The Sword Chronicles: Child of Sorrows
Author: Michaelbrent Collings
Date: 2016-06-20 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Fiction; Young Adult; Action
Description: THE FINAL BOOK IN THE TRILOGY NOW AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER AT https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K6T5MH4 PRAISE FOR THE SWORD CHRONICLES SERIES: "Epic fantasy meets superheroes, with lots of action and great characters. The Sword Chronicles is dark yet hopeful, and very entertaining. Collings is a great storyteller." - Larry Correia, New York Times bestselling author of Monster Hunter International and Son of the Black Sword "[A] thoroughly amazing experience." - MySF Reviews "A great book and what looks to be an interesting start of a series that could be amazing." - Game Industry News "[A]n excellen
Publisher: Written Insomnia Press

Copyright © 2016 by Michaelbrent Collings

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author. For information send request to info@michaelbrentcollings.com.

NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

cover and interior art elements © Michaelbrent Collings breakermaximus,

Romolo Tavani, faestock, and nouskrabs
used under license from Shutterstock.com
cover design by Michaelbrent Collings

PRAISE FOR THE WORK OF

MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS

"Epic fantasy meets superheroes, with lots of action and great characters…. Collings is a great storyteller."    - Larry Correia, New York Times bestselling author of Monster Hunter International and Son of the Black Sword

"... intense... one slice of action after another... a great book and what looks to be an interesting start of a series that could be amazing." - Game Industry News

"Collings is so proficient at what he does, he crooks his finger to get you inside his world and before you know it, you are along for the ride. You don't even see it coming; he is that good." – Only Five Star Book Reviews

"What a ride.... This is one you will not be able to put down and one you will remember for a long time to come. Very highly recommended." – Midwest Book Review

"I would be remiss if I didn’t say he’s done it again. Twists and turns, and an out-come that will leave one saying, 'I so did not see that coming.'" – Audiobook Reviewer

"His prose is brilliant, his writing is visceral and violent, dark and enthralling." – InD'Tale Magazine

"I literally found my heart racing as I zoomed through each chapter to get to the next page." – Media Mikes

Dedication

To...

those who struggle to make the world a better place,
not through fighting

(though that sometimes has its place),
not through anger,
but through kindness,
and understanding,
and appreciation for those who share
this strange, wonderful world…

and to Laura, FTAAE.

PROLOGUE: gods

"Some say: From whence come we? To this I answer: We are of the gods. We come from them, and some day to them we shall return. For as the Gods once were, so now are we; and as the Gods now are, so may we someday become. The house of the Gods is ours to claim, our birthright and our destined future."

- Emperor Eka, First Rules and
Commandments of the Ascension

The Guardian held a body in his arms.

Darkness covered him, and that was right. That which a Guardian does in the Place Above must be done under cover of darkness. That was ingrained in the Guardian's body, in every particle of his being.

The Guardian walked forward in the pure darkness, and as he did he thought.

This, he knew, was something that should not be. Guardians did not think. Not beyond the limited needs of their tasks.

His task was to take this body and place it atop the spike. To impale it and leave it.

The darkness would cover him, and that the spires would always be there when he or his brothers came to do their hidden work. The People Above had tried several times to destroy those spires. To pull them down or dig them up. But the spears that stood in a ring around the castle were of a substance too strong to be destroyed by means magical or mundane. And they ran too deep to be dug out – to the very foundations of the mountain itself.

The spires would stand forever. And the darkness would come when they saw use.

That darkness was thick, and had physical presence. No torch could cut it, no magic light could part the curtain it spread over all. It was so real a thing that the Guardian could actually feel it.

Feeling.

Another thing he knew set him apart. None of his brother-Guardians felt. None of the others seemed to understand anything at all. They had jobs, those jobs were done: the end and sum of their existence.

But not him. Not this Guardian.

And yet was he really any better? Any more? Even as he pondered his own reality, he realized he was climbing the spike. Which spike would hold the body had been decided through a complex mathematical process that would yield the closest thing to a random choice that was humanly possible.

Humanly.

The Guardian almost laughed. Didn't. Silence was part of the task.

He reached the top of the spike, holding himself up easily with one hand, the other arm all that was needed to hoist the body atop the spire.

He was very, very strong. But he took no pride in that fact. It simply was – like everything else about him. Like he himself.

He pushed the body atop the spire, the sharp point pushing at the corpse's back. When he let go of it, the weight of the body was enough to drive the spike deeply into it. The Guardian then grabbed one of the dead man's –

(It is a man, isn't it? Like me? Am I a man?)

– legs, and one of his arms. He released his legs' grip on the pole, and added his weight to the body's own. The spire punched the rest of the way through the body, and the body then slid down the shaft. One foot. Two. Three.

Enough.

The Guardian let go and dropped to the ground far below. He landed silently. Looked up. He could not see through the mist of darkness that accompanied him to this place, but he knew what was there. The man who had dared travel Below was ready. He would be found in the light. Then….

Then what?

The Guardian did not know. He did not know so much.

He walked away, something inside guiding him as he passed over feet and yards and miles. The darkness receded as he walked, so slowly that even he – he who had done this task a thousand times, and would do so a thousand more – barely noticed it.

He did notice the woman, though. Not all at first, and yet very quickly. She crept into his notice, through a back door in his mind, so that when he finally became aware of her it seemed that she was all that existed. She was all he saw… and she was all he wanted to see.

He brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. He had never done that before. It was not impeding his vision, so why?

I must look terrible.

Another first. He had never worried about his appearance – had never wondered if his hair, which was bright red, with a streak of gray down one side, would be pleasing or ugly to another's sight.

He knew that he was supposed to be of a type that none would remember, that would pass in and out of others' attention with the same impact as a light wind: real, but invisible. Real, but beneath notice.

That was the way of the Guardians.

That was his way.

"Why do you stare?"

The Guardian didn't realize the woman was speaking to him until she repeated the question.

He pushed his hair back again, and felt his spine straighten.

Why? Why am I changing who I am?

(Please her.)

He walked toward the woman. A strange sensation came over him. A shift in the bones and muscles of his face.

He was smiling.

He knew what a smile was, of course. He had seen it in others during his work. Even some of the Guardians could smile – the ones tasked with finer, more sophisticated elements of the Work.

But he had never done it before. And yet it seemed the only thing to do.

"I… am sorry."

The Guardian's tongue stumbled. He rarely spoke. It was not a part of his job. He hung the bodies. He left the warnings.

The woman laughed. It was a bright, merry sound. It made something inside the Guardian ache. Made him recognize a void he had carried with him for the entirety of his existence, but had never recognized until now, until this moment when something finally filled it. The laughter completed him – or nearly so – and the Guardian wondered, for the first time in all his years, if he had a soul.

She laughed again, and he knew he did.

"Don't be sorry," she said. She was drawing water from a small stream that ran through the middle of the town, and sudden worry crinkled her eyes. She dipped a small cup into water, and offered it to him. "Would you like to drink?"

The Guardian knew he should not. The part inside him that told him what to do, where to go, was screaming. He had deviated from his course. He must return. Perhaps be… repaired.

But he did not return to his place. He stepped toward the woman. Every step closer to her took him farther away from his designs. Every step closer to her made the voice telling him he was changing what must not change become quieter.

He reached for the cup.

She put it in his palm.

Their hands touched.

The woman smiled. "You don't say much," she said.

He smiled back. "No."

"That's all right. I like you anyway."

At that moment, a boy came around the corner of a building. That he was this woman's child could not be doubted. Not that he looked anything like her. He was only six or seven, but there was none of the coltish figure, the exuberance the Guardian had seen in other children. This boy was hunched over, his back swollen to the point it looked almost as though he carried a sack beneath his tunic. He stood at a lopsided angle, one of his legs visibly shorter than the other, and his face was a mismatched, asymmetrical mask: the nose pushed to the side, the eyes not quite level with each other.

But those eyes were the same color, the same shape, as those of the woman at the water's edge.

And the way she smiled at him told the Guardian the tale, even before she said the words. "My son," said the woman. "Vrisha."

The child held something in his gnarled hands. A yellow stone of some kind. As the Guardian watched, the stone glowed slightly. The boy seemed to realize what had happened, and quickly stuffed the stone into his pocket. But he didn't leave.

He smiled, too. And even though the smile came through lopsided lips, it was still somehow just like his mother's.

The Guardian's grin stretched so wide it hurt. He looked at the boy for a long time. "Vrisha. Vrisha the Jeweler," he said, tasting the sounds. They felt good. Right.

No Guardian had ever made a joke before, he suspected.

But does that mean I am broken? Or healed?

He suspected the former. And did not care.

The boy smiled slowly. Embarrassed, but clearly enjoying the title.

The Guardian looked back at the woman, and spoke words he thought had never been spoken by his kind before.

"May I sit here awhile? May I… stay?"

ONE: ends begun

"And the crown rested upon me, and I held the scepter of power, and I said: of a truth, this is my world, and this is my glory. And I shall hold all in the palm of my hand, and shall protect it, for were it not so, all would fall, and great would be the devastation thereof."

- Emperor Eka, First Rules and
Commandments of the Ascension

1

It is said that dead men spin no tales. But though true that may be, also true is this: they scream, and they howl, and they claw at the thick barriers that surround Halaw, better known as the Netherworld, and known best of all as the Walled City of Fear.

One of the men actually managed to get his fingers on the top of the wall, here on a place where it was low, where it sagged a bit on the inside.

Barnas smashed his club down on the man's hand. He heard the familiar sound of snapping bones. The man had already been screaming: first the scream of so many in the city, the scream of hunger and rage and fear all bound in a tight knot; then the scream of triumph as he felt freedom in his grasp; then the scream of agony as his hand collapsed under the weight of the iron band that circled the thick wood of Barnas' club.

The sound made Barnas wince, though he heard it at least three times a week since he'd been here.

And how long have I been here?

Barely any time at all. But far too long. Forever.

Another hand reached up. This time the club that swung down belonged to Ikaia, the second guard stationed on this section of the wall.

Crack.

The crackle of individual bones could not be heard under the power of Ikaia's blow. Just the dull thud of the huge man's even huger club half-burying itself in the stone of the wall.

The prisoner shrieked and fell away, leaving the mass of flesh that had once been a hand behind, still pinned beneath Ikaia's club.

"They are bold today," said Ikaia. He wrenched his club away from the stone with a grunt, then cleaned off the meat and blood by scraping it along the wall. The wall was already coated with a thick layer of ash – the Netherworlds was located on the mountain of Fear, which wasn't a mountain at all, but a volcano. And ash was always spewing from some wound in the earth or another. The land wept poisonous tears that made it impossible to stay clean, that spread disease, that killed nearly half of the children born in this place.

Fear indeed.

"Bold. Yes," Barnas said. Though with the loss of the man's hand, the unkempt group that had attacked – or the few who had made it through the bowfire the tower archers had rained down on them – seemed to lose their nerve. They slunk into the shadows and disappeared.

Most of them. One more lost himself to the bowmen as a single arrow arced down from the tower that loomed over all this part of the wall. It took the convict in the back of the head. He fell without a sound.

Barnas was silent for a moment. He stared at the prisoner.

What am I doing here?

Ikaia seemed to sense Barnas' mood going down. He clapped his big hand on Barnas' shoulder. "Remember that all is well."

"How can you say that?"

"Because you are on the wall, and not within it, my friend."

Ikaia laughed. Like most of the people who claimed Fear as their ancestral home, he was large and dark of skin, with eyes that flashed as though he had somehow contrived to capture some of the fire from below the mountain and lash it to his very soul.

He laughed much, did Ikaia. And that was a rarity here, in this place where men came to die – either because they were judged worthy of a slow death in an entire city of convicts, or because they were judged worthy of an even slower death as the ones tasked to keep those men in their place.

"Stop!"

Barnas jerked at the word – though it was one he heard at least a dozen times a day as prisoners tested the walls, and tested the guards.

Ikaia clapped his hand down again, and Barnas figured he would probably have bruises all over that shoulder when he took his armor off tonight. "You are jumpy today, my friend."

"I'm jumpy every day, Ikaia."

He looked up to the source of the sound in time to hear it repeated: "Stop, or be fired upon!"

The voice came from the tower, and Barnas could see an arrowhead edging through the slit cut in the tower wall. He jumped again when he saw where it was pointing: not inside, but outside the walls.

One thing they never had to worry about: people trying to get into the Walled City. The people in the city were all either thought to be dead, or thought of as better off that way. And who in their right mind would want to join them?

And yet here were three people, approaching the wall. This wasn't the gate, so there was no road. They were just picking their way over and around the black volcanic rock that served as the ground here. A bit of a marvel in and of itself, considering that one of them wasn't even walking.

"Halt! Now! This is your last warning!" The arrowhead moved slightly, and another one appeared in the arrow slit directly beside it. Then a third beside that one.

The three newcomers stopped. No one spoke. Easy to see why the guards in the tower didn't say anything: what could you say to three people wandering about in a barren land, approaching a city of madmen and murderers?

"Get down on your knees!"

Ikaia laughed. "Really, Na?"

Barnas almost laughed, too. It was only the strangeness of the moment that stilled his voice.

"All of us?"

One of the newcomers spoke – the reason for Ikaia's laughter. It was he who had come to the wall without walking – and, indeed, it was clear he couldn't walk, for his legs were small and withered. Instead of walking, he sat on a strange contraption unlike anything Barnas had seen. It was a chair, but it had two large wheels attached at two its sides, with two smaller wheels behind them, and another two smaller wheels before. When the man moved a lever, the chair moved forward of its own accord – it must have been enchanted by a Push.

The man himself was old. No, ancient. So wrinkled it was hard to tell what he looked like, any more than one could tell the form of a grape by looking at a raisin. A few strands of white hair clung to his otherwise bald head, and a thin curl of a beard spun like a spider's web down to the rumpled remains of thick leather clothing that looked as though it had been burned repeatedly. Not by a great fire, but by the falling of hundreds of small sparks: round, dark patches in the leather, singed and blackened.

Barnas glanced behind himself. No convicts appeared to have noticed this strange event, no one was making another ill-advised attempt to break out.

As if there's anywhere to run to. Surrounded by leagues of nothing but ash and glass.

He turned back to the trio. The old man hadn't answered Ikaia. The big man pursed his lips and his normally walnut complexion tinted crimson. "Answer me, old man. Where did you get that outfit? Because if you're an Imperial general, I'm the First of Gods."

The old man nodded gravely, as though Ikaiah had just said something deep and important. Then he leaned toward one of his companions.

The girl beside him was just as strange as he was. She looked to be about twelve, dressed in the thick fur coat of the northern lands of Strength – ridiculous-looking anywhere but those lands, but especially so in the sweltering heat of Fear. She held something in her hands, a small puff of fur that Barnas didn't even realize was alive until he saw it move.

"What in the name of the Gods is – is she holding a woolly?" said Ikaia.

"I think so," said Barnas. "Ikaia, what's going on?"

"I don't know, but I'm starting to get a bad feeling."

Barnas nodded. Something cold had started to coil around his guts, to slip up his spine.

Apparently the bowmen felt the same. "DO. NOT. MOVE."

The old man ignored the command. He leaned to the other side, to the third member of the party. It was a young man, perhaps barely into his twenties, but so big he could have picked up Ikaia by the scruff of the neck, shaken him like a puppy, and tossed him away. Barnas suspected the only reason he hadn't been shot on first sight was his expression: it was one of vacuous joy. From his complexion and his size, Barnas guessed this man, like Ikaia, had been born in Fear. From the look on his face, Barnas guessed the big man had been born – as so many in this land were – with a disease of the brain that kept him locked in the mind of a child.

The old man finished whispering to the big man, who laughed like a toddler and clapped.

"This is your last warning!" shouted the bowmen from the tower.

The old man ignored him. He stared straight at Barnas. "You look young, boy. How long have you been in the Army?"

Barnas gulped. He looked at Ikaia, who shook his head and shrugged, clearly just as unsure as he was about how to go about responding to the question.

"Uh… three months, sir."

"I thought as much. You haven't grown enough to be part of the problem yet." The old man waved. "You may leave."

Barnas cocked his head. "What? What – I mean… what?" The old man might as well have been speaking the language of the Old Ones for all the sense he was making.

The old man's eyes narrowed – or at least, the wrinkles around where his eyes should be deepened slightly, which Barnas assumed meant his eyes were narrowing. "Are you slow, boy? Get out of here!"

"Where do I – why should I leave?"

"So we don't kill you."

Ikaia, for once, didn't laugh. He appeared just as stunned by the statement as Barnas was.

Laughter came from the guard tower, though. Gruff laughter that made it clear all five men in that hot box of stone and iron thought this an amusing – and probably welcome – break in their usually dull routine of killing convicts.

The old man ignored them. Nor did he seem to notice the other wall guards who were beginning to converge on this section as, one by one, they noticed something new.

New was rarely good in this place.

"Well?" he said. "Are you going to leave?"

Leave, said a voice in Barnas' head. You hate it here. You've always hated it here, so run! Get away!

Run!

But a saner part answered: And where would you go? And how long before the guards butchered these three, hunted you down, and then butchered you, too, as a deserter?

He shook his head. "I am a solder in the Imperial Army. I am a servant to the Empire. I will not leave."

Ikaia put a proud hand on his shoulder. "Well sai –"

The big man's voice cut out. Barnas frowned – it wasn't like his friend to stop talking for any reason, let alone in the middle of a sentence. He saw his friend's hand, fingers still clenched tightly on his shoulder.

But the hand was attached to an arm that ended at the elbow.

And the rest of Ikaia was just… gone. There was only a thin cloud of blood to mark the place where his friend had been only a moment before.

Someone screamed – Barnas thought it might have been him – and then he heard the distinctive thwap of bowstrings being released, the shhhhk of arrows passing overhead.

He looked at the threesome, and no longer cared how harmless they looked, because clearly they were not harmless, clearly they were dangerous, they had just killed his friend and the only thing he could say about them was that he wanted them to die.

Time seemed to both speed up and slow down. It reminded Barnas of his first day on the wall, the first time a lunatic had run at him, spittle flying, teeth gnashing. The fear. The certainty he was going to die. The relief when he didn't.

Because Ikaia saved me.

He turned. Followed the arrows' flight.

Saw.

The first arrow sped to the girl. She didn't shrink from it. Didn't flee. Instead, she threw the woolly at it. The thing, a foot-long ball of fur, the kind of thing mothers gave to infants to sleep with and keep them company at night, flee into the air…

… and grew.

In the space of the few feet between the girl's hands and when it met the arrow, the woolly went from a foot long to something that towered over the girl: probably ten feet tall, and broad in proportion. Its four legs became many-knuckled things that gave it a strangely arachnid appearance, and its snout split to accommodate a suddenly too-wide mouth.

The arrow sped toward it, and it didn't move away. It simply swallowed the arrow mid-flight, and seemed no worse the wear for it.

The monster was connected to little girl's wrist by some kind of leash that ran from her wrist to its neck. The leash pulsed with a sickly yellow light, something unhealthy and unwholesome, and as he watched the girl seemed to… fade. She drooped, like wax from a candle that has burned too long. Then she fell forward, and seemed to merge with the leash and through it with the thing that had once been a woolly.

The monster grew still more as it merged with the girl. Its teeth grew even longer and sharper, and it bellowed a terrible shriek that seemed to shake the ash from the air. Then it leaped the fifty feet between it and the guard tower. It snapped another arrow out of the air mid-leap, then slammed into the side of the tower, driving huge talons deep into the stone and climbing up the side.

The next of the arrows hit the simpleton. This one found its mark, as did the next one. The first hit the big man in the shoulder, the next one took him in the neck. He shivered, but was strong: he didn't fall. Instead, he stood there and writhed, his features a study in agony.

If it weren't for the fact that he had just seen his friend utterly destroyed, Barnas would have felt bad for him.

A final arrow made its slow-fast way toward the old man. Barnas felt a smile split his face, for surely the old man was the person behind the evil that had come to the wall this day.

The old man waited…

… waited…

… the simpleton kept twitching, shivering, shaking, kept not falling…

… the huge monster that had once been a gentle pet made its way up the tower, tore one of the narrow arrow slits wide open, and shoved its head inside to a choir of screams….

… and the old man waited…

… waited…

… and then dodged.

Barnas blinked, unsure what he had just seen.

Could the old man be a Greater Gift? Could he be one of those types who jumped from place to place or who made himself as smoke?

No. The old man had moved. And not just him, but the chair he was on. It had all shifted.

"How…?"

The screams above Barnas worsened. Then grew silent. The guards that had come from other parts of the wall screamed battle cries. Some drew short bows or crossbows. The woolly/girl/thing dropped among them.

The simpleton stopped shaking. And his eyes were suddenly gone.

Barnas coughed. Not a cough of illness or the cough he made a thousand times a day as he tried to get the ash out of his lungs. This was a sound of pure, perfect panic. It felt like part of his soul shriveling inside him. The choked sound he had just made was all he could muster in the face of what he saw.

The big man's empty-seeming eyes had disappeared. But not as though he had been tortured, not like they had been burned away with hot spikes or cut away with knives. They seemed instead to have receded into a dark nothing. As though a part of the night sky had found its way to the man's skull and cast a dark spell that extinguished any light around it.

And, along with the man's eyes, any sense of a feeble mind seemed to have disappeared. He ran at the wall.

Except for places – like here – where the wall had fallen into disrepair, the insides of the wall were smooth, hard to scale.

But the outsides were another matter. It was only the work of a moment for the man to climb the wall. To flip himself over the edge. To land in the midst of half a dozen wall guards.

And to kill them all.

He moved so fast he was a blur, a streak followed by swaths of crimson as he spilled the blood of the six guards. They didn't even get to attempt a defense, let alone a counter-attack. They simply fell.

The man didn't use a weapon. Just his hands. His feet. His nails.

His teeth.

The berserker turned toward Barnas – just an instant. He saw the other man's shirt had ripped in the climb up the wall. Saw that in his chest, something glowed with that same yellow light as the leash that had merged the girl and the woolly. It looked like a gem, bigger than Barnas' fist, somehow embedded in the other man's very flesh, and carved in the symbol of a Bishop of Faith:

Then the man spun away. Returned to his killing.

Barnas saw it all. Saw the berserker turn to the next group of guards. Saw the creature that should have been a pet begin to murder more of his friends. But mostly he saw the old man. The man who shouldn't have been able to navigate the rough terrain of Fear at all, let alone dodge an arrow.

The old man in a chair.

But, Barnas now saw, that was wrong. Wrong, and when he saw why it was wrong, he understood all.

The old man wasn't in a chair.

Not just a chair.

The contraption's wheels spun, and Barnas heard gears clicking and clacking. The chair shifted, and suddenly the old man was no longer sitting, but standing, his legs locked into position by the frame of the chair. The metal frame telescoped upward, locking into place along the old man's spine and arms, then splitting into extensions that enclosed his hand in heavy, thick gauntlets.

The old man's knees bent. He jumped, dodging the arrow that had been fired at him and flying high into the air in one motion.

A moment later he landed in front of Barnas.

Barnas fell back, as much from the tremors the old man's landing had caused as from the shock and terror of what was happening.

To either side of him, the screams were petering out as the guards on this section of the wall were destroyed by two monsters – the once-gentle human, and the once-pet of a child.

He heard rustling behind him. Knew without looking that the convicts in this part of the city had finally noticed what was happening. That they were going to attempt an escape. And this time, they might actually succeed.

"You can't do this. If we're not here to stop them, they'll get out."

The old man nodded. The strange machine around him kept shifting, binding him up in armor unlike any Barnas had ever seen. He pointed a gauntleted fist, and now Barnas understood what had happened to Ikaia: there was a click, and a slim tube appeared on the old man's metal-clad arm. Another click, and what looked like a line of light – too bright to look upon directly – streaked out of the tube. It hit a part of the wall.

A huge section of the wall simply disappeared, the same way Ikaia had. A perfect circle of mortar and stone turned to nothing but dust that joined with the ash in the air for a moment before settling quietly to the ground below.

The convicts roared. They streamed toward the hole.

"Don't! You can't! They're mad! They'll kill anyone they find!"

The old man nodded again. The suit almost finished its change, becoming a complete suit of armor that covered him from neck to toe. And as Barnas watched, it began extending over his head as well, creating a  helmet.

The helmet bore that same symbol of Faith, etched in glowing yellow figures on his helm, just above the small slit that allowed Barnas to see the old man's calm, frightening eyes.

"They'll kill everyone," Barnas whispered again. It was all he could think to do.

"They may well kill many," the old man agreed. "And that would be regrettable." He pointed his arm, and another line of light shot out and destroyed more of the wall. Barnas' eyes darted about, though he wasn't really sure what he was looking for. An escape route? A way to stop the madness he was witnessing?

He saw the woolly/girl/monster, ambling almost idly down the wall on one side. It was killing guards, stopping occasionally to climb up a guard tower and destroy everyone inside.

On the other side of the wall it was much the same, except the fiend had only two legs, and two fewer eyes.

"You can't escape this," said the old man

Barnas spat at the old man's face. It wasn't a calculated move; even as he did it, he was so afraid he felt like he might start crying. It didn't even accomplish anything: he just spat on the helmet, not managing to get anything on the thin slice of skin that was still open to view.

But the old man bowed slightly as he wiped the spittle from his helmet. "You have honor," he said. "It is too bad that you serve such a dishonorable master, and for such a dishonorable cause." He pointed that strange, terrible, terrifying tube at Barnas.

A strip of something that looked like glass, only opaque, impossible to see through, slammed down over the old man's eyes, and now Barnas stared at something more machine than man. It whirred and clicked with the sound of hidden gears, hissed with a sound like steam escaping a kettle.

"Too bad, indeed," the old man said again. With his visor shut, his voice came out strange. It no longer sounded human, but was instead deeper and grating. It sounded like gears turning, like pistons driving, like a thousand other things and none of them human in the least.

"Don't do this, " whispered Barnas.

The machine made a sound that Barnas didn't understand for a moment, then realized was a sound of disgust filtered by whatever evil magic drove the contraption. "Now you beg."

"Not for myself. For these people. For the prisoners. For the people inside these walls and for the people beyond. For Fear." He swallowed, then whispered, "It will tear itself apart."

Silence, then the machine-man whispered, "Yes."

There was a click. The tube on the thing's arm glowed yellow.

And that yellow was the last thing Barnas saw.

2

The officer yanked the girl out of her bed. Her father was dead, and her mother no match for the big man's skill and the palpable air of danger he carried with him. He pointed the sword he held, and the tip quivered. Not with fear, but with rage and with uglier things, things he clearly intended to visit on the girl he had pulled from the darkness of her bed into the greater darkness of his grasp.

The mother cowered, whispering, "You can't. The Emperor rescinded the law. You can't take our children, can't do what you wish to them anymore."

The officer's only answer was a growl. Again, the growl bespoke rage, need. The need to become what he had been, to re-conquer the conquered.

"To the Netherworlds with the Emperor," he snarled. Then turned, hauling the girl toward the front door.

The mother screamed. Heedless of the danger, she ran at the man, her hands outstretched, fingers curved into hooks – though it could not be told whether those hooks were meant to rend the man who was trying to steal her daughter, or simply to steal her back.

The man almost smiled. His uniform was dirty, hardly the parade-ground look that most of the officers around the capital preferred to sport. He had the look of a man grown desperate – not for food, but for the deeper sustenance that some men crave: the knowledge that they may take what they will, and do what they wish.

The man's smile disappeared as soon as the woman came close enough. Then his sword flashed out, cleaving the air itself in a slash that would end with the woman's head bouncing off the rough dirt floor.

Something flared. A brightness, a flame brighter than any torch.

Sword's katana – light embodied, fire contained within her magic – sliced through the officer's blade, turning a weapon into nothing more than a hilt with an inch of metal sticking out of it.

Even that metal was useless, bouncing off the floor as it was – released from a grasp that was no longer there.

The officer stared at the stump of his wrist, the hand that had held the sword now curled in a dark corner of the small house. Holding nothing, and never to hold anything again.

Sword stared at the man as he stared at the cauterized stump, then continued staring as he began to scream. She nodded at the woman, who rushed forward on hands and knees, grabbed her daughter, and then shrank away from the terrible man who had threatened them and the even more terrible young woman who had saved them.

Sword waited for the man's screams to slow, then when they didn't she placed the tip of her fiery blade close enough to his face that the skin of his cheek began to sizzle.

"Quiet," she said through gritted teeth. "Quiet or by the Gods I'll cut you away piece by piece, starting with your tongue."

Something of that must have penetrated, because the man's screams became whistling, panicked whimpers. "What," he managed, tears rolling down his cheeks, "what are you going to –?"

She cut him short with a flick of her wrist. A line of charred black skin now ran from his ear to his collarbone. He fell silent.

Sword turned to the women, who shrank back from her. She bowed to them, deeply. "The Emperor has offered the children of Ansborn his protection. He knows that you have suffered, and suffered still more, and offers you this." She held out a purse that was filled with Royals – more than the woman would probably make in the next Turn.

The mother waited, as though unsure whether to believe what was happening. Sword softened her voice. "Take it, please," she whispered. "Malal has promised to make the Empire a new place. He gives you this – use it yourself, or share it with family or friends. It is a gift, and the promise of a better tomorrow."

The woman finally took it, her head bowed. Then she raised her gaze to the man who still whimpered nearby. She stood, and spat on him. The man flinched as though she had rained down her fist upon him.

Sword nodded approvingly. She looked at the girl who had almost met with ruin and perhaps death. Not much younger than her, perhaps only a Turn or two. Sword suddenly saw herself in the girl, and seeing her, her rage came to the fore.

"Take her to her room," she said to the girl's mother. "Stay there, both of you." She turned back to the officer. "Neither of you need see what comes next."

The officer started whimpering louder, but another flash of her sword quieted him. His shoulders slumped as she motioned for him to precede her into the street. Another twitch of her sword moved him to an alley between a pair of nearby buildings.

After the moonlit street, the alley seemed a thing of infinite shadow, more so as the blade disappeared from Sword's hand. Black pools swallowed the two figures.

The officer stood, beaten, in the middle of the alley.

"You were told the laws allowing officers to take the Empire's children had been rescinded," said Sword. Her voice was soft, barely a whisper.

The man seemed to find some steel. His voice whipped out, harsh in the night. "The law has always been for us to take what we will. Who are you to take that from me?"

"The Emperor took that from you."

The officer's snarl deepened. "The false Emperor. Don't think we haven't noticed. All these changes, all the 'improvements.'" He held his wounded wrist close to his chest. "None of it's real. You can't take what we deserve." Now he shook the stump in her face. "You can't take what you don't deserve!" he repeated, this time shouting the words with more than a trace of hysteria tingeing his voice. He looked at his wrist. "It's not fair," he whispered, sounding suddenly like a lost child.

"Very little in life is," said Sword. Then her sword flared again. She slashed, movements so quick and bright that anyone watching wouldn't have been able to follow them.

The officer didn't cry out. He couldn't. He just fell in the dirt, his other hand cut off, his eyes gone, and a precise cut through his neck that would steal his voice forever.

"I have left you your ears," she said, "so that you may hear the hatred and pity that surround you to the end of your days." A final cut, and his feet were gone as well. "Thus comes to those who prey on the weak in the rule of Malal."

She turned and left him. He would be found and picked up when she notified the detail of soldiers assigned to the matter, what was left of him deposited outside the officers' barracks as a reminder of what happened to those who broke the Emperor's new laws.

She looked to the sky. After Turns in the kennels, Turns where her only sky was the ugly roof of her cage, or the faraway roof of the arenas, she still couldn't get over how beautiful the sky could be. As she watched, dawn broke, the sun's light diffused by the clouds that so often crept up the five mountains of Ansborn to shade the Empire from below.

"Beautiful," she whispered. Then returned to the castle. The guards on the walls let her in without a word. They knew who she was, and what her mission had been in recent months. And though they were all good men, still there was fear whenever she came among them.

All men, no matter how innocent, fear their judgment.

Then she was in the courtyard beyond the castle wall, and from there entered the palace proper. Malal's palace was a huge building – the largest in Ansborn since the fall of the Grand Cathedral – with so many rooms she had yet to visit them all. But right now she was only interested in one. Not her bedroom – there was no sleep to come on nights when she saw to the Emperor's Justice.

The Imperial Library. A place where she had found much refuge, and much comfort. Strange to say – she had barely read only a Turn ago, and now she felt as home among the books as among any people save her closest friends.

She found the books she had been looking at yesterday – replaced on their shelves as always – and began reading.

"I thought I would find you in here."

Sword jumped, and the book she had been reading slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor with a thud louder than the sound of a vanquished foe on a battlefield.

And what does it say that I know that – and that it's my first thought?

She turned away from the image, even as she turned to her teacher. The old man leaned partly on a crooked wooden cane, partly on the doorway of the library. She frowned a bit when she saw it – not him, but the lean.

She frowned when he stepped away from the doorway, and now leaned almost completely on the cane in his hand. That he leaned so at all times was, she knew, her fault. And her fault alone. Brother Scieran had saved her from a crippling blow at the hands of a Greater Grift. But he had saved her by taking the blow upon himself – a blow so terrible that even the ministrations of the best Patches in the Empire had sufficed merely to save his life, not to save his strength.

Pain can never be avoided completely. It can only be shifted from one place to another.

But the worst of it wasn't the mere fact of his pain – wasn't even the fact that that pain had been meant for Sword. No, it was the fact that he had suffered it at the hands of Armor – at the first thing she could remember having that was like she imagined a father should be. And Brother Scieran was like a father, too, in his own way.

One father hurting another. Such a thing should never be.

Then she had done even worse. For she had killed Armor. And even though with his dying breath he told her he bore her no blame and expected it to happen and still loved her… even so, it still stung.

Brother Scieran cleared his throat, and Sword realized she had been staring into space. Silently looking at memories that were more real sometimes than the present.

Brother Scieran looked at the book on the floor. He shook his head – slowly; one of the things he'd lost when Armor crushed the right side of his body was full range of motion in his neck – and tsk-tsked lightly. "Have I taught you nothing of how to care for books in the past months?"

"You scared me."

"You don't get scared."

"Well… startled me, then."

"You still shouldn't have dropped it."

"To be fair…," and she groaned as she levered the book back up to the table, "it is bigger than I am."

"There is that." Brother Scieran hobbled over to look at what she was reading. "Ophel's Masterwork On The First Four Hundred Turns." He snorted. "Quite the prideful one, aren't you?"

Sword felt her ears redden. "I've been practicing my letters. And I was curious."

Brother Scieran shook his head quickly. "Oh, no, not you, my dear. You already read better than most of the Temple Faithful I've met in my long Turns. I was talking about him." He pointed at the book. "This Ophel fellow. Anyone who calls his own treatise a 'masterwork' has something to learn about humility."

Sword turned back to the page she'd been reading. "It's only hubris if you're not really as good as you say you are."

She practically heard Brother Scieran's jaw drop open, and had to work hard to keep herself from laughing.

"Where in the name of all the Gods and all the Faithful – who ever would say…." He narrowed his eyes. "Smoke taught you that, didn't he?" He threw up his hands in equal parts righteous frustration and virtuous rage. "That upstart thinks that just because he took the Emperor's place he actually…. Bah!" He stood silent for a moment, then curiosity finally got the better of him. He looked over Sword's shoulder. "How is it? A masterwork?"

Sword sighed and swung the book shut. "Not really. It actually reads pretty much like Eka's own Rules and
Commandments. Lots of 'thus must it be's and 'for I beheld it so's, but not a whole lot of actual history. Eka ascends the mountain, says a lot of high-sounding things about the greatness of his reign, then there's a huge jump to the Great Civil Wars, without much in between. Like the historians expect that anyone who reads these books will somehow just know what happened." She slammed down a fist in frustration. A spark actually flew out from beneath her hand.

Brother Scieran took a quick step forward, and placed his one good hand over hers, calming her. When most people got angry, they threw a tantrum, or smoldered inside, or in extreme cases got in a fight. But Sword wasn't most people. She was a Greater Gift. One in a thousand people in the Empire were born with magic, and one in a thousand of them had powers so great they could change the course of history – as Sword had already done.

Repeatedly.

Her Gift was that she could wield weapons with greater skill than anyone who had ever lived – or ever would. She couldn't handle guns or bows or the like particularly well, but if it was a weapon that used only her strength – anything from a sword to a whip to a spear to a blunt rock – she had no equal.

Beyond that, she was possessed of something even most Greater Gifts never saw – a Second Gift: a change to and amplification of her power that made her well-nigh unstoppable. Not only could she wield weapons with superhuman power, speed, and skill, she could actually call them into being from the very fabric of the universe – any weapon, at any time.

And it didn't hurt that the weapons she called into being were made of an enchanted fire. The fire could be a cold one, without heat but harder than any steel; or a searing fire that could burn through, as far as she could determine, anything and everything.

So though it wasn't likely that she would actually pull a flaming dirk into existence and use it to slice the offending book to pieces – setting fire to the Imperial Library as an incidental side effect – the slight chance of it was obviously enough to worry her friend and teacher.

The spark disapppeared as fast as it came. She took a few breaths, then heaved the book into her arms and began the slow work of climbing up the nearby ladder that would let her return the book to its place on the shelves.

Why are the huge, worthless ones always so high up?

"Why are you so interested in the Imperial history, girl?" asked Brother Scieran as she climbed. He had asked the question before; many times, in fact. She had never answered. She wasn't avoiding the question, she just didn't know why. Ever since she and her friends – the revolutionary group dubbed the Cursed Ones – had overthrown the corrupt Imperial regime three months ago, she had spent nearly every free moment in the Imperial Library. She had stumbled upon it at first, during one of her many sleepless nights when she wandered the halls of the palace like the restless ghost of one of the many men and women she had slain. She turned the knob, opened the door, and felt she had found the answer to a question she never knew she had.

Only I haven't found the answer yet. I just know it's in here.

She realized she was talking. Speaking to Brother Scieran, her voice sounding automatically, as though her body had been inhabited in that moment by two different people at once.

"History interests me."

"Obviously. But saying you're interested in history because history interests you is a bit of a tautology, don't you think?"

"I don't know that word." She finally managed to shove the four-foot-tall book back into its space on the shelf and start back down the ladder.

"I'm surprised. I've never seen someone drink in knowledge like you before. A tautology is a circular argument. For example, if you say the sky is high and I ask how you know that and you point and say, 'Because look how high up it is!' It's an argument that just feeds on itself and goes nowhere at – are you even listening to me, girl?"

"Yes, it's an argument about things that eat the sky." Sword leaned and pulled a book away from the shelf.

"That's not what I said. Why aren't you – You're not listening to me again, are you?"

She didn't respond. The book that she pulled away didn't look that interesting. Tales of To-To-Mo, which from its cover was some sort of children's book.

But there was something behind it.

One thing about the Imperial Library: it was carefully, precisely ordered. There was never a book out of place, never a speck of dust. On the rare occasions that she had left a tome out for the night, when she returned the next day she found it gone, returned to its original home on the shelves.

The first few times that happened it enraged her – she hadn't noted where she found the volumes, and finding them again had been a challenge. But she learned quickly, and after that, if she wasn't finished with a book when she was ready to leave for the day, she either wrote down where she got it, or simply took it to her room with her.

She had seen the man who did the re-stacking – a slim form in palace livery, with red hair that hung in a wave over his eyes, red hair that had gone prematurely gray in a single thin strip on one side of his head – but every time she thought about talking to him there was something about his gaze and his posture that stopped her. He seemed so… busy. Too engaged in what he was doing to be bothered by a paltry thing like another human being.

The library was a place of supreme order. There was no place in this Imperial Library for misplaced items. No place for disorder. Certainly no place for a book to be carelessly shoved behind another book.

She pulled the other book out, intending nothing more than to put it on a table and leave it for the phantom librarian to put it wherever it belonged. But when she looked at it, her intentions changed.

She brought it down the rest of the way, nearly falling the last few steps down the ladder in her hurry to bring it to Brother Scieran. She showed him the cover. It was dusky leather, faded and with bits of it flaking away, others worn so smooth they felt almost as though they might simply fade out of existence.

A weathered etching was on its surface, the rough outline of a tree, branches reaching into the sky and roots thrusting into the earth, with a smudged line across the top, as though someone had tried to erase words that had once spanned the length of it:

"What do you make of this?" she said.

Brother Scieran pursed his lips. He rubbed his fingers through his beard, and his normally playful eyes took on a serious cast. "Gods' eyes," he whispered. "Can it be?" He looked at her, and now his eyes were not serious, they were haunted. "I think this is…." He looked back at the etching for a moment, then returned his gaze to her. "I think, Sword, that this might be some kind of… a tree."

It took a moment for that to sink in. Then she balled a fist and slowly held it in front of his face. "I could murder you."

"But then who would you have these scintillating conversations with?" he said, and the smile returned to his eyes.

"Arrow," she answered, and stuck out her tongue.

"Really? Are you two actually talking now? I thought you just sat and made dove-eyes at one another while the rest of us felt vaguely ill."

"I…." Her voice caught at that. She tried again. "I…." Her fist unclenched. "You win."

"Yes. I rather think I do." He peered at the book, actually managing to be serious for a moment. "Why so interested? I see nothing of note about this tome."

She frowned, biting her lip nervously. "I don't either."

Brother Scieran cocked an eyebrow. "Then by all means, continue to make a fuss."

She held the fist in front of his eyes again, but the action was playful, and he knew it. Then the play melted away. "I don't know what's special, but there's something. Something familiar."

That made Brother Scieran take notice. "Is it from a dream?"

She shook her head. Last time something had seemed "familiar" to her in a way she couldn't articulate, it had been something from a dream that had turned out to be a half-buried memory. And that memory had turned out to be the key to their attempt to overthrow the Emperor.

Not that they had been successful. The Emperor had been killed, but so had the heir that would have taken his place – a friend of Sword's named Rune. Still, they had managed since another of the Cursed Ones' – a man named Smoke – Second Gift was that he could literally change into any person. He couldn't take over their memories, but in outer form he would actually be them – not a copy, but the same person; and no physical examination, no viewing by the most talented Reader, would reveal the deception.

It was a one-way metamorphosis, though. Smoke was now the Emperor Malal. He hated it – not least because as Smoke he had been a big, strong man in the prime of early adulthood, and now was in the soft body of a pampered teen – but he had made the choice without a second thought.

So many sacrifices.

So many losses.

More than once, Sword had second-guessed, had agonized, wondering: if she had only understood her dreams, those memories trying to be born again through the mists of her subconscious… would her friends still live? Would Rune and Armor, Garden and Siren and Scholar and Teeth and all the rest still be alive?

She didn't know. She never would.

Life is like that. Foresight is never perfect. And contrary to what most people say, hindsight is even less so, because mixed in with human doubts and fears is not just of what might be, but what actually had been. And nothing distorts faith in oneself quite so much as reality.

Still, just because she hadn't been able to figure out what was happening, what her mind was trying to tell her, in time to save her friends last time didn't mean she wouldn't try this time. So when Brother Scieran asked if she was remembering this book –

(this strange book this familiar book this frightening book)

– she took care and concentrated so hard that sweat beaded along her brow and dripped from the bridge of her nose.

At last she shook her head. "No. Not from a dream." She shrugged. "At least, I don't think so."

Brother Scieran opened the book. "Well, let's see what's insi –"

"There you are!"

The voice cut them off. Sword and Brother Scieran turned away from the book before looking inside.

A palace page stood in the doorway, panting, bent over with hands on his knees. He spoke in gasps, obviously at the end of a long search for one or both of them. "The… Emperor wants… you both to… come to his… private… chambers."

Brother Scieran rolled his eyes. "Gods. Is this another 'urgent' request so that we can come see some pretty picture he drew? Or so he can tell us all about how beautiful his Captain of the Guard is?"

Sword knew this was hardly normal palace protocol. But Smoke was still Smoke – which meant he had a wicked sense of humor, liked to needle people in general and Brother Scieran in particular, and had called them to his chambers for "urgent" business that had turned out to be just those things before.

But the page was shaking his head. "No. Not… that." He nearly toppled, just managing to catch a table before falling from exhaustion.

He must have run the length and breadth of the palace.

Brother Scieran caught her eye. He cocked an eyebrow. She shrugged. She looked at the book in her hand for a long moment. The tree still intrigued her, somehow managing to be both alien and familiar at once.

But the Emperor summoned.

She put the book, still unopened, on the nearest table. Reluctantly.

She turned to Brother Scieran. "Come on. We had better see what the Emperor wants."

Brother Scieran cursed. The page gaped at that, and she glared at Brother Scieran. He didn't notice, or at least pretended not to. He simply set off, passing the boy with a rapid triple gait – two steps and the click of his cane on the marble floor of the castle.

She hurried after him. As soon as they were far enough down the hall that she was confident the page was out of earshot, she said through gritted teeth, "What are you doing?"

"Going to the Emperor," he said. He snorted. "Undoubtedly to be asked to play a game of rooks and castles, or to render an opinion on the new kitchen draperies, or to admire his Imperial Big Toe."

Sword almost laughed at that. As it was, she snorted – a mangled chuckle that almost made her choke on her own spit as she tried to maintain the irritation and seriousness she had built up.

"I'm not talking about that," she finally managed. "You remember who he is, don't you?"

"I just told you who he is," he said. He eyed her with a concerned expression. "Is something wrong with your memory? Were you hit on the head on the practice pitch?"

"Yes, you said the word. You said he's the Emperor."

"So what's the prob –"

"So you are completely and utterly failing to act like he is the Emperor." She put a hand on Brother Scieran's hand, drawing him gently to a stop. She looked up and down the hallway, making sure they were alone. Talking about things like this in the palace was dangerous. Even now, even in a place where it seemed they were alone, there could be unseen ears. A chambermaid, cleaning in a nearby room. A manservant tending a fire in one of the many hearths that kept the palace warm. A Shock doing rounds, making sure the glo-globes in the halls were all charged and well-tended.

Still, Brother Scieran had to be talked to. Now.

He was looking at her quizzically, as though completely unsure what was going on. That was the worst of it.

"The Empire was corrupt. We've changed things –"

"We're still changing things," he said.

"Yes." She nodded. "But how easy do you think that will be if the Army thinks they're being led by an impostor? If one of the aristocracy believes he has a better claim to the Silver Seat than the man who now sits upon it? If the people know that the man who has crushed them for Turns is dead – and a new one who bears his face sits upon the throne and to all appearances is simply going to keep on crushing them?"

Brother Scieran crossed his arms. Or did the best he could: the gesture was difficult when carrying a cane. "What are you saying?"

She jabbed a finger at him. He looked shocked, and of a truth, she was more than a little surprised herself. She had lost her family when she was young, and in the kennels there were no families, just the Packs, just the other children who would live and die at your side.

The first man she really thought of as a father was Armor, the man who taught her what it was to be a person of honor, of integrity, of courage. He worked for the Emperor – and, through him, for the Chancellor – and that meant he was working for evil. But he did so only because the Chancellor would have killed Armor's wife the second he disobeyed him.

And, in the end, Armor died rather than let the Chancellor win, but he did so in a way that would leave his wife alive. He fought to the last, but he made sure to take on a foe sure to destroy him.

He fought Sword. And she killed him.

The only other man whom she had met that was the equal of Armor in wisdom, in courage, in grace – was Brother Scieran. He had filled much of the hole Armor left behind.

Arrow, too.

Even now, in the heat of her argument with Brother Scieran, her cheeks reddened to think of Arrow. Not particularly handsome, with a face that was squat and round – but he was kind, and loyal, and brave.

And he loved her, though he had never said it outright. Still, she saw it in his looks, in the way he held her hand, in the way he kissed her when they were alone.

This surprised and delighted her almost as much as the fact that she loved him in return. Not least because when she looked at him she saw the potential to become someone like Armor, like Brother Scieran. Not just brave – he was already that. Not just smart – he was already that. Not just honorable, not just good.

But someone who had been all those things for a lifetime. Someone who had chosen a lifetime of good, and so had a lifetime of strength to lend to others.

Sword had grown up with nothing but children who were taught to murder one another. She of all people know the value of those who had grown wisely and well.

And I'd like to do that with Arrow.

Something poked her in the side. "Are you even listening to me?"

Sword realized with a start that of all the things she had just been doing – thinking, dreaming, even a bit of hopeful planning – listening was definitely not one of them.

"Well… that is –"

"No, I thought not." Brother Scieran was irritated enough that he actually managed to cross his arms this time. "I said, if he wants us to treat him like an Emperor he should try acting like one."

Sword nodded automatically. Then she frowned and shook her head. Then nodded again, but this time with an even more forceful frown. "Fine," she said. "We'll just turn back the clock to the times when The Chancellor still ruled. Or, better still, to the times of the Great Civil Wars. Is that what you prefer? The choice you want to inflict on Smoke?"

"Now, I never said –"

"Because that's what's going to happen. One of these times you're going to disrespect him, and he's going to take it, and one of the less-stupid courtesans or courtiers is finally going to put two and two together –"

"I don't think –"

She kept rolling right over him. She had been wanting to say this to him for weeks and found that, once begun, it was terrifically difficult to stop. "No, you don't think. You're so busy feeling that Smoke isn't acting like a proper Emperor – like the Emperor you think he should be – that you apparently don't realize that your very actions are making it impossible for him to ever be that man, or that leader."

Brother Scieran looked like he was going to say something. His mouth opened, and his finger pointed the way it often did when he was about to start lecturing.

Then he closed his mouth. His finger lowered, his hand fell to his side.

"Gods," he muttered. "I've been acting like just as much of a child as he has."

"More," she said. Then she clapped him on his shoulder. "But if it's any consolation, I do give you better odds on being the first one to stop."

A strange sound came from under his whiskers – she couldn't tell if it was a laugh, a self-deprecating cough, or if he was just clearing his throat. Perhaps all three.

Whatever it was, he began hobbling down the hall again. She was always amazed how fast he could move; Malal – the once-Smoke – had installed him as the new liason to Faith soon after they had gotten rid of the Chancellor –

(tossed him right over the side of Fear and his body on a pike the next day and no one the poorer for it)

– a massive, thankless job given that the Army had all but destroyed the Grand Cathedral, killed the priests of the Order of Chain, and murdered many of the other Faithful. Still, Brother Scieran had thrown himself into the job with all the energy of a youth, even though he had been given the responsibility while still confined to a bed. Then, when he finally could walk again, he could be seen at all hours of the day and night, followed by a retinue of scribes and advisors – most of whom he worked into varying degrees of nervous apoplexy – trailing papers as he dictated letters, drafted bills and orders for Malal's approval and signature, and generally made everyone shake their heads and wonder how he was capable of doing all he did.

Sword knew.

Brother Scieran was trying to forget. It wasn't just the work, either. She saw how hard he pushed himself physically, saw him in the quiet moments when he thought no one was looking – the grimaces, the sweat that broke out on his face as though he had been holding it in by force of will.

His recuperation wasn't miraculous. He was doing so much not because it didn't hurt him, but because the pain was welcome. Because it would let him forget all those they had lost. Especially her. Sister Prasa. The one person he had given his heart to, and the one woman he never could allow himself to fully love – not until after she had died… and, of course, then it was too late.

So he threw himself in a flowing river of pain, swam in deep waters of agony because in so doing his only thoughts would be to stay afloat, to stay alive.

There could be no grief, because grief has always been second to survival.

Sword reached out. She put a hand on Brother Scieran's arm and pulled him to her. She didn't think about it, and wasn't even sure what she was trying to do as she did it. She only knew that there was something wrong with her good friend, her father.

He tried to pull away. "I can walk on my own."

"No, you can't." She pulled him toward her.

"How do you think I got to the library, girl? Do you think I flew? Burrowed through the floor? Traveled magically?" He tried to pull away again; again she did not let him go. "I can walk as well as I need to."

He tore his arm from her grasp, a movement so hard and fast it was violent. She didn't try to hold him to her again, but she put her hand back on his shoulder. "I was a Dog," she said.

Nothing more. They walked in silence for a time, just the sound of their footfalls and the tap-tap-tap of his cane.

"I know," he finally said, his voice even gruffer than usual.

"I know something about being alone."

"I know."

Footfalls. Tap-tap-tap.

"Even in the kennels, though, they knew we had to have a Pack. We couldn't just fight alone. Even if they tried to make us, I think they knew we would end up with others. Would end up finding each other."

Footfalls.

Tap-tap-tap.

"You walk well," she said. "But none of us walks so well that we can walk alone."

She put her hand on his arm again. Not helping, exactly, but more than a simple gesture. Something of an embrace, as two people might when walking a long road and unsure who will tire first. Ready to both give and receive strength.

This time, Brother Scieran let her.

She glanced at him. Saw his eyes were moist. His beard wet.

"Thank you,," he finally said.

She said nothing. Any words she could have said were words he already knew.

A few turns later they arrived at a short hallway that ended at a pair of black doors of solid iron. Each door had six steel rings inlaid with gold and precious minerals brought up from the mines of Fear. In front of the door were two of the Imperial Guard – some of the fiercest fighters in all of Ansborn, with black armor that made them look like deadly insects, except for the helms which were crafted to look like dark human skulls. Except for the Captain of the Imperial Guard, none of these soldiers ever took off their helms when others could see them – they were faceless servants of the Emperor, his to command, his lives to spend.

They stood at attention, each holding a yari – a tall spear that showed they had been trained in the weapons of the northern lands. The yari were pointed straight at Sword and Brother Scieran, and though she knew she could have killed both these men – or women, the Imperial Guard were open to fighters, not to genders – she simply waited.

One of the guards turned his – she was fairly sure it was a he, by his height and his stance – head. Beside him was a small mesh window. Sword knew that behind that window would be a small, reinforced room – basically an iron box, all-but impervious to attack, and designed to hold a single thing.

"It is they, and they are true. This is Minister Scieran and the Lady Sword," came the voice of the Reader on the other side of the mesh. Sword had never seen her, but she had a nice voice, low and throaty, and she imagined the woman as short, fairly voluptuous, and with kind eyes. A good person. The kind of person she could depend on to determine whether people seeking entry to Malal's private  chambers could be trusted. For that was the Readers' Gift: they could tell the true identity of the person they beheld. The best of them could even tell a bit about your intentions – if you held malice in your heart, violence in your plans.

Sword was suddenly glad she had managed to get Brother Scieran to calm down a bit. It wouldn't do to have him come into this corridor quite so irritated with Malal – especially not with an entire squad of Imperial Guards waiting to burst through the false walls on either side of them at a single word from the Reader or from the two guards at the door.

The guards bowed low, then one turned and spun each of the rings in a predetermined order, turning each to a specific. The rings were not just decorations, but a combination lock created by an Emperor hundreds of Turns before, a ruler who was himself a Greater Gift with the power to create unbreakable locks. When Sword had first heard of this, she had not been impressed, until she had been told that that included the power to lock his enemies away in their own minds.

Sometimes magic could be wonderful and beautiful. Other times, it was so cruel that she questioned whether the world would be better off without it, and what kind of universe could have come up with something capable of such abuse.

But that is what we're for. To protect the helpless from those who would use the world as their plaything.

The last ring turned. The door opened.

She looked at Brother Scieran, who sighed again, as though the opening of the door had, in and of itself, validated his fear that nothing but mischief waited beyond.

"Don't worry, old man," she said. "I'm sure the world as we know it is ending."

He muttered something under his breath – she was fairly sure it was a string of very un-pious curses followed by something that ended "… show you who's old." Then they were inside, the door closing behind them.

Their first sight of Malal didn't bode well for the meeting in general. It was well past noon, but he was still in bed, his nightgown clear proof that he hadn't yet ventured past the confines of this room.

When he saw them he dropped the hunk of cheese he'd been holding in one hand, the goblet of wine he had in his other one also tumbling to stain the bedcovering that probably cost more than an entire Pack in the kennels.

Only there are no more kennels.

That had been one of the first things Malal did after what Sword and her co-conspirators referred to as "the change": he had gotten rid of the slave auctions, the kennels, and the rules that had given military officers permission to do as they would to the children of Ansborn.

And they had nearly done a better job destroying the Empire than the Chancellor and the original Malal did. It tossed the economy into chaos, caused mutinies that had to be put down – many by Sword and the flashing blades of her Gift – and sent shockwaves through the Empire.

They learned the hard way that they couldn't fix in a day a government that had spent the last century rotting from the inside out.

"You're here!" shouted Malal. He tried to get out of the bed, then almost fell when he tangled in the bedcovers.

"You've been drinking!" roared Brother Scieran.

Malal paused, processing this. "Well, I'm not drunk," he finally said, as though this was more than enough of a refutation.

Brother Scieran cast his hands in the air, but not before throwing an I-told-you-so look in Sword's direction.

"What did you need us for?" she asked Malal, hoping against all hope that it would be something important enough that Brother Scieran would overlook this moment. Though she really couldn't think in this moment what that could possibly be.

"Oh!" Malal snapped his fingers in excitement, finally managing to extricate himself from his covers, then ran to a nearby writing desk. He picked a page off a thick sheaf of papers and held it up.

"Well?" asked Brother Scieran after a moment.

"What do you think?" asked Malal.

"Of what?"

"Of what?" He rattled the page, as though doing so would make clear what they were looking at. "It's my brand new stationary! Just came this morning. Well, I guess it was around one o'clock, but still. I knew you'd want to know, so I called – Hey, Scieran, what's going on with your face?"

Sword looked at the priest. He was turning so red she worried he might well explode, and though that would make the stain created by Malal's spilled wine that much easier to explain, she still didn't fancy that as an alternative.

"Malal, perhaps you could –" she began, then her voice cut off when she realized the Emperor's face was turning the exact same color as Brother Scieran's.

They're both going to explode.

"I'm going to murder you."

Brother Scieran's explosion was more verbal than the blood-and-bone variety, but it was still sufficiently violent that Sword worried the guards outside would rush in. She tried to hush the priest, but he just swiveled to point at her, shaking with rage. "I told you, didn't I? I told you it would be something ridiculous and infantile, and STOP LAUGHING!"

The last was aimed at Malal, and that was when Sword finally realized why the once-revolutionary, now-Emperor, and always-prankster was so very red: he was in hysterics. "I knew it," he finally gasped between braying howls. "I knew you'd believe I would bring you in here for that." He abruptly grew serious. "Hey! What does that say about what you think of me?" Then he waved the question off and laughed again. "Doesn't matter. The look on your face, priest. Priceless. We'll remember it for the rest of our lives."

"I need to make this very clear, you spoiled little –" Brother Scieran broke off in mid-threat. "Wait, 'we'?"

At the word, the room seemed to erupt in movement. Wind and Cloud emerged from behind a pair of thick curtains, the twins rarely far from each other – especially now that Cloud had been deafened and had only his sister for company. As always, Cloud wore a white tunic, seeming almost like something that had descended from the Heavens. As always, his sister wore a tunic as well – though any place from which she might have descended was no doubt a warring, deadly land. She wore the silver breastplate, greaves, and gauntlets that had become something of a legend in the castle – the guards said they had been crafted by the Gods, and could only be destroyed if the bearer were to become unworthy.

Sword didn't know about that. She only knew that Wind and Cloud were her friends. And woe to any who were their enemies.

From behind a pillar tottered another priest: Father Akiro. So old he made Brother Scieran seem a babe in diapers, he had a long gray braid down his back and was also a Priest of Faith, though he was a member of the Temple Faithful and not, as Brother Scieran, one of the Order of Chain – distinguishable by the gold trim on his robe, and the brass chain around his waist. The old man walked with the aid of two wolf-headed canes, and Sword noted with some sadness that he was a bit grayer, a bit slower, than the last time she had seen him.

"Father!" shouted Brother Scieran, unashamed happiness flooding his expression. "I thought you were in Faith!"

Father Akiro snorted. "And I thought you were supposed to secure further funding for the rebuilding the Grand Cathedral."

"I –"

Father Akiro waved him off. "You are hopeless. You have always been hopeless. You will always be hopeless." He squinted. "Though you do have a cane now, and I suppose that is something of an improvement. You can at least be called half a proper man, I suppose."

Brother Scieran growled. Cloud laughed as his sister translated the conversation, using the language of Sign to give the priest's words to him. She was deaf, too, but she had been deaf much longer and knew how to read lips.

Brother Scieran whirled toward them, and no doubt would have had choice words about the disrespect such laughter showed, but another form stepped out of a wardrobe at the far end of the room.

"Arrow!" shouted Sword, and then she was across the room and into his arms.

They held one another for a moment, and she didn't know if the others were silent out of respect, embarrassment, or happiness. She didn't care. She was just glad to see him again. He had been gone the last week, touring the outer rim of Fear, seeing how construction progressed in the wake of the eruptions Malal – the first Malal – had caused with his magic. Half the Imperial Army and many, many of the people who lived in that part of Fear had been killed. The rebuilding would be a thing of Turns.

"Are you okay?" she finally said.

"I'm fine. The worst danger was when I got Malal's message to hurry back and then got a cramp hiding in the wardrobe waiting for you two."

At that, Brother Scieran seemed to remember that he was supposed to be angry with Malal. "Wait. You brought us all here to tell us about stationary?"

"Of course I did."

Brother Scieran and Father Akiro both started yelling, and even Arrow looked a bit irritated at the joke.

Malal allowed it to continue for a few moments, his smile growing larger and larger, then he finally raised his hand in what he supposed was Good Imperial Fashion. No one quieted, so he turned to Wind.

"Captain," he said. "Would you please silence the rabble?"

Wind didn't move. She didn't have to. Like most of the Greater Gifts, her name reflected her power, and in an instant there was a change in the room as the air grew heavy. The voices petered out – Father Akiro and Brother Scieran were the last to stop talking – as pressure built in the space. Sword's ears popped. Not painfully, but uncomfortably enough to remind her that when she looked at Wind she looked not just at a beautiful woman, not just at the woman Malal had chosen as the Captain of his Imperial Guard – she looked at one of the most powerful magic-users to ever live.

"That's enough," said Malal lightly. "I don't think we need to burst their brains. Just shut them up. Especially the old ones."

Brother Scieran glared at that, but Wind frowned and took a step forward, and apparently even the priest could be cowed by such a thing, because he only grumbled a bit.

"Now. To the stationary." Malal handed each of them a sheet of the paper.

"We're back to –"

"It's really amazing," he said, speaking right over Brother Scieran. "If you look at it in the light, you'll see some things."

They all held their papers toward the nearest glo-globes or windows. Even Brother Scieran, though he grumbled as he did it.

Sword gasped. As soon as the light hit it, the paper exploded in color. Curls and arcs seemed to grow from the center of the page, turning in and around and over each other, then forming a series of images: a crown, the berries and wheat the were a symbol of the Gods' love, the inverted triangle bisected by two lines that were similarly a symbol of Faith –

(and again she had that feeling that familiar feeling that where have I seen this before and what does it mean feeling)

– and then it all scattered in a beautiful burst of hue that took her breath away.

Nor was she the only one. Sword heard gasps around the room as the others saw similar images; felt a wonder like unto her own.

"How did you do this?" asked Arrow.

Malal actually managed to look modest – no small feat for him. "A few Shatters, a few Shocks, a pinch of the work of an Artist, and all brought together with a Thread or two." He nodded back at the sheet Arrow still held. "But none of you have seen it all."

They returned their gazes to the papers as one, and as she did, the colors returned to Sword's page. Once more they swirled and whirled about in a graceful ballet, rainbows dancing about one another in gleeful pirouettes that finally settled into a recognizable pattern; a single word: Sword.

No sooner had she seen the word than it disappeared and another took its place: Malal. And then a third: Wind.

Everyone was gasping and murmuring in wonder at their papers, then glancing in confusion and askance at Malal, who still wore that amused look.

"Now, these are just drafts. More information will be filled in later: date, time, location, dress code – I'm looking at you, Scieran. But for now each paper has just three things: your name… and the name of the bride and groom."

Sword blinked. She looked at the paper again.

Sword.

Malal.

Wind.

She looked back at Malal. And as she did, Wind left her brother's side, and walked over to Malal and took his hand in hers.

The room erupted. Everyone talking at once, everyone shouting, everyone holding each other and hugging. Sword thought that Brother Scieran might well destroy anyone who got between him and the happy couple, shoving Arrow aside with his cane and then sweeping Malal and Wind into an embrace so strong the Emperor exhaled forcefully.

The iron doors to the room opened, and the guards looked in, their faces masked but the worry clear in their stances.

Malal tried to wave them off, but Brother Scieran beat him to it, snarling, "Get out, can't you see we're all incredibly happy!" with such vehemence that it would brook no defiance. The guards very quietly withdrew, and Brother Scieran turned back to Malal and Wind, holding them close.

"Be good to her," he whispered, choking the words through tears.

Malal put one arm around the priest – his other was trapped between him and Wind. "I will, old friend," he said, and his voice was just as halting.

It was hard to remember sometimes, the way the two bickered, but they were old friends. They had fought and suffered and bled together. They loved each other.

Sword looked around the room. Not just at Malal and Wind, the lovers who would soon unite; not just at Brother Scieran and Father Akiro, the priests who would no doubt argue about who would perform the Binding; not just at Cloud and Arrow.

At them all.

At her family.

And then the screaming began.

3

The congratulations stopped immediately. The air changed as Wind and Cloud drew upon their magic, Brother Scieran yanked a short-bladed knife out of the handle of his cane, and Arrow… Arrow became a walking arsenal. He suddenly held a small, double crossbow in his right hand, and both of the bolts looked like they had explosive tips. His left hand held a gun – it looked like a nine-shot, and being who he was, Arrow could shoot it with perfect accuracy and supernatural speed, killing nine people before the first fell. He also threw back his cloak to reveal another crossbow on his back, along with a short rifle of a type Sword hadn't seen before.

Whatever it was, he'd be able to use it, faster and better than anyone alive, for that was his Greater Gift.

The doors remained shut – as they should, for it was clear that the sound was coming from outside the room. But Sword heard the sound of masonry crashing to the ground and knew that the false walls of the hall were being destroyed, that the guards behind them were taking up positions before the Emperor's chambers, ready to die for him.

For the man they think he is.

Not for the first time she felt a bit guilty at their deception. True, the Emperor had been utterly co-opted by the real power behind the throne –the man who had called himself Chancellor but who was really Phoenix, a Greater Gift who took the power and appearance and the remaining life-Turns of any other Greater Gift he murdered.

She wondered, suddenly, why he hadn't just killed Malal and taken his power. Instead, Phoenix had used one of his Gifts to make Malal – also a Greater Gift – do his bidding. To make the volcano of Fear erupt, and destroy half the Imperial Army.

Why?

It doesn't matter. Focus.

The screaming was still going on. But even as she pushed her mind back to the task at hand, it lessened and died.

Then… silence.

Once before, she had fought in another room in the palace. Then, she had battled a Fade – a magic user who could will himself to virtual invisibility. The only way to spot a Fade was to look at him or her directly, which was more or less a matter of luck.

But Sword had been able to find him. Not by looking, but as an extension of her power. And she did now what she did then. She closed her eyes. She breathed. She pushed out with her senses, feeling the room, the people in it.

Father Akiro and Brother Scieran. The two had taken up position in front of Malal and Wind, as though the two old men would be the last and best resistance against any threat that might make it through the guards, the door, the Greater Gifts in the room.

Arrow: breathing shallow, quick breaths. Moving slowly from side to side, his arms out in front of him as though he expected threats to materialize in their midst. That was impossible, of course: there were Screens throughout the palace, their own magic making it impossible for anyone to teleport anyone or anything inside the castle walls.

But that's the thing about magic, isn't it? We only know what we know about it because we haven't seen something new enough to prove us wrong.

She was glad Arrow was on the alert.

She kept looking without looking. Now feeling Malal. The man who was once a revolutionary, was now an emperor, and would always be something of a trickster and rogue, seemed utterly unconcerned about what was happening – at least according to his breathing and his perspiration. Only the fact that Sword sensed the blood thrumming through his veins, pulsing at his neck and temples, betrayed his fear.

Wind and Cloud alone were as they always were – silent, existing in still worlds of their own creation. Sword had been told of their pasts, of the losses they had suffered and the agonies they had endured. It was no wonder they were always so calm – surely the worst was behind them.

She pushed out. Beyond the doors. The guards – all of them, not just the two that had been guarding the door, but the ones hiding behind the corridors' false walls in case of emergency – crouched, waiting. They almost killed the man who ran around the corner. He squealed, raised his hands.

Sword could not hear them. She could feel what they did, though, and her body unclenched. She had not even called one of her weapons into existence – she tended to avoid flaming katanas when in close quarters with her friends – but she realized how close she had been. Her fists loosened.

"It's all right," she said, even as the doors opened.

One of the guards came in. Bowed. "Lord," said the guard, this one with the voice of a woman. "Master Iwala begs entrance." Then, without waiting for a reply, she bowed and left.

Arrow caught Sword's eye and he looked at her quizzically. She shook her head and shrugged.

A newcomer entered, his head bowed, which gave Sword an excellent view of the top of his utterly bald head. Master Iwala was the palace's Earmaster – not an Ear himself, but possessed of a pair of far greater gifts: he was an excellent organizer, and highly discreet. Since any Ear could instantly communicate with any other, they were the primary hub of information between the palace and the Army bases, the government installations, the centers of commerce. Every bit of information that mattered – and quite a few that didn't – came through the army of Ears stationed in the bowels of the palace. And Master Iwala, along with his staff, had to decide what should be passed where, to whom, and how fast.

He was the soul of tact, of careful thought, and quite unflappable, was Master Iwala.

At least, normally. Now, however, he was a wreck. He wore a saro – the long, skirt-like wrap of fabric favored by some whose ancestors hailed from Fear – and as he stumbled toward the Emperor one of his feet caught in the hem. He pitched forward and would have fallen if Arrow hadn't caught him.

He barely noticed it. He was babbling, his face red and his eyes wild, casting about the room as though certain that some enemy would lay waste to all in his sight at any moment. Murmuring under his breath.

"What?" said Malal. "What's that?" Then, to Brother Scieran, "What's he saying?"

"How should I know?" Brother Scieran snapped, a bit more harshly than necessary, but Sword couldn't blame him: seeing Master Iwala like this was enough to spook a mountain Claw. Brother Scieran moved to Arrow and Master Iwala. He took the crazed man by the arm in a surprisingly gentle move.

Sometimes he's so much the warrior, so much the Order of Chain, that I forget he is also a priest, also a man of the Gods.

Brother Scieran whispered something in Master Iwala's ear. It didn't seem to calm the man at all, but he nodded, a quick, jittery up-down-up that seemed as much shudder as affirmation.

Brother Scieran looked to Father Akiro. "You've your oil?"

"Of course." Father Akiro drew close, putting one of his canes over his arm, freeing a hand so he could withdraw a small horn from the chain looped around his waist. He uncorked it and upended it. A single drop of oil fell to his finger. He deftly recorked the horn, replaced it on his belt, then rubbed the oil on Master Iwala's bald head. He and Brother Scieran placed their hands on the Earmaster's shoulders, then bowed their heads and whispered into his ears.

Sword looked at Arrow. He looked back, clearly unsure what she was trying to convey with her look, then his eyebrows rose. "You've never seen this before?" he whispered.

