Kitabı oku: «The Compass Rose»

The Compass Rose

GAIL DAYTON
The Compass Rose

For Robert. Thanks for all the brainstorming help

and for paying attention when I told you

how much fun fantasy was. I’m glad you’re my kid.

And for Lindi. Keep at it. Dreams do come true.

CONTENTS

CAST OF CHARACTERS

GLOSSARY

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Kallista Varyl-captain in the Adaran army, naitan of the North, lightning thrower

Torchay Omvir-Adaran sergeant, Kallista’s bodyguard

Stone, Warrior vo’Tsekrish-Tibran warrior

Fox, Warrior vo’Tsekrish-Tibran warrior, fighting partner to Stone

Aisse vo’Haav-Tibran woman

Obed im-Shakiri-Southron trader

Joh Suteny-Adaran guard lieutenant

Serysta Reinine-ruler of Adara, North naitan truthsayer

Viyelle Torvyll-Adaran prinsipella of Shaluine

Belandra of Arikon-the near legendary godstruck naitan who unified the first four prinsipalities to establish Adara, a thousand (or so) years ago

Huryl Kovallyk-Serysta’s high steward

Erunde Nonnald-Steward’s 4^th undersecretary

Irysta Varyl-Kallista’s birth mother, East naitan healer

Karyl & Kami Varyl-Kallista’s twin sisters by blood

Mother Edyne-Mother Temple prelate in Ukiny

Huyis Uskenda-Adaran general in Ukiny

Merinda Kyndir-Adaran East naitan healer

Mother Dardra-Kallista’s 5^th mother, Riverside temple prelate and administrator in Turysh

Domnia Varyl-founder of the Varyl bloodline, West naitan and prelate

Oughrath, Bureaucrat vo’Haav-docks and trading official in Haav

Beltis-South naitan firethrower, Adaran trooper under Kallista’s command

Hamonn-Beltis’s bodyguard

Adessay-North naitan earthmover, trooper under Kallista’s command

Kadrey-Adessay’s bodyguard

Iranda-South naitan lightmaker, trooper under Kallista’s command

Rynver-East naitan plantgrower, trooper under Kallista’s command

Mora-South naitan foodspoiler, trooper under Kallista’s command

Borril-Adaran guard sergeant

Smynthe-Tibran female magic hunter

Gweric-Tibran male magic hunter

GLOSSARY

Adara-the nation occupying the northern half of the continent south of the Jeroan Sea

aila (aili)-Sir or Madam, a title of respect in Adara

Alira River-tributary of the Taolind, descending from the Shieldback Mountains near Arikon

Arikon-capital of Adara at the edge of the Shieldback Mountains in western Adara

Athril River-center, navigable branch of the two western arms of the Unified River

Boren-town where the Alira becomes unnavigable, where the road to Arikon begins

Devil’s Neck-impassable isthmus connecting Tibran continent to the Adaran

Devil’s Tooth Mountains-the mountains that make the Devil’s Neck impassable, habitable only in the lower southern reaches, above the Empty Lands

Djoff-Tibran port on the western coast, at the mouth of the Athril

Dzawa-Tibran city where the Silixus descends from the central plateau to the coastal plain

Empty Lands-an ancient lava-flow desert on the northern edge of Adara, thought to have been created in the Demon Wars 2000 years ago, habitable if one is careful

Filorne-prinsipality north of Taolind, upriver from Turysh; coat of arms: crossed swords, black and silver

Gadrene-Ukiny’s prinsipality; coat of arms: blue-and-white ship

Haav-main port of Tibre, at the mouth of the Silixus River, easternmost of the rivers coming out of Tsekrish

Heldring Gap-wide valley in west central Adara, famed for the mines on either flank, and the swords made there

ilian (iliani)-four to twelve Adaran adults joined into a family unit, their version of marriage

ilias (iliasti)-spouse (spouses)

Kishkim-port city west of Ukiny, at the mouth of the Tunnassa River, known for its swamps and smugglers

Korbin-northernmost Adaran prinsipality, just south of Devil’s Neck land bridge in the Devil’s Tooth Mountains and the Empty Lands, Torchay’s home prinsipality; coat of arms: red-and-gold stag

Mountains of the Wind, Mother Range-mountain range that marks Adara’s southern border, Mother Range is Southron name; Mountains of the Wind is name used by Adarans

naitan (naitani)-a person with a magical gift

Obre River-westernmost branch of the Unified River, fast and full of rapids

Okreti di Vos Mountains-the name means “Arms of God” in the ancient language; separated from the Devil’s Tooth range by a lava-flow desert and from the Shieldbacks by the Heldring Gap

prinsep (prinsipi)-the ruler (male or female) of one of the once-independent governmental units now joined together to create Adara

prinsipality-the province ruled by a prinsep

prinsipella-the offspring (male or female) of a prinsep

Reinine-the priestess-queen chosen by the collective Adaran prelates and prinsipi to rule Adara; a lifetime appointment, but not hereditary

Shaluine-prinsipality north of Turysh, between Taolind and Tunassa Rivers; coat of arms: gold lion

Shieldback Mountains-a western mountain range separated from the Mother Range by the Taolind and Alira River valleys and from the Okreti di Vos Mountains by the Heldring Gap, where Arikon is located

Silixus River-important transport river in Tibre, easternmost of the three branches of the Unified River, the only one that empties into the Jeroan Sea

Taolind River-Adara’s major river, leading from northern coast at Ukiny southwest deep into the interior

Tibre-the nation made up of most of the continent north of the Jeroan Sea

Tsekrish-capital of Tibre, on the high central plateau where the Unified River breaks into three

Tunassa River-secondary river, north of the Taolind, rarely navigable, empties into Jeroan Sea at Kishkim, runs southwest to northeast

Turysh-Kallista’s hometown, at the confluence of the Taolind and Alira Rivers, also the name of a prinsipality, coat of arms: green tree surmounted by a gold crown

Ukiny-port city on Adara’s northern coast, at the mouth of the Taolind River

Unified River-flows into Tsekrish from northern mountains, once considered sacred

CHAPTER ONE

The wind off the sea snapped the banners to attention on the city walls. It ripped at the edges of the captain’s tight queue and set the two white ribbons of her rank fluttering from her shoulders. Kallista Varyl tugged her tunic, blue for the direction of her magic, into better order. Yet one more time she wished that if she had to have North magic, she might have been given some more useful type. Directing winds, for instance.

She abhorred the way the wind here in Ukiny constantly tugged at her hair, destroying any attempt at neatness and order. And wind magic had civilian uses. Practical, productive uses. Her magic had no use other than war, so here she stood, captain of the Reinine’s Own, on the walls of this besieged city waiting for the coming attack.

“What’s the mood below?” Kallista continued her slow patrol of the ramparts.

“Quiet. Tense. They know what’s coming.” Her shadow moved forward to fall into step beside her. Torchay Omvir had been her constant companion for the past nine years. His tunic was bodyguard’s black trimmed with blue to show whom he served. The folded ribbon set on his sleeve below the shoulder indicated his rank. When they went into summer uniform in a few more weeks, his tattooed rank would show on his upper arm. Most of the men making the military a career did the same.

“Not too tense I hope.”

He shrugged. “Who can say until the moment comes and the battle begins?” Torchay paced alongside her, always keeping his lean height interposed between Kallista and the enemy spread out on the fields and beaches below.

Their white tents dotted the land like virulent pustules of infection as far as the unaided eye could see. Ukiny stood on the lone patch of rock floating to the surface of Adara’s flat northern coast. The city’s chalk-white limestone walls towered over the plains where the enemy camped. That advantage hadn’t meant much so far.

