets. Kreat caught up with them and tried to poke the Hierarch’s head, and was scolded by Isa and sent back to walk beside Amabel.

As they drew near the gate tower, Kai recognized people from the supply train carrying the equipment to set up their kitchens and infirmaries into the portico of what had been a grand house, probably for the highest servant-noble. Salatel led the way inside it to a large foyer, where the Arike murals on the walls had been painted over with some kind of gray wash, and hung with weapons and trophies. None of the lamps had been lit and it was dim and cool and somehow calm.

Ziede met them there, and she looked well, not even too tired. Kai knew she had spent most of the battle in the air with her wind-devils, coordinating between the different Prince-heirs’ forces. She shooed his cadre and the other Witches away, saying, “Yes, you’ve seen the Hierarch’s head, very impressive. He has to meet with the Prince-heir now.”

“Go get some food,” Kai told them all. The suppliers would have cold rations to hand out even if they hadn’t had a chance to start cooking fires yet.

“Send for us when you need us, Fourth Prince,” Salatel told him, and led the group away.

Ziede led Kai up a set of broad stairs into a mostly open balcony with latticed windows letting in the breeze, though there was still lingering smoke in the air. The tiled floors and carved stone of the walls were almost untouched, except for a spray of blood in one corner. Ziede took Kai’s arm, looked into his eyes, and asked quietly, “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” As an afterthought, Kai admitted, “I got a little scorched. How are Tahren and Dahin?” He thought someone would have told him if they had been hurt; Salatel had reported casualties and injuries last night. Kai mainly wanted to know if Tahren was angry with him.

“Dahin is very proud of himself, and Tahren was somewhat annoyed.” Ziede answered the unspoken question. “But we’ve agreed that you … had enough to deal with today and she and Dahin are going to settle it between themselves.”

That was good. Kai wanted to comment that it sounded like Tahren and Dahin hadn’t had much choice in making that agreement, but his thoughts were still too scattered to put the words together.

Ziede opened a door and they walked into a room with one curved wall of windows, looking out on the plaza in front of the gate tower. Bashasa was there, and Lahshar, several of their cadre soldiers, a few vanguarders and an Enalin messenger Kai vaguely recognized. He thought they had been with the Tescai-lin in the Summer Halls. There was a table already covered with maps and papers. Everyone was dusty, grimy, and a little blood-spattered. The conversation stopped abruptly and they all stared. Then Bashasa said, “We’ll continue this when Hiranan and the others are free. If you’ll excuse me!”

The others moved to leave immediately, even Lahshar, whose glance at Kai was a little wide-eyed and hard to read. Arava stepped up with an open bag. Kai put the Hierarch’s head in and she whisked it away.

Kai didn’t notice that Ziede had left too until Bashasa stepped up to him and took his hands. “Kai,” Bashasa said, and turned Kai’s hands palm up to look at the fading burns. “Trenal will bring food as soon as the suppliers have it ready. I want you to stay with me for the rest of the day.”

Kai frowned. “Is someone trying to kill you?”

Bashasa let out his breath. “Not more so than usual. Kai, Ziede told me what happened.”

Oh, Kai didn’t want to talk about that. He had told Salatel to report to Bashasa, but that had been some time ago and he was not nearly as numb now. “I made sure they won’t come back.” His voice was suddenly hoarse and raw.

Bashasa pulled him close, and Kai felt something inside himself break. He did not burst into tears, but only because the fire intentions had taken so much out of him that he felt as desiccated as the corpses still stacked like cordwood along the wharf. He buried his face in Bashasa’s neck and choked out, “It’s what I came here to do.”

“You came here to face them in battle,” Bashasa said softly. “This was not something you expected.”

Kai had cried for the Saredi in the Cageling Demon Court, but he wasn’t sure he had ever truly mourned. Maybe part of him had never really understood that their way of life was dead and buried, would never come back, maybe would never even be remembered. He understood it now. The Hierarchs hadn’t just killed them; they had utterly destroyed everything they were, twisted it into something terrible. “I want to stay with you,” he said into Bashasa’s neck. He smelled of sweat and horse and the copper tang of blood. Between that and the smoke of burned bodies saturating Kai’s clothes and hair and skin, they were like the war encapsulated.

“Ah, good,” Bashasa said, his breath warm on Kai’s ear. “We will stay together then.”

“And drive the Hierarchs into the southern sea,” Kai whispered.

Bashasa lifted his head and smiled. “That too.”

Acknowledgments

It’s been a hard couple of years since 2023, when I had two books coming out, several con appearances, including an international one, two book tours, and in the middle of all that, breast cancer. The fact that this book got written at all seems incredible to me at times. But it wouldn’t have happened without all the people who made it clear they had my back.

I’d like to thank my agents Jennifer Jackson and Michael Curry.

My editor Lee Harris and the rest of the Tordotcom/Tor Publishing Group team:

- Editorial: Matt Rusin

- Marketing: Michael Dudding, Eileen Lawrence, and Sam Friedlander

- Publicity: Desirae Friesen

- Managing editor: Rafal Gibek

- Production manager: Steven Bucsok

- Production editor: Megan Kiddoo

- Copy editor: Amanda Hong

- Proofreaders: Rachel Bass and Ed Chapman

- Cover artist: Cynthia Sheppard

- Cover designer: Christine Foltzer

- Interior designer: Greg Collins

Also by Martha Wells

THE MURDERBOT DIARIES

All Systems Red

Artificial Condition

Rogue Protocol

Exit Strategy

Network Effect

Fugitive Telemetry

System Collapse

BOOKS OF THE RAKSURA

The Cloud Roads

The Serpent Sea

The Siren Depths

The Edge of Worlds

The Harbors of the Sun

Stories of the Raksura: Volume I

(short fiction)

Stories of the Raksura: Volume II

(short fiction)

THE FALL OF ILE-RIEN TRILOGY

The Wizard Hunters

The Ships of Air

The Gate of Gods

STANDALONE ILE-RIEN BOOKS

The Element of Fire

The Death of the Necromancer

Between Worlds: The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories

OTHER STANDALONE NOVELS

City of Bones

Wheel of the Infinite

THE RISING WORLD SERIES

Witch King

YA NOVELS

Emilie and the Hollow World

Emilie and the Sky World

TIE-IN NOVELS

Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary

Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement

Star Wars: Razor’s Edge

About the Author

MARTHA WELLS has written many novels, including the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Murderbot Diaries series, which has won multiple Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Alex Awards, and has been adapted into an Apple Original TV series. Other titles include Witch King, City of Bones, The Wizard Hunters, Wheel of the Infinite, the Books of the Raksura series (beginning with The Cloud Roads and ending with The Harbors of the Sun), and the Nebula Award–nominated The Death of the Necromancer, as well as YA fantasy novels, short stories, and nonfiction. You can sign up for email updates here.

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Dramatis Personae

The Past: the Spark

One

The Past: the Fire

Two

The Past: the Hazard

Three

The Past: the Offer

Four

The Past: the Choice

Five

The Past: the Prelude

Six

The Past: the Testament

Seven

The Past: the Trap

Eight

The Past: the Dawn

Nine

The Past: the Conflagration

Ten

Eleven

The Past: the Pledge

Acknowledgments

Also by Martha Wells

About the Author

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

QUEEN DEMON

Copyright © 2025 by Martha Wells

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Cynthia Sheppard

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates / Tor Publishing Group

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ISBN 978-1-250-82691-6 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-250-82692-3 (ebook)

eISBN 9781250826923

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First Edition: 2025