She shook her head, whispering back, "They frowned on church time in the kennels."

He hugged her, tight and long: an embrace that spoke not only love but sorrow for all that had been stolen from her – friendships, culture, life. "The priests annoint the afflicted with holy oils. It is a prayer of health, of peace. Master Iwala's people are those of Fear, and the people of Fear tend to be religious, so Brother Scieran asked if he would like a blessing."

It seemed to help. The two priests said closing words – Sword couldn't hear what, though she had to admit to a burning curiosity and an even hotter jealousy that she had never had someone offer to bless her this way, to offer her the comfort of the Gods or the simple closeness of a friend's hands on her shoulders in all the long Turns when she had fought in the kennels. When the priests took their hands off Master Iwala's shoulders, he seemed more himself. Shaken, but at least somewhat composed.

He drew a hand over his face, as though pulling an errant spiderweb away, or the last vestiges of an ill-omened dream. Then he bowed to Malal. "Your pardon, Emperor," he said. His voice quavered.

Malal waved his hand. "What news?" he asked.

"The Ears," said Master Iwala.

"What of them?"

For a moment it looked like Iwala might lose control of himself again. He drew a great shuddering breath and began trembling. Father Akiro put a hand on his arm, and that seemed to calm him a bit. Enough to say, simply, "They're all dead."

4

The listening post was a bloodbath.

Malal had believed Iwala – it wasn't like the man to lie, or even to exaggerate – but in the face of something so bizarre, only first-hand knowledge would suffice.

The listening post was in the depths of the palace, just a few levels above the dungeons. The dungeons  themselves were far less populated now, since one of the first decrees of the (unknown) new Malal's regimes was to release most of the inhabitants – the political prisoners, those held captive because they had spoken against the Empire or her Emperor, those who had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time. But above the quiet dungeonss, the listening post had continued to hum and buzz as it always had.

The Ears themselves required little. They simply came at the time their shift began, sat on one of the many rows of chairs provided for the purpose, and waited. Other Ears would contact them, and the business of the Empire would go on. Exchange rates needed to be calculated – wheat for minerals, minerals for water, water for wheat. News needed to be shared – convicts sought by the Imperial Crown, battles won by the Army over rebel forces, new inventions and innovations by the Empire's best and brightest.

If it was important, or even just gossip-worthy, chances were it would make its way from some Ear in a faraway place to another Ear, right here.

Then the work began. Each chair had a desk attached to it. There, the scribes took down every word as it fell from each Ear's mouth. The words, once transcribed, went to the next room, where the sorters gave the information its first, most basic organization. Then the words were analyzed and, once analyzed, and sorted again. Anything deemed time-critical was pulled and acted on as quickly as possible.

The Empire depended on many things. And of them all, the speedy flow of information within itself was one of the greatest.

Each Ear still sat at his or her seat.

But none of them would ever Hear again.

When Malal said he wanted to come to the listening post to see for himself, it was hard convincing the Imperial Guard not to accompany him en masse. It was only Wind, their Captain, threatening them with bodily destruction, that got them to agree to have only six of them accompany him.

And when Malal and the six guards, along with Wind, Cloud, Arrow, Brother Scieran, Father Akiro, Master Iwala, and Sword, pushed their way into the room, two of the guards immediately pushed their skull-helms back far enough to vomit onto the floor.

Arrow's gift was one of faraway sleep. He saw the dead, and saw their blood as his bullets or arrows found their marks, but it was distant… and he usually barely took the time to confirm death before moving on to the next target. Wind and Cloud also killed from a distance, and in groups – they tossed masses of enemies in storms and hurricanes, eradicated them with lightning.

Only Sword killed up close. Only she killed one-on-one, and only she looked in the eyes of those she killed, and watched as the life drifted away from their gaze.

But even she, with her experience in battle and her near-friendship with Death, felt ill when she saw what waited for them in the listening post.

Brother Scieran started murmuring. A moment later, Father Akiro joined him. A prayer for the dead, and perhaps a curse for the living – for whoever had done this.

Or whatever. Because there's no way that this could be the work of a human being. No human could be this cruel, this evil, this powerful.

The Ears were dead, yes. And they had died in agony. Sword had known that – the fact that she and the others had heard the screams from so far away, through so many walls of stone, could only mean deaths so painful as to defy understanding – but knowing they had died in agony meant nothing without seeing the expressions on their faces.

The Ears' eyes were open. All of them. And though the light of life was gone from their eyes, still they managed to look as though they stared even now into some pit, into the darkest realms of the Netherworlds. Their mouths curled into death rictuses. Their heads were pressed hard into the cushions of the high-backed chairs, and that was the thing that stood out most to Sword. It was the most insane, the most gruesome, and the most impossible rolled into one.

Their heads pressed back. Pushed against that cushion, high up on the chair back. But they shouldn't have. They couldn't have.

Because there was nothing to hold them up.

Below the heads, there was nothing. There was just a head that became a stump, and below that stump the bloody outline of a body. As though the bodies had exploded so forcefully that they had nearly evaporated.

But, at the same time, it had happened slowly. So slowly the Ears had felt every atom disintegrating. So slowly they went mad even as they died. So slowly that none of them could run, so slowly –

(their heads pressed back paralyzed with pain how are their heads there how are they still there?)

– that it did more than kill them.

It sent a message.

One more of the guards vomited. Master Iwala looked at the man who did, as though fearful the guard would transform to a mad, murderous beast. "They screamed," he said, and shuddered, "and then this happened."

"Where are the scribes?" To his credit, Malal's voice did not tremble. He sounded utterly the way Sword thought an Emperor should: in control, both of himself and of the situation. As though there were some rulebook somewhere that had prepared him for just such an eventuality: Scenario #143224h: Explosion of Ears.

"In the next room," said Iwala. He seemed to gather strength from Malal, sounding a bit less shaky himself. "When it happened most of them were… er… sprayed. I ordered clean water and towels, but also ordered guards to keep them there."

"You did well." Malal sounded even more an Emperor. "We will speak to them one at a time, to find out if there was anything in the messages received. Then we will…." He drifted to a stop. Then any sense that the moment was under control fell away as he, too, turned his head and threw up.

Brother Scieran and Father Akiro fell silent, their prayer complete.

Sword felt Arrow reach for her hand. It was meant as a comfort for both of them, but for some reason in that instant she felt as though darkness gathered in the room. An ill omen.

She was suddenly possessed of the conviction that one of the people in this room – not the guards, not Iwala, but one of her friends – was going to die.

And, as though whatever evil magic was behind this all had heard her thoughts, the heads all twisted in place. Still hanging against the backs of the seats, but now they stared at Sword and her friends. A long moment – a moment as eternal as the Netherfires into which those dead eyes stared.

Then, with a sound that Sword knew she would hear forever in her worst dreams, the heads all fell as one to the stone floor.

But they rolled, and even though she could tell the magic finally and fully abandoned the room, it did not do so before positioning every head so it stared straight up, as though peering into the eyes of whatever demon had killed it.

5

The day had been long, then longer, and then become the longest that Sword had ever experienced.

Wind was all for bringing in the scribes one at a time, on the assumption that they had had something to do with what happened, and cutting them to very small pieces until one of them confessed – then broadening the search to the rest of the Empire, if necessary.

Arrow, though, had been the son of a noble. His father had had a room much like this one – until Sword had killed him. He was the first to point out the obvious: that this might not be an isolated event.

"What if it happened everywhere?" he said. "What if this is the beginning of some kind of attack?"

"He's right," said Brother Scieran. "We have to find out if other Ears have been injured –"

"Or killed," said Father Akiro.

"Always a ray of sunshine," grumbled Brother Scieran.

"Always a stupid student."

Brother Scieran growled but didn't say anything.

"I win," cackled Father Akiro. "That's seven to two, my favor."

Brother Scieran gaped. "Are you… Gods' charity, are you keeping track of who wins our arguments?"

Father Akiro looked insulted. "Of course. How else am I to confirm how stupid you are."

Brother Scieran still wore a sickle and a whip on his waist –the traditional weapons of the Order of Chain – and he looked like he was seriously considering using either or both of them.

"Enough," said Malal. He looked hard at both of them. "Don't you think we have more important things to do?"

Brother Scieran's growled again, but he nodded.

"And that's eight," mumbled Father Akiro. Brother Scieran glared, then sighed and looked away from his old teacher.

"So we need to find out if the other Ears have been harmed," said Brother Scieran.

"But we don't have a way to do that, since our Ears can hardly call to them," said Father Akiro.

They all looked to Malal. He shrugged. "I'm open to suggestions." He looked at Wind, who was Signing the conversation to Cloud. The two shook their heads, so the Emperor turned to Sword and Arrow, who gestured likewise. "Father Akiro?" he said. The old priest shook his head, too.

Brother Scieran's eyebrows went so high they almost touched his hairline. "Really? Really, oh sage and wise one?" He cleared his throat. "Eight to three." Then he turned to Malal. "Call an Eye."

Malal thumped himself on his forehead. He gestured, and a guard who had been waiting in a corner of the room nodded and disappeared.

A moment later an Eye came in. A young man dressed in a tunic and leggings, the fact that this was his first audience with the Emperor obvious in his tense posture and the dozen bows he made as he entered.

"Yes, Lord, I mean, yes, your Emperorship, I –"

"You may be still," said Malal. Again Sword wondered at her friend. He had spent most of his adult life as a prisoner in Fear, now he ruled all of Ansborn. And in between acting the fool – and it was an act, she was certain, something he did to amuse himself and to irritate Brother Scieran – he actually did a good job of it. Certainly better than she could have done.

Malal drew close to the young man. "What is your name, my son?"

The young man beamed. No doubt he would tell that tale to his grandchildren: "And the Emperor called me his son, he did, I swear it! His son!"

"My name's Janos, my Lord."

"Excellent, Janos. Wonderful name. From the north?"

"Yes, Lord."

From the moment he walked in, Janos was utterly calm. Sword thought the man was possessed of an unnatural bravery – or perhaps he was a butcher before coming to work at the palace, someone used to blood and death. Either way, he hadn't batted an eye when stepping into the listening post.

But now… his eyes widened as though suddenly realizing where he was, and what surrounded him.

Gods, he didn't even realize what he was stepping into. He was too busy worrying about appearing before the Emperor.

Janos took a sudden step back, tripped, and tumbled over. "What? What? What?" He kept saying the word over and over, his eyes whipping from side to side like he was watching a fierce game of deuces.

Malal leaned down. He touched the Eye lightly on the shoulder. "It's okay. You're safe."

"We probably should have warned him," whispered Arrow. He tried to make a joke of it, but his smile was forced and sickly.

Sword nodded. It wasn't until he said that that she realized it: they were all panicked. She and her friends had fought a bloody war, a revolution that few knew about and even fewer knew had been successful. They each had known devastating loss and seen terrible things.

But nothing like this.

We're not thinking clearly.

That could kill us.

And she realized that she was now thinking of what had happened as a first attack. Not a single, isolated incident. This was the first salvo of something that promised to become worse.

"Easy," Malal was still whispering. A moment later, Cloud joined him. It was easy sometimes to remember the young man was even in the room. He had always been quiet, but ever since he had been deafened he carried silence like a cloak.

He put his hand on Janos' other shoulder. Squeezed. The panicked Eye looked up at him. Cloud smiled – a rarity on his usually expressionless face. The smile seemed to do more than any amount of Imperial encouragement, for the young man on the floor calmed. He looked at Malal.

"Forgive me," he whispered after a moment.

Malal laughed. A low laugh, totally inappropriate on this killing floor, but it put Janos at ease, and Sword felt a bit of the tension melt from her own shoulders.

"I had the same reaction myself," said Malal. He looked around, visibly working to do so. "I am sorry for bringing you in here without warning. The fault was mine." He put out a hand, and Janos took it. Malal helped him up. "As you can see, we suffered a rather horrible – well, we don't really know what to call it."

"A Tear," said Janos.

"What was that?"

Janos bowed low. "I’m sorry, my Lord."

"No, don't be sorry. What was it you said."

"It's a bedtime tale from the village where I was born. Something the parents tell the children to get them to eat their wheat. If you do wrong and don't be fair/ Then soon will come the wicked Tear/ To tear your body from your Head/ So eat your wheats and go to bed." He cleared his throat. "It's said that the story dates to the beginnings of the Empire, that the Emperor Eka told it to his children, and that it came from below the clouds."

That hung there for a long time. Finally, Wind Signed something. "What did she say," asked Father Akiro.

"She says," said Malal with a tight, humorless smile, "that she is glad she did not grow up in your village."

"It was a hard place," agreed Janos.

"Well," Malal said after a moment, "whether it be a bedtime monster come to life or some other evil, what we need now is to find out whether or not this has happened anywhere else."

Janos nodded. "I am at your command."

"Good." Malal clapped him on the shoulder. Janos managed to both burst with pride and cringe as though with the gesture the severed heads that still lay all about would rise up and begin to chew on him. "Have you ever seen any other listening posts?"

Sword knew why Malal was asking: to find out if this was happening elsewhere, they had to see elsewhere. The Gift of the Eyes was that they could See anywhere at all, instantly… as long as it was a place they had actually seen before, with their physical eyes.

Janos was nodding. "I've been to the one to the one in Jax, near my home village, and I went to one in an exchange once, in a mine." He grimaced, "I'll explain that, of course, how I came to be in a mine, though I'd rather –"

"No, of course not, that's your business." Malal hastened to reassure the young man, clasping his arms in his hands. "But this is something we should be quick about, so…."

"Of course."

"I See," breathed the young man. His eyes closed. He stood silent. Still.

They waited. Sword had experienced this Gift with a different Eye, shown visions of distant places by the old woman who was one of the first people she met at the palace. That had ended badly, the old woman being murdered in the middle of the vision.

But she had never seen the process from the outside, watching as someone not being carried away with the Eye.

It was a bit anticlimactic. Janos just stood there. He didn't stiffen, didn't weave as the charmers did at the bazaar. He didn't even nod or let his chin drop as though relaxed. Except for his closed eyes he might as well have been standing in the corner of a party, attentive to the goings-on but not interested in participating in the conversations.

Then, after what seemed like many minutes, his eyes snapped open.

"They are dead. They are all dead," he whispered.

"Who?" said Father Akiro "Who are, boy?"

Janos' eyes jerked to Father Akiro, then back to Malal. "My Lord, I Saw the listening post at Jax. But I wished to be thorough. To do well for you, Lord. So I went to the listening post at the mine, as well."

"And?" Malal asked softly.

Janos closed his eyes. He looked like someone who would give anything to be anywhere else.

"All was as it is here," he said. His eyes snapped open, horror to the point of near-madness sparkling within their depths. "All the Eyes were dead."

He gulped, then added, "What could do this, my Lord?"

No one answered.

6

They questioned Janos after that – all of them. It always amazed Sword how much Wind could communicate without speaking a single word, and how much Cloud seemed to listen even though he heard nothing at all. How gentle Brother Scieran and Father Akiro could be, how strident Arrow could become when the situation turned strange and dire.

We each become what we truly are. Warriors, men of the Gods, children of power.

And what are you, Sword?

Still a Dog?

No. Never that, never again.

She asked her own questions, to be sure. But to be sure, she asked fewer than the others, simply because she had less knowledge than they did. She knew that it was better to be silent and let those with knowledge speak than it was to waste time in a futile attempt to appear knowledgeable herself.

That was, in itself, a kind of knowledge.

But no matter how they prodded, or nudged, or commanded, or wheedled, Janos could tell them little more than he already had.

"It was death," he said more than once. He shuddered when he said it.

They let him go at last, telling him to go to one of the many guest quarters at the palace, that refreshment would be sent to him. Malal, sounding very much the Emperor once again – but a great, a powerful, a terrible Emperor this time – said, "If you speak of this, ever, to anyone, your head will be forfeit."

Janos, to his credit, did not shudder or shake. He simply nodded. "My allegiance is yours, Lord," he said. Sword realized the stutter he had first entered with was gone. He had aged in the few short moments he had spent in this place. Royalty no longer terrified him – how could it after what he had seen?

He left, and Malal signaled for the remaining guards to leave as well. They did, their body language both hesitant and relieved.

Malal turned to his friends. He looked like he was going to speak, but Arrow broke in. "We should interview the scribes. They were there at the last moment. Maybe they have a clue about what happened."

Wind Signed something. He nodded as she Signed translations for her brother. "I agree, love," he said. Then, to Arrow, he continued, "The scribes know nothing but what is on their papers."

Arrow frowned. "Surely they will have seen –"

"Nothing. They will have seen nothing. They write as fast as they can to keep up with the constant stream of information that comes through the Ears." Malal shook his head. "No, if there's anything, it's in the pages that came through directly before… whatever it was that happened."

Arrow crossed his arms. He had been born a noble, and was still accustomed to being the one giving the orders, not taking them. But he saw the wisdom of what Malal said, and nodded.

Brother Scieran was looking at Malal with surprise. "How do you know this?"

Malal grinned, and as he did Sword saw a touch of the old Smoke coming through. "Because in between thinking of ways to torture you, old friend, I actually was learning to run an empire."

Malal led the group out of the room. He whispered to one of the guards who waited outside, then led them into a nearby chamber. It was a bedroom, but another few whispers to the guards who followed them and the bed was moved to the side and several tables and chairs were brought in just in time to bear the hundreds of sheets of handwritten papers – the scribes' transcriptions of the Ears' reports.

Malal nodded, and the guards once again left. Sword appreciated what he was doing: whatever was happening was something dire, and the group would have to speak frankly. This was no time to worry about what a guard would or would not hear.

At the same time, the sight of all the pages made her spirits sink. She shook her head. "How are we going to get through a whole day of these reports?"

Malal guffawed. "A whole day? This is just the last twenty minutes." He eyed Arrow. "Told you the scribes would be too busy to notice anything."

Arrow grumbled something under his breath. Sword couldn't resist. "Careful. Say something too awful and the Emperor might put you in stocks."

"I could do it, too," chuckled Malal.

In answer, Arrow simply lay a hand on one of his pistols. And in answer to that, Wind and Cloud made small motions with their hands and the air pressure dropped even as static built and all Arrow's hair suddenly stood on end.

Arrow took his hand away from his gun. But he was grinning, as were the other two, as was the Emperor. Old friends baiting one another, old friends making fun in a bad situation. This was what families did in times of stress: they fought until they argued, they argued until they joked, they joked until the laughed, then they laughed until they argued again – and the whole bound in a circle of love.

They sat, and began looking.

"This will mostly be reports about exchange rates and prices of various goods," said Malal. "The rest will be troop movements, requests for transfers, a few high-level orders marked 'Imperial.' Those will have come only to a few Ears who have special permissions to Hear such things, along with their designated scribes. Set aside any of those for comparison, along with anything that doesn't fit in the categories I just stated. And anything that just hits you wrong."

"One thing," said Sword. Everyone looked at her. "Whatever happened here happened elsewhere. The first two places Janos checked, in fact. So we can assume it's an attack." They looked at her somberly. Wind nodded. "That means we can expect the next move to come soon. We don't have a lot of time. But we should bolster the palace defenses until then."

Malal was silent a moment. Then he looked at Wind. He moved his lips without sound – he didn't need to speak aloud, since she could read lips. After a moment, she Signed to Cloud and they both stood and left, moving with purpose.

"She'll make sure we're safe here," said Malal.

Father Akiro said something, very quietly. But Sword heard it. And though it chilled her, she agreed.

"I very much doubt that."

7

"I must say, I'm a bit disappointed in you."

For a moment, Sword thought she was still in the room. The room. As long as she had been in the kennels, as long as every fight seemed to be, as long as life could be, the room – the room – had seemed that long, with a long infinity tacked on to boot.

The scribe sheets were all the same size, all the same shade of yellow. Every scribe had the same, perfectly looping cursive. Every sheet seemed to have the same, banal information. Wheat at one silver a bushel. Water trading down in the north. More Pushes and Threads needed at the air-car factories in Knowledge. Troop movements static in Fear after minor reshifting following reshifting necessary after reshifting following preceding reshifting necessitated and on and on and oh Gods she was going mad in increments that could be measured by yellow sheets.

She looked around the table, far after night had fallen, and saw looks on the others' faces that mirrored her own: exhaustion, not just from the day's events but from the sheer strength of will required to read thousands of pages that all added up to The Empire proceeds apace, please continue forward.

Father Akiro surprised her by being the first to call it quits. He stood, taking almost a full minute to go from chair to upright, groaning several times in the process. He unhooked his canes from where they hung on the back of the chair, then said simply, "This old man must rest," and left the room.

Not five minutes later, Brother Scieran muttered, "I thought he'd never give up," and he left as well, his wobbly stride nearly the mirror of his old teacher's.

Arrow, Sword, and Malal were all that remained. They looked at one another. "Anything?" Sword finally said.

Malal shook his head. "Not a thing that I can find that has anything to do with what happened. Though I feel sure I can bore the Ministers to death at the next Ministry meeting." He sighed, then pushed away from the table, though he didn't stand. He eyed the bed that still rested in  the corner. "I think I might just sleep here tonight."

"No, you won't," said Arrow.

Malal sighed again. "No, I won't. It wouldn't do for the blasted Emperor." He eyed the door. The guards had been sent out of the room some time ago, but it was second nature to check to see if they were alone – though usually before he said something like that. He blushed, clearly embarrassed at the mistake.

"You're tired," said Sword, hoping he would grant himself some measure of forgiveness in the fact.

"Yes. And so it is off to bed." He stood, and straightened his back, forcing the exhaustion from his frame.

Of us all, he alone can never appear tired.

For an uncounted and uncountable time, she marveled at the sacrifice Smoke had made in becoming the Emperor – in becoming Malal.

Malal moved to the door. Turned at the last moment to them both. "Go to sleep, both of you." He smiled wanly. "That's an order." Then he left, accompanied by the Imperial Guard.

Sword moved her chair closer to Arrow's. She leaned against him for a moment, and he leaned against her. They bore one another's weight. Foolish, because in leaning on one another it wasn't as though the weight disappeared – it just shifted a bit. Still, in sharing the burden it felt lessened somehow.

After a time, he kissed her, then stood. "We should sleep."

She nodded. Kissed him again, wishing she had enough energy for a bit more passion, but she was so bone-weary that a mere brush of the lips was all she could manage – and it was all he managed to return.

She didn't even take off her clothes when she got to her bed. Just fell fully-clothed atop the covers. And then… the words.

"I must say, I'm a bit disappointed in you."

She swam through memory, through blurry moments reading yellow pages, into a dark room atop silken sheets, finally sitting up when she realized where she was, that the voice was real, that someone was here.

And whose voice it was.

The voice of a dead man.

The man who had found her in the kennels, who had taken her away and changed her from a Dog into one of the most dangerous people in the Empire was perched atop a chest of drawers that sat against a nearby wall. His legs dangled casually, and he picked at his nails with a short knife, as though he had a right to be here. As though he belonged.

As though she had not already killed him.

"Devar?"

8

Bright light flared. A whip appeared in Sword's hand, a braided length of orange flame that ended in a blue flail that was nearly too bright to see. It snapped forward, moving so fast that it was nearly too fast to see, that it was too fast to dodge.

Devar didn't dodge.

He just wasn't.

One moment he was sitting on the chest, that devilish grin on his face that she had once found beguiling, the next he was on the other end of the room even as the whip seared through empty air and cracked into nothing.

She reversed the attack, slashing the whip back toward him. Again he disappeared, and reappeared once more on the chest.

This was his Greater Gift. He could transport himself and other things from one place to another – though she didn't know what his range was. She had seen him move through battles with ease, appearing with blades already buried in people's bodies. Though she knew he wasn't going to try that with her. Touching her with a weapon would grant her the power to wield it to deadly effect – even if it was being used to wound her. He had found that out the hard way.

Devar disappeared for a moment. Completely gone from the room this time, and  Sword spun in a quick circle before he reappeared, this time with a bunch of grapes in his hand. He popped one in his mouth as he settled back onto the chest.

"I could have killed you in your sleep, you know," he said. Then he shimmered, and in his place was the Chancellor.

Not the Chancellor. They're all the same man. All the Phoenix.

"Or I could have dropped the ceiling on you," said the big man. Then he was gone, and in his place a small boy, an old crone, a muscular woman, a dark old man, then back to the form of Devar. He smiled. "I have lots of ways to kill you." He ate another grape. "But that's not why I'm here."

The whip disappeared from Sword's grip, snaking back toward her hand, shortening and hardening into a long dagger. It spat embers into the air around her hand like a flame made of green wood.

"I killed you," she said, and tried to make the words sound angry instead of amazed. But she was amazed, and knew he would see that. And more, knew that he would see her fear.

"Yes, I suppose you did." Another grape went in. Some juice spurted down his chin. He didn't wipe it away. For some reason that, more than anything else, drove home the reality of the moment. This was real. It was happening.

Devar – Phoenix – was alive.

"But you fell. You fell below the clouds. You were run through on the spikes outside the palace."

"Yes," he said, nodding. "Just as is everyone who tries to descend below those cursed mists." He spread his arms wide. "Just as are all who attempt to depart our blessed, beloved Empire of Ansborn." He disappeared, then reappeared without the grapes. He finally wiped the juice off his chin as well, a gesture both genteel and strange. "Do you never wonder at these things, Sword? At who does this? Who murders us? Who kills the brave among us, the ones who try to leave?"

He leaned back, folding his arms across his chest. "Do you never wonder if perhaps I am not your enemy?"

She lunged at him, her knife slashing at his neck.

But he was gone again.

She waited. This time he did not return. Not in the minutes that followed, not when the sun finally broke past the line of the horizon and spilled itself across the palace grounds.

She had paced the length and breadth of the room all night, sure Phoenix would return. Now she finally let herself sink to the bed. She lay on her pillow, exhausted from the events of the night, the horrors of the day before.

But the pillow was hard. Not the feathery softness she had grown used to in the past months. It was a blocky, angular thing. She pulled the case open, and instead of  the pillow, inside was a book. On the cover: a weathered, faded outline of a tree.

She opened the book, and inside the cover was a note, in neat, scrolling letters.

I really do think you should spend more time on this. And ask yourself why it, among so many books in the Imperial Library, was hidden.

- P

She held the paper a long time.

Then opened the book to the first page.

And knew that, tired as she was, sleep would come no more.

9

Moa hadn't asked for guard duty on the wall.

Moa also hadn't asked to be the best fighter at the Strongholds. With a temper that occasionally forgot the difference between low rank and high.

Nor had she asked to be a girl.

Usually that last didn't bother her. But occasionally it did get her into trouble – mostly on days when a certain captain mouthed off at her and she was inclined to bump into him when he stood conveniently near a puddle of mud. She only did it when he was alone, and he would stand up and sputter and there would be that look in his eyes – him deciding whether it was worth it to make her life miserable right there on the spot… and then seeing the murderous look on her face, and how she fingered the knife on her belt.

He always decided against immediate action.

Sure, he always made life worse for her eventually, and she supposed that was her own fault in a way. But she just couldn't stop. The look on his face when he came up all muddy, his always-perfect uniform spattered and in some cases nearly wrecked.

Perfect.

This last time, though. Even she had to admit she might have gone too far.

His own fault. He shouldn't have made fun of my size.

Moa was not a petite girl, in much the same way the Imperial Palace was not a shack. She loomed over most of the men at the Strongholds – which was saying something, considering this was where the Imperial Army trained, where the men and women tasked with keeping peace in the Empire came to learn the tools and skills of killing.

Moa looked down on almost all of them. Literally and figuratively. She had little use for men, and less use for the kind who seemed to be attracted to military life: men bloated with their own egos, their own sense of invulnerability. And yet most of them had never known true danger. Had never known death. Had never known Fear.

Moa had grown up in that place. A small town that roved as the magma flowed. That died when they were not vigilant – either killed by the roving bands who stole and killed to live themselves, or by the mountain itself. Eventually Moa was the only one left. She saw her brothers murdered, saw worse happen to her mother before she, too, died.

She was able to steal away on an air-cair leaving Fear. Discovered almost instantly, of course – there weren't many places to hide on those things. But to her surprise the woman in charge didn't turn her in. Instead, she took one look at Moa's physique – huge, but muscular instead of fat; moving like a creature built to prey on the weak – and offered her a choice: enter the Emperor's service, or be thrown into the clouds between the mountains.

Not a hard choice.

Though at times like this, Moa wondered if she should have taken her chances in the clouds. She knew the stories, of course: that whatever went below the clouds, living or dead, appeared the next day, pinned to one of the spikes around the palace.

But that meant someone had to do the pinning. And Moa had yet to meet someone capable of doing such a thing to her.

She flexed her big arms, and grinned. Decided in that moment she had been right, after all. She hadn't meant for the Captain to actually fall into the latrine ditch, only scare him a bit. But the sight of him, his arms spinning in great circles, that last terrible moment as he realized he was going in no matter what he did, and then the long fall into the collected offal of the Stronghold.

Beautiful.

Worth it. Worth a thousand nights on the wall.

"Having a good night, Moa?"

"Always, Jon."

The other guard snorted. He was smaller than Moa, but not by much. Like her, he was dressed in thick furs to ward off the cold. It didn't seem to be helping much. He shivered constantly.

The cold never bothered Moa much. Surprising, considering where she came from. Perhaps it was because of where she came from. If she never saw a place that hot again, it would be fine.

"You shouldn't have pushed him in the dumper," said Jon. But he grinned through his tremors.

She smiled back. Jon was a man, but he was an all right type in spite of that. He'd never hit on her or implied he was better than her, which put him in the very small minority.

"Hey! Shut up!"

The guard to her right was not in the minority. Agu was from Center, the son of a minor noble – a fact he never let anyone forget – and someone who believed his soils didn't stink.

Or maybe he doesn't even make soils. Maybe he's completely without the necessary exits.

The idea made her giggle.

Agu frowned. "I said, shut up," he hissed. He was stationed next to the gate – the break in the low wall that ringed the Strongholds, so for this night he had seniority. Another fact he was determined not to let anyone forget.

Moa frowned right back at him. "Or what?" she asked. She dropped her hand to her knife. Most people were smart enough to back down at that point.

Not Agu. He took a step toward her. "Or I'll report you."

That was enough to make her laugh again. "To who? You think the Captain could hate me any more than he already does right now?"

Agu opened his mouth – no doubt to say something crushingly stupid about how his daddy was important or his name meant "Great One" in the Old Tongue (as though he could possibly know such a thing) – but something stopped him. His mouth slammed shut with such violence that Moa heard his teeth clack together.

Or maybe that had been her own teeth. Certainly she saw the same thing that Agu had spotted. And Jon's spot from further down the wall assured her: she wasn't going crazy. What she saw was actually happening.

A man had just… appeared.

He was young, but tall and strong, with a red robe and black velvet tunic that looked costly. His hair was darker than the night, but his blue eyes took in the fires from the torches that blazed on the wall and cast it back brighter and stronger than before.

He caught Moa's eye. Smiled. The smile was so wide and happy and genuine that she felt herself smile back.

Then he drew a dagger and, before anyone could move, disappeared.

An instant later he reappeared – with the dagger buried deep in Agu's throat.

Moa had a moment of mad happiness. An insane giggle bubbled up from within her, and she thought, Not so great now, are you? Then Agu fell, pitching forward against the wall, his blood splashing across the low structure, staining the stone.

Moa realized her dagger had made its way to her hand. She didn't remember yanking it free of her belt, but she must have. The second she realized it, the urge to laugh disappeared. She grinned, but without mirth. It was a deadly grin. She gestured at the man who had killed Agu. Come on, said the gesture.

He just smiled.

Behind her, a horn sounded. Jon had raised the alarm. But no one had blown the alarm horn in generations, and Moa wasn't sure if anyone would know what to do upon hearing it.

It didn't matter. Not to her. All she had to worry about was this man who had killed Agu.

She repeated her gesture.

He made no move toward her.

Something else did.

Agu.

He's dead. He's dead, he's dead I saw it he has to be he –

But if the man was dead, he didn't know it. Because he was standing. As he pulled himself up, the slit in his throat gaped. But no blood came – it was already gone.

No blood. No blood, how is he moving?

Then she saw something that terrified her even more. His eyes. Pure white, filmed over as though he had been dead for days or weeks instead of only seconds.

And that brought another moment of startlement. The realization that she thought of him – knew he was – dead. It was impossible, because he was moving, he was not laying still as the dead must do.

But dead he was.

And, she realized, moving toward her.

Shock had frozen her. Terror had rooted her to the spot. Now she moved. Almost too late, but she managed to plunge her dagger into Agu's heart.

And it did nothing at all. He did not even fall this time.

She felt the sharp bite of a dagger against her own skin. Felt her own flesh part.

Her eyes moved over of their own accord and she saw the young man. He still hadn't moved from his spot near the bloodstained wall.

He smiled at her, and nodded as though to thank her.

Is there someone behind him?

Who…?

Then her thoughts disappeared as her own blood splashed against the wall. Drifted away and fell apart…

… and gone.

10

"Anything?"

"No, sir."

"Well, keep an eye sharp."

"Yes, Cap'n."

Captain Yoro looked around, trying to spot something as well, though if Foka couldn't see anything through the Glass, there was no chance at all of him seeing anything. Still, he couldn't abide just standing here, doing nothing.

No one had told him that would be so much of his job as captain of an air-car: long periods of interminable waiting, punctuated by short bits of terrible action.

Odd, how we always wish for our state to be other than what it is. We wish to rest when we are busy, wish for action when we are at rest.

We are an ungrateful lot, we humans.

The Gods must despair.

Yoro kept looking through the darkness. The men around him moved quietly – almost as quietly as the air-car itself. The Excel was the fastest in the Imperial Fleet. A simple design, as they all were, but this one had extra magic in the hold, and apparently some genius Smith had figured out a way to streamline the design that focused the Pushes' powers so that it propelled the craft that much faster.

The design was a closely-held secret, but because Yoro was to be captain of the Excel, he had been allowed to view the primary mechanism that provided the push for the air-car, and had found it simple, almost to the point of being underwhelming.

But then, how many great things are simple? And great because they are simple?

Several cubes, cut in thin cross-sections, were set around a central track. The Smith who crafted the cubes – working with wind and fire and metal with his bare hands as easily as a normal person might shape potters' clay – had inset thick iron slugs on one side of each cross-section. They actually looked something liked a Rifleman's bullets.

Pushes enchanted the slugs, but because a Push could only enchant something to go forward, the problem was always: how to get an air-car or some other vehicle to move with any kind of control?

The answer was in the track the cubes were set into. The slugs pointed forward normally, driving the air-car ahead. But the track spun and the cross-sections spun and the slugs now pointed back and the air-car would be driven aft. If some on one side of the cube faced to the fore, and some on the other faced aft, the air-car would turn – the ratio determining how fast the turn was.

Simple. But effective.

The track even allowed for the slugs to be pointed up or down, which pushed the air-car into steep or gradual ascents or descents. And the balloon above it all was just there to provide a counter to gravity's pull and make static hovers easier to calculate.

The balloon itself was of a new design, as well: filled with a prototype gas; something that the miners had found recently. Apparently it was very flammable, and that made Yoro nervous – it wasn't like there were a lot of options for getting out when you were hovering a hundred feet or more over a mountain. Even worse when crossing over the chasms that separated the States.

The thought of falling below the clouds… Gods, now that was the worst thought of all. He didn't want to end up on one of those pikes outside the palace.

"Can we get this thing to go any faster?" Normally the kind of question that would shatter a crew's confidence in its captain, but given that this was only their third flight in the Excel, allowances could be made. They were still feeling her out.

The engineer ran some calculations on the small, illuminated table that sat in the center of the bridge. Looked up with a grimace and shook his head. "Sorry, Cap'n," he said. "We're locked as fast as we can go. Even if I bleed off some gas, the air differential is going to return less than it takes away."

Yoro nodded and tried to look as though he had expected that answer; had just been testing the crew.

The engineer hesitated a moment, then asked, "What do you think we'll find?"

"No idea."

The mission was simple enough: go to Halaw, recon the area. If possible, get to the listening post and gather whatever information there that could be gleaned.

The reasons for the assignment, though – those were not simple at all.

As though he had been reading Yoro's thoughts, the engineer – a short, jolly-seeming man with a topknot who actually came from a small town in the south of Knowledge not far from where Yoro had been born – asked, "What do you make of it? What they said?"

Yoro pursed his lips. The Imperial Air Corps had a much laxer idea of discipline than did the Army, and usually he was glad of that fact – how many hours a month did they lose just to saluting for all the Gods' love?

But sometimes – like now – he wished they had a bit more control in the IAC. It would save him having to give answers he didn't have.

"I don't know," he finally said. Three words that no ship commander should ever admit to. But there seemed to be nothing more to say. "It seems impossible: the Walled City of Fear has stood as it is for six hundred Turns. For something to bring it down, to shatter its walls, to let those inside escape – and to do it in a single day?" He shrugged. "It seems impossible, but…."

"Why didn't they just send an Eye to See the place?" mumbled the engineer.

Yoro realized that the rest of the crew on the bridge was listening. The Excel was designed to operate with minimal crew: two engineers, two navigators, five riggers, an executive officer/first mate, and three Riflemen on loan from the Imperial Army who mostly kept to themselves. Everyone but the riggers and one of the navigators was on deck right now, and even the Riflemen were acting interested for once, though they still managed to seem irritatingly aloof.

Yoro realized he had to answer the next question well – not just for the engineer, but for the rest of the crew. They were afraid. Heading into a night marked not just by a thin sliver of a moon, but by terror of the unknown, by the fall of something that had existed since long before they were born.

"You know many Eyes who've been to Halaw? Perhaps on holiday?" Yoro said, and forced a laugh. Everyone knew that Eyes could only See places they'd only been before, and the idea of an Eye going to the Walled City for any reason at all – let alone for a holiday – was a ridiculous one.

One of the Riflemen spoke. Yoro didn't know his name, but thought of him as Surly. He was tall and angular. Not just physically; Yoro got the impression that if you cut the man open you would find a soul as hard and jagged as any geode brought up from the mines.

"There had to have been one that had been to the listening post, though," said Surly.

The crew grew silent again.

"True that is," muttered the engineer. He felt at his topknot, as though it were a talisman that might stave off the darkness that crowded in from outside the air-car.

"Perhaps," said Yoro. He resisted the urge to glare at Surly, and instead clapped the engineer – Rin was his name – on his shoulder, as though he was playing into some master plan of Yoro's.

"Always have a plan for leading the men," Yoro's teacher at Command School had said. "And if you don't have a plan, pretend like the Nethers that you do."

"In fact, I'm sure you're right, Rin," said Yoro. "I'm sure some Eye has seen the listening post at least, perhaps Halaw itself." Surly mumbled something darkly – no doubt upset that Yoro had given the credit for making that observation to Rin, rather than to the Rifleman. Yoro ignored him. "Yet have you ever known an Eye to make a truly accurate observation? How many times have you gone into a battle on an Eye's information, only to find it missing some critical component, or to discover that some vital element had been overlooked?" He looked out the front window, that dark expanse that lay beyond the glass.

Bright spots could now be seen in the darkness: the perpetual spurts of magma that dotted the landscape of Fear.

Almost there.

And what will we find?

"No," he said. "We are needed to find out what happened. Not some Eye's second-hand, untrained Sight. The Emperor is wise, and he knows. He knows that we are needed to truly see."

The men murmured among themselves, but it was a different kind of murmuring than he had heard at earlier times in the flight. Bereft of fear, now there was purpose, now pride held them safe in its palm.

They would die for a cause they believed in.

But they would actually live – much harder than dying – if they had the pride that comes with believing they are important to that cause. These men believed now. They believed in their importance. To the mission, to the Empire, and in a very real and personal sense to the Emperor himself.

At that, Yoro felt that twinge. The one that had followed him around over the past months, worrying at him like a mountain Claw at weakened prey.

Malal. Something was wrong with the Emperor. He had heard the whispers for weeks. "Malal is seized by a plague." "Malal is possessed of a demon."

"Malal is not himself."

Yoro himself had not believed it. He refused. He had been raised by parents loyal to the Empire – a father who was himself a captain of the Imperial Air Corps, a mother who had served as scribe in a listening post –

(Gods what if she had been there had seen what happened to them to the Ears what if she had seen?)

– before marrying and seeing to the family's business affairs.

Then he saw Malal. The different way the boy held himself. Hardly the insecure child he had been, more self-assured, almost cocky.

And there were the others: the priests, silent brother and sister who apparently had some place in his Guard. The boy who was armed to the teeth with every kind of projectile weapon that could be carried.

And the girl who carried no weapon at all, but who stared at Yoro when he entered. He got the feeling that, if she wished, she could kill not only him but every other living soul in the room. And do so without breaking a sweat.

The final touch, though, was when he left. That final moment, when he turned to leave, and Malal reached out for the silent girl's hand.

The Emperor never would have done that before. The regent never would have permitted it.

And where was the Chancellor?

More rumors abounded about that, but no answers.

Questions, questions.

And no answers to be had, so focus on what can be done. Focus on the mission.

The fires still waited. Three vents through which Fear's ever-flowing magma could be seen marked the location of the Walled City: three explosions that never quite extinguished and thus provided an easy way to spot Halaw even from afar.

"I see them," Yoro said. The rest of the crew moved back into position, each taking up their spots at navigation, steering. The Riflemen situated themselves at the sides and front of the cabin, each holding their guns loose at their sides. Yoro had never had occasion to use a Rifleman. Theoretically they were to assist when landing under fire or if somehow an enemy got ahold of an air-car and tried to levy an attack by air, but neither had ever happened in Yoro's career.

He doubted either would happen here. They just had to land, find out whatever they could, and get back to Center. Report to the palace with their findings and then….

What?

He forced himself not to worry about it. It wasn't the job of a military man – at least, not one at his level – to figure out what was done beyond the mission. It was merely his job to see that mission done, and done well.

The navigator made several marks on his table, verifying their course was sure. He frowned. "Sir, one of Fear's Notches is in the wrong place."

"Not possible." Yoro swung to look at the navigation table himself. The three fires were known collectively as Fear's Belt, the individual flames as Fear's Notches, or simply the Notches. For one of them to be out of place was inconceivable. Much of Fear did shift, the volcanic mountain changing day to day. But the Belt had always stood immobile.

Yet what is the saying? Nothing remains in Fear.

Yoro looked at the navigator's map – the markings of the Ploughs and the Northerns clearly visible, triangulations marked to the Belt, the lines that delineated the air-car's course, and….

Yoro squinted. He looked at the far Notch. It was in the wrong place.

And, as he looked at it, it began to move.

Several of the crew noticed it at the same time he did. Rin started visibly and made the sign of Faith, touching shoulder, forehead, then the opposite shoulder in a rough "A."

"What in the name of the Gods…?" Surly grabbed the Glass from Foka, an unfortunate move for the nav-master since the instrument was secured to his neck by a thick leather strap. But Surly didn't seem to care much, just pulling until the metal catch that secured the strap to the Glass finally broke, then looking through the eyepiece.

Everyone stilled, waiting with equal parts wonder and terror. What could make the mountain move in a way that it had not done since Eka first climbed above the clouds?

Surly looked for what seemed far too long, then said, "It's not one of the Notches."

He fell silent, and did not seem as though he would speak again, until Rin said, "We don't care what it isn't, you land-crawling Army infant. Tell us what it is."

"I…." Surly squinted. Then he screamed. "Evade! Evade!"

No one moved. Only the ship's captain could order the crew. Yoro felt a flash of pride at his men's discipline. But at the same time, all it took was a look at the normally dour Rifleman's face to know he should take the man's warning seriously.

"Evade!" he shouted. "Hard port! Riflemen ready! Alert the riggers!"

The ship began turning immediately, so hard and fast that it would have been impossible to catch by any other air-car in existence. The frame of the cabin groaned with the change in direction, and the men caught onto straps placed around the cabin for just such a moment – all but one of the Riflemen, who pitched hard sideways, grabbed for a strap, and missed. He plummeted into the starboard window, which cracked.

Surly screamed, "Jac!" and the Rifleman at the window had a single moment in which to reach out his hand. Then the window split in two. There was a great rush of air, and the Rifleman was gone.

Yoro did not have time for horror. He was too busy seeing what had caused Surly to scream for evasive action. The Notch – that impossible Notch, misplaced after so many Turns – suddenly split in two. Part of it flew forward at an impossible rate, a star that streaked toward the Excel and left a river of sputtering, twinkling flame behind it.

"Faster!" Yoro screamed. He saw that the helmsman was already leaning on the wheel as hard as he could; that the wheel had turned as far as it would. Yoro slammed into the lever that would drive the air-car up.

It did no good.

The streak of flame came closer and closer. And the closer it got the brighter it seemed, the faster it went. It looked, Yoro realized, like the shells he had seen in the armored vehicles the Army had been training – the flying tanks. Enchanted by both Pushes and Shocks, the things were huge, explosive bullets.

And one was headed right for them.

He thought of his wife. Surprising. He rarely saw her – like his father, he was an officer, first and foremost. Like his mother, his wife's primary responsibility was to oversee the family household and finances. It was a partnership as much as a marriage.

But he thought of her now. Not his ship, not the men with whom he spent almost every day of every Turn. In this instant before the shell struck, he thought of Aimi, and her eyes.

The shell hit the ship.

Not a shell. Just… light. How could that be? How could light hit us?

It was a smaller explosion than he expected. But enough to ignite the gas in the bag above the cabin. He saw the helmsman incinerated by a gout of flame that burst through the roof, saw Rin rush forward valiantly, trying to save the ship as it yawed dangerously. Saw the next explosion take him as well.

Then a sound so massive it became Yoro's world. He felt something hot across his face and right arm, then cool across his whole body and realized the Excel had exploded – Rin gone, Foka gone, Surly gone, everyone gone – and he had been thrown clear somehow and was now falling through the nothing of the night, falling to Fear.

He saw the Notches. Saw now that there were four –

(and a part of him whispered, this is what was wrong, not that it was in the wrong place, but that there were too many)

– and that one of them was far too large, then it solidified into a man-shape. Only the man-shape was on fire – flame wreathing its back, the soles of its feet. An armored giant who reached out and caught Yoro in mid-air and the embrace was agony because he was burning, burning, Gods' charity he was burning.

The armored form seemed to be floating under the power of the flames that lit its back and feet, and under that same power it brought them to the ground. It lay Yoro down on the hard, rocky earth of Fear.

"You are dying," said someone from inside the armor. The voice was strange, mechanical and grating. The symbol of a Bishop of Faith was etched into the suit's helm, and it glowed dimly in the night.

Yoro tried to say something, to curse the man – the thing – that had destroyed his ship and killed his men. All that came out was a whimper.

"Tell me where the Emperor is, and we will let you die quickly," said the voice.

We?

Yoro became aware of movement nearby. With effort, he saw a little girl to the left of the armored giant, holding a woolly in cupped palms, whispering and cooing to it. To the right, there was a dark-complexioned young man almost as big as the massive suit of armor, who stared up at the night sky with the empty expression of a simpleton.

Something whirred inside the armored helm. It slid back to reveal a surprisingly small old man. "Just tell us," he said. "We know the Emperor travels often, and we've no wish to harm innocents if we don't have to. Tell us, and we'll see you die with no further pain."

Yoro managed one final bit of strength. He laughed, and shook his head.

"I am… an officer," he managed.

The helm clicked back into place. The symbol glowed more brightly.

"Very well," said the old man.

Yoro knew pain.

And, surprisingly, found it bearable as long as he continued to think of his wife.

11

"It's not possible, girl!" Brother Scieran stamped his cane on the floor with every syllable, as though emphasizing them this way would add power to them and keep Sword's news from becoming a reality.

She nodded, and rubbed at her weary eyes. "I know. And yet it happened."

Brother Scieran looked at the others. They had gathered in the same room as they had been in yesterday, which still held thousands – tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands – of neatly-written pages to go through.

But the answers aren't in there. They're in the book.

She looked at it. It hadn't left her hands since Phoenix came to her chambers. Father Akiro saw her gaze drop, and held out a hand. "May I, child?"

She held the book out and he took it with steady hands that belied both his age and the shocking news she had brought.

Phoenix. The man who had sought to take over the Empire, the one who had taken over the real Malal's mind and used his power to create an eruption that buried half the Imperial Army in molten rock. The man who had shown himself cunning, merciless, and powerful beyond anyone the Cursed Ones – for so the revolutionaries had then been known – had faced.

The man that Sword had killed.

Arrow was shaking his head. Cloud and Wind looked dazed – or as close to dazed as either of them ever got.

Malal just sat, staring at a ring he wore on a chain around his neck. He spun it idly a few times, then spoke. "So we have an unknown enemy destroying the Ears all around the Empire, and the night after that happens, Phoenix appears in Sword's quarters. Anyone believe that's a coincidence?" No one moved, though Arrow snorted loudly. Malal nodded. "That's about how I feel about it."

"But we don't know if they're connected or not," said Sword.

Malal grinned, that devilish grin that was so much Smoke and so little Malal. "I think we just established that they probably are."

Sword blushed. She was a fighter, yes, but often rediscovered to her chagrin that she wasn't much of a talker. "I mean, are they related, or are they the same? Is Phoenix behind both of them? Or is someone else behind what happened to the Ears, and that caused Phoenix's appearance?"

Father Akiro grunted suddenly. "Scieran," he said.

"Scieran." He never called his student that. "Stupid," "dense" or even "idiot child of idiot offspring." But never simply "Scieran."

Everyone looked at one another, and Brother Scieran moved as quickly as he could to his old teacher. Sword realized this was the first time the old priest was actually looking inside the book – he had only managed to glance at its cover before they had been pulled away for Malal's announcement and then the attack on the Ears.

Now Brother Scieran looked. His gaze shifted to Father Akiro, who nodded.

"We should send this to Father Inmil," said Brother Scieran.

For some reason, Sword felt a thrill of fear at the idea. As though to let the book out of her possession would be to weaken her in some critical way. She actually took a half-step forward, raising her hand slightly as though to snatch the book back from the priests.

Brother Scieran saw the motion. He nodded as though he understood her anxiety. "Father Inmil is a reader of languages," he said.

Sword furrowed her brow, and heard Arrow shift as well. "Languages?" asked Arrow. "Other than the language of Sign, there is but one tongue in Ansborn. The idea of many languages is the stuff of legends, of stories from before Eka's Ascension."

"Not just stories," said Brother Scieran. He looked at Father Akiro, who gave a small nod. He looked at the rest of those in the room, his face solemn. "What I am about to tell you is something virtually unknown outside the priesthood – and even within our Faith, few are privy to this knowledge." He waited until everyone had nodded, understanding the unspoken plea not to reveal what he was about to say. "The Grand Cathedral houses books from before."

It took a moment for the words to sink in. For the group to understand.

Malal was the first to speak. "Before?" He blinked. "You mean, before the Ascension."

"No, I mean since before breakfast, you fool," snarled Brother Scieran. Then he caught Sword's disapproving eye and brought himself under control. "Yes. Before the Ascension. At least, we think so."

"What my very stupid student is trying to say," said Father Akiro (and Malal smirked at this), "is that we have books that are very old. And that no one understands, though there are some – like Inmil – who have devoted their lives to understanding them." He gestured to the book in their midst. "We should send this to him, and to those like him, to see if they can divine what it holds."

Wind Signed something. Malal said, "Yes, that's true." He turned to the priests. "The Grand Cathedral was destroyed in the Chancellor's attack," he said. "How can there be books of any kind within a fallen structure."

Again, Brother Scieran and Father Akiro shared a look. This time it was Brother Scieran who spoke. "You remember," he said to Sword, "you escaped that attack by fleeing into a cave system?"

She nodded, then put the pieces together. "That wasn't a cave just in case of attack. It was part of –"

"A catacomb." Brother Scieran nodded. "There is nearly as much of the Grand Cathedral below the ground as there was above." He looked around, grinning slightly at the surprised looks. "What, you think just because we serve the Gods we can't keep a secret? The catacombs protect not just escape routes, but untold numbers of books and papers from times before the Ascension." Then he returned his gaze to the book. "We can't read any of it, though," he murmured.

Another stunned silence. Again, Malal was the one to break it. "So how do you know the books are from before the Ascension, if no one can read them? They could just be gibberish, or a madman's recipes for drawing pretty pictures."

Brother Scieran looked ready to start snarling again, but Father Akiro put a hand on his old student's arm. "We know because that is what has been passed on since before memory. We hope one day to understand the writings, but until then…." He shrugged. "Unless any of you can think of a better course?"

No one answered. A moment later, he took up the book and hobbled out the door with it, then returned without it after a few seconds. "It is on its way," he said. "I hope you don't mind," he said with a bow to Malal, "but I invoked your authority to have a fast ship carry it." He sighed. "Things seem to be changing, and I think we had best prepare as well as we can."

For once, Malal seemed subdued. "Of course." He looked around, taking in the papers that still waited for their review. "I rather wish I could be the one taking the book to Father Inmil."

He sighed, and moved toward the nearest papers, but before he took one up a knock sounded at the door. Everyone looked to the sound expectantly, knowing what the sound heralded. With the Ears gone, Malal had sent Eyes to the various listening posts – as many as he could, given that there were only so many that the castle Eyes had been to. All the Eyes reported the same things: death. Horrible death.

On Brother Scieran's suggestion, Malal had dispatched air-cars to the Fear, Faith, Knowledge, and Strength to take stock of the different States' conditions: Eyes could See, but they could not hear what was happening, or speak to others who needed to pass along information. The air-cars would be more helpful in the crisis, and this knock could only be a report of how one – or perhaps all – of them had fared.

"Come," said Malal.

One of the Imperial Guard ushered in three men in captain's uniforms. All seemed harried, unsure. Most people were either terrified or worshipful when brought to Malal, Sword had noted. As though the title "Emperor" brought with it a piece of the Gods' own power.

No wonder so many of them go mad and become tyrants.

The captains looked at one another, none of them wanting to speak first. Finally, one who looked slightly older than the others and whose shoulders bore one star more than the other captains' stepped forward. He bowed slightly. "Emperor, we," he said, indicating the others, "have been to Faith, Strength, and Knowledge."

One of the other captains seemed to decide he didn't want his superior to be the only one getting the honor of speaking to the Emperor. He, too, stepped forward, and bowed even lower. "It was as we were given to understand. The Ears were all dead."

"But no signs of physical attack, other than the state of the Ears' bodies themselves?" said Arrow.

The captains looked a bit irritated that a beardless young man should speak to them so bluntly – but at Malal's nod they just as quickly decided he must be very important and their manner switched from irritated to nearly cringing. "No, young master," said the higher-ranking captain. "There were the Ears' bodies, torn asunder." He gulped, and so did the other two captains.

"What about the scribes?" asked Brother Scieran.

"They were safe." The younger captain's nose wrinkled. "A bit… messy. And rather upset, as you can imagine. But physically unharmed."

Wind had been translating the conversation for Cloud. Now Cloud Signed a new question. Malal noted it, and repeated it aloud: "Was there any physical damage? Not just at the listening posts, but anywhere else that you noted?"

The two younger captains looked at each other and shrugged, then shook their heads. "No, Lord," said one.

The older captain was looking at Malal strangely. "I did not know you spoke the silent tongue, Emperor," he said.

"I've been teaching him," said Brother Scieran, moving forward quickly. "The Emperor feels that lifelong improvement is a way to honor the Gods." He smiled beatifically. "I quite agree."

The captain nodded, that strange look still on his face. Then he looked at Malal again. "Would you like us to provide complete reports, Lord?"

Malal looked at Brother Scieran, then at Wind. Brother Scieran shook his head, and Wind Signed something to him. "Yes," said Malal, "but not here." He clapped, and a guard appeared. "This man will take you to chambers with paper and ink. Please prepare written reports for us to review."

The captains all bowed and left.

"The oldest one suspects something," said Sword.

Brother Scieran nodded to her. "You were right, Sword, I have to be more careful." He looked at the group. "We all do."

Malal sighed and reached for Wind's hand. He squeezed it. "We might have to wait on the wedding, my dear." She smiled, then Signed something that made Malal laugh, and for that moment it seemed to Sword that all would somehow be made right – that through all this, they could find a way to make the world make sense.

And then sound and fury came, and the laughter was gone.

It sounded like thunder, but Sword did not know of any thunder that could hit something as strong and solid as the Imperial Palace and shake it to its foundation. Stone shifted throughout the building, and dust sifted from the ceiling. The door opened and guards streamed in, covering Malal with their bodies even as the second explosion sounded. It reminded Sword of when the Grand Cathedral was destroyed by the Imperial Army, tanks pummeling the beautiful symbol of faith and hope out of existence.

A third explosion. A few pieces of stonework actually dislodged from the wall, tumbling to the floor and exploding in a starburst pattern of sand. The guards started moving Malal toward the door, and Sword knew that from there they would take him to his quarters – the closest room in the palace that had special defenses in case of attack.

Then, the voice came.

"MALAL!"

Everyone froze. Even the highly-trained guards were shocked to immobility by the sound. It was human, but not – grating, ugly. It sounded like the workings of one of the great excavators that brought up minerals from the mines, melded to the voice of a man.

And loud.

"MA…LAAAAAL!"

The voice somehow grew louder, so loud that it scorched through Sword's ears, got into her very mind. She clapped hands over her ears, knew she was screaming, but couldn't hear it over the machine-man screech of whatever monster had come for them.

And then it stopped.

The end of the sound was almost as painful as the sound itself had been. Sword could feel herself breathing, the thundering river of her pulse pounding through her body, but there was only deafening silence, for a painful eternity.

Then, when she did hear sounds, it was screams.

12

It sounded like the entire world was screaming. Men, women, children.

Sword leaped to her feet. Arrow had fallen beside her, driven to the floor by the same onslaught of sound that had pounded her down, and now she hauled him up. She looked around and saw that – surprisingly – Father Akiro was already on his feet, balancing his canes on one arm while helping Brother Scieran up in a jerky series of movements that in any other circumstance would have seemed comedic.

He caughter her eye. Squinted in irritation. "Well," he snapped. "Don't stare at old men trying to stand. Go find out what's happening and stop it!"

Sword nodded. She looked to Malal. He was being helped to his feet by Wind, who was herself being aided by her brother. Sword caught Cloud's eye, nodded. He touched his sister's shoulder.

"Let's go," said Sword.

Wind shook her head.

Sword was shocked. Wind had always been the most ready of them for a fight, first to rush in. She had lost her family to the Empire's excesses, and never wasted a chance to share her pain with those she deemed worthy of it.

But now….

And then Sword understood. She wouldn't leave Malal. She nodded to Wind, then shifted her gaze to Cloud. "Can you get us to the walls so we can see what's going on?"

"Oh, no," moaned Arrow. "He's terrible at –"

But Wind was already Signing to her brother, and before Arrow finished speaking, the air changed. The pressure in the room dropped so hard and fast that Sword's ears popped. Thunder – real thunder, not whatever strange explosion had rocked the palace just moments before – sounded nearby, and a moment later a lightning strike split the air just outside the window.

"He's not a flier, I'm telling you," said Arrow. "We did this before, and it was awfooo –"

Sword didn't hear the rest of the word – if Arrow managed anything else – because in that instant she was sucked out the window.

She found herself spinning, barely able to see anything in the twister that Cloud had called into being with his Gift. And she saw at once why Arrow had been reluctant to go like this, as her entire body started immediately aching as it whipped back an forth in tight circles. She thought she saw Arrow a few times, pinwheeling madly, his hands and feet splayed out in all directions and screaming – though his screams were swallowed whole in the maelstrom.

Cloud was nowhere to be seen, though whether he was himself being spun about or was hanging somewhere more in control she could not guess.

Something slammed into her. For a moment she was sure the tornado must have uprooted a tree from one of the practice pitches outside the room they had been in, the tree sliding through the air like a ship in a stormy sea, then finding its way to her. She wondered if she had broken any bones.

Then, just as fast, she realized it was no tree. She hadn't been hit by something, she had landed on something. In the next moment the storm disappeared, the dark winds and dust and dirt they had stirred up disappearing as quickly as they came.

She was on hands and knees on the highest wall of the castle that surrounded the palace. Arrow was beside her, flat on his back, staring up at the sky and muttering darkly under his breath.

Cloud stepped down out of the air as lightly as if there had been an invisible staircase there.

"I see the trip was a bit nicer for you," said Sword. Arrow muttered a bit more forcefully at that, and she was glad she couldn't hear what he was saying.

Cloud just smiled, though it was a tight smile, nearly lacking in warmth. He pointed.

Sword rocketed to her feet – or tried to. Even after the relatively short trip from the palace to the castle wall, she must have spun at least a hundred times or more, and now discovered that her mind was still busily spinning. She stumbled, and only a quick hand from Cloud kept her from going right over the side of the wall.

She looked at him. He didn't seem in the least dizzy. "I think I hate you right now," she managed.

Arrow was no longer muttering. He had managed to turn over and was busily throwing up.

It was almost surreal: the spinning, the dizziness, the sense that this was some strange dream –

(like Phoenix in my room what's going on what's wrong with the world)

– and under it all the screams.

Sword finally managed to get her feet under her enough to walk, and made her way to the edge of the wall. Inside the castle was the palace itself, and outside the castle wall was the dry moat – no water within, but studded with spires that could impale any who fell within, and itself encircled by the spikes that stood as silent warning to any who sought to escape Ansborn.

Beyond them: fields, shops, homes – a city that had sprung up around the center of Ansborn, the center of the world.

The screaming came from an area only a dozen rods from the wall a stone's throw from the bridge that spanned the moat. The wall there had been pulverized, knocked to half its height by some unknown force. Rocks had been thrown high in the air, then rained down on the shops and kiosks that grew in the shadow of the spires. The people down there were crying and screaming – some in shock, some in pain.

Some in grief. Sword saw several bodies, laying in the dirt and grass.

"Are you here for him? Are you his protectors?"

Sword looked to the sound. That same mechanized voice, harsh and ugly. It sounded like it was coming from above her, which was impossible since this was the highest point of the wall. But she looked up and gasped.

It was a suit of armor and iron, shaped like a man but larger. Gears shifted on his shoulders and arms, and fire seemed to shoot out of his feet and back, flames that somehow held him aloft. The symbol of a Bishop of Faith – what many simply called the sign of Faith – could be seen on the armored helm, glowing even in the daylight.

The thing nodded. "I have no need to kill you. Not now. Bring me Malal."

Sword ignored him. She turned to Cloud and made several hand motions. He seemed to understand them. So did Arrow, apparently, because he said, "Oh, no, not –"

Then the twister came again. This time it left her alone, whisking Arrow away and depositing him on the highest tower of the palace. Sword saw that Cloud was, in fact, floating in the exact center of the small tornado. Not turning, not spinning as Arrow did – she saw him pass by every second or less – he was in perfect control of himself, if not of those he transported.

The storm dropped Arrow at the tower, then returned to the mechanical man.

There were no words to start the fight. Cloud was like Sword – he wasn't a warrior-priest like Brother Scieran, someone bound by ideas of honor and fair fighting. He had been born to a family who loved him, been raised to avenge them. He did not stop to announce his attentions, the tornado simply engulfed the metal man.

Sword became aware of others on the wall: soldiers posted there, who had scattered, first fleeing from the destruction, then the bravest of them running back again to see what could done to help those injured in whatever blast had taken the wall apart. Now they were running to her, aware that she was part of the Emperor's inner circle, not daring to ask what was happening, but surely hoping that they would be given instruction – and perhaps some information – if they were nearby.

She said nothing. Just watched as Cloud's tornado threw itself against the armored giant who hung in the sky. She could barely see Cloud, but the metal man was easier to spot – the fires of foot and back glared so brightly that they were visible even through the swirling winds.

He hung there as easily as he had in the clear air of moments before. Sword felt something change around them, felt the air pressure shift as Cloud gathered more power to himself. The maelstrom grew, broadening until it took up most of the inner courtyard of the castle, pushing against the boundaries of the palace itself. People fled from the grounds, trying to get away from the sucking winds, but Sword saw several people hauled into the twister, only to be softly pushed out a few moments later by other, smaller tornadoes.

The power it would take Cloud to maintain that many different storms, to be aware of so much while maintaining his main attack – it had to be astounding. Yet even now, with no more room for the tempest to grow, it swirled faster and faster, chunks of the barracks on this side of the castle pulling up, then the entire structure –

(empty, thank the Gods)

– yanking up in a single piece, flying into the tornado and then dashing to pieces within it.

And still the fires that showed the presence of the metal attacker did not move. Still they hung motionless.

Thunder bellowed. Rain began to fall. The soldiers that had gathered around her fell back as the rain thickened, and suddenly was rain no more. Instead, hail the size of bullets fell on the castle wall, pelting the stone with sounds like a million bones snapping.

Sword was forced to back away as well. She couldn't see Cloud at all, the impossible weather the only thing serving to prove he existed at all.

And the fires held still.

Lightning arced. It tore the sky, the first two strikes seeming random, but the next two coming down directly into the center of the tornado. For a moment the center was illuminated and she saw the perfect shadow of Cloud, arms outstretched, back arched in effort as he called down the lightning. She also saw the metal man, still hanging motionless in the air.

The lightning cascaded over the armored creature. It flowed over it, rolled through every crack and cranny.

The armored thing hung for another moment, then ascended to an even greater height. Once again that shrieking, grinding voice came forth.

"I TIRE OF THIS GAME."

The thing moved so fast Sword could barely see it. One moment it was hanging there, the next its back flared and it shot forward… and all the weather fell back to its normal spring glory in one terrible instant.

Cloud was falling. Falling, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

13

The world slowed.

Sword screamed.

She had known only two families. One had been as a Blessed One – one of a handful of Greater Gifts pressed into service as assassins for the Empire. In the other assassins – in Armor, Garden, Scholar, Teeth, Siren, and even Marionette/The Poppet and Devar, though they alone of all of them had been truly evil – she had found friends. People who understood her. Brothers and sisters and a father.

When she discovered that the Blessed Ones worked for a corrupt Empire, when she found that the revolutionaries known as the Cursed Ones were the people she should be helping, the change was hard at first. But she found the Cursed Ones to be just as worthy of her love, and in them found her second family. In them found new brothers, sisters, fathers, friends.

And now one of them tumbled from the sky. Cloud, falling from high enough that when he hit there would be nothing left to bury.

And nothing she could do about it.

She screamed, and screamed, and –

(and maybe Wind will come maybe his sister will come maybe she'll catch him maybe she'll hear me scream but she can't hear she's deaf just like him oh gods please don't let him –)

– and watched him fall.

Then, before he touched earth, the thing that had thrown him down also brought him up. The armored thing swept down, fire on its back blazing. It caught Cloud only a few feet from the ground, and held him by the neck, dangling there unconscious.

"I will not let him die so easily," said the voice. One hand was still around Cloud's neck, but now the other cradled his head almost gently. "He will die in pain, unless you bring me the pretender. Bring me Malal."

Something whined through the air. A spark flew off the helmet, and Sword smiled. That was why she had told Cloud to carry Arrow away: it never hurt to have someone covering you. Especially someone who had better eyesight than a hawk and who could shoot a thorn from a rose at three leagues' distance.

A second spark flew, and the suit looked at the palace. Something whirred within it. "I see you, little Gift," said the voice. The helm spun to look at the spot where smoke still billowed from the hole in the wall. "There's a nuisance on top of the high tower," said the voice. "Deal with it."

Sword didn't know what she expected to see. Surely not a little girl holding a woolly in one hand, leading a huge young man with gaping mouth and widely-staring eyes with the other. They clambered over the wreckage of the hole, the girl equally careful of both her charges, then into the courtyard area. The big man stumbled at the last, and almost fell, knocking into the girl. She held him up carefully, as though it were even possible for someone her size to stop a man of his girth from tumbling to the ground should gravity so will it.

He managed to right himself, though, then swept her up into an awkward, painfully sincere embrace. She grimaced and whispered something into his ear, and he let her down with a look of remorse every bit as sincere as the embrace had been.

The whole of it was so strange that it tore Sword's attention away from the danger Cloud was in. She couldn't help but stare, and, staring, the girl saw her.

They locked eyes.

The girl smiled. And the woolly ran up her shoulder and jumped into the air.

Like all such creatures, the woolly was small – barely the length of a man's forearm. But as it flew high, it seemed to swell – slightly at first, then more and more. Soon it was the height of two men, with legs and arms that were jointed in the way of nightmares, and a mouth that gaped with far too many needle teeth.

The girl, though… what happened to her was far stranger. She melted away, like a pile of sand in a wind. Sword saw that she was connected to the woolly-thing by some kind of leash, and that leash pulsed with the same light that made the symbol on the armored creature's helm glow. The girl melted away, melted into the leash, melted into the woolly, and as she did it reared back and shrieked at the Heavens.

The big one, the simple young man, laughed and danced. He leaped atop the creature, wrapping thick arms around a thicker neck, and suddenly the thing was off, running in a strangely broken gait across the courtyard, leaping over or just straight through anything that got in its way.

Headed, Sword knew, toward Arrow.

Arrow apparently knew it, too. She heard bullets firing, the metal bits Pushed by their magic at speeds too fast to see. The creature roared as it ran, but did not falter, or even slow.

Arrow.

The next shot took the simple man. Sword would have felt bad for him, were it not that he was clearly part of the plot that was trying to bring down her friends – if not destroy the Empire.

And wasn't I trying to do just that, not long ago?

But not now. Now I'm trying to set it right.

The simple man rocked back with the impact of the bullet. Arrow didn't miss – he never did – and the bullet no doubt hit him straight in the eye, or found its way to the base of his skull through his neck. But he didn't fall.

The woolly kept charging.

And still he didn't fall.

Instead, he began to change. Not anything she could really see – the change was one of his bearing, his manner. Suddenly gone was the simpleton, replaced by –

(What?)

– a creature. A thing.

A beast.

He still looked like a young man, but he roared a wordless roar that was the mirror of the screams of the woolly creature. He shifted, and no longer was he holding the beast in his arms, no now he was riding it, his knees clamped around its withers. He raised his hands skyward, then leaned forward and reached for his prey.

Blood flowed down his chest, and Sword saw that Arrow's bullets were finding their mark. They just weren't stopping the creature.

She looked back to the machine-thing. It still held Cloud casually in its hand, in the courtyard far below. And unlike Cloud she could not control the winds, could not fly.

The machine seemed to sense her frustration. She felt like whatever was below the helm was grinning at her.

She had not flight.

But she did have Gifts – and Greater – of her own.

With a roar, fire exploded from her hands. The armor shifted, and in the same way she sensed the simpleton had disappeared, she sensed whoever was inside the iron was at last taking her seriously – surely he must, for the fire that she held was greater far than the fire that came from his suit.

She screamed… and threw herself over the wall.

She twisted in midair, feeling the fires of her Gift wrap around her hands, more of the flames enveloping her feet. The people of Knowledge favored some of the stranger weapons, but those came just as easily as the more typical ones in the castle armory. So she could handle shuko and ashiko as easily as rapier or broadswoard.