“True.” She neither needed nor even wanted the information she’d asked for. She asked to force Torchay to answer, to have some contact with another human at this loneliest of moments.

Torchay preferred his invisibility, claiming he could protect her better if he went unnoticed. But hair the color of Torchay’s—deep, vibrant red—seldom escaped notice even when ruthlessly confined in a proper military queue. And wherever a military naitan went, everyone knew her bodyguard went also. At moments like this one, Kallista preferred company to protocol.

“Tomorrow?” Torchay stopped beside her at the northwest corner tower.

Kallista stared down at the rubble spilling from the breach in Ukiny’s western wall and on down the steep slope of the carefully constructed glacis below. The setting sun gilded those broken stones, mocking the coming death they heralded.

“Likely,” she said. “At dawn or just before. That’s when I’d attack, when we’re at our most tired.”

The enemy ships had appeared unexpectedly off Ukiny just a week ago, hundreds of them. Adaran ships were built for speed and trade, not fighting. With a North magic naitan to call winds on almost every ship, they rarely had to deal with pirates or more political forms of banditry because their vessels were hard to catch. The few local ships in port when the strangers sailed up had fled. The city—still reeling with astonishment that any would dare invade Adara—had fastened itself inside stout walls.

Soldiers had poured from the clumsy ships, hundreds and hundreds of them, unloading bizarre equipment and strange-looking devices. The foreign army outnumbered the small force garrisoning Ukiny before half their ships had unloaded.

By careful listening at staff meetings, Kallista had gathered that one of the quarrelsome kings on the continent across the Jeroan Sea to the north had taken all the lands he could on his own continent and now had cast his eye toward Adara. No one seemed to know what drove Tibre on its conquest, whether greed, religion or something else. They were strange people according to the traders stranded in town when the ships fled, divided among themselves according to rank, each rank worshipping different gods.

Stranger yet, they had no naitani of their own and were known to kill those from other lands who demonstrated a visible gift of magic. That was why, despite the overwhelming numbers ranged against them, the small Adaran garrison had been confident of victory over the invading Tibrans. If they had no naitani at all, they certainly wouldn’t have any attached to their army.

They had something else. Cannon.

Traders had been bringing reports for a number of years about the wars among the northern kingdoms. They told of a weapon that required no magic to break down walls and fortifications, a weapon far more effective, far more devastating than ballistae or catapults. The Adaran general staff had discounted these tales as exaggerations. The Tibrans might have something, but nothing without magic involved could have such a deadly effect. The generals were wrong.

Now they were paying the price for their smug assumptions. Adara was a nation of merchants, a matriarchal society that used its army primarily to control the aggression of her young men. A long succession of prelate-queens had seen little need for violent expansion. The last of the independent prinsipalities between the impassable Devil’s Neck land bridge to the north and the nearly impassable Mother Range spanning the continent to the south had joined Adara two hundred years ago, the result of diplomacy and trade, not war.

The Reinines in the years since had believed Adara’s superiority so obvious that no other nation would dare challenge it. And they hadn’t, even though some Adaran traders skinned those they traded with a bit too close to the bone. Adara had more naitani than any other land, and the naitani were Adara’s strength.

But they should have expected the other nations to develop alternatives to the magic Adara used so extravagantly. When the traders came home complaining of cloth made waterproof through the use of powders and mechanical techniques, someone should have noticed. This new stuff wasn’t as good as Adaran waterproofing, but it was much cheaper. How far from there to mechanical weapons as effective at massive destruction as a soldier naitan? More effective, because the cannon could be used by anyone and could be forged by the hundreds. A naitan had to be born.

These terrible cannon belched forth fire and destruction. They battered the city walls hour after endless hour, day upon day. The constant boom!-whistle-crack! as the iron ball exploded from the mouth of the weapon, sailed through the air and smashed into stone, was enough to drive anyone into screaming fits. Anyone, that is, of lesser moral fiber than a captain of the Reinine’s Own Naitani.

Kallista had destroyed one of the awful machines, the only naitan of her troop able to do so. The enemy moved them farther from the walls then, and still kept up the relentless bombardment. These cannon could fire their iron balls farther than she could throw her lightning. She could not hit what she could not see. At least her magic was line-of-sight and not touch-linked. She’d heard of some who could visualize what they aimed for and strike without seeing, but she could not.

This morning, the cannon had breached Ukiny’s walls. Soon the enemy would pour through the gap and bring its advantage of numbers to bear. Kallista knew her fellow soldiers would fight bravely, but the outcome was not optimistic.

“Have you decided where to post your troop?” Torchay never looked away from his view over the wall at the enemy.

Kallista sighed. That was the supposed reason for taking this little stroll into danger. She couldn’t tell her bodyguard that one more second in their austere quarters would have had her chewing holes in the furniture, even if he already knew it. “Yes. Half here—East and South. Except for Beltis. I want her fire-throwing skill with me and Adessay on the far side of the breach.”

“In the tower.”

“Tower’s too far away. On the wall. Near the breach.”

“Too close. It’s not safe.”

Kallista turned her head and looked at Torchay, at his bony, hawk-nosed visage silhouetted against the orange sky, waiting until he looked back at her.

“It’s a battle, Sergeant,” she said. “It’s not supposed to be safe.”

He gave a tiny nod in acknowledgment of that truth.

“We need to be as close to the breach as possible.” She moved to the edge of the battlements to peer over, ignoring Torchay’s hiss of displeasure. “It’s going to be up to us to slow their advance, thin their numbers as they come through.”

“You can’t do anything if you’re dead.”

“If we can’t stop them, everyone in the city could well be dead by this time tomorrow. And we haven’t enough regular troops to do the job. It’s going to require magic.”

“Just—” He broke off and took a deep breath. That wasn’t like him, to be fumbling for words. “Don’t make my job harder than it has to be, Captain. Promise me you’ll do nothing reckless.”

Kallista raised an eyebrow. “You forget yourself, Sergeant.”

“Probably. But if it means that you don’t forget yourself when the battle begins, I’ll bear the punishment.” Torchay held her gaze until Kallista had to look away.

She did have a tendency to take risks in battle. Too much caution could lose a battle. Generally her risks paid off, but once…Once, she’d nearly got the both of them killed.

“I’ll be as careful as I am able,” she said finally. “But if my action will make the difference in winning or losing, you know I will act.”

“If your lightning can turn the battle, I’ll carry you into it on my back.” Torchay paused then, so long that she glanced up at him. His gaze caught hers, held it. “But I won’t let you throw your life away on a lost cause, Kallista.” He turned away to look out over the enemy camped below. “Do you understand me, Captain? I will do my duty.”

“I never for a second thought you would do anything else.”

“Have you seen all you needed to see?”

Relieved at Torchay’s return to his normal self, Kallista tugged at the wide cuffs of her supple leather gloves and wished she could take them off. It was too hot for gloves, but a military naitan could not appear in public without them. Not unless she was about to call magic.

“Let’s go down.” She headed for the flimsy ladder leading through the trap door in the floor and below to street level. It would be simple to remove when the time came and prevent access either up or down. “I want the troop up here tonight. If we have to stumble from our billets and stagger into place half-asleep, we’ll be too late.”

Torchay didn’t answer, simply followed her down.

The streets were all but deserted, most shops already closed up, the owners and customers at home praying for rescue and hiding their valuables. The buildings near the wall showed signs of the enemy bombardment. Apparently, pinpoint targeting was not a strong suit of the Tibrans, but then with cannon, it didn’t seem to matter. The buildings here had not been of the sturdiest construction to begin with, mostly weathered wood hovels or sheds with a tendency to lean. Now some were patched with planks or canvas. Homes too near the breach in the wall had become little more than splintered debris. Kallista hoped the residents had found new shelter.