The spikes that gripped themselves to her hands and feet were not primarily weapons – any more than a rock was a weapon. But if it could be used as such, then she could use it. So the teeth of fire bit into the side of the wall, and bit deep. Her mad fall became a controlled descent as the claws on foot and palm gouged great furrows in the wall, slowing her more with each passing foot.

But still fast. So fast that when she hit the ground it was with a hard jolt that would have broken most people's bones.

But, again, she was not most people. For she was the master of fighting, and fighting was nothing if not motion.

She rolled, absorbing the impact with every part of her, spreading it out so that instead of a bone-smashing blow it became merely a discomfort. And when she came  to her feet, the claws had disappeared from her hands and feet. In their stead, she bore twin javelins that she threw at the armored creature – one at his eye, one at his center.

He moved, calmly but quickly, shifting slightly so that Cloud was between him and the incoming missiles.

Sword felt her stomach clench. She waved her hand, and the twin shafts of light and flame disappeared an instant before impaling her friend and brother.

Now the armored thing moved, letting go of Cloud with one hand and aiming his arm in her direction. Atop the arm was a tube, and it glowed for an instant. Sword reacted in the same instant. A glowing katana appeared in her hand, batting aside whatever had been fired at her.

There was an explosion, knocking her back in a storm of bright sound. Her feet dug tracks in the dirt, she almost lost her balance. She looked at her katana and saw that it ended halfway up the blade. A moment of concentration, and it reappeared, but still, she had never before encountered something that could nullify her power this way.

What is that weapon. What is this thing?

The thing seemed to be considering her.

Then, at last, it cast Cloud to the side. At the same moment, it fell the last few feet to the earth. The fires on back and feet did not extinguish, but they dimmed to near-nothing.

The thing crouched. The helm opened and Sword found herself looking at an old, old man.

"You fight well." The helm snapped back. The armored man crouched, and there was nothing feeble or infirm in his movements.

"Now, let us see how you die."

14

The world was a thing of moments, of intersections occurring at varying speeds.

That was what most people didn't understand about Arrow's Gift. They looked at him and thought he was merely someone who shot, who shot fast. But it was more than that. He understood the ways things came together, the collisions things would make, the way each individual particle would glance off any other. It was perfect sight, aligned with perfect understanding.

The fact that he could draw a bow and fire an arrow, that he could level a gun and fire all the bullets and then lock in a new cartridge or shell or cylinder when most people were still trying to aim their first shot… that was all mechanics. That was the thing his body did, as opposed to the miracle of what his mind knew, and could understand.

Angles, intersections. Actions and reactions.

Usually it was confined to things. To the bullets and shells and arrows and bolts that he sent through the air, always perfectly, to hit whatever target he decided to hit. To the way they would impact, and whether they would lay dead in what they hit, or glance off at an angle to hit something else. To impact dully, and lay in a single piece within whatever he shot, or to shatter like glass and become a thousand shards to destroy the insides of his marked prey.

Usually, it was things. But sometimes he saw the intersections in other ways. He saw it in the way his father had looked at his family – a love so unadulterated and pure that Arrow knew even as a child that such a love could never veer far from the objects of its affection. That Creed, Lord of the Southern Grasslands, was an arrow that would dodge whatever obstacles, would make its way through any weather, to stay close to those he loved.

It was almost true.

Only the need of others pulled him away – the realization that there were so many who were in so much pain in this corrupt Empire – and even then, it was only slightly. Even when working covertly as a freedom fighter, supplying rebels with money and the poorest of the poor with illegal aid, Creed still managed to make it home for dinner, more nights than not.

But then came the one thing that no love could deny, that no affection could hold back.

Creed had been killed, and his youngest son – Arrow's brother – beside him.

Creed, Lord of the Southern Grasslands, had been murdered by an assassin of the Empire. By a Blessed One.

By Sword.

That was one of the other intersections that Arrow saw. When he first saw her, in one of the very towns that his father had worked so hard to help, to save, and she was in his power and helpless and he knew she had killed his father and he could have killed her in that moment… and did not.

Because in her he saw the great intersection of his life. Greater than any bullet fired, any arrow loosed. Greater even than the intersection between the Lord of the Southern Grasslands and the rest of his family.

He resisted at first. He hated her, even. That was one of the first truths he found in his life – that love and hate were not always exclusive. That you could love something for much of what it was, what it represented, and still hate a part of it, a thing it had been, a thing it had done.

Sword had killed his father. Had been there when that devil-child Marionette had murdered his brother. He could not forget that.

But she had not known what she was doing. She had thought she was saving the Empire from a villain. She had thought she was doing right, tricked by the Chancellor and his puppet, the first Malal.

More than that, though… she was strong. She was smart. She was honest.

She was good.

Arrow fell in love with her almost immediately, so fast the hate had not cooled, let alone fallen to the dull ache that would later become simple grief and loss. But he denied it and denied it, held it as far back as he could.

And now it was in him, and he knew his flight was bonded to her side, just as Creed's flight had been to that of his family. Arrow had not stepped forward to take his place – the Heathered Hall remained empty these months since his father's death – but he was now the Lord of the Southern Grasslands, and was, like his father, bound.

To her.

So when Cloud tore him away from her, wrenched him off the wall with the devastating imprecision of his Gift, it more than spun him sick. It tore his heart away. He knew what would happen next – what must come. It was her way.

Sword would fight. And it didn't matter that it made more sense for him to be here, an overwatch position that would allow him to use his Gift to best advantage. The fact was, he did not want to leave her. The separation was agony, if only for the fact that he knew his bullets would now take that much longer to reach her, to save her.

Then things grew strange, and Arrow had no time – even with his mind that could calculate so many angles, impacts, speeds in every second – to do anything but concentrate on that strangeness. On the little girl, with a woolly in her hands. Even this far away, Arrow's Gifted sight allowed him to see her easily, and to see what happened when the creature leaped off her arm, and grew, and then the girl melted into the creature.

The simple young man beside her clambered on.

And they were his enemies.

Angles, directions, deflections. An arrow was always a threat, but that threat was merely potential until it was loosed. At the moment it flew, though, it entered his realm, it became his subject. He saw it, captured it, and utterly controlled it.

The two creatures that came through the hole in the wall were arrows unloosed. But when the woolly changed, the girl became one with it, and the big man climbed atop the monster it became – they were loosed. They were his.

He smiled.

He pulled a gun from his hip. Waited. Waited. He could have shot that faster, but he wanted them well clear of the fight that he knew was coming between Sword and the flying, armored thing. He wanted clear sightlines between him and them – between him and her.

He fired.

The shot went where he intended – and yet it missed.

He had aimed for the creature's eye. Had seen the bullet fly forward – followed it with his sight as only he could do. The bullet hit.

And did nothing.

The creature did not break stride, did not even blink. It was as though the eye itself swallowed the bullet, and the creature went on unharmed.

The next shot had the same effect – which was to say, none at all. Still Arrow kept firing, firing, firing, loading a new cylinder so fast that it was as though the shots continued uninterrupted. And not a single hit did anything at all.

He moved his aim. Shot the young man. He felt a twinge of shame doing so – the man was simply riding, and riding with simple joy on his face. But he was also coming for Arrow, there was no doubt. And that made him an enemy.

The shot took the man. Tore off his throat, and from the twist of his neck and the angle and velocity of the bullet and the way it met with the man himself as he rocketed toward the palace – a separate building within the castle keep – it should have torn his head off.

The young man rocked. His head snapped back so hard that, even if it remained attached to his neck, the bones should have cracked in a dozen different places.

Then he brought his head forward again. And Arrow nearly screamed at what he saw.

The man's eyes were gone. Disappeared as though they had never been, and in their place was only darkness. Not the hollow darkness of a skull where a bullet had plowed a path not even the black emptiness of death itself. No, this was something far deeper, and uglier, and more terrifying. For a moment Arrow felt as though he were staring at the Netherworlds. Not the blazing fires and burning pits told of in the Cathedrals – but the dark, mad places where the damned must forever scream, and scream in silence for the screams are theirs alone with none to hear and none to care.

Arrow looked at a madness so complete that he felt, for a moment, that he must go mad himself.

The man crawled to the top of the creature, and he was changed. Gone was the child-like joy, the sense that he was simply here for this moment of wild riding. Now, there was a sense of…

Destruction.

That was it. And not a contained destruction. Nothing clean, like an arrow or a bullet shot with precision by a man who never does – never can – miss. This was an ugly destruction, that would rend and destroy anything that came in its way.

The proof of that came a moment later.

Several guards – not the Imperial Guard, who were no doubt clustered tightly around Malal, acting as his last line of defense against this strange attack, but regular Imperial Army stationed at the castle – ran forward. The woolly beast was faster than any land beast Arrow had ever seen, but the guards ran at a well-timed angle and managed to intercept it.

They had the same lack of effect as Arrow's bullets had had. The monster pulled two of them apart with the huge, clawed hands at the ends of its horribly-jointed arms. Two more it trampled.

One more it simply swallowed from the waist up, leaving the rest to fall in the dust behind it, spitting out the upper half a moment later.

One guard managed to grab the beast from behind. And this one the man on its back dealt with.

The fiend with no eyes reached down and, without losing his grip on the monster's back, he tore the flesh from the guard's body.

The guard went bravely, nobly, stabbing his foe even as he was pulled to pieces. But the cuts did not seem to bother the berserker, only to inflame him. He began screaming, too, and now was using tooth and nail to yank flesh from the other man's body.

The guard stopped moving. Arrow did not look away, though he wished he could. He had to know what his enemy would do, what he was capable of.

The berserker managed to not merely destroy the guard's body, but to render it unfit for burial. Screaming all the while, yanking bits away and dropping them like breadcrumbs behind.

The monster screamed. The berserker shrieked. And Arrow could not tell which was worse.

More guards angled –

(angles vectors good angle they're coming well have to help what to do?)

– out of a barracks. They came more carefully than the first few, and had used the moments the woolly creature took to travel the courtyard to formulate a strategy.

Several led with nets and weighted ropes, casting them at the feet of the creature, trying to trip it if not ensnare it outright. It tripped, but managed to stay on its feet.

The next guards rushed forward, attacking with long spears, holding them over the circular shields favored by the people of Arrow's own region.

Do I know any of them? Are any from the Grasslands?

They jabbed at the creature as it fell. It whipped around, shearing the spearheads off, and as it whirled the berserker threw himself from the creature's back. He flew over the heads of the spear- and ropemen, right into the third line of guards, those bearing swords and crossbows who were now rushing into the fray. A few of the swordsmen got their blades pointed at the madman, a few of the bowmen actually managed to loose their bolts.

The berserker flew into the blades as though they didn't even matter. He bled freely from a dozen and then a score and then a hundred wounds – any one of which should have been a crippling if not a killing blow. But none seemed to matter. Indeed, the opposite was true: with each drop of blood he lost, he seemed to grow in strength and madness.

And the blood – the wounds – disappeared as fast as they came. Gone, with only the increased rage of the berserker as proof they had ever been.

A swordsman ran the berserker through, but the madman simply ran forward, continuing up the blade to crush the man's head between his hands, then ripping the blade out of his own body and using it on another guard – not to slash at him, but to bludgeon him to death with the hilt.

A bowman shot him, and at that close range, the bolt exploded right through the madman. He didn't mind that any more than he had the sword. He was already running toward the bowman when it happened, and without changing direction or even looking behind him he swiveled with super-human speed and caught the bolt after it exited the body. Then – still moving forward at incredible speed – jammed it through the eye of the man who had shot him.

These were the lucky ones.

In comparison to the berserker, the beast was a thing of clean mercy. It broke, tore, rent. But it did so as though the guards were simply other creatures that had had the mistaken arrogance to wander into its marked territory. They must pay, and pay with fury, but without the mad malice of the berserker.

The net- and ropemen quickly found they had made a grave mistake in not trying to simply tangle the creature, but to hold it. The three men who held the ropes were yanked off their feet and right into the creature's clutches and were dead as fast as that.

The fourth one who held onto the rope was nearly yanked into the creature's grasp has well, but Arrow fired his gun, the rope parted, and the man fell back.

It still did him no good – nor did the ten shots Arrow sent into the creature – because in two steps the beast was upon the guard, and that guard, too, was dead.

The lancers' weapons had been shredded by the creature, but they were brave. None retreated. They attacked with the swords at their belts and, in a few cases, with the wreckage of their spears.

Nothing worked. None survived.

The berserker found himself alone in a wide circle of blood and death. He began running in a random direction, screaming that same mindless scream of mayhem. The creature roared for him, but the berserker ignored it.

The creature roared again, and Arrow blinked as… a symbol appeared under the creature's fur. No one else could have spotted it, but his Gift let him see it clearly, like a brand burning on the skin of the creature's chest. The symbol of a Bishop of Faith.

As soon as it happened, the berserker stopped running away. It turned back and ran and leaped back to the creature's back, and as he did, Arrow thought he saw a glow under the ruins of his shirt. The glint of something that seemed like neither skin nor the reflection of blood.

A gem?

The sight was hidden for a moment as the man clambered atop the beast, then Arrow saw it clearly as he resumed his place on the monster's withers, held his hands high, and the last bits of his shirt fell away.

The berserker had bathed in blood. But there, among the blood and bits of other things that Arrow preferred not to think about… it was a gem, but one unlike any Arrow had ever seen. It glowed from within, a bilious yellow that brought to mind sickness, unclean things.

Like the brand on the monster's chest, the gem was carved in the shape of the Bishop's Symbol.

Together, the beast and man-beast roared. And ran once more for Arrow.

More guards huddled around the side of a stable, ready to run out and attack the invaders. Ready to die.

Arrow waited until the creature was almost there. Then he holstered his gun and in the same motion, switched to the double crossbow slung below it. The crossbow was a handheld version he had designed himself, with two bolts locked into place and ready to be fired in succession without reloading.

The creature was far enough away that the shot was nearly impossible. For anyone but him.

He loosed the first bolt.

It hit the ground twenty feet away from the stable, between it and the thundering beast.

The tips were also of his own design. The work of a Thread, a Shock, and some minerals he had found while hiding in the caverns the Cursed Ones used as a hideout.

The explosion was huge. The heat intense. But, again… angles. Velocity. Result. The explosion billowed into the face of the creature, directed mainly away from the men hiding behind the stable. The stable itself creaked and then collapsed, but it did so slowly enough that the men were able to pitch themselves out of the way, so when it fell it simply fell as a wall between them and the monsters.

They were safe.

Arrow breathed a sigh of relief, though whatever relief he felt was certainly short-lived.

They know where I am. They're coming for me.

They'll have to come through the palace. Through all the people in it.

He turned. No thought of escape now, only of the possibility of meeting them partway down. Perhaps he could save some lives if they were stopped –

(if they get what they want if they get me if they kill me)

– somewhere in the middle of the palace, as opposed to killing their way to its very highest point.

A rumble stopped him. He turned back.

The creature had leaped. Not through a door, nor a window. It had hit the wall with its full force, and now clung there for a moment before beginning a hacking, haphazard scramble up the side of the wall. The berserker still clung to its back, and looked with its sightless stare directly at Arrow as his unholy steed clawed its way roughly upward.

They're outside. No one here. Just me.

Angles. Speed.

He loosed the second bolt of his crossbow. He had thought about using it on the beast – just as he thought about using it on the creature earlier – but worried it might have no effect. So he shot at something he knew would react.

The bolt impacted the side of the palace just between the creature's front legs as it pulled itself up another two feet. Buried itself and exploded in the instant that it would hit the wall, but also be at least somewhat beneath the creature.

The explosion rippled through the stone, not causing the structure to tumble or even sway, but definitely sending a tremor through the soles of Arrow's feet.

The creature had been hit; Arrow couldn't see through the dust to tell if the berserker had been wounded when the arrow found its home. Either way, both were falling, as the wall had fallen apart beneath the monster's claws.

But they didn't fall far.

The monster might have been surprised. Perhaps it was even stunned. But it wasn't hurt – not that Arrow could see – and before it had fallen ten feet it turned and jabbed a claw into the wall and stopped falling and began its climb again.

Arrow backed away from the wall, trying to figure out his next move. He cast a look in Sword's direction, and saw only dust and the flash of flame – her weapons moving nearly as fast as the bullets he fired.

Hopefully you're having more luck with yours.

The tower rumbled, the roar of the creature grew louder as it drew close. The berserker was not screaming, but it gave a high, keening whine that spoke of strange hungers, terrifying needs that none other than the mad could understand.

Arrow looked behind him. There was a door leading into the tower, of course, and from there to the palace proper. But he couldn't use it. To do so would be to kill any who got in the path of the creature –

(creatures that madman is more a monster than the monster)

– and perhaps even draw them that much closer to Malal himself.

Who are these people? And what do they want with him?

Another question to which he had no answer.

He looked one last time at the open door, beckoning him to a false safety.

Then turned back to the wall of the tower. The roars were so loud he could almost feel the creature's breath on his cheek, and the madman's lament threatened to drive Arrow to simply step off the tower and save his attackers the trouble.

Arrow looked around, trying to see something, anything, that would help him escape this moment, would give him a way to kill these monsters or if not that slow them down.

He didn't want to die here. His own arrow still flew beside the path of Sword. He was not ready for it to come to earth.

Angles. Velocities. Directions.

A banner fluttered in the wind. The gun flew back to his hand and he shot the clips that held it to the pole, timing it with the wind so that the flag fell directly onto the beast.

It accomplished what direct attack had not: it slowed it down. The monster roared and thrashed, losing its grip on the wall for a moment and even plummeting a few feet. Then two hands ripped through the cloth – man's hands. The berserker began to tear it away, even as the beast began to clamber blindly upward.

But Arrow was already moving, himself. He drew and reloaded his crossbow in the blink of an eye, and now aimed it – again at the wall, but this time higher. He fired.

And jumped over the side of the wall.

The explosion didn't make the creature lose its grip on the wall at all. But the explosion sent hundreds of pounds of stone flying out, and dropped a huge piece of masonry directly on the creature's head… and that did it.

The thing bellowed, and tumbled into free-fall. Harder when Arrow hit the top of the stone as well, driving his own weight into the top of the thing. He couldn't see the beast below the stone, but in the short moment of free-fall, saw the berserker's fingers tear at the lip of  the stone, seeking him, seeking his blood.

Arrow had already fired again.

Angles, variables. A thousand possibilities in a second, and my fingers know what to do.

The arrow hit the wall below and to the side of the fall, and another explosion slammed into them. The creature below roared as it absorbed the majority of the blast, and the madman's fingers disappeared from view.

The energy of the explosion also knocked the creature sideways – along with the stone upon which Arrow stood. The creature, the berserker, and the stone slammed into the side of an outcropping on the tower, a minor turret with a wide window that could be used as a lookout or vantage point. The beasts and their burden slammed into the side, but Arrow –

(angles possibilities making them all come together)

– was able to throw himself through the opening, crashing into the window, rolling to a stop against a bookshelf.

He was cut, he was bruised. But he was alive. And that – he hoped – was more than he could say for the things that had come after him.

Sword!

The thought drove him back to his feet, neverminding the bits of glass that glinted in his hair and skin or the abrasions from smaller bits of stone throne up by the explosions. He ran. Looked. Saw.

"No!"

Then he looked away – he had to – and the only way he could think to look was down. The place where the monsters had fallen. Where they should have died.

Instead, he saw the creature stand and, with a bellow, hurl the berserker bodily at Arrow. The madman flew up the impossible height, well over a hundred feet, and slammed right into him. The weight of the man and the force of his propulsion drove him back through the ragged gap he had just created a moment before, then to the floor beneath the snarling, flailing arms and feet of the berserker.

The madman looked at him for a long moment, with those eyeless eyes that saw nothing and everything and fell into the insanity that lay between them both. He smiled.

And bit down on Arrow's neck.

15

Sword was several rods' length away from the old man in the armor. Enough room for time, for planning.

And then thought disappeared as the old man – rushing faster than a waterfall, flowing with more crackling energy than the lightning Cloud had called – was upon her.

Her weapons were in her hand, as always. Too close for javelins, but a rope dart – a glowing length of bright light with a heavy blade of flame affixed to the far end – appeared in her hand, and she cast it toward the armored juggernaut.

She had thought she knew the one man who could withstand her attack. Armor had been a Greater Gift like her, her one-time father figure ever kind, ever gentle… until called upon to fight. Then he became physically invulnerable to attack by any weapon.

But even he eventually succumbed. Even he eventually died, at her hand.

This thing, though. This armored beast.

The dart flashed, the rope wriggling behind it like a viper made of something far more deadly than flesh, though with a bite of infinite fatality.

The old man raised his armored arm and simply batted it aside. The contact made the armor sizzle and smoke, and for a moment Sword thought she saw it blacken slightly. The armor was already a mix of grays and deeper grays, gears grinding within it, the light of the faith symbol at its brow giving it an eerie, demonic appearance, so even that momentary singeing could have been nothing but her imagination. Indeed, it probably was, because it was certain that in the next moment not a mark marred the suit. It continued unburned, unbroken.

Impossible.

She twisted her wrist, and the rope dart snapped, changing direction suddenly and thrashing its way back toward her enemy. This time he –

(no!)

– simply caught it. A snap of his wrist this time, and suddenly she found herself lurching forward, stumbling, off-balance for a moment.

A moment too long.

The old man had been moving forward this whole time, never slowing or so much as breaking pace, and now her shambling fall forward combined with his lumbering run to bring her into his range.

His fist swung at her, and again she was reminded of Armor, of the tall man who became so physically imposing when in the throes of his Gift. She remembered what happened to flesh, to wood, to solid stone when he collided with it, and somehow knew that being hit by this iron fist would be far worse.

She dove out of the way, barely avoiding being brained by the huge creature.

A laugh came from within it, and now she knew what to listen for she could hear the undertones of the old man's real voice. But a voice distorted, made frightening by what he wore.

"Good," he said. "I worried this would be over too quickly. A worthy foe makes a worthy fight."

She clapped her hands. Her swords appeared – katana and wakizashi. One long, one shorter, both dancing with the flame of which they were made, but both still possessed of blades stronger and sharper than any other.

The old man saw them, and laughed again. He reached for her.

She ducked under his hand. Slashed, slashed, stabbed – three movements too fast to follow by any but her, perhaps Arrow if he had been watching.

Arrow. Be alive. Be safe.

She drew away from the armored form, expecting to see its metal arm – and the softer arm of flesh within it – fall away in a shower of sparks and blood.

It was whole. Again, perhaps a slight mark for a moment that quickly faded.

The old man laughed appreciatively. "You are quick."

Then he attacked in earnest. His fists swung fast, he danced and flowed from one side to another with speed she thought should be impossible – until she saw that he wasn't stepping, but gliding. The fires at his back and feet flared with every movement, pushing him in the direction he chose much faster than otherwise possible. And in doing so, they added a loud noise, like the breath of the Gods, to the fight. Barely possible to think with the crash of the gears, the bellowing wind at the old man's back.

She dodged his attacks, dancing away when she could, blunting them with her swords when she could not. Each came within a hair's breadth of her, the very wind of his fists passing almost close enough to steal her breath.

This can't go on.

Her weapons had no effect.

And so they were gone – or rather, changed.

Instead of swords, she held a glowing net with barbed hooks around the edges. She waited until the terrible fists came at her again, then threw herself away from them even as she threw the net at her attacker.

It worked. First one hand, then another tangled in the mass of brilliant, blazing threads.

She used the moment to conjure another weapon – nothing so sophisticated or subtle as her favorite katana. A war hammer appeared in her hands, so big it weighed nearly as much as she did. But as with all her weapons, in her hands it was light as a sparrow, and flew as fast.

The old man roared from within his armor, twisting his hands and arms in the netting. Pings and pops sounded, and Sword realized with a start that the strands of her conjured net were actually starting to part.

Not possible. It can't be.

She swung the hammer. Blades had had no effect, so perhaps it was time for simple, cruel, ugly force.

The hammer slammed into the side of the suit of armor, and she was glad to see the beast skitter to the side, taking several stuttering steps before the fires on its back flared and it righted itself.

The old man screamed. Wrenched. One hand free.

Did I hurt him? Did that get through to what was inside?

She had no way of knowing – his screams could be of rage at being imprisoned, or pain from her blow, or both.

She swung the hammer again. This time the man was ready, and his fires brightened before the impact, making of him an immovable rock. The hammer bounced off him with a shower of bright sparks and afterimages of flame that burned her eyes and made them water.

The old man roared again.

She slammed the hammer into him. But this time she transformed it in mid-swing, creating a battle axe nearly as heavy as the hammer had been. The blade hit the armor.

It bit. Not far, but her heart stuttered as she saw one of her weapons affect the iron -

(only no not iron too strong what is it what is he?)

– for the first time. She had aimed it at the joint between hip and leg – a slight indentation to allow for freedom of movement. The old man shifted at the last second, though, and the blade hit his thigh instead. Still a good, killing blow in any other circumstance.

Not this one.

The axe bit an inch into the armor – clearly not enough to penetrate to any flesh beneath. Then the old man jerked his leg again, and the axe was yanked out of Sword's fingers before fizzling to nothing.

She was on the move. A lariat in her hands now, she threw the loop over the head and neck of the helm. She didn't try to overbalance the huge creature – at twice the height of a man and broad in proportion, that would have been a fool's errand.

Instead, she climbed. Knowing instinctively that at the current range it was only a matter of time before the monster's hands found her.

She had to go inside.

She yanked herself up, and suddenly was spider-scampering up the side of the armor, yanking her way to the shoulder. A fiery dagger appeared in her hand, and she slammed it into the area between shoulder and arm, another pivot point.

The dagger sank in. Still not as far as she hoped, but farther than the axe had gone in the thing's thigh. Something ground in the shoulder, the sound of a gear unable to move.

The old man roared again, and yet still she could not tell if she had managed to injure or only antagonize him.

She kept climbing. Yanked her way up higher. Another dagger in the neck, more clanking, more grinding.

She saw the symbol on the head. The sign of faith. The light.

She aimed her dagger for it. She would cleave the beast's head. Save Arrow. Return all to order, and to the rebuilding of an Empire long floundering in sickness and corruption.

Her hand plunged. And the old man caught her. Both hands finally free of the net, he caught one wrist in each, yanking her off his side and slamming her to earth so hard she heard something crack inside her and wondered if – after so many Turns fighting as a Dog, after all her battles as assassin and revolutionary – she was finally going to discover what death felt like.

She wished she could have seen Arrow one more time.

The old man let go of her for a moment, aimed his arm at the palace. Light shot out… and a huge hole gaped in the palace wall. Big enough that the wall began to sag. She heard screams from within, then they silenced as that part of the palace simply folded in on itself and what had been walls and rooms and people with lives became nothing but rock and ended dreams.

Sword screamed. Agony for them, agony for her.

The arm pointed at her face, the metal voice spoke. "Move and I will make a graveyard of this place."

Sword believed him. She held still.

There was a click, and when the voice came again, it was much louder. "Wahy! La'ug!"

A moment later, out of the dust that now shrouded what was left of the palace, the little girl came – again holding her woolly. The simpleton appeared beside her, eyes again vacant, following like a puppy behind its master.

He held Arrow in his arms. And Sword could not tell if he lived or not. Only that blood caked his body, his dust-covered face. His closed eyes.

The old man's voice came again. "Malal! Come out, you cur! Come out if you are man enough, or I will kill everyone within these walls." His arm dropped to point at Sword, and light blossomed from the tube on its side. "Starting with her."

For what seemed a long time, there was nothing. No movement, no sound other than a few coughs from people within the dust cloud.

The helm swiveled to her. "He is not coming. I am not surprised."

Sword grinned. "Will an Emperor succumb to the orders of a madman?"

Now the voice sounded tired. "No madman. Mad, yes, but not a madman." The tube glowed brighter. "But mad or not, I never lie."

Sword closed her eyes.

16

"Stop!"

Sword opened her eyes and jerked her gaze toward the sound of the voice. Knowing what was happening, but powerless to stop it.

"No," she said. But the hand above her slammed down, a fist the size of her head pounding the sense from her mind.

She was only out for a moment, and opened her eyes again almost immediately. Fast enough to see Malal floating through the air. Not roughly as Sword and Arrow had done while with Cloud. He floated regally. Majestically.

He looked like an Emperor.

Behind him came Wind, obviously the one providing the flight. Scowling, unhappy to be doing what she was, but still doing it.

Malal touched down in front of the armored man, his arms crossed. "I am here. What do you want?" he said simply.

The old man didn't answer. Not with words.

His arm pointed at Malal. A trio of darts shot out of hidden sleeves under his gauntlet. They found their way to Malal's neck.

The Emperor grabbed at them. Gagged. Then fell to his knees.

"I want you there," said the old man. His helm flipped back, his aged face visible and his own voice the one that said, "I want you on your knees."

Wind's face grew wrathful. Her hands raised, and again Sword felt that change in air pressure. She had seen Wind call the air to batter enemies, to crush them in invisible grasps.

The old man didn't bother replacing his helm. He just stared at her. "The darts are poisoned," he said. "You have a few moments to get him in the palace. Perhaps you have a Patch there who can help him." He shrugged, and the helm slammed back in place. "Or you can spend that time fighting me. Personally, I'd almost prefer that."

His hand pointed at Sword again, and the other aimed at Cloud's still-unconscious form, lying on the ground nearby. Tubes on the old man's arms glowed. "But first these two will die as well."

Wind looked at Malal, at her brother, at Sword. Her mouth opened and closed in wordless anguish.

Malal gasped. He fell facedown in the dirt.

The old man contemplated the Emperor. "I was told this will cause quite a bit of suffering." He looked back at Wind. "It will be interesting to see what happens, don't you think?"

He gestured at the girl and the big man – La'ug and Wahy, he had called them. They came toward him. The big man dropped Arrow in the dirt beside Cloud. He laughed, a simple laugh utterly free of malice, the laugh of a child who has just played with friends and had a fine time of it.

The armor on the old man whirred and shifted. Rods emerged from the sides, a series of straps. The girl and the big man climbed on the rods, strapped themselves to the armor.

The fires on the old man's back flared, and his feet left the earth. About ten feet up, he turned to look at the body of Malal, twitching on the ground. "I hope you can cure him. A quick death would be far too merciful for him."

Then there was a roar, and the trio flew into the sky and were gone from sight in only a moment.

Sword felt air cradle her. Felt it pull her to her feet. The movement was quick, jerky – not the graceful control Wind usually exhibited. She saw why: Wind was concentrating on Arrow; her brother; and, most of all, on Malal, keeping the three unconscious men steady in the air as she flew them toward the palace.

Foam was coming from Malal's mouth as whatever poison had been on the darts seared through his system. As Sword watched, blood began to trickle from his ears.

They took to the air, just as had the assassins. But without the roar of flame, the air of triumph. They took to the sky in silence, as beaten dogs.

They flew through a window in the part of the palace that was still whole and unblemished, and Sword began calling for Patches to attend them before they were even through.

Imperial Guards were waiting for them, clearly having seen the whole thing and waiting only because they had been ordered to stay away by the Emperor. Now, though, they moved as one. There was no need to hold Malal – he was still borne aloft on a cushion of air – but they filed in around him. Sword thought it looked disturbingly like the honor guard around a funerary carriage.

Wind cast a look over her shoulder as she ran with the Guard. I'll tell you as soon as I can, the look said. Then she disappeared down the hall, the bodies of Arrow and Cloud trailing after her.

Sword nodded, and let them go. She could do nothing now.

Only wait.

The nearest room was some sort of study or minor library: desks, some books. Sword didn't much care which it was, only that it had a chair she could slump in for a moment. She could still hear people moaning elsewhere in the palace, other sounds of people who thought they were completely safe only to discover that safety was nothing but illusion, and that illusion part of the danger itself.

I should go help.

But what could I do?

She was a fighter, probably the best alive –

(or at least, I was before today)

– but other than that she was just a teenage girl. Someone who had little experience compared to most, other than that given to all Dogs. The experience of fighting, and living in an ever-growing shadow of death.

Is that all I am? All I'll ever be?

With that, she knew she had to get up. She forced herself to move, though her side ached so badly she was sure she must have broken a rib. But there were people who would have been hurt worse, and if she could do anything – anything at all, even lift a rock off someone's shoe – she had to do it.

That was what they were here for, after all. What they'd been doing these past months in the palace: trying to make things better, if only a small bit at a time.

She grimaced, both in pain and remorse. The Cursed Ones had thought all it would take was replacing Malal. Getting rid of the Chancellor –

(Still alive!)

– and then they could just make everything somehow better. But they quickly discovered that there were two options open: either make their overthrow public, and watch the Empire tear itself apart as it lost the dynastic rule it had known for a thousand Turns; or work from within, and try to make things better at a frustratingly slow pace.

They had chosen the latter. Some changes came quickly – getting rid of the kennels, for instance. But even those had unimagined repercussions. The children sold to the kennels were sometimes the way poverty-stricken families made ends meet. Without the kennels, there was more starvation in Fear than ever. And what to do with the thousands of children suddenly released, most of whom had no idea who their parents were, or where they came from? A few families had come forward to reclaim their children, but most were either too ashamed or too uncaring to do so.

The children had been put in hastily-constructed tent cities, overseen by as many men and women as the Imperial Throne could arrange for on short notice. But even there, the children died – either from disease, old wounds, lack of proper care… or just simple despair.

We haven't made anything better at all.

"Stop moping."

Brother Scieran had appeared at the door when she was halfway there. There was a young man behind him, one that Sword recognized as one of the palace Patches. Brother Scieran nodded to him and the man moved toward her.

She tried to wave him off. "I'm fine. There must be others –"

Brother Scieran scoffed. "I saw you. You're not fine." He looked at the Patch, who had stopped between them. "Do your job. If she tries to resist, hit her until she stops."

The Patch looked equal parts confused and worried. Sword didn't envy him, caught between the best – one of the best – warriors in the Empire and the force of nature that was Brother Scieran.

She sighed and slumped back in the chair she had just abandoned. Nodded to the Patch, who stepped forward. Each Patch had basically the same Gift, but each exercised it slightly differently. This one laid his hands on her head, then let them drift slowly down her face, her neck. They touched her shoulders. Wherever they went, a pleasant warmth followed. She felt sleepy.

"Let yourself rest, girl," said Brother Scieran.

She shook her head. Forced her drooping eyes open and then stood again. "No. There is too much to do." She twisted at the waist. Her side still hurt – quite a bit – but it was at least bearable. To the Patch she said, "That's enough. Go see to those who most need it."

The Patch nodded. Started for the door. "You," she said, and he turned back. "Don't do what you did for me. Not again. Don't waste time on the ones someone says are 'more important.'" She looked at Brother Scieran. "Help who needs it most, regardless of rank or station. If anyone questions you…." A hint of light appeared in her hand. The threat of flame. "Send them to me. And keep doing your job. Until you can't anymore, until you drop."

The Patch nodded, and looked somehow relieved, as though that was what he always wanted to do, but rarely was able to.

"Stubborn," said Brother Scieran.

"With people like you around, how could I not be?" she answered, then strode from the room, heading toward the damaged part of the palace. Brother Scieran fell in behind her with his triple step of foot, foot, cane.

The closer they got to the area the old man had destroyed, the worse things looked. People moved in and out of various rooms, holding bloody sheets, curtains – anything that could be used to help the wounded. Glancing in rooms she saw people laying on beds, tables, and desks. Some had Patches helping them – a few wounded only slightly and quickly able to rise and help others, but many beyond complete healing, even through the magic of the Gifts. They remained where they lay, some unconscious, some gasping in pain. She saw one of those angrily shove a Patch away, propelling him toward a woman on a chair. "Her first," growled the man, even as a spasm of pain wracked him.

Sword's jaw clenched. These people didn't deserve this. Some of the men and women in the palace had been corrupt – as with any beauracracy, there were good people and bad. But she and the other Cursed Ones had been working hard to identify them and either send them to prison or at least remove them from their stations. So most of the people still in the palace were guards, cooks, maids, manservants, and any of the thousand souls who lived and worked in a place like this.

"Why did he leave?" she said.

"What?" Brother Scieran was looking at the wounded as well.

"He could have destroyed us. Destroyed everything. Why did he leave?"

Brother Scieran didn't have to ask who she meant by "he." He shrugged. "You heard what he said. He wants to make Malal suffer."

"So he'll be back. And it will be worse the next time."

Brother Scieran didn't say anything.

Sword saw a girl on a table. Dressed in a chambermaid's outfit, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling while Patches worked feverishly on another woman nearby who could only be the girl's mother. And it all happened to the tuneless song of screams: a person pinned under a huge piece of stone, so large that it took two Strongs with all their magic to lift the masonry away, to show another body that Sword could already tell was beyond help.

One of the Strongs caught her eye. Like all Strongs, he was small, almost delicate-looking, though his magic enabled him to lift many times his own weight. The Strong nodded at her, and in his eyes she saw the terror of being strong in a place where strength meant nothing.

Or perhaps his eyes simply reflected what she knew was in her own gaze.

The Strong moved on, out the door and to the next place where his might could be useful. He walked quickly, but still there was something broken in his gait. Brother Scieran followed him, though Sword wasn't sure if the priest went to follow the small man himself, or saw someone else who needed his ministrations.

Sword continued on.

Place after place, room after room, pain after pain. And then it just… ended.

The pain was still there, but the rooms were not. The hall simply and suddenly ended. This was where the armored man's blast had turned stone and mortar and wood and cloth and everything else that made up the spaces where people lived to nothing but dust and air. The corridor ended jaggedly, a line of rock that turned to crumbling edges open to the outside.

Sword looked up and could see this whole part of the palace above and behind her, extending ten or more rods up. Corridors and rooms had been cut apart in cross-section, and she could see flashes of movement as people worked in those open spaces to save coworkers, friends, and strangers.

She suddenly felt very small. The power she had could bring down an Empire, but here in the face of an armored madman and his two helpers she could do nothing but watch.

"No madman. Mad, yes, but not a madman."

The old man's words echoed in her mind. She tried to comprehend them, to pull meaning from the puzzle he had spoken. She failed. Another failure.

Before her, the castle continued down for another three floors before it reached the ground. In front of her there was nothing but air, with a sloping mountain of rubble leading to the ground directly beside the wall.

She saw movement in the rubble.

Without thinking, she was sliding down the rocks, crashing to her hands, falling to her back time after time, but never stopping, never halting her downward progress.

The movement stopped.

She kept moving, rushing forward in her semi-controlled fall. When she reached the spot where she had seen the movement, she dug into the rock beneath her knees. Pebbles ran down the hill as she dislodged stone after stone – some as large as her head – and pushed them away.

She saw a hand. Small. So small.

She started screaming for help. But no one came. No one heard.

She kept digging. It was a little boy. Brown hair matted down by dust and sweat and the blood that flowed from the deep cut on his scalp. The cut was deep enough and bad enough that Sword couldn't wait for anyone to come to her aid, for a Patch to notice her. She had to get the boy out of the rock and up the hill, even if his back or spine had been damaged already. Leaving him was more dangerous than moving him, because leaving him would mean watching him bleed to death in a grave of stone.

She pulled more rubble off his body, clearing away enough that she could drag him free. She hoisted him to her. She could handle weapons with ease, no matter their size. Her Gift did not apply to people, though, and even this boy was heavy for her. She looked up, screaming for help once more, knowing none would come.

The boy was turning visibly white in her arms, his lips going blue.

She couldn't climb. She fell instead. She simply let her legs go out from under her, pitching onto her back with the boy held tight against her stomach and chest. Sliding haphazardly down the rubble, unsure what to do beyond try to reach the bottom, to regain her feet, to find a way to help this child.

The rocks bit at her, tore the back of her head and neck. Blood soaked her shirt. She fell to earth. Stood, still miraculously carrying the boy.

One of the sheared-off sections of the castle was right beside her: not a hall this time, but a room that had been cleaved in half by the fall of the palace. No one in it. She ran through. A door in the back. A hall beyond. People running. No one paying attention. Not to her, not to the boy in her arms.

"He's dying!" she cried. And no one heard, because they were all dying here, this close to the fall of stone.

Then someone did hear. A hand reached out. Rested his hand on the boy's head. The tear to his scalp suddenly knit – not completely, but some.

"That's all I can do right now," said the exhausted man, the Patch who had just helped the child. Then he was gone in the press of bodies, off to help someone just enough to perhaps cling to life, then another and another.

Sword brought the boy to the nearest room. No table empty, no bed free, so she laid him in a corner. A flaming knife appeared in her hand, and she cut a strip from a nearby curtain and wrapped the boy's head.

"Live," she breathed, and kissed him.

Then left him, to find more she could save.

17

Udo pulled the candle from its holder. It was small, burned away to a slim cylinder of wax that would burn away to nothing more than a thin wisp of smoke in only a few more moments. He used it to light a new candle he pulled from the desk, then with the last of the first candle's flame he melted the wax on the bottom of the new candle so it would stick to the holder.

The first candle went out. It had served its purpose. It would never light again.

Udo leaned close to the parchment on the desk. The candlelight flickered, making the drawings on the paper –anotomical diagrams of chick-fowl – seem as though the birds were in flight.

The other High Academics who worked in the Aviary made fun of him for using candles. "Glo-globes last longer. Gods, they last forever," they all said. "Why waste time lighting candles, when they're so much dimmer and make such smoke?"

Udo just smiled. As a High Academic, his every decision was supposed to be motivated by logic, by learning. And, as a High Academic, he was keenly aware how impossible that was. So some Turns ago he had abandoned it as an ideal. That was why he let himself use the candles: they were less efficient than glo-globes. But the simple fact was… he liked them.

He liked the way they smelled, the smoke when they lit and when they extinguished, a tangy, sharp odor that reminded him of the fires his grandfather built when he was a child. The stories the old man told.

He liked the way the wax dripped, the way the candles drooped and eventually melted away to nothing and reminded him that time was passing. That life was moving along. Easy to forget when your only company was glo-globes and books, which never showed that they cared about the time. But the real world did care, and so should the men and women of the Great University. The Gods had always urged their children to keep away from the world's ills, but never hide from its cares. The shrinking wax reminded Udo of that.

Most of all, though, he loved that flicker of flame. The movement it gave to the pictures he studied. The illusion of life it provided to figures and diagrams of creatures who had sacrificed themselves to the furtherance of knowledge.

In Udo's eyes, the birds who died under his knife, to be studied and drawn and so, hopefully, understood a bit more, had a kind of eternal life. The flame gave that life motion, and provided his life with meaning.

Though it is hard on the eyes.

Worth it.

An Academic entered. He removed his fedora and bowed. Udo thought his name was Glen or Glan or something like that. Another man who hoped to earn the silver chain of a degree with honors, to be worn around the neck, to mark him as one of the elite – a High Academic.

As though that matters.

Udo himself hardly ever wore his own chain. He didn't care who knew of his honors or accolades. He cared about his birds. About his books. About making the world a better place by acting himself as a candle – albeit a small one – to brighten the darkness of ignorance.

People asked him what he thought he was really accomplishing. "Just birds. Who cares? Why not study at Medicine or even Meteorics?"

Even the Academics who studied under him – like the idiot waiting at the door – didn't understand. They just chose the Aviary as the fastest, easiest course to their chain and the honors of men and women.

Glen/Glan cleared his throat. Udo didn't bother turning to him, just said, "Yes, what is it?" with what he hoped was enough irritation to get through the man's thick skull.

"It's… quite late, sir."

"Late? Who cares about late?"

"Well, I mean… that is…." Glen/Glan cleared his throat again.

Udo finally turned to the Academic. "Are you ill?"

The other man flushed. "No. Just…." He sighed. "It's actually not just late. It's the middle of the night."

"Knowledge never sleeps, boy."

The Academic's flush deepened at being called "boy." And, in truth, Udo wasn't that much older than him. Glen/Glan was probably in his mid-thirties, and Udo only had forty Turns to his name. But he had been a High Academic for fifteen of those Turns – a genius of the highest order – and they both knew it. Just as they knew that it more than entitled Udo to call the other man "boy" if he wished.

But Glen/Glan didn't have to like it. And he showed that fact clearly in his face.

"Knowledge may not sleep, but I have to, at least occasionally." Then, aware of the fact that his ascension to High Academic depended in large measure on Udo's approval, he added a grudging, "Sir."

Udo sighed. "What's your name again?"

The Academic's flush deepened to a dangerous level. "Golan, sir. I've been here for two Turns."

"Two Turns?"

"Yes."

"And do you know why I have trouble remembering your name? And why I am still at work here when all the other Academics sleep?"

Golan's expression soured. "I have no idea."

Udo laughed. "Yes, you do. You think it's because I'm a narcissistic know-it-all who is so obsessed with things that fly that he's forgotten how to deal with things that walk – if he ever knew in the first place."

Golan said nothing, but his expression was clear enough: Udo had hit the nail on the head.

Udo gestured for the younger man to join him at the desk. After a moment – and a quick flicker of exasperation – Golan did.

Udo pointed at the page he had been studying. The anotomical drawings of the chick-fowl. "What do you see?"

"Chick-fowl."

Udo nodded. "Yes. A bird. Which is what we study at the Aviary." He looked hard at Golan. "But why do we study them?"

"Because they're interesting?" Golan didn't even try hiding the question in the words.

Udo laughed. "All right, perhaps I should have asked why I study them. You study them because you want your chain, then you want to start teaching – preferably in a different discipline – as soon as possible."

Golan had the decency to attempt a protest. "No, sir, I –"

Udo waved him off. "That's all right, Golan. I've been here fifteen Turns, and no one – not a single one – of my students has ever understood. Not really." He pointed back at the parchment. "Why do I study birds? Why not horses, or woollies? Why not men? All fascinating, all worthy of attention and study. So why do I spend my time in the Aviary, virtually alone. What is different about the birds? What do they have that nothing else has?"

Golan looked at the parchment a long time. "They… fly."

Udo shook his head, tsk tsking as he did. "So do many insects. So do we, for that matter, in our air-cars. No, not flight. Think."

Golan kept staring. The minutes passed. The candle melted. "They have faster heartbeats than other –"

Udo cut him off. "No, no, no. Any anotomical differences are not really differences at all. Every one can be found in other creatures – individually, if not as a whole. Birds are an amalgam of the pieces the Gods have already used for other animals. No, the answer is not in what they are, but what they do."

Golan thought. Thought. Finally shook his head.

Udo leaned back, and grinned. The reaction clearly surprised Golan, who nearly smiled back.

Nearly.

Have I become such a difficult man?

"Don't be embarrassed. No one else has ever seen it, either. Just me." Udo lay a finger on one of the pictures, a cross-section of a wing. "You were actually close, though, when you talked about the creatures' flight."

"But you said –"

"I said it wasn't flight itself. And it isn't." Udo leaned toward his student. "No, it isn't flight itself. It's where they fly."

Golan thought. And this time – surprisingly quickly – he understood.

"Down the mountain," he said. "Below the clouds."

Udo nodded. "Birds are the only creatures that we are aware of who have descended below the clouds and then returned – alive."

"But, surely insects, some animals –"

Udo shrugged. "Insects? Perhaps. But not that we have observed, and so that is a dead end – at least for now. As for animals… there are no animals at the level of the clouds, that we have seen. And even if there were, birds are uniquely useful for my purposes."

"How so?"

Udo pointed to the anatomical drawing. "You helped me dissect this bird." He frowned, then looked embarrassed – a rarity for him. "That was you, wasn't it?"

Udo managed not to look irritated. He just sighed. "Yes."

"So you know what we found when we cut her open. What we saw when we examined her. But did you think to ask how she was chosen? How she came to be the subject of our examination? Or…," and Udo gestured around the room, at the hundreds of scrolls and reams of papers that held similar information, "… how I chose any of the other subjects?"

"I just assumed you had students catch them for you."

Udo shook his head. "No. Well, yes. Some. As controls. But others, like this one, I trained."

"How so?"

"I trained this one to chase a lure – a bright piece of metal. To catch it, and bring it back to me."

Again, Golan understood. "You threw it over the edge of the mountain."

Udo nodded. "It took quite a few tries to time it properly – to throw the lure enough ahead of time that the bird followed it under the clouds, but not so far ahead that it lost sight and turned back before going that far."

Golan frowned. He chewed his lip as he stared at the parchment sheet. "So you're looking for what makes them different?"

Udo nodded. "If anything." He looked hard at Golan. "We have been atop the five mountains for a thousand Turns, Golan – assuming the histories are true, which is debatable, given that histories tend to be written by people who have an agenda and are willing to bend the truth if it will further that agenda. A thousand Turns. In a closed system, with nothing coming in, and nothing coming out. We know there is more – the First Emperor's own stories, corroborated by corrupted tales from before, tell us so. But here, where we are, the Empire is all there is." He took a deep breath, suddenly feeling twice his age. "How long do you think this can last, Golan? How long before we run out of resources, or a disaster strikes, or simple human nature acts to wipe us all out?" He shook his head. "No, we must find a way to leave this place, and sooner rather than later."

"And the birds will tell us how?"

Udo nodded. "That is my hope." He rubbed his eyes and stared at the candle. "And the reason I stay when others have gone. Why I work while others sleep, and why I care nothing for my chain or the University honors – only for what I find, what I discover."

Golan was silent for a long, long time, his expression unreadable. Finally he said, "Have you ever told this to anyone before?"

Udo was silent nearly as long before he said, "No."

"Why me?"

Udo shrugged and turned back to his parchment, returning to his study. "I really don't know. Perhaps because I'm lonely. Perhaps because I worry that time is short."

"Not because I'm particularly promising, then?"

Udo laughed. He regretted doing so – he wasn't a monster. But it came before he could stop it. He didn't look at Golan after the laugh came. Better to let the younger man leave. Probably to ask to be transferred to a new discipline and a new advisor.

Instead, something scraped across the floor. A chair. Golan drew it up to the desk, sitting beside Udo and leaning close to the parchment. "Tell me what you're looking at."

Udo stared at him, the barest hint of a smile playing at one corner of his lips. "But it's late."

The same trace of a grin showed on Golan's face. "Knowledge never sleeps."

Udo smiled fully. He pointed at the picture he had drawn. "The spleen of this specimen is slightly enlarged, but within the typical range previously noted for this species, so…."

They spoke on into the night, and Udo was surprised how much he enjoyed it.

I was lonely, then.

One more thing learned. One more bit of knowledge.

The discussion continued unabated, brightening the atmosphere and even seeming to brighten the light of the candle itself.

"What's…?" Golan blinked.

"What is it?" Udo looked at him. "Did you see something?"

"I'm seeing a lot. Too much, actually."

It took him a moment to understand what Golan was saying. The candle was still lit, but its flame had been overpowered by something else: a brightness beyond its meager flame. A light coming from somewhere outside the room.

And that light was growing.

Golan stood up, and Udo saw him staring out the small window on one wall of the room.

Udo looked, too. The window allowed a view of the next building over – one of the student dormitories, he thought – as well as the path between them. Usually it was fairly empty. He had rarely seen more than one person on the path, and never seen anyone on it at this time of night.

The thought struck him that it wasn't night. That he and Golan had spoken through the night. But he had a fairly developed internal clock, and his body rejected that thought as soon as it came. Dawn was still hours away.

So why was it light outside?

And brightening?

Someone ran past the window. It looked like a student, though it could have been a younger Academic. Hard to tell, because she was only wearing nightwear – a light robe and a knit cap. She ran past in a flash, then returned to view: she obviously had seen them in the room, but ran past too quickly to stop immediately.

She began hammering on the window. "Let me in!" she screamed. Her panic was both palpable and contagious; Udo's pulse immediately quickened, his breath grew shallow.

The light behind the woman brightened. She hit the glass harder. Looked behind her. Screamed.

The light was so bright now that it hurt to look at. But Udo could vaguely see….

"Gods," whispered Golan.

Udo could only nod.

The light brightened. Brightened. The woman at the window screamed. Then the light was so bright it swallowed her, and the scream disappeared just as she did.

Udo turned away, blinking his eyes against the tears of pain and terror that the light – and whatever had happened to the woman – had brought.

And as he did, he found only more to fear.

The light was coming in through the open door to the hall.

Not just outside, now.

Everywhere.

He heard a muffled gasp.

He reached out. Felt Golan's hand in his, and they both clutched at each other like terrified children in the dark rather than grown men in the brightest light ever seen.

They held each other, and Udo was glad he had told Golan what he suspected. Gladder still that Golan had stayed.

Terrible to be alone, all my life.

Then the light took him, and there was no more loneliness, for there was no more life.

18

"Sword. Sword!"

At first the shaking didn't even register, so exhausted was she. The day's toll had been high – physically, mentally, emotionally. Just working, working. Doing what she could, knowing it was far too little.

All these powers, and what am I? I can kill, but can I save?

She worked herself ragged, all the while hoping to hear something – of Cloud, of Malal.

Of Arrow.

But no word came, no one looked for her to tell her the news, either good or bad. She worked into and through the night, still pushing herself by the light of the glo-globes that illuminated the palace, still facing the terror and the madness… and all the while aware how little she really accomplished.

The old man could have killed us all. Why didn't he?

("I hope you can cure him. A quick death would be far too merciful for him.")

The words the old man spoke echoed through every step she took, every stone she lifted, every wound she bound. They were the words of one driven to terrible vengeance. But by what? What had Malal done to deserve this?

That was the problem, though, wasn't it? There was no shortage of men and women who hated Malal, along with all he represented. People like Sword herself – the Cursed Ones had been the most effective revolutionaries, but she couldn't believe they were the only people who dreamed of change. There must be countless who wished to kill Malal.

Because they don't know. They don't know things have changed! And will change still more.

Of course, that thought led to one more list of people who might hate Malal: those who had been affected by the changes in the Empire, since Smoke had assumed Malal's identity and taken over for the real Emperor, the young man who had died insane in fires of his own making.

The people the old Malal crushed want him dead. The ones we are throwing out do, too.

We're just making everything worse.

Her mood darkened along with the sky, each person she saw who was wounded, or frightened, or trapped becoming an outward confirmation that she was right. Things were worse. They would never be better.

Even the kennels were better than this.

That was the thought that brought her back to herself, at least a bit. The kennels were a slice from the Netherworlds. Children and teens raised to fight and die, never knowing why, never knowing if their lives served any purpose beyond the entertainment of the men and women who placed bets over the blood of the young. No choice, other than the simple choice offered every time the arena opened: fight or die, kill or be killed.

This was better than the kennels. It had to be. Even though everything had not changed – certainly not all that had to be changed – still they had given some hope. Had offered some people greater choices than they had enjoyed before.

She bound an old man's leg. Not a critical injury - most of the worst-injured had either died or been seen to by Patches by now. But he was clearly in pain, and when she finished the tie he put a bony old hand over hers.

"Thank ye," he rasped. She nodded, and tried to leave, but found his hand clamped on hers. He wouldn't let her go. "Not for this," he said. He pulled her close. "For everything," he whispered, his teeth gritted in pain. Then his eyes rolled back and he slipped into unconsciousness.

She checked to make sure he hadn't died; that the wound hadn't been too much for him, but he seemed all right. Just exhaustion and pain finally demanding oblivion. As she leaned over him, his eyes jerked open again, so sudden and wide that she almost screamed in startlement.

"We know you, girl," said the man. "We see the changes. We… see…." His voice drifted off, his eyes closed. This time he didn't wake again.

Sword realized her own eyes were shutting as well, as though in sympathy with the old man's, with the eyes of the many she had seen permanently closed today. She weaved on her feet, and was gradually aware of someone catching her, of the jostling sensation of being moved to the side.

Then she knew nothing at all, just darkness and dreamless sleeping until the voice and the shaking. "Sword!"

She blinked, and at first couldn't see anything but a blight blur. It was light out, she realized, and realized at the same time that she had, indeed, been shoved off to a corner of the room in which she had finally dropped from exhaustion.

Part of the brightness shifted above her, resolving into the features of Father Akiro. Like everyone else, he was caked in dust and grime, sweat cutting uneven rivulets through the dirt on his face. But other than that he looked bright-eyed and aware, though she could tell at once that he hadn't slept since the attack yesterday.

Only yesterday? So short a time, but it feels a forever ago.

Then, on the heels of that thought:

Gods, does Akiro ever get tired?

The old man hadn't been shaking her after all. Rather, he prodded her repeatedly with one of his canes. "Sword," he said again. "Get up, girl." She moaned, and saw him squint. "Good, you're awake," he said. "So is he."

The last few words took a few seconds to make their way into her brain. "Who?" she finally said. Hope bloomed, and shame at the same time. Hope, because she wanted the "he" to be Arrow. Shame, because she knew that Malal was the most important, the one who was key to seeing that the Empire didn't dissolve into anarchy.

I don't care. Let it happen. Haven't I given enough?

She pushed those thoughts away, shame burning even brighter within her. We are all possessed of a person within who wishes nothing but ease, quiet, contentment. Who is selfish in the extreme. And though it is no evil to have that person within, it is the beginning of evil to allow it full run of your mind.

Sword pushed that selfish self away, forced herself to ask, "Malal?"

Father Akiro shook his head, downcast. "No. Arrow. Cloud, too, but I thought you'd want to know about Arrow most, so I tried to find you." He eyed her small spot in the corner, nearly buried among the wounded and the sleeping who had given them aid. "Quite a bed you've made for yourself."

She shivered, wondering if he heard the deeper meaning his words might hold.

But… Arrow. Alive. Awake!

Again she pushed away that deep self, that first self, and tried to feel worried about Malal – and by extension the Empire – instead of just relieved about Arrow. "And Malal?" She got unsteadily to her feet, Father Akiro reaching out to steady her until she shook her head.

He sighed. "Best you should see for yourself."

He led her quickly through the palace, away from the damaged portion and deeper into the areas where Malal held court and lived. Even without seeing damage to the walls and ceilings, there was no way to mistake this for a normal day in the palace. Far too many people moved through the halls, and all of them moved with a strange silence that spoke of terror, of confusion, and of jobs that needed doing faster than was possible.

The air was one of defeat.

Finally Father Akiro reached a single door where nearly a dozen of the Imperial Guard stood watch. He nodded at them, and they nodded back. Sword was surprised that he was so well-known, so easily accepted by them.

Priests. Crafty as any politician, and twice as likeable.

They went in. More guards stood inside the huge room – which looked to be one of the bedrooms for visiting nobles. Probably the closest place they had found that could be used as a treatment center for the Emperor, while still being reasonably secure.

Not that anywhere really was secure. Not anymore.

The guards, as always, were completely hidden under their armor and their skull-helms. Even so, Sword sensed the fear in here, thick as anywhere else in the castle. They were probably feeling what she herself was: the exquisite pain of those who thought themselves strong, only to discover their weakness in the face of something far more terrible than themselves.

Arrow stood by the door. He looked wan, and new scars, bright red and angry, criss-crossed his neck and ran up in curls over his jaw to his cheeks. Sword herself had a long scar on one cheek – given her by the last Captain of Malal's Guard in order to turn her into a decoy for the girl who was an heir to the throne. Scars didn't bother her – they told tales of wars fought, of victories earned, of trials survived. And Arrow's new scars – bad enough she could see they would always have a place on his neck and face – just made him seem more fragile, more fleeting, and all the more precious for it.

His face, tight and tired as it was, relaxed a bit when he saw her. He swept her into his arms without a word, and without a word she accepted the comfort he gave. It seemed both forever and far too short a time in his embrace, then he drew away and said, "I feared for you."

Arrow was not a man who gave himself over to flowery language or to losses of control. The fact that he admitted to his fear was an enormous nod to his feelings for her. She knew he loved her: his kisses, when they came, were passionate and tender. His arms around her were always firm, strong. But it was in the moments like this, where he said little but meant much, that she felt closest to him. A thing that only warriors could share, a feeling that only those who had suffered and bled together could understand.

She squeezed him one last time, then said, "Cloud?"

"He's all right, too. Patches were working on him most of the night, and apparently he was half-broken inside. But he woke recently, and was able to understand what had happened to the palace."

"What did he say?"

"Some very obscene things, which boiled down to, 'Don't waste time on me, help the people who need it.'" Arrow shook his head. "That man is too strong for his own good sometimes."

Sword looked, finally, to the center of the room. A quiet knot of priests and Patches hunched around the bed there. They were mostly silent, and when they did speak it was with low, murmuring voices that sounded like nothing so much as the wind through a graveyard.

The voices of men tending the dead.

"Is he…?"

Arrow shook his head again. "I don't know. None of them," he added, gesturing at the men around the bed, "seem to, either. Not that they'll talk to me."

One of the people around the bed straightened, and Sword saw it wasn't all holy men and healers: Wind was also there. Like Arrow, she had a wan, bloodless face that spoke of too much stress and no sleep whatsoever. Her hair was mussed and unruly, and though she pushed it out of her face it was the gesture of someone who needed to see, not a woman worried about her appearance.

Wind looked back at the bed for a long moment, then withdrew. She went to Arrow and Sword, her steps faltering.

"Gods, girl, sit down," said Father Akiro. Sword had almost forgotten about him, but now he hobbled forward and guided Wind to a chair. She drew a hand over her face, tracking lines through the dirt that caked her skin as it did everyone else's.

No one spoke for a moment, as though worried what further bad news any speech might bring. But when Wind finally met Sword's eyes, she said, "What of Malal?"

Wind didn't answer for a moment. She could read lips, so it wasn't that she hadn't heard the question. Rather, she seemed momentarily unsure what to do with it, as though something in her mind had burned out.

After a long moment, the room silent save only the sighing susurrations of the men working around Malal, she finally Signed something. Father Akiro translated for the rest of them, saying, "He's been poisoned."

Sword looked sharply at the holy man. "Poison?" She gestured at the Patches around the bed. "How is it that Malal isn't already on his feet, then? I don't know of any poison that cannot be neutralized if Patched quickly enough."

Wind waited, then led her to the bed. A few of the Patches parted to let Sword through. Father Akiro and Arrow held back, and the grim looks on their faces said they had already seen what the bed held – and had no wish to see again.

She steeled herself. And it didn't matter. She couldn't be ready for what she saw – no  one could.

Malal lay with mouth open wide in a soundless scream, the muscles in his neck and around his jaw rigid as though he were actually shrieking, but so loudly and strongly that none could hear it but he. Skin sloughed from his bones in wide patches, only to be knit and grow from nothing again, then fall away once more. Below the skin, the flesh was black as though burned or rotted away.

Several of the priests, she realized, weren't just praying: they were gathering away the skin that fell and throwing it into nearby basins as they whispered their liturgies.

The Patches healed the Emperor, but only partway before the poison again took hold and began to blast his flesh.

How long can they keep this up?

As she thought this, one of the Patches weaved, exhausted. A priest steadied the woman, and after a moment she returned to her concentration.

The moment they stopped, Malal would die.

And that wasn't the worst of it. The worst was the thought that perhaps it would be a mercy to let him die. Not just because of the silent scream, or the falling away of his flesh. There was worse.

There was his eyes.

They stared at the ceiling, open and unblinking. But it was not the wide stare of those about to succumb to death, nor was it the empty look of someone whose mind had fled. He stared at something beyond others' sight – perhaps something that existed in the same plane as his silent screams.

He looked like a man staring at the very Netherworlds. A look that spoke not of madness, but the most awful sanity as madness was fully and completely understood for the first time.

Sword shuddered and looked away. A moment later, Wind left the bedside. She followed her and rejoined Arrow and Father Akiro.

More Signs from Wind. Again, Father Akiro spoke: "They don't know what it is. They've never seen anything like it. But their magic cannot heal it."

Arrow stared at the Patches. "Then what are they doing, if they can't heal him?"

"Keeping him alive. The Patches work to reverse the poison's effects as fast as they happen." Wind's hands shook as she Signed the words.

"So he's not going to die," said Sword. "Not as long as they keep working."

Wind nodded, but looked even more defeated in that instant. "No. But they can't work forever," she Signed.

"What if we bring in more Patches?" asked Arrow. "We can –"

Wind shook her head. "The priests have already done the calculations," she Signed. "They guess that, if we bring in all the Patches in the area and work them to exhaustion, one after another, then he has two weeks. Maybe three."

"But that would mean letting everyone else who was injured in the attack and who needs a Patch just die," said Sword.

Wind's breath hitched. Then she nodded.

"And without dedicating so many Patches?" asked Arrow. "With just the ones in here?"

Wind had looked exhausted and frightened before. Now she looked ill. "Two days. Maybe three."

19

Father Inmil felt like a young man again.

It's been a long time since I felt this way. Too long.

The first time he had donned the frock of the Temple Faithful, he had felt like this. He felt a bit like it when he worked at the Small Cathedral, where he first became part of the silent revolution of the Cursed Ones.

Then, again, when he was introduced to the catacombs: a secret world of knowledge below the Grand Cathedral, a vast universe of mystery and treasure for the mind.

The catacombs held what the priests and priestesses who worked here referred to simply as the Archive. The records of the church were here – copies of the records of ordinances performed by priests and priestesses, and of moneys spent to aid the poor. The history of a people's beliefs, and through them a history of the people themselves. A mission of the church that few thought of was the chronicling of the Empire itself. And the priests were able to do this perhaps better than anyone. For who better to tell the story of a people than those who accept the lowest, who help the most desperate?

The story of a culture is told more in who suffers than in who succeeds. The history of an Empire is not one of leaders and lords, but of the people who falter or benefit under their rule.

And far too much suffering. Even now, after the Cursed Ones succeeded in their work.

Inmil was not a naïve man – he knew that change could come either as slow, measured shifts, or as anarchic revolution.

And what many did not understand – did not even think of – was that an Empire utterly bounded by the sides of its mountains, by the impassable clouds below, could not afford anarchy. There would be nowhere to run if the Empire collapsed, it would simply be the end of the world.

Not for the first time, Inmil wondered what lay below the clouds. What was it that prevented any from leaving Ansborn?

Not for the first time, he tried not to think of it. Because it was an enemy, it could only be an enemy. And one more enemy was more than he or anyone else could handle right now.

He knew he was hiding from reality – that when he went to the Archive it was as much to escape as to discover. But that was human nature, and Inmil understood that he was human, and that though the Gods demanded perfection, they would have to settle for flawed men and women.

He thought, too, that They did not so much mind. The flaws in a diamond created unique refractions, beautiful colors. The flaws in a people made them worth saving.

All this thought was his in the moment he received the book. In the moment he felt young again.

He opened the book when he received it from the special messenger, and for a moment the sight of it made all the madness of the past hours flee from his mind. Rumors had been coming in – ill happenings in Fear, the listening posts of the Empire now housed by nothing but blood and bodies and the ghosts of the dead. But when he opened the book, he lost himself in that special place reserved for discovery.

Young men feel young when they exercise their bodies, when they take reckless risks that they hope will impress their friends or their lovers. Old men regain that lost youth in the reckless explorations of the mind. And so Inmil felt the burst of youth when he opened the book, and saw what was within.

That it was an Old Book could not be questioned. Though it was in excellent shape – many of the Old Books were falling apart, and could crumble at the mere touch of a hand. Perhaps this was a copy, or even a copy of a copy? That would be strange, because as far as he knew, only the Faithful copied such tomes. Why copy something that looks like gibberish?

The tree on the front cover looked familiar. He had never seen it before, but there was something about it that tugged at him. When he opened it, the book revealed many of the characters he had seen on the other Old Books in the catacombs, and he felt the same hope that he felt every time he looked upon an Old Book: that this would be the one. The one that took them out of the darkness, and into the light.

Everyone knew the basic history of Ansborn: the Ascension of Eka, the civil wars, the rise of the Blessed Ones and the Order of the Emperors. But few were aware of – and even fewer cared about – the gaps in that history. What happened during the Time of Erik. The details of the Reign of Judges.

And, most important, what had happened before the Ascension. Where Eka and his followers had come from, and what lay below the mountains of Ansborn.

The priests ministered, they preached. But they also searched for the answers that would, perhaps, allow the people above to descend the mountain. To see what there was of a world unknown, but only hinted of in the oldest parts of the histories.

The Old Books predated the histories. And so they might – they must – hold the answers. The keys to a world beyond Faith, Strength, Knowledge, Fear, and Center.

This is it. I know it. This will tell us all.

When the messenger gave him the book, it was hard to even say goodbye, or to call an Acolyte to see to his comfort. His entire body screamed that he must see, must see now.

But he did see to the messenger, and then forced himself to wait until the entire crew of the air-car the messenger had come in was shown to rooms where they could rest and refresh themselves from their labors. They were all so solemn, bowing and whispering appreciative words. He told them not to, and joked about the fact that he was just a man – and not a particularly attractive one. They laughed, and – hopefully – would think of the Faithful less as ascetic, faraway beings and more as fellow men and women just trying to ease one another's path in this life.

It was penance, of a sort. He wanted to leave, so he forced himself to stay.

Father Inmil knew that he had much to pay for. Many sins that would never disappear. Much blood that would never come clean.

I am a man of Faith – but will never be a man of the Gods, no matter how much I wish, no matter how much I try.

Finally, after seeing to the needs of others, he looked at the message that had come with the book. He recognized the writing instantly: Father Akiro's clean, careful script.

This book was given to Sword by

Certain Persons better left Unsaid.

Please give it your utmost attention.

Get back to me soonest. Or sooner.

-      A

Inmil frowned. Father Akiro was always a cagey one, but the lack of information accompanying the book was unusual even for him. "Certain Persons"? Inmil tried to think of who that could be, then realized it didn't matter. What mattered was that another Old Book had been found!

He headed toward the place that would let him go below, and so perhaps ascend to knowledge.

Many of the secret paths and entrances to the catacombs had been destroyed when the Grand Cathedral fell. And though artisans from all over the Empire worked to rebuild a new Cathedral, Inmil knew they would never be able to replicate what had once stood as a monument to the Gods. The tale was that the Grand Cathedral had been built by great magics of times past. Magics that could hardly be reproduced by the work of men and women alone, no matter how skilled.

Gone, it is.

Things change. That is the way of it. The way the Gods have decreed, and who am I to question such an order?

Even when the new Grand Cathedral finally stood, Inmil knew that entrances to the catacombs that had been lost in the destruction would remain lost still.

It is the way of it.

The entrance he used was far outside the area being rebuilt. A stone jutted out of the ground, and at his touch it seemed nearly to split in half, revealing a long ladder that led below the earth.

One day I'll be too old to come down here.

But not today.

He climbed down, holding the book under his arm and traveling slowly so as not to let it – or him – tumble down the long shaft.

Light overtook him. Glo-globes flickered every few paces along the passageway at the bottom of the ladder. The glo-globes were dim, darkling with age. Inmil didn't know who had placed them originally. Like everything down here, they were ancient, mysterious.

He found himself nearly skipping as he made his way to the Archive. The idea that he held an Old Book in his hands! A new Old Book!

The problem, of course, was that no one could read them. And no doubt it would be the same with this one, so he shouldn't get too excited. But still, there was a chance, wasn't there? A possibility that this would be the book that opened the rest? That had the key to understanding all the Old Books, and the knowledge they held.

For a moment, he was possessed of a thought: And what if that knowledge is better off undiscovered?

It almost made him lose that jaunty step. Almost.

He continued forward. The Archive wasn't far, only a few more turns and he would be with the books, and could begin his study.