Nearer their quarters, the buildings on either side of the narrow cobbled streets at least stood up straight. More had stone walls rather than wood, and shops displayed a better quality of goods. Flags in bright colors advertised the business operating in the buildings where they flew. Here, shops of all sorts stood hip to thigh, unlike the capital where each type of business had its own street, if not its own neighborhood.

A tailor operated next door to a jeweler, next to a shoemaker, a grocer and so on. Because of the odors they generated, the tanners and the livestock markets were relegated outside the city walls. Kallista had worried about that, about running out of food during a long siege. But that was before the cannon made themselves known. The siege hadn’t been a long one.

A bakeshop along their route still displayed loaves and sweet buns on its fold-down countertop as the baker bustled about preparing to close.

“Wait.” Torchay touched Kallista’s arm, and when she stopped, he approached the baker. “How much for what you have left?”

“Can’t you read?” She jerked a thumb toward the sign. “Two buns or one loaf for a krona.”

“It’s the end of the day, your customers have gone home, and your bread was baked before dawn. You don’t advertise South magic preserving. It’s not worth that price.” Torchay spoke quietly, patiently to the baker. “I’ll give you two kroni for the lot.”

“Listen to me, soldier.” The baker spat out the word. “You got no business telling me what my wares are worth. I made these loaves with my own two hands. I don’t need magic for that. What do you make? Death? What value does that have?”

Kallista stalked toward the plump baker, her foul mood flaring into sudden temper. “What value is your life? If it weren’t for soldiers like him, you would already be living in a Tibran harim with half your iliasti dead. This man is ready to give his life for you, you ungrateful bitch, and you begrudge him a few loaves of bread?”

She knew her anger was out of proportion to the situation, but she couldn’t help it. She’d had enough self-righteous scorn from the locals who looked down their lofty faces at the soldiers defending them yet screamed for help at the first sign of trouble.

But she didn’t realize she’d removed one of her gloves until the shock of skin against skin made her jerk and stare down at Torchay’s bare hand clasping her own.

The baker’s wide eyes said she understood the threat, if not what had caused it, and she was tumbling bread into a rough sack as fast as her hands would move. “Pardon, naitan. Pardon. No offense meant.”

“None taken.” Though that was a small lie. Kallista had taken offense. And she knew better than to do so. She couldn’t change popular opinion. Her own behavior, though unconscious and unintended, had only reinforced the impression that those who served in the military were too wicked or too stupid to do anything else. Anything productive.

She considered removing her hand from Torchay’s grip and replacing the glove. But that would make her inadvertent action seem even more of a threat, withdrawn now that she had what she wanted.

“Thank you, aila.” Torchay held out two kroni. The baker waved them away and he set them on her counter. “I pay my debts, aila. I just mislike paying more than what is due.”

With the sack gripped tight in Torchay’s other hand, he and Kallista continued down the street. Around the corner, out of sight of the bakeshop, she jerked her hand free and rounded on her bodyguard.

“Are you mad? Have you lost the remaining threads of the feeble wits you might once have possessed?” Kallista held her bare hand in front of his face. “I am ungloved.”

“You hadn’t called magic. I was safe enough. I’d have been safe enough even if you had. You have more control than any naitan in the entire army. Probably in all Adara.”

Torchay’s calm unconcern infuriated her. “You don’t know that. The sparks don’t always show.”

“I know when you call magic. I don’t have to see the sparks. And I know you don’t have to unglove to do it. To do anything.”

Kallista yanked her glove back on in short, sharp motions. “Do not ever do that again. Ever. Do you understand me, Sergeant? If you do, I’ll have that chevron if I have to strip the skin off your arm to do it, and see you flogged.”

“You don’t approve of flogging.”

“For this I do. Never touch my bare hands. You know this. You learned it the first day of your guard training.”

Torchay gazed at her. She could see the words building up inside his head, battering at his lips in their desire to get past them. Other naitani had trouble with their guards getting too close, wanting more from the relationship than was possible, but Torchay had never shown any sign of the failing. Was this how it began?

She didn’t want to imagine trouble where none existed. She and Torchay worked well together. She didn’t want that to change, didn’t want to offend him by making faulty assumptions. “If you have something to say, say it.”

He shook his head. “No, I have nothing—” His mouth thinned into a straight line, lips pressed together, stubbornly holding back the words. She would get nothing more out of him, not now.

Torchay turned his back to her, scanning their surroundings for potential danger, pulling back into his familiar role.

“Give me the sack.” Kallista held her hand out for it. He needed his hands free for weapons, now that she was safely gloved again. Civilian naitani weren’t required to go about gloved, but military magic was considered too dangerous to risk a naitan’s loss of control.

Anything covering the bare skin of the hands interfered to some degree with the magic. Leather blocked virtually all magic save for that under the most exquisite control. But Kallista didn’t have to remove her gloves to use her magic. She didn’t know any other naitan who could do what she could.

Torchay handed over the bread and moved down the street behind her toward the oversize home where the Third Detachment, Military Naitani, was billeted. The house towered three stories above the street, offering a view over the walls from the flat roof garden. The furnishings were elegant, gilded and ornamented to the extreme, what few furnishings there were. The table shared by the troop had curved gilded legs encrusted with more curlicues, and the top had multicolored woods inlaid in a geometric design. The mismatched chairs they used had tapestry-upholstered seats, or inlaid designs, and yet others were gilded within an inch of their lives. But most of the rooms were vacant, echoing with emptiness.

The ilian that owned it had once been much larger, a full dozen individuals all bound in temple oath to love and support each other and raise the children that resulted from their bonding. The loss of a child and his mother in an accident had fractured the family and a bare quartet of iliasti remained to finish bringing up the few children left to them. They had plenty of room for the entire troop.

Torchay bowed her into the house, but his eyes held hers as he did, watching her. It unnerved her. What did it mean? Anything?

Kallista tossed the bread sack to Torchay as he closed the door behind them. “Alert the troop. I want everyone ready to move into position by full dark. The general will be moving the regular troops into position then as well. The Tibrans won’t have far-seers to spot us in the dark.”

“And we hope they have no machines to do it for them.”

“Bite your tongue.” Kallista gave an exaggerated shudder, but it was indeed something to worry about.

Torchay opened the sack and tossed her a bun. “You missed supper.” He was gone to carry out her order before she could throw it back at him.

He returned moments later, while Kallista still stared at the bread in her hand. “Everyone is ready, save for Beltis and Hamonn. They went to dinner at the public house down the street and should be back shortly.”

Kallista sighed. Beltis was one of the naitani she worried about. The young South fire thrower was impulsive, romantic, and she was growing far too attached to her bodyguard. Hamonn was older, like most guards assigned to new naitani, and sensible, but—well, time enough to worry about it after the battle. If they all survived, she could talk to Hamonn then about reassignment or retirement.

“Bread is for eating.” Torchay slid one of his blades into a wrist sheath and drew another to test its edge. “Not staring at. It’s not a work of art. You’ll need the fuel tonight for your magic.”

“You’re my bodyguard. Not my keeper.” Kallista wanted to set the bun aside, but Torchay was right. She needed to eat. The bread tasted better than she expected for having been baked without magic and set out on display all day.

The silence caught her attention. No sound of steel on stone as Torchay sharpened one of his numberless blades. She’d tried to count them once, the dirks and daggers and short swords secreted in every place conceivable around Torchay’s body. But just when she thought she had them all, he would produce another from some invisible spot. And whenever he had a spare moment, he would sharpen them. The rasping sound had played accompaniment to every quiet moment of the last nine years. Until now.

He sat in his usual place beside the street door, a wicked little blade—needle thin and razor sharp—in one hand, his whetstone forgotten in the other as he watched her.

The skin between her shoulder blades prickled. She did not have time for this now, whatever it was. They had a battle to fight, probably before dawn. She refused to encourage him. But she could not refuse to listen if he chose to speak.

“Yes, I’m your bodyguard,” he said finally. “I’ve served you for nine years. I’d like to think I’ve done a good job of it.”

“You have. Exemplary.” Was that what had his hair on too tight? His qualifications record?

“For nine years, I’ve been no farther from you than a spoken word. I know you better than anyone. Better than your family. Better than your naitani.” He paused and looked at his blade as if wondering why he held it. “The battle tomorrow—it’s not like the bandits we’ve fought before. It doesn’t look good, does it.” He didn’t ask a question.

“No. It doesn’t.” Kallista still didn’t know where Torchay was going with this, but she had never given him anything less than the truth.

“This time tomorrow, we’ll most likely be dead.”

“Very probably.”

He looked at her then, his clear blue eyes holding her gaze. “If I’m going to die, Kallista, I want to die with friends. The army isn’t a good place for making them. You’re the only person I can think of who I’d consider a friend. You’re my captain, my naitan, and I’m your bodyguard. But—is it possible—could we not also be friends?”

Friendship. Was that all he wanted? Such a simple, utterly difficult thing. Someone who cared about him not because they had to, not for ties of blood or marriage, but simply because they liked him.

Did Kallista have friends? Naitani in the army were too valuable, too rare to concentrate them in large numbers, and the regular officers were often what the average citizen thought them: dim and sometimes cruel. She’d met a few fellow naitani she liked, but postings in the far corners of the Adaran continent kept her from furthering the acquaintance.

The person Kallista knew best, the one whose moods she could interpret just from the sound of steel on stone or the huff of breath through his beaked nose, the one who kept her secrets and guarded her privacy, was Torchay. Was that friendship?

She rather thought it was. “We are friends, Torchay,” she said. “You’ve perhaps been a better friend to me than I have to you, but we have been friends for a long time. Why else would we have lasted nine years?”

Torchay slicked his knife along the stone, a satisfied sound. “I thought so.”

“You know, you’ll sharpen that knife away to nothing if you keep that up.”

He grinned at the familiar comment. “Perhaps,” he said in his regular response. “But it will be a very sharp nothing.”

They were friends. Everything was exactly the same as before, and everything was different. She knew. At least one person in this world considered her a friend.

Torchay’s head came up at the noise of doors opening and closing, boots clattering on flagstone. “That will be Beltis and Hamonn.”

CHAPTER TWO

Torchay put away his blade so quickly Kallista did not see where and picked up the cloaks tossed on the bench beside him. The blue he handed to Kallista, and draped the blue-trimmed black over his forearm. It would likely get cold before dawn, she realized, and as usual, Torchay had already thought of it.

“I’ll have them assemble in the courtyard,” he said and disappeared into the outer rooms where the others lived.

Kallista led her troop through the dark streets of Ukiny by a pale steady light courtesy of the South naitan Iranda. Her best skill was lighting up a dark battlefield, but she could also scorch enemy soldiers, depending on how far away they were, how many they were and whether the local chickens had danced a waltz or a strut that morning. Iranda’s magic was not under the best of control, but she hadn’t burnt any Adaran soldiers since she’d been under Kallista’s command.

Only five naitani besides herself, plus their five bodyguards, made up Kallista’s troop. Three wore the yellow tunics of South naitani—Beltis the fire thrower, Iranda the scorcher and a girl from the eastern coast who could spoil the enemy’s food. Kallista wasn’t sure what use Mora would be in battle, but she was part of the troop, so she would be with them.

The lone naitan in the green of East magic could cause uncontrollable growth in plant life. Rynver was one of the few male naitani in the military. Men did have magic, but it was less common—perhaps one in every ten rather than the one-in-five rate of women born with magic. His parents hadn’t expected their son to have magic, so Rynver had never learned to control it. His military service had already stretched beyond the required six years, but when he learned control, like Iranda, he’d be gone. Back to civilian life, working on a farm somewhere.

The other North naitan wouldn’t have to wait. When Adessay turned twenty-two and finished his tour of mandatory military duty, he had a place waiting in one of the western mines. Today, he would be spilling debris from the breach down the glacis as the Tibrans tried to climb it, rolling stones in their path and generally disrupting their advance. He didn’t have a great deal of power to put behind his earthmoving, but that and his excellent control was why he would be welcomed outside the army.

Beltis would spend her life in the military, like Kallista, because her fire starting was too powerful, exploding ovens and setting houses on fire even after years of working on her control. Kallista’s control was so fine she could set tiny blue sparks dancing from finger to finger—and sometimes did when a staff meeting droned on and on and on. But no one had any use for her lightning, save Adara’s defense forces. Defending the helpless gave her magic some use, gave her life a purpose.

When her troop was disposed to her satisfaction, Kallista wrapped herself in her cloak and went to stand near the arrow slit in the parapet. The lights of campfires spread down the beach as far as she could see. She’d have suspected the Tibrans of lighting more fires than they had troops to demoralize Ukiny’s garrison, but she had watched them unloading. She had never seen such a vast army, never imagined a need for such a thing.

Kallista turned her face into the wind, feeling it rush past her from the shore, from the North. She squared up her shoulders, pointing them east and west so that North lay directly before her. First the Jeroan Sea, then the lower fringes of the Tibran continent. It rose to a high plateau ringed by cliffs, or so she’d been told, and beyond that, mountains. Mountains as high and wild as the Devil’s Tooth range along the neck that bridged the sea, but colder. Beyond the mountains lay pure North. Cold, clear, rational. Utterly unlike Kallista’s own hot-tempered, impulsive, passion-ruled nature.

Perhaps that was why the One had given her North magic, so that its icy control could provide what she did not possess in herself. Kallista opened herself to the North, calling its cold clarity into her mind and soul, filling herself with its sharp-edged magic.

She sensed Torchay’s presence behind her. “You should sleep, Sergeant.”

“So should you. Your rest is more important than mine. Your lightning will be needed. We guards have divided the watch.”

Kallista glanced toward Beltis’s stocky guard who stood over his charge. Hamonn gave her a tiny nod, acknowledging his duty, accepting it from her. “You’re right,” she said. “The battle will begin when it begins.”

She lay down where she was, her back against the fortification, and listened to the quiet sounds Torchay made as he settled close by. “Sleep well, friend.”

The silence that answered had her fearing she’d overstepped some unknown bounds, until at last he spoke, his voice even quieter than hers. “And you also…friend.”

“Stop! Wait, dammit—what kind of friend are you?” Stone bent over, hands on his knees, and tried to decide whether the contents of his stomach were going to come out. He knew he’d feel better if he could just shed his jacket in this infernal heat, but the padded gray nuisance was part of the uniform. They could unbutton it, but they couldn’t leave it off even in camp.

“I’m your only friend, thank you. No one else would put up with your rubbish.”

Stone tilted his head and peered up at Fox who had stopped after all and was waiting, swaying slightly in the offshore wind, his face strange and shadowy in the firelight coming from the nearby crossway between tents. Stone knew that face better than his own. Both of them named Warrior, of the highest caste Tibre had to offer, below only the Rulers themselves. Both of them vo’Tsekrish, of the king’s own city.