Something tinkled. He turned in time to see a flash of light behind him, followed by a noticeable dimming of the tunnel's light.

So one of the glo-globes finally failed. I thought they would outlive me.

He turned and continued walking.

Crack.

Another glo-globe burst, releasing the lightning that a Shock had imprisoned within the glass. Inmil turned to look down the tunnel behind him. It was still lit, though no longer so brightly as it had been. Indeed, there were three or four glo-globes that he could see still burning behind him. Then, beyond that – darkness had swallowed the tunnel.

I'll have to take another way out.

He turned back the way he had been walking again. Two steps.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Darkness completely swallowed the area behind him. Inmil stared down that way, and swallowed. It was possible, of course, that all the glo-globes were simply giving out at once. That happened sometimes, when they had been made at the same time by the same Shock.

So why were the small hairs on the back of his neck standing on end?

(He was in his past again.

He felt blood on his hands.

Danger!)

Inmil began walking again. Trying to ignore the fact that a few seconds after he passed them, each glo-globe would burst.

Or be broken.

He moved faster, and suddenly the feeling of youthful exuberance that he had felt upon first holding the book with the tree on the cover was gone. Now he felt every day of his long Turns. His legs grew leaden, and no matter how fast he pushed himself, he felt like he was swimming through mud.

Crack. Crack. Crackcrackcrack.

The tinkling, popping sounds were coming faster now, matching his pace as he sped up. He chanced a glance back.

Darkness.

And… was there something moving?

He choked back the urge to cry out. Even if someone heard him, the catacombs made sound bounce and there was no way anyone would come in time to –

(rescue me save me)

– help him. Better to save his breath.

He rushed from darkness… and straight into night.

He skidded around a turn and found himself right in the middle of pools of black, a stretch of tunnel where the glo-globes had already been broken.

Crack.

The last light behind him fell dim. He was alone, and in a darkness that could only be found deep within the earth.

Inmil stifled the urge to panic. It had been long since he felt fear like this. Not since he fled to the Grand Cathedral in the first place. No intention of becoming a priest at the time – let alone one of the Council. Just trying to get away. To beg sanctuary of the Faithful. Knowing that meant he would have to leave all he had been behind, knowing that was a good thing, but wondering if he could do it.

He took quick, shallow breaths, straining his ears for any sound in the darkness, any clue what might be happening – or what might be coming.

Nothing.

He moved to what he hoped was the side, feeling for the wall. As he did, he slipped the ceremonial dagger out from his belt. Silver, meant primarily to be used for the Ceremony of the Harvest. Still, its heft felt comforting in his hand.

Too comforting?

Will I ever leave that part of my life behind?

He stilled that thought, even as he bumped into the wall. His breath caught in his throat, and he hoped that the noise wouldn't alert whoever was in the tunnel with him.

And he had no doubt there was someone there. For the glo-globes to shatter could perhaps be coincidence. But for them to burst in such perfect order, and for there to be this stretch of dark tunnel waiting ahead… that spoke of planning. Of someone who knew these catacombs, and could prepare…

A trap.

His mind rebelled at the thought. He knew every priest and priestess who was aware of the catacombs, and trusted them all with his life. So who could be doing this?

Intruder. Outsider.

Inmil put the Old Book down on the ground. And as he bent he felt something part the air where his head had just been. It could have been anything, but something inside him – in that place he had tried to bury for decades – screamed that it was a blade.

Inmil slid to the side, cringing away and trying to make himself as small as possible in the dark. He felt another swish of air, and knew he was making too much noise – that whoever was here was following the sounds he made, and would find him with the sharp edge of his blade soon enough.

Another slash, another parting of the air. This one found Inmil. A moment where he felt cool wind – strangely comfortable, considering what must follow – and then the cleaving touch of metal.

It was a glancing blow, but still deep enough that Inmil felt his left arm deaden. The blade had cut across the top of his bicep, slashing easily through his robe and the flesh beneath. He cried out, and heard a sharp intake of breath that sounded like a grunt of triumph.

He did not know what was happening. Only that it was happening now, to him, and he had little time to stop it.

He knew what would come next –

(you've seen it you've done it yourself, Inmil)

– from the attacker: the blade had cut through his bicep, passing him in a side-to-side pattern. The next motion would be a reversal of the movement, coming at him from the other side – probably with a deeper slash designed to hack off his right arm, bury itself in his chest, or even simply take his head off.

He knew what the attacker expected. Knew that he would be waiting for an old man who would simply stop and wait for death to claim him.

Not in all the Netherworlds.

Inmil folded forward, a motion that would have been graceful threescore Turns ago. For now he would have to settle for effective. The fall took him below the attack – again he felt that blast of cool air as the blade just missed him – and as he fell he jammed his knife forward.

He felt the knife bite flesh, then the particular –

(familiar too familiar Gods forgive me)

– warmth of blood flowed over his hand. His attacker shouted, a mixture of pain and surprise, and fell back. Inmil almost dropped to the floor as the weight he had been leaning against suddenly disappeared.

Scrabbling. Off to the side.

The book!

How he knew it, he wasn't sure, but in that moment he would have bet his life – whatever might remain of it – that this was his attacker's goal. Not to kill Inmil – he was just an obstacle, something to be gotten out of the way – but to take the book.

The scrabbling continued, just long enough. Inmil slashed in that direction with the knife, aiming  low. If whoever it was knew that the book was there, they'd be leaning just… so.

Again the blade found its target. The muffled, wet sound of a blade cleaving flesh; the muffled, wet sound of a gasp through punctured lungs.

Then silence. Inmil suspected he might have heard the other man gasping, if he could have stopped his own labored breathing. As it was, all he could hear was the thunder of air going in and out of his lungs.

Hopefully he can't hear me, either.

"Where are you, old man?" The voice that came was pained, but stronger than it should have been.

Stronger than me.

No.

Inmil turned to follow the sound. Whoever it was was moving as he spoke, the echoes of the caverns making it difficult to pinpoint an exact location.

Inmil moved as well, slipping to the side along the wall, trying to keep from being pinpointed.

The voice in the dark: "All I want is that book. Just walk away from here, leave it behind, and you can live through this."

So it is about the book.

Inmil stumbled. He was losing blood, and certainly no longer the young man he once had been. He thought he had scored deep wounds on his attacker, but that didn't mean he would outlive him.

Scrabbling as the other man moved toward the sound of Inmil's misstep. Again, Inmil rapidly calculated what his attacker would do: he would lead with his blade, slashing as he came close.

Lower this time, though. He won't let me get under him again.

Inmil ran forward. He threw himself sideways, bouncing off the wall there, hoping it would get him past the sword's range.

It did. He collided with something soft. Again, his knife flashed out. Again, he was rewarded with a grunt of pain. More blood on his hands.

Gods, will I ever be clean of it?

The body surged against him, but Inmil was too close for the sword to do more than nick his shoulder blade.

He yanked the knife free and drove it home again. And again.

The body sagged.

"Who are you?" whispered the voice in the dark.

Inmil lowered the man to the ground. "Two kinds of people run to the priesthood, my child. The kind who run to the Gods, and the kind who run from the evil of their pasts." The man in his arms breathed out and did not breathe in again. "I am of the latter type," said Inmil.

Then he, too, fell. Blood flowed from his arm and soaked the dirt floor. He lay in blood and mud. His good hand reached out blindly and found a rectangular shape: the Old Book. Almost he pulled it close, then a fading space in his mind told him not to: the blood would ruin it.

He lay in darkness, and fell into a deeper black, hand still touching the book and mind still wondering who had done this, and why, and if he would ever truly be the good man he had hoped to be.

20

Tiawan flew, and flew, and when he landed he expected to feel better. More whole. At least different.

But when the iron legs that clad his own touched down, when his suit folded back to the shape of the moving chair he had fashioned, he felt… empty.

Wahy and La'ug hopped to the ground as the armor disappeared, and their perches with it. Wahy laughed, and the sound was beautiful and heartbreaking at once. Tiawan looked at his grandson, and marveled at the changes wrought. Wahy had been born a Strong, and even though all with that power were slight of build, Wahy had been small even compared to others like him.

Part of the sickness. Part of what Fear does to those who are consigned there by the Emperor.

Then the man came to them. With his magic, and with his promises.

"I can change him," he said. "I can change you all."

And he did. Wahy slept when the gem was put inside him, and when he woke he was a giant of a man, strong not merely magically, but physically.

But still the same mind. The brain of a child in the body of a warrior.

The gem had changed him more than physically, of course. It had taken his magic and twisted it. Not just a Strong anymore, but something else. A man who was not simply powerful, but who grew more so whenever his blood flowed.

The same twisting had occurred with the girl. La'ug had been a Critter when the man came to them. Able to speak to small animals, like her pet woolly. A poor magic, not useful for much. But the man changed it, as he had changed Wahy – as he had changed Tiawan. She was no longer merely one with the mind of her animal, but one with its body – and that body changed when the magic came. A child's pet became a monster.

And is that what we've all become?

For a moment, Tiawan heard the screams. Not just the guards around the Walled City of Fear, nor those who had been atop the castle wall when he blasted it apart. Those were the Emperor's men, and deserved whatever pain he could visit upon them.

He heard the screams of the men and women outside the moat. The people crushed by falling rock, burned by the fires that took their homes and their stores. He hadn't thought the would be caught by the destruction. Hadn't expected that.

Did they deserve this?

He shook his head. It wasn't a question of whether individuals deserved it. He hadn't deserved it. Hadn't deserved to have his legs stolen from him by beatings from Imperial officers when he was a child. Hadn't deserved to marry a woman killed by a minor noble simply because she was beautiful, and a "great man of the Empire" could not stand that she belonged to a lowly cripple.

He didn't deserve to lose his children – the only memories he had of his wife. They had been on a pilgrimage: his three daughters and their husbands and children taking a trip that they had scrimped and saved for, and from which they never returned.

Only Wahy had been left behind, the man-child unwilling to go on the long trip. They gave him to Tiawan for safekeeping until their return.

They took it all. He took it all.

Tiawan pressed a button on the side of his chair, moving forward on the road they had chosen as though by doing so he might outpace his rage, his fears, his doubts.

The chair hissed and clanked as he moved forward. A marvel that he never would have been able to create before. Even as a Smith, such a mastery of iron and fire and air would have been beyond him.

One more thing changed.

Made better.

(I hope.)

La'ug and Wahy fell in beside Tiawan. The big man breathed heavily, as though still figuring out how to run his new body. The girl cooed to her woolly, petting it absently.

"We could just make them do what we want, you know," she said.

Tiawan shook his head. "No. We're not the Emperor. We're better than that. We'll let them choose."

"And if they make the wrong choice?"

Tiawan's jaw clenched. "Then it will still be their choice."

The road they had landed on wasn't far from where they wanted to go, and within a few minutes they rounded a curve and saw them: the tents and cloths that had been spread over the ground, the men and women who lay thick as lice over the land.

One of them hailed the trio. He looked like he had once been a strong man – perhaps even as big as Wahy. But lack of food had drawn him down to a skeleton. Still, there was fire in his eyes. He held a stained sword in his big, knuckly grip.

"Ho!" he shouted. A few of the other people nearby stirred, though most simply lay still. "Who are you?" Tiawan looked at the man long enough that he started to shift, pointing his sword at them with a mixture of nervousness and bravery. "Who?" he demanded again. More people were standing, drawing closer.

"I'm not from the Empire," said Tiawan.

The big man nodded, staring pointedly at his useless legs. "I gathered that. So who are you?" He grimaced, then added, "I'm not going to ask you again."

Again, Tiawan paused before speaking. "Who's in charge here?" he asked.

"I am," said the man with the sword.

"No, you're not. And whoever is in charge is going to be vexed that you made us wait."

"Kill him, Meinra," said a woman nearby. "He's trouble. They want to take us back."

Tiawan ignored her. In the silence, someone threw a stone.

"No!" yelled Tiawan. But it was too late. The stone hit Wahy on the forehead. Blood immediately sprang from the cut that opened.

Wahy shook – more than shook, he trembled, a leaf being tossed in a magic storm that always looked like it was killing him. He threw his head back, screaming without sound. People murmured at the strangeness of the big man's reaction, but they didn't seem particularly afraid.

Then Wahy's head snapped back forward, and now they were afraid. Gazing into the blank holes where the man's eyes had been.

And then he was among them.

Wahy had been a Strong. And now he was still a Strong, but also something more. A berserker, and as his blood flowed he became a beast of killing fury and unstoppable force.

Wahy moved so quickly that Tiawan couldn't react in time to save the woman. The one who had urged Meinra to kill them was closest, and so she was the one who found herself in Wahy's grasp. A look of shock, an instant of surprise, and then her lifeblood was pouring into the stone at their feet.

"Stop!" Tiawan screamed, then concentrated as hard and fast as he could. The jewel in his own chest pulsed warmly, and as always he felt like he was in three bodies at once – his, La'ug's, and Wahy's.

His grandson was already reaching for another victim. A few of the men and women on the road – including Meinra – had managed to overcome their fear and surprise enough to start moving toward the berserker, but Tiawan knew that would just end in more of them dead.

"Enough!" he shouted, focusing on the lifepulse within him, the tether that tied his jewel – his soul – to that of his grandson.

As always, when he did so he felt himself disappearing into the madness that had gripped Wahy. He felt a formless need to destroy, and it almost stole him away from his own mind.

No. Wahy, stop. Stop, my child.

There was nothing there. The madness seemed to become deeper and deeper every time, and Tiawan wondered if one day it would steal Wahy away entirely, if there would be nothing of the good-hearted child he had known, only the beast that thirsted for blood.

He wondered at that madness. He wondered how much of that madness was really Wahy's, and how much of it was his own. Wondered how much the jewels had twisted their magics, their bodies… and how much they had twisted their minds.

Stop.

Wahy had already reached another person. With a sickening yank, an arm separated from its shoulder. More blood soaked the black earth of Fear.

Please. Please stop.

And with this last, he felt the pull of his grandson's heart – his real heart, not the yellow gem the man had placed there – and was able to fold it into the embrace of his mind. A moment later he felt La'ug within him, adding her own consciousness and strength to the task of taming the monster before them.

Wahy had another person in his hands. A little girl –

(how can that be how can there be a child here in this place with these people?)

– who screamed once before her eyes rolled back in her head. Tiawan thought Wahy had killed her, then he realized the girl had just fainted. Wahy was actually supporting her now, and Tiawan saw with relief that his grandson's eyes were back, that he had become himself again.

Wahy looked at Tiawan, concern for the child in his arms replacing the insane darkness of a moment before. He grunted, a questioning noise that was as close as he ever got to speech.

Meinra was beside Wahy, his sword drawn back for a slash that would cut off his head. Tiawan honestly didn't know if that would stop his grandson, or just start the madness anew.

"Stop!" he cried. "If you want to live, stop your blade!"

Meinra looked at Wahy, who was now lowering the little girl to the ground, kneeling beside her and tenderly wiping sweat and tears from her cheeks. Tiawan thought it was as much the sight of Wahy's innocence that stopped Meinra's sword as it was his own words of warning.

Meinra moved the sword away from Wahy, but pointed it at Tiawan. "Who are you, old man?" he demanded. "What do you want?" The words were a roar, fear becoming rage in the aftermath of Wahy's destruction.

Tiawan looked at those gathered near. More of them were coming close, leaning in to hear what he would say. A few had gone to the bodies of those Wahy had killed, praying over them or just staring morosely.

He sighed. "I'm the man who freed you," he finally said.

Conversation erupted. Some hadn't heard, and the words were relayed to them. Others had heard, and simply couldn't believe. Both groups stepped forward, and Tiawan knew that their fear would propel them to places from which they could not return.

He concentrated on his jewel again. This time not to calm Wahy, but to find his own new power.

Why did he give us this? Why us?

He still didn't know. But he knew what he was capable of, and what he must do.

The chair shifted beneath him, altering itself to become the armor that clad him and made him tower above the gathering crowd. And as far beyond his original skills as a Smith the chair had been, this thing it became was monumentally beyond all that was possible. He didn't know how he had made it, only that he had done so.

The armor – like all things created by Smiths – was a thing of metal and fire and wind. Smiths took such things in bare hands and worked them to wonder. The armor was metal, with fire at its heart, with air that stoked the flames and pushed it to greater heights of power.

It was also, he discovered, harder than any steel. It could take to the air on its flames – and no flames or air could hurt it. Not even that of the Greater Gift he had faced at the palace, with his tornadoes and his lightnings called from the sky.

And it was all impossible.

No person could do such a thing – not even a Smith.

But he was no longer a Smith. He was, like Wahy and La'ug, something more than he had been. A kind of Greater Gift, but not by birth – only by the power of the man who had come to them.

("I will make you my instruments. My messengers.")

The armor clanked as it shifted, the sounds of gears turning and unseen fires stoking growing louder, then all but silencing as the helm clapped over his head.

"I understand you're frightened, and angry, and confused," he said. "But understand this: I brought down the walls of Hawal. I opened the City of Fear, and killed every soldier who made it their home." He raised his arm, and the tube on the side, which cast rays of light so hot and strong they destroyed everything before them, began to glow. "I freed you. I have no wish to kill you."

The tube glowed brighter as he spoke. It hurt. It all hurt, always. That was one thing the man hadn't told them: that exercising their new power would bring pain. Would feel, sometimes, like death.

The crowd fell back. No one made a sound, except Wahy, who kept looking around expectantly, keening softly and clearly hoping for someone to come take care of the little girl he still held.

Tiawan looked to Meinra. The skeletal man was twitching with fear, eyes darting wildly between Tiawan and Wahy.

Tiawan's helm flipped back to reveal his head. "You are safe," he said. "As long as you don't try to harm any of us, no one else has to get hurt. But I do need to talk to whoever is in charge." He pointed at Meinra. "Take me. Now."

Meinra nodded and lowered his sword. He gestured for several others to go to Wahy. "Help her," he said. Those he commanded did not move for several seconds, clearly terrified of what Wahy might do to them.

"Go," said Tiawan. The armor shifted back to the moving chair, and the disappearance of the juggernaut of flame and steel seemed to reassure them. They went to Wahy and pulled the little girl from his arms. Wahy watched her disappear into the crowd, then returned to Tiawan's side. He hugged La'ug, as though to reassure himself that she was there, that all was well. The girl hugged him back, one-armed since she was still holding the woolly. She whispered in his ear and the big man visibly calmed.

La'ug nodded to Tiawan. She had been his helper when he was a simple Smith, and from the first moment she stepped into the smithy she felt a close bond with Wahy, and he with her.

That thought brought another pang to Tiawan's heart. Wondering what might have been if Wahy had been born with a normal mind, not stunted by the sicknesses that plagued Fear. If he might not have great-grandchildren by now, if perhaps La'ug had grown a few more years and the two could have fallen in love and –

One more thing to lay at Malal's feet.

Tiawan gestured for Meinra to lead on. The tall man led them through the small crowd, which parted for Tiawan and his fellows like a murmuration of sparrows hunted by a falcon.

Past the first group on the road, more people could be seen. Indeed, they grew thicker as Meinra led Tiawan, La'ug, and Wahy along the road. The land here was ugly and sharp, as it was in all of Fear. The sky was ash-laden, dust an ever-present part of life.

Meinra was silent for a time, then said, "You freed us? You broke down the walls of Hawal and ended the Walled City of Fear?"

Tiawan nodded. "I brought down the walls," he said. "They," he added, gesturing at Wahy and La'ug, "destroyed your captors."

"You're welcome," said La'ug.

"Welcome?" Meinra spun on her, seeming to forget the danger in his sudden rage. "Welcome? For what?"

"For your freedom," she answered simply.

Meinra snorted. "Yes. Free to run out of a burning city and onto a rocky plain that burns just as brightly. Free to leave the captivity of a walled city only to find that there is nowhere to run." He kicked a black stone in something approaching rage, staring at La'ug with a fire in his eyes to rival any that burned in Fear. Then he turned and resumed walking. "At least we had food brought into the city."

"By an Emperor who wanted you alive, but only as a way of controlling families you left behind." La'ug snorted. "Better to die as men than live as pawns."

Meinra snorted, "Says the one who never knew what it was to live a pawn."

"We are all pawns, friend," said Tiawan. "Some of us just have not ever seen the game-master."

The people grew thicker – and not just the living. Here and there piles of people were stacked like altars of death. Some of them had been set ablaze, obviously piled directly above the vents in the black rock, heated until they simply exploded into flame. Their ash wafted up, joining the greater ash that was Fear's heavens.

Tiawan was surprised to see so many dead. "Surely these haven't all died of hunger since the Walled City was opened. There must have been food stores in the city, something you could bring to sustain you."

Meinra snorted. "We had little there. And –"

"And yet you complain about having less here," interrupted La'ug. She seemed unaffected by the environment, still wearing her heavy coat as though the cold of the northern reaches where she was born had infused her bones with a permanent chill.

Meinra glared at her. "I don't like you, girl," he said.

She smiled. "More's the pity. I will weep myself to sleep tonight."

"What happened to all them, then? Even without much food, why did they die out here?" Tiawan said, hoping to stave off an argument. He loved La'ug, but her acid tongue could cause problems at times. The only people she had been civil to before they Changed had been him and Wahy.

And come to think of it, she wasn't all that civil to me. Just Wahy and her pet.

Some things didn't change in us, at least.

Meinra was looking about him, seeming almost as though he saw the dead for the first time. "We fled," he said. "We saw the explosions, heard the screams. Some of us ran because we saw a way to freedom – we thought. Others because we thought the world was ending." His face drew tight. "Even in the Walled City we hear rumors. The destruction of the Grand Cathedral, Fear itself swallowing up the Acropolis and along with it half the Army." He shrugged. "We thought the end had come for us, and we ran. And many of us," he said, indicating the dead, "were too weak to flee. Or simply too frightened to live in a place without walls."

Tiawan's chest felt leaden. "I'm sorry," he breathed. "I –" He stopped, choking off the words before he said something he might regret.

(I'm sorry.

We shouldn't have done it.

We're acting as wrongly as any Emperor.

We killed you all.)

"No matter," said Meinra. He no longer sounded angry. Just tired. Not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. The exhaustion of someone who has lost everything… and then lost everything again. "We're here."

He gestured at a tent that sat a few paces off the road. Like all the shelters here it was a cross between a lean-to and a simple ramada – a few stones with a pair of blankets stretched between them. Something to keep the ash off those beneath it, and to block some of the heated wind that occasionally blew across Fear.

Beneath the blankets, several people had gathered. Three men and a woman were arguing heatedly, about what Tiawan could not make out. But they were all huddled around something on the ground below them, gesturing wildly at whatever was down there.

Meinra nodded for Tiawan to follow him. Tiawan gestured for La'ug and Wahy to stay behind. "You sure?" asked La'ug.

He nodded. "I've nothing to fear here, I think."

The ground was much rougher off the road, but his chair managed it with ease, either flattening out the rocks beneath its weight or climbing them as quickly as any man with two good legs might have done.

The closer they came to the tent, the better Tiawan could hear what was going on. The men and women were arguing about food.

"He took it," shouted one man, pointing at another. "He stole my bread!"

"I did not!" shrieked the accused. "She was the one. She took it. I saw her." He pointed at the woman, who flew into a rage, screaming obscenities and blasphemies that made Tiawan wince. He was not one of the Faithful, but even he knew that some things simply should not be said.

The third man put a hand on the woman's arm. "She was with me," he said. "She couldn't have –"

And then the first man went off again, screaming accusations of lies, theft, conspiracy. "They're all out to get me!"

"Enough." The voice that came from within the huddled people was soft, but it carried nonetheless. Tiawan was reminded of the hiss of a viper upon hearing it. Low, assured, a warning of death nearby.

The four arguers fell silent immediately. Something shifted among them, and Tiawan got the impression of a person, but he could not see who had spoken.

"He took it."

Tiawan couldn't see whom the person behind the voice indicated, but he could tell a moment later as the first accused man began arguing, "I did not. There's no way to prove I did, there's no –"

"Give him back his bread," came the voice.

The accused crossed his arms over his chest. "I didn't do it," he insisted angrily, "so there's no way you can –"

Then all breath emptied from his body as something slammed into him. He bent over, retching, and now Tiawan saw the viper.

The man was small – surprisingly small, to sound so quietly confident. But there was no mistaking the hardness of his face, the cast of his eyes, or the many brands that covered all his skin. A prisoner many times over, and an escapee at that.

Tiawan would have guessed he had a weapon of some kind, given the obvious force of the blow that had bowed over the first man. But there was nothing in the small man's grasp. Just hands which Tiawan saw were knuckled and huge.

A Strong, he realized. Like Wahy.

But in the next moment the man in the tent showed he was nothing like the kind-hearted Wahy. He brought a fist down on the back of the bent man's head. The man fell, but still the small man kept pounding on him, over and over until there was a sickening crack and the accused was dead.

The small man nodded to a trio of men who waited near the tent. All of them looked nearly as hard and dangerous as their leader, and they entered and dragged the dead man out, heaping him on top of one of the burning piles of corpses.

The other two men and the woman stood silent through it all, shocked by the suddenness of the violence and the permanence of its end.

"Judgment has been rendered," said the man, who was not even breathing hard. He wiped his bloody hands and arms on a nearby cloth. "Do any disagree?"

The others were silent. The man and woman who had claimed to be together at the time of the crime took each other's hands and slunk away. The accuser began to follow, then turned back and said in a lowly voice, "And my bread?"

The small man sighed and flexed his muscles. There was little apparent strength in his arms – Strongs did not receive their might from their bodies – but the man whose bread had been stolen took a quick step back.

The Strong looked at him. "You should have kept better track of your things," he finally said. "Count yourself lucky that I don't make an example of you for your carelessness and for the trouble it caused."

The man nodded jerkily, sudden terror etched across his face. "Yes," he said. "Ye – yes, I mean –" He tripped on a stone, almost plummeting to his back. He righted himself, then managed a twitching nod to the small man before backing away and fleeing.

Meinra stepped forward as the man ran off. He entered the tent without preamble, then said, "People want to see you, Brun."

Brun looked over at Tiawan. He sighed. "Who stole from you?"

Tiawan shook his head. His chair moved forward, and Brun looked momentarily surprised at that. Then the hard look returned to his eyes.

"No one stole from me," said Tiawan. "Rather, I may have stolen something from you."

Brun's eyes narrowed. His fingers snapped together as though hungry to choke the life out of something. "What's that?" he said.

"Your captivity."

Brun laughed at that. He looked around. "I see no freedom here."

Now it was Tiawan's turn to sigh. "That's the second time I've heard that today," he said. Disgust filled his voice. "What lowly creatures would rather hide behind their walls than have the freedom to roam the land – even as hard a one as this."

"I don't like your tone, old man," said Brun. His muscles clenched.

"I don't much care." Tiawan's chair began shifting, changing to its armored form. Brun's eyes widened, though he didn't move away or even seem particularly afraid. "I'm here to ask your help, but that doesn't mean I'm yours to command or frighten."

Brun looked like he was contemplating attacking Tiawan. "Brun," said Meinra warningly. "He says he brought down the walls. Alone." His eyes flicked to Tiawan. "I believe him."

"You did that, eh?" Brun still held himself tense and ready, but he nodded as though the information had been more or less what he expected.

A cold one, this. But….

The armor disappeared. "I don't want to frighten you, or make you do as I say," said Tiawan. "I want you to help me of your own free will."

Brun laughed. "I don't help people, old man. I'm from behind the Wall, and there isn't much help to be found there."

Tiawan snorted. "Of course you help. You're resolving disputes, keeping order among these refugees."

"Maybe I just do that because it gives me a chance to kill people."

Tiawan nodded. "Perhaps," he said. "But there are easier ways to be a murderer, I think." He stared at Brun for a long time. Brun stared right back, apparently not cowed or even intimidated. Finally Tiawan said, "I think you are someone who cares. Or if not, then you are at least someone willing to lead those who need leading."

Brun finally nodded. He sat on the ground, gesturing for Tiawan to join him. The three men who had taken the body out of the tent came closer, as though to protect their leader. Brun waved them away.

"You were someone of importance," said Tiawan when he was under the shelter.

Brun snorted. "I was a farmer – or at least a farmer's son – until I ran away. Nothing special there."

"No. I mean, inside the Wall. You mattered."

Brun nodded slowly. "I saw to a part of the city."

"And in a place where there is no law other than to stay away from the Wall, that is quite an accomplishment." Tiawan leaned back, nearly pressing himself into his chair. "I need a leader."

"For what?"

"To lead these people back."

"To where?"

"Halaw. The Walled City."

Brun finally looked surprised. He laughed, hard and loud. "Who's going to make us do that, old man?"

Tiawan looked around. The young, the old, mostly the infirm. "No one," he said. "You'll do it yourselves. You'll go back to the place where you were captive. Because now you're free."

Brun clearly didn't understand.

That was fine. He would.

The whole Empire would.

Soon.

TWO: rise of the fallen

"When first we saw the land, it was barren and dead. But still blessed were those who climbed, those who rose above the Below and so perched atop Creation. The world lay before us, and that world was ours; so was it, and so always shall it be."

- Emperor Eka, First Rules and
Commandments of the Ascension

1

It felt like a funeral.

Even though Malal was still alive, Sword could feel the hopelessness in the room. Could sense the fact that many of those in the room were already planning what to do when – not if, when – he died. When the last of the Patches working on him finally gave the last of their power and dropped from exhaustion.

Brother Scieran and Father Akiro had been in the room almost constantly, adding their prayers to the magic of the Patches, but Sword couldn't tell if they were praying for his recovery or for his peace.

"Peace" is a thing only the dead feel. To live is to struggle, and only the dead rest. Prayers for peace were prayers that meant someone didn't want the sufferer to have any more pain, and that was well, she supposed. But she also knew that such petitions amounted to requests that the Gods would end what they had started; would take the sufferer's life.

Peace. Death.

She had seen it in the kennels: the look in some Dogs' eyes when they simply decided not to fight anymore. The empty, slack look on their faces. They were at peace, because they had already died. They just had to wait for their bodies to figure it out.

No. No peace for him. Not while I still draw breath.

Wind stayed at Malal's bedside. After speaking to Sword and the others about what was happening to him, she had not left him for an instant. Sword found it hard to look at the Emperor, with his skin sloughing away then regrowing, his muscles exposed then covered. The body rotted over and over, and watching it was more than she could stand for long. But Wind kept watch, kept staring at Malal and adding her silent hopes to the murmurs of the priests and Patches.

Cloud stood behind his sister. He looked up occasionally, taking measure of the world around, but only for a moment. Then he returned his gaze to the two people that mattered most to him.

"I'm going to Fear," said Sword. The words came without her really thinking about them. She only knew that to stay would be to acquiesce; to give in. She was still a Dog at heart, in many ways. And a good Dog always fights.

"What's that, my dear?" Brother Scieran looked up from his prayers, as did Father Akiro. His voice was still low. He moved away from the bed, the Patches parting for him.

Father Akiro cast a last glance at Malal as he stood, too, and Sword saw him restrain a shudder. "What's that you said, my dear?" he asked.

Sword almost smiled in spite of herself. He and Brother Scieran bickered constantly – almost as much as Brother Scieran and Malal did –

(had)

– but in every manner and word, they showed how alike they were. Separated by age, but brothers nonetheless; and not just as priests. Brothers of the heart, mind, soul.

"I'm going to Fear," she repeated.

"Why?" asked Arrow. He had been standing behind her, one of his hands resting lightly on her neck.

She turned to him. "Because that's where he went," she said.

The others looked at one another. "We don't know that," Arrow spoke slowly. "He flew to the west, yes, but he could have gone anywhere. He could have gone that direction to put us off the scent, then turned once out of sight."

Sword shook her head. "No," she said. "He blasted a hole through the wall, he shouted for Malal. This is not a man who has time for subterfuge. He pretends nothing." She glanced at Malal, mostly hidden –

(thank the gods)

– behind the men and women who encircled him. "Certainly he pretends nothing of his hate." She crossed her arms. "No, he has business in Fear. And I have business with him," she added through clenched teeth.

Brother Scieran glanced at the bed, too. "If you hope to find a cure," he said quietly, "I don't know if –"

"There's a cure," Sword said.

"How do you know?" asked Arrow. His words were low, as though he did not wish anyone to actually hear him.

Sword's words were simple. "Because we have to have him alive. So there is a cure because there must be one."

She looked at the others as though daring them to disagree. Surprisingly, Father Akiro looked as though he understood completely. "Yes," he said.

Faith. He has true faith – not just in the Gods, but in us. In what we have done.

Brother Scieran looked at Father Akiro "I'm going to Faith," he said. When Father Akiro cocked a questioning eye, he said, "I'm not as adept as Father Inmil with the Old Books, but perhaps I can be of help with Sword's book."

"How will the book help us?" asked Father Akiro.

Brother Scieran shrugged. "It will," he said simply. He looked pointedly at Sword. "It will because it must."

Now Father Akiro nodded. He sighed and said, "Then I suppose I'm off to Knowledge." Brother Scieran nodded, understanding, but Father Akiro must have seen Arrow's and Sword's looks because he explained, "The High Academics have the entire medical history of the Empire at the Great University." He nodded to the bed. "Perhaps they have knowledge of this poison. Perhaps there is a way to cure him." He frowned. "Perhaps they will also have information about the gem you saw in the big man's chest."

"I'm going with you," Arrow said to Sword.

She wanted him to. Gods, how she wanted that. Quiet, never speaking much – but what he said was always something worth hearing. He was solid and flew as true a course of any of the arrows he fired.

So it hurt her to say, "No."

Arrow's face seemed to unfurl, surprise writ large across his features. "But –"

"You have to go to Strength."

"Why?"

"Because most of the rest of the Army is there. And we'll need them to come to Center." She looked at Malal. "He said he wanted him to suffer. So even if Malal starts to lose to the poison, I think the man who did this will want to come back and make the Emperor watch his Empire fall. So we need the Army here – everyone we can get – to keep that from happening."

"Someone else can get them."

Sword shook her head. "The Army won't listen to just anyone. You're the Lord of the Southern Grasslands, and an adviser to the Emperor."

"There are other nobles, other men."

"None who are privy to all that's happening." She drew Arrow close, and the others came with her. She pulled them so tight to her that their heads touched, so tight that her words would carry no further than the few to whom she spoke directly. She glanced back at the Patches and priests who surrounded Malal's bedside; at the guards who stood at the edges of the room. Then she whispered, "And many of them suspect Malal – they know something's changed, and if they know this has happened, too," she added, gesturing to the bed, "then they'll either wait for the end or perhaps even act before then. We already have one enemy fighting against us; we don't need more."

Arrow clenched a fist. "The fool doesn't know that the Empire already fell." His fingers uncurled and he looked at the open palm as though hoping to find answers in his hands. There was nothing. He sighed. "I'll call for air-cars."

Father Akiro shook his head. "I think that ill-advised."

Brother Scieran nodded. "We've already seen that our enemy can stop air-cars – we have to assume the missing one sent to Fear was his work. Besides, the less  trace we leave behind us, the less he will know what we're planning, and," he said with an arch eyebrow, "the less any enemies inside the palace will know that the Emperor's friends have left him."

"What of them?" Sword asked, looking at Wind and Cloud.

"I don't think you could peel them away from here with all the Gifts in Ansborn," said Father Akiro. "Which is good. They can be a defense."

He didn't say "final" defense. He didn't have to. The majority of the Army was bivouacked in Strength. The palace had its Guard, and enough soldiers to make anyone of ill intentions think twice about starting anything. But the reality was that Ansborn's palace had not been attacked in hundreds of Turns – even during the Civil Wars, all sides had understood that the palace was the logical place for a government to sit. It was as close to inviolate as any location in the Empire.

We've grown lazy. Complacent on our mountains. And now a threat comes – a real threat – and we're not prepared.

Stupid. Who would have thought to do things this way?

For a moment she wondered if it had been the Chancellor's doing. He had been the power behind the throne for untold decades – perhaps centuries. And he had been –

(is!)

– a man of secrets within secrets, plots within plots.

She shook her thoughts away from that. Perhaps Brother Scieran would be able to find answers with Father Inmil, answers that would illuminate the Chancellor's end game. But that wasn't her mission.

"Get auto-cars," she said.

Arrow nodded. "When do we leave?" he asked.

"Now."

2

Hands on his head. Fever feelings. Ghosts hanging over him. Murmured voices.

Inmil opened his eyes. Or tried to. There was something hanging from his eyelids, some great weight that made such a simple action all but impossible.

He groaned. Something on his head shifted, and he realized that what he had taken as many hands was in fact only one. It pressed on his forehead. It was cool. It felt wonderful.

"He's waking," said a woman's voice. It sounded familiar, though he couldn't place it. His thoughts were jumbled, far away. Like something in the distance, close enough to be sensed but too far to actually be seen.

A cloth touched his lips, slightly damp and just a bit too warm to be comfortable. He licked his lips as the cloth moved away, and tasted the metallic, salty taste of blood.

My blood.

What happened?

Where's –

His eyes popped open. "The book!" he shouted. Then the light above him pierced his eyes and drove daggers into his brain. He groaned and shut them again.

"Shhh," said the woman. A different cloth – cooler, this one, without the blood that matted the other cloth – dabbed at his cheeks. "Don’t move. You've lost a lot of blood."

"The book," he said again, his voice barely a murmur – but insistent nonetheless.

"The Old Book? With the tree?"

Inmil tried to say "yes," but all that came out was a dry croak. He nodded, the tiniest of movements, and even that small motion sent pain up and down his frame. He remembered being wounded, but he had no sense of where – everything hurt so much that it was impossible to discern one place where the pain might have come from.

"It's safe, Innie."

He blinked at that, managing to open his eyes and keep them open for a moment. Only one person he knew called him Innie. "Maci?"

His sister looked down at him, concern etching the wrinkles on her face into even deeper cracks. Still, when he said her name she smiled. "Who else?"

Inmil tried to sit up. She pressed him back, and he realized he was laying on hard stone. "Just stay there, you fool," she said.

"I'm going to tell Mother that you're calling me names again."

"You do that. Just not today; I'd rather not have you going to meet her just yet." She looked away from him, and said, "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Inmil realized that the pain in his body was receding, and as it did he was able to turn his head in time to see the other person nearby shake his head.

Brother Luca was a thin, pale, shade of a man. Not quite as old as Inmil, he seemed a decade older – probably because he so rarely left the catacombs. He was also rare in the priesthood: most Gifts either set up small shops in city bazaars, or went to the Great University to be trained in the best ways to use their powers. Few made their way to the Faithful, and fewer still stayed the long decades that Brother Luca had done.

And Inmil was glad for that, because without a Patch attending him he suspected he would be dead right now.

The aches in his body continued to ease, though the ghost of his agony settled into his joints and his mind, and he knew it would be some time before he fully healed. Patches had their limits.

A thought struck him, and he twisted to the side in near-panic. He was still in the catacombs. Glass was sprayed on the stone floor at regular intervals: the remains of the glo-globes his attacker had smashed, glittering now in the light of the glo-globes that Maci and Brother Luca had brought with them.

The body of his attacker was still there. Wide-eyed, staring into whatever afterlife the Gods had decreed for him. He was nothing special: just a normal-looking man, not too thin, not too fat. The most interesting thing about him was the stripe of gray that ran through a head of otherwise vibrant red hair.

Still, to Inmil's eyes, the man looked deeply evil.

Not for the first time, Inmil was glad he didn't have the job of deciding the disposition of souls. He suspected he would have sent far too many people to the Netherworld.

Just shows that I'm still not a good man. Not even after all these Turns.

He looked at Maci. His sister still dabbed at him with a cloth, though his bleeding seemed to have stopped. She had run with him to Faith, come with him to seek sanctuary after his crimes, even though she could have stayed behind.

She'd be better off without me.

Maci seemed to know what he was thinking. She sniffed and rolled her eyes. "Don't get maudlin on me, Inmil," she said.

Brother Luca jerked a bit when she said that. He was a stickler for titles and respect – both things Maci had little care for, especially when her brother was the focus of them.

"How do you know what I'm feeling, Maci?" he said. He tried to sit up again, and this time managed to do so. Without waiting for her reply, he pointed at the dead man. "Do you know him?"

"I was about to ask you that," she said.

Brother Luca moved forward slightly. "You're as well as I can make you," he said. "You should get to the sanctuary and rest."

Inmil shook his head. "Thank you, Brother," he said. "But I don't think we've got time."

"Well, make time to at least tell us what happened here," said Maci.

Inmil shook his head. "I'm not completely sure," he said. He recounted what he knew: receiving the book, Father Akiro's note, hurrying down here, then the attack.

"You've never seen that garbage before?" said Maci, looking with distaste at the dead man.

"Sister," said Brother Luca with a touch of reproach.

"He tried to kill my brother," she said. "I'm sure the Gods will forgive me for calling him a name or two." She growled at the body. "Lucky you're already dead."

Inmil looked at the dead man. "I don't know… He looks a bit familiar. But not as someone I know. Perhaps a man I've seen working at the building site, or someone I've seen at worship service, or…." He threw up his arms. "Gods, it could be anyone, anywhere. Or no one at all. I don't know."

Brother Luca closed his eyes, as though he were a toddler who insisted that if he hadn't seen a thing, it couldn't have happened. He sighed, then opened his eyes. "We should get you to the Archive, then."

"No, we shouldn't," said Maci. "We're getting him to –"

"We have to move quickly," interrupted Brother Luca. That surprised Inmil: just as he was a stickler for titles and other signs of respect, so he was fastidious about matters of courtesy. For him to interrupt was unusual.

Maci's jaw dropped, her own surprise evident. "Brother Luca," she said, "I didn't know you had it in you."

A bit of color rose to Brother Luca's pale cheeks. "Whatever the book is," he said, pointing at it, "it must be important. Perhaps something about what happened to the Ears?"

That was a sobering thought. Even around the building site of the new Cathedral, a place where the workers saw to their duties with quiet reverence, whispers could be heard. That there was an enemy among them, within the Empire. That the enemy was dangerous, and crafty, and could strike at any time. All were on edge, and though they kept on with their work and mostly pretended not to worry, it was easy to sense that as a lie.

Brother Luca stared at the others for another moment, then nodded and went to the book. He picked it up, looking at the cover. "It's a copy," he said.

Inmil nodded. "I thought it might be."

Brother Luca opened the book, and gasped. "But it's definitely one of the Old Books. A copy, yes, but…." He ran his fingers along one of the pages, tracing the strange characters within. Then he turned on his heel and began walking down the tunnel, toward the Archive.

Maci reached down to help Inmil stand. She brushed off his robe – a foolish gesture since so much of his clothing was still soaked with blood. "You do keep things interesting, Inmil."

He grimaced. "Would that I didn't."

"We are as the Gods made us." She looked into his eyes. "Someday you'll have to accept that. You might even find that you are able to forgive yourself if you do."

Inmil didn't answer. There was no answer to some things. Just faith, and steps into darkness that you could hope would lead eventually to light.

The glo-globe Brother Luca had been carrying illuminated the tunnel ahead, the light bouncing slightly with his stride. The priest must have a beginning in mind – a starting point to the investigation of the book with the tree on the cover. Brother Luca, of all the priests and priestesses who worked in the Archive, was perhaps the most gifted. Quiet, a bit stuffy, but his mind was a trap that captured everything. Inmil would have asked for his help anyway, though he could have done without the need for a Patch.

He looked back at the dead man with the red/gray hair. He hadn't been very attractive, even when alive. Death just sullied his features further, the slackness of his face making him appear slightly demonic. "What should we do with him?" he asked.

He was musing more than seriously questioning, but Maci answered. She spat on the ground. "I'll have one of the Adherents come clean it up. There are a few who know about the catacombs."

"Make sure they keep it quiet."

"Of course. I'll watch over it personally." Her eyes twinkled. "It will give me an excuse to admire the young men as they work."

He sighed. "You're a very poor priestess sometimes."

"I appreciate the Gods' handiwork."

"Handiwork that is a good fifty Turns younger than you are."

She shrugged. "Even less harm in my admiration, then."

Inmil let it go. He wasn't going to win a battle of wits with his sister. He never did.

Just one more reason she's always been too good for me.

Again she sensed his mood. She shook her finger at him. "Don't go there, Innie." She pulled him down the tunnel. "Let's just see if we can catch up to Brother Luca." The twinkle came back into her eyes – if it had ever left. "He's a fun one to annoy."

Inmil shook his head. But seeing her eyes, the laughter in her gaze, was as healing to him as the work of the Patch had been.

They found Brother Luca hunched over an outcropping of stone that served as a natural desk. Several Old Books lay open on the rock. Inmil and Maci both looked at which books they were, then began their own search, trying to find meaning in the book that they had been given.

We go in faith. And hope.

Inmil was weak. He felt parched and hungry. He should rest.

Luca handed him a spare robe, nodding at Inmil's own blood-stained, shredded frock. "Don't get blood on the books," he said somberly.

Inmil almost laughed at that. He only didn't because he was too tired. Instead, he changed and then bent over the books before him. Searching. And praying for help in the search, because just as the others had sensed this might have something to do with the Ears, so he sensed that the time they had to find answers was short.

3

The travel began quickly. Then continued almost as fast.

Sword didn't need much: some food and water, the clothes on her back. She was offered a driver, but refused: that would just be a distraction in the event of trouble, one more person she had to watch over.

The auto-car she took was one of the palace's. Which meant it was one of the fastest in the Empire: as fast as a horse in full gallop, but without such a creature's need to rest, eat, or drink. It was sleek and dark; it reminded her of a bird of prey, or perhaps a dangerous insect designed to fly and kill.

It suited her.

The roads around the palace were well-kept, then a long stretch of road that was bumpy enough to make her teeth slam together when she hit each rut, each hole in the road. Then she was back to the place where she was born.

Of course it wasn't her real birthplace. She had no idea where that was. She supposed she could have found out, but that was a part of her past long done and dead.

No, this was the place of her second birth. Her entry into the life of a Dog, the place where she learned that life meant death: death for those around, followed inevitably by your own.

It was wrong, of course, but as she drove the bazaar, passed the kennels – now closed, thank the Gods, they had at least done that much since taking over – she felt the pull of a life long left behind.

But still there. The past never disappears. Not completely. It is always there, waiting as a comfort or a curse.

She wondered, not for the first time, what it would have been like had she lived in a normal family, with a  normal father and mother. Her parents had been members of the Imperial Guard, and had given her up to the then-Captain during an attack on the royal family. They had intended the Captain to protect her, perhaps raise her as his own. Instead he had used her as a decoy to protect the Imperial princess.

She understood what the Captain had done. She lauded him for it. She also hated him every day, for the happiness he had robbed her of; for the long Turns of death at her hands.

And yet, if I had not been a Dog, would I have become a Greater Gift? Would I have become one of the Blessed, then one of the Cursed? Would I have met Armor, and Garden, and Brother Scieran and Arrow and all the rest?

The past. It reaches out and touches us, and in the final analysis its touch is neither good nor bad. It simply is, and only the present moment matters, for the present is the refining fire that changes past to gold, or simply burns too brightly and leaves behind only worthless dross.

She had slowed while passing through the bazaar – it was so full that to go through the place at full speed would have meant mowing people down. She had actually thought about going around the area, bypassing it on side roads, but determined that would take more time than simply going through.

At her current crawling speed, she wondered if she had made the right choice.

And as she drove, she became aware of something.

It was nothing but a vague tickle at first, the kind of mental itch that barely registers, and is certainly not enough to merit your full attention. But as time went on, as she continued to inch her way through the bazaar, the itch grew, and moved from subconscious to something that must be attended.

People were looking.

It wasn't everyone, but it was too many to ignore. Certainly auto-cars were not something that everyone had: both the building and the enchantment involved were laborious, expensive processes that rendered the vehicles unattainable for most. But enough of them passed through the bazaar – rich men and women, lords and ladies out for a lark, shopping at a place so far beneath them it became a game – that no one should have looked twice at her vehicle or its occupant.

And yet… people were looking.

The first ones she saw looked away quickly when she turned her gaze upon them, as though ashamed of their stares. Or perhaps afraid.

Still so much fear. Still so many we haven't helped.

And yet still, the alternative is worse.

She had read fairy tales. Stories of magics stranger than any Gift – people who flew without enchantment, who traveled to places so far they were beyond the sky. In some, evil had to be overthrown, just as it had in the Empire. But in all the stories, no one ever spoke of what happened after the overthrow; of the strife and the terror that would inevitably follow a crushed and weakened government.

Slow. Slow and quiet the changes had to be made. Or else the suffering under the previous Emperor –

(and the Chancellor)

– would be as nothing.

She saw another person in the crowd, staring at the auto-car as she passed.

No. At me.

And she knew it was true, for this person – a small man who held a huge slab of raw metal easily under his arm, a Smith for certain – did not shrink away when she looked at him. Instead, he gazed back at her almost defiantly for a moment. Then he did look away, but not in the manner of someone shrinking or shamed.

He bowed his head, and saluted her. His fist went to his forehead, knuckles tight against his skin, and he held the pose as she passed.

Sword didn't understand that. She was a fighter, but she held no position in the Army, or even the Imperial Guard. Nor was she officially a member of the government, or a noblewoman that others might notice as one of their "betters."

The Smith melted into the crowd as she passed. But it was as though when he saluted her, a dam had broken. Now the people who stared at her bowed as she passed. Saluted. Men and women, old and young. Crones put arthritic knuckles against cracked and wrinkled foreheads, children barely old enough to be at the bazaar bowed and saluted.

What's going on?

No one stepped forward. No one offered explanation. Just silent bows, near-obeisance. One time she thought she saw one of them mouth a word. It could have been "judge," but as with the Smith, the woman who said whatever it had been melted into the crowd and was gone as Sword passed.

The bazaar finally ended. Sword considered getting out of the auto-car to ask what was going on, but then she thought of Malal, of the Ears, of the old man in the armor.

She pressed on.

The roads grew bumpy and rutted again, then turned at times to barely more than paths of sun-hardened dirt with scrub and foliage encroaching on either side.

Sword didn't have a map. She didn't need one. She just had to keep going west, and eventually she would get to Center's Edge. She would leave the auto-car behind, and purchase a seat on one of the air-cars that ferried the rich and powerful into and out of Fear, since that was the one State of Ansborn not connected to its neighbors by a skybridge.

As soon as she reached the other side of the chasm separating Center and Fear, she would proceed on foot – though only for a time. She had no doubt that she could beg, borrow, or steal a ride of some kind, and she didn't want the attention that would come with an expensive auto-car being ferried via air-car into Fear. She would fare better as a simple passenger, then a thief.

Once a Dog, always a Dog. Willing to do whatever it takes to see a fight to the finish.

She felt a pang. A memory thrust itself into the fore of her mind: a fight when she had been a new Dog, introduced to the kennels only a few weeks before. She had found herself attacked by a boy much older and much bigger. He didn't hesitate, knocking her to the ground, pinning her, then leaning in close to tear out her throat with teeth that had been filed to points – either by his master or simply by the boy chewing on the metal of his cage.

Sword didn't hesitate, either. She buried her head in her chest, so that instead of her throat the bigger boy only tore loose a chunk of her scalp. He was surprised, and reached up to pull out the hair and skin that caught between his teeth.

Again, she acted without thought. Just reached up with the hand that he had let go of, sought his face, then drove her finger deep enough into the boy's eye that she bruised it on the bone that protected the brain behind it.

The boy screamed, of course. Then went into a seizure of pain, curled up in shock.

She bit out his throat. And never felt a single thing beyond the elation that she had won, that she still lived.

She would not hesitate now. She would do what must be done to save Malal. To save the Empire – not the Empire as it had been, or even as it currently was. She aimed to save it as it could – and should – be.

Though she had to admit that her plans were on the vague side. After landing in Fear… she had no real plan, beyond simply finding out. Knowing her enemy's directness, his lack of subtlety, she suspected that finding him would be easy enough.

And what then?

That was a good question. He hadn't just beaten her at their last confrontation, he had practically toyed with her. What chance did she have if she faced him again?

None.

So she wouldn't face him. To a Dog there was no such thing as fair play. She would find him and stab him in the back in the night if need be. After she found out how to cure Malal.

And why he is doing this in the first place.

Though that last was obvious: the old man had a grudge against the Empire. What it was, exactly, wasn't particularly important. It was enough that it had angered him enough to fight.

Again she felt a twinge of guilt. He was doing what she had done. How could she blame him for wanting change – and for not knowing that change was already afoot?

She couldn't. But that didn't mean she had to let him go forward with a plan that would bring utter chaos to a people who could not flee from such a thing.

She passed through more towns. A few of them had fairly busy plazas, but there was not a repeat of what she had seen at the bazaar. Not until the third town she passed – a small place called Bria. It was nearly empty – everyone out working the fields that surrounded the area – save a single woman.

The woman worked at the well in the center of the town. Rainwater from Ansborn's frequent storms gathered in craters upon each mountain, then seeped into underground channels that Sword presumed took the water down the mountain, below the clouds. Wells could be dug to tap the waters, and towns like this frequently sprung up around such things.

The woman at the well was beautiful. Young: five or six Turns older that Sword, with auburn hair that drifted to her shoulders in thick waves. Sword had the windows of the auto-car open, so she could hear the beautiful woman humming to herself as she dipped a bucket into the well and then pulled it out full of clear water.

The woman turned to look Sword full in the face, and Sword started. She had seen the woman only in profile, but now she saw the whole of her countenance.

The woman had suffered some grievous injury. Her left eye was a blind, sightless orb encirled by scar tissue that stretched tendril threads across her cheek and up into her hairline.

The woman saw Sword. Smiled a genuine, open smile.

Then something changed in the woman's one good eye. She ducked her head and, just as had those in the bazaar, put her knuckles to her brow. A moment later, she raised her head and Sword could see the woman was crying. Tears streamed from her good eye, though the sightless one remained dry, unable even to weep after whatever had happened to the woman.

Like the woman in the bazaar, the woman at the well mouthed something. Again, Sword thought it might be "judge," though this woman also added something else that Sword couldn't make out.

Enough of this.

She stopped the auto-car, braking so hard that momentum cast her painfully into the steering wheel. Then she left the auto-car, running around toward the well, to find….

… the woman gone.

Sword spun around, trying to spot her. The streets were empty, lined by enough buildings – houses and a few shops – that she knew there was no possible way to find her. Not quickly, anyway. And Sword didn't have time for anything other than "quickly."

She got back into the auto-car. Pulled some smoked meat out of the pack on the seat beside her and chewed it for a moment, looking around in the vain hope that the woman might return.

Sword didn't go among the people that often – at least, not during the day. Most of her work in the cities and towns took place at night.

So how long had this been going on?

Forget "how long," what is going on?

She shook her head, then twisted the lever beside the wheel that would set the auto-car moving forward again, and continued out of Bria. She saw no one else, and was glad of that fact.

The moment did not repeat itself in any of the other cities or towns she passed through. She drove through them with ease, the few people she found at local plazas or bazaars simply moving out of the way of the auto-car. A few of them did look at her, but the looks were always of apprehension or outright fright. That made more sense – they clearly thought that if she was in an auto-car she must be a rich woman or even a noble. And they had lifetimes of experience being harmed by the nobility.

When this happened Sword again wanted to get out of the auto-car, this time to reassure the people. To tell them that things were changing, and were getting better.

Slow. Slow to change things, slow to get to Fear.

Everything is slow.

At least the auto-car moved forward, pushing ahead at a steady pace. She drew closer to Fear and, as night fell, she saw the air-dock ahead.

The air-dock was a massive construct. Built not to handle two or three or even four air-cars at once, as were most of the air-docks in Ansborn. This one was a huge structure, with buttresses built into Center's Edge, plummeting a hundred feet down the cliffside. It could hold a hundred air-cars at once – two hundred if they crowded.

Air-docks usually swarmed with people, moving from one State to another. Merchants moving goods back and forth, people traveling on pilgrimages to Faith, the few who had saved to travel for its own sake.

The great air-dock that provided travel between Center and Faith was no exception: busy, though the flow of traffic was much more one-sided. Many entered Fear: criminals, rejects, those with nowhere else to go. Few were able to leave, however, either because they were imprisoned or because they simply had not the means to flee the fiery mountain.

As Sword drew nearer to the air-dock, though, she noted few people atop it. Far fewer than there should be. Torches and glo-globes lit the expanse, which nearly disappeared in the distance in both directions, and all along the length of the stone and metal she could see men and women – not the surging throngs of travelers, but paired groupings standing at intervals that were far too regular to be accidental.

She pulled off the road, driving deep into a nearby copse of trees and then abandoning the auto-car. It probably wouldn't be here when –

(if)

– she got back. That was fine. She hoped whoever stole it needed it, and, again, she had no doubt she could find her own way back.

She watched the air-dock for a long time, trying to determine what was going on there. A change like this could only be related to what was happening in Fear. To what was happening everywhere.

At last, she began walking. She thought about waiting for a Fear-bound caravan, trying somehow to sneak across with them. But none came, and none came, and she didn't have the time to wait for a possibility that might never come to fruition.

The air-dock lay far enough away that night had fully fallen by the time she was within hailing distance of the structure. Several men stood at the foot of the entry – a long, wide, slowly-rising ramp that brought visitors up to the main berths. The ramp was attached to Center's Edge, but the air-dock itself hung over only nothing and cloud – a visitor who went ten feet onto the ramp could look over the low wall on either side and stare straight down at the forbidden place below.

The men on the ramp stared at her as she approached. She didn't see any weapons on them, but they had hard faces and harder eyes. She tensed as she drew near, her body readying for whatever might come.

The closest man was tall and lanky, and looked undernourished. They all did, she realized, like people who have not yet reached starvation but can feel it closing in.

"Ho," said the man. A word of greeting, but stated in a flat, unemotional tone.

"Ho," she said back. Her voice matched his, and he frowned as though surprised to hear such boldness from a lone traveler on the road.

They stood silent, motionless.

"What business have you here?" the man finally asked.

"My own."

"I'm afraid I'll need more than that."

She squinted. "Is it law now that a woman must tell her reasons for travel?"

The gaunt man's companion – just as thin, though not nearly so tall – stood forward. His face, even under the dim light of the torches and glo-globes, reddened visibly. "Don't play with us, girl."

The short man's clothing was ragged, torn. It looked like it hadn't been washed in some time. But the dagger he drew from beneath his shirt glinted bright enough. He pointed it at her. "Answer his question, or we'll ask you again after you're dead."

Sword almost laughed at that. "That seems unproductive."

The shorter man looked at his companion, who shrugged. Unlike the short man, the tall one appeared to have some self control and a modicum of hope that this might end well. "You'd best turn around, girl," he finally said. "Things are changing, and you'll want no part of them."

If these men were working for the old man and his two companions, they were likely working to overthrow a government they saw as corrupt. If they weren't, then she had no idea who they could be but knew they weren't acting like thieves or brigands. Either way, there was an excellent chance these were decent men who deserved to live out their lives. She had no wish to force a confrontation.

Yet at the same time, she could feel every passing minute, sharp as a blade, slashing away at the string of Malal's life. And the wellbeing of the Empire – and all its people – might well hang from that same string.

"I ask you to let me pass, and let me find passage," she finally said, gesturing at the air-cars that hung at berths beyond and above her. She realized for the first time how few there were – and how empty they seemed. Then she turned back to the gaunt man and added, "I can't tell you why, only that it's important."

The short man started forward, dagger darting ahead as though hungry to bite her flesh. The tall man put a hand across his chest, stopping him. "Girl, you need to go. This is your last chance." He, too, reached under his dirty shirt and withdrew a knife. His was bright and expensive-looking, slightly curved. A tantō, cousin to her own preferred blades, the katana and wakizashi. It looked expensive, and on the side she saw a red and black decoration.

The blade had belonged to an Imperial officer of some kind. And it was doubtful the soldier had simply handed it over as a gift to this man.

Sword's senses began to shift. She could uddenly hear and see and smell more than she had a moment ago. The tang of the cool air wafting up from the clouds below the skybridge. The sound of the breaths the tall man took, the vein throbbing on the side of the short man's temple.

She took a step forward. "Please," she said. "I've no wish to fight you."

The tall man looked genuinely sad. "Then turn away. You're unarmed, and the skybridge is covered with people who will not let you pass. Fear is no longer part of the Empire, and no longer to be burdened by its minions." He paused, then took a step forward and added, "This is your last chance."

She shook her head. "No. It's yours."

4

Wind watched the sun sink, and disappear. She felt hope die with the light.

When will they return?

A nonsense question, of course. The others had just left this very day. It would take time to travel to the other lands to find answers. And yet, the question was the only thing she heard, pounding through her mind with the relentless force of a blacksmith's hammer.

When will they return?

When will they return?

When will they RETURN?

Even the question itself was nonsense, because she knew the only one she really cared about was Father Akiro. He was the one on his way to Knowledge, the one looking for a cure for whatever had happened to Malal.

To Smoke.

To my love.

The priests were praying, the Patches that surrounded his bedside swaying with the effort of trying to stay ahead of whatever poison the man in the armor had given him. It all played out in silence for her – just as everything did. The only time she had heard anything was in the moment when Malal told her he wanted to marry her. Wind was born deaf, so she had no real concept of "sound," but the feeling she had in her heart when he Signed his intentions, and asked the question… it was what she imagined birds sounded like. What she knew she would hear if her ears started working in the instant that a baby laughed its first laugh. Not just sound, but a sound that made reality worth living in.

Then this.

Malal had been shot in the neck with three darts, and the Academics posted at the palace were examining them. There were even three High Academics currently at the palace, which seemed to make many of the people around Malal hopeful.

Wind, however, knew that the three High Academics' specialty were weather patterns, animal husbandry, and the cultivation of wheat. Hoping for them to find answers would be like hoping for her to describe a birthday song to another deaf person.

Still, they looked. Searching for any kind of clue that might lead them to save the Emperor. So far all that they had discovered was that the darts were hollow; that they contained some kind of poison. Which everyone already knew, so what good were they?

Cloud was the one who told her that. Told her what the Academics had "found." He Signed the words to her, though Wind barely saw them.

Cloud was patient. The fact that his sister barely cared to pay attention made it doubly hard for him to get her to understand, but he kept trying to tell her. What was known, and what was not.

She finally gestured for him to stop talking. To stop getting in the way of her vigil over her Emperor. "I know," she Signed. "No one knows anything. They're all fools. Get out of my way."

Cloud did. She felt a momentary pang of regret at the way she had spoken to him. The rest of their family had been killed when they were young, and for Turns they had been each other's only companions. It wasn't until they found their way to a Cathedral of the Faithful whose priest was also a recruiter for the revolution – for the Cursed Ones – that they found another family.

Even then, though, Cloud and Wind were closer to each other than to anyone else. Until Smoke came. Until the man who would become Malal slowly won over Wind's heart.

And now… now that heart was going to be torn out of her chest.

A tap came. Someone touching her shoulder. She didn't look away from Malal. Healing, then falling to the poison again in an endless cycle. Black patches appeared on his skin, which then tore and exposed flesh below that seemed to have rotted on his bones. Then that flesh charred, burned away to nothing… only to be regrown again as the Patches did their work.

And he screamed throughout. Cloud tried to reassure her; tried to explain that though the Emperor's mouth was wide open and his jaw strained, no sound was coming. "He's probably unconscious," her brother Signed.

Wind knew he was not. And she began to hear the second sound of her life. Just as terrible as the first as been wonderful. For the longer she sat and kept watch, the more she thought she heard Malal screaming.

She knew it was false. Knew it was an exhausted, terrified mind playing tricks on her.

But it didn't matter. She heard it, and there was nothing she could do. She had failed to protect her love, and now she was cursed for that failure.

The tap came again. Harder. Whoever it was was insisting she look away.

She refused. Kept staring at Malal until the tapping had become something like an attack.

She spun, and the air… hardened around her. It gathered at her now-clenched fists like gauntlets. She was ready to strike, to lash out, to hurt others so that they might know what she felt.

A small part of her recognized how foolish and selfish that was. Understood that everyone in the palace had lost someone. That they all feared for Malal.

Or most of them. There were some, even here, even close to him, that she suspected would be glad of his death. Glad of the chance to step forward and grab whatever power they could.

But the larger part of her felt only grief. And grief is only one small step from anger. We hide from pain by inflicting it on others, and Wind was ready to hurt someone.

But it wasn't just someone. It was Cloud.

She blinked, surprised. He seemed to understand her need to watch Malal. And yet here he was, interrupting what could be her last moments –

(No! They'll come! Sword and Akiro and the others will save him!)

– with her Emperor and her love.

"Come with me," he Signed.

She shook her head. Started to turn back toward the bed.

He grabbed her and swung her around hard enough that it hurt. "Now," he said. His face was composed – both of them had always hid their feelings behind a lack of expressiveness or expression. But his fist closed around each Signed word, and she felt almost like he was screaming at her.

She shook her head again. Turned away.

Again, he swung her around. Swung her away from Malal.

She erupted upward, grabbing him by the folds of his shirt, shoving him back. Imperial Guards were positioned around the bedroom, and they took several steps forward. She was their Captain, and if anyone tried to hurt her – even her own brother – she knew they would kill him or die trying.

He wasn't trying to hurt her, though. A fire burned in his eyes, but it wasn't violence, or even anger. It was… was….

Terror.

She let go of his shirt as abruptly as she had grabbed it. Cloud had not looked like this for the entire time of this crisis.

Something is worse.

She gestured to the guards to re-take their positions. Then Signed, "What is it?" to Cloud.

He looked around, staring at the guards. Wind rarely issued orders – her position as Captain was more an appointment as Malal's head bodyguard, and the Imperial Guard was mostly run by several officers directly under her – but many of them had still learned to Sign. At least well enough to pick up the basics of a conversation. And she saw now that Cloud was worried about others seeing his words.

A huge drawback to Signing was that private conversations could be difficult to have. Particularly in a crowded place like this one. Anyone who spoke the language and who had their eyes open would be privy to the most secret speech.

"Please. Come." Cloud hesitated a moment, then added, "Now."

The look in his eyes convinced Wind. She threw a last glance at Malal. One of the Patches fell, exhausted. Another took his place and a guard dragged the spent one away.

She turned back to Cloud, and nodded. He led her out of the room. Down a hall. The palace – what was left of it after the armored man's attack – was huge, so Wind expected to go somewhere far away. But Cloud took a single turn into a side hall, then opened a door.

Another bedroom. This part of the palace was mostly quarters for visiting nobles or merchants or other supplicants and supporters.

What could possibly be so important in here? Wind wondered.

Cloud gestured for her to go in.

One look on the man on the bed, and Wind knew that his screams, unlike Malal's were not silent. She could not hear them, but she saw them sounding in the terrible cringes of the two men tending to him, and in the fearful glances of the four men and two women who huddled in a corner, as far away from the man's bed as possible.

Wind registered that the men and women in the room were the Academics and High Academics that had been analyzing the darts and the poison used to fell Malal.

As was the man on the bed.

Wind felt suddenly ill. A lead weight settled into her belly as she looked on him.

It wasn't as bad, but it was the same thing. The same thing that had brought Malal so low. She recognized the man on the bed as the High Academic who studied wheat, but a few seconds later such an identification would have been impossible. Even as she watched, his skin tore open, revealing blackened meat that looked like it had been burned by acid.

She looked at Cloud in shock. "There was still poison in the darts? Did he accidentally –"

Cloud cut her off with a shake of the head. "No. They assured me they were all careful. They were all in the infirmary, and he," he gestured at the screaming man, "never even touched the darts or the poison. He had some books, and he was researching toxins."

"Then how did –?"

A flurry of movement. Wind saw the huddle in the far corner shift and sway. People fell back, several of the Academics making the sign of Faith as they moved. One tripped over herself in her hurry.

Wind glanced at her brother. He didn't understand what was going on, either.

She looked back at the group. Saw. And understood.

The group scattered like an explosion, leaving only one person behind. That person – a middle-aged woman with a suit and tie that were clearly expensive, the silver chain of a High Academic around her neck – was screaming. Screams that neither Wind nor Cloud could hear, but which she could see were every bit the match of those of the man on the bed.

The High Academic gripped her left forearm in her right hand. Left hand extended, palm up. The hand shook so hard it was a blur. But Wind still saw it: the woman's fingers had turned black.

Abruptly, the skin fell away. Black, burned flesh beneath.

The woman's screams grew visibly frantic, and Wind saw the other Academics speaking to each other, quick words bitten off first in confusion, then understanding, and finally terror.

Wind could read their lips. But even if she couldn't have done so, she would have known what they were saying. Because her own heart said the same.

She looked at her brother. "What are they saying?" he asked. He couldn't read lips. She was the one who deafened him, and now she was often his only link to what the rest of the world said.

She swallowed.

Looked at the man on the bed.

The woman with blackening flesh who stood near the window.

Before she had a chance to answer, she saw the woman at the window look at her fellow on the bed, literally disintegrating before their eyes.

The woman's eyes found Wind's own. She mouthed a single word.

Then she turned and ran to the window behind her and jumped through it. A silent spray of glass, and she fell.

Wind rushed with Cloud to the window. They looked out and saw the High Academic, fifty feet below. Blood began to pool around the body.

Cloud stared at his sister. "What did she say?" he asked.

Wind looked at him. At the man on the bed, who suddenly gasped and then was still.

"She said, 'Plague.'"

She looked back at the body on the ground below.

"The man who attacked us didn't give Malal a poison," she told her brother.

"He gave us a disease."

5

Arrow wondered how Sword was doing. How Malal fared. If there had been any further attacks, or any more deaths.

He hadn't realized how much he relied on the Ears for his daily information. Not just news of the Empire, but of his friends. He was as a deaf man for the first time, and found he did not care for it at all.

He traveled quickly through Center, stopping only to relieve himself when necessary, and arrived at the skybridge to Strength without incident. It was nearly dark when he reached the massive stone structure, the sun setting to his right and painting the white bridge in casts of gold and pink.

Even at the late hour, people moved across the bridge in thick knots – though he noticed that more moved toward Center than into Strength. He frowned at that. True that Center had the palace and the Silver Seat, but as many people still moved out as moved in. Army transfers, merchants selling to the inhabitants of Strength, people just looking for a new life – it all created nearly-equal movements in both directions on the skybridge.

Yet now the people were definitely streaming almost solely in the direction of Center.

He reached the edge of the skybridge. On a normal day people moved toward Strength on one side of the skybridge, and passed into Center on the other, creating two more or less even lanes of travel.

Now, the lane leading into Center had thickened, overtaking almost the entirety of the skybridge. So many travelers glutted the skybridge that soldiers from the Army had been called up to control their passage. They stood at equal intervals, waving people forward, stopping fights that could spread like wildfire among people pressed so tightly together. More soldiers moved at the base of the skybridge, directing people quickly onto the various paths that led to different parts of Center.

Arrow stopped his auto-car at the base of the skybridge, got out and walked to what looked like a command center of some kind: a small tent with officers streaming in and out. He went in. Several of the officers looked like they were going to object, then took a second look at the cut of his clothing and the set of his eyes and reconsidered.

"Who in the Netherworlds are you?"

The voice that finally challenged him was sharp as any sword. Arrow nearly winced at the sheer strength of it, but forced himself not to as he turned to see the woman who had spoken.

"Well?"

The colonel was as sharp and angular as her voice. Petite, but her expression was that of a person who knew what power was, and how to wield it. Arrow sensed that she would be good in a fight; someone he would want on his side in a battle.

He also sensed that she was someone who would not respond well to such a compliment.

Instead, he curled his lips into a sneer. "Watch your tone, colonel." He nearly spat the words, and as he did all movement in the tent abruptly ceased. He could still hear the muffled murmur of passing throngs outside the tent, but within this space, all was silent.

"What did you say?" said the colonel. Then she shook her head, cutting off any answer before he had a chance to voice it. "It doesn't matter, I don't have time for you." She turned to an aide. "Get rid of this boy."

The soldier – a huge man who might well have been cut of the same stone as the skybridge – started for Arrow. Arrow just waited. Waited.

And when the man lay a hand on his shoulder, he moved.

He knew how it would look to the others in the tent. A beardless young man, barely out of boyhood, standing alone. A large officer, ready to force him out of the tent.

And then, too fast to be seen, the bore of a gun laying against the bare eye of the aide.

"If you so much as blink, I will paint the canvas with your brains," said Arrow.

Silence stretched out into an infinity. No one moved until Arrow finally looked at the colonel. "You know what I am?" he said.

She nodded. She didn't look scared, which made him respect – if not like – her even more. "A Greater Gift."

"Yes," he said. "And I've no wish to prove the extent of my powers. So if I may?" He nodded toward the aide, who was now not merely stone, but a statue.

The colonel nodded, and Arrow's gun disappeared as fast as it had come. He turned away from the aide, dismissing him entirely. He bowed to the colonel. "I am called Arrow." He hesitated a moment, then added, "Son of Creed, now Lord of the Southern Grasslands."

The colonel's eyes widened at that, and Arrow could practically see her thinking about whether to believe him. Not the name he had been given as a Greater Gift, but the latter statement. Then she reexamined his outfit, his bearing. And, he knew, she would have to be asking the simple question: Why would a Greater Gift lie about such a thing?

She finally bowed. "Forgive me, young Lord," she said. "We had heard of a change in the Heathered Hall, but not that a new Lord had been chosen."

Arrow had to swallow a lump that rose in his throat. His father, Creed, had been the best man he ever knew. Even now, months later, his death was still hard to contemplate.

He masked his expression with a nod. "Of course, colonel. News does not always travel quickly as it should."

"Especially not these days." Her expression grew dark. "I am Colonel Alya. And though I don't wish to be rude, I'm sure you can tell we have a lot to do."

"What is happening?" Arrow asked.

Colonel Alya grimaced. "People are afraid. Ever since what happened to the Ears – you know about that?" Arrow nodded. "Ever since that, there have been rumors that there is more to come, and that the only safe place is near the Emperor, because he wouldn't let his precious skin be harmed, at least." She seemed to realize what she had just said, because her eyes widened slightly. "I didn't mean that personally, of course. That's just what the people –"

Arrow waved her off. "I understand. And I understand their concern. That's why I've come." He squinted at her.

"My Lord?" she said, and for the first time he saw her unsure how to handle the moment.

For some reason that decided him.

"I require your assistance, colonel," he said.

She nodded. "Whatever I can do."

"Please inform your second in command that he is to assume control of this situation."

She arched an eyebrow. "And me?"

"You're coming with me."

She snorted. "My Lord, please understand that I have nothing but respect for your power and for your station. But the Southern Grasslands are far from here, and I answer to my superiors and to the Emperor."

"I expect you do." Arrow reached under his shirt and brought out a folded piece of leather. He opened it, and showed the contents to Colonel Alya. Her eyes widened as she looked, then she turned to her aide.

"Have Broc report to me. Immediately."

The aide nodded and departed, and a few moments later a bulbous man who had a wad of speargrass tucked into his cheek pulled back the tent flap and entered. Colonel Alya told him quickly that she would be going with Arrow and that he was to assume control of the operations here.

Broc, to his credit, didn't even blink at the orders. He might appear slovenly – certainly chewing spear on duty wasn't regulation activity – but he was clearly a good officer, and in only seconds he had assumed command.

Colonel Alya left the tent with Arrow. "Do you need to bring anything?" he asked.

"I assume we're going to the Strongholds?" He nodded. "Then no, I don't need anything."

They got in the auto-car, and several of the officers at the foot of the bridge moved aside barricades and even a few slow-moving bodies to make way for them. The trip across the skybridge itself was hardly fast, but it was much quicker with Colonel Alya in the vehicle. Every time they reached a checkpoint, she would lean forward and the soldiers would get one look at her sharp face and sharper expression and move as fast as they could to hurry her along.

"You run a tight crew," Arrow remarked.

"They are good men, good women," she said. Pride suddenly changed her face, smoothing the angles and softening the features into something less forbidding.

After a few minutes, she asked, "Are you going to tell me what a child is doing with an Imperial Order? And one that simply says the bearer is entitled to anything he wants or needs?"

Arrow was silent for a time. Truth was, he hadn't really thought out his decision to bring Colonel Alya with him. He had known she would be handy in getting across the skybridge, and certainly it would be helpful to have someone who looked more authoritative than him for interacting with the commanders of the Strongholds. But should he tell her more?

Even as the question sounded in his mind, he spoke. "You know about what happened to the Ears. There's more happening. I can't tell you all of it – not even much of it – but I need to get to the Strongholds and put the Army on alert."

Her gaze jerked toward him. "Why take me?"

He kept his eyes straight, focusing on the road ahead. "You seem competent. And like you care about what's happening in the Empire, and the people it's happening to."

"You got that from one minute in a tent?"

Arrow looked at her.

The world was a thing of moments, of intersections occurring at varying speeds.

"You fly beside me for a time," he said.

Strangely, this seemed to satisfy her. Or perhaps she simply had such a low opinion of magic users and nobles that hearing one spout nonsense comforted her on some level.

She sat back. Closed her eyes. "Wake me when you need me."

"You can sleep in an auto-car?"

"A soldier can sleep anywhere."

And in a moment, she proved her words to be true.

Arrow drove on, moving into Strength, no longer alone but still wishing for the people who were not here.

6

Sword could never explain what happened when she held a weapon – perhaps because she didn't fully understand it herself. She only knew that when a tool of death fell into her hand, she… became.

She became the weapon.

She became the moments that made the battle.

She became her foe as much as herself.

She became… everything. All there was in the small infinity of battle – the only universe that existed until foes had been vanquished and weapons sheathed.

So when the shorter man rushed at her with his blade outstretched, she felt her own weapons spark into being. More than that, she felt herself become the blazing whips in her hands, the man running at her, the steel he held, the air between them.

She became. She was no longer Sword, she simply was.

The short man's eyes widened in the instant he saw the flaming cords burst from her hands. But there was no time for him to wheel away, no time for him to do more than stumble slightly to the side. Then he was gagging, dropping his blade to clatter on the stone ramp of the air-dock, trying to rip the whip from its strangling grip on his neck.

Sword smiled grimly. She had called a whip of cold fire. If she hadn't, it wouldn't be choking the man, it would have simply seared his head away in a bright flare of light and heat. Now, at least, he might live through this.

She didn't want to kill him if she didn't have to. She didn't want to kill any of them.

She jerked the whip, and the man stumbled forward and down, slamming face-first to the stone below.

And because she was, because she had become, her other hand moved of its own accord. The whip flared into the air, snapping louder than one of Arrow's guns. The tantō the taller man had thrown shattered into a thousand pieces, some of them simply winking out of existence under the fire of her flail – not a cold fire this time, but a flame like the noonday sun.

The short man was still on his stomach, making a gasping hrk, hrk as he tried to draw in breath. The taller man stared at the hand that had thrown the tantō as though unsure why it had betrayed him. Then he looked at Sword. He mouthed something.

And in the next moment, others swarmed past the tall man. Mostly men, a few women: the ones that had been standing guard the length of the air-dock. They had seen the fight begin, and had run forward. They overtook the tall man, who stood motionless until he was lost to Sword's view by the dozens of people rushing past him.

Knives. Swords. Arrows. Bolts. Bullets.

She felt a grin split her face. Part of her was ashamed of that. She truly didn't want to kill anyone – she would try hard not to. But she also knew that she had felt powerless ever since the old man came to the palace in his impossible armor. Now, for the first time since the attack, since stone had crumbled under light, she could fight back, she could win.

And she could use a win.

"So come on," she said under her breath.

The whips disappeared from her hands. Suddenly released, the short man did not rise up but simply lay silent on the ground. Not dead, but he wouldn't be waking up in the next minute or two.

And a minute or two was all this would take.

Her preferred weapons – the katana and wakizashi of fire – appeared in her hands as the men and women rushed her. There was a noise and her hand moved of its own accord. The bullet that had been meant for her forehead was slashed in two by the flaming blade she held.

The onrushing men and women wouldn't be able to see her movement – too fast for the eye to follow. But they would know she had been shot, at point blank range, and had not fallen. They saw the weapons of flame that she had conjured out of nothing.

She saw fear in their eyes, reflected in the light cast by her swords.

To their credit, though, none of the air-dock guards fled. They slowed, but kept coming. The only one who had stopped was the first one who had hailed her – the tall man who had drawn back for some reason and whom she could no longer see in the press of other attackers.

Someone else shot at her – this time a crossbow bolt. With a twist of her wrist she flicked the bolt out of the air, caught it on the edge of her wakizashi, and rebounded it at the woman who had fired it at her. The woman went down, screaming, her hands clamped around the quarrel embedded just above her knee. Not a killing shot – if she got attention soon.

Best I can do.

Another motion. Sword ducked under a swordthrust and slashed with her own blade, which had grown an extra six inches in response to her unspoken wish. The sword took her attacker in the shin, slashing through muscle and tendon and scoring the bone beneath. She had willed the sword to heat, so the wound was cauterized even as it occurred. He wouldn't bleed to death. But another attacker was down.

More people came. She ducked, wheeled; cut, slashed. Her blades disappeared, replaced by a two-handed mace that crushed a man's foot; then it was swapped in turn for a trident she used to pin a woman's arm to the wall of the ramp before jerking it loose and using the swords that were now back in her hands to disarm and then hamstring another attacker.

They attacked. They fell.

Finally, it was down to her and a single man. The rest were groaning, moaning, screaming all around. Some called for their mothers, others screamed wordlessly. A few were silent, staring up at the sky. Alive, but unseeing and unspeaking, and their silence was somehow more terrible than the screams.

The last man held only a rusted dirk, and he switched it from hand to hand nervously. He took a step toward her.

"Don't," she said. "You don't have to do this, and if you try, it can only end one way." She glanced at the wounded, then back at the man. When she looked up she realized there was actually one more person still standing – upright and unwounded – on the ramp. The tall man, gaunt as a skeleton, white as a ghost. Standing well back and saying something so quietly she couldn't hear it. It didn't matter. He wasn't moving toward her, and she could sense no weapon on his person.

She looked back at the other man, the one with a dirk, who had edged a bit closer while she looked at the tall man behind him. "Don't," she said again. "Please," she added, her voice plaintive. "I don't want to hurt you."

The weapons disappeared from her hands. She opened them, palms toward her last assailant and fingers splayed wide. "Please," she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear. "Just let me pass."

He looked behind himself as though searching for help. He gestured at the tall man, who continued to stare in seeming shock, mouthing a prayer or a curse or something else that Sword could not even guess.

The man took a hesitant step forward, his dirk still extended. Her katana blazed into being and she held the point toward his eye. "I want to leave you whole so you can help the others," she said. "But if you stand against me you will fall as they did."

The man leaned down, clearly about to drop his dirk. Then he straightened, blade still in hand and a grin splitting his face. Sword heard the sound at the same time he did: a deep roar with a high-pitched overtone. The sound of a thousand flames, stoked to white heat.

Sword stiffened. She knew that sound.

She looked skyward and saw a star seem to detach from the heavens. It was already brighter than the rest of the pinpricks of light that dotted the night sky, but it quickly grew large enough that no one could pretend it was a mere star. Larger and larger, closer and closer, and in only a few seconds she was staring at the huge form of the one enemy she had ever faced who brought her to her knees.

The armor looked even huger than the first time she saw it. The fires at its back and feet seemed to have been cut whole from the fires of the Netherworlds, and its cogs and gears clanked and shifted with a sound like the churning gut of a hungry beast.

The armor fell to the air-dock ramp between her and the man who had been the last to stand against her. The helm turned to the man, and that ugly, mechanical voice spoke a single word: "Leave."

The man nodded. The grin still split his face in a mockery of joy. He backed away, moving up the ramp toward the main part of the air-dock – but not too far. He wanted to see what would happen to Sword.

Sword stared at the iron creature as it looked around, the man inside the armor taking in the sight of the wounded, their cries of pain and silent stares of anguish.

"You didn't kill any of them," he said. He bowed slightly to Sword. "For that, I will grant you mercy. For that, child, I will kill you quickly."

Sword threw herself to the side, a motion so fast it seemed a streak of light. It almost wasn't fast enough. The arrows that exploded from the old man's armored fingers slammed into the stone of the ramp, driving through it with puffs of dust.

Sword was already dancing back through the powder toward the old man before he could bring his other arm forward. She cast her whip at his leg, willing it to brightness, to heat. The air around it roiled as it snaked toward the armor. It should have melted the iron to slag.

The iron hissed. It smoked. She thought it might have blackened a bit.

Then the old man yanked his leg backward, pulling Sword off balance. She lost her footing and stumbled toward him, barely managing to lurch sideways as he sent a huge metal fist down. If it had connected it would have crushed her skull, mashed it down and made it a part of the air-dock itself. As it was, the fist crashed into the stone and created a hole nearly a foot deep.

Sword skidded sideways, then slammed her own fist at him. A stiletto had appeared in her grip – not an ordinary knife, but a long, slim blade that came to a deadly point. Soldiers in the Army trained with them since they pierced mail armor and could be used to slide into the chinks of plate mail. The suit of armor she faced now was harder and stronger than mere plate, but she remembered that she had managed to bite into a joint – at least slightly – with an axe the last time. Perhaps she had failed before because her attacks were too broad. Perhaps with a precision strike….

The point of the stiletto found the spot behind the armored knee. The suit was so tall that the knee came up above her waist, but that just meant she had more leverage when she swung the stiletto – and more force behind the strike.

The stiletto sank in. Sank deep. Something ground against the blade she had created with her Gift, and smoke surged out of the small hole in the armor.

The old man screamed. Even with the distortion created by the helmet, she could tell he wasn't in pain, just angry. She didn't bother trying to jerk the stiletto out of the hole, just let go of it and it disappeared in that same instant.

She flitted around to the back of the armor, thinking to repeat the same process, but the old man was waiting for the move. The fires at his back, which had been banked to allow him to land on the air-dock, surged suddenly. They blasted out columns of flame, and Sword only barely leaped to the side before being burned.

She rolled and came to her feet, saw another big fist hammer toward her, and called two stilettos to her hands. They flamed bright, and she moved her head aside as the fist slammed at her. It barely missed, punching a hole in the air so close to her that she felt its heat on her ear.

She didn't even blink, just punched a blade into each side of the elbow as soon as it came close. The blades sank into the dark joint, one going in several inches and the other disappearing almost half its length.

Again, smoke billowed as gears ground angrily together. Again, the old man roared in rage – and this time, perhaps also in pain.

Sword grinned tightly. "I'll cut you down an inch at a time if I must, old man."

Then something happened she wasn't prepared for. She still had the stilettos buried in his arm, but in an instant the arm simply wasn't there. She blinked, realizing that she was still holding her blades, but the arm they had punctured had disappeared.

But no, that was wrong. The arm hadn't disappeared – it had changed. It had pulled back, splitting apart and folding into itself, moving on gears and tracks and transforming into something else. She glimpsed flesh – the old man's arm, encased in the armor but visible for a short moment – then the arm snapped back to its shape.

But Sword had jerked, slightly off balance when the thing she had pinned down with her stilettos suddenly disappeared. And in the instant the arm and fist reappeared, the old man took advantage of her momentary unsteadiness. He slammed his fist sideways, and what felt like an anvil hammered into her head.

The side of Sword's face – her ear, her cheek, her eye – seemed to explode in moist heat. Her face, her neck grew wet. Bleeding. She tried to call a weapon, something that would help her. But her thoughts were scattered. She couldn't focus.

What weapon? Pike? Sword? Mace?

Ideas flitted through her mind, but they flew as birds in a storm, skittering side to side and never quite managing to alight.

She wanted to rest. To lay down and sleep. But knew she wouldn't be able to, because… because….

Because the Empire is in danger.

Because Malal needs me.

(because I'm going to die here)

She blinked away a curtain of blood, and saw the first that had hit her returning for another punch. She managed to lean away from it, but only slightly. Instead of taking the hit on her face, the metal fist slammed into her shoulder –

(it hurts oh it hurts so much)

– and chest.

The force of the blow sent her flying. She didn't even touch the stone below her feet, just found herself twisting, touching nothing but air as she shot across the width of the air-dock's ramp.

She saw the wounded as she spun. Took them all in, saw their faces in strange detail.

She saw the armored man, the tube on his arm glowing, following her flight.

She saw the first man, the tall, gaunt man who had challenged her. He was running forward, shouting something she couldn't hear.

Then she hit something. Hard, painful. It slammed into her hip and leg, but her upper body kept moving. She flipped over it and realized what it was.

The wall on the side of the ramp.

The wall that kept people from dropping into….

A single instant of terror. Then she was falling. Falling to the forbidden clouds below, to death and perhaps worse.

She would appear tomorrow, her body impaled on one of the poles that surrounded the Emperor's castle. Placed there by whatever enemy lived below the clouds, and had forbidden any from Ansborn to descend.

No!

No!

NOOOOOO!

The scream lasted forever, and eventually she screamed not just with her mind, but with her throat and mouth and with her very soul.

She screamed, and fell.

And the clouds waited for her.

7

Father Akiro knew something was wrong.

He didn't like traveling in auto-cars – something about them made him queasy. He preferred horse and carriage any day, even now that he was old and his body didn't work the way it should. Still, he had bowed to the wisdom of the others: things were moving quickly, and they didn't have the time for slow moving. Everyone had to take auto-cars to their destinations.

Besides, he would see himself to the Netherworlds before he let Brother Scieran do something that he himself refused to do. If his old student could travel to Faith in an auto-car, then Akiro would make himself reach Knowledge. And he'd get there first, by the Gods!

But the trip quickly turned… strange.

Nothing he could put a finger on, not at first. The trip from the palace to the skybridge took the better part of a day, and nothing really stood out then. Not until he passed over the skybridge and entered Knowledge.

Even then, it was subtle. Passing through several towns as night fell, he began to notice a strange emptiness. At first he chalked it up to the fact that it was nearing nightfall. People could be found at the bazaar in Central at all hours of the night and day – but these were smaller places.

Not everyone stays up all night. Not everyone's as young as you are, Akiro.

He grinned to himself at that thought, but the grin quickly faded.

Because though it was late, it wasn't that late. Shouldn't there be someone? Someone at the well for late-needed water? Someone walking toward a tavern to buy a drink, or even a fellow traveler passing on the road?

But there was no one.

Akiro thought about getting out of the auto-car, knocking on a door or two, but he decided to keep on moving. The emptiness of the towns wasn't his mission: finding a cure for Malal's affliction at the Great University was.

Then he saw the face.

It was just a glimpse: a small, round moon of dirty white he spotted in one of the upstairs windows above a small, dark shop. A child's face, wide-eyed and frightened, that disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Akiro almost could have persuaded himself it was just his imagination, so quickly did it happen; only the still-fluttering curtain at the window convinced him that something had, in fact, been there.

He stopped the auto-car without thinking about it, and without thinking about it he got out of the vehicle. It wasn't a fast process – he wasn't young, and his days of bounding out of still-moving auto-cars were over, if they had ever existed in the first place. But he moved as quickly as he could, and then, leaning on his two canes, moved to the store over which he had seen the face.

He knocked quietly on the wood door. The windows beside it – the store looked to be a leatherworking shop – were dark and empty as the eyes of dead men. He waited, and a moment later knocked harder – this time with one of his canes, rapping the metal against the door hard enough to leave a dent.

"Open up!" he shouted after a moment. The noise broke the silence that hung over the town like a pall, and it nearly made him jump. He hadn't realized how –

(afraid)

– jumpy he was until this moment. He looked around the street, wondering if anyone would come to a door to look out, to see who was yelling.

No one.

He knocked again, now hammering both canes against the door. "Open up!" he hollered. "Open up, I'm a man of the Gods, so get the door open, curse you!"

He heard his voice, noted it growing thin and stretched as a parchment left to dry too long in the sun. Fear sank tendrils into his bones, made his muscles clench tightly.

The sun, he realized abruptly, was completely gone. It was full night now. No stars twinkled. The only light came from the sliver of a moon and from the lanterns that hung on the sides of the auto-car.

I don't even remember lighting them. But I must have.

Akiro suddenly felt very alone, and very old. Conscious of his inability to –

(flee run get away!)

– move quickly in an emergency. He turned and began moving back toward the auto-car, which waited in twin globes of light cast by the lanterns. Bright, safe.

Something made a noise behind him. The click of a latch being loosed. The creak of a door swinging slowly open.

Akiro stiffened. He didn't know what he expected, but it was something sharp and bloody and terrible. Not the small, quavering voice that said, "Will you take me to my parents?"

Akiro turned back to the leatherworking shop. The door had been opened, and a young, very slight boy stood framed in the darkness beyond. His hair was so blonde it was nearly white; straight, hanging down to his shoulders. His face was smudged and dirty, as was his clothing. He wore what looked like a smaller version of the garb of an Academic: wool pants, a white shirt that buttoned up the front, and a vest over it. Add a small suit coat, a tie, and a fedora, and he would look like a tiny student at the Great University.

An Academic's boy? Perhaps the child of a High Academic?

Akiro couldn't tell everything about the boy, of course, but he could tell this: the child was terrified. His lip quivered, his dark eyes were open so wide they seemed cartoonish.

"Will you?" he asked again.

Akiro didn't know how to answer that. He took a wobbly step toward the boy, and the instant he did the child seemed to melt into the darkness behind him. Only his terror-filled eyes could be seen, white orbs floating through the black of the shop.

"Don't," whispered the child, and in the single word Akiro heard myriad meanings: Don't come closer. Don't run away. Don't scare me.

Don't hurt me.

Akiro jerked to a stop, which wasn't as easy at his age as it had once been. He swayed a bit as he leaned on his canes, but managed not to lose his balance. After a moment he said, "It's all right, child. I'm not going to hurt you."

The boy didn't reappear completely – still just a pair of eyes in the dark hole framed by the open door. "Where did they go?" he asked. His voice was not just afraid – not even terrified. It was something more. Something worse. The boy sounded haunted.

"I don't know," said Akiro. He reached for the boy. Slowly. Not wanting him to disappear, not wanting him to flee. He felt for a moment as though he had found the only remaining soul alive in Ansborn. And if he lost sight of him, then Akiro would be alone and doomed to roam atop the mountains forever.

"Let me help you, child," he said, speaking as much to calm himself as to reassure the boy. "Tell me what happened and let me help you."

"They're gone," said the boy. "They came and then they went and then they were all gone."

Akiro frowned, not sure how to take this. "What do you mean?" He took a halting step forward. The boy still didn't run, though Akiro sensed movement beyond the darkness. Sensed him getting ready to run. Akiro went still as a statue, even the trembling that so often plagued his muscles now gone, as though his entire being sensed how important this one moment was.

The moment stretched into two. Nothing moved. The moon hung still overhead. Akiro finally – slowly – moved the cane from his right hand, hanging it over the crook of his left arm. He reached out his now-empty hand. "Boy," he said, "let me help you."

The eyes continued staring from the darkness. Akiro looked at him without moving, blinking, breathing. He knew, somehow, that this was his last chance. That if he did the wrong thing the boy would flee and would never be found. He would become part of the night, and no more easily caught than the darkness itself.

The eyes moved. They blinked. They shone with sudden tears. Then the boy threw himself forward. Akiro barely had time to prepare himself before the child barreled into him, wrapping tiny arms around his waist and sobbing into his robes.

"Where are they? Where are they?" he whispered over and over. "Where did Mommy go? Where did Daddy go?" And then more weeping, more sobs, and then the words came again, asking questions for which Akiro had no answers.

He looked up and down the street as the child clung to him. He should have cried out, called for help. But he didn't. Because now he knew, in a deep and certain part of him, that no one would come. The town was empty.

Everyone was gone. Everyone but this child.

Akiro held him until the sobs quieted, stood there under the light of a waning moon until all became silent and the world fell still. The boy still held him, and his robes were wet with tears, but no new tears fell. Akiro whispered "You're safe" over and over, but he wasn't really sure if he spoke to the child or to himself. He felt as though something cold and oily had crept into his bones.

"What is your name, boy?" he said a moment later.

The boy didn't answer, waiting long enough that Akiro wondered if he even had the mental ability to answer. Perhaps fear had scorched away everything but the ability to run and the simple questions, "Where's Mommy? Where's Daddy?"

Then the child moved. He drew back so as to look up at Akiro. He probably had only six or seven Turns of life to him, but Akiro was small himself, and bent with age, so the child didn't have to move much to look straight into the priest's eyes.

"I am called Cai," he said, and in his voice was an elegance that convinced Akiro: this was most definitely the child of an Academic, at the very least. Someone educated in both written and spoken word, and who had taught his or her child well.

"What happened here?" asked Akiro.

He tried to ask gently, quietly. Tried to make the question as simple and safe as possible. Even so, he thought for a moment Cai might run from him again. He had to force himself not to throw his arms around the child and clutch him to him; surely such a move would only make him panic all the more, and flee all the faster.

Cai's head whipped around, looking up and down the street as though something might appear out of the night at any moment and pull them both away to a place too awful to see or contemplate. "I don't…," he said. "I don't…." He threw himself forward, burying his face in Akiro's robes once more. "Take me away," he whispered.

Akiro nodded. Part of his mind was saying that he must look around, that he should find out if anyone else was in this strange place, and if they knew anything of what had happened here. But that was only a small part. The greater portion of his mind screamed leave leave leave! and grew louder each time and knew that no matter how long or hard he looked, he would find no one else in this silent place.

He gathered Cai to himself, and the two of them made their way to the auto-car. He opened the passenger door, and the boy climbed in and curled up in a ball on the seat. Akiro got in the other side. He moved the lever on the side of the wheel and the auto-car lurched forward, moving quickly to its top speed as they left of the town.

Akiro didn't speak until the dark buildings had lost themselves in the deeper black of the night sky. Only then did he look to Cai. The boy was shivering. Akiro reached behind him. There was a seat behind them, and on the seat he had laid several bags with food, water. A blanket. He tossed the rough, wool fabric over the boy. Cai kept shivering, but nodded his thanks.

Akiro still didn't speak. He needed to know what was happening – there was no way the timing of this strangeness was coincidental – but he didn't want to completely destroy the child's mind. He stayed silent, brooding about what he could do, how he could fix things.

He suddenly wished Brother Scieran were here. His old student could be pigheaded at times, but at least he had a clear, intelligent pig's head. Akiro could have used some time with Brother Scieran to talk about what he had seen – or what he had not – during his stop in the town.

"They're all dead," said the child. His words were still clipped in the manner of so many Academics: as though his teeth chewed each letter out in a precise pattern, with no more and no less spoken than was absolutely needed.

Akiro was silent a moment after that, waiting to see if Cai would say more. When he didn't, he said, "How?"

Cai shook his head. He played with the corner of the blanket, wringing it between nervous fingers. "I don't know. I was under the floor when it happened."

"Under the floor?"

Cai nodded. "Mother works leathers. Father," and Akiro noted they were "Mother" and "Father" now, not "Mommy" and "Daddy" – the child was struggling to get himself under control, "is usually at the University. But he came home to visit us. He and Mother were talking while she worked in the shop."

He fell silent, and Akiro wondered if that was all the boy would say.

I need to know more. Gods forgive me for pushing him, but I need to know.

"What happened then?" he asked in the quietest voice he could muster.

Cai chewed his lip for a moment. "There's a place. Under the floorboards of the shop. It's where Mother –" He broke off and flicked a glance at Akiro's robes.

Akiro understood immediately. "I'm not a soldier or a tax man, Cai. Just a priest, and I have no interest in what you might have hidden down there. You don't even have to tell me, just tell me what happened while you were there."

Cai nodded. "There's not much space down there. I can stand up, but Father says that'll only last another Turn or so." He grew somber, and Akiro suspected he was wondering what would happen when he reached that next Turn without a parent to see it – or if he would live to see it himself.

"Could you see above?"

Cai shook his head. "Not really. Light came down through the boards, enough that you could see what was under the floor when you were down there. But you couldn't see what was in the shop when you were down there. Just… shadows. Dark bits in the light that came down."

"So you could see nothing at all?"

Another moment of silence before Cai said, "There was a loud noise. Like a rush, like a river. Mother and Father said some –" He grimaced. "They said some things that would have landed me face down in the bathing trough with a soap stick in my mouth."

In spite of the circumstances, Akiro had to stifle a chuckle at that. He remembered similar treatment at the hands of his own parents, the first time he chased his sister around the house, screaming an obscenity he had learned at school – not sure what it meant, really, but delighted at her shrieking reaction. Mum had jammed a soap stick in his mouth, then pushed him into a bucket of water long enough to make him gag on it.

He'd never spoken profanity since then.

Almost never. I'm only human.

The traces of a smile that had appeared at the corners of his lips disappeared as he saw Cai. The boy certainly wasn't amused at the thought of his parents' words.

Their last words.

Solemnity returned, Akiro said, "After that?"

Cai shook his head. His shoulders bobbed up and down in a quick shrug, and as they did Akiro noted how dirty his clothing was. Wondered how long he had been hiding under the floor. "After that, there were screams."

Akiro felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature inside the auto-car. "Your parents?"

"No," said Cai. "From other places in the town. Like people was – were," he said, grimacing as though disgusted with the error in word choice, "being massacred."

"You didn't come up?" said Akiro.

"Tried to. But Mother stamped down hard on the boards that ply up like she didn't want me coming up and I think…." His voice hitched, then he continued. "I think Father said, 'Stay.' So I stayed. But what if he didn't? What if she needed me to come up? What if I was wrong?"

Akiro suspected the last questions weren't really directed at him; that they were the questions of a self-aware child who wondered if he had done the wrong thing at the worst possible time. He answered them anyway. "He did, boy. Your mother wanted you down there, your father said to stay, and they both meant you to listen." He looked away from his driving long enough to capture Cai's gaze. "Don't you ever doubt that. You did what your parents wanted you to do, and you did right in that."

Cai nodded somberly after a moment. "There was a bright light then, so bright I had to look away, even down under the floor. Some noises…." He drifted away, frowning in confusion.

"What noises?" asked Akiro.

Cai shook his head. "I don't know. Like nothing I ever heard before. Loud, but quiet. I know that makes no sense, but it was like….." He looked hard at Akiro. "You know the First Story?"

Akiro's lips pursed in dry amusement. "I've heard it a time or two."

"The part when the Gods come down from the clouds, and give life to the mountain? Sometimes I try to imagine that, and…. The sound that happened while it was so bright, that's the sound I have in my head. The sound of Gods coming down. Bringing life." He shook his head. "Only this wasn't life. It was bright, it was a sound that shook my center. And when the light left…."

Akiro waited. The wheels of the air-car spun, pulling the vehicle away from the dark town behind.

And what of the next? Will it be the same? Just dark homes grinning like skulls in the night, and no one at home?

"What happened when the light left?" Akiro said. His voice was hoarse. He needed a drink.

He looked over at Cai again. The boy stared straight ahead, looking out the front window of the auto-car but seeing nothing at all. "They were gone," he said. "They were all gone."

8

Sword screamed, and fell, and the fall was forever and all – a universe and an eternity all wrapped in one terrible package that sought to swallow her up and yet which never would. Not until she reached the clouds.

And yet, as long and as far as the fall seemed, the scream coming from her mouth seemed somehow to be longer and farther. Not just sound, but depth and breadth and a fullness of distance and time and then more somehow added to the infinity of all.

She wondered, in a small part of herself, how that could be.

She wondered, in a larger part of herself, what lay below the clouds.

She feared the answers to both.

She breathed – finally –

(how long to fall, that there are breaths between shrieks!)

– and in that moment's respite from the screams that she had become, she realized there were other sounds.

The clap of thunder, the roiling of the mists that shrouded the mountain below.

The ragged gasp of her breath.

The rush of the wind past her ears.

The last sucked her breath away, dragged the next round of screams from her before they were born. And she would have been grateful for that – for a respite from herself – but the rush of the wind grew and grew until it was painful. The air flowed over and through her ears, rasped the insides of her skull until it felt like her brain was being flayed. The sound grew louder –

(a river)

– and louder –

(a storm)

– and louder –

(the great tempest of the First Story)

– and finally she was screaming again and wanted to put her hands over her ears but she couldn't because she was falling and she was spinning and her arms flung to the sides and then up and then down in the mad pirouette of a drunken dancer and then she saw the clouds and the rushing grew and she realized it was not water, was not the storm, was not even the air instead it was something else something she knew something –

And she jerked to a sudden halt.

No. Not sudden. It just seems sudden because the fall is over.

She thought at first that she had fallen through the clouds, and would see at last what lay below. Every person – every person – who had descended to the mists had died. They had been found impaled on the spears around the castle within a day of the descent, many bearing mad expressions of terror so deep that those who saw them shuddered and looked away but never forgot.

No one had ever seen the bodies placed. The nights it happened, evil mists of darkness rolled over the lands surrounding the castle. So thick they were like the clouds below the mountains. So dark they drove all away.

And the bodies would be there the next morning. And people would not climb for a time.

Is that what will happen now? What will happen to me?

She feared, mostly. But she also looked forward to it. Because she had often wondered, and now at last she would know.

But no. It was not to be. The clouds hung below her – no longer spinning, no longer rushing to meet her. Simply rolling and boiling in their never-ceasing tempest.

The rushing sound continued, though. As though she were still falling. And she knew the sound. Knew it well.

She craned her neck to see above and behind her, suddenly aware of the hands that gripped her. Hands covered in armor that made them huger than those of any man.

Behind her, the metal helm of the man she had fought – the man who had twice vanquished her – split in half. The old man met her eyes.

Then they flew.

Sword had flown before. Through the Gifts of Wind and Cloud, she had flown. But never like this. Nothing could be like this.

The rushing noise – the fires at the old man's feet and back – suddenly exploded into something like the roar of a mad beast. Sword was jerked forward and worried she would fall again, but the man's grip – or the grip of the suit – was stronger than the metal from which it had been forged. She felt wind on her face, and her eyes ran with tears that slid sideways instead of down as the wind slapped away gravity and made direction a thing of imagination.

A leaden heaviness again made her feel as though she were falling, though she knew now she was not. She was, instead, climbing through the sky. Rising in the metal hands of an enemy who had cast her to her doom… only to save her from what he had wrought.

The fall had taken forever. The ascension took only an instant. She flew, and then she was suddenly flying no more and yet longed to return to flight again.

The rushing sound of flame stilled as the armored man's fires banked. Metal clanked as he touched down on the stone of the air-dock, and she felt the solid rock beneath her feet as well. After such a flight, it felt clumsy and out of place. A man-made thing that served only to beat back the air, to hold back flight.

She marvelled at what the flight had done.

Then marvelled more at who had done it.

She looked at the old man, and he bowed. Not the short nod of the head he had given her before – the nod of a soldier to a worthy foe. This time, the metal of his suit creaked and the gears ground as he bent at the waist. Smoke billowed from the joint on his arm that she had attacked, but he seemed neither to mind nor even notice.

"Forgive me," he said.

Sword almost reeled. Still more when she realized that many of the wounded – the men and women who had been trying to kill her only a moment ago – had struggled to their feet. And then, like the old man, they also bowed.

"What….?" She felt lost. Like this was a cage she didn't understand, a trap she could not escape because she could not even see it. She looked back at the old man, who still bowed to her, his head so low it was nearly even with her own. "I don't understand," she finally managed. "You were trying to kill me."

The man finally straightened. His face bore an expression that was part suffering, part elation, part confusion. "I am sorry for that. I did not know."

"Know what?"

Now the confusion took the fore. He cocked his head. "Why, that you were her. That you were the savior. That you are Judge and Jury."

The trap seemed tighter, closer. She looked around again. Knuckles had raised to heads in salute. Several of the wounded could barely stand, and even as she watched one tottered to the side and fell. But he still saluted, even on his back he pressed fist to forehead and as he caught her eyes he murmured the thing she had heard before: "Judge." Then he added the word that she had seen others mouth, but had never quite made out. "Jury." And then a final pair of words, which made just as little sense and yet were more shocking: "Thank you."

Sword looked back at the old man. "I don't… I don't understand."

"You don't understand? How can you not –" The old man searched her face. Shook his head. "All that you have done, and you have no idea what it means." He held her gaze for another moment, then abruptly looked away. "See to the wounded."

Sword didn't know who he was talking to, but there was a flurry of movement as everyone seemed abruptly to remember that they weren't in a strange parade inspection. Salutes fell away and those that could saw to others who were wounded worse than them.

The old man, to her surprise, settled to the ground. He bent as though to sit, but as he did his suit split and shifted and smoked, and before he completed the motion he was sitting on a mechanized chair of some kind. It belched dark smoke out the back, the same smoke she had seen on the suit where she wounded it. Something ground, and the old man grimaced as though vaguely irritated at the evidence of – very minor – damage.

All that – all I could do – and I managed to barely bother him.

She also saw his legs, blasted and wasted-looking even through the cloth of his pants. And wondered anew. One thing to create a suit of armor the like of which had never been seen before. Quite another to create a suit that gifted the power of movement to the unmoving.

Who is this? What else can he do?

The old man waited. Finally, unsure what else to do, Sword sat as well. A large chunk of stone had been blasted apart during the fighting, and she settled on it as a chair.

The old man looked as though he approved. "I am Tiawan," he said.

"Sword," she answered, surprised at the sudden turn. He tried to murder me. Shall we now have tea?

"No," said the old man. "Not to us. You are not Sword to us, you are Judge and Jury – or simply Judge to some."

"You said that already. I don't understand it. I'm just Sword."

He laughed at that. A laugh so loud and strong it was hard to believe it came from such a blasted body. When he finally stopped she felt vaguely embarrassed for not understanding the joke. And as though he sensed her embarrassment, Tiawan stopped laughing suddenly and stared at her with an intensity that reminded her of the kennels – of Dogs taking one another's measure before the dealing of death began.

"The men of the Empire, the… officers and nobles…." Tiawan's face twisted at the last, and he spat to the side. "They have long had the freedom to do what they would. To our children, to our daughters."

Sword shook her head. "Malal –"

Tiawan held up his hand. "Don't speak of that monster!" The chair shifted behind him, as though sensing his sudden rage and aching to turn back to its armored shape, its true shape. Something seemed to glow beneath his shirt, as well – a dim yellow under his clothing, a spot over his heart. It pulsed once, then darkened, and as it did the chair settled into itself once again. Tiawan sighed, getting himself back under control. "You will have your time to speak your story, Judge. But now I will speak it." He looked at his legs. "The law has been in place for centuries – perhaps as long as the Empire. For centuries we have been culled, the children of the poor and the weak stolen away, to be put in the kennels – or worse. And we could do nothing."

"The law changed." The words came as a whisper.

"And nothing else. Not until you." He pointed at her. "Not until the girl who came to kill those who broke the law. Not until the dark lady with the flaming swords, who stole from the rich the lives they sought to steal from others." The puzzlement reappeared in his face. "Why would you fight me? Why would you go against me? Was your need to kill Malal so great that you would destroy any who sought the same for themselves?"

Sword blinked, not understanding what he had just said. Not for a long moment, until –

Gods, he doesn't know. Doesn't know I'm with Malal. Doesn't know I live at the palace and work for the Empire. He thought I was at the castle to kill him myself.

"It's not what you think. None of this," she said, gesturing at the wounded, the air-dock, and whatever lay beyond in Fear, "is necessary."

He frowned. "I would have thought our Judge, our champion, would understand –"

"Don't you see? I'm not the judge or the jury. I'm just the executioner."

Now it was Tiawan's turn to look confused. "But you –"

"I was acting under orders. The orders of Malal." Shock tore Tiawan's expression, and she pressed forward. "Tiawan, there are things you aren't aware of. Things you don't yet understand." The chair started to change, shifting into armor, one plate of metal at a time. Sword hurried, trying to stop the change – and the violence it promised. "Tiawan, you don't have to fight against the Empire or the Emperor." The change continued. Slowly, but she couldn't be sure if that was because he was confused or tortured, or if it was simply that he wanted her to see doom coming. She blurted out the one thing she never thought she would say. The most dangerous thing.

"Malal is already dead."

The clanking stopped as quickly as it had begun. The change didn't reverse – Tiawan was still stuck somewhere halfway between a man sitting on a chair and one encased in armor – but at least it halted. "What did you say?"

Sword looked around. The others on the air-dock had stopped moving, orienting on their leader as soon as his chair began to transform. But they hadn't moved to attack – not that there were many left who could.

More important, they were far enough away that none had heard what she had said to Tiawan… or what she was about to say next.

Sword leaned in close to the old man. He tensed, clearly expecting foul play, but she kept her hands visible, her fingers outstretched. "Tiawan, I understand your fear, your anger." She glanced around again. "Have you ever heard of the Cursed Ones?"

He nodded. "Of course. Though many have wondered if they were destroyed during the attacks that destroyed the Grand Cathedral and called up the lava to consume the Army's Acropolis. The Imperial Army was present at both, and the people all believe they were called out in force to fully and finally destroy the Cursed Ones. Surely the people have heard of no activity from them since those events."

Sword nodded. "No, they wouldn't have heard anything. Because those things happened when Malal and his Chancellor tried to wipe out the Cursed Ones and those who fought with them. But they failed. The Cursed Ones weren't destroyed, they – we – destroyed the Chancellor. We killed Malal. The Empire does not need to be overthrown, because it already has been."

"And yet Malal still sits upon the Silver Seat."

Sword shook her head. "No. One of us – a Greater Gift who was once named Smoke – transformed himself to Malal's form." She paused, sitting back. "The Cursed Ones are in charge. We are in charge. And things are changing."

Tiawan no longer looked confused. Now he looked stricken. She didn't understand. "Tiawan, this is good news. Things –"

"Yes, things are changing." He waved her words away. "So you said. But from where we sit," he said, indicating those around him, "nothing has changed. We are still taxed, our children still stolen."

"I stop the people –"

"You stop some of them. You stop those who break this new law," he said, his lips curling, "near the palace. But what of those in the outlands? In Fear, or the northern reaches? Do you think the nobles or their lieutenants ceased pillaging simply because some faraway Emperor-child told them to do so?"

Sword put her head in her hands. Tears wanted to come. She knew what he was saying was true. She and her friends had decided on a course – revolution was well and good to talk about, but too often anarchy followed, and that would be far worse – but the reality was that they were moving too slowly. Far too slowly.

And will it ever be fast enough? Can we ever change what needs to be changed, short of letting the Empire simply die and then waiting to see what will rise from the ashes.

And what if nothing does?

"We're trying," she finally said. It sounded petty. The words of a spoiled child caught not doing its chores. She abruptly thought of the paper that Malal –

(and he is Malal now, not Smoke, Smoke is gone and just the Emperor remains)

– had ordered for his wedding announcement. The expense that had gone into the making of it, magics that had cost more than some families spent in food for a year.

And was that because it was part of the charade, something the real Emperor would be expected to do? Or was it simply because he had grown accustomed to the wealth and power that his new position brought?

"Trying is not enough," said Tiawan. His voice was low, but hard. Not grandstanding or preening. Simple conviction. "Things must change. Now."

"But if they change too quickly –"

"No! There is no such thing as 'too quickly'!" The metal around him shifted, and now he was back in his seat. "You have not seen. You don't know…."

Now something cold took hold of Sword. "I don't know?" She indicated the scar on her face, the thin line running from just under her right eye to the corner of her mouth. "Do you know where I got this? The kennels. Put there, and my parents killed, because I was witness to a coup attempt upon the Emperor's house. I've forgotten more about suffering than most of you will ever know." Light began to flare under her palms, and she had to concentrate to dim the fire that wanted to brighten as weapons in her hands.

Tiawan met her gaze evenly. "I believe you," he finally said. "And I weep for you." He seemed to lose himself for a moment, thinking hard about something before finally saying, "Come." He held out a hand, and as he did the chair shifted and whirred and the armor grew once again to envelop him.

Sword stepped forward. She didn't hesitate. She was here to find out what was happening in Fear. To find a cure for Malal.

This was the man who could provide all of that. She wasn't sure anymore if he was her enemy – he very well could be. But he had what she needed.

She took his hand. Great fingers closed around hers, surprisingly gentle. Then the giant took her in his arms, cradling her like a baby. The fires at his back and feet stoked high. The rushing came.

"Where are we going?" she said. She was not afraid, which surprised her.

The metallic voice answered, "To the place where we may speak further. Where we may know each other's stories. And where I will decide whether or not to kill you."

9

"Are we going to talk about it?"

"About what?"

"About the man who tried to gut you like a fish."

Inmil looked at his sister. Maci was younger than he by several Turns, but she had always managed somehow to seem older. Especially at times like this, when she folded her arms and looked at him with a cocked head that reminded him so much of their mother.

So long. Has it been so long since she died?

For a moment, Inmil felt himself a child again. Hearing the screams of his mother as the soldiers came for her.

No, not for her. For Maci. And Mother got in the way, and then….

He refocused. Thoughts like this came occasionally – and more and more with every passing Turn. Age drove him into the past, just as it drives young men into the future. The ache to achieve was gradually burning out, replaced by a need to….

What?

"Well?"

Maci's word – and the tone she spoke in – finally pulled him fully away from the memory that had threatened to intrude. The screams, the blood… and the far worse that came after.

He turned away from her, back to the Old Book with the tree on the front – that strangely familiar tree. "Well what?" he said.

He sensed as much as saw her frown. "Don't pretend to be an idiot, Inmil." She shrugged. "Though I must admit that particular mask does fit you rather well."

Inmil shook his head, but didn't take the bait. He kept his face bent to the book. Hard enough to do, since Brother Luca was intently studying the page opposite the one Inmil was looking at, a half-dozen other Old Books spread out on the huge slab of stone that served as a table in the Archive.

Brother Luca bent a bit nearer to the page each time Maci spoke, as though to prove how much he wasn't listening by how close he could get his nose to the old paper.

"Inmil, I'm talking to you."

Inmil sighed. She wouldn't let it go. She never did. He had tried to ignore her since her very first words – not even words, really, just burbling and screaming that rubbed his young nerves raw. Even when Maci grew enough to speak – and to become very smart and even more interesting as a person – she still annoyed him.

He loved her. Gods, how he loved her.

But that didn't mean he had to like her all the time.

"Still waaaaiting, Inmil." She drew the word out, letting him know she was willing to be as irritating as need be to get her answers.

"Fine. Fine!" He pushed the book away. "What is it you wish of me, dear sister?"

"Some basic common sense, first of all." That look was still on her face: that look that told him no matter how much older he might be, somehow she had managed to become an elder sister. "What happened in the tunnels? Who was the man?"

"What man?" Maci opened her mouth – no doubt to really take him to task, but he waved her off. "I'm toying with you, dear sister." Her brows came together in irritation, and he couldn't help but smile for just a moment before growing serious. "The truth is, I've no idea."

"So you finally have total strangers trying to kill you now? It's not just me anymore?"

"So it would seem."

"It's about the book, obviously." She nodded at the Old Book, which Brother Luca had gotten close enough to that he looked like he was trying to inhale the thing.

"So it would seem," repeated Inmil. He sighed. Looked at Brother Luca and then at his sister. "I need to tell you."

"Tell us what?"

They both knew some of it. Knew about the attack that had leveled the Grand Cathedral, obviously; and though Brother Luca had never been a part of the church councils that discussed the problems in the Empire – and possible ways to stop it – he would have to actually be as blind as he was now pretending to be not to know that things were terribly wrong.

Maci knew more. She was higher-placed among the Faithful, and Inmil had confided some of his own knowledge to her. She knew that there was revolution in the wind, and that it actually had a chance of succeeding. But even she didn't know that the revolution had already occurred. Almost no one did.

"What I tell you now, I tell you in secrecy. Swear it on the Gods."

Brother Luca gave lie to his pretended avoidance of the conversation by straightening and immediately raising his hand to the square before solemnly intoning, "I so swear."

Maci was more difficult about it. Of course. Finally, though, she mirrored Brother Luca's actions.

And Inmil told them. Told them everything.

He had the great satisfaction of seeing his sister go from all-knowing to utterly stunned. Something that he had only seen once before – and this time it was under much better circumstances.

Then it was Inmil's turn to be shocked, for when he finished Brother Luca snorted and said, "Is that all?" before turning back to the Old Book.

Maci's jaw dropped in tandem with Inmil's own. They looked at one another for a moment before returning twin gazes to Brother Luca.

"Is that… all?" Maci tried to find something more to say; clearly failed.

Brother Luca barely glanced at her. "I was worried it might be something important." He shrugged. "But it has nothing to do with the Archive." Now he looked at Inmil, his eyes reflecting the bright light of the glo-globes in this cavern under Faith. "Besides, you act as though everything you say weren't obvious to anyone paying the slightest attention at all to what's been happening around us." He sighed, then mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, "This is why I prefer books."

Maci's teeth clenched so hard Inmil could hear them grinding together. "Why, you conceited…." Words failed her again, and she threw up her hands.

Inmil forgot his own astonishment long enough to enjoy his sister's.

Then he turned to Brother Luca and said, "How long have you known all this?"

Brother Luca didn't look away from the book. "You're asking the wrong questions, Father."

Inmil blinked. Brother Luca was, technically, of inferior rank in the church. And though Inmil had never stood much on formality, it was still surprising to hear such cheek – especially from someone as quiet and bookish as Brother Luca.

"What… what is the right question, then, Brother Luca?" he finally managed. Not angry. Actually rather glad to discover that Brother Luca had a personality at all – he thought the Old Books and the catacombs had drained it out of the younger man.

Brother Luca gestured for Inmil and Maci to join him. He pointed at a character in the middle of the page. "The right question is, what is that doing here?"

Inmil looked. He saw nothing but more Old words, though these were arranged rather strangely – not in straight lines, but in meandering paths that ran up, down, diagonally across the page.

"What is what doing here?" Maci asked.

Brother Luca sighed. He rotated the book a quarter-turn. "You see?" Something like excitement began coloring his voice.

"I still see nothing. Just words," said Inmil.

"Words. Yes, words," Brother Luca nodded, now obviously excited. "But not just words – they're locations." He looked around, saw only uncomprehending stares, and added, "They're a map."

"A map?" Inmil looked harder. The way the words crawled around the page, leaving large blank areas between some, thin corridors between –

He gasped. Maci saw it at the same time. "Gods," she said. "It's the catacombs. The Archive."

Brother Luca nodded. His finger stabbed down. "And what, I wonder, is this?"

A single word, separated from the others. Written in bolder letters, underlined with ink that had only faded slightly with time.

"It looks darker than the others," said Maci.

Brother Luca nodded. "That's what first drew my attention to it. And what made me reorient my perspective, since it's written sideways."

Now it was Inmil's turn to push in so close to the page he could smell the dust that clung to it. He shook his head. "It's not just darker," he said. "It's newer. Someone added this later than the rest of the book." Then he jerked back in startlement.

"What is it?" Maci asked. She held out a steadying hand, as though worried he might fall over dead.

Inmil flipped the book again. The single word was sandwiched between several lines that – now that he knew what he was looking at – clearl represented a corridor. "Do you see it?"

Maci and Brother Luca looked at it. "I know where that is," Brother Luca said.

"I think… yes, I do, too." Maci looked down one of the stone halls that led out of the cavern.

"No, not that." Inmil shook his head impatiently. He traced the "walls," then the bold line below the Old word, then several parts of the word itself. "It looks like it's just another Old word, but when you look carefully, some of it is darker."

Brother Luca's breath caught. He looked at Inmil. "It's not an Old word at all," he said, almost speaking in a reverent whisper.

Maci looked confused. "I don't see – what is it, then?"

"It's in our language," said Inmil. He traced the letters again, drawing over them in patterns that followed not the Old word, but the parts that were written in darker ink. "It says –"

And then Maci saw it. "It says, 'KEY,'" she breathed.

Brother Luca was a streak of gray, dashing down the corridor that led to… wherever it was they were going. He was panting something excitedly to himself as he ran, his robes rising up to expose rail-thin legs that looked like twin bell clappers. Inmil followed him an instant later, Maci at his side. He looked at her and smiled. Something was happening. Something important. That it was something important to all that was happening now had already been shown by it's manner of delivery, and Father Akiro's note.

But what if there was even more? What if this was something that would matter not just to the people alive here and now, but to all people? A key – a key – to the Empire? Something that would explain Ansborn's past, that would make sense of its present… and that would forever change its future?

"It could be nothing." The words came between Maci's breathless pants; Brother Luca's pace was unbelievable for someone who, so far as Inmil knew, barely left the Archive for anything. "It could just… be your… imagination. Scribbles… on a page."

"Maybe," said Inmil. But he was shaking his head at the same time. He knew what he had seen. What they had all seen.

Brother Luca turned a corner. The glo-globes in this stretch of the catacombs were sparser, dimmer. These weren't just aging, not even ancient. They were truly Old.

Like the books we can't understand. Like this place.

Like the words in the book of the tree.

Inmil and Maci turned the corner as well, then barely managed to stutter to a halt before ramming bodily into Brother Luca, who was bent over and feeling at the rocks along the side of the corridor.

The sight of his backside wasn't any more pleasant than the sight of his knobby knees had been, and in spite of himself Inmil had to stifle a guffaw.

Maci, ever more direct, said, "What are you doing?"

"Looking for the key," said Brother Luca, in a tone that indicated he was too busy to answer further questions.

Maci looked at Inmil, and he rolled his eyes. "Zealots," he said. It was enough to get Maci to smile a bit.

"What do we do?" she asked, looking around.

They were in a short length of corridor, a span between two abrupt turns in the passage. And as Inmil realized that, he also realized that – to his knowledge – there was no other place in the catacombs like this. The passages through the rock tended to be fairly straight. The occasional curve and bend, yes, but… no, he couldn't recall any other spot like this, with a short line between two hard turns. It singled the short length out.

Made it important.

Inmil turned to the wall opposite Brother Luca. Began feeling around.

"What are we looking for?" asked Maci. She sounded both confused and irritated, but joined him as he felt along the wall.

"The key," he said, glancing at Brother Luca. "Though I've no idea what that might mean."

"An actual key?" asked Maci. She found a small pock in the wall and reached her fingers in. A moment later she drew them out and kept moving, having found nothing.

But Inmil looked at the pock. He moved away from the wall, staring at the many small holes that scarred the wall. Such were abundant throughout the catacombs, holes left over from a time long-past when perhaps Faith had been a volcano, just as Fear still was.

The holes….

He reached over and took the Old Book that Brother Luca still held. The priest started to object, as though his time examining it had given him exclusive right to its care. But he silenced quickly when he saw Inmil holding the book – again at that strange angle that had allowed them to see the map, and the word that had led them here.

"What do you see?" asked Brother Luca, still speaking in the low tones of a worshipper in a Cathedral or church.

Inmil's voice was no less reverent. "I see the key."

Maci moved toward him, as did Brother Luca. They stood at his side, and again Inmil traced his fingers along the lines hidden in an Old word, which sent a message to those who would see.

"It's there," he said.

"What is?" Maci asked. She sounded as hushed as Brother Luca now. Something huge was here, something that would change the world.

Still holding the book, Inmil moved back to the wall. The pockmarks were everywhere, but if you looked… just… so, you could see it.

He put his finger in one of the holes. Nothing. Just rock. For a moment Inmil's heart sank. Was he wrong?

No. I saw the word in the book. I see it now.

Brother Luca saw it, too. "It's written in the wall." He moved ahead of Inmil, tracing invisible lines between the holes that were not just random rock formations, but a message.

Maci gasped. She moved to the wall, put a hand out, then looked at Inmil with an impish expression. "You're going to hold this over me forever, aren't you? That you saw it first."

Inmil grinned. "Probably." He moved to the next hole, feeling inside it. Like the other one, it wasn't very deep or wide – just enough to put two fingers in up to the second knuckle. And, seeing the similarity between the two, he also noted what had passed unseen for centuries. The holes that spelled the word weren't natural. Of course, they couldn't have been: nature didn't tend to send messages via geology. But now that he knew what he was looking at, Inmil also saw that the holes were a little too round, a little too similar.

Drilled.

By whom?

He, Maci, and Inmil felt all the holes. Nothing.

They widened their investigation, looking at the pocks that surrounded the nearly-unseen word. Still nothing.

They stood back, and Inmil realized that his heart had been racing almost painfully the entire time he was feeling for… whatever it was they were seeking.

Nothing.

Impossible. Why would this be here if there were nothing to find?

He heard a strange growling and was surprised to discover it was coming from his own throat. He wasn't sure whether it was the constant stress of what had been happening in the Empire over the last few months – the measured change that seemed at once so necessary and so wasteful – or perhaps just the knowledge that he was on the verge of a discovery that would make the Old Books mean something. Either way, he felt like an animal in a snare, caught by invisible ropes and kept from freedom desired and deserved.

Maci glanced at him, and in the look he saw what made him love her more than anything: understanding. Not just because they were brother and sister, but because she loved him, and knew what he had sacrificed for her – just as he would always bear the burden of knowing what she had given up for him.

She touched his shoulder lightly, then her eyes widened. "Wait," she said. She moved back to the wall and began feeling at the holes again.

"We already –" he began.

"Shh," she hissed, and kept inserting her fingers in the holes. It wasn't until she'd done so nearly a dozen times that he realized she wasn't examining them in quite the same way as before. The first time, Brother Luca, Inmil, and she had pressed at and examined all the holes, but in a haphazard fashion: whichever was closest was looked at, then the search broadened out.

This time, Maci was following a pattern.

She's writing it. She's moving as though she is writing the word on the wall.

As soon as he thought it, she reached the last point, the hole that would have been the end flourish of the "Y" in the word they were looking at and looking for.

Something clicked.

"Well, well," said a voice. Inmil jumped, as did Brother Luca. The voice was deep, male, but it belonged to neither of them. For a moment as he turned, Inmil was certain it belonged to the assassin; belonged to someone who wanted so badly to keep this secret that he would return from the grave to do so.

Then the voice continued: "I leave you alone for a little while, and what happens?"

Inmil saw the speaker even as he placed the voice, and he beamed. "Father Scieran," he said.

The old priest scowled. "I've told you, it's Brother." Then he looked at the wall, where Maci still had two fingers hooked into the last hole. "And what has your sister discovered?"

"How did you –" Brother Luca seemed nearly unhinged by Brother Scieran's appearance. "How did you get here?"

Brother Scieran beamed, and he winked. "I'm sneaky," he said conspiratorially. Then he looked at Maci. "Well, sister, don't wait on me. Finish what you've begun."

Maci nodded. She twisted her fingers a bit, as though catching hold of something in the hole that had not been there before. Then she pulled, her arms straining –

(when did we become so old?)

– and, with a grunt, yanked the wall apart.

10

People were dying, and Cloud didn't know how to stop it.

Malal was still alive. That was something.

Though exactly what it was, Cloud wasn't really sure.

When he saw the woman jump from the window, he knew it was going to be bad. She wasn't just some first-Turn soldier, some spoiled child of a minor noble. She was a woman of intellect and measured decisions. You didn't get to be a High Academic without both of those qualities.

But she had decided to end her life. To kill herself rather than face what came next. And the decision had not taken days or hours or even minutes. Mere seconds after she realized what was happening, she had thrown herself to her doom.

At first, Cloud thought she must have made a mistake. Or perhaps that whatever had begun eating away at her hand might actually have started somewhere deeper, like her mind itself. Perhaps she had gone mad.

But that couldn't be true. Someone else would have noticed, and when he and Wind spoke to the other men and women who had been working with her, none of them had had a clue anything was wrong with their colleague.

It had taken them all by surprise.

The first case happened less than a day after Malal was afflicted. The second less than an hour after that.

An hour later, three of the Academics who had been in that room were in beds of their own, unheard screams resounding in Cloud's mind.

No one was with them when they died. That seemed wrong somehow, but he understood it. Malal had been the only one hit by the darts, and yet others had contracted what some were already calling Malal's Sickness.

It was a sickness. And no one – even Cloud – wanted to catch it. So no one – not even Cloud – stayed with the sick woman and men as they died.

Though he did not completely abandon them. The infected were being kept in a trio of adjoining rooms, and as soon as the doors had been sealed shut – nailed closed so none of the stricken could lose their wits and try to leave – Cloud called for the best Strong in the castle.

A tiny man with hair so dark it was nearly black arrived and, under Cloud's direction, jammed a thick spike through each of the three rooms' doors. When he yanked the spike out of each door, it left a two-inch holes behind, through which Cloud could look.

No one wanted to be with the afflicted. Not even he.

But he would not leave them completely alone. He would watch. He would speak words of comfort to them – he was not born deaf, and speech still came fairly easily to him.

And, unlike others who might stand here, he might actually be able to remain… for the simple fact that he would not hear their terrible, terrifying screams.

Wind was at Malal's side.

No one else was in the hall.

It was just him and the unheard shrieks of the dead.

And soon even the shrieks ceased. Soon, as he moved from door to door, he saw their frenzied, panicked motions cease. Saw them finally relax – though, in truth, they were so corroded and eaten away that it was hard to really tell when that moment came. Hard to see anything of what had once been a human.

All the fault of the man in armor, and those who came with him.

He hoped Father Akiro would find some antidote to this poison in Knowledge. But almost as much, he hoped that Sword would find the man and his friends and kill them. Horribly.

Finally, only one man still screamed in his room. At least, Cloud thought it was a man. He had lost track of who was in which room, and there was no way to tell just looking at him (her?) anymore if he was a man or a woman.

The man died.

Cloud slumped. He raised a hand, gathering magic unto himself. He would call a storm, funnel it into the room. Would call forth sheets of lightning to burn all within, then rain to put out any fires. The men and women in Malal's room – including Wind – were quarantined there, so hopefully there would be no more spread of the disease.

Something moved in the corner of his eye. He turned his head and spied a guard running toward him. It was a man named Garek, one of those who were stationed in the hall outside Malal's room to make sure no one went in or came out.

Garek had learned enough Sign for basic communication – probably the reason he was chosen to come to Cloud. He wasn't supposed to be here. Cloud had given instructions to seal off the corridor with him in it, the same rules that applied to Malal's chamber.

As horrible as what had happened to Malal might be, it would be much worse if this affliction spread.

Cloud almost shouted at Garek to get out. Then changed his mind. Anyone who came in here, so close to the place where the sick had been, must stay. Even those Academics who hadn't been stricken, but were in the room with the sick man and woman, were taken into other rooms in this corridor. Cloud would have welcomed their company, had they wished to stand watch with him, but all retreated to the rooms and shut the doors.

This was a place of danger. Of death.

So why was Garek in here?

As the guard came closer, Cloud saw his face. And knew even before the other man Signed.

"Others. Sick."

"How many?" asked Cloud.

Garek said something. That happened a lot: people started a conversation in Sign with him, then he spoke and they seemed to forget that speech had not suddenly brought his hearing back.

"Sign, please," said Cloud.

Garek hesitated. His hands moved in small circles, searching for a word. Finally he settled on: "Many."

Cloud tried to quell rising panic. This could be nothing. Nothing new. It could just be people who were in the room with Malal, who had come into contact with the Academics.

It could be Wind.

He tried to banish that thought. He would be lost without her. She could not die.

"Where?" he managed to ask. Garek looked confused, so Cloud added, "Where were they found? The sick ones?"

Now despair tumbled upon him as Garek answered, "Everywhere in palace. Sickness everywhere. People afraid. People leaving."

Cloud digested that. Just a moment, but in that moment he felt the world collapsing. Felt himself grow too late.

He almost ran down the hall toward the door that would lead out.

No. Takes too long.

Instead he turned and slammed through the nearest door. The door of the woman – and he saw it was a woman, though he could only tell by the cut of her suit – who had died last. He ran for the window.

And jumped out.

Glass cut him. Slashed his arms and face. Blood ran down his cheeks. Pain came, but it was a distant thing. Something he barely felt as he plummeted, fell just as had the woman who threw herself out another window on this same floor of the palace.

Cloud had no intention of killing himself, though. He fell only a few feet, then a whirling mass of air caught him. The tornado was small – only perhaps ten feet in diameter, and most of that the eye at the center – but the air pressure shifted within it just enough to catch him. Instead of falling to his death, powerful currents of wind bore him to his destination.

The palace was inside the castle. The castle itself was a connected series of buildings, enclosing fields and free-standing structures where people lived and worked. There were stables, barracks, smithies. Garages for the palace auto-cars, a small dock where air-cars could settle.

All if it was surrounded by a tall wall. And though that wall had been breached by the recent attack, the moat beyond meant there was only one feasible way in or out.

Don't let me be too late. Please, Gods.

Cloud landed just inside the castle wall, standing directly in front of the portico that opened onto the single bridge over the moat.

Word had traveled quickly: people were already swarming toward the bridge, their eyes showing that they had heard what lay inside the castle. Chambermaids, Patches, soldiers, Smiths – all scrambled toward the exit. A few nobles and their attendants sat astride horses and tried to fight their way through, were blocked by the sheer mass of people, and then got down and ran with the crowd.

Cloud turned to the bridge. A half dozen people had already made it there. Running for the safety that lay outside the castle.

Cloud raised a hand. And the storm came in earnest.

He dropped his hand, and the small tornado that had taken him here was suddenly fifty feet across. Rain fell within it, clouds forming in miniature – a strange sight that Cloud knew from experience would terrify most people simply because of its inherent wrongness.

Good.

The tornado kept growing. Faster and faster, and Cloud was aware of that fact but only with a part of himself. It was like a hand, a part of him that operated nearly automatically, allowing him to concentrate on other things at the same time.

And what he had to do demanded his concentration. Not because it was difficult on any phsyical or intellectual level. It wasn't difficult at all.

Just terrible.

He raised his hand, and lightning sheared through the air, seeming to cleave the very heavens in two. It was early morning, the sky barely light, but now the sun was overpowered by the brightness and power of the shard that crashed down.

It hit the bridge.

The lightning had been so intense, so powerful, that most of the bridge simply disintegrated. The rest fell into the dry moat below, small pieces crashing into smaller pieces that fell among the upturned spikes below.

In an instant, the half dozen people who had been on the bridge – people who had committed no crime, and who had acted completely reasonably given the circumstances – turned into nothing more than puffs of red mist. And in the instant after that, even the mist boiled away under the heat of the lightning. There was nothing but a half-melted metal chain swinging from the outside wall, and a torn bit of wood that jutted out a few feet over the moat like a broken tooth.

The throng of people stopped running. The ones in the front halted so suddenly that the people behind knocked them over, tripped over them, fell, and were then themselves buried by the third wave of humanity.

Cloud heard nothing. But he saw people screaming, holding palms to bloody heads, cradling broken arms and legs.

He held up his hands. "Go back inside!" His magic caught the words on the wind and carried his shout, made it grow so that it overpowered the roar of humanity before him.

All but some of the wounded fell silent. Cloud repeated himself, a bit quieter this time.

A man facing him spoke. Cloud couldn't read lips like his sister, but even he managed to make out the word, "plague."

He saw a pair of soldiers break away from the side of the mob, running toward a building Cloud knew held supplies. Probably getting a ladder or a rope. That's what he would have done.

But the tornado he had first called forth had not disappeared. It had grown, and grown, and now hung over the castle like the dark eye of the Gods.

He shouted, "No one can leave. We have to stay!" Again, his amplified words went to the crowd – and to the palace beyond. He meant everyone to hear him.

Again, the man before him shouted something. His face twisted in terror-fueled rage. And again, Cloud made out a few words: "Netherworlds… can't stop us…."

Cloud's voice grew to its loudest. "You. Will. NOT. LEAVE!"

He looked up. The tornado spun, twisted its way downward. The people in the crowd raised hands over their faces, as though they might ward off what was happening. They knew they were going to die.

Cloud had no intention of killing them, though.

Not yet. I hope not at all.

But he knew he would, if it came to that.

For now, though, the tornado would hopefully suffice. It dropped down, and widened still more as it did, and then it fell around the castle. The winds spun only feet away from the walls on all sides, and everyone inside could feel the tremors that rippled through the earth. A few loose stones and mortar pulled away from the wall, flung into the sky by the wind's force.

But mostly, the wall remained as it had been.

The wall was not Cloud's intended target.

The tornado dropped into the moat, instead.

It spun faster and faster. Enough wind escaped the funnel that the people standing before him – those who remained standing – fell over and were pushed bodily backward, shoved toward the palace proper.

Only Cloud remained standing. This was his Gift, and his domain.

The tornado chewed downward, eating away at the bottom of the moat at the same time as it tore away the far edges.  Dirt and rock flew upward, spat into the castle and across the land beyond.

Then… it was gone. Suddenly, completely. As though it had never been.

But it had brought change.

The moat.

The tornado had deepened and widened it. The spires that had been within the moat were gone – torn away along with everything else down there. But the moat was still much more intimidating now, because now it was a hundred feet deep, and nearly that far across. It went right up to the spires that had encircled the moat before – the ones that served as warnings to those who would leave Ansborn. The spires, Cloud knew, extended deep below the ground, but he hadn't known how deep until now: he could see some of them, extending below the depth of the new moat, disappearing like the roots of a giant's teeth.

Cloud had, with a wave of his hand, cut himself and the others in the castle off from the rest of the world. There was no rope that could be thrown across the chasm he had created. None but an air-car or a Wanderer could bring anyone in or out.

And air-cars could be grounded by a storm, or destroyed outright if necessary.

As for Wanderers… there were none in the palace that he was aware of, so he didn't need to worry about people leaving that way. And if someone transported into the palace, well, they would just be stuck here as well.

The man in front of Cloud eyed the devastation beyond the gate. He spoke. This time Cloud didn't understand a word of it, but he could guess at the gist: You've killed us all.

Cloud spoke, one last time. "You all know there is a disease, and that it is spreading. I know you don't want to die. I don't either. But I won't let you kill the Empire. If we must die to stop the disease, then so be it." His shoulders slumped a bit. "Now go back to your rooms or your work. And pray."

It was the last two words that did it. He knew that they hoped for a miracle. That by telling them to pray he was extending to them the hope that they might live, might somehow leave this place.

A few looked like they might attack Cloud, but only until he conjured a hailstorm that drove everyone into the palace.

Then he looked out over what he had done. The deep hole he had dug.

He didn't want to die, either.

He shivered, then turned back to the palace. If he was to die, he would do it at Wind's side.