They had been partnered the day they left women’s quarters to begin warrior training, when they were six years old. They were now twenty-two. Or maybe twenty-three. Stone didn’t keep track of that sort of thing.

He and Fox had learned to read side by side from the same book. They had learned to fight back-to-back against the same teachers. They had even discovered the pleasures of women at the same time, though not with the same woman. Stone trusted Fox with his life.

But at the moment, he could cheerfully throttle him. “I thought you said you knew where women’s quarters were.”

“I didn’t say that. You did.” Fox grabbed a handful of Stone’s hair and pulled him more or less upright, leaning down until they stood eye to eye.

Stone envied him those few inches that made the lean necessary. “’S not fair,” he muttered. “I should be the taller. I’m lead in this pair.”

“You’re drunk.” Fox shoved and Stone staggered back several paces.

“Am not. If I was drunk, I’d have fallen. ’Sides, Stores won’t give us enough to get drunk. Just enough to get pleasantly snockered. Besides that, you’re drunk too.”

“Not drunk. Snockered.” Fox frowned. “Why d’you suppose that is?”

“Dunno.” Stone looked around for a place to sit. He didn’t recognize the tents—though why he thought he should since all something-thousand of them looked exactly alike, he didn’t know.

The tents were wide enough for a tall man to stretch out without getting his feet wet, long enough for six men to sleep side by side without quite touching, and high enough to stand up in if you didn’t mind ducking a bit. Or ducking a bit more if you were Fox. And they were set up in identical long rows with space between them for walking and mustering.

Stone didn’t recognize the warriors strolling about, either. Except for Fox. He recognized him. Worse luck. “Dunno why we’re snockered,” he said again, “’cept the First and Finest are always a little snockered when they go charging up through the breach. And ’cause they gave us the stuff and what else were we to do with it but drink it?”

“Maybe that’s why.” Fox set a small keg on its end and plopped down on it. “Give us these fancy red poufs of trousers so we’ll be sure to get shot at. Get us just snockered enough we’ll run like lunatics into that hellmouth, and call us a brilliant-sounding name like First and Finest so we won’t realize we’re something else entirely, like First and Foolishest.”

“No such word as foolishest,” Stone offered, nodding sagely. Or as sagely as he could, given that he was at least a quarter full of some truly vile liquor. “And you shouldn’t talk that way. It’ll get back to the Rulers. You do realize you’re sitting on a keg of black powder, don’t you?”

Carefully, Fox leaned to one side and peered down at his impromptu seat. “Damn me, so I am. Suppose it wouldn’t do to get myself blown to bits prematurely.”

“No. Won’t do at all.” Stone took his partner’s hand and hauled him to his feet. “D’you suppose we started drinking too early? They haven’t started the cannonade yet, have they?” He froze, trying to force thought through his slightly pickled brain, to hear what he ought to be hearing. “Have I gone deaf?”

Just then, the concentrated thunder of hundreds of cannon firing simultaneously at close range threatened to knock both men off none-too-steady feet.

“Did you hear that?” Fox said when the noise faded.

“Yes.”

“Then you’re not deaf.”

“Do you know where we are?” Again Stone tried to pick out landmarks.

“Haven’t a clue.”

“I don’t suppose you know where women’s quarters are from here.”

“Not a bit.”

Stone shoved his hair out of his face with both hands. “Why doesn’t your hair ever get in your way? It’s just like mine, yellow and curly. It should get in your way like mine.”

“I remember to get mine cut.” Fox produced a length of string, bunched Stone’s hair together on the top of his head and tied it off. “You look ridiculous. Like there’s a fountain sprouting from your head.”

“Don’t care. It’s out of my way. Thanks, brodir.”

“Anytime.” Fox paused, then pointed at the banner hanging above a nearby tent. “Isn’t that the vo’Haav banner?”

Stone turned, looked. The banner was hard to see in the firelight, but he thought he recognized a black bear on the yellow flag. “If a bear is vo’Haav’s emblem, then it is.”

“Our camp is always just to the east of theirs.”

“Don’t tell me you know where east is. The sun’s down. The moon’s not up yet.”

Fox pointed. “The city is east. Therefore east is that way. Our tent is also that way.”

Stone sighed, his chest heaving in his disappointment. “I really wanted a woman tonight.”

“One last time before we die.”

Anger flashing like sparks in dry grass, Stone swung, his fist plowing into his partner’s face, knocking him to his backside. Stone spat in the sand beside him, invoking the warrior’s god. “Don’t say that,” he ordered, fists clenched. “Maybe we’ll die, but maybe we won’t. It’s not up to us. You go into battle knowing you’ll die, Khralsh will give you what you want. Death is easy.”

Once more he reached down and pulled Fox to his feet. “You go into battle determined to live, maybe he lets you live. Life, that’s not so easy, not in battle. Either way, Khralsh decides. But if you ask for what you want, maybe he gives it.”

“And maybe he doesn’t.” Fox couldn’t meet Stone’s gaze.

“Maybe not.” Stone shook the wrist he gripped, jarring his partner’s whole body, willing him to understand, to believe. “But who guaranteed you life to begin with? Remember that Bureaucrat we saw get run down by the ale wagon? Or the Farmer who got gored by his bull? Everybody dies, Fox, sooner or later. Swear your life to Khralsh, let him look after it. You can’t.”

This time, Fox’s sharp brown gaze locked onto Stone’s. He envied Fox his eyes as well. Few others had the pale blue of Stone’s eyes. Their mentors had always shuddered and called them uncanny, witchy. But he didn’t mind uncanny now if it convinced Fox.

Slowly, Fox nodded. “All right. I’ll swear. With you at my shoulder I believe it.”

“Then swear. We swear together, we fight together, fight well, and surely Khralsh will let us live.”

“I swear. I swear myself to Khralsh. I ask for life, but my life in his hands whatever happens.” Fox spat in the sand, offering a body fluid precious to the warrior god.

Stone copied him. “And so I swear also. My life to Khralsh.”

They stood another moment, swaying faintly when the wind gusted through, setting tent walls to flapping.

“D’you suppose we ought to try to sleep?” Stone scratched his head, careful not to disturb his new topknot.

The cannon crashed again, less in unison than before.

“In this noise?” Fox turned his partner and pushed him in the direction of their division. “You can try.”

“Why do you always have all the answers?”

“Because somebody has to, and you obviously don’t.”

Stone punched Fox in the shoulder hard enough to send him reeling to the far side of the tent street. “What is it I have then?”

“Lunatic courage.”

“You have courage. Plenty of it. I’ve seen it.”

“Ah, but I have the sensible sort of courage. Somebody has to be the crazy one, the one who’ll charge cannon with a misfired musket or volunteer for First and Finest. And that’s you.”

“You were right there charging and volunteering with me.”

“We’re paired. Where else am I supposed to be but at your back, making sure you don’t get your fool self killed.”

Stone thought long enough they passed two tents, trying to work his way to Fox’s meaning. The cannon’s booming, now a steady rumble as the big guns fired at will, seemed to shake the alcohol from his brain. “You’re pissed.” He stopped in the throughway. “Not drunk pissed. Angry pissed. Because I volunteered.”

“I’m not angry.” Fox took his arm and got him moving again. “I was. But I’m not anymore. You convinced me we’d live through this. And if we don’t, Khralsh will welcome us to his hall.”

“Yes.” Stone believed it. He couldn’t believe anything else. “Volunteering for First and Finest will get us noticed. It could get us promoted.”

Fox sighed. “Don’t you ever get tired?”