A moment later, the storm returned. Swirling clouds spun in a never-ending maelstrom around the castle walls. Dust again swirled, and the funnel extended into the sky. The sun was blocked, and the castle dwelt in a silent, funereal, and permanent twilight.

11

Brother Scieran had cheated.

Like the others – Sword, Arrow, and Father Akiro – he had started out in one of the palace's auto-cars. But unlike them, he had no intention of traveling in one for his entire mission. He hated long drives in auto-cars. And, more importantly, he wanted to get to the catacombs to help Father Inmil as fast as possible. Partly because he knew that speed was of the essence.

But, he had to admit, it was also partly because he knew that Father Akiro was going to Knowledge. And wouldn't it be nice to get back to the palace before he did?

The idea of beating his old teacher at anything was just so delicious.

He did start off in an auto-car, just like the others who were departing on their various missions. But he only drove as far as the far side of the skybridge to Faith before he stopped riding.

Because that was where – if you knew of it – you could find and use the Wandering Line.

Wanderers could transport people or objects from one place to another in the blink of an eye. But they were expensive, charging huge amounts for their services. And they could only transport something a few miles at a time. It was faster to travel with a Wanderer, certainly, but most people were willing to take the extra half hour or hour in order to save a half-Turn's pay. The only people who did use Wanderers with any regularity were the very rich, and even then their usefulness was negated by the many Screens whose magic prevented anyone from magically appearing in the homes of most of the nobles and high merchants.

Wanderers should have been one of the major parts of the Empire's infrastructure. Instead they were relegated – by others' power and by their own greed – to expensive, largely unemployed, courier dispatchers. They couldn't even transport themselves, but had to do it to others; another problem, since many people were unwilling to let someone dissolve them to nothing in the hopes of reappearing somewhere else.

No, the Wanderers were largely useless. Even when bound together by a Thread, groups of them still couldn't move things very far – they just moved bigger things those few miles. Cheaper to transport things the usual way, and usually nearly as fast.

Unless you knew about the Wandering Line. Which Scieran did.

He pulled off the skybridge and veered to the left. The main road that led to the Grand Cathedral – what had once been the Grand Cathedral, now a pile of rubble that would take a thousand Turns to rebuild – lay in front of him, but he wasn't interested in following it.

The Wandering Line did not follow the straightest path. It followed the fastest one.

The smaller road he took was still a fairly large thoroughfare, and there was a fair amount of traffic going in both directions. But in only a few minutes he took yet another turn. This one led to a much smaller road, which quickly narrowed until it was barely a path between thick growths of trees and brush on either side. Branches hung over the auto-car, a canopy that shut out the stars and made the night that had fallen seem even darker.

He kept going until the path ended. Then kept going a bit farther still. The trees looked thick here, but there was enough space between them to push on if you knew where to look.

After a long time in the forest, following twin cones of light from the glo-globes embedded in the front of the auto-car, the trees suddenly ended. In their place was a clearing, filled with grasses, and a small garden planted with the wheat and berries that were a sign of the Gods' giving and love.

In the center of it all stood a small house. More a shack, actually. But though a shack, it was also much more than it seemed.

Scieran pulled the auto-car into a well-tramped spot beside the building. He got out and, without knocking, opened the door and entered.

The woman inside looked up without surprise. Like him, she was dressed as one of the Faithful, though she wore the blue-trimmed, white robe of an Acolyte of the Mind, rather than the garb of a Knight of the Order of Chain.

She was young – not much older than Sword, he realized with a pang. He hoped Sword was all right. Priests could not marry, could not father children. Not unless they chose to leave the priesthood, which they were always allowed to do – family was important to the Faithful. Scieran had chosen to remain a priest, though that decision had cost him much. He knew he would never leave, and so would never have children of his own.

But Sword was close. If any could be a daughter without being of his body, it was she.

The Acolyte looked at him mildly, then said, "A traveler in the night?"

"As are we all, daughter," said Scieran, the words coming automatically even though it had been long Turns since he used the Wandering Line. He made the sign of Faith, his right hand touching shoulder, forehead, and other shoulder.

"Will you keep traveling?"

"I prefer to wander."

The woman – the girl – nodded. She had been reading a book by the light of a lantern, and now she closed it and stood.

"Can I offer you refreshment?" she asked. She didn't know who he was, but he had known the signs and keywords. She knew he belonged here, that he was no stranger. She knew that he was entitled to her help, and so she would give it in any way in her power.

Scieran shook his head. "Alas, daughter, I am in a hurry."

She nodded. "Where to?"

"I need to get to the Grand Cathedral."

A sadness flickered in the girl's eyes. Even though Scieran didn't know her, he rather loved her in that moment. She felt the loss of the Cathedral; felt it not merely as the pain of losing something beautiful, but as the deeper loss of a pillar upon which she had leaned. She was one of the Faithful, not just in name but in word and in deed.

He put a hand on her shoulder, squeezed it lightly, then smiled. "Things will get better, child," he said.

She nodded somberly. "You are Father Scieran, aren't you?"

He started, saying, "Brother Scieran," automatically before squinting and adding, "Do I know you?"

She shook her head. "No. But you gave my father sanctuary, long ago. He always spoke of you. Said you were a good man."

"What is his name?"

"Tir."

Scieran remembered him. A petty thief, someone who stole to feed his family in the power-mad cities near the Imperial Palace. Discovered and run out of Center by the police, appearing at Scieran's small church with a young wife with frightened, kind eyes.

"I remember him. Is he well?"

The girl's eyes answered before her words: "Dead."

"I'm sorry."

She nodded, then reached out her hands. Scieran took them. "I'll send you on, then," she said.

He nodded, his head going up…

… and then something changed…

… and when it dropped down again he was no longer in the small shack. He was, instead, in another one. It could have been the same one – the same rough furnishings, the same lanterns, the same table in the center. Only at this table it wasn't a girl, but an old man. Like the girl, he was an Acolyte of the Mind. Like her, he seemed not at all surprised to see Scieran.

"Where to?" he asked as soon as Scieran appeared before him and they went through the code words that showed Scieran belonged: that he knew of the Wandering Line and had the permissions to use it.

"The Grand Cathedral." This one didn't stop for niceties as had the woman. He simply stood, took Scieran's hands in his own, Scieran blinked…

… and somewhere between the moment where his eyes closed and then opened again, in that twinkling moment where sight died and then was reborn, he disappeared and reappeared again.

This was the Wandering Line. A series of small houses where lived Faithful who were also Wanderers. The tiny houses were all hidden away from main roads and cities, and all were close enough to one another that a Wanderer in one could transport someone to the next.

It wasn't perfect – there weren't enough Wanderers in the entire Empire to blanket all of Faith, let alone enough who were also Faithful who could be entrusted with this great secret of the church. But there were enough that people who knew the secret could get from most of the major cities of Faith to most of the others in a series of jumps that took minutes instead of hours or days.

The people at each succeeding waypoint moved quietly and quickly. The keywords were spoken, hands were clasped. A blink, a moment of darkness followed by a step into light.

Scieran thought, during one of the jumps, that that was something like the best hopes possible for this life: darkness must come, but if all went well each darkness would be followed by greater brightness.

Scieran didn't know if his realization was an omen, a portent sent by the Gods to brighten his path. He hoped so.

Please let it be so, Gods, for certainly we have passed into a place of Dark, and we need the light more than ever.

Jump, jump, jump. And then the last jump, only a few miles away from the center of Faith. The Grand Cathedral was gone, but people had not lost hope. They were trying to rebuild what had been lost. And though what they created would be different, and probably less grand to look upon, Scieran knew this: whatever they built would be theirs, in a way the Grand Cathedral had never been. Not a gift from Gods or Greater Gifts long-gone, but a thing of their own hands, their own hearts.

No longer a gift to them, but one from them – and more valuable for that.

The last small house held a young man who was asleep on a pallet in the corner. He started awake when Scieran appeared, began lurching groggily to his feet, but stopped when Scieran gestured that he should remain.

"Sleep, my boy," he said. "I will walk from here."

The young man – barely more than a boy – shook his head, even as he sank back and his eyes began to close. "I can send you…."

Scieran bent down and lay a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Sleep. Where I go, you cannot send me."

And that was true. Just as Eyes could only show people places they themselves had already seen, Wanderers could only send something or someone to a place they themselves had visited.

And there was no way this boy had ever been to the catacombs.

He left the small building – the boy already asleep and snoring lightly as he left – and started toward the place where he knew the catacombs lay. Various paths lay scattered through the lightly-forested land around the Grand Cathedral –

(How long will it be until I stop thinking as though the Cathedral still stands?

Perhaps it does still stand – if only in the hearts of the Faithful.

Perhaps that, too, is a kind of light.)

– so it was easy enough for Scieran to walk toward his destination. Or at least, it was easy enough for him to orient on his destination. The walking, as always, cost him. Since his battle with the Chancellor and with Armor – the evil man's greatest protector, though the man had been honorable and had never agreed with what the Chancellor did – walking more than a few paces at a time pained him. He had always viewed people with canes – like Father Akiro – as using something that made life easier.

It wasn't until he was forced to use one himself that he realized they were not conveniences, but necessities.

More than once he tottered and almost fell, the third leg of the cane the only thing that saved him from crashing ignominiously to the ground. After less than a league, every step was agony.

He continued on. More than that, he kept his face impassive, showing nothing of his pain.

No one is watching. Just let it out, for once.

No, the Gods watch. And you watch, Scieran. Don't let self-pity mar your face.

He pushed forward, and eventually found what he was looking for. He had been there many times – which was lucky, considering that sunlight was not even a memory by the time he hobbled to the tree he wanted. The night was dark – clouds had rolled over the sky, perhaps it would even rain – so he found the place as much by muscle memory as by sight.

A small branch that was not a branch stuck out of the side of the tree. Cunningly crafted to look like the same wood it jutted out of, but it was a key. Scieran grasped it and rotated it a half-turn away, then twisted it a full turn toward him.

A click. The tree split in half, revealing a hole in the ground with a stairway that led beneath the earth – to the catacombs. The Archive. Father Inmil and, hopefully, some answers.

Scieran moved forward, walking down the stairs. The tree re-sealed itself behind him, and as always he marveled at the skill of whatever Smith or other Gift had crafted these entrances to the caverns and passages below Faith's center.

He walked through the tunnels, enjoying the cool air of places below the earth. Glo-globes flickered, lighting his way with warmth.

The pain in his bones seemed to fall away as he closed on his final destination. Part of that, he knew, was simply his body anticipating rest. Much of it, though, was his mind anticipating the Archive. There were those who adored the place – Father Inmil and the somewhat strange Brother Luca, even Inmil's sister, Mother Maci.

Scieran did not love it so. But he found it a place of comfort. Secreted away from a world that was so often confusing and cruel. Held in the heart of the earth, kept safe by the will of the Gods.

He entered the Archive. The books were as ever – lining the walls, piled on the floor, stacked on the shelves that had been carved out of the living rock, spread across great stones that served as tables.

But there was no one in the chamber. He had expected to see Father Inmil for certain, and he had never set foot in this place – not in the last quarter-century, at least – without seeing Brother Luca bent over some tome or other.

Here, now? No one.

Scieran was about to call out when he heard voices. Speaking animatedly, the high-pitched sounds of excitement.

His own pulse quickened. They had sent the Old Book with the tree. And excited voices could only mean that answers had been found.

The acoustics of underground caverns meant it was difficult to orient on the sounds. They bounced and echoed, and Scieran took several steps down two wrong passages before moving to one where the sound was definitely stronger.

He found them. Saw them looking at the Old Book with the tree, at the wall. Saw them touching the pocks in the wall, then saw Maci moving her hands.

He recognized the pattern she traced: writing "KEY" with her fingers by following a series of the small crevices in the wall while Father Inmil and Brother Luca watched. A moment later he realized that she wasn't just tracing the indentations, she was putting her fingers inside them… pushing?

The last one. And something clicked.

Scieran could no longer resist.

"Well, well," he said. Father Inmil and Brother Luca both jumped, and Scieran felt a wonderful moment of glee – a sense of happiness that had been in short supply over the last few days. "I leave you alone for a little while, and what happens?"

Father Inmil saw him, and smiled. "Father Scieran," he said.

"I've told you, it's Brother," Scieran growled. Then he looked at Mother Maci, her fingers still sunk deep into the final hole in the word. "And what has your sister discovered?"

"How did you –" Brother Luca's eyes bulged to dangerous size. Scieran worried for a moment that they might explode. "How did you get here?"

Brother Scieran grinned and winked at him. "I'm sneaky," he said conspiratorially. None of the people in the room knew about the Wandering Line, and it wasn't his place to reveal it.

Besides, this was more fun.

He looked at Mother Maci. "Well, don't wait on me. Finish what you've begun."

She nodded slightly, then pulled. Her old arms strained and quivered, then a sharp crack broke the silence of the catacombs… and the wall fell apart.

Scieran supposed he probably looked like Brother Luca had when he first spoke. He felt his eyes widen almost painfully, his mouth gaping so broadly his cheeks hurt.

This secret place had been here as long as the catacombs themselves, of that there could be no doubt. The way the wall split was too much like the way the tree slid open to admit Scieran to the catacombs to be a coincidence. This place had been built when the rest of the caverns had been hollowed out, and by the same gifted men and women, if not the Gods themselves.

What seemed to be solid rock suddenly split from floor to ceiling, two ten-foot slabs of stone rolling back on hidden wheels, then sliding apart and disappearing behind the rest of the wall.

Behind them: a room. A single glo-globe hung from the ceiling, partially embedded in the rock. It was dim – so very dim – but it still illuminated the small room. Enough that they could see its contents: a stone table, nearly an altar; and on the table a single book.

Scieran heard Brother Luca's breath catch, and the priest stepped forward, hands outstretched eagerly. At the same time, Father Inmil grunted in unmistakable disappointment. "Just another Old Book," he muttered.

"Just another Old Book?" Brother Luca sounded confused to the point of pain. "Do you know how long it's been since one was found?"

"Since this morning," Mother Maci observed dryly.

Brother Luca looked at the book Father Inmil clutched, the tree design on its cover easily visible, and snorted. "That's not an Old Book, it's a copy." He gestured at the tome on the altar/table in the room. "This is a true Old Book."

Brother Luca still hadn't touched the book. His hands hovered only inches away, then withdrew and rubbed together as though cold.

"Well, get it then," said Scieran. He tried to make his voice light, as though whatever was happening had no real import. He failed. The words felt like stone on his lips. Like he was moving something huge, something that could never be unmoved.

Everything is about to change.

Still, Brother Luca didn't touch the volume. Not until Father Inmil said, "Oh, for the sake of –" and stepped forward himself. Then Brother Luca snatched the book off the table, hugging it to his breast as though afraid that Father Inmil might steal it away.

Mother Maci laughed at that: a soft laugh, the kind that made merry without mockery. "We won't take your treasure, Brother Luca." She, too, stepped forward. "Though it would be nice to actually see it, wouldn't it? I would like to see what this 'key' actually opens."

Luca nodded – slowly, as though deciding whether to simply take the book and run away with it. Then he put it back on the table. Scieran limped into the room: his bones and muscles had started to ache again, screaming protest with every motion.

Mother Maci followed. A moment later so did Father Inmil. The small room behind the wall brightened as he entered, and Scieran realized that his friend had plucked a glo-globe from one of the sconces in the hall, bringing it in to illuminate whatever they had found. He also placed the book with the tree on the stone table, close enough that it could be looked at if need be, but far enough to give Luca room to work.

The binding crackled as Luca pulled the front cover open, and he froze for a moment – obviously afraid he was going to damage the book. "I have better tools –"

Scieran shook his head. "Normally I would encourage you to get them, but I don't think we have that kind of time. We'll have to risk damaging the binding, I'm afraid."

Brother Luca looked absolutely scandalized at that, but he nodded a moment later and pulled the book the rest of the way open.

Scieran's heart sank, and he heard Father Inmil and Mother Maci both sigh disappointedly.

It was another Old Book. But that meant it was hidden away as surely as it had been only moments ago. Not by a hidden door of stone, but by time and the strange language of a people unknown to history.

Scieran cursed. Sometimes even a man of the Faithful loses control of his tongue.

He turned away from the table and from Brother Luca, who remained bent over the Old Book and oblivious to the world.

Mother Maci and Father Inmil followed him into the hall. Scieran eyed the place the wall had split apart and said, "How did you find this?"

The brother and sister brought him up to speed, quickly going over the message they had found hidden in the book with the tree, and how it had brought them here.

"But it brought us to nothing," Scieran muttered.

"Where did the book come from? And why would someone kill to protect it?" asked Father Inmil.

Scieran shook his head. "Sword got it. From the Chancellor, if you can –"

"The Chancellor?" Father Inmil nearly shouted the words. "But, he's dead, isn't he?"

"Not according to Sword," said Scieran. "She – wait, what do you mean, someone would kill to protect the book?"

Father Inmil looked at his sister, who shrugged. Then he told Scieran of coming to the catacomb, of being attacked by one of the men who brought it, of almost dying.

"You killed him instead?" Scieran eyed his friend. Father Inmil was not a priest-warrior of the Order of Chain; nor was he a young man. Scieran believed what he said – he had known Father Inmil long enough and well enough to trust him with his life – but he wondered how an old priest could have bested a young assassin in the dark.

Father Inmil looked at his sister, and they shared a look that Scieran could not interpret. Mother Maci dropped her eyes, and Father Inmil looked back at Scieran. "Yes," he said simply, though Scieran sensed a wealth of meaning behind the simple word.

Scieran didn't inquire further. His friend would tell him more when – if – it became necessary, and when – if – he was ready.

"But why kill to protect it? If it leads to nothing but more empty words that none can understand?"

"Because it doesn't." Brother Luca's voice sounded frenzied, each syllable an exercise in controlled hysteria. Scieran worried that the priest had seen something horrible, then realized the hysteria wasn't born of terror, but of elation. Brother Luca gestured them over. "It's the key," he said. "The key."

"What do you mean, Luca?" asked Mother Maci. "What –"

Her voice cut off so abruptly it was as though it had been slashed in pieces. She was looking at the Old Book on the table, and Scieran realized she wasn't even breathing. "Gods," she gasped.

Scieran and Father Inmil looked down as well. And now it was their turn to cease breathing, their turn to marvel.

"It's the key," said Brother Luca again. He laughed, a high-pitched, quavering giggle.

Below them, on the page Brother Luca had found, twin columns marched down in thin black lines. The first had single words. The second held paragraphs – one paragraph matched to each word.

Both columns were written in ink notably darker than that found in the rest of the book.

Added later? Scieran wondered. Of so, then by whom?

The question faded to irrelevance in the next moment.

Two columns. A single word, with a  matching paragraph beside it. The single words were Old. The unknown speech of the time before.

The paragraphs were not. The writing was strange, slanted differently than Scieran was used to, but recognizable nonetheless.

It was the language of Ansborn. And as far as he could tell….

"It's the Old words," said Mother Maci. "It's what they mean." She looked at Father Inmil, who looked at Scieran. "We can read them now," she gasped. "We can read them all."

"The key to the times before," whispered Scieran.

Brother Luca was flipping rapidly through the pages of the book. Then he frowned and opened the book with the tree on the cover. He made a strange, strangled sound.

"What?" said Scieran. "What is it?"

Luca laughed. Not a giggle this time, but a long, hard, throaty laugh that sounded out of place coming from such a slight form. "It's the answer!" he finally shouted. "Together, these books are the answer!"

"To what? Make sense, Luca!" Mother Maci looked like she was on the verge of slapping him – and Scieran understood the feeling completely.

"To everything. To who we are and where we came from!"

Inmil shouted as well then – shock, surprise, joy. The search of a lifetime about to come to fruition.

But Scieran felt only a strange fear.

The answer to who we are.

And where we come from.

Answers to questions that none in Ansborn had ever been able to reveal. And, perhaps, the revelation of whatever enemy lay beneath the clouds.

12

Sword had never traveled so quickly.

Well, she supposed she had, one time. Her first assignment as a Blessed One, her final test to see if she would serve as an assassin for the Chancellor and the Emperor. She had been transported with the others in her team – with a whole room, whole and intact – to a place near their target. Something like what a Wanderer might do, only much more powerful, moving all of them a greater distance than any of those Gifts could manage.

The Chancellor probably did it – the Phoenix who stole others' powers undoubtedly had consumed the Greater Gift of someone who could do such a thing.

So yes, she had traveled faster. But never had she moved in a way that seemed faster than this, riding in the grasp of a metal giant who flew through the air, born by flame. The wind slashed at her, cruel but somehow exhilerating at the same time. She could only look forward in quick bursts, since if she kept her eyes open too long the air drove curtains of tears down her cheeks and obscured her vision.

Even so, even in a series of blinking, weeping glimpses, she saw Fear. The magma burbling out of the dark, rocky earth. Small areas where the nomadic people of the land had cultivated gardens that would let them eke out a bare existence. A few places in the distance that were clearly Army strongholds – the only real cities that existed in this land.

And, of course, the ash shroud that hung over all. A grim place where death was the only real way of life.

The roar of the giant's fires grew, and they sped up even more. Sword had to keep her eyes closed completely now, and soon even that wasn't enough. The air battered her eyelids painfully, and she only found respite by turning her head and upper body inward, nestling against the breast of her enemy.

Is he my enemy?

He had tried to kill her. He had hurt her friends.

But he had honor. A code. He had moved to save her as fast as he had to harm her.

Where is he taking me?

He had said he would take her to where they could share their stories, but she had no idea what that might mean.

He also said he would decide then whether or not to kill me.

"Are you all right?" The mechanical voice rumbled through her frame as much as it came to her ears. "I can slow if you need."

Sword shook her head, then realized how foolish that was: there was no way Tiawan would feel that through his armor. "I'm all right!" she shouted over the rush of the air. Opening her mouth at this speed, the wind nearly sucked the breath from her lungs. She gasped, then added, "Go faster."

The last words were less a request than a hope. How much time did they still have before Malal died – if he hadn't already? And how long before more blood was spilled?

She didn't know if Tiawan heard her request or not, but the roar of the fires grew still louder and now the wind didn't just batter her, it felt like heavy weights had attached to her skeleton and were trying to yank it directly out of her flesh by way of her stomach.

She almost vomited. Managed to control her stomach and throat. Curled a bit tighter against Tiawan, and wondered how long they would fly.

It wasn't much longer. She thought. Her brain told her the last leg of the trip had gone fairly quickly, though her body argued that it had lasted a lifetime.

The fires that pushed her and Tiawan forward changed in tone. She was dimly aware of her body changing position as well. Unlike Cloud and Wind, who flew through the air as though standing upright, Tiawan's flight strung him out in a long line, face to the fore and legs behind as though he were laying on his stomach in the wind. Sword had been hanging below him, held against his chest. Now she sensed her orientation moving from horizontal to vertical.

She opened an eye. The wind was nearly gone, but she shut her eye quickly nonetheless: the land was so far below it seemed both unnatural and terrifying.

She felt her stomach pitch again as Tiawan dropped from the sky, and she almost screamed. It wasn't a need to appear brave that kept her from doing so, either, but the simple fact that she couldn't find the breath necessary to do so.

Then there was a thud. The roar of the fires all but disappeared, and a voice spoke.

"A present. Would you like me to kill her, or do you plan to do so yourself?"

Sword opened her eyes, barely able to see anything through her still-streaming tears. Turned her head.

It was the girl. Perhaps twelve Turns, dressed in the fur coats of the farthest northern reaches, seemingly oblivious to the sweltering heat of Fear. She stared at Sword with an empty expression.

But her eyes seethed. In them, Sword saw hatred. Death.

The look in the girl's eyes was so surprising, so out of place with the innocence that should have been, that Sword forgot for a moment what danger she might be in.

What happened to her?

And then, a second thought: Was I so different?

She thought so. She had been a Dog, and a Dog had to be ferocious, merciless… but not even a Dog had to hate like this girl did.

Tiawan placed Sword on the ground as his helmet slipped back and disappeared. "No one will kill her, La'ug." He eyed Sword as the suit changed back to the motorized chair that gave him movement. "At least, not yet."

Sword's eyes narrowed. She had had enough of this. She was not a girl to cower, to writhe in terror – not even when in the midst of her enemies. "You talk much of death, Tiawan," she said through gritted teeth. "So did you bring me here to kill me? If so, let's be on with it." She looked at the girl – La'ug. "Though I suppose you may be trying to bore me to death."

The girl was stroking a small ball of fur – the woolly Sword had seen earlier, which joined with her to become a monster. Now her hand froze, and the complacent mask cracked as a scowl peered through. Then she relaxed and looked to Tiawan, pointedly ignoring Sword.

Tiawan only laughed. "Little girls," he said ruefully.

"Hardly a girl," said Sword. She wasn't sure if she spoke of herself or the child with the woolly – anyone that could hold such hatred had lost what remained of their childhood.

Tiawan chuckled again. "At my age, anyone younger than fifty Turns is a girl."

Sword looked away from La'ug. Surprisingly, she saw no anger in Tiawan's face. Just amusement, and an open affection for La'ug.

It was that look that convinced Sword to relax – at least a little.

She looked around. They were in the middle of some kind of camp – groups of underfed men and women who lay in lean-to tents or beneath tarps or moved around with a clear sense of purpose.

"They're going back to Halaw," said Tiawan.

"These… these were prisoners?" asked Sword.

Again the old man chuckled. "What did you expect them to look like?" he asked. "All murderers and worse, horned heads and black souls hanging around them like ash?" He sighed. "Most of the people of Halaw are nothing more than dissidents and their families."

"People who dared speak against the Emperor." La'ug nearly spat the words, and this time Tiawan did not speak to hold her back. "People whose greatest sin was to be unhappy in a land where one man controls who may laugh, who may smile… and who dies in pain."

The woolly in her hand roused, looking around with eyes that blazed just like those of his mistress. Sword tensed, sensing that La'ug was on the verge of… whatever it was that turned her to a creature of destruction.

"Yet they return to Halaw?" Sword asked.

Tiawan nodded. "The thing that made it so terrible was the guards, the walls, the fact that they relied on others to provide all their needs. If the food didn't come, they died. If the guards shot at them from the walls, there was no one to stop them. Now the walls are down. And the guards…."

"You killed them," Sword said dully.

"Of course," said Tiawan. "They deserved to die, so die they did." He leaned toward Sword. "They were judges, juries, and executioners. But their prey were not the guilty. They hurt the weak, the helpless. And they laughed as they did."

"Not all of them," said Sword. It was true there had been – still were – corrupt men and women in the Imperial Army, just as there were still nobles who resisted the new measures Malal and her other friends had instituted in the past few months. But she had seen enough to know that many – most – of the people weren't evil. Just scared, or perhaps simply lazy. Afraid to take any course that might lead them to disfavor, or unwilling to fight against what seemed to be the easiest and safest way.

"All of them," La'ug insisted.

Tiawan nodded. "They starved the people. Any who weren't actively involved in the harm committed it by not standing up. Those who do not fight against evil agree to its commission. Those who do not struggle against injustice become themselves the unjust."

The quiet fervor in the man's voice unnerved Sword. But below that, she sensed something else, something almost… rehearsed. As though this speech had been written for him by someone else.

And who might that someone be?

"So will you kill everyone in the Empire?" Sword asked. The words were quiet, but she saw a number of the men and women around them tense, as though expecting at any minute to be destroyed – and this to be the sign of their doom.

Tiawan laughed. "Not everyone is evil as the guards around Halaw. Not everyone starves the men and women of a walled city as did the old Emperor. And," he added with a pointed expression, "not everyone helps by watching the pain and doing nothing as this 'new' Emperor does."

Sword shook her head. "Our Malal increased the disbursements to Halaw months ago. He more than doubled them when he found out about the conditions there."

"Liar!" La'ug's composure utterly cracked. The woolly scampered to her shoulder and hissed.

Sword faced her squarely. "No. I saw it done. I saw the gold leave the treasury."

Tiawan looked openly startled. Then his face settled back into cool anger. "If he did so – and I don't know that he did – then he didn't care enough to see if the people actually got the benefit of the money. He tried to solve a problem the easiest way – the way of the fool, the corrupt – with money, and with a blind eye to what was actually happening."

Sword threw up her hands in frustration. "What would you have him do?" she nearly screamed. "He is one man, and trying to fix an Empire of millions – an Empire that has run to corruption in the last century and more. Do you think he is a Greater Gift with the power to simply wave his hand and fix all in an instant? Do you think it possible –"

"I think it possible for him to do the honorable thing. To step down – and kill himself, if he really were a man of honor – and let the people rule."

Sword sighed and closed her eyes. "What do you think he has been working toward?" She opened her eyes again and saw Tiawan – even La'ug – looking at her quizzically. "The Emperor – our Emperor, the people's Emperor – has no wish to cause suffering. But that means he can't simply throw the Empire into chaos by abandoning the Silver Seat and letting things fall apart around him as people battle to see who will control what remains."

"Why not?"

The simple words, spoken in a near-whisper by Tiawan, surprised her. "Because people would die."

"People are already dying. At least this way they would be able to have a hand in the choices that led them to happiness or to a lesser reward." Tiawan pressed himself hard against the back of his chair, as though trying to push himself out of existence. As he did, his shirt fell against the spot that Sword had seen glowing yellow. She saw a bulge there, and almost asked what it was. But Tiawan relaxed, and continued, "I am not the Emperor. I have no wish to control people, nor illusions that I am worthy to do so. I wish merely to give them back their freedom." He nodded at the men and women around him. "They return to Halaw, but they return of their own will. Without the guards who murder them at every turn, with the possibility of a life." He swallowed hard. "Food is scarce, even outside the walls. Much of the water in this part of Fear is corrupt. Many will die." He aimed a hard gaze at Sword. "But they will die as their own masters. As people."

Sword tried to think of something to say. Before she could, a huge man – the child-man she had seen become a berserker who killed everyone in sight – approached. He was even bigger up close than he had seemed before, with hands the size of dinner platters and muscles that stretched and strained against the confines of his simple shirt.

She saw another bulge beneath his clothing as well, and suddenly wondered if La'ug had a similar lump under her thick coats.

The big man saw her, smiled broadly, and waved. Not the look and gesture of someone greeting a friend – it was the motion of a child opening his heart to a stranger.

Small children have no sense of other – everything is part of them, so no one is to be feared, only loved as they love themselves. And this man had frozen in that moment in his life.

Sword, strangely, envied him. She did not remember a time when the world was not composed of "I" and "they." And for most of her life, all who were "they" had also been enemies. This big man knew no such hate, no such fear. She could see in his eyes only joy, and that joy reflected doubly as he hugged Tiawan, lifting the entire chair in one hand and clutching the old man to his breast with the other.

A Strong.

But that couldn't be, could it? Strongs were all small – tiny, even.

More important, people who were Gifts had only one power. So if he was a Strong, how could he become that berserker? Even when Greater Gifts discovered they held a Second Gift – itself extremely rare – that Second Gift was always connected to the first. Sword's Great Gift was that she could wield any weapon that used her own power – bladed weapons, thrown weapons; but not guns or bows that used the weapon's own power to move – with preternatural ability and speed. Her Second Gift was the ability to call such weapons into being, blades and cudgels of flame that she could use at any time, anywhere. Her Greater Gift was skill with the weapons, her Second Gift was simply that she could never be separated from such.

Yet the big man – being a Strong was not a Greater Gift, and he should have had no more than that strength. Even if it had been such a Greater Gift, she could see no way for his Second Gift to create an unkillable monster out of him.

The big man went to La'ug, picked her up, and put her on his broad shoulder in much the same way she held her woolly. She said, "Wahy, where have you been?" as he lifted her, hugging him as she spoke the words in a tone that clearly expected no answer. There was only caring there. Love.

The girl, for the first time since Sword had seen her, looked happy. Sword didn't understand. Couldn't comprehend how people who had killed so many could share this love. How a man who injured and actively tortured her friends could command this kind of loyalty from others.

She shook her head. "I don't disagree with what you've said. At least, not that something has to be done, but –"

"But you work for a corrupt Emperor. You rest in luxury while others starve." La'ug looked disgusted.

Sword barked a quick laugh. "You know nothing of what's happening around you, little girl. And even less of me."

La'ug looked ready to climb down from Wahy's shoulder and claw out Sword's eyes. A dagger of light appeared in Sword's hands. The woolly scampered down from La'ug's shoulder to her outstretched hand, and at the same time the girl hooked her other hand around Wahy's head, nails planted firmly against his cheek. They didn't draw blood, but it was clear that with the slightest movement her nails would tear his flesh.

Sword suddenly remembered: the trio's attack at the castle. The man in the armor had come in ready for battle. But La'ug and Wahy had looked normal at first – as normal as a fur-coated girl and a man so large he was nearly a giant could appear when clambering in through a smoking crater in a giant wall.

Then they had changed. The girl had thrown the woolly in the air, and had somehow joined with it.

And Wahy – he had remained himself. Riding the monster with glee, shouting and laughing… until Arrow shot him in the head. Then he changed. He became a monster the equal of the one he rode.

It's when he's blooded. It happens when he is wounded.

Now she understood the reason for La'ug's strange hold on her friend. She was ready to turn him into a maniac even as she turned herself into a horrific monster that would no doubt come for Sword.

"La'ug!" Tiawan's voice snapped out. "Not here. There are innocents."

La'ug's visage only hardened. "We can keep him away from them." A wicked grin split her face. "We can keep him on her."

Tiawan looked suddenly tired. He turned to Sword and said, "Please. Let's not turn this bloody. Not yet, at least." He nodded at her – at the dagger of light she held. "Please," he said again.

Sword was motionless for a long moment. Then the dagger faded from existence. She held up her empty palm. But at the same time, looking evenly at La'ug, she said, "Don't ever presume to know me. You haven't earned it."

La'ug nearly threw the woolly. But Tiawan's voice snapped out. "La'ug!" The girl stopped moving, but didn't lower the creature. Nor did she let go of Wahy's cheek. "We are speaking in peace. I brought her to tell her story, so do not stop her from doing so."

"Who is she that we should listen?" spat La'ug. Wahy, finally seeming to pick up on the fact that bad things were on the verge of happening, grew suddenly serious.

"She is the Judge and Jury!" Tiawan roared. "And by that alone she has earned the right to speak and to be heard!"

La'ug's teeth ground together again, and she flung herself off Wahy's shoulder. She landed with animal grace on the hard ground, then took the big man's hand and, with a last, angry backward glance, led him away. Soon they disappeared among the crowd of people – though Sword could still see Wahy's head from time to time, well above the level of anyone else. Burdens appeared on his shoulders as he used his great strength to move things for people – presumably helping them get ready to return to Halaw.

"Are you just going to move them?"

"What?" Tiawan looked confused at her question.

"Is this an army? Are you preparing to attack the palace again?"

As soon as she said it, Sword realized the ridiculousness of the question. Tiawan snorted. "I don't need an army, child. I already went to the palace and did as I wished. When I decide to level it, my family and I will do so."

Sword noticed that he said, "When I decide to level it," and her blood felt cold inside her. Not least because she suspected he was right: what could stop them? Certainly she had failed.

A man clad in armor the like of which had never before been seen.

A child who became a beast of horrific power and force.

A man who transformed into a creature that lived only to kill, and would never die.

More than enough to level a palace.

More than enough to destroy an Empire.

13

"Wake up."

Arrow had known Colonel Alya was a soldier, and even someone without his gift for seeing the paths of things would have known she was a good one. But he was still surprised at how quickly the slim woman went from deep sleep to complete wakefulness. She sat up before he had finished speaking the two words, leaning forward and peering through the front window of the auto-car. No stretching, not so much as a single confused blink.

"What is it?"

Another surprise: she didn't say it with curiosity, she said it was caution. As though she expected bad news. Danger.

Good. Because I think we've found both.

Out loud, Arrow said, "Is this the way the Strongholds are supposed to look?"

Colonel Alya looked out the windows. The land here was craggy, but lush – a mix of the harsh rock of Fear and the verdant growth found in Center and Faith. Though itself a mountain, great spires of rock speared upward throughout the land, like taloned fingers of giants clawing their way out of the earth. A dozen of them ringed a large space on the mountain, and it was here that the Strongholds hid, cupped in the center of the giants' unseen palms.

Colonel Alya shook her head. "There should be… more than this."

Arrow nodded. "That's what I thought." He kept the auto-car moving forward, though he slowed it considerably.

They passed the first spire – the one that served as both a lookout tower and a warning to those who would enter the Strongholds without permission. Arrow had never been here before, but his father had. Creed – the real Lord of the Southern Grasslands, as far as Arrow was concerned – had served in the Army in his youth, before returning to sit in the Heathered Hall. And he had told Arrow many tales of his time – most of them centered in the Strongholds. The place where the Army trained, where men became soldiers.

"A harsh place," Arrow's father always said. "Harsh, and if you didn't look over your shoulder, you might find an enemy behind you at any time, at every turn." When Arrow was a child he would ask about that, what his father meant. It was only later that he understood that Creed had realized during his time in the Strongholds how corrupt the Empire had become. That that was when he decided to help those in need.

That the Strongholds had sent him on the path that would end with him being murdered by – of all people – Sword.

Arrow had never been here. But he had heard the stories. And what he saw now looked nothing like what his father had described.

The Strongholds Arrow's father had described was a hive of activity. Thousands of men and women training at all hours, groups leaving – dispatched to parts of the Empire where force was needed. People coming – returning from successful missions.

Now, though….

All was silent. All was dark.

Arrow's vision was beyond the understanding of others. The darkness around the auto-car was no hindrance. But as he looked, he realized he could barely see beyond the illumination provided by the auto-car.

He felt suddenly cold inside. Like part of his Gift had deserted him – though he knew that wasn't so. He could feel it, there inside him. But at the same time, it felt… muffled.

"Something's wrong," whispered Colonel Alya.

Arrow nodded, and drew the auto-car to a halt. Past the first spire of the Strongholds stood a wall. Not like the palace – this one was low to the ground, a token structure meant more to give final warning than to keep out intruders. In the known history of the Empire, no force had ever attacked the Strongholds – why would they, knowing that the strength of the Army stood there? There were many, faster ways to commit suicide than standing against the greatest fighting force in the known world.

No, the wall was simply a signal, a statement. You enter our world now, it said. And that was quite enough.

Still, though it wasn't a defensible wall, there should have been people. Forget the ones that should have been going and coming through the long gate that split its length, there should have been sentries on the wall, people walking guard.

Colonel Alya was looking behind, at the stone spire they had just passed. "There should have been a warning the second we passed the spire," she said. "The protocols demand –" She fell silent without finishing, turning to face forward again.

"There are wall guards, too, right?" Arrow already knew the answer, but he wanted verification. As though having someone else agree that things were wrong might somehow act to remove the wrongness.

"There certainly should be."

He slowed to a crawl. The darkness was oppressive, and the further they drove, the thicker it seemed.

"Do you see that?" he finally asked.

"What?"

"The dark."

Colonel Alya didn't crack the slightest smile. "It's night."

"No, there's more than that…." He shook his head. Didn't continue speaking. He couldn't really describe it to himself, let alone to someone else. The pressure behind his eyes, the feeling that something was pushing against him, that the darkness around them was more than just an absence of light. It had weight, feeling.

It had malice.

They drew even with the wall. Beyond it, Arrow could make out dozens of structures – stables, garages, smithies, command buildings, fields where training could occur, barracks. But he saw them all dimly. The darkness would not permit him any kind of detail.

And one thing he definitely did not see: any movement at all.

"Stop." Arrow jerked the auto-car to a halt, but Colonel Alya was already out the door before she finished the word. Arrow got out as well, running with her to the wall.

"What is –" But he saw. He knew.

Blood.

A wide red smear colored the gray stone of the wall beside the gate. And now that he was close enough, Arrow could see that there were holes in the stone, too: someone had been shot to death here.

He looked down the line of the wall. Ran a few steps down. Came to another smear of blood. No holes in the wall, no other clues as to what had happened. Only enough blood that it was certain whoever had been attacked had also died right here.

"What is this?" whispered Colonel Alya.

Arrow jumped. She had crept up behind him without a sound, and now stared at the second patch of blood.

"I don't know," he said. He leaned down to look closer at the blood –

(I shouldn't have to get closer. I should see it all. What's going on?)

– and dabbed at it with his finger.

"What are you doing?"

He showed her. The blood was dark, small crusts beginning to form. "This happened at least a few hours ago. The blood's starting to congeal."

Colonel Alya turned toward the darkness within the Stronghold, began running.

"Wait!" When she didn't stop, Arrow ran as well. Not after her, but to the auto-car. He didn't know what was happening here, but he didn't intend to leave the vehicle that could carry them out of here the fastest.

He got in and began driving. He saw Colonel Alya ahead, and quickly caught up with her, rolling down the window and shouting, "Stop!"

She ignored him. Just ran, faster and faster. She wasn't trying to get away from him – just ignoring him. Not even seeming to see him. Or to see the splotches of red that Arrow now noticed on the ground every few feet, or the crimson streaks painting the walls of the buildings they passed.

They sped by the garages. Big doors – not just for holding auto-cars, he realized, but probably for the larger weapons the Army had at their disposal. The flying things designed just months ago – things they called "tanks," which flew faster than an air-car, and could fire huge explosive shells from gun-like turrets mounted on them.

The doors were opened. Some of the auto-cars and a few tanks were there – smoking and destroyed. Most of them were gone.

Blood was everywhere.

Arrow looked away from the sight in time to see Colonel Alya veer off, finally entering a building – one of the barracks. He stopped the auto-car and ran after her. He didn't like leaving the auto-car, but he liked leaving Colonel Alya alone even less.

He pounded toward the barracks. A light rain began to fall, droplets touching him in the heavy darkness. He realized he had a gun in one hand, his small crossbow in the other. He held both so tightly his palms and fingers ached, and forced himself to loosen up – hard to shoot if you can't even make your fingers pull the triggers.

Then he was inside.

Dark. A few glo-globes hung from sconces along the entry room, but they had all been broken – shattered spheres with dark fluid smeared across most of them. If it weren't for the lightning that began to flash through the windows, he wouldn't have been able to make out much of anything.

Colonel Alya wasn't in here.

"Colonel?" The shout ricocheted around the room, and as it did he noticed what a mess it was. Not just blood, but the furnishings had been destroyed. Bullet holes in one wall, a trio of arrows in another.

Colonel Alya didn't answer.

There were two doors leading out of the room, deeper into the barracks. He called for Colonel Alya again, but heard nothing. He picked the door to the right – mostly because it was close to the wall with the arrows in it, and he wanted to look at them.

He did. Wished he hadn't. The arrows sunk deep into the wall, but all three of them were painted up and down with sticky red. Two of them had bits of flesh attached: meat they had pulled with them after punching completely through someone.

Arrow shuddered, and continued through the door.

A hall beyond. Even darker. Lightning flashing just enough to illuminate one step at a time. He heard his breathing, felt his pulse slamming through him from his toes to the tips of his ears.

The flickering light let him see nearly nothing, but far too much.

Broken walls.

Papers scattered.

Blood. Everywhere, blood.

He heard a sound. A soft scrape that drew his attention to a doorway just ahead. A door hung from a single hinge, askew as though grown drunk on the blood all about. Arrow moved carefully around it, keeping his crossbow pointed down the hall while pointing his gun into the room.

Dark.

All dark. That strange, heavy dark.

The lightning flashed.

Arrow screamed and almost loosed a shot.

The lightning illuminated a huddled form, crouched on the floor. Holding what looked at first like a body without head or arms or legs. Looking like a creature from the Netherworlds come not just to kill, but to take – body and soul.

The lightning flickered out, then flashed again. And now he saw what it was. What his body had already known, and the reason he hadn't shot it.

Not a monster. Not a monster.

Just Colonel Alya. And she's not holding a body. Just….

"His pillow." The words were laden with suffering, sounding almost like tears even though the colonel's face was dry. She clutched the red-soaked lump of hay-stuffed fabric closer to herself. Arrow could hear it crinkle. It sounded like tiny bones being shattered.

He didn't speak for a moment. The lightning kept flashing, and now the rain that had only threatened fell in earnest – he could hear it hammering against the ceiling of the barracks.

He wondered if it would wash away all the blood.

Never. Nothing could.

Colonel Alya looked up at him. Her face, already angular, seemed to sharpen to a knife edge. Her mouth all but disappeared, a bloodless slit slashed through a bone-white face. Then she bowed her head and pushed her face at the bloody pillow, cradling it with every part of her. When she lifted her face, it was painted as well – blood over her cheeks, her lips. Only the hollows of her eyes remained white.

She looked like a bloody skull. Arrow shivered.

"What happened here?" he asked.

He didn't expect an answer, but Colonel Alya said, "Something killed them all." She looked at the pillow, tracing it with red fingers. "Someone killed my boy."

Arrow swallowed. He almost said, "I'm sorry," but forced himself not to. He saw paths and courses – that was his Gift. And he knew that no words would help her, no kindness would soothe. She would do best in the silence.

It was the right choice. The lightning blinked on and off, creating strange shadows that writhed across the bloody walls. Arrow didn't move from where he stood, but he looked around the room. It was the main barracks room – racks of bunks lining a long space on both sides. Probably room for thirty or more soldiers.

This was the kind of space that new fighters slept. Until they had earned promotion, and were moved to better quarters.

Every bed was bloody.

Arrow looked back at the colonel, and now he spoke. "When did your son join?"

She didn't answer for a moment. Then, suddenly, as though willing herself to move because she knew that to remain would be to die, she stood and dropped the pillow at her feet.

She looked around as well, seeming to see the rest of the room for the first time. "He entered the Emperor's service three months ago." Her voice was empty, nearly toneless. But it did not shake, there was no trembling in her words.

She is strong.

Now Arrow said the words. "I am sorry."

She nodded. "As am I." Now some emotion crept into her voice: cold fury as she added, "As will be whoever did this."

She stepped away from her son's bed. Her feet crackled as she walked, and Arrow realized with dread that there was so much blood on the floor it had literally stuck to her boots.

The colonel didn't seem to notice at all. She just moved along the bunks, searching for something. Finally she grunted, bent over, and when she came up something glowed in her hand. She had found a glo-torch, the small stick with a glo-globe embedded in one end of it, and a switch that would activate a shutter to cover the light so it would not be seen unless the carrier wished to use it.

The light illuminated everything in a clear, white tone. Arrow was both happy for the continuous light and distressed at what it so clearly showed.

Colonel Alya, again, barely seemed to note the gore that covered nearly every surface in the room. She just swung the torch from side to side, looking around with an expression as neutral as if she were appraising a patch of farmland for taxing.

"Have you ever seen anything like this?" Arrow barely managed the words. He had seen death, destruction. But not like this. Nothing – not even the sight of the murdered Ears – had matched what lay around him.

"No." Colonel Alya glanced at him. "You going to be all right?"

He nodded. Sucked in a gasp of air. Clean, head-clearing. But he still sensed that strange blackness all around, pressing at him, pushing at his Gift.

What is that? It has to be related to what happened here, but how?

"What now?"

Arrow was surprised to hear the colonel ask the question. He nearly answered, "You're the colonel, you tell me." But in that instant he knew that would only draw a rebuke from her. He was a noble. He was the Lord of the Southern Grasslands, on a mission from the Emperor. He was in charge, and she was clearly a soldier, through and through: she would not let him defer to her. He was the leader, so lead he must.

He looked around. "Where are the bodies?" he whispered.

Again, he didn't expect an answer. Again, she gave one. "Gone, Lord." Her words had become formal, as well: she was hiding from her shock and terror behind a wall of procedure and rules. "But that is not the question we should be asking, if I may be so bold."

"Don't rest on formality, Colonel. What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that we don't need to know where the bodies are, so much as who could do something like this. And why."

Arrow nodded, then turned to leave. Colonel Alya followed him without a word, only looking back at the bed where her son had slept for the shortest instant.

They went back to the front room.

The world was a thing of moments, of intersections occurring at varying speeds.

And I understand them. Where things come from. Where they are going. How to shoot a weapon and –

He had closed his eyes for a moment as he thought. Now they snapped open and he turned to look at the three arrows on the wall. The grouping and the angles told a story. He read the story, and then turned.

"Do you see something, Lord?" asked Colonel Alya. Her voice sounded a bit more alive. Hoping for him to find something that would let her avenge what had happened.

"The arrows were all Army-issued. Standard for a longbow. Shot by three different people, nearly in the same instant." He pointed at three different spots in the room. "From there, there, and there."

"Whoever did this was well-trained, then." She shrugged. "But that was already obvious. They would have to be well-trained, to destroy the Strongholds so completely, to kill everyone in them without a single person escaping to give the warning to the rest of us. I just reported to the skybridge yesterday, and before that I was here. So whatever happened, it happened in a matter of hours." She shook her head. "I don't see how that's possible."

"Not hours." Arrow moved between the three spots where the arrow shots had to have come from.

"What?"

"Minutes." He knelt at each spot. There was a wide swatch of blood at each point of origin. Two of them had long streaks coming off the main patch of red. The other had a series of smaller patches leading to the first. Then a boot-print in the middle of the blood.

"What do you mean, minutes?" Colonel Alya shook her head. "That's… that's not possible."

Arrow barely heard her. He moved to another spot in the room.

No. No. Not this, no. Anything but this.

He found another splash of red – this time against the wall. Almost none on the floor. His gut turned.

No.

"This was where the bullets were fired." He wasn't talking to Colonel Alya. Not really. He was speaking to keep from screaming.

No. NO!

(Moments. Intersections. Paths.)

He moved away from the spot, turning to see what he already knew would be there: a broken window.

He ran out of the barracks. The rain lashed his face, water saturating his hair and coursing down forehead, cheeks, chin, neck.

He ran faster. The blood would wash away. And he needed the blood to know.

You already know.

No. Perhaps not. Perhaps –

You KNOW.

Colonel Alya followed him as he ran from place to place, using the torch to illuminate his path as he ran. She didn't speak, clearly not understanding what was happening, but just as clearly knowing it was something important. Critical.

Arrow ran through the Strongholds. They were massive, and he didn't know if he would be able to follow what happened far enough back.

The paths are disappearing. The intersections fading.

Lightning glared, blinding him. The darkness loomed, suffocating him. And the fear he felt made him want to crawl away.

He thought of Sword. What she would do if she were here.

She wouldn't give up. Wouldn't stop. And she wouldn't believe I would, either.

He forced himself onward, moving from path to path, intersection to intersection. Trying to live up to what Sword thought of him; to be as brave and good as she constantly told him he was.

I'm not who she thinks I am.

Not as good.

Just me.

His thoughts grew quiet. The sounds of rain and thunder and boots in mud disappeared.

Just me… will have to be enough.

He knelt.

They were back at the gate that split the long, low wall around the Strongholds. Back at the first patch of blood that they had seen.

"What is it?" breathed the colonel. "What do you see?"

Arrow spoke, still on his knees and still looking for the one thing that would tell him beyond any doubt what he already knew. "The people in the barracks were part of a chain."

Colonel Alya stiffened. "What do you mean?" she asked in a hushed tone.

Arrow looked away from his investigation for a moment, his features softening. I'm talking about her son.

"We're all part of a chain, Colonel," he said softly. "Everyone alive is part of many chains. People come together and forge bonds. Some are good, some not so much. But they link us together in chains of events, of moments. And just as with any other chain, if you pull it just right, the rest of the links can be felt. You can follow each chain to its beginning, or its end."

He looked away from her. Partly to keep looking on the ground nearby, but partly to avoid her eyes. "Your son – everyone in this base – was part of one great chain."

"The Imperial Army."

"No. Well, yes. But the chain I'm talking about is the chain of murder that happened here in the last few hours. The arrows in the barracks were fired by three different people. Those three shooters fell, as well."

"So our soldiers fought back. We sold our lives dearly."

Arrow grimaced. The dirt around was wetting, turning to mud. All the clues it might hold rapidly falling away. "No."

"But you said –"

"I said they fell. I didn't say the soldiers did it. They fell, shot by people outside the barracks. And those people were killed by others, and those by others. A chain of death, unbroken."

"That is war," said the colonel.

"No," said Arrow. "Because the chain ran the wrong direction."

"What do you mean?"

"It didn't run in the way of one man killing another, then being killed himself in turn." He paused, his eyes widening.

Oh, no.

"Then how did it run?"

Arrow moved to the wall. The clue wasn't in the dirt after all. It was sitting there, under a bit of ripped cloth. He saw what it was, but couldn't find the strength to move the cloth. He didn't want to reveal what it hid, as though refusal to throw it open to the sky might keepit from becoming real.

No.

"The chain ran backward," he said, and felt like he was speaking in a dream. "A man killed someone, who then killed someone, who then killed someone else."

"Wait – you're saying that the people who killed the soldiers here… were already dead?"

Arrow nodded. "I followed the chain back to here." He gestured at the bloodstain on the wall. "This man was the first. He died. Killed by…." His throat ran dry. He swallowed and started again. "Then, after being killed, he murdered his fellow guard." He pointed at the next splash of red on the wall. "They moved away, and killed others, who killed others, who killed others. Eventually bullets flew into the barracks and killed three bowmen. They fell, then stood again – you can even see one of their bootprints in the center of the carnage as they stand after losing too much blood to live. They shot another man, who wrenched himself off the arrows that impaled him. Then they all continued down the hall to…." He swallowed again. Not wanting to say out loud what had happened to the colonel's son.

I know what it is to lose my family. Please, Gods, help her through this.

Help me through this.

"What could do that?" Colonel Alya's voice finally sounded as dry as Arrow's.

Arrow finally did what he needed to do. He pulled aside the bit of fabric – cloth torn from the uniform of a dead man – and revealed what lay beneath.

He had thought he might find a footprint. A large one, maybe, alongside a small one.

But the footprints were gone.

And this was much worse.

Colonel Alya shuddered.

The doll lay, face up to the rain. Burned and tortured, one eye burned out, the other intact but the wood of the doll's face gouged heavily as though some beast had tried to claw out the glass orb. The hair was torn, shredded. The dress singed and brown. The doll's arms and legs had been meticulously broken, so that two of them were too short and the others faced the wrong direction. A nightmare.

"What is it?" Ayala asked.

"A poppet."

14

Akiro drove through three more towns. In each, he stopped the auto-car in the plaza or market – whatever seemed to be the center of the town. In the first one, he called as loudly as he could, "Is anyone here? Anyone?"

He hated how old his voice sounded. How feeble. When he was young he could have shouted loudly enough to be heard in the entire town and well into the farmlands beyond. Now, his voice quivered and quavered and barely carried beyond the open space surrounding the market.

No one answered. Just silence, and the low whisper of wind over dirt, through empty structures.

And worse than empty. He felt not as though he were walking through a town whose people had left for a time. Rather, it was as though he walked through a cemetery. A place of the dead, but never hallowed by prayer or blessing. An obscene place, where the dead lay quiet, unmoving, but still somehow alive in angry memory.

(Look what you did. Look what you failed to do.)

He wasn't sure if the voice in his mind came from his own thoughts, from the Gods, or from something darker. He – like all the others who knew of what had happened only months ago – worried about what they had done. Knowing they were doing the best they could, but still wondering if that best had been merely to replace a corrupt, evil government with one that was slightly less corrupt, slightly less evil – but still far from the good they had hoped for.

He had never asked them about it. But he saw it, on all their faces. Especially Sword, who seemed to bear each pain suffered by any in the Empire. Who seemed to feel each injustice as a physical attack, a stab to a heart that had only survived this long because of its greatness.

Akiro returned to the auto-car, and in the next two towns he did not call out. Because of Cai's face.

The young boy was curled in the footspace in front of the seat, only his eyes visible above the blanket he had wrapped around him. He was shaking, and tears streamed from his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Akiro said softly as he got in. He knew instinctively that his shout had terrified the child.

So much. He's been through so much tonight.

And may soon see worse.

In the next two towns, Akiro still got out of the auto-car. But no calls, no shouts. He walked up and down a few of the streets. Tried the doors of the homes and shops he passed.

No one greeted him. Not too surprising – it was the middle of the night. But when he tried some of the doors, not all were locked. He went into every one that opened to his hand, and found only empty rooms, only beds still made and unslept-in.

A few of the houses showed signs of struggles. Not much, but a chair knocked over here or food scattered across a table there.

One house – another that clearly belonged to someone who had trained at the University, full of books and papers – had a message left inside. A paper on a writing desk, with quickly-scrawled words that stood out in dark letters:

THE GODS

A thumbprint smudged the last letter – red, the author of the message clearly wounded somehow when he or she wrote the note.

Akiro stared at the linen paper for a long time. He might have stayed there forever, terror and confusion rooting him to the spot. Only the thought of Cai, shivering in the auto-car, drove him back outside.

Town past town.

All empty. Save the ghosts – of whoever had lived there, or (worse) of whatever had happened to them.

Had lived? Had?

Akiro realized as he drove that he was already thinking about the people in the towns as dead. Not just gone, but dead.

Please, Gods, let it be not so.

The Gods were silent.

He drove on.

He thought about returning to the palace.

And what would that accomplish?

Going back would take another day, and what would he say? That the people in some small towns were gone? That he had found a boy, but that boy didn't know what had happened?

The palace would just send out people to find out what had happened – people who would take another day to discover what Akiro already knew.

Besides, there was something more important at the end of his trip. And it wasn't that he was hoping to find a cure for Malal's affliction at the Great University – though he certainly did hope for that.

No, what he needed to discover, as quickly as possible, was whether there was anyone at the University. Or if they had all disappeared as well. As impossible-seeming as the disappearance of a few thousand people in several towns in Knowledge might be… if he found the same to be true at the University, it would be a shattering event.

He realized too late what was happening. That his exhaustion had conspired with his fears to cause him to forget what he was actually doing now.

A sudden grinding pulled him out of his reverie. The auto-car had been listing to the side, allowed to slowly move off the road under Akiro's inattention. Now it hit a small mound of rocks, stuttered, and slammed suddenly to the other side. Cai, who had ridden silently beside him since before the towns, cried out suddenly.

The wheel spun under Akiro's hands. The auto-car bounced off the road, over a small incline, and straight at a heavy wall that separated someone's farm from the road.

He tried to stop the auto-car, the levers that controlled the forward motion had jammed.

He heard a squeak – the unmistakable sound of the auto-car's passenger door opening. Looked over to see Cai leaning out. He almost shouted, yelled for the boy not to jump. Then realized that Cai might have the right idea. They might break bones if they jumped – probably all of them, in Akiro's case, given his age – but that would be better than flying through the front windshield and flaying the skin from their bones before hitting the wall itself.

The auto-car ground to a halt.

Akiro almost bounced off the steering wheel. He looked at the levers in shock: they still showed the auto-car in full forward.

"Why isn't it…?" He looked to the passenger seat, surprised to see Cai still there.

Even more surprised to see the boy halfway out the open door. Leaning headfirst toward the ground, his right hand dipped down, below Akiro's sight, his left gripping the metal frame around the open door.

Akiro realized in that moment that the metal was bent around Cai's fingers. Curved around them like butter.

"A Strong?"

Akiro didn't even realize he had said the words out loud until Cai grunted. "Yes. You might want to get out."

As if to confirm his words, the auto-car lurched forward. Metal shrieked as Cai pulled against it.

Akiro flung himself out of the vehicle, barely managing to grab his canes before yanking himself bodily to the ground outside. As he fell to the earth, he saw Cai's other hand – buried deep in the ground, with a long furrow trailing behind it. He had used his great strength to create an anchor of himself, pulling against the ground itself until he brought the auto-car to a halt.

Cai saw him, too, and as soon as he did he rolled out of the auto-car. The instant he let go, the vehicle hurtled forward, barely missing rolling over the boy with its rear wheels as it passed.

Only a short journey before it found its way to the wall. But long enough that by the time it hit the thick stone barrier, its speed was great enough to utterly crumple the heavy metal vehicle.

That could have been us.

Akiro stared at the mess of metal and glass and rock, amazed that he had avoided being mashed to a pulp in the middle of it. He looked at Cai. "Thank you, boy."

Cai nodded somberly. Got to his feet and brushed off his suit and vest – which Akiro thought was a bit of a wasted effort, given how dirty it all was from the child's stay under the floorboards.

When the Gods came for his family.

Cai saved him from thinking further about that. He went to Akiro and held out a hand, then gently but firmly hauled the old man to his feet.

"Thank you," Akiro said again. He glanced at the auto-car.

"What happened?" asked Cai.

"Well, I –"

"You fell asleep." It wasn't a question.

"I fell asleep."

Cai shrugged. "My father always said if you didn't fall asleep at your table, you probably weren't working hard enough."

Akiro smiled at that. This is a good boy. Please, Gods, let his parents come back to give him more wisdom.

Cai managed to smile back – a welcome sight, given how terrified he had been through the journey. "What do we do now?" he asked.

Akiro had already told him they were bound for the Great University. Though he hadn't told the boy all the reasons he wanted to go there. Only that there might be help there, as well as answers.

Akiro picked up his canes from where they lay nearby. "We walk."

"Is it far?"

Akiro shook his head. "We're almost there."

He began walking. Halfway back to the road, he felt Cai's hands circle his waist. The child was walking behind him, close enough that it was awkward for Akiro to time his gait to the steps of the smaller boy. But he didn't complain, because he immediately felt lighter.

The boy was carrying him. Or near enough that it made little difference.

"A Strong," mused Akiro. "Rare."

People in Knowledge who were either born as or later discovered to be Gifts almost always went as soon as feasible to the Great University for training. That was one of the University's purposes: to teach Gifts how to best use their magic, how to create and build and improve.

There was also the fact that fewer people turned up as Gifts in Knowledge than in any of the other four States of Ansborn. No one knew why that was – the Academics had been studying it for generations, and none had ever come up with an answer.

So because few Gifts were found in Knowledge, and the few who were discovered went quickly to the University for training, it was unusual to see anyone with an active Gift in any of the cities or towns. People did things largely without magic in Knowledge – the Great University being an exception – and if you found a Gift it was usually someone passing through. Someone who was either performing a service he or she had been contracted to do, a Gift going to the University for training, or one leaving to make his or her living in one of the other States.

Cai nodded at Akiro's comment. "Mother wanted me to learn her trade before I left. At least enough to be useful as a man as well as a Gift. Father disagreed, but…." He shrugged, almost embarrassed. "Mother always gets her way." His voice grew restrained. "She always did, anyway."

Akiro forced a jovial tone. "Don't count her as lost yet, my boy."

Cai said nothing. Just kept holding Akiro up, bearing him forward.

They walked for a few hours. Long enough that dawn peeked over the horizon. Akiro's every bone ached, his every muscle shrieked in pain. He said nothing, though. Cai had borne all this pain – and more – and said nothing. He would not disrespect the child's strength by showing his own weakness.

The University was unlike many of the other major structures in Ansborn. It had not the grandeur of the Imperial Palace. It lacked the sense of grace that any felt when beholding the Grand Cathedral. There was no sense of power or foreboding, as one could feel when walking among the spires that surrounded the Imperial Strongholds.

The Great University was simply… a place. Buildings, mostly low and compact, that spread along a great plain atop Knowledge. Many were classrooms. Some held archives – books of history, of medicine, of art, of magic. Others contained research areas where the High Academics worked on projects that improved crops, exploited magics to their highest potential, aided the Empire in its quest to survive atop the mountains.

Cai stopped propelling him forward when he first saw the buildings in the distance. Because they were so small, they were actually quite close: it wasn't like the Grand Cathedral, which was visible for miles.

Akiro pointed at a cluster of buildings in the center. "There," he said, and again Cai bore his weight, just allowing Akiro to step lightly enough that he could guide himself.

He realized how mature that was. Surely Cai could have just carried him, as easily as a man carries a baby. And it would have been simpler for the child, as well – easier to simply lift a burden than to walk awkwardly the way they had over the last hours. But Cai had chosen instead to lend his strength while at the same time preserving Akiro's dignity. He helped, but did not steal the old priest's ability to control his own steps, to take his own path.

Extraordinary boy. And more a man than many I have met.

They moved forward.

And Akiro's heart sank. He heard Cai make a strangled noise behind him, as well, and knew the child had seen what he had: nothing.

The Great University, like the towns they had passed – like Cai's own home – was empty.

Still, Akiro managed to keep marching forward. Managed to keep his fear in check.

Until they passed the first small building.

It was a greeting booth: just a small kiosk with an open window where first-time visitors to the University could stop by and ask questions. Usually housed by students training to be Academics, it was where you went to find out where a specific person was, where you needed to go to discover particular research. The smiling face that represented a place dedicated to learning above all else.

The kiosk was empty. No smiling young men or women, dressed in their suits and vests and ties, no jaunty fedoras perched atop their heads.

But though there was no one in the booth, that didn't mean there was no information. Someone had left a note behind. A smeared word, written in the pencils favored by students.

Akiro saw the word. He felt Cai's arms tighten around his waist and knew the boy had seen it, too.

"What does it mean?" whispered Cai. "What is happening, Father?"

"Only the Gods know," said Akiro, and immediately regretted his choice of words. Because that was the word. Black letters, scrawled on the side of a small white building. Easy to read in the brightening morning, but pulling a shade over his heart.

GODS

15

Sword felt like she was swimming in a circular pool. Going around and around and not getting anywhere at all, just becoming a bit more exhausted with every turn.

"We can't move faster. Either we keep the beauracracy intact, and we move slowly, or we get rid of the whole thing and watch the Empire fall into utter chaos."

For what felt like the millionth time, Tiawan crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head. He added a snort this time, so at least there was a small bit of difference – for which Sword was oddly grateful.

"And I already told you: let chaos come. It couldn't be worse than this." Tiawan gestured at the people all around, still preparing for the voluntary return to a city that had been their prison.

His chair belched black smoke again. It hadn't stopped since they landed in the camp, though Sword wasn't sure if he even noticed it. The dark smoke rolled over him, billowing out and down in a cloud that engulfed him for a moment before blowing away on the hot breeze that swept the volcanic plains of Fear.

Tiawan must have grown tired of the round-and-round nature of their talk, as well. He coughed and finally acknowledged the smoke, waving a hand through it and cursing when it failed to dispel fast enough. "La'ug!" he shouted.

The girl materialized in only a moment. "Yes, Tee?" she said.

"Where's Wahy?"

La'ug pointed toward a pair of carts. Wahy was there, loading two huge baskets into them – baskets that were each as large as he and looked to weigh at least as much. But he didn't even seem to strain, just lifted and shoved them into place.

"Get him," said Tiawan. La'ug ran to the cart, and Tiawan waited for her to return with the giant man. Then he turned and began pulling at his chair.

No one spoke, and for a moment Sword wondered why he had called the other two over. Then she realized why, in the same moment that Tiawan saw her looking at them all.

"You think I'm going to leave myself helpless in front of you?" He shook his head. "Not even if you are Judge and Jury. I'm not stupid." With a grunt, he pulled the back of his chair apart. The sound of gears turning and fires being stoked died instantly, and though the wheels of the chair didn't move at all, they seemed somehow more inert than they had been. The chair – and the armor it could become – were disabled.

Tiawan turned back to her, holding a gear and a piece of machinery that Sword couldn't identify. Both were blackened and twisted, and the machinery had a smoking hole in one part of it.

Tiawan eyed her almost admiringly. "Didn't even think that was possible."

"What?"

"For someone to breach my work." He put the machinery on his lap, then grabbed hold of the gear, and it seemed to suddenly lose its strength. To become not hard, strong metal, but some soft material as pliant as potter's clay. He worked it between his fingers, shaping it into a formless sphere, then back to the original gear – only now without the bent teeth. There were still blackened patches, but they no longer seemed to matter, more decorative than anything that would harm the strength of the piece.

He put the gear back into its place in the chair behind him. Then took up the bit of machinery and started to disassemble it, the metal again turning soft as tallow beneath his fingers.

Sword had been arguing with him through the night. Telling him to give the new regime time, receiving only taciturn statements to the effect that time only brought slow pain. And so why not get it over at once? Destroy the Emperor – no matter whether it be the real one or an impostor placed there by the Cursed Ones – and let the people of Ansborn sort themselves out.

She told him – told him again and again – that that amounted to murder on a massive scale. "The people have nowhere to run to, nowhere to flee the wars that would come. We have to be careful, we have to be –"

"Cowards," he spat – spat again and again – and so they went, around and around.

Now, watching him work the metal with bare fingers in a way impossible to all but a few, she tried another tack.

Machine pieces lay across Tiawan's lap in precisely-ordered patterns, ready to be put back together. Sword moved a bit closer to him, straining to look. La'ug took hold of Wahy's wrist, her fingernails hooked into his flesh, ready to turn him into a berserker. She also held out the woolly she held.

Sword rolled her eyes. "Gods, girl, I'm not going to do anything. Not yet."

Tiawan looked at her now, a long, calculating moment.

"I just want to see," said Sword. She gestured at the tiny parts. "I've never seen anything like that. Amazing." She added the last on impulse.

It worked. Tiawan, it seemed, was no more immune to flattery than were most. He nodded at La'ug, who stepped back – reluctantly. But not too far. And she kept her hand clamped on Wahy's huge wrist. For his part, the big man just grinned emptily and reached over to pet La'ug's woolly.

Sword moved a tiny bit closer. "You're a Smith," she said. Then, looking at Wahy, she said, "And a Strong." She switched her gaze to La'ug and, looking at the woolly in the girl's hands, she said, "And a Critter."

The last was purely a guess. She hadn't seen La'ug actually talk to the woolly, but there was a definite connection between them, and certainly the small creature acted like it understood the girl's unspoken requests.

Tiawan revealed nothing. His face was a mask as he continued pulling the machinery apart, then began carefully putting it back together again. And of course, Wahy's own expression was just as blank – though more cheerful.

La'ug, though…. The girl was careful, but still young. When Sword called out each of the Gifts, her gaze flickered. Surprise replaced the anger in her expression, if only for an instant. And when Sword called her a Critter, that surprise nearly gave way to shock.

Sword looked back at Tiawan. He put the finishing touches on his work, then replaced the machinery in a slot in the back of his chair. There was a whoosh! and the rumble of perfectly-calibrated gears, and Sword knew the warrior had been reborn.

Tiawan looked back at her. Saw that she knew she had guessed correctly, and shrugged. "Yes," he said. He waited.

"But how is that possible?" she asked. "How do you have more than one Gift? How can she be a Critter and also change to that… thing?" La'ug bridled at that, but Sword ignored her, turning to Wahy. "How can he be a Strong and also turn into the killer I saw at the palace?" She returned her gaze to Tiawan. "At least what you do makes sense: you're still working with fire and air and metal – though I've never seen a Smith that does anything close to what you can."

Tiawan shrugged again. "No," he said. "There is no Smith like me. Nor a Critter like La'ug nor another Strong like Wahy. We are…." He paused, feeling for a word. "A man once called us unique."

She wondered who that man was. Thought about asking, but instead she pointed at his chest. She was going to say, "It's that, isn't it? That's what makes you 'unique'?" about whatever it was that she had seen glowing there.

She didn't have the chance.