“Of what?”

“This.” Fox swept his arm in a half circle, indicating the camp around them, the cannon, the city with its broken walls. “Living in tents. Slogging through mud or heat or rain or all three to the next camp. Fighting. Bleeding. Healing up so we can do it all over again. Don’t you wish we could rest for a little while? Go home, soak in the baths, spend some time with a woman who has all her teeth?”

“I don’t know, I rather like the toothless one. The way she can wrap her mouth aro—”

Fox shoved him and Stone broke off, laughing. His laughter didn’t last long. They’d reached their own tent, shared with two other pairs, all elsewhere just now. They probably knew how to find the women’s tents.

Stone took advantage of their absence to speak frankly, half shouting over the cannon noise. “This is the way it is, Fox. We were born Warrior caste. We are the King’s Fist. His Sword and Shield. Where our king sends, we go. It’s no use wishing it was some other way, because it’s not, and it won’t ever be. You’ll shatter your soul trying to fight it.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right.” Fox pulled his musket from the stack and sat down to clean it once more. “I think too much.” He grinned at his partner. “The curse of a brilliant mind.”

Stone grinned back, relief flooding him. “Crazy and stupid. That’s what a good warrior ought to be. You should work on that.”

“I will. Damn me! The flint’s cracked already. I just replaced it this morning.” Grumbling, Fox set to putting the finicky firearm back into working order.

Stone pulled out a whetstone and his bayonet. In a charge like the one facing them, they’d only get one chance to fire their muskets. A sharp bayonet seemed more useful.

The boom of cannon fire set the walls of the women’s tents to trembling. All night the bombardment had continued, a constant underpinning to the activity within the tents. The activity had ceased with the departure of the men. The women slept haphazardly wherever they found a comfortable spot, twitching when the cannon roared, but sleeping nonetheless. All save one.

Aisse vo’Haav, assigned to the Warrior caste, crept carefully from the communal areas to the tiny partitioned section where the women washed, dressed and kept their few personal belongings. If anyone woke, she would have questions, and though Aisse had answers, she couldn’t afford the delay.

She took the moments necessary to stop at the shrine to Ulilianeth, healer, seductress, protector of women, the only goddess in a heaven full of gods. Aisse felt the need for her blessing before embarking on her path.

Ulilianeth had spoken to Aisse in this place, had shown her that things could be different, that she could live a life of her own choosing, free of everything that had made her existence into hell. In this place, women could say no. And Aisse intended to be one of them.

She pressed a kiss to Ulilianeth’s stone skirt, then scurried to her corner where she ripped off the hated gauzy dress. She scrubbed herself until her skin felt raw, but still she didn’t feel clean. Aisse pulled the brown linen tunic from beneath her box, where she’d hidden it the day she bought it from the local boy selling bread in the camp. She put it on, smoothing it down over her thighs. It left her legs bare from the knees down. Studying her exposed legs critically, Aisse decided they did not look much like boys’ legs, too round and golden. She had to disguise them.

A short while later, she’d made her coverlet into a fair approximation of the leggings she’d seen Adaran soldiers wearing. Hers were lumpy and threatened to slip down because she couldn’t tie the bindings tight enough, but they would have to do. She got out the scissors she’d “borrowed” from Piheko. She’d listened to Piheko bemoan their loss for days. Aisse would be sure to leave them where they could be easily found. In seconds, her waist-length mane of gold hair lay on the ground.

Her neck felt cool, tingly, strange. But she didn’t have time to marvel at it or the way her head threatened to float away. Aisse gathered up the shorn hair and shoved it in with the straw of a spare pallet, scuffed the remaining strands into the dirt, and laid the scissors in a gap beside Piheko’s box.

From her own, she retrieved the bag of supplies she’d been collecting—dried meat, hard cheese, biscuit, a cup, extra shoes—and knelt to peer beneath the tent wall. No one passed by. After endless hours, the cannonade was at last rising to its crescendo. The warriors would be mustering on the field before the city, preparing for the attack. No one would notice a boy slipping from the camp.

She made it past the cannon, past the endless stacks of stores, past the officers’ mounts and the cattle waiting their turn to be slaughtered for rations. She could see the line of trees that marked the southern edge of the Tibran camp.

“Here! You—boy!”

Aisse froze, hesitating seconds too long before realizing she should run. Her face would never pass for a boy’s at second glance. But the Farmer caste tending the beasts already had hold of her arm.

“What are you doing here, boy?” He yanked, snapping her arm painfully upward. “Spying? Off to tell your witches all our plans?”

She kept her face turned away, hoping her hacked-off hair would provide sufficient disguise.

“Look at me, boy!” He jerked her arm again.

Aisse shook her head, trying to pull away from him. He swore and backhanded her across the face. She couldn’t stop the reflexive high-pitched cry. A girl’s sound, not a boy’s.

The farmer grabbed her face with the hand not gripping her arm and forced it upward, until he could see her. “Achz and Arilo!” He called on the Farmer caste’s twin gods in his shock. “You’re female.”

He shook her, violently. “What in seven hells have you done? By all that’s holy…” His voice trembled with horror.

And it was true horror to a Tibran male to think anyone might wish to escape his caste, to think a woman might wish to live some other life. Women lived in the women’s quarters of whatever caste they were assigned, doing women’s work, available to any man of any caste who might wish to use her. Most Tibran women didn’t mind. It was the way life was. Aisse hated it.

She couldn’t lose her chance at freedom now, not when she was so close. “Let me go!”

Her elbow punched into the farmer’s stomach as she struggled. He grunted with the blow, so she did it again, kicking, scratching and biting in desperate silence.

“Witch.” He shook her hard enough to rattle her eyes in their sockets. The first blow of his fist stunned her and she collapsed, held upright only by his grip. He waited till she regained her senses before he hit her again, to be sure she felt every least bit of the punishment he had in store for her. He told her so.

Torchay pressed his naitan closer into the angle between wall and walkway, his body covering hers. Not that mere flesh and blood were much defense against the cannon’s iron balls, but at least if he failed her this time, he would surely die first. He put his lips next to her ear and shouted so he could be heard. “We should pull back. They’re targeting the walls now.”

“And the town.”

Since the bombardment started, she had argued against leaving the walls because the Tibran missiles sailed over their heads to crash into the shops and houses of Ukiny. Then, she had been right. They were safer on the walls. But no longer.

The captain turned her head. Torchay pulled back, allowing her to find his ear.

“It’s too late to pull back.” Her lips brushed his skin as she spoke. “Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t do it now. We’re safer staying put.”

Torchay gave up. She was likely right, as usual. And even if she wasn’t, she was the captain.

A cannonball smacked into the crenellations behind them, sending stones tumbling to the walkway. Hands molded to his captain’s head, he waited till the biggest debris settled, then lifted his head just enough to peer behind him. The other guards lay over their naitani in the space beyond his feet.

“Hamonn!” Torchay bellowed the man’s name, but doubted he could be heard over the cannon’s roar. He propped himself on elbows to see better, and thought something moved past the South naitan’s guard.

“Status?” his captain asked.

“Checking.” He nudged Hamonn with his foot. Rubble spilled from the man’s back, but the man himself did not move.

“Casualties, Sergeant?”

“Hamonn isn’t moving. Don’t think he’s dead, but I don’t know. Don’t know about Beltis either. Someone’s moving beyond them, so I assume Kadrey and his naitan are unhurt.” He didn’t like reporting incomplete information, but his captain needed something and that was the best he had.

“Go check on Hamonn. See if Beltis is hurt. I need her with me.”

Torchay flattened himself over her as another ball hit close by. “When it’s safe.”

“Go now. By the time it’s safe, the battle will be over. That’s an order, Sergeant.”

When she said that, it meant she was beyond reasoning with. He had no choice but to obey, or risk her doing almost anything. Torchay rose onto hands and knees, but remained in place, his body still shielding hers. “Do not move from this spot.”

They’d fought this battle out their first year or so together, but he still held his breath every time he went on one of her errands, until he returned and found her again where he’d left her.

“I won’t. Now go.” Her shove sent him scooting on hands and feet to the pair under the debris behind them.

Torchay moved the worst of the stones off the older man and checked for a pulse. He found it, strong and steady. “Trooper? Beltis, are you injured?” He leaned close to hear any response over the cannon fire.

“I’m fine.” Her voice came muffled from beneath her guard. “Is Hamonn—”

“Breathing and well enough, given that he has a lump the size of my fist on the back of his head.” Torchay probed the injury and was rewarded with reaction.

Hamonn tried to shove him away. He might have groaned but no one could hear it in the crash of a cannonball nearby. So close that bits of rock blasted from the wall spun into Torchay’s face, making tiny cuts on his forehead and cheeks. Too close.

He looked up to see where it had hit in time to see the parapet above his captain begin to crumble. “Kallista!”

Torchay bellowed her name and scrambled to reach her. She was moving, getting out of the way, but not fast enough.

An enormous stone capping the structure plummeted down, striking her a glancing blow before it bounced off the town side of the walk. More stones followed. Torchay dove forward to keep them off her. He didn’t quite succeed.

A fist-size stone hit her head, leaving a cut oozing blood in the fine, pale skin of her forehead. With a cry, Torchay covered her head with his hands, ignoring the battering they took. He scooted forward until he could get his head over hers. His was undoubtedly harder, could take more of a beating. But the rocks had stopped falling. The entire parapet lay on the walkway around and over them.

Torchay shoved the rocks away from her, leaving streaks of blood on their chalky surface. His hands bled from a score of cuts, and at least one finger was likely broken. He used them to cup his captain’s face and turn it up to the full moon’s light. He bent his head till his beak of a nose brushed her small straight one, and he felt her breath stir against his skin. “Blessed One,” he whispered in gratitude.

“Is she dead?” Both young naitani peered over his shoulder, but it was Beltis who spoke.

It took Torchay a few moments before he realized Beltis sounded strange because she wasn’t shouting. The bombardment had stopped. Instantly alert, Torchay looked toward the breach and saw Hamonn, slightly the worse for wear, peering around what was left of the crumbled breastworks.

“They’re coming!” he shouted.

One of Iranda’s bubbles burst into bright light high above the city wall, illuminating all that lay below. Torchay made note of it. The captain would want to know so she could commend her later for her prompt and proper action.

“They’re coming!” Hamonn beckoned with a wave of his arm, but the two naitani still hovered.

“Go.” Torchay shoved at the yellow-clad girl. Adessay would follow her lead, if she only would.

“Is she dead?” Beltis asked again.

“No, but if she were, you’d still have to take command. You’re ranking naitan. It’s your duty to protect them.” He jerked his head in the direction of the city and wished he hadn’t. He’d taken a few too many stones to the head himself. “The enemy is coming.”

He could see them over the broken wall, rushing forward in waves, hopefully to break against Ukiny’s walls like the ocean on the shore. But like the ocean, they would pour through any gap they found.

“Naitan.” Hamonn had returned from the hole in the wall to kneel in front of his charge. He held his hands out, palm up. “I accept your gloves.”

Beltis stared at him half a second, then stripped off her gloves and laid them in Hamonn’s upturned hands. “Adessay.” Her voice cracked like a whip. “Come with me, Trooper. We have an army to stop.”

CHAPTER THREE

Beltis had to pick her way through the rubble that had felled Kallista, rather than striding decisively, but she was moving. The young North naitan removed his gloves, handed them to his guard and followed, his blue tunic less noticeable in Iranda’s light than Beltis’s yellow.

Fire exploded in the plain below, turning half the lead Tibran rank into human torches. Rock tumbled down the steep slope of the glacis, mowing down the ranks behind. From the tower on the far side of the breach in the wall, more magic came, causing vines and brambles to grow instantaneously in the field, impeding the enemy’s rush. Satisfied the naitani were doing their duty, Torchay turned to his own.

His muscles quivered from holding his weight off his captain for so long. He pushed himself up, gravel and dust cascading from his back, and went to his knees beside her. That she had not yet regained consciousness worried him. He had no East magic, no healing in his touch, but he had the best nonmagical medical training available. A bodyguard needed to be able to tend his naitan if he failed in his first duty and allowed her an injury.

Torchay cleared the area around his captain, blocking out the shouts and screams of battle. The youngsters seemed to be holding their own, so far. He straightened her limbs, checking for injury, working his way carefully toward her torso and head. She didn’t wake under his probing, even when he pressed on bruises he knew had to hurt.

She’d been struck in the head at least once, but he wouldn’t have thought that blow enough to render her unconscious this long.

Someone screamed. Beltis. Torchay looked up to see Hamonn clutch his chest as if arrow struck, but no shaft protruded. He staggered, then fell from the wall into the shattered hole where the breach had been forced.

“They have hand cannon,” Kadrey shouted back at Torchay as he pulled both naitani down behind the broken walls. “Long, with knives on the end like pikes, but firing tiny missiles. As bad as archers.”

Beltis screamed again, rising to her knees to fling fire at the enemy. Looking grim, Adessay crawled up beside her. Worried, Torchay turned his attention back to his own naitan. He had to wake her if he could.

She looked ghost white in the eerie light. Kallista usually appeared more pale than she actually was because of the contrast with her hair, so dark a brown it was almost black. But this paleness seemed extreme. Gently, Torchay slipped his hands around her neck to feel along her spine.

He loosened her queue, knowing she wouldn’t like it, but the tight weave of hair kept him from feeling her skull, finding injury there. When he found the lump, she flinched and gasped. Torchay grinned. A lump usually meant the swelling was expanding outward, rather than in against the brain. And she responded to pain.

He found no other injuries, save for the cut on her forehead and the second lump forming beneath it. He cleaned it with water from his bottle and a cloth from his pack.

“They’re coming!” Kadrey shouted.

“Stop. Hurts.” The captain moved her head away from his ministrations.

“I’m finished.” The cut was as clean as he could make it here. Torchay took her hand in his. “Squeeze.”

“Still hurts. Why?” She opened her eyes to slits, squinting against the bright illumination.

“You got smacked on the head with a great huge rock. Blame it for your headache, not me.”

“No. Why squeeze?” Her hand lay limp as yesterday’s fish.

“So I know you can. You might wiggle your toes while you’re at it.” That enormous boulder had barely brushed her, but Torchay’s stomach made fear-knots over what that light blow could have done.

“Oh.” She promptly squeezed his hand tight enough to hurt and waggled both feet up and down. Then she tried to roll over and sit up.

Torchay pushed her back down, realizing far later than he should have that the scuffling and shouting he heard were right on top of them. He ducked beneath the knife-on-a-pole of the nearest Tibran and buried a blade in his heart. He pulled it out and threw it at the head appearing over the wall at the breach. He just had time to see the hilt quivering in the dead man’s eye socket before the next crisis was upon him.

He drew the long knife from its sheath down his back beneath his tunic and slashed across the neck of the first man rushing them, then lunged forward onto one knee and thrust it into the gut of the man behind him. That gave them a little space of time before the next enemy reached them.