As soon as her finger moved toward him, Tiawan jerked back. The chair slammed and shifted, encasing him in metal and turning him from a chair-bound cripple to a towering warrior of fire and steel.

La'ug moved, too. She threw the woolly in the air, then there was a golden glow and a flash of color and Sword found herself facing not just the armored warrior but the panting beast that La'ug had become. Its many-jointed limbs shifted anxiously, and its mouth opened wide enough to bite a grown man in half.

Wahy didn't move, other than to blink and look a bit confused. Whether because she had taken Tiawan's earlier warning about other people in the camp being harmed to heart, or because she had just moved too fast to spill his blood, the man-child remained himself – unbroken, unbleeding, unchanged.

The woolly creature, though, stepped toward Sword, rage blazing from eyes trapped halfway between human and animal.

She ignored it. Looked beyond it, to Tiawan's hulking form. She was peripherally aware of movement all around her: the people of the makeshift camp. Half of them moving to help with whatever weapons they had, the other half fleeing as fast as they could.

Sword didn't want bloodshed. Not here. Not now.

And especially not mine.

"I wasn't going to hurt you," she said to Tiawan. "I'm just trying to understand."

The woolly creature growled, a deep, throaty growl of rage and bloodlust.

Sword kept pretending La'ug – what had been La'ug – was not there. Only she and Tiawan had any chance of changing the course that had been set, so only she and Tiawan existed in this moment. "You are unique," she said. "You and your family," she said, using the term he had used earlier, though she did not know if they were actual family or merely family in a cause, "have great power. And you could use it to help us. To help everyone. Come, see what we're doing. Decide after you know all there is, instead of just the small piece you've seen."

The woolly creature took one more step. Close enough that Sword could feel its hot breath on her.

Sword concentrated on not calling forth her weapons. She looked at Tiawan. "Please," she said. "I ask only for you to know what is happening, rather than what you think is happening. Meet the people who now surround the Emperor. Meet the Cursed Ones."

A clawed hand raised. Ready to drop on her, slash her to bits. Wahy laughed and clapped, not understanding what was happening but excited by it.

The creature's clawed hand dropped. It was huge, the size of Sword's head. It slashed through the air, a downward arc that would tear out her throat.

Sword didn't shy away. Didn't dodge.

But the clawed hand didn't reach her. It stopped only a few inches away from her throat, hanging in mid-air, impaled by the glowing weapon Sword held. It was a dagger, but with an extra-large handguard that served to block the crushing attack of the creature's hand. The thing howled.

"I don't want to fight you," Sword said through gritted teeth. Then she grinned tightly and added, "But I don't have to let you kill me, either." She flicked her wrist and drove the dagger down. It lengthened into something like a lance as she did, the blade extending in an arcing line of flame that stabbed deep into the dark, rocky earth, effectively nailing the creature's hand to the ground.

The woolly creature screamed, a roar so loud that it hurt Sword's ears. She heard Wahy scream as well, the man-child afraid of the noise and the sight of his playmate hurt. He moved toward them, and Sword tensed, worried that she might have to brace all three of them at once.

I couldn't beat one of them before. How am I to survive this?

The woolly creature screeched and lurched back and forth, trying to loose itself from the bond Sword had fashioned. The spike of light held, but Sword could see the rock itself grinding to pieces, and knew the creature wouldn't remain captive much longer.

Only Tiawan remained motionless, his helm oriented on her but nothing of his features or expression visible behind the metal.

Wahy ran forward….

La'ug – what had been La'ug – rocked back and forth, and the rock splintered apart….

Tiawan's helm snapped open, disappearing into the back of the suit. "Stop," he said. Then, louder, "Stop!"

Wahy skidded to a halt only a few inches behind Sword. La'ug stopped roaring just as suddenly, then swayed on her padded feet as though suddenly drunk. Something under the fur of the creature – just over where its heart should be – glowed yellow. Sword saw a yellow glow under Tiawan's chin, as well: the light at his chest illuminating upward through the cracks and crevices to escape at the neck of his suit of armor.

What is that?

Tiawan put a hand on La'ug's shoulder. The giant thing shivered and snarled, but still did not move. The yellow glow at its breast increased. "Don't, child." He looked at Sword. "Will you release her?"

"Can she keep her temper?"

Tiawan smiled as though she had just told a clever joke. "Little girls," he murmured, but there was no malice that Sword could hear. If anything, she seemed to have impressed him with her ability to face a challenge without overreacting.

I wonder how respectful he would be if he knew how close I was to wetting myself right now.

She concentrated on keeping her face neutral. On looking like neither predator nor prey. Just an equal.

Tiawan put a huge, metal hand on La'ug's shoulder. He whispered into her ear. As he did, the yellow glow disappeared from within his armor, and the glow died on her chest, as well.

Sword thought she saw something there, shifting under the fur. Just a glimpse, just an instant.

A jewel?

Impossible. What she saw was easily the size of a man's fist. And though such a thing could have been hung from a sturdy chain, then it would have bounced and shifted with every movement of the wearer. What she saw on La'ug's chest was stationary. And the only way for that to be possible was –

"You may free her now," said Tiawan.

Sword didn't move. She kept a tight grip on the hilt of the lance/dagger/spike that had La'ug pinned. The creature growled, and the blood flowing from her wound hissed and spat as it flowed down the flaming length of the weapon.

Sword concentrated, and the weapon cooled. But she still didn't release her grip. Just stared evenly at Tiawan.

He looked irritated for a moment, then took a small step back and added, "Please."

It was what she had been waiting for: a sign that he regarded her as she was trying to regard him: not as something less or more, but as an equal.

"Of course, Master Tiawan." The trail of light disappeared instantly. La'ug growled, her skull splitting apart to show a mouth too wide to be possible, crammed tight with too many teeth to be real. But she didn't move toward Sword, just pulled her wounded hand to herself and began licking it.

Sword thought the grooming was unnecessary: as far as she could see, the wound disappeared almost the instant she released her hold on La'ug.

How can these people be stopped?

As she watched, La'ug shifted – not just her stance, but her form. She shrunk, and where she had been holding her wounded hand in the other, now she held a woolly in the hand of a girl.

She was back as she had been. Only angrier-seeming, if that were possible. But she made no further move to attack, contenting herself with stroking the woolly, murmuring to it in a voice so low that Sword could make out no words – only a wrathful tone.

Probably saying, "We'll murder her later, my pretty."

Tiawan looked over Sword's shoulder. She glanced there as well, to see Wahy. The last vestiges of that same yellow glow disappeared from below his shirt, leaving him standing quiet and content. His friend was no longer hurt, no one was shouting, and apparently that was enough for him to live a happy life.

He grinned and waved broadly when he saw Sword look at him. The smile and wave of a child hailing someone a league down the road. Sword was hard-pressed not to grin herself, his joy was so obvious and infectious.

She turned back to Tiawan. He looked at her, saying nothing, waiting for her to speak. She hoped that was a good sign.

"I don't want to fight you. I don't want you to fight me," she said.

"You couldn't win," said Tiawan.

She nodded. "Probably not. But other people might be hurt. And who knows?" A dagger flared into life in each hand, and she flipped them end-over-end into the air, catching each by the hilt again and then clenching her fists as they puffed out of existence. "I might get lucky."

Tiawan nodded gravely. "Just so." His great, iron arms crossed. "What do you want, then?"

"I've already told you. I want to keep helping. I want you to help." She gestured around. The people at this makeshift camp had finally finished their meager preparations. They began moving, urged forward by several men and women who seemed to be in charge – though whether they had taken that role themselves or been given it by Tiawan, she could not say. "You say you want them to have their own lives, their own choice. Fine. But make it the best choice. Don't just turn them loose, to fight and live or die in a world where war covers all, and there is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide or to find anything better." She flushed, her words coming as hot and fast as any weapon she had ever wielded. "I was a Dog. I know what it is to be at the mercy of others. But I was a Dog, and that means I also know what it is to live in a world where only the strong survive, and the weak are trampled without thought." She exhaled, the strength suddenly going out of her.

How long has it been since I slept?

"You want to give them a life?" she asked. "That is well. You want to make sure no one else suffers as your family has? That, too, is well." She lifted her gaze to look Tiawan as squarely in the eye as she could. "But if you truly care about what they want, about their choice, then give them what they want, let them choose. Don't give them what you think they should have. Don't give them what you have decided they need." She pointed at a small group nearby: a man and a woman who were helping a pair of old ladies pick their way slowly over the rocks. "Do you think people like that would rather the Empire implode? Do you think they will accept a sudden death at the hands of would-be tyrants vying for power… because at least then they 'died as free people'?" She paused, then shrugged. "Perhaps they would. But would they prefer that to a chance at a better, peaceful future – even if it meant they had to wait longer for it?"

The last words hung in the air. Sword felt exhausted.

"'Almost thou persuadest me,'" murmured Tiawan.

Sword allowed herself a small smile. "I love that quote," she said. The smile melted away. "But I never even knew the Gods' Book existed until a few months ago. Dogs are not permitted to read such things – to read anything. And would I have died to have the chance to escape? Yes. Yes. But I am glad I did not. I am glad I lived. I suffered longer, but now enjoy much more." A final breath, and she added, "Let these people have the same chance."

The people still moved around them. Wahy stepped past Sword to join La'ug, swinging her up to his shoulder and laughing as he did. The woolly hissed and scampered up to La'ug's shoulder.

Movement.

Sound.

Life.

But, in that moment, for Sword… all was silent. All was still.

The world hung breathless. Waiting for the response from an old man who had more power than any save the Gods themselves. Who held the power of life and death for untold thousands – perhaps millions – in his gauntleted hands.

He nodded.

He stepped forward, his hand outstretched to her.

She reached out as well. Dared a smile of hope.

And that was when the explosion blew her off her feet.

16

She was many things: a Dog, a soldier, an assassin. Someone trying to make the world a bit better.

One thing she was not, though: indestructible.

The explosion rent the earth, scooping it up and then raining it down again as tiny pebbles. Where once people slowly picked their way across black rock, now stood only a crater the size of an auto-car, with blood and bodies – parts of bodies – strewn around and within it.

The shockwave pounded out, and though Sword could move impossibly fast when possessed of her Gift, there was no weapon she could call, no instrument she could  use, that would protect her. The blast slammed into her, and she was suddenly airborne, flying ten, fifteen, twenty feet straight back. She hit rock with a glancing blow that slammed all the breath from her lungs. Then she bounced, came down again, flew up and back once more, and finally settled to earth.

She couldn't feel much of anything. Just the vague sensation of blood, spilling down her nose, out split lips, welling from long lacerations where the ground had shredded her flesh.

The rest of her… numb. No feeling in her limbs, no concept of whether she was upright or laying down, no idea of anything at all.

Just confusion.

Terror.

Her thoughts bounced around madly. Finding nothing to reassure, to provide any sense of where they were or how they had come to be in such a dark place.

What happened?

A high-pitched whine filled her ears – the first thing she really became aware of other than the blood streaming from her cuts. The whine gradually rose to become a shriek, then that shriek transformed to the thundering rush of a waterfall that had somehow found its way into her skull.

She couldn't hear anything for a moment. Just the shriek. The water.

(The blood.)

Then she could hear. And wished to return to her strange, loud deafness.

Screams.

Moans of pain.

Explosions. Blasts that rocked the earth and pounded air out in invisible pulses strong enough to level stone.

She managed to turn her head, realizing only as she tried to do so that she had landed facedown on the stony ground. She twisted, and as she did sensation finally came to her flesh: pain exploded through every nerve of her body. Every fiber screamed to just lay there lay there lay there and die.

She ignored it. Forced herself to roll over. To look up.

To see.

At first she couldn't understand what was happening. And even when she did understand what she was seeing, she could not understand how it was possible.

No. It can't be – Who ordered this?

The Imperial Army had arrived.

She tried to quell her jumbled thoughts. Concentrated on standing, on doing something to stop what was happening.

She had seen the tanks before. Great, armored monsters that had been enchanted to fly like an air-car. But unlike an air-car, the tanks had no balloons helping them remain aloft. Just magic.

Unlike an air-car, the tanks held only a small crew – three or four people in each vehicle.

And unlike an air-car, the tanks were not meant for travel. Only for attack.

Each tank had a long pipe that extended out of their forward shielding: the muzzle of a gun the likes of which the Empire had never before seen. Not until the Chancellor – until Phoenix. He designed these weapons, and used them to level the Grand Cathedral, to try to hunt and kill Sword and her friends.

A tank hovered directly overhead. It thundered as the bullets it carried – enchanted to explode when they impacted their targets – flew forth, turning men and women and rock to nothing but ash and blood and bone.

Sword tried to stand. Tried to move. To call forth a sword of flame that would let her do something. Would let her fight back.

Only… only there was no sword. Her fist clenched, but held nothing but itself. Empty, useless.

Where is it? Where is my sword?

Nothing came. She couldn't concentrate enough to bring forth her Gift. Her thoughts swirled and swayed, and no matter how hard she tried, standing seemed an impossible task. She managed to roll over, then threw up as screams and explosions rent the sky.

Concussion.

She couldn't concentrate; didn't even know if the single word that pounded in her mind referred to the explosion that knocked her down, or the possibility that she was seriously injured.

Another blast sounded, this one different than the others. A muted roar accompanied it, one that she knew, and she managed to look up in time to see Tiawan's armored form shoot toward one of the tanks. His fist extended, roaring forward like the largest explosive Shell ever created, able to punch through the thick armor of the tanks like a spike through soft cheese… and then he bounced off nothing, his precise flight turning into a mad spin as he slammed into the force field that surrounded each tank.

The invisible shields were another gift of Phoenix, one of whose powers had been the conjuring of such things to protect himself and others around him. Sword had wondered for a time why the shields hadn't stopped working when she killed the once-Chancellor.

But I didn't kill him. That's why his magic still works.

Why does that matter now?

It doesn't.

(Survive.

Stop this.

Stop the killing.)

Her thoughts still tumbled like Tiawan, falling in a flat spin that he gradually managed to correct. Then another roar overpowered the sound of the tanks –

(so many of them it must be every tank that was at the Strongholds)

– as La'ug, again in her creature form, flew into the air. Sword blinked, her jumbled thoughts still incapable of making sense of what she was seeing. Then she realized that the monster must have jumped, leaping at a tank that skimmed over the camp at a low altitude.

La'ug sailed at the tank, which turned the huge bore of its gun to face her. Sword, even in her pain, gritted her teeth at what must come: either La'ug would be blown to pieces, or she would bounce off the shield. It just depended if she would reach the shield first, or if the tank's gunner would manage to pull the trigger before then.

Neither happened.

La'ug flew forward, batted the tank's muzzle out of the way, and landed on the tank. A moment later she was tearing great ribbons of metal shielding away the way Sword might peel a fruit.

Of course. The shields don't stop people.

They had discovered that while testing the tanks after Phoenix fell through the clouds. The shields he created allowed people through – otherwise no one could have driven the vehicles – but stopped bullets, arrows, stones, and the like. She didn't understand the mechanics of it – the magic of it – but clearly the shields were not built to hold back a ten-foot-tall woolly/vengeful little girl combination.

La'ug finished tearing away one side of the tank. She reached into the gaping hole with a huge, clawed hand, and began yanking out the crew of the tank, slashing at them as she did, so that what fell was less "people" and more "pieces."

Then she leaped away from the tank as, crewless, it veered in the sky. The war machine slammed hard into the ground a hundred feet away and remained still, while La'ug continued her great leap toward another nearby tank.

A moment later, Sword feared her injuries must be worse than she thought, as La'ug seemed to split in half in mid-air.

Not La'ug. Wahy.

The man-child had been clinging to La'ug's back, nearly unseen in the madness of the moment. Now he leaped from the beast's back. He had been blooded. No longer the innocent person he had been.

The mad berserker reigned.

Looking at him, Sword suddenly understood what she and her friends were fighting for. They had fought against corruption, and now they fought against this. Wahy was the epitome of true, total war. Conflict without sides, without compassion, without lines. War would make his berserker insanity pale as a match before the sun.

We are right. We have to stop them. Have to stop Tiawan. Have to keep the people safe.

It takes longer, but the other choice… madness.

Wahy and La'ug landed on separate tanks. La'ug repeated her earlier actions, tearing apart the side of the tank and reaching in like a bear hunting for grubs in a rotted tree.

Wahy simply pounded at the tank with fists that bled and broke and healed and bled and broke and healed again. Blood smeared the side of the armored war-machine, but it began to buckle under the combined might of Strong's magic and berserker's rage.

A moment later, it opened to him. He pushed his way inside, not seeming to mind that the opening was not quite big enough for him. He left flesh and skin behind as he shoved through the jagged edges of the split he had created.

A moment later, Sword saw… things… rain out of the same hole. Clouds of red trailing after pieces of the crew that rained down in the fluttering remains of their Imperial Army uniforms.

Wahy emerged, shrieking insanely into the sky as the tank swerved to the side. He leaped away from it, caught by Tiawan, who had swooped in and captured him in one great fist, the other holding tight to the scruff of La'ug's neck.

Tiawan rocketed upward, the fires in his back and feet brightening as he flew above two more tanks, dropping Wahy on one and La'ug on the other. He evaded several blasts from the other tanks while he waited for them to repeat what they had done before; to finish their bloody work.

Bodies fell. Pieces. Neither La'ug nor Wahy let anything larger than half a man emerge from the tanks.

Sword looked away. There was nothing she could do, and what was happening above sickened her. Not just the carnage, but the very reality of it.

Who could have ordered the Army to attack this place? Malal was incapacitated, and her friends were in charge at the palace. None of them would have done this, so how….?

She managed to stand, her confusion mounting even as she regained some physical equilibrium. The sounds still beat upon her, pounded at her with near-physical violence. Explosions, the shriek of bullets flying and the fires at Tiawan's back. The roars of Wahy and La'ug.

The screams of the dying.

The terrible silence of the dead.

One by one, the tanks fell from the sky, brought down by the combination of berserker and beast. But they fired their bullets up to the final moment, killing those in the camp even as they themselves died.

Sword tripped through the dust, the haze. She nearly fell over something. Realized it was a body. An old man who reminded her of Brother Scieran.

An omen.

She turned away. Tried to move somewhere –

(safe
away from here)

– where she could catch her breath and figure out what was happening.

A sound came to her ears.

Strange to think: that a single noise, a grunt, a small cough of terror, could pierce the enormous wall of sound that had been born around her. But it happened.

Sword swiveled, orienting on the noise. She didn't know what it was, but it had sounded like someone in distress. Someone in pain. Someone….

There!

She ran toward the sound. It was a girl, small and malnourished as were all the souls here – those that remained. Sword had an instant to wonder what crime she could have possibly committed that would warrant imprisonment in the Walled City of Fear –

("Most of the people of Halaw are nothing more than dissidents and their families," said Tiawan, and La'ug spat, "People who dared speak against the Emperor.")

– then she only wondered how to stop what was happening.

A soldier of the Imperial Army had his arms around the girl's legs. He himself appeared to be laying down – perhaps knocked down by one of the explosions, or perhaps by one of the ex-prisoners who had managed to survive this long. Now he was grappling with her, grabbing her calves, reaching for her thighs….

Sword charged. She still felt dizzy, queasy. She still didn't understand what was happening. But she did know that it was wrong. That it shouldn't be happening.

The girl is innocent. I will protect her.

Her power returned in a rush, rage tearing the confusion apart and returning clarity to her. A red-orange throwing knife appeared in each hand, and she hurled them straight at the soldier.

She didn't want to kill him, either – she didn't know who had ordered the attack, and in any event it was unlikely that a low-ranking soldier would have anything to do with it or any understanding beyond going where he was told. Another thing she had learned: much of the "corruption" of the Army and government was simply men and women who believed the lies they were told, and truly thought they were stopping dangerous people – or who simply feared for their own lives and didn't know what else to do.

An evil empire, she had found, is not one controlled by a corrupt population – but by an evil few, followed by the many who are unwilling or unable to understand what is truly happening around them. Who will follow the loudest voice, because the loudest voice promises safety, peace. And the lie is easier to believe than the reality.

So the knives flew not at the soldier's head, but his arms. They pierced his flesh, wounding him non-fatally but in a way that would make it impossible for him to keep holding the girl. He would let go. Would scream. Would bleed.

And would live.

Only… when the knives plunged into his arms, none of that happened. He did not let go, did not make a sound. Only a tiny trickle of blood appeared, and even that was dark and strange.

The soldier kept yanking at the girl. She was about to fall.

And Sword finally saw what was happening. Saw what he was. And knew that if the girl fell, she would not rise again.

Or, worse, perhaps she will.

The soldier wasn't lying on the ground, after all. Sword had thought he must have been knocked down, perhaps grabbed the girl as she ran by. The reality was much uglier. The soldier was reaching up because that was all he could do. He could not stand. Could not run after her.

He ended at the waist. Nothing beyond his belt but the tattered remnants of leggings and other trailing things she preferred not to think about.

Sword's forward momentum stuttered as she saw it, and she realized even as he turned to look at her that he must have come out of one of the tanks. Must have been thrown down after being cut to pieces.

He was trying to kill a girl after a fall and wounds that had to be fatal.

The soldier was already dead. He glared at Sword with eyes that had turned milky white, the cataracts of a corpse.

A thought. A single word, like a knife stabbed into the center of her brain.

Marionette.

This was the work of the mad child who had once been one of the Blessed Ones. An assassin who killed with the dead – whose weapons were the fallen themselves.

It was the first and only Gift that Sword had ever seen that was, as much as she could tell, purely evil.

Marionette is here.

As far as Sword knew, Marionette – The Poppet – had to be fairly close to use her Greater Gift.

Where is she?

No time to look. Sword kept running at the girl before her, and the dead man who was trying to kill her. The knives Sword had thrown disappeared from the creature's arms, returning to the never-place from whence she called them. Now she held swords, and as she closed in she slashed down with them, separating the thing's arms from its body. It made no sound as she kicked its torso away, though she could feel its hatred, its rage.

The girl the dead man had attacked was still in danger: Sword had cut its arms from  its body, and the body had fallen away… but the arms still clung to their intended victim. They wrapped around her legs, the hands clutched at her and inched their way higher.

"Don't move," said Sword. The girl stiffened, though whether it was because she heard Sword's instruction or simply went rigid with terror could not be said. Sword's long blade disappeared, replaced by smaller knives. She slashed with them, and dead arms were separated at the wrists from still-clutching hands.

Another quick set of slices and the fingers were cut in two.

The hands fell away. The girl realized she was standing in the middle of a body that had died long ago – the small parts of which still moved and twitched hideously – and shrieked. The sound was so loud and piercing that Sword worried the girl might have lost her mind.

She ran to the girl. Clung to her. Held her tight and whispered that it would be all right, that they would survive and all would be fine and whatever other kind lies she could think of.

She heard screams, explosions, the rasping un-sounds of men and women undead. She knew she should move, should help. But for a moment all she could do was hold tight to the child. For a moment, all that mattered was this little girl, and Sword was gripped by the conviction that if the girl did not survive, then all in Ansborn would die.

At last, though, she pressed the girl against the ground. No cover to speak of, and the only safety available came of being close to the earth.

No escape. Just cringing and crying and hoping not to be seen.

The girl clutched at Sword. Screamed.

Sword pressed her down to the earth, to the deep embrace of dark stone.

Then she turned to the fight.

17

Arrow drove like a madman. He pushed the auto-car to its fastest, taking unpaved roads at speeds that threatened to flip the vehicle off its wheels.

Colonel Alya sat beside him, left arm pressed hard against the flat panel in front of her, the other jammed between her seat and the door, holding as tightly as she could.

Arrow had a sudden, insane thought – that putting in straps to hold people tight to the seats would be a brillinant invention. Another: I should sell that idea.

Then he spun the wheel quickly to the side, narrowly avoiding bouncing right off the road.

Alya had spoken at the beginning of their insane flight through Strength, but was silent after that. After seeing the battered, tortured doll on the wall of the Strongholds, Arrow had run to the air-car as fast as he could. Alya barely managed to throw herself in the passenger before he pulled away in a cloud of dirt and dust.

She looked at him. "What's happening?" She held herself rigid in the seat.

Arrow spoke through clenched teeth. "There's an attack coming. Perhaps several." And he told her. Not everything. Not of the coup, the change in the Silver Seat. But of Marionette, and of the armored man who had flown into the middle of the castle, leveled part of the Imperial Palace, and crippled Malal.

Perhaps killed him. I don't even know if he's alive.

She knew some of it – of course. She was an Army officer, and the Army had suffered an attack against its own Ears. But much of it left her stunned.

Arrow told her of Phoenix. He made it sound as though the once-Chancellor had tried to corrupt Malal, rather than actually succeeding. And that, once his evil was discovered, he had been dispatched by one of the Blessed Ones, who still stood ready to assist the Emperor in any and all tasks for the good of the Empire.

Then he added that, even though he had been impaled by Sword, thrown off the side of Fear and into the clouds below, then impaled again on the spears outside the palace – he had apparently returned.

The armored man and his two accomplices.

Phoenix.

Marionette.

Gods. What else is coming?

Alya went a shade whiter with each passing part of his terse story. At one point, when he was talking about the relationship between Malal and Phoenix, she looked over at him. A sharp glance that he saw only out of the corner of his eye as he pushed the auto-car to its limits.

What does she suspect?

What does she know?

"Are they connected?" she asked.

"Who?"

"Phoenix and the armored man and this little girl. Marionette."

Arrow frowned. But he already knew. Intersections and angles. People flew like bullets, courses straight until they hit something – and then they buried themselves in what they struck, or bounced away at an angle and continued on, depending on how hard they struck, and whether what they hit was harder or softer than they.

He was suddenly acutely aware how far from Sword he was. He had flown beside her long enough that this time apart made him ache.

He loved her.

The realization surprised him anew, each and every time. Not because she was unworthy – she was – or because they hadn't spent enough time together – they had, and the time spent was during crises that brought out a person's true self. That showed who she was, and what she was worth.

She was worth his love. She was Sword, and there was no one – never would be anyone – like her.

The startling thing – at least, this time – was that this realization came as he hurtled down a dark road, the first fingers of dawn clawing their way over the horizon. That it came in the midst of blood, and death – and worse than death.

Love had come to him. And the understanding of it, the knowing of it, refused to acknowledge the darkness around. The sun rose, and the light tore through the night. Love came, and ripped away terror and pain.

Love cannot exist in its fullest when fear is present. And if the love is great enough, fear flees before it.

At least for a moment.

The road curved, and Arrow came back to himself. The love was still there – maybe it had always been there – but his mind was now back in the moment.

Another fact of love. Infatuation leads to madness, to rash choices and a lack of commitment and focus. It is a thing of the now, with no future possible and no past that matters.

Love leads to good decisions, to hard work, to an appreciation of the present, an understanding of the past – and an eye to the future. Because love yearns for always. Not a thing of the now, but a presence of the eternities.

He loved Sword.

He wanted to be with her forever.

He focused on the now. He looked to the future.

Intersections. Angles. Flights.

"Yes," he said, suddenly seeing things clearer than ever before. "They are connected. Phoenix and Marionette are working together – there's no question of that. She's like a pet of his, and loves the captivity because Phoenix turns her loose to kill at every opportunity. As for the man in the armor, and those who came with him…." He frowned. "They're connected, too. But not directly."

"How do you know?"

Arrow's frown deepened. He knew in his gut the reason, but articulating it was hard. "Because the man in the armor has… honor. There is a nobility to his path."

Alya gaped. "He attacked the palace. He poisoned Malal. How can that be 'noble'?"

Arrow nodded, then shook his head. Then shrugged.

The auto-car took a turn so fast that lifted it onto two wheels for a second, then slammed back down with bone-jarring force and a slide that nearly took them off the road before Arrow managed to correct it.

"What he's doing isn't noble," said Arrow. "His path is. It may not be the right path, but he travels it with integrity. With purpose." He thought to how the man had hailed Malal. Had called him out, and then had spoken to Sword before fighting. Not like an assassin – not like Phoenix would have done.

Like a soldier. A warrior. A man, in the best sense of the word.

Arrow shook his head, his resolve firming. "The man isn't with Phoenix."

"But you said they were connected."

Arrow chewed his lip. This was even harder. His Gift saw the connections, but his mind still struggled to sort them out. "They are. The armored man isn't fighting with Phoenix, but he might be fighting for him – though I would bet my best guns and my good right hand that he doesn't know that."

Alya fell silent, and remained that way. She didn't ask where they were going. They both knew.

They were going to the palace. Almost all that remained of the entire Imperial Army had been wiped out by Marionette. Phoenix was somewhere close behind, planning Gods-only-knew what.

Arrow had to warn the palace. Had to muster whatever remained of the Army. Rally his own people of the Southern Grasslands if he could, to add their number to the conflict he knew was coming.

Light continued creeping over the horizon, dawn forcing the night to recede. Arrow blinked, and realized with a start that he was about to drive off the road. He corrected as quickly as he could – faster than anyone else could do, but still well slower than his norm.

A hand closed over his. Both resting on the wheel for a moment. He looked over at Alya.

"How long have you been awake?" she asked.

He shook his head. After the death of the Ears, the attacks on the palace, the race to Strength….

"I have no idea," he said.

She didn't say anything. But he felt her unspoken words. They were both soldiers, of a sort, and knew what had to be done.

He nodded gratefully, no time for pride. He pulled the auto-car to the side of the road, and they both leaped out. Arrow ran around the front, Alya around the back, switching places with an ease and economy that seemed almost practiced.

She is a good soldier.

"Why aren't you more than a colonel?" asked Arrow as soon as they were on their way.

"I haven't been promoted," said Alya.

"You know what I mean. You're capable. You're strong. You're smart. Why haven't you been promoted?"

Alya handled the auto-car nearly as well as Arrow could. Better, given how tired he was. She grimaced as she whipped around a bend in the road, then grimaced again in response to his question.

"Plenty of reasons," she said. "I'm difficult at times, and though I try to be respectful to my superiors, I also have trouble not telling them when I think they're acting stupidly. Which is surprisingly often."

Arrow nodded. He felt sleep coming over him, and knew he should take advantage of this time to rest. But he wanted her to know: "I have some influence," he began. Alya chuckled, and he laughed as well – anyone with an Imperial letter giving him unfettered power directly from the Silver Seat obviously had influence. Then he grew serious. "I'm going to see you move forward. As you deserve."

"Assuming we survive."

She wasn't attempting humor. A soldier – a true soldier – knew when death knocked at the door. She recognized the immense danger that had come to them – and all the Empire.

"Assuming we survive," he agreed.

As though the Gods had waited for their cue, Alya started to scream. She let go of the steering wheel and clapped her hands to her head and Arrow had a moment to wonder what was happening.

Then he knew.

A terrible pain ripped through his skull. It felt like someone was cleaving his brain in pieces, hacking the centers of his very self to quivering, painful bits. He, too slapped his hands against his temples.

A tiny part of him – rapidly receding before the pain – realized what this was. Or at least what it had already done.

This is what happened to the Ears.

He saw blood spurt from Alya's nose, her ears, and her eyes. Felt similar warmth on his own skin.

Then the auto-car – careening along a road at full speed with a driver who no longer held the wheel – veered sideways. They were passing through a lightly-forested area, and the auto-car drove off the road and into the trees.

Paths. Intersections. Angles.

Even through his pain, Arrow saw what was about to happen. His body reacted instinctively, tossing itself sideways. Numb fingers clasped the door handle, miraculously managed to yank it. The door opened and Arrow rolled off the seat, tumbling through the dirt between the trees, and through the waves of pain that still crashed over him in pulses so powerful he could no longer even scream.

He rolled once. Twice.

Then the auto-car slammed into the tree his Gift had known was its final destination.

He kept rolling. But did not turn fast enough to avoid seeing Alya crash through the windshield, slamming headfirst into the tree that had stopped the auto-car. She dropped to the crumpled hood of the auto-car like a limp cloth, a huge smear of blood on the tree where she had hit it.

Arrow was still spinning through dirt and leaves. Facedown in the dirt, then face up again. Spinning and spinning, the pain in his mind so great he barely felt it.

He came to rest, staring up through the leaves at a sky that seemed far too blue for such horror. The pain pressed out everything else.

Then there was a roar. Even through the pain, he heard it. Even through the pain, he trembled. He had never heard anything its match. It was almost like the sound of the flames that had held the armored man aloft, but a thousand times louder and a million times more powerful.

The blue sky broke. Something appeared. Gray metal hanging directly overhead him, a craft so broad and fearsome that he knew what it must be – and who must have sent it.

"A dragon," he whispered. "A dragon ridden by the Gods."

And then he closed his eyes. The pain surged over him in a final wave that grabbed him, yanked him away from himself, and pulled him into the dark.

18

The fighting clarified things, and that was a strange relief.

The world was in upheaval; things were happening that Sword didn't understand. But here, now, there was only time for her to think of herself, her weapons, and whatever enemy stood directly before her. She almost rejoiced in the clarity of the moment.

She ran from place to place, raining fire upon any who stood against her – or who threatened the refugees who had run from Halaw.

It wasn't hard to dispatch the individual undead. No matter how she hacked at them, they still lived… but if she cut them into small pieces, there was nothing much those pieces could do. Without a hand, a finger was no threat. Without a hand, an arm could do little.

The problem was that there were so many of the undead soldiers. She thought at first, as she ran from place to place, dispatching the creatures as quickly as she could, that they must have snuck into the camp. But then one fell directly before her, plummeting from the sky and landing in a broken pile and then managing to rise up on shattered legs and reach for a man who was screaming nearby.

She understood: the undead in the camp were the crews from the tanks. They were being peeled out of their war-machines, tossed into nothing but air. Only Tiawan and Wahy and La'ug had no idea what was happening. Had no idea that they were essentially bombing the camp. Not with Shells, nothing so loud or so grand – just with creatures once men but now kept alive only by the evil power of a mad little girl.

But that was enough. Most of the people of the camp, confronted with the reality of a dead man or woman clutching at them, were unable to fight or even to run. They simply stood, and watched, and screamed.

Sword was all they had.

She was fast.

Not fast enough.

One by one the creatures fell before her, one by one she slashed and cut them away until they were too small to threaten anyone. But for every one she cut down, another had time to hurt or kill one of the survivors of Halaw. Their screams rose around her, surrounded her. And no matter how fast she moved, it seemed there were always more screams, always more people to save from the men and women who had already been killed.

She cut one of the soldiers away from a young man, slicing the still-moving corpse to pieces with a sword that moved too quickly for anyone but her to see. Then the sword shifted and became a rope dart: a line of fire headed by a cold blue point of hardened flame. She threw it fifty feet, the dart plunging into the head of an undead who was about to bite out the throat of an old woman. The dart caught its skull like a fish hook, and she yanked it away from its prey.

The dart disappeared, and the undead soldier stumbled. Now Sword held a meteor hammer: similar to the rope dart, but with a heavy weight at the end.

She felt a pang holding it. This was one of the weapons she had fought Phoenix with. One she thought she had used to kill him.

Then that thought was swallowed in the fight as she flung the heavy end of the weapon. It flew through the air, smashing into the soldier who still lurched toward her. It tore through its head, leaving nothing but bone fragments behind. The creature still had fight in it, though, so Sword heightened the heat of the weapon until it shone as bright as the sun. She yanked down on the rope she still held, and with a sizzle like water on a skillet, the line of flame cut the undead man in half. Right and left separated from each other, and though both halves tried to keep moving, neither was much of a risk for anyone who didn't step right into its clutches.

She moved to the next threat. And the next. And the next.

The sound of her breathing, the low purr of the flames she held in her hand – those took over her senses. They merged, for as always when she fought, she was as much the weapons themselves as she was a separate person.

Then, suddenly, all fell silent.

She felt for an instant like she was in a coccoon of some kind: somewhere soft and safe, designed to keep the world out.

A lie, of course.

In the next moment, the sounds came back. And she realized that the "silence" hadn't been a silence at all: just the absence of explosions, of the screams of those under attack by undead. No sounds of tanks plummeting to earth, or of living corpses clawing their way over rock that had darkened with blood.

There were still screams, but they were the screams of terror and pain that come after a battle. Screams that were very different from the type heard during a fight.

She had only a moment to enjoy the fact that the fight was over. Then one of the sounds that had fallen into her subconscious as she fought grew suddenly louder. The rushing roar of flame holding a man aloft.

The sound grew, and a moment later Tiawan dropped to the ground before her. La'ug and Wahy clung to him, both still in their alter-forms. La'ug roared, and Wahy threw back his eyeless head and shrieked before running toward Sword.

Wahy's shirt was gone, and even as she crouched and prepared to meet his attack she saw what had caused the glow she saw on him and the others.

It was a gem. Just like Arrow had described to her and the others after their first encounter with Tiawan and his family. Carved into the shape of the symbol of a Bishop of Faith, an intricate design of many facets that sparkled in the light, and with an internal yellow glow.

The gem was huge, too. More than the size of her fist, and it disappeared into the skin directly over Wahy's heart. Perhaps it went all the way to his heart.

Or replaced it.

Then she had no more time for observations, because Wahy was upon her. He roared, and his hands rained down. She batted them away with a war hammer. But though she heard bones crack with every blow, it seemed to matter nothing to the berserker. She hit his right hand, and saw it fold back completely flat against the back of his forearm. But he swung it back at her and as he did she saw the hand twist and snap back into place. He was healing as fast as she could hit him.

She ducked under a blow, rolled away… and came up holding a blade. She didn't want to kill him, but it seemed there was no other way to stop this.

Wahy reared up, his fists high overhead, ready to jump at her.

"Stop!"

Wahy paid no heed to Tiawan's shout. He loomed over Sword, who crouched…

… drew back her sword…

… thrust…

… and stopped only an inch in front of Wahy's throat.

The big man had stopped moving, completely and utterly. He stood as still as stone, not even blinking. The yellow gem in his chest glowed, a subdued flame over his heart.

Sword flicked a quick glance past Wahy, looking at Tiawan and La'ug, who were both walking toward her. La'ug's furry chest glowed with the same fire as Wahy's, and Sword was sure that Tiawan bore the same glow under his armor.

For now, though, all she could see was his face as the helm snapped back. "You dare!" he snarled. Rage beyond any she had yet seen settled over his expression.

Sword tried to keep one eye on Wahy's still form while watching the other two threats approach with her other. It wasn't that the berserker feared her, or her weapon: his eyeless expression still possessed the same mad rage it had in the instant before he stopped.

Before something made him stop.

(the gem)

"I don't know what you're talking about," she snapped back at Tiawan. "I haven't done anything."

Tiawan gestured all around: the downed tanks, the smoking craters, the shrieks of pain and grieving. His wild wave turned into a more precise gesture as he pointed at one of the tanks. "You brought them here," he said. Spittle flew off his lips. "You led them right to us. Right to them."

Wahy emitted a low, guttural growl. He still didn't move, but Sword now knew that was only because Tiawan, though his own jewel, could control the berserker. And that the old man's control was losing out to his rage.

"I did not," she said quietly.

"Don't lie to us, girl, you –"

"I. Did. NOT!" Her own scream drowned out his last words. Anger took hold of her with surprising intensity, forcing her words to come even louder. "How in the name of the Gods could you think that? You call me Judge and Jury and laud me for helping the innocent, then you accuse me of working with corruption. You bring me here so we can tell our stories to one another, but you never once actually listen." She spat toward Tiawan. "You're a hypocrite."

Wahy's arms lowered an inch. His fingers curved slightly, preparing to grab her. And she knew that she wouldn't win. Not here. Not against all three of the strongest enemies she had ever met.

I couldn't even beat one of them.

Then, suddenly, the berserker shivered. His head rolled back, and he seemed to lessen somehow. His shoulders slumped slightly, and the gem in his chest gave a single bright pulse.

He looked back at her. His eyes had returned, as had the childlike innocence. He grinned sheepishly, as though the butt of a joke she had not heard, then moved back toward Tiawan.

As he did, La'ug twisted and writhed as well. Sword could neither track nor define the creature's movements. One moment there was a furry monster, a thing of nightmares. The next there was only a girl in thick fur coats, holding a woolly and glaring at Sword.

Tiawan was back in his chair, as well. The old man looked weary, and actually sagged a bit. La'ug stepped forward to take his left arm, and Wahy stood behind him on his right, the Strong reaching out to bear some of Tiawan's weight.

Tiawan looked around. His jaw worked up and down as though suddenly unsure of what to say. When he looked back at Sword, there were tears in his eyes.

"They did nothing. They did nothing to you or to the Emperor."

"I told you, I didn't do this. And neither did the –"

Tiawan cut her off. "I don't know whether you lie or not. You have done good for the people. But something has to change. This," he said, gesturing at the broken men and women all around, "has to change."

He put a hand over his face for a moment. When he moved it away, his tears were gone. So was any warmth.

"I will let you live. But the Emperor – and the Empire – dies today."

His chair shifted. His armor grew, and covered him, and the last thing she saw were eyes as dead and empty as the Nether-pits of the berserker.

Wahy and La'ug moved to him without a word being spoken. They both climbed aboard the hand- and foot-holds that sprouted from his armor. Gears clicked, flames sprouted from his back.

And he was gone.

He flew west. Toward the palace.

Sword was left behind. No way to stop him, no way to even catch him. The palace would be caught unawares again, and by the time she caught up – if she ever did, the palace would likely be gone.

As would any of her friends who were still there.

She didn't know what to do. For the first time in her life, she saw no choices, no good alternatives. Not even the simple choice between life and death: hers was not immediately in danger, and the ones that were, were so far beyond her reach that they might as well be in another world.

She looked around her. The dead and wounded still scattered the landscape. She could help them. At least it would be… something.

But the instant she moved toward the nearest injured, two men converged on her. She could see they were scared – terrified, even – but though they trembled, she still saw conviction in their eyes.

"Leave," said one of the men. The other nodded.

"I can help," she said, and felt the lie of it burn her tongue. What could she do, really? What had she managed so far?

The men both shook their heads in unison. And more men and women began to draw near. Their expressions ranged from fear – but with that steely resolve beneath – to outright rage.

"Leave," said the man again. His voice was soft, and this time carried a pleading note.

Sword left. Walking west as fast as she could. Perhaps she could get to Center. Could find an auto-car, or even a Wanderer who could move her a few miles closer to where she needed to be.

Perhaps she could warn the palace… and help them prepare for war. A strange war – the remaining might of an entire Empire against three people – but a deadly one for all that.

Not that much might remains.

Half the Imperial Army had been lost when Phoenix caused Fear to erupt around the Army base called the Acropolis. The rest had been scattered in various places around the Empire – but the two largest groups were at the palace, and stationed in the Strongholds. She figured the people at the palace were still there – those who hadn't simply deserted after Tiawan's first attack.

But the Strongholds? Was there anyone even there? The tanks had come from there, and the soldiers inside them must have been stationed there. But tanks and soldiers alike had been stolen – coopted by Phoenix and Marionette.

What had happened to the rest of the soldiers stationed at the Strongholds?

She was away from the small camp of refugees in minutes, and within an hour she was far enough away that she could not see any trace of what remained of the camp – other than plumes of smoke that reached into the sky at the spots where tanks had crashed or their bullets exploded.

She was alone.

She suddenly wondered whether she would even make it out of Fear. She was on a road, but she had no idea where it led or whether it would get her to a settlement before hunger or thirst claimed her.

Don't worry about that. If that's what happens, the Empire is doomed anyway. Just put one foot in front of the other, Sword.

She continued walking. Her wounds hurt abysmally, and soon stung even worse as her salty sweat dripped into them. Worse, she knew Tiawan, La'ug, and Wahy were getting closer to the palace with each step she took.

How long before they got there?

How long had it taken Tiawan to fly her from Center's Edge to this place in Fear? Minutes? Hours?

She didn't think it had been hours.

She did her best to ignore that idea, and the reality it represented: the reality that she would never catch up to him, and that the Empire was at an end.

"My, my, my."

The words stopped her faster than a bullet to the brain. Sword had been walking with downcast eyes, her body gradually settling into the rhythm of her walk with hypnotic efficiency. Now her gaze snapped up and forward.

"You," she snarled.

The man before her grinned modestly. He waved a hand, and as he did he transitioned from the older man she had first known as the Chancellor, to an old woman with a hump, to a tall man with a streak of gray in his otherwise-black hair, to a curly-haired boy, to the final form who had been known as Devar.

All a lie. There was only Phoenix.

Behind him, Marionette sat on the rocky ground, playing with one of her dolls. This one had only half its head, and most of its body looked acid-scarred. The little girl made it dance for a moment, then looked up at Sword with her red eyes. She smiled, and her smile was oddly reminiscent of Wahy's: empty of reason, of human understanding. But where Wahy's eyes held a childlike innocence and were quick to smile, Marionette's gaze held only fire and madness within its depths.

Sword stepped forward, her katana appearing in her right hand, her wakizashi in her left. She gritted her teeth and took a step forward. She didn't know how Phoenix was behind all that had happened, but he was. She knew it.

He must be.

She was about to move forward. About to dance toward him, ready to deal death.

He disappeared.

A voice spoke, directly behind her: "You couldn't kill me before."

She spun, whirling around to hack at Phoenix, who had transported from his place before her to a hiding spot behind. But he was already gone.

"You can't kill me now," he said, and again his voice came from behind.

She turned. "You attacked me with magic," he said.

Another whirl, another slash at nothing. "You tried to kill me with your weapons," said his voice from behind.

Turn. "You impaled me."

Turn. Slash. Nothing. "You threw me into the forbidden realms below the mountains."

A final turn, and still she had only managed to slash and stab empty air. Phoenix stood twenty feet away, grinning from the face of a young man she had once thought she might love. But she saw the cruelty in Devar's – Phoenix's – eyes now, and wondered how she had ever been so stupid.

Phoenix crossed his arms. "All that, and you couldn't kill me. So what makes you think you can do any better this time?"

Sword's lips curled. "Because this time I'm going to cut you to bits and burn the pieces."

She rushed forward.

And stopped when he said, "But wouldn't you like to know what's happening in the Empire? And who the real enemy is?"

19

Heroism finally did what suffering could not: it convinced Wind to leave the side of her love.

Malal was the same.

No. Not the same. He fails with every passing hour.

She knew he would not last long – not even the few days the Patches had told her to hope for. And she had fully intended to stay at his side until the end.

And then? She didn't know, exactly. Only a single word kept sounding in her mind.

Vengeance.

She fought it away every time it appeared. Not because of some ideal she had learned at the feet of Brother Scieran or Father Inmil. Not because she harbored hopes that she was a good person who might someday be received into the bosom of the Gods. She denied thoughts of revenge simply because that was something that would happen after.

And after was something she refused to contemplate. It would come soon enough, and there was no need to hurry the future into the present by thinking about it.

So she stayed. Held the hand of her beloved – a hand that continually sloughed to muck under her palm, then firmed and reformed as the Patches worked their magic.

Even when Cloud left for a time, and the sun suddenly darkened outside the bedroom window – even then she took no notice. When Cloud returned with a subdued expression and stood behind her, she barely saw him. There was only Malal, and her, and the future they would never have.

Vengeance.

Then something changed. She didn't know if it happened gradually or not – perhaps it was sudden, but her notice of it was a creeping thing, slow and nearly unnoticeable until she became fully aware of it.

There were too many people in the room.

It had been nearly a funeral service before. The Patches and priests, the guards standing watch and no one other than Cloud really daring to enter or leave. Now, though, people were moving in and out of the room. Whispering to the guards, some of whom Signed to Cloud. He had no official standing in their ranks, but they all knew he was the brother of the Captain. More than that, they had come to accept his quiet strength, the wisdom of his words whenever he spoke.

She saw Cloud speaking to them, though his back was always turned enough that she could not make out the words – even had she cared to do so.

Then, suddenly, one of the priests who sat watch at the Emperor's bedside cried out. Wind did not hear the sound, but there was no mistaking the agony on his face. He fell, grabbing at the bedspread as he tumbled to the floor as if holding to it might keep him from falling into an abyss of pain.

One of the Patches left the circle that worked to keep Malal alive. Wind almost shouted at him, but the words that echoed silently in her mind – Ignore him, you fool! Only Malal matters! – would have come out as nothing but a wordless howl, and at best would only have distracted the other Patches.

She looked at the priest. The Patch had lain hands on him, obviously concentrating his magic. The priest pushed him away. He said something, and this time Wind did see it.

"No. I don't matter any more than the others. Keep the Emperor alive."

Then one of the guards came forward and helped the priest to his feet with the same care one might give a newborn. The priest shrieked. Wind did not hear. She barely noticed. A word was in her mind, and it stole her focus.

Not vengeance this time. A different, more terrible word.

Others?

She looked behind her. Cloud still stood there, though he had moved slightly. Hours must have passed since the sun fell dim.

She gestured to him, and as he came forward she noticed other changes in the room.

There were fewer guards stationed around the outside of the chamber. And several of the ones that remained held to their spears as though they were the only things keeping them standing. Their faces were covered by the black skull helm of the Imperial Guard, so Wind could not tell what their expressions were. But something about them bespoke great pain. Not of soul, but of body.

More telling: Cloud's face had gone from mournful to near-despairing.

She turned away from Malal, the hardest thing she had ever done.

She Signed to Cloud: "What is happening?"

He looked hesitant. That scared her more than anything else. She and Cloud had always shared everything. The only thing that had ever parted them in the slightest was her love for Malal. And it wasn't a wedge, but a bridge. Their worlds had shifted, parted slightly because she had a new love, one that was greater in its way than the love she felt for him. But that love only served to show how alike they remained, how close they were. Malal had never stood in the way of it, had never insisted on being more important than her brother. He shared her, and in doing so won her completely.

Cloud finally responded. "It's not a poison."

For an instant, Wind's heart leaped. Then she saw the guard, still helping the priest who had fallen. They stutter-stepped their way to the door, and as they did the back of the priest's robe fell down slightly. Enough for her to see the blackened skin on his back, the torn and rotted flesh beneath.

She knew.

"Plague," she Signed. Cloud nodded. "How?" she asked.

He shrugged. "No one knows."

"How many?"

Another hesitation. Then, "Most of the palace. Half the entire castle."

Her blood seemed to seize within her. Cold traveled from her fingers and toes inward, driving thought and feeling away as they traveled.

"Half?"

She didn't realize that she had Signed until Cloud responded. "At least."

"Are the Patches helping?"

"All the Patches in the castle are here." He gestured at Malal's bedside.

"Then get some from the city!"

Another hesitation. Cloud told her what he had done. How he had cut the castle off from the rest of Center – the rest of the world – in order to stop what he knew was coming. Or at least contain it here so no one else would suffer.

She was angry for a split-second. But it passed, and she hugged her brother. No one should have to make such a decision. She knew it would torment him forever, even though it was the right thing to do.

If there is a forever, she thought.

She turned back to Malal. She knew what she had to do.

Malal was doomed.

There were others who were suffering.

Those two things alone were not enough. She would have had the Patches stay with him, no matter what. Selfish, she knew, but she was neither as kind nor as right-hearted as her brother. He could do what the greater good required. She could do only what those she loved actually needed in order to ease their pain.

But there was this final thing she knew: Malal would not want it this way.

"Take the Patches," she Signed. "Let them see to those in pain."

Cloud shook his head. She saw movement in her peripheral vision. Turned and saw the guards who remained – even those in the throes of agony – shaking their heads. Several Signed no with such emphasis they nearly fell.

Cloud Signed, "The people were angry at first. Angry at me for cutting them off. Then…." He shrugged. "They understood."

"All the more reason to give them relief," she answered.

"I agree."

"Then what's the problem?"

"No one will accept the help of the Patches. I tried to send one around. Everyone turned him away. They told him to see to the Emperor. And only to him."

Wind ran from the room. Tears streamed down her cheeks – Gods, when was the last time she actually wept like this? – as she flew into the hall, then turned down the corridor. She peered into every room she passed. Most were empty.

A few were not.

The dead and dying lay in beds, on stretches of floor. A terrible juxtaposition, with the dead and dying from the armored man's attack: those injured by falling stone or fire laying among those dying of falling flesh, and a fire born in their very bones.

Many suffered from both maladies. Many died from both attacks… and suffered all the more for it.

Other men and women tended to the fallen. But Wind knew from experience that, at least for those suffering from the poison –

(the sickness
the Plague)

– even cool cloths would further tear the skin and lead only to fresh agony. Little could be done except to hold the victims' hands. And when the hands were gone – melted away along with the other extremities – there was only the presence of the living to usher their friends into death.

She ran, and ran, and ran. She saw death, and dying, and pain.

She saw a lady on a bed. A scribe that Wind had worked with. One of her arms was gone, completely eaten away by the disease. But she managed to lift her head when she saw Wind.

"The Emperor?" she said – or maybe she only mouthed it. "Is he… well? Does… he… live?"

And then, as though fearing the response, the woman shuddered and died.

Wind ran. Ran.

She found only the dead. The dying surrounded by others whose eyes told a clear tale: they knew they were next. And feared the death less than the fact that, unlike these first, they would be doomed to die alone.

She ran outside, and found more dead. Some had been pulled into the lee of buildings, sheltered at least a bit from the windstorm that still surrounded the castle. Others lay where they had fallen. They all had agony etched on their faces – at least, the ones who had been lucky enough to die with faces.

Several lived. More – many more – had died.

Almost all of the still-living asked about the Emperor. Few of them understood her Signs, and she herself could not remember what it was she said to them. Kind lies or cruel truth? Most of the people reacted as though she had told them what they already knew. Some did not react at all, because the poison –

(The disease!)

– had stolen too much of their sight to make out what she Signed. Perhaps they did not even see who she was, just asking their most important question to whatever human soul they sensed nearby.

Wind turned. She started back to the castle. There was nothing she could do here. She could at least be with Cloud. With Malal.

She stopped at the entrance to the palace. A guard stood there, still at his post. He did not seem affected by the disease. Not yet. He nodded to her, and because he was not an Imperial Guard, his helm did not completely cover his face. She could see his eyes. Could see his determination to stand guard over the Emperor's home. To see out his duty to the last.

After their unknown coup, the Cursed Ones had discovered much evil in the government. Much corruption.

They had also discovered good, and good people.

Wind turned away from the guard. She walked back to those who suffered alone. Malal had others around him – people who would never leave him. She could go, because she knew others were there.

She would see to those in need, who had refused help in favor of a doomed Emperor.

Wind moved from person to person. She held hands, she knelt in the dirt next to those who were too wounded for anyone to touch. She stood next to the suffering, and lay beside the dying.

The wind swirled. The world did not see what they suffered.

A few times, she caught sight of something beyond the worthless gate to the outside world. She thought for a moment it might be people, and an irrational hope lit inside her.

But what could they help? They would only die if they came inside.

And in the next instant, she realized it wasn't anyone waiting to help, anyway. Just a quick, shadowed, glimpse of the spires that still stood outside the castle walls. The spikes that would kill all who fell away from Ansborn.

New fear stabbed at her. If this plague passed beyond the castle walls, Ansborn would die. There was nowhere to to flee. People would run to the other mountains – to Strength and Knowledge and Faith and even to Fear in their terror – but how long before the disease jumped those narrow chasms? Before someone stole across to visit a sick friend, then brought the disease back with them.

The winds swirled, and she was glad.

Everyone – nearly everyone – was sick now. She still moved around the castle, the palace, seeking those who would benefit from a moment with someone else. Finding fewer and fewer.

She wanted to go back to Malal's room. Not just to see him, but to find out if Cloud was still alive.

She didn't.

She knew if she did go, she would never leave. And she was needed here.

Besides, if Cloud had died, the windstorm would be gone.

She tried not to think of the obvious: that, if alive, he was likely dying. Holding onto his magic to the last, the same way the guard remained at his post until death claimed him.

Tragedy is seen as a curse by most – either inflicted upon them by an uncaring world, or, worse, inflicted upon them by "caring" Gods. But though tragedy is painful, and terrible, Wind suddenly realized it was not just a curse. It was a moment where people could prove they were worth the universe's notice. Where they could show others the kindness and love and strength that the Gods had apparently decided to withhold.

And do we not become Gods ourselves in that moment? At least in a way? Both the first Emperor Eka's First Rules and Commandments and the Gods' Book said something like this, but Wind had never really understood it until now.

A Strong – one of the few people who had not yet been touched by the disease – carried bodies from where they had fallen. He stretched them out in neat lines, and though the job was supremely grisly, he bore no sign of how awful it must be. Just reverence. He mouthed words that she could read – a repeated prayer to the Gods.

Another man – this one a Smith, also blessedly untouched –

(yet)

– used bare hands and his Gift to bend metal into shapes she did not recognize at first. Then she realized he was making dozens of signs of Faith.

Markers for graves – graves that would never be dug.

He saw her. Nodded. Kept working.

Someone touched her shoulder.

The touch was so shocking in this place where so few still walked that she jumped and spun the same way she might if surprised by an enemy.

It was Cloud. He smiled a wan smile, then she felt his breath explode out of him, hot on her cheek, as she grabbed him in an embrace tighter than any she had ever given.

She let go, and his eyes were happy to see her, and terribly sad at what was going on, and… something else.

"What is it?" she Signed. "Malal?"

He shook his head. "The Emperor still lives."

A happiness fluttered inside her breast, its wings clipped just as quickly as she realized Malal was still doomed, only now he remained in pain.

She forced her thoughts away from that. "Then what is it?" she Signed.

Cloud did not answer. His eyes – eyes which saw much, much more than he ever let on – roved over the castle grounds. The dead, the few living.

He walked, and she walked with him. Both in silence. Then, suddenly, he stopped.

"Do you see it?" he asked.

She looked around. She saw only the same things she had seen for hours.

Then she realized what had been hiding in the back of her mind for a while now. Those that still lived were in two conditions: either in their last moments, gasping through lungs that dissolved in their chests… or completely fine.

"Some of them are immune," she said. She looked at her brother. He looked as he always had, and she herself felt no pain, no places where the disease might have struck. "We're immune."

To her surprise, Cloud shook his head. "Not just that."

She looked around. Not many still moving, and that made her spirits drop. Even if there were some whom the disease could not touch… it was too few. If this pestilence spread to Ansborn, it looked like perhaps one in a few hundred might live. Fewer. One in a thousand. Here in the castle, she saw only the Strong she had seen before, the Smith, a woman kneeling beside a dying man. The last had her eyes closed, and Wind thought she was praying, then realized it was an Eye – probably soothing the dying man by giving him a last look at family or perhaps his home or –

The Smith and the Strong suddenly ran toward something. Wind moved toward them, leaving Cloud's hints behind for a moment. Something was happening, and from the looks on the Gifts' faces, it was something bad.

She reached it as they did. Her spirits sank. She had been hoping – foolishly, irrationally – that they had seen something that might mean hope. A way out of this.

It was only another dying man.

He looked familiar. Red hair, a scraggly shock of gray on one side of his head. What had once been a slim frame that was now eaten away to nearly nothing. Wind thought she might have seen him in the palace. Then she placed him: the Imperial Library. She had seen him there a few times when searching for Sword. The man had never paid her much mind. A quick nod, then returning to his never-ending task of maintaining and re-shelving the books.

The hands he had used for those tasks were mostly eaten away. Just a few fingers left on his right hand. And the rest of him looked just as bad. Only his head seemed untouched, and that fact made the rest of his wounds seem all the worse.

That wasn't what attracted her notice, though. She took all that in as background, focusing on the thing that had brought the Smith and the Strong running. A moment later the Eye came as well – the man she had been comforting must have gone the way of all the rest. Concern bordering on terror drew deep lines on her face.

Wind understood that. She felt the same.

The librarian was laughing.

It wasn't a laugh of madness, either. Not the hysteria of someone driven to insanity by unimaginable pain. He seemed….

Happy.

Wind looked at Cloud. Saw his own fear.

The red-haired man's hand flashed out. He grasped the Smith's arm with his remaining fingers. His eyes –glazed with impending death – suddenly focused. He looked at them all.

"It's begun," he said. He laughed again. "It's finally begun!"

His body shuddered, and Wind saw the Smith cry out and grab at the arm the librarian still held. To her shock, Wind saw bone coming out of his arm. The librarian – the small man with the red hair – had shattered his forearm in his bare hand.

A Strong?

She dismissed the thought as fast as it came. If he had been a Strong, the palace would not have employed him as a simple librarian. Besides, Strongs were wispy, almost ethereal. And though this man was hardly a large man, he was still too big to be one of those Gifts.

No. No Strong.

Then how did he do that?

The man who was a Strong was desperately trying to loose the red-haired man's grip from the Smith's arm. He had no luck, his bodily strength and the added power of his Gift seemingly useless against the wasted, three-fingered grasp of a dying man.

The red-haired man yanked the Smith close. His eyes had begun to melt in their sockets. But he stared straight at the Smith nonetheless and whispered something through a mouth filling with blood.

"You're all going to die."

He laughed again. Then the red-haired man shuddered once more. He mouthed two words.

And died.

The Smith finally yanked himself free. He stumbled backward in pain, cradling his badly broken arm. The Strong and the Eye went to him, trying to calm him enough that they could examine his wound.

And, watching them, Wind suddenly understood what Cloud had hinted at earlier. What he had seen before anyone else.

She looked at her brother. Signed.

"Gifts are immune."

He nodded. "So it would seem. Or at least, we are completely untouched by the disease this far." He shrugged. "Though we could just take longer to catch whatever it is."

He Signed the words distractedly, and he kept glancing at the red-haired man.

"What was that about?" he Signed.

Wind forgot sometimes that Cloud couldn't read lips like she could. He had always Signed to her, always spoken with others and relayed their words to her upon occasion. To have their roles reversed in this way was so strange her mind constantly rejected it.

She was avoiding his question. Letting her own thoughts distract her.

She glanced at the red-haired man, and heard his words in her mind. And more than that, she heard the two words he had mouthed as he died. Two words that meant nothing to her, but that for some reason filled her with dread.

"The Culling."

20

The words were difficult.

The concepts, though…. They threatened to send Brother Scieran spinning into a place so deep and so dark that, should he lose is grasp on the reality he knew for even an instant, should he tumble into that hole, he knew there would be no return.

He looked over. Father Inmil's and Mother Maci's exressions bore the mark of people threatened by the same madness. Once, Father Inmil looked up for a moment, looked away from the books he had been reading. He met Scieran's gaze.

His eyes were spectral.

He managed to whisper, "Gods," then returned to his reading.

Only Brother Luca seemed unperturbed. The thin, ghostly priest might as well have been reading a copy of Eka's Rules and Commandments: something well-known to the point of nearly being banal.

They all clustered around the stone table in the center of the room they had chosen as their workspace in the Archive. Glo-globes kept the light constant, and no one had moved for hours.

Hours? Or days?

It didn't matter. For the first time since being crushed by the Greater Gift known as Armor, Scieran felt no pain.

No pain of the body, at least. His mind, though… his mind was in agony.

Part of it was just the sheer mental exertion of what they were attempting. The Old Book that they had found in the secret space behind the wall sat between them all. It held the keys to the rest of the books – to the language of the Old Ones, the ones before the Ascension. One by one, Father Inmil, Mother Maci, and Scieran himself had noted figures that seemed familiar. They each disappeared into the Archive, to return with a book or a scroll where they remembered such a figure appearing before. Only Brother Luca never moved from the chamber, leaning close to the open pages of the book Sword had brought – the book they had taken to simply calling The Tree.

The secret book they found behind the wall – which they had also given a name, "The Key" – sat on the table between them, open to whatever page had last been used. At first it had been almost a fight to look at it: everyone wanted to look at it at the same time, to find a figure they remembered, to get the knowledge they needed. But as the hours wore on, the The Key was used less and less. No one had turned its pages in at least an hour now.

That was the thing that most surprised Scieran when they first realized it – or when Brother Luca did, since the man's mind seemed to operate on a different level than the rest: the Old Ones had not spoken – or even written – a language different from that of Ansborn. It was simply that the language had corrupted over the Turns. Changed from what it had been to what it now was, with time standing as a wall between the two. It was still hard to understand the writings – and would have been impossible without the book they discovered behind the wall – but it was possible.

Scieran rubbed his eyes and straightened a bit. Mother Maci was leaning back as well, old knuckles pushed into the small of her back, trying to ease kinks that had probably barked at her for Turns but were now screaming non-stop.

"What do you make of it?" Scieran's voice was low, quieter even than it had been the first time he participated in a Bestowal Ritual at the Grand Cathedral. Somehow this place had become… he struggled for the word in his mind.

Hallowed.

That was it. Sanctified. Made holy. But not in the same way the Cathedrals were. More like the holiness of a tomb. A place where the living found peace.

Or where, perhaps, some of the dead were restless.

Mother Maci shook her head. "I don't understand most of it." Off his look, she said, "Not the letters or even the words – I'm getting the hang of those, I think. But there are ideas there that…." She shrugged. "I don't believe we have the knowledge to understand them now. Perhaps not ever."

"How so?"

"I get the feeling that they're beyond us. Like the people below long ago learned all we would ever know. I feel like a child trying to read a High Academic's treatise." She craned her head to look at what he was reading. "What about you?"

"The same."

"Me, too." Father Inmil had looked away from his own book. "Though I don't even think mine is a book of learning."

Scieran frowned. "What do you mean?"

Father Inmil snorted – a dry, crackling sound that echoed off the stone walls. "I mean I think I'm reading a story. Like Tales of To-To-Mo, though I don't think this one is a children's tale." He eyed the book with a mix of elation and irritation, then shoved it away from him. "I'm going to find another book to look at." He eyed his sister. "Can you understand what you're reading at all?"

"The slightest bit. I think it has something to do with breeding. The book talks about mating and childbearing of animals. But that's nearly all I can understand." She sighed. "I'll keep trying."

Scieran laughed lightly. "Sounds like you two understood far more than I. All I've gotten out of my book seems like nonsense. Something about the composition of the land below, and that it is a nation of other nations."

"What does that mean?" asked Mother Maci.

"If I knew that, perhaps we could –"

Brother Luca shouted. The noise stopped Father Inmil's words instantly, and everyone looked at the stooped figure.

The thin priest was always pale. But, Scieran thought, now he looked like a ghost that had itself seen something that terrified it in a very particular and very personal way. So white that snow would have looked like mud beside him.

He weaved, and grabbed the table to steady himself at the same time that Mother Maci put her arm around his waist.

"What is it?" Scieran nearly shouted the words. For most of his life he had been a soldier of the Faithful – a Knight of the Order of Chain and commander of those who would break lawbreakers, would punish those who took oaths in vain. The steel of a man of action had never left his voice, even if it had left his body.

Brother Luca hardly seemed to notice. He looked around, not seeing the others in the chamber, but looking past them to some terrible threat.

Then he grabbed The Tree and ran.

The move was so sudden and so unexpected that Scieran, Mother Maci, and Father Inmil all froze. Scieran was the first to react, stumbling toward the tunnel Brother Luca had run down. Mother Maci and Father Inmil were fast on his heels an instant later, then passed him and ran as fast as they could.

Scieran felt an instant of hot jealousy. Of anger at the body that had been stolen from him.

Then he focused on moving as fast as his bent body would let him.

They were, he realized, moving into the tunnel where Father Inmil had been stabbed by the red-haired man. A moment later, he saw the assassin. Mother Maci had said she intended to have an Adherent come fetch the body. Apparently she had forgotten in the heat of their investigation.

The corpse remained where it had fallen. Where Father Inmil had killed him.

Scieran had seen dead men – more than pleased him. The red-haired assassin looked better than most after laying untended this long: the cool, dry air in the catacombs was slowing the decomposition process. Still, the blood had started to settle, leaving the top-facing parts of the body gray and empty, while deep purple and black patches had appeared on the parts that pressed closest to the tunnel floor.

Not a terrible-looking corpse, all things considered. Certainly not worthy of the shocked, even terrified, looks of the others. Brother Luca stood staring at the body with his mouth hanging open and his eyes nearly vacant of reason. Mother Maci and her brother bore similar expressions.

The Tree hung from Father Inmil's fingers. The front cover and most of the pages were clenched in his hand. Scieran pulled it out of his friend's grasp, careful not to lose the place that had been opened.

He looked at it. Saw.

There was a picture. Under it was a single word, one he was able to translate fairly easily. But the word meant nothing to him. Nor, for that matter, did the picture.

No, that's not true. It does mean something. It means that the universe has gone mad.

The Tree was an old book. Hundreds of Turns old. And it was a copy of a book that was likely older than that. A truly Old Book, which meant it was from the time before Emperor Eka's Ascension. Over a thousand Turns old.

"How can this be?" murmured Father Inmil.

His sister shook her head. "It can't."

Scieran did not speak. He just looked at the picture. Hoping for some mistake, some difference.

There was none.

The man on the floor – the dead man who looked to be perhaps thirty Turns old – had his picture in a book that dated back over a millenium. Nor was it just someone who looked similar. Scieran had seen a few such people in his life: unrelated men or women who looked so alike that it was hard to believe they weren't twins. But this….

He's the same. The same.

The picture in the book he held allowed no argument. The angles and lines of the face. The ears that stuck out ever-so-slightly. Even the waves of the hair that lay across the killer's forehead were exactly the same.

No. Not a killer. Not just a killer.

The book called him something different. Something else that made no sense: "Guardian."

But what kind of guardian would try to kill a priest?

No answer for that. Just as there was no answer to how a dead man of thirty Turns could have been the subject of an image created a millenium before.

"What is this?" asked Brother Luca. His voice quavered. He sounded like a child whose room has just been invaded by a monster.

No one answered. Mother Maci slowly turned and headed back to the Archive. Father Inmil followed his sister. Brother Luca, with a last glance at the man who had died a day before, but should have died a thousand Turns before that, finally walked after them.

Scieran stayed. Last and longest with the dead man.

Who are you?

Then he, too, returned to the stone table and the Old Books.

The recently-dead man would give no answers.

Perhaps the words of the long-dead would provide them.

Phoenix had given Sword the first clue. Had he meant it to lead here?

Scieran didn't know.

But he knew he could not stop looking. And felt that to do so would be to court the doom of all Ansborn.

THREE: alliances

"What lays below is one of the great Mysteries. Some will say that this means they are never to be known or understood. To this I say: You do not understand the nature of mystery. Mystery exists not as a wall that cannot be breached, but as a locked door which awaits only the right key to open."

- Emperor Eka, First Rules and
Commandments of the Ascension

1

This was not how it was supposed to be.

Nothing was how it was supposed to be.

He had asked her if she wanted to know what was really happening. Who the real enemy was.

And Sword didn't move. Didn't try to kill him, or even to attack Marionette – the one behind the attack on the Strongholds, and from there the camp of Halaw refugees.

She stood. Just a moment, but something told her to listen. Told her that, though Phoenix was a murderer, a corrupter – a liar – he was not lying now. Something was coming. Something worse than anything that had yet come.

"Sorry for making you walk," said Phoenix. He looked chipper, still wearing Devar's face, his wry grin spreading in half-secret amusement. "I didn't want to chat with Tiawan. Not at the moment, anyway."

Something about the way he said "Tiawan" caught Sword's attention. "You know him?" she said. It wasn't really a question.

Nor was it a surprise when Phoenix nodded. "Of course," he said. He opened his mouth to speak – clearly intending to tell her how he knew the other man – then visibly shifted gears. "Where did he go?" he asked.

"To destroy the palace. To kill Malal and destroy the Empire." Bitterly she added, "To finish what you started."

At least, that's what she intended to say. In reality, she only got as far as "the palace" before Phoenix lurched to his feet. Fear suddenly lit his expression.

"What?" he roared. Then, without waiting for an answer, he said, "Marionette."

The girl didn't look up from her play. "Is it time to make more poppets?" she asked.

"We're leaving," said Phoenix. He looked at Sword. "You, too."

She snorted. "You've got to be kidding –"

Phoenix closed his eyes, and Sword realized in that instant he was going to travel somewhere. When she had first trained to be one of the Empire's assassins, she had been transported miles across the land, something far beyond the abilities of any Wanderer. She had assumed that was the Gift of one of Phoenix's other shapes – the power of a Greater Gift he had consumed, but one she had not seen. However, he did not shift to a new form. He remained in the shape of Devar.

She didn't understand. Phoenix was bound by his form: he used the Gift of whatever person whose body he wore. And Devar's Gift was to travel instantly through space, but that was different than transporting others.

"Devar's Second Gift?" she asked, not really knowing why it was important to understand.

Phoenix opened his eyes. He gave a slight grin and put a hand over his heart. "Devar das no Second Gift," he said. "None of my selves do."

How is that possible?

Sword's mouth opened to speak in Fear…

… and the words cut off in another land.

Marionette and Phoenix still stood nearby. Marionette still played with her tortured doll, as though she hadn't even noticed the shift.

They were outside the Emperor's castle – it seemed even Phoenix's gift was not enough to pass the Screens whose magic prevented anything transporting into the walls via magic.

But Sword only registered that fact as background. The rest of her attention was focused on the castle itself.

It had changed.

Even after Tiawan's attack, there had been a sense of life about the place. As though the fact that this set of structures was the center of the Empire worked a unique magic of its own. Everyone inside the castle had a place to be and a task to see to. The walls themselves seemed to glow sometimes, nearly appearing aware of their place as the center of the world.

Now, though… all was dark.

A swirling dustcloud surrounded the palace: a gray cylinder taller than the eye could see. Dust and particles of stone and other detritus spun around and around, the same bits visible time and again as they circled endlessly.

The moat had widened to the circle of spires that marked the boundary between the castle and the rest of Ansborn. The stalls and shops of the market beyond had been abandoned, though some brave souls stood a hundred feet or so from the wind – either their fascination overwhelming their fear, or that fear itself so great they could not move.

Sword suspected the latter.

The drawbridge had been destroyed, so completely that it was not even wreckage – merely a memory.

Lightning shattered the sky. It lit everything with a pale ghostlight that somehow seemed to darken as much as it illuminated. It slashed through the windstorm – not inside it, not outside, but through the middle of the winds themselves.

Cloud.

Only he could create something like this. No one else had such mastery of the weather, of the storm.

But why would he do this?

The winds swirled.

The castle could not be entered.

For a moment, she actually believed that.

Then, she heard the roar of flame. She looked up.

She saw Tiawan.

He fell from the sky, a bright halo of flame seeming to surround him, as though the Gods themselves had sent an emissary from above. An avenger to wipe clean the Empire for its sins.

For a moment, a dreadful, horrible moment, Sword wondered if this was all the punishment of the Gods. If it might not be deserved. If it might not be better.

Tiawan touched down, and any semblance of heavenly form disappeared. La'ug dropped from one side of him, Wahy from the other.

He clanked toward Sword. His mechanical voice came out dry, empty of emotion. Humanity was gone from him, and he was only a machine of death.

"You should have stayed away," he said to Sword.

Then his gaze turned to Phoenix. The helmet clicked back, revealing Tiawan's face. The rage was still there, the killing intent. But sudden shock also masked his expression.

"What are you doing here, Vrisha?" he asked.

Sword looked over, and saw an old man where Phoenix had been standing.

It is Phoenix.

But he was wearing a form she had never seen. Bent over, a huge hunch distorting his back, and one leg was much longer than the other. His eyes seemed mismatched, and one was higher on his face, beside a nose that seemed to have been pressed by a huge fist.

The deformed old man nodded. "Tiawan," he said. "A new enemy has come, and I have much to tell you." He eyed Sword. "I have much to tell you both."

2

Brother Luca turned the pages of The Tree. Showing the others what he had found. He was still reeling from the vision of a man long-dead, but still somehow alive.

Luca was a man of knowledge. He was one of the Faithful, but he saw no difference between the ultimate aims of faith and study, of religion in its truest form and the search for understanding of the universe. Both were avenues to truth. Both were keys that together opened the doors of comprehension. Keys to the minds of the Gods, and so also keys to the hearts of humanity, and the workings of the world.

A man of knowledge. A seeker of answers. A disciple of truth.

And, for the first time in his adult life, he wished he could put the answers away. Wished he could forget what he knew, and return to a place where ignorance had kept him safe and happy.

He wished, for the first time, that he could be a child again.

But he could not. He kept turning the pages of The Tree.

"What is it?" asked Father Inmil.

Luca didn't realize he was being spoken to. Not until Brother Scieran said his name, "Brother Luca?" in a tone of such concern it actually tore his gaze away from the book.

"Yes, Sword?"

Brother Scieran's lips pursed. He looked as though he worried that Luca might have lost his mind. "Sword isn't here," said the warrior-priest.

Luca shook his head. "Not her. You. Scieran That's what your name means. It's a derivative of an old language, and it means 'sword.'" He frowned. "Or maybe 'blade.'"

Brother Scieran cocked his head. He looked at the page of The Tree that Luca had been examining. "Where?" he said.

Luca showed him the line, the tight, even script that translated the name. Below it was another translation, and another. Brother Scieran traced his finger down the text. Turned the page. Luca let him, glad to have an excuse to turn his eyes away from the dreadful burden of knowledge.

"It says…." He smirked suddenly, and looked at Luca. "Is this you?"

Luca nodded. The motion taxed him. He felt beyond old. His mind had expanded past comfort.

If this is what the Gods feel like, then perhaps the Netherworlds would be a better place to live out eternity.

Brother Scieran smirked again. "What a boring name you have," he said.

Then he turned the page. Luca hadn't seen the page following the list of names – he had assumed it would be more of the same. Perhaps he could have discovered what Father Inmil's name meant, or Mother Maci's. Not all the names he had ever encountered were in there, but some of the more common ones were listed. A kind of genealogy of ancient times – a family tree with listings of where the names came from, places with names so odd and alien they defied expression.

Father Scieran said, "Ansborn." He looked up. "It means 'born of God,'" he said.

"The Gods?" said Mother Maci, half in automatic correction, half in legitimate question.

Father Scieran just shook his head and turned the page.

As the paper lifted, Luca was gripped by a sudden terror.

As a child, living in the highlands of Strength, he had wandered off his family's farm. Not far, but he liked the silence of the forest that bordered the fields. They were a place he could hide – if only for a short time – from the demands of sowing and reaping, the need to lay up during times of plenty so that survival could be found in times of scarcity.

It was, in short, a perfect place to steal away with a book. Not a children's book, no fables for him. He read books of learning. The teachings of the Gods' Book, Thoms' Broken Theologies.

He read, and learned, and treasured those times.

But one time, it was different. One time, he realized only a few pages into his present book – Cultures and Conflicts – that the forest was not just quiet, but absolutely still. Not a bird twittered, not a leaf seemed to move.

Expectant. But not hopeful. Terror blanketed all like a cloth over a corpse.

Luca sensed something behind him. He turned.

The cats were rare, even in the highlands. Rarer still near human habitation – they preferred to keep to their own, deep in the crags of Strength where none but the bravest dared go. And even those sturdy souls didn't, for the simple reason that there was nothing there to have or find. Just rock, scrub, small animals… and the giant beasts that hunted them.

The Claw stared at him for a long time, its gold eyes wide, the pupil only a small dot in the center. The creature was only about as big as Luca – a very small boy for his ten Turns – but every measure of it was either bone or muscle, claw or fang. Claws could attack and kill full-grown men.

The beast seemed to realize this in that moment, and its eyes narrowed. It took a silent step toward Luca, and growled.

Not a growl. A pur.

It wasn't threatening, nor was it warning. It was making the contended sound of a warrior who has already seen victory… or a man contemplating the rich meal before him.

Luca was doomed. He closed his eyes.

His father came at the last moment. Killed the beast, though the Claw wounded him badly. No Patch was near, nor did Luca's family have the money to hire one.

And even if they had, the wounds were probably too severe. Luca's father died the day after he saved his son.

Never since that moment had Luca felt anything he would describe as real fear. After witnessing his own death in the eyes of a monster, after seeing his father wrestle the demon, kill it, and then die himself… what, then, was there to fear?

Even when he saw the red-haired man's picture, when he saw a man from a thousand Turns ago lying almost peacefully in his own blood, even then he had not known real terror.

But now, watching Brother Scieran turn the page, that terror finally came again. He wanted to shout, to scream, "No!" but the word did not come from his frozen tongue.

Brother Scieran turned the page…

… and Luca felt silly. Felt ridiculous.

It was only another picture of the tree that graced the front of the book. Though this time it was strangely stylized, only the vague outline of the dirt into which it stretched its pointed roots, the clouds into which its v-shaped outline disappeared.

Nothing. Nothing.

But Mother Maci shifted. Father Inmil made a strange sound, half gag, half gasp, as though his soul had suddenly tried to escape.

Luca frowned. "What is it?" he said. He looked at Brother Scieran, who wore the same expression as he.

Mother Maci reached across the stone table. She was standing opposite him, and now she spun the book so the pages were upside-down in front of Luca and Brother Scieran: the same viewpoint she and Father Inmil had had.

Luca saw it.

The tree… the vague outlines of ground and cloud formed two parallel, horizontal lines. The tree's wide, "V" shape became something more akin to an "A" when inverted.

It was the sign of a bishop of Faith, of the priests of Ansborn. The sign that represented the Faithful.

"The sign… it's the mountains of Ansborn – Center, with clouds below and the Gods' realm above," said Father Inmil. He didn't sound sure.

"Not according to this," said Luca. His voice sounded strong, and he realized he was hiding behind the façade of a professor – a teacher who, by his very office, could not be afraid of knowledge because his job was to pass it on. "According to this, the sign is an inverted tree."

"What does the tree itself mean?" asked Mother Maci. Her voice sounded like his: her own retreat from fear to cold analysis.

"I don't know yet," said Luca. His expression cracked. Fear pushed through his pretense of nonchalance. His next words were hard, but he sensed they must be said. The job must be done. "I'll keep looking."

He took the book and bent over it, turning to the next page.

The others mimicked him. Only Father Inmil did not look down at the Old Book he had been studying. "I wonder," he said in a quiet, dreamlike voice, "I wonder if the lands are also upside-down."

"What do you mean?" said Brother Scieran. His voice was steady. He was a brave man.

Braver than I'll ever be, thought Luca.

But Father Inmil's words shook even Brother's Scieran's confidence.

"I wonder if the Gods' realm isn't above. If it's below."

Everyone looked up. They shared glances of worry, confusion.

Fear.

Then they all – even Father Inmil – returned to their studies.

Answers were here.

Answers to everything. To where they had begun.

And, perhaps, to how they would end.

3

This was the second time Phoenix had mentioned a new enemy. The second time he was apparently trying to stop violence from beginning.

Sword didn't understand.

She didn't understand why the winds surrounded the castle. She didn't understand why or how Tiawan appeared to know Phoenix. She didn't understand what "enemy" Phoenix kept ranting about – or why he was suddenly acting as though she were a friend instead of an foe.

Her sword was in her hand. Pointed at the ground, the flame illuminating a bright circle below her. She wasn't going to fight – not yet – but her discomfort was so great that she couldn't seem to let go of the weapon. The sword was her defense, and her fear refused to let it go.

We react to fear with violence, and that violence breeds only more fear in its turn.

(let go of the sword)

But she couldn't. She could only face the darkness that beckoned with the light of the weapons she held.

Tiawan saw her sword. He settled down – not crouching, exactly, but leaning slightly forward, his armor shifting and grinding as he lowered into a stance that could bring him to full action in less than an eyeblink.

La'ug followed suit. She climbed onto Wahy's back and hooked her fingers around his throat. Her other hand held the woolly. She whispered to it, and it stared at Sword with bright, angry eyes.

Phoenix – the misshapen, ancient, strange version of him – limped between Sword and the others. "Stop," he said. His voice was hoarse. Old, yes, but also strained by the simple force of his plea. "You are not enemies. You are not the enemy." He looked at Tiawan. "This is not why I gave you the jewels."

Sword took a half-step back, surprise shoving her bodily. "You… you gave them the jewels?" she said. She said it mostly to herself, working out the rest and saying it, as well. "You changed them. The jewels changed them from a Smith and a Strong and a Critter to…." Her voice fell to nothing.

Phoenix nodded. "Yes. My first Greater Gift. My power to create stones that would change people. Would make simple Gifts into Greater Gifts. That would change them into something related to their first magic. But greater, stronger." He looked at Tiawan and the others again. "And terrible."

He shifted his gaze back to Sword. He pulled up his shirt. The movement was slow, his broken body barely allowing this simple motion. But he managed to pull the hem up high enough for Sword to see the jewel in his chest. Like the others, it had been cut into the sign of Faith. Like the others, it glowed yellow – though she noted his jewel was not set over his heart, but was much lower on his body; and it seemed to hold a far greater light than did the jewel in Tiawan's and the others' chests.

"And when I tried it on myself," continued Phoenix, "it changed me, too."

The old, malformed body shimmered, and now Devar stood before her. "Changed me from a person who could merely give greater power to others, into someone who could also steal that power from others, and make it my own."

Sword saw shock cross Tiawan's face, and even La'ug's depthless rage seemed to break for a moment when Phoenix changed. "Vrisha?" said Tiawan.

Phoenix – still looking like a young man in his late teens, perhaps as old as twenty Turns – nodded. "It is I my friend." He took a step toward Tiawan. "And I beg you… please stop. Please wait. Don't attack the castle. Don't kill the Emperor."

Tiawan's features hardened. The surprise was still there, but alloyed with cold determination. Death flared in his eyes. "You are the one who gave me the poison. You are the one who explained it all to me, Vrisha. You are the one who told me that those in control must die that the rest might choose their own path. Who convinced me that it was better that they die in chaos than live in slavery, and that the strong and the deserving would survive and make this land what it truly should be."

Sword's mind reeled. Tiawan's speech in Fear, his words about letting people die and how that was better than having them live under the Emperor… she had thought they sounded strangely rehearsed, as though they had been given to him by someone else.

But those words had come from Phoenix?

It made no sense. For those words could result in only one thing: the destruction of the Empire. Not just the government, but the entirety of its existence – perhaps every single person who lived there.

She had thought all Phoenix did – the destruction of the Grand Cathedral, the killing of much of the Army, the hunt for the Cursed Ones and every other revolutionary who challenged him – was in order to consolidate his power. To remain the secret force that truly controlled Ansborn.

Now she saw that could not be. He didn't want control. He wanted complete destruction. He wanted….

"Madness," she whispered.

Phoenix looked at her. "No," he said fervently. "Not madness."

"You're trying to destroy everyone."

"No, you fool girl, I'm trying to save everyone." He hesitated, then added, "Or as many as I can."

Marionette spoke. Sword had nearly forgotten about her. "But not too many. Enough will die for me to play with." She held up her doll in front of her face, moving it as though it were the one that spoke the next words. "I'll have many friends soon."

The words chilled Sword. More so because she saw Phoenix's face when she heard them. Saw his downcast eyes and knew Marionette spoke truth – they had always intended many to die. Had always known death was coming.

But, for some reason, Phoenix was… he was sad about that fact.

"Enough," said Tiawan. "I don't know why you've changed, Vrisha. And I don't care." He nodded at the swirling winds. "I am –"

"You will kill us all," roared Phoenix. "The clouds below hide our doom!"

That stopped Tiawan. He didn't look so much surprised as simply confused. "What?"

"We came from below the clouds," said Phoenix. "The First Emperor was one of those who dwelt below. He brought his followers here for a purpose. The people below created the five mountains, and Eka and his people came, and the clouds covered all beyond, and Ansborn was born." He closed his eyes. "And I thought if I could kill the Emperor, if I could bring war so great that none but the most powerful – the strongest Gifts – would survive… I thought that if I could bring a plague targeted to the unGifted… I thought I could fulfill that purpose. There would only be Gifts, and they would breed, and create the stronger Gifts that were always Ansborn's purpose and its aim. But when I went to the Strongholds, I saw it had begun."

Phoenix opened his eyes, staring at Sword and Tiawan in turn. "I thought I could create the Culling, and fulfill Ansborn's purpose, and buy us time." He looked mournfully at Sword. "I hoped you would help. I was angry at you for getting in the way of my plans, but I always did like you, Sword, even though you killed me. At first I thought you were nothing but a hindrance, but eventually I came to understand that you might be Ansborn's best hope." He shrugged modestly. "Other than me, of course." Then the look dissolved from his face, replaced by an earnestness Sword found completely off-putting. "I hoped that you would come over to my side if you knew. That was why I gave you the book – so you would find out the truth. So you would help me save Ansborn.

"But instead the Gods have already come. Too early, they have come. I saw it at the Strongholds – they have come and will destroy us all unless we can stop them." He clenched his fist. "Unless we can band together – all of Ansborn – and destroy them."

Tiawan shook his head. "I don't understand what you're saying," he said.

Sword heartily agreed with that. Phoenix's intentions had been to destroy everyone but the strongest Gifts? She saw how, if that were true, he had certainly taken the right steps: the Imperial Army had always had few Gifts in its ranks, and Phoenix had destroyed much of it when he had Malal cause the eruption at the Acropolis.

But why try to take over the Silver Seat? Why spend decades destroying the Empire from within?

But she already knew. Wasn't that what Sword and her friends were working so hard to stop? They were trying to avoid a change in power from the thousand-year dynasty of the Silver Seat to some new leader. How much worse would it be if there was a complete and utter collapse of all government, brought about after a hundred years and more of carefully fomented corruption?

Trees whose branches rotted could be pruned and saved.

Trees that rotted from within eventually just dissolved and were simply… gone.

And after he failed with the Emperor, Phoenix has tried to breed the same purpose in Tiawan. Increasing Tiawan's power – the power of a man who hates the Empire – and encouraging him to destroy the leadership of Ansborn. Corruption from within, destruction from without.

Anarchy.

And only the strongest – the Gifts and Greater Gifts – could possibly survive that storm.

It made sense in its execution. But it was senseless in its purpose. Why would Phoenix do that? Why would he spend years – decades – fomenting corruption in the government, and then providing threats and disease to kill almost everyone in a single, swift moment of near-extinction?

But what changed his mind?

He had mentioned the Strongholds. That was where the tanks that had attacked the refugees in Fear had come from. So he had seen something there. Something that convinced him of… what?

That the Gods have come.

She still didn't understand what that meant. The Gods lived in the Heavens, but Phoenix seemed to be saying they were ascending from below the mountains to destroy Ansborn? Why?

And why, if Phoenix wanted to stop that destruction, would Marionette have commanded the undead in the tanks to fire on the refugees?

To stop Tiawan. To kill him before he could finish what he started.

The thought chilled her. And then another, much worse thought: Or perhaps so Marionette could have more dead to raise. If Phoenix wants to band together to destroy some unseen enemy, then what better way to fight than with an unkillable army – an army that has already died?

All this went through her mind in less than a second. The thoughts left her equal parts illuminated and more confused than ever.

She wished that Arrow were here. He always saw the meaning of things. The paths people had taken, the reasons behind their choices.

Arrow. Was he even alive? Sword realized with a sudden chill that among his staggering, nearly nonsensical flurry of words, Phoenix had said he found something terrible at the Strongholds… and that was exactly where Arrow had headed.

A new fear crept over her. Arrow had become, in a very short time, the most important person in her world. Her confidant, her friend. The man she loved.

Tiawan had stopped moving as well: obviously trying to understand what Phoenix was talking about the same as Sword had. Then his helm enveloped his head.

The armor was cold, but not as cold as his voice. "I don't understand what you're saying, Vrisha – or whoever you are. And I don't care."

The fires at his back erupted, and he flew a few feet skyward.

"The Empire falls today," he said.

4

Sword still didn't understand all that Phoenix had said. Not all of it. Not nearly enough.

So it was a strange relief to see Tiawan shoot skyward. To realize he was going to try to burst through the strange swirl of wind and debris. To know he intended to kill the Emperor – if he wasn't already dead – and perhaps the hope of an Empire.

It was a relief because, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, Sword knew what to do.

She had to stop him.

Only she had no idea how to do it.

Tiawan took to the sky, and in only an instant he was well out of range of any whip or rope she might cast. She could throw a spear, perhaps. But what would that do? Tiawan had been a Smith, and knowing that she understood why her weapons barely functioned against his magic: Smiths worked metal, and they controlled air and flame with their Gift to do so.

The metal suit Tiawan had created had surely been forged in magic flame. It had undoubtedly been created with the aid of the strongest air.

No flame could penetrate it. No air could blow him off course. That was why Cloud's attacks on him had come to naught. And why Sword's weapons were only minor inconveniences.

He was too far overhead to catch. And too invulnerable to her weapons for her to do anything even if she could catch him.

Her heart fell within her. Then she heard Phoenix. "Stop them," he said. Sword realized that La'ug and Wahy were racing toward her. The girl had taken her monstrous shape, and the man had shifted to his berserker self. Sword didn't know if they intended to get into the castle as well, or if they simply intended to kill her.

She didn't care. She would stop them. She didn't know how, but she would.

She was about to say something to Phoenix, but in that moment he disappeared. She heard a metallic shout above, and saw that Phoenix had reappeared in midair beside Tiawan. The rapier that he always carried was buried in Tiawan's armored chest, and Sword felt a moment of hope that perhaps this had ended the fight. But Tiawan bellowed in rage and sent a huge fist toward Phoenix, who was hanging to the hilt of his sword.

Phoenix disappeared. The sword remained behind, and Tiawan's fist slapped into the metal, snapping it cleanly apart about an inch from his chest.

Phoenix reappeared, this time above Tiawan, plummeting rapidly toward the suit of armor.

Then Sword didn't have time to watch any more. She only had time for her own survival as Wahy and La'ug came upon her as one.

La'ug reached her first, apparently too crazed at the chance to kill Sword to have Wahy climb on her shoulders the way she usually did. She leaped at Sword, claws the size of daggers extended toward her.

Sword rolled to the side, her katana slashing as she did. La'ug roared, all ten of her claws falling to the ground with dry-bone sounds. She reared back, but Sword had already changed weapons, the katana disappearing and a spear appearing in its place. She threw the weapon.

Most people chose javelins for long-distance attacks like this. They were slightly lighter than spears, allowing for a longer throw and more accuracy. But Sword's magic allowed her to cast a spear with a heavy head nearly the length of the castle. That was how hard she threw it now, even though La'ug was barely ten paces away.

The spear flew toward her, so fast that anyone without Sword's magic – perhaps Arrow's – would have seen only a blur. They would not even have realized they were in danger until after the killing blow had gone into and through them.

La'ug shifted, a motion every bit as fast as the flight of the spear. Her huge mouth opened, splitting her head nearly in half. The spear entered her maw, but instead of shooting out the back of her skull or her throat, it simply disappeared.

Swallowed whole? Or simply destroyed by the same magic that had created this seemingly indestructible monster? Sword couldn't tell, and she didn't have time to ponder it.

The monster's great teeth slammed down with a sound louder than the thunder that still clapped within the nearby tornado. La'ug made a strangely human sound: a deep, thrumming chuckle. Foolish girl, the sound seemed to say, can't you see that your doom has already come?

Then Sword sensed something behind her – that same power that enabled her to feel a bullet speeding at her, that let her move fast enough to split it in two. She barely managed to spin fast enough to stop Wahy, though.

(No, not stop him. Just not be killed by him.)

The berserker pounced on her. She ducked and rolled under him, her wakizashi flashing into existence, then slicing Wahy up the center as he passed over her.

He landed. She spun. His insides had spilled through the slash in his shirt, through the underlying gash in his belly. But he didn't seem to care.

He threw his head skyward and howled, a sound filled with pain and rage and madness. But though the wound had hurt him, it didn't stop him.

And a moment later, it was gone.

Sword couldn't see exactly what happened. There was simply a shimmer, a sense of movement. Then Wahy was running at her again, his belly muscular and whole – not even a scar to show where Sword had just opened him to the world. His guts were nowhere to be seen. Just gone.

La'ug was running toward her as well, the monster clearly holding back so that both of them would reach Sword at the same time.

She skipped backward as La'ug slashed a great paw at her – though the claws had been cut off, there were still sharp nubs that rose an inch or so from the monster's fur. And even if the claws had been completely destroyed, a single hit with that huge paw would be more than enough to crush Sword's bones to powder.

La'ug's attack missed. Barely. Sword felt the wind part in front of her eyes.

And in that same instant, she saw La'ug's claws reappear. The creature was whole again.

In the same instant, she wrenched her body to the side, avoiding Wahy's grasping hands. Not as strong as La'ug's paws, but if the berserker managed to grab her, she might never get out of that insane grasp.

His fingers brushed her shirt. She slashed down with a dagger. His fingers fell just like La'ug's claws had done.

But he grabbed her anyway.

Sword was shocked for an instant. Nearly long enough to be fatal. She knew he healed, she had seen that. But it was still terrible to be grabbed by fingers that should not have been there.

Wahy's face dropped toward her. His mouth opened wide, and Sword knew he was going to bite her. Chew her.

She managed to get a hand up. Wahy was fast, but she was faster. A dirk appeared in her hand, and she rammed it through his open mouth.

Unlike when she threw the spear down La'u, the blade did come out the back of Wahy's head. There was even a spray of blood. But it made little difference. Wahy just yanked his head upward, off the tip of the weapon. The blood spilling from his mouth disappeared with the same strange, impossible-to-watch shimmer Sword saw before. He dove at her throat again.

This time there was no dirk. Instead she held a te unun. The weapon was used by some fishermen in Strength, and was composed of a slender center shaft that ended in a spear point. Three other shafts extended at an angle from the central rod. All four were lined with the teeth of wild animals or some of the larger fish, creating a huge barb that would let nothing go once pierced.

The one Sword called was not made of wood and teeth, of course, but her magic did the job well enough. The te unun went through Wahy's open mouth, piercing the back of his neck. He tried to pull away from it, but she had conjured the weapon so it was small enough to impale him, but big enough that the three branches reaching away from the center shaft held him fast. And that center shaft was wide enough that it held Wahy's mouth open like a hooked fish.

All this happened in an instant. Sword knew La'ug would attack in the next moment. Knew she was in mortal danger.

Another weapon appeared in her free hand: a fiery shuko like the one she had used during Tiawan's first attack on the castle. She slammed her palm toward Wahy's center, the spikes in her hand flashing toward the jewel she knew rested in the left side of his chest.

She couldn't hurt him. Not long enough to matter. So the only chance was to cut the jewel out of his body and hope that would do the trick.

The spikes hit his chest. Sank in easier than a knife punching through parchment. She ground the spikes toward the jewel, moving them deeper and in a circular movement that would gouge the jewel from his living flesh, while all the while Wahy growled and shrieked a gagging shriek, his mouth writhing around the te unun she still held to.

And La'ug was behind her. Mouth splitting open, ready to tear Sword's head from her shoulders.

She ground the shuko. Felt it touch the jewel.

And could go no further.

The jewel could not be removed. Not by her. Perhaps not by anything at all.

La'ug lunged.

Sword didn't think. She had no time for anything but instinct.

Wahy, in spite of her attacks, still held her tight. And he was far too strong for her to break out of his grasp. So she didn't try. She let go of the te unun; felt it disappear in the same instant.

La'ug: nearly at the moment of the kill.

As soon as the te unun disappeared, Wahy dropped his head again, teeth bared to rip out her throat and bathe in her blood. Sword hadn't released the shuko, though. She dug it upward now, gashing great furrows in the berserker's body. She used the resistance to push herself downward, her head almost level with the glowing jewel she could see through his shredded shirt.

There was a muffled thwock.

Wahy's arms clenched around Sword so hard they bruised her ribs. Then, suddenly, they went limp.

Sword somersaulted backward out of his grasp. Her shoulder rolled across the ground, and she twisted at the same time so she ended up on her feet, facing her foes. Her katana and wakizashi flared, and though she already knew instinctively what had happened – indeed, she had caused it – it took her mind a moment to catch up.

Then she saw. And, seeing, felt sick.

La'ug had tried to bite of her head, simple as that. But when Sword ducked, and Wahy hunched down to bite her, his head moved into the space hers had just occupied.

La'ug had bitten Wahy instead of Sword, and severed his head from his neck. His body hung from her clenched teeth for a moment, then fell away in a headless heap as blood arced through the air.

La'ug moved, a quick ripple went through her body, and Sword realized in horror that the beast had, acting without thought, moving on crazed instinct and bloodlust, swallowed Wahy's head.

La'ug seemed to realize it in the same moment. The creature gagged and made a strangled noise.

Sword barely heard that, though. She was watching Wahy. The indestructible man.

But he did not rise. Sword wondered why – he had been shot repeatedly in the head, and that hadn't even made him pause. Was actually losing the head enough?

Then she saw the jewel he still held in his breast. The light was gone from it. It was dim. And when La'ug screamed, roared in the agony of loss, Sword saw the monster's fur glow brightly.

That was it. Sword couldn't have stopped him, but La'ug could. Because La'ug had received the same gift as Wahy. She held his magic, perhaps held a link in common with him.

She could hurt him.

She had killed him.

Sword grieved. Just for an instant. Wahy had been a child in mind and heart. A good-hearted soul without the mind to understand what had been done to him. An innocent.

So many innocents.

La'ug's roar changed. No longer of loss, but of rage.

She charged at Sword.

5

Tiawan spun in the air. He had created a suit that was fast, strong. It gave him the power to walk. It was beyond anything ever created in the history of Ansborn. Within it, he felt invincible. He was no man. Not precisely a God, but certainly one of the Gods' messengers, armed with power from above and sent on a holy mission to right wrongs, to avenge the weak, to punish the wicked.

He was born a man. He had become a cripple.

And when he made the suit, he became more than either.

Yet now, when he needed it most, when his mission was so close to fruitiion… now it failed him. The arms and legs that had always seemed so quick and strong now felt cumbersome and slow. He spun and turned in the air, flew high and plummeted nearly to earth. But no matter how fast he moved, no matter how quick his flight, Vrisha was always just out of reach.

Is it Vrisha? Is it truly him?

Certainly he had appeared as Vrisha at first. There was no mistaking the crooked form or twisted face. But then he had become a young man, even younger perhaps than Wahy. And that young man appeared and disappeared and reappeared once more in the blink of an eye. Tiawan flew high, and Vrisha would be there, falling toward him, grabbing at his armor, harrying him. He spun away, and Vrisha again appeared. Falling instantly – he had not the power of flight, apparently – but reaching out to yank at Tiawan's armor before blinking into nothing once more.

Blink… and he was kicking at Tiawan's chest.

Blink… Vrisha yanked on Tiawan's gauntlet with the full weight of his falling body.

Blink… Tiawan's flight stuttered as Vrisha appeared on his side, one arm wrapped around Tiawan's armored neck and the other hand pulling at his helm, trying to peel it away.

Tiawan almost smirked. The boy – or old man, or whatever Vrisha truly was – could not really touch him.

He oriented himself on the swirling winds around the castle. The air held no fear for him, any more than the steel of a sword or the flame of a bonfire. His armor was a creature of all these things. He was beyond them all.

Another yank at his foot. Tiawan gritted his teeth. Vrisha could not hurt him, but this constant badgering had grown tiresome.

He saw Sword, fighting Wahy and La'ug below. He grinned. Once she was dead, perhaps Vrisha would lose hope and leave him alone. In fact….

The tube on Tiawan's arm glowed. The light would kill her, he was sure. No matter how fast she was with her weapons, no matter how quick she was on her feet, the flame that the tube fired was as quick as the rays of the sun – and twice as hot.

He aimed. The tube glowed.

He realized that Vrisha hadn't "attacked" him for the last few moments.

Good.

The light speared out. Straight at Sword.

Tiawan watched it too closely. His vision dissolved in a series of sparkles for a moment, blinded by the intense light of his weapon. Slowly, though, the floating clouds of white – jags of blue spearing out of them like lightning from a cloud – dissipated.

Revealing… Sword. Still alive, still fighting.

He shot again. And this time noticed the hint of purple that appeared, darkening the air just where the light-weapon should have passed.

What…?

He realized he was not alone. Aa woman now flew nearby, hovering a stone's throw away. She was gorgeous. So beautiful she seemed nearly unreal, dressed head to to in a black suit that refused to reflect any trace of sunlight. The black suit contrasted with the white cloak she wore, the white hood over her head. And the white cloak in turn contrasted with her raven-black hair, through which a single lock of white ran like a stream through a dark land.

She was a thing of opposites. Black and white, dark and light.

And Tiawan knew who it was. "Vrisha," he muttered.

He pointed the light-weapon at her –

(him?)

– and felt it discharge. Another purple blur. The woman still stood unharmed.

"You can't hurt me," she said.

At her words, Tiawan realized she wasn't actually flying, or even floating. She stood in the air, that same purple light below her feet.

A shield. Vrisha can conjure a shield in this form.

Tiawan didn't say a thing. He simply charged.

As a Smith –

(but not a Smith now something more what is it what am i?

i am a monster)

– he knew that the world was divided into four basic elements. Earth, air, fire, water. His suit had been born of three – air, fire, and the earthy metals that were a Smith's lifeblood.

His suit was also more or less impervious to those three.

Everything was at heart one or more of the four elements.

His armor could withstand three of them.

So he rushed at Vrisha. Knowing what would happen.

He did not fear.

Vrisha's face showed her own confidence. She held up a hand. The purple light flared – the shield. Tiawan saw the light through the glass that covered his eyes. He felt the light through his suit. His flames, pushed to their highest and hottest, sputtered as he hit the shield.

And he slowed… but did not stop.

As he had expected.

The shield was magic, yes. But even magic used the world for its existence. Air, water, fire, earth. Tiawan felt it as he passed through, and felt what it was: a kind of fire. A cold fire, to be sure. A fire that did not ignite what it touched, but rather redirected the energy of what came against it.

Tiawan did not fear fire. And his suit surpassed it.

He had been panicked when the flying machines came to Fear. He had not thought, only reacted –

(and again he wondered if the jewels had done more than augmented his magic if perhaps they had not merely given him power but also stolen some of his peace some of his thought some of his mind)

– and as a result he had not used the magic that was most his to command. He had acted as the man in iron, instead of what he truly was.

A Smith.

And a Smith did not fear the flame.

The flame feared him.

Purple flared around him as he touched the cold flame of Vrisha's shield. His/her mouth rounded in an "o" of perfect shock and horror. Tiawan saw in her eyes that look of someone who has never lost.

And was about to.

Tiawan pounded through the last inch of the shield. He had to focus all he knew, all he had, all he was.

If I had done this, could I have saved the people in Fear? If I had only thought clearly?

(you haven't thought clearly since this started, Tiawan)

Then, abruptly, the shield was gone. He hadn't forced his way through it this time, either. It simply disappeared.

At the same time, Vrisha melted. That was the only way he could think to describe it. One moment she was beautiful, the next moment she sagged and her form became like molten ore. Then the shape solidified again, in the same moment it began to fall.

The young man reappeared.

His Gift changes with his shape.

The young man would be able to transport himself. Would be able to escape and then resume his meaningless attacks.

Tiawan aimed his light-weapon at the falling boy.

Vrisha grinned. And disappeared.

Tiawan grinned as well.

He was already spinning in the air, the fires on one side of his back blazing white-hot as those on the other side dimmed nearly to nothing.

His arms flared out, windmilling so fast they were a blur. Then he felt a jolt as his right arm hit something.

His grin widened. Vrisha had done what he did before: appeared at close quarters, where he could fall upon Tiawan and attempt – pitifully – to hurt him. This time, Tiawan had been ready: when Vrisha appeared nearby, Tiawan's spinning fist had caught him.

Tiawan stopped spinning so quickly he almost threw up inside his suit. But he had to do it. Had to finish it.

He came to rest facing Vrisha. Saw the young man's shocked expression. The pain as he curled into himself in midair. He saw the loose hang of his right arm, and the strangely indented right side of his ribs.

Tiawan didn't know if the boy had the presence of mind or concentration necessary to activate his magic. And he didn't want to find out. The fires at his back slammed him forward. His fist swung.

It connected with Vrisha's head. His neck snapped to the side, and Tiawan heard the distinctive crrrack! of bones breaking. Tiawan would have known just from the sound that he was dead, even if he hadn't seen the man's head twist so far to the side it was a miracle it didn't fly completely off his shoulders.

Vrisha twitched once, horribly.

He fell.

Tiawan wheeled in the air, intent on following the corpse to earth. He would make sure the body fell, that it turned to nothing but a red stain on the ground.

But first he glanced down. Saw Wahy grab Sword.

And so dies the Judge and Jury. So dies the last protector of the Empire.

So dies Ansborn.

He saw Wahy lean over to rend the girl, to tear her apart with his teeth.

He saw La'ug rear up. Come down to kill Sword as well, both of his beloved warriors destroying her as one.

There was a blur. Sword shifted.

And Tiawan screamed. The armor amplified the noise. Made it sound like a sudden roll of thunder, as though the Gods themselves had shrieked.

Wahy fell.

My grandson. My only….

Tiawan's mind dissolved. It fell into a pit where only madness ruled.

(don't do this
there's still time
still time
still…

time…

to…)

He forgot about the Empire.

He forgot about his quest.

He even forgot about La'ug.

There was only Sword, standing in the dust a few paces from the body of his last true family.

He screamed again, and fell toward her.

There was only Sword.

There was only his vengeance… and his prey.

6

La'ug roared, and threw herself at Sword. Sword dodged, but the move was slow. She had been awake for over a full day, much of it spent in exhausting travel and even more exhausting battle. Before that, she hadn't slept properly for days. She had fought, and buried the dead, and wept and worried.

She was exhausted. And it finally caught up with her.

She tried to slip away from La'ug. She half managed it. Her sword flared, the katana slicing through flesh and bone. La'ug roared, her face splitting in half once again as her oversized mouth opened wide.

The katana had bitten deep. Slashing nearly a foot into its massive torso. Dark blood – nearly black – gushed out of the wound.

Any other living creature would have died. If not instantly, the mere knowledge of the extent of the wound would have sent anything else into immobilizing shock.

Of course, any other living creature would have been simply sliced in half by Sword's magic blade.

La'ug was made of different stuff. In large measure a thing of magic herself, her flesh resisted the full might of the katana. She did not die, she did not go still with shock. Instead, at nearly the same instant that Sword struck, so did La'ug. Her paw went out in a wide, fast arc that connected with Sword's shoulder.

She felt like she had been hit by a war hammer. Most of her right side went numb, and what feeling remained was reserved for searing pain.

La'ug reared up again, and again swung her paw at Sword. This time she managed – barely – to roll away, but La'ug's claws raked across her chest as she fell back. More fire exploded there. She screamed.

She tucked her head into a backward roll that should have been easy. That should have had her springing up with a magical weapon in her good hand, ready to go back on the offensive. It might have worked, too, but for the fact that her bad arm hit the ground.

Intense pain rolled through her. She was already tired, and this was one injury too many. She completed her roll and even managed to find her way to her feet, but then they slipped out from under her again. She lurched to the side like a drunken soldier on holiday, her balance a memory and her magic impossible to reach.

She fell. Face-up to the sky.

She saw something above her. Tiawan, pointing his arm at something. A bright flare of light flew from his arm... and then her field of vision held only one thing. La'ug. Blood still gouted from her side, but she seemed not to notice it.

A moment later, there was nothing too notice. The blood just ceased. The wounds were simply gone.

La'ug raised her huge, horribly jointed arms over Sword. Her taloned feet scraped huge furrows in the ground.

Silence suddenly fell. Nature itself seemed to wait for the inevitable moment. In one of the few corners of her mind not devoted to pain or exhaustion or fear, Sword realized the tornado that surrounded the castle was gone.

Then La'ug fell upon her with a snarl and the gape of a dagger-filled mouth that should never have existed…

… the world disappeared, there was only the monster's bulk…

… and then, at the last possible moment, something barreled into the beast.

The object, whatever it was, wasn't enough to stop La'ug. Not even enough to slow her as she fell toward Sword. But it diverted her mass, if only barely. The monster collided with the ground only a handsbreadth from Sword.

Perhaps it was the proximity of the monster. Maybe it was the sudden shock that came with the realization that she was still alive. Whatever the reason, Sword felt a small measure of strength return to her. She scrabbled away from the beast, still not sure what had happened but with a voice screaming at her from within that she must get away get away!

She managed to stand in a series of jerky steps, her legs nearly going out from under her twice before she regained a semblance of balance. Only then did she turn, to see what had saved her.

Wahy.

The berserker was all over La'ug. Pummeling the beast with bloody fists, kicking it as fast as he could, even ramming fingers into the bloody gap at her side. A berserker as before, but not biting, not tearing with his teeth.

Because his head was still gone.

Sword noticed this as she noticed the jewel still embedded in his chest. Glowing again, but it was no longer yellow. Instead, it beamed a bright red. The color was familiar somehow. Almost the color of….

"See? Now you have a plaything."

Sword had forgotten about Marionette. But the little girl hadn't gone anywhere. She stood nearby, holding her tortured doll up so it could see the fight between the monster and the headless berserker. "See, my darling?" she whispered to the toy, and idly yanked one of its arms out of its socket. She dropped it on the ground and looked at Sword. "Phoenix said you might need help." She curtsied, a strangely dainty move. Then she had the doll echo the movement.

Sword was riveted for a moment. Utterly captured by the strangeness of her rescue and the insanity behind it. She wondered how Phoenix had convinced the mad little girl to do his bidding; and in the next moment she knew: he had promised her toys to play with. Either when he killed the unGifted, or when he fought the enemy below.

Mad. They're both completely mad.

Then she turned back to La'ug and Wahy. The monster seemed completely unnerved by the sudden appearance of the dead man. Wahy struck the monster's head, he gouged at her eyes with one hand while the other raked wounds in her side and then pulled those wounds wide.

The monster screamed. But it did not fight back. It looked at Wahy with the expression of someone who has just fallen into a vast chasm, and knows that they will die there.

The monster shimmered. La'ug and her woolly separated. Her side was bleeding, and Sword saw the woolly's side was slick and red as well, but neither of them seemed as badly injured as they had in their monster form.

Wahy – the thing that had once been Wahy – drew back for a moment. La'ug stared at him dully. Sword understood the look: she knew what she had lost. She knew it would never come back. And she didn't know whether life without it would be worth living.

It is! Sword wanted to shout. It is and you can't –

Marionette clapped her hands. Giggled.

And Wahy – what had once been Wahy – leaped at La'ug.

"No!" shouted Sword.

Marionette turned a disapproving eye on her. "Phoenix said they would be mine to play with," she said reproachfully.

Sword turned toward Wahy, toward the little girl he reached for. She didn't know La'ug's story, not completely. But for a child to hate this way, to desire such revenge….

La'ug was not evil. It was simply that mercy had been cut out of her heart.

Not evil.

Just terribly damaged. And terribly sad.

"No!" Sword screamed again. She lurched toward La'ug. She would save her – had to save her.

But her body betrayed her again. She tripped. She fell.

I have to save her.

But when she managed to stand again, there was no one left to save.

She looked away from the sight. Turned away, and now was facing Marionette, who turned trancelike red eyes on her for a moment before beginning to whisper into her doll's one remaining ear.

That was even worse than the sight of La'ug and her woolly, worse than the sight of Wahy, whom Marionette had obviously released since he now lay across the dead girl, his arm around her shoulders in a mockery of friendship.

Sword couldn't look at the dead. She wouldn't look at Marionette.

She looked up.

Something fell from the sky.

She had a moment to realize what it was: Phoenix. Unconscious, rolling through the air in an almost lazy turn. He fell, and fell… and then hit the ground a hundred feet away with such force that the ground seemed to explode around him.

Now Sword did look at Marionette. The little girl had seen it, too. She looked at the dust that still settled around a new crater in the ground, but didn't seem to care about what had just happened. She resumed whispering into the broken ear of her plaything.

Sword looked away. Up again. The only direction to look.

And she saw Tiawan.

He flew toward her so quickly, so directly, that she knew in an instant that he had seen. He knew his family and friends were dead.

The tube on his arm glowed bright. Aimed right for her.

Sword could not run. She was too spent. She wanted to fall, to lay there and just wait for oblivion.

No. I can't run. But I will stand.

She looked up.

And the sky suddenly caught fire.

7

Wind knelt at Malal's side.

The room was quiet.

The Patches remained, trying to keep up with the poison that was killing Malal, but no one else was in the room.

One by one, the guards that remained had crept away. Some fell at their post, and were dragged away by a fellow – usually another guard who was barely standing upright.

Now it was just her. Her and the Patches.

She knelt beside her love. Held his hand. He did not hold hers in return.

The Patches were losing their fight, she knew. One of them fell back, crumpling to the floor in exhaustion. But where before there had always been another Patch to replace one who was too worn out to continue… this time there was no one.

She could not hear the soft breathing of the Patches, the labored inhalations of the one who had fallen, or Malal's own tortured gasps. But she knew they were there, just as she knew the wind must be screaming as it swirled around the gastle: the storm that Cloud had conjured to keep the rest of the world safe. No one really knew if this –

(What? Poison? Plague?)

– would or could spread beyond the walls here, but this was certain: everyone within the swirling winds who was not a Gift was dead.

And as though her thought triggered some horrible signal to the Gods, Malal gasped. Wind couldn't hear it, of course, but she saw it clearly. Saw his half-rotted lips open wide, saw his wretched frame suddenly inflate with terrible effort.

His eyes – what was left of them – opened. They were terrible to see, one eye almost melted to nothing, the other crazed with burst blood vessels. But somehow he managed to look at her.

Somehow, he managed to smile.

And then he died.

Wind stood.

She sensed something behind her. She turned. Cloud stood there, his face a mask of misery. "I'm so sorry," he said.

She turned away, heading toward the door. He moved into her path. "Where are you going?" he asked, his lips moving in that exagerrated way he occasionally used when he wanted to be extra-sure she was paying attention to him.

To kill him.

Cloud didn't ask who she meant. He didn't have to.

He shook his head. "I can't let you leave," he said.

Wind looked behind her. Out the window. The winds outside the castle walls suddenly seemed darker, thicker. More forbidding, more impenetrable.

She looked back at her brother. His expression crumbled. Tears tracked down his cheeks. "I'm so, so sorry," he said again. "But I can't… I can't let you –"

Cloud's voice cut off as a layer of air suddenly turned into an invisible fist that slammed into his chest. He flew back into the stone wall behind him. The wall itself crumbled, cracked. Perhaps it had been weakened by the previous attack on the palace. Perhaps not.

Wind suddenly found she didn't care.

Either way, her brother was flung into the hall beyond the Emperor's deathchamber. He lay still.

Wind turned around in time to see the storm that had cut them off fall away to nothing in an instant.

She walked out of the room. Down the hall, not looking at her brother. She only had eyes for the way that would lead her out of the palace, and her mind only had a single thought. A single word that repeated in an endless cycle, over and over and faster and faster until it was nearly meaningless. Not a word at all, but a feeling. No thought, only the most base of all human desires.

Vengeance.

Vengeance.

Vengeance vengeance vengeancevengeancevengeance –

Then clarity shattered the confusion. A single point of bright, searing light that became Wind's entire being.

I will kill him.

A light blossomed around her. She thought at first that a glo-globe must be malfunctioning. Then realized the light was coming from her.

What is this? asked a weak, quiet part of her. What is happening?

And as she walked, the answer came.

8

Sword watched Tiawan approach, and watched the tube brighten on his arm, and felt no fear. She knew what was going to happen – the image of him using his weapon on the palace was imprinted forever on her mind.

But still… no fear. Only a sense of sadness that she had not finished what she began. That the Empire might fall, that most – perhaps all – the good people who lived in the Five States might die.

That she would never see Arrow again.

It was this last that bothered her the most. She knew that was wrong. Shouldn't she care more about the masses of people? Shouldn't the fate of an entire nation weigh more heavily on her mind than the fact that she would not see Arrow again?

No. This is as it should be.

The voice she heard was not her own. It came from within her, but the voice was Armor's. Her first true friend, and – even after she discovered he was on the wrong side of the battle – still the closest thing to a father she had ever had.

You have found family. All the world is nothing but a collection of families, each struggling to protect their own, each hoping to find a part in the greater Family that is the world. But in the end, we seek first those we love most. Great sacrifices are made in the name of the greater good, but what is that good if not simply the community that protects those closest to us?

She wondered if Armor had actually said that – some half-remembered moment where he taught her the wisdom he had accumulated. Perhaps.

But in the end, she knew that whoever said the words didn't matter. What mattered was that they were true. What mattered was that, live or die, she had found something worth living for. And in so doing, she found something to cling to and find peace in at the end.

She was an instant away from her death.

And that's when it happened.

The tornado surrounding the castle had disappeared. The sky was bright and bluer than Sword could ever remember.

But out of the clear blue sky, shattering the silence of the moment, a bolt of lightning smashed into the earth.

It shouldn't have been possible. Not even Cloud, with his Greater Gift that controlled the storm, could cause such flame to erupt from nothing at all.

Could he?

Sword saw Tiawan wheel above her, momentarily distracted by the jagged lightning that passed close by him.

More lightning came. And more. And still more. It fell like raindrops, scorching the earth wherever it touched. Burning plants to cinder and melting stone to black glass.

Sword took a step. Thought about running. Realized it wouldn't matter. She couldn't tell where the strikes would touch down.

Here was as good a place as any.

The lightning streaked through the still-blue, still-bright sky. It looked random at first, but as Sword watched she realized it was anything but. The bursts radiated out from a central point, slamming down at uneven intervals, but drawing ever closer, like a shrinking wheel.

The center point was Tiawan.

As the lightning closed on him, Tiawan stopped moving. He seemed to be waiting for the crackling flames to hit him. He even stretched out his arms as though taunting them.

Why would he do that? Who is –

Sword blinked. None of the lightning had struck her, obviously, but one of the shards suddenly touched down so close she could have spit on it. The blast of it almost knocked her off her feet, but she managed to stay upright – barely – and in that moment, she thought she saw something in the lightning. A form she recognized, a face she knew.

Wind?

Then the lightning flickered to nothing, and with it went the image of Sword's friend.

The lightning came faster. Faster. It pounded the earth every time it slashed the air, and soon nearly every inch of ground in sight was a blackened, smoking wreck. Even the bodies of Wahy and La'ug had been consumed, turned to ash and smoke in a Heavenly funeral pyre.

There was a perfect circle of unmarked space around Sword and Marionette though. Seeing that was how Sword knew.

It is her. Wind.

But how?

The answer came instantly.

She has found a Second Gift.

Wind controlled the air. She could use it to move herself, could make it hard and strong as iron, as sharp as any sword. Sword had often wondered at how similar her power was to that of Cloud; Brother Scieran had even conjectured that the similarity of their powers had something to do with their being twins. As though Gifts might be linked to family.

Just like what Phoenix said. We are being bred for our Gifts.

If that was true, then it made sense that, as Cloud's Gift was to control the storm and call down the lightning, so Wind's Second Gift was to become that lightning.

The lightning flared again, brighter and brighter, faster and faster.

And then, in the instant before it should have licked at Tiawan's fingers, should have enveloped him in flame, it abruptly stopped.

Wind hung in the air. Invisible a moment before – or rather, only visible in her new, radiant form – she had appeared in front of Tiawan. Both were close to Sword. Close enough that she could see every detail of Tiawan's armor. Every detail of Wind's expression.

Sword's guts coiled within her. She felt sick. Because she knew. One look at Wind was all it took.

Malal was dead.

There was more to it, perhaps – Wind's visage was one of such perfect despair that Sword suspected she had lost more than her love, perhaps had lost her soul – but the clearest thing was Malal's death.

The Emperor was dead. Again. And this time, there was no one to replace him.

Sword felt a terrible weight fall on her. She had failed. Failed everything, failed everyone.

Wind drifted closer to Tiawan, and as she did, Sword saw the other woman's face change. The sorrow melted away, leaving behind only the purest rage Sword had ever seen.

Tiawan hung there as well, though his fires could not keep him quite as even or still as Wind. He seemed almost jittery in comparison to her smooth flight, but that was only the mechanics of his suit. When he spoke there was no fear in his voice.

"You can't hurt me, girl," he said. "And I will do what I came to do."

Tiawan's helm was on. His head was invisible, and Wind could neither hear him nor read his lips. Still, she reacted in that moment, as though she had somehow heard his words.

She screamed.

It was a wordless, throaty scream. The scream of a woman who cannot hear her own voice, but who still must find a way to speak. The sound was dark, full of rage and hate and despair and pain. Tears pressed behind Sword's eyes as she heard it.

She thought, again, of Arrow.

She wondered how she would react if she saw him die.

She knew what Wind was going to do.

Tiawan faltered for a moment. His helm opened, and he looked at Wind with tired eyes.

"Girl," he began with a voice as weary as his expression. "Just let me –"

Wind disappeared. And this time the lightning did not shear the sky. This time the lightning was the sky.

It came not as a bolt, but as a mountain of pure white, crashing down from the heavens, cascading over and around and through Tiawan. Sword had just enough time to see him look up with a shocked expression before her world turned white and thunder sounded so loud she wondered if she would ever hear again.

She closed her eyes, but even through her eyelids the light blinded her. She clapped her hands over her eyes as well, and even then the pink light that filtered through was far too bright for her body to cope with.

And then, as quickly as it came, the light was gone.

Sword could hear nothing. Could see nothing. The thunder still sounded in her ears, and the world seemed covered in white.

Finally, sound returned. No one spoke, but she heard something crackle. She opened her eyes, and saw small rocks all over. They seemed to dance on the ground like water on a hot pan, and Sword knew that they were so hot they were literally exploding from the inside.

The heat, though, did not touch her. Nor did it touch Marionette, who was looking around with the first semi-human expression Sword had ever seen on her: wide-eyed wonder.

Tiawan was gone. Destroyed at last by a flame greater than his own. By a rage and a loss that made his seem a mild thing in comparison.

The man who would destroy an Empire was gone.

So was Wind.

Sword stayed there, unmoving, waiting.

A figure rose from the ash.

Sword's heart jumped. "Wind!" she shouted, feeling foolish at once for calling to a woman who could not hear.

That feeling disappeared an instant later, replaced by a mixture of sadness and loathing.

The figure that rose was burned, blackened. A charred creature that resembled a stick left behind after a campfire. But as it lurched toward Sword and Marionette, the black fell away. Pink flesh was revealed. The arms and legs untwisted. Hair grew. The gait shifted from a lurching slide to a strong, confident walk.

Phoenix stood before her, this time as the Chancellor. "You can't kill me," he said simply as he stood before Sword.

9

Phoenix sounded oddly sad. "You can't kill me," delivered not as a triumph, but as a curse.

"I'll try, though," said Sword.

"Not until after we have defeated the enemy that lays below."

"Why would they attack us? Why not leave us alone, like they have for a thousand years?"

"Because we disappointed them." He raised his arms, the gesture taking in the whole of Ansborn. "The people below sent a few up the mountain. Very special people – the ones we call Gifts. The plan was that they were to breed, and become more powerful. But it didn't work. Gifts were rare among the children of Ansborn, and Greater Gifts even more so. The people below didn't want that, so they planned to destroy us after a set time."

"And if you didn't want that to happen, if you didn't want our deaths, why did you try to kill so many people?"

He nodded, looking like a teacher acknowledging a prize student. "Because I knew there was another plan: the Culling."

Sword frowned, interested in spite of herself. Or perhaps she was just using his words to distract her from all that had just happened, and what might still lay ahead of her. "You said that word before. What is it?"

"Instead of killing all of us, the people below had the option to simply kill the unGifted. Perhaps this time the remaining people – all of them Gifted this time, instead of being the mixed group of those with Gifts and those without who first ascended the mountains – would have more powerful Gifts as their children. I thought perhaps I could put that alternative in motion, and save the Empire. At least give it time."

He blinked, and his shoulders slumped. He looked as old as his many years – a man holding the great weight of lifetimes within him. "I could not save all – not even most. But some. And some is better than none."

Phoenix shrugged. He didn't look like a great, powerful bear the way he had the first time Sword had seen him. He looked like a whipped dog. "I was too late. I started my own Culling – a Culling of corruption, of killing, of disease – but those below had already set in motion their plan to come for us."

Arrow, thought Sword, remembering Phoenix's statement about what he had found in the Strongholds.

"How do you know all this?" she asked. But of course the answer was obvious: it had to do with the book that Phoenix had given her.

But no. He surprised her. "My father told me," he said simply.

Sword gaped at him. "Your father?" she demanded. "Your father told you some fairy tale about what lies below and –"

"There are… well, people of a sort who live below us. Not the people who sent us here, but others called Guardians. They are the ones who ensure that no one passes below the clouds. They are the ones who kill anyone who tries, and they are the ones who place them atop the spires." He looked at his hands, and suddenly the twisted, bent old man stood before her. Vrisha, his first form, and the only one he had not stolen from another.

"My father came to place someone atop the spears. But for some reason he was different than the others. For some reason he walked away, and found my mother, and loved her." Phoenix sighed. "He loved me."

Sword heard him stress one of the words. "Different?" she said.

Vrisha shook his head. "I didn't believe him when he told me all this. I thought just as you did: a fairy tale. It wasn't until I first came to the palace." His shape shifted, and he turned into the tall, beautiful woman dressed in black. "I came because I had found power, and I hungered for more. It was then – thirty Turns and more after my father's death – that I found another Guardian."

"And you knew his fairy tale was true?" Sword snorted. "Because you saw someone?"

Phoenix nodded slowly. "And because he looked just like my father. The same red hair with a streak of gray, the same slight build – but powerful, strong. Stronger than any person – even an actual Strong – should be." He looked at her, deep in her eyes. "You've seen him, too. A century later. This time as the librarian in the palace."

Sword felt something pull back inside her, as though her soul sought shelter in some deep place inside herself. What he said was wrong. Not incorrect – she sensed now the truth of what he said – but wrong, in the way rain falling up might be wrong.

"He lives forever?" she asked.

Phoenix shook his head. "No. There are many Guardians. They grow old, they die as normal men. But more are born – my father said they were made – and take their place. They live below us, in the cloud, but walk among us as well, mostly unnoticed. They keep us here. They monitor what has happened. And they report to their masters – to the people below."

Something crackled nearby. Sword looked to see an auto-car making its way slowly across the pitted ground left behind by Wind's Second Gift.

When it drew close, the vehicle stopped. Father Akiro got out, his mouth agape. A boy with long, white-blond hair, dressed in soiled clothes that had once been a fine, small version of an Academic's garb, got out of the other side of the auto-car. He also looked stunned.

"What happened here?" said Father Akiro. He looked around, then turned to stare at the wide moat. The castle walls looked as though they had been attacked. Pieces of them were missing, rocks and mortar pulled away by the winds that had surrounded them.

Sword didn't answer Father Akiro. She began running to the castle. Running to the place where she hoped she might find some friends, some hope.

She ran to the edge of the moat. So wide now, and deep enough she thought if she fell she might drop right through the world, to whatever lay below.

"Wind?"

Sword lifted her eyes. She was standing in front of what was left of the castle gate. Through it she could see Cloud, standing in the courtyard beyond. His head was bleeding, and a slightly-built man who looked like a Strong supported him. A few others gathered behind them.

Is that all? Is that all who are left?

If Phoenix had been telling the truth, he had given Tiawan a disease. Tiawan infected Malal, and now….

Now all that were left in the castle were Gifts. The only ones immune.

"Wind?" Cloud called again. His voice, weak from injury and exhaustion, barely carried across the chasm to Sword.

She realized in that moment that she was standing between two of the spires that were used to impale those who tried to descend the mountains. They stood like guardians, ensuring that she deliver her message.

Cloud was still waiting. Finally, she shook her head.

Cloud started to weep. He curled into the Strong like a child.

Sword felt like an intruder watching something secret. Cloud was implacable, his face always a mask of perfect self-control. But he had broken.

"Is Arrow there?" she called.

Cloud did not answer, of course, but the Strong shouted back to her. "We are the only ones here!" He gestured at the small group that stood nearby. Perhaps two score people.

Sword felt a sudden surge of happiness. It shamed her – should see feel any happiness in light of all that had happened, and all that Phoenix said was still to come?

She couldn't help herself. She felt bright. She masked her feelings by looking around. "How can we get across?" she shouted. "How can we get you out?"

No one answered at first. One of the women near Cloud touched him on the shoulder and he slowly pulled away. She Signed to him, and Sword knew she was relaying the question. Cloud was younger than all of them, but he was the brother of the Captain of the Guard –

(the once-Captain)

– and, more than that, a man whom others trusted to do the right thing.

Cloud nodded. He wiped his eyes and stood as straight as he could. But he did not turn to Sword. He spoke to those gathered around him. Sword couldn't make out what he said.

As he spoke, she saw the others in the courtyard gather closer around Cloud. After a moment, they all shifted. Some slumped. Some began to weep. Others – most of them – stood straight and tall, with shoulders out and chins high.

One by one, they nodded. All of them.

Cloud finally turned to her. "We can't leave," he called.

Sword didn't understand, until she heard Phoenix say, "He's right."

She jumped. She hadn't realized he had made it to the spires. He stood there as Devar, wind ruffling his dark hair. Marionette stood at his side, and for once she seemed to have forgotten her doll. It hung loose in her hand.

She spoke, and sounded less in a dream as well. As though what had happened had broken through the madness she brought with her wherever she went. She stared at the castle and said, "The poppets inside… I can't raise them." She looked at Phoenix, an expression of surprised sadness rippling over her face. "There is not enough of them for me to lift."

Phoenix looked suddenly terrified. "Like we found at the Stronholds, child?"

Sword felt terror sweep her own soul. That must have been what he found at the Strongholds. He must have gone there, killed them all, sent them as undead killers to Halaw, and then realized that the Ears stationed at the Strongholds had suffered the same fate as the others in the Empire. But that meant….

It wasn't Phoenix who did that, after all.

Then who?

She knew. A very real part of her knew. But she shied away. She didn't want to face it. Not now, perhaps not ever.

(the people below
it's real
it's all real)

Poppet was shaking her head. "Not like there. Not like the dark place," she whispered. She held up her doll, using its voice to speak for her. "This is different."

Phoenix looked at the castle. A new, different kind of fear spread its cast over his expression. "The disease," he whispered.

Marionette's eyes suddenly lost their sanity. She held her doll tight, squeezed it so hard that its wooden back broke in her arms. "Don't worry, my love," she whispered. "We'll find more friends for you to play with. I promise."

Sword looked away from the little girl in revulsion. She met Phoenix's eyes. "Don't hate her," he said. "She has suffered more than anyone alive. That she still lives at all is a victory of a kind you will never understand." His gaze moved to the castle. "If we let them leave, the disease will spread to all the Empire."

"Then what do we –" Sword's voice cut off as she realized the import. Not of his word's, but of Cloud's. Of the looks in the others' eyes as he spoke to them.

She looked across the moat in horror. "No!" she screamed.

But there was nothing she could do. Cloud raised a hand as soon as she saw him. He smiled a half-smile that spoke only sorrow.

Then the smile changed. It softened into something that, while not exacty joyful, at least carried peace. The knowledge that what he did was, as so often with him, the right thing to do.

His arm dropped.

The storm came.

10

Sword screamed again. "No! No! NO!" She kept screaming, so loud and so hard that her voice instantly hoarsened and she felt blood trickle down the inside of her throat as it tore with the force of her shrieks.

But she didn't hear the words. No one did.

The storm that came dwarfed anything Sword had ever seen. Not a tempest, but an entire world that seemed to fall from the sky. Clouds, wind, rain, lightning. All gathered in a mass of turbulence, a maelstrom so dark it seemed more like a solid wall than wind and water and fire.

She saw things inside it. Rocks. Dirt. Long objects she recognized as sections – whole sides – of the castle wall. It all disintegrated as it spun. The vortex existed only to destroy, and that destruction was complete.

For a moment, Sword thought she saw other things. Smaller. Moving not merely with the wind, but of their own accord. Then they disappeared, yanked upward and in faster than a loosed arrow, a fired bullet.

The maelstrom grew so loud Sword felt like her skull would burst apart. Like she would turn inside out.

And then, even more suddenly than it had come, it was gone.

And with it, so was all that had stood within the moat.

The castle had not merely been destroyed, it had been disintegrated. Not a stone stood, not a blade of grass remained.

Of Cloud and the others who had stood with him at the last – and had faced their fate with strength, knowing exactly what they had agreed to, and what would come for them – there was no trace.

Phoenix placed his hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

Sword looked at the hand.

He acted for the Empire.

He did what he thought was actually right.

He killed them all!

She could not move. Her body locked tight with rage, with loss.

Father Akiro had joined them. He was old, stooped. Walking with the assistance of two canes and the further help of the boy who had come with him. A feeble body, but his voice came deep and strong.

"If you don't get your hand of her, you cur, I will kill you myself."

Sword managed to turn her head. She saw Phoenix's eyes – the eyes of a man she had cared for. For a moment, he looked almost amused at the old priest's threat. Then loss took over.

"I will find you," he whispered. "We must fight."

Then he disappeared, and Marionette along with him.

Sword stood silent. She stood still.

She looked at the nothing that had once been the seat of an Empire. That had once been her home.

She waited. The shadows lengthened.

Darkness gathered. And she knew what was coming, even before it fell like a mist about her shoulders. Not night, but the darkness.

Sounds came. A low grunt from somewhere near.

She felt something grip her. Realized it was the old hand of Father Akiro.

She held it.

The darkness fell away.

She looked up.

She did not scream. She had no voice left to her. She had no tears left to shed. Her heart was a hole deeper than the chasm before her.

Father Akiro gasped. He choked, and sobbed.

Sword turned away without a sound. She went to the auto-car, leaving Arrow's body atop the spire.

She got in the auto-car.

She was Sword.

She was one of the last three Greater Gifts.

She would find Brother Scieran and Father Inmil in Faith.

She would learn what they had found of the people below.

And then she would kill that world.

She would kill them all.

EPILOGUE:
the fallen state

"We came from below. Shall we ever fall again to our birthplace? The answer is sure: we must. The albatross returns to its country to mate and to die; and we shall one day fly to the land of our inheritance and partake of its glory."

- Emperor Eka, First Rules and
Commandments of the Ascension

So much was nonsense.

So much was beyond them.

Strange words littered the Old Books. Words for which no concepts existed in Ansborn. The books Mother Maci had taken for descriptions of childbirth had resolved into something much darker: some kind of chart of family history. But not one to show where a family came from; this was something designed to create a family. To breed people like animals, and cultivate specific traits.

Brother Scieran had no idea why anyone would do such a thing. But it made him cold and hot at the same time. And he could only think, This is evil.

Father Inmil made a strange sound. Nearly a chuckle.

"What is it?" asked Scieran.

"So much here. Books that seem to discuss the etymology of our units of measurement: leagues, rods, miles, feet. Others that talk about where the design of auto-cars came from. And this one," Father Inmil showed him his book he was currently looking at, "is some kind of treatise on the animals of Ansborn. I still can't make it all out, but the old ones had different names for some of them. Some of them are quite odd. Woollies –"

"I found it!" Everyone looked at Mother Maci. Her eyes were alight with discovery. "I found the poison! Malal's affliction!" She kept reading. "It seems to be from a spider. The venom…." She drifted off.

"Well, woman, what is it?" Father Inmil yelled at his sister with the irritable tone that only siblings can manage. "And can we cure it?"

"I'm not sure. I'll… I'll keep reading." She bit her lip. "Though it seems it isn't just the venom. It was engineered somehow. Created by this 'nation of other nations.'"

Brother Scieran shook his head. They had found repeated references to that place. No maps, no explanations of what it meant. Clearly the people below had known what it meant with such intimacy that they felt no further description was necessary.

Brother Luca shifted to look away from his own study. He peered at Mother Maci's book. "Where does it say that? About the nations?"

Mother Maci showed him. Brother Luca examined the text for a moment, then turned back to his own book – The Tree. He flipped through several pages. Shook his head. "It doesn't say 'nation of nations.' It's something else."

"What?" asked Scieran.

The pale, gaunt priest shrugged. "It doesn't matter much, I suppose. There's still no explanation of what or where it is, really. And the correct translation is almost nonsense."

"Tell us!" Brother Scieran nearly shouted the words.

The other priest shrugged again.

"It doesn't say 'nation of other nations.' The words mean 'the United States.'"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michaelbrent Collings is a full-time screenwriter and novelist. He has written numerous bestselling horror, thriller, sci-fi, and fantasy novels, including The Colony Saga, Strangers, Darkbound, Apparition, The Haunted, Hooked: A True Faerie Tale, and the bestselling YA series The Billy Saga.

Follow him through Twitter @mbcollings or on Facebook at facebook.com/MichaelbrentCollings.

NOVELS BY MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS

THE COLONY SAGA:

THE COLONY: GENESIS (The Colony, Vol. 1)

THE COLONY: RENEGADES (The Colony, Vol. 2)

THE COLONY: DESCENT (THE COLONY, VOL. 3)

THE COLONY: VELOCITY (THE COLONY, VOL. 4)

THE COLONY: SHIFT (THE COLONY, VOL. 5)

THE COLONY: BURIED (tHE COLONY, VOL. 6)

THE COLONY: RECKONING (THE COLONY, VOL. 7)

THE COLONY OMNIBUS

THE COLONY OMNIBUS ii

THE HOUSE THAT DEATH BUILT

THE DEEP

TWISTED

THIS DARKNESS LIGHT

CRIME SEEN

STRANGERS

DARKBOUND

BLOOD RELATIONS:
A GOOD MORMON GIRL MYSTERY

THE HAUNTED

APPARITION

THE LOON

MR. GRAY (aka THE MERIDIANS)

RUN

RISING FEARS

YOUNG ADULT AND
MIDDLE GRADE FICTION:

THE BILLY SAGA:

BILLY: MESSENGER OF POWERS (BOOK 1)

BILLY: SEEKER OF POWERS (BOOK 2)

BILLY: DESTROYER OF POWERS (BOOK 3)

THE COMPLETE BILLY SAGA (BOOKS 1-3)

THE BILLY SAGA:

The Sword Chronicles: Child of the Empire (Book 1)

THE RIDEALONG

HOOKED: A TRUE FAERIE TALE

KILLING TIME

Table of Contents

- PROLOGUE: Gods
- ONE: Ends Begun
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- TWO: Rise of the Fallen
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- THREE: Alliances
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- EPILOGUE: The Fallen State
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- NOVELS BY MICHAELBRENT COLLINGS