Torchay stood, bringing his naitan up with him. Holding her close, inside his protection, he surveyed the situation. Beltis lay draped over the parapet, the blood pouring from her neck denying any hope she might yet live. Adessay and his guard sprawled in a small heap, both of them gutted. Probably by the first man Torchay had just killed.

More soldiers in padded gray jackets and loose red trousers rushed down the walkway toward them, and yet more climbed onto the wall beyond.

“We should fall back.” Torchay tried to draw the captain toward the town side of the wall.

“Where to?” She was already stripping off her gloves, thrusting them at him.

“Anywhere. Somewhere safer than this.”

“And where is that?”

He could feel the hair-raising tingle of magic being called. Before he could tuck her gloves into his belt, lightning flashed from her hands. The massive blue-white spark leaped from man to man to man until all of them lay twitching on the walk a few moments before they fell still, their hearts stopped.

More of them climbed over the parapet, up ladders from town where shrill wavering screams tracked the progress of the Tibran sack of Ukiny. Kallista let her lightning fly in huge, jagged horizontal sheets, half toward the men on the wall, half toward the breach where countless more hordes poured through. She stood with her arms outstretched in supplication to the Source of Magic.

Again and again and again, she called on the One for power, until she was blind and deaf with it, sensing the enemy as much as seeing them. Bodies lay piled on the wall five and six deep, and still they came. They climbed over their fellows in the breach and burst onto the city streets, held back now only by Kallista’s lightning and the occasional rooftop archer.

“You can’t call enough magic to kill them all.” Torchay crouched beside her, head swiveling as he attempted to watch in all directions. “There are too many of them. We must fall back.”

“I can’t!” Kallista could hear the screams of the innocent as they died, smell the smoke of homes being burnt. She couldn’t save herself while they suffered. She could see gray and red on the tower where she’d stationed the rest of her troop. They had to have fallen like Beltis and Adessay.

“Kallista!” Torchay grabbed her waist with both hands, breaking her concentration. “Your death won’t save them.”

Sweet Goddess, he was right. But she couldn’t just give up. She lifted her hands high, calling yet again on the One, the Mother and Father of All, Giver of Life, Source of Magic. “Do something!” she screamed. “They are your children! Save them. Use me—whatever you want! Whatever you need. I’ll do anything, if you’ll just save your people. What kind of Goddess are you?”

The wind rushed past from the sea as it had since time began. The sun crept above the eastern horizon, casting the dead into pale shadows behind the wall, painting their spilled blood brilliant scarlet and crimson and dark, dull, brown. For a moment, Kallista waited to be struck down for her defiance.

Then power filled her in a turbulent rush, enough power to fill deep oceans, to shift whole mountains and build a hundred cities. It permeated her, deep into each strand of hair, every shred of callused skin on her feet. She screamed, and power poured in through her open mouth. She couldn’t contain it all. She had to rid herself of it somehow. Kallista threw her hands wide, as if throwing lightning from her fingertips, and the magic exploded from her.

Not in bright sparks, but as a shock wave of darkness, a sort of black mist, roiling out in all directions from where she stood at the epicenter. It settled over the landscape, clinging like some dark dew to everything it touched. And Tibrans began to die.

Some of them screamed, clawing at their faces as if it burned. Others just dropped in their tracks. Others—she couldn’t see clearly. A few turned and ran when they saw the opaque fog approach, but it moved as fast as the lightning she threw. There was no escape.

Panicked, Kallista tried to call it back, but the magic refused to answer. Would it kill everything it touched? She looked down at Torchay where he knelt by her side, head bent, saw the dark glitter clinging to the burnished red of his hair. She tried to brush it off, and it melted away like the mist it resembled, leaving nothing behind. Not even dampness.

Torchay turned his face up to hers, his eyes as wide and frightened as she knew her own must be. “What did you just do?”

In the high mountain pass on the southern edge of the Mother Range, huddled over a feeble fire just at dawn, the trader lifted his head. He sensed something. A new thing, strange and powerful—and oh so seductive. He straightened, searching with all his senses. Was he finally to discover what he had been seeking for so long?

When it hit him, bowing him backward in a spine-cracking convulsion, he shouted for sheer joy. Incredible power rushed through him, recognizing him, welcoming him, promising him his every dream fulfilled. It left him as quickly as it had come, but this time it left him filled with hope, with eager purpose, rather than anxious desperation.

No, not this time. This was as like his previous experience as the sun was like the moon. It was promise kept. It pulled at him, compelled him onward, sped his steps. His heart’s desire awaited him, and the faster he traveled, the sooner he would have it.

He picked himself up from the dirt where he lay, his traveling companions hovering in a fearful circle around him. “Move, you sluggards!” he bellowed. “I want to be on my way before the sun reaches the treetops.”

He hurt. All over, but especially his head. And there was dirt in his mouth. And his mouth was too dry to spit. Stone tried anyway. He succeeded in getting rid of some of it. He wiped his hand on his pants and scraped more of the grit off his tongue with his fingers.

Where was he? What had happened? They’d made it through the breach, somehow alive and—Khralsh, his head hurt.

Ocean was gone, incinerated by an Adaran witch. He’d taken his partner, Moon, with him. River, Wolf, Snow—too many to name—had fallen to arrows or worse. But he and Fox had made it through. He was certain of that. They’d crossed into the city, cleared the houses nearest the wall, which were mostly cleared already save for a screeching crone who’d brained him with a broom and died on Fox’s bayonet. They’d reloaded, fired the houses and left them burning to advance to the next street.

Stone had killed the archer shooting at them from the roof and reloaded, then they’d checked the house. Empty. The dead archer was a woman. That had shocked him, but Fox reminded him she was dead now, paying the price of her blasphemy in the afterlife. They’d clattered back down the stairs and set the place alight. Then…

He scrubbed a hand across his face. The light hurt his eyes, even though they were still closed. It wasn’t supposed to be light, was it? Wait—yes, the sun had come up. He remembered that. It had just risen over the city walls when…When what?

Stone spit more dirt from his mouth, beginning to have enough spit to do it. He should get up. Find where they’d called muster. Report in. But lifting his head seemed more than he could accomplish. He tried opening an eye and managed that. It was hard to see, his vision veiled, blurred somehow.

This didn’t look like the city. Unless the city had crumbled around him. Was that what had happened? Stone opened his other eye. How could the sunlight hurt when everything seemed so dim? He lay over white stone rubble. Big rocks, little rocks, grit, gravel, bloody body parts…mighty Khralsh, he was in the breach.

Stone tried to scoot off the dead but there were too many of them. They carpeted the ground, layers deep, their limbs flopping bonelessly as he struggled to escape them. Heads lolled. Wounds gaped open. Stone’s hands slipped and he fell face first into some poor soul’s bloated entrails.

Retching his empty stomach even emptier, he slid farther down the slope only to fetch up against the brittle black corpse of one of the fire-witch’s victims. Stone recoiled in horror, scrambling, rolling, crawling on his belly until he reached a bare rock promontory jutting from the sea of bodies. There, he curled into a tight ball and shivered uncontrollably.

What was wrong with him? He was a warrior. Death was no stranger to him. He’d climbed across bodies to capture a city numberless times before. He’d been on burial detail, collecting bodies from the battlefield and lining them up in rows to record their names before consigning them to pyres of Khralsh’s flames. Granted, he’d never before seen men burst into spontaneous flame without a torch or spark to set the blaze, but fire was fire. It was natural. Not like…What? Why couldn’t he remember?

Had it been so awful that his mind wiped the memory blank? And where was Fox?

Stone uncurled from his tight knot, just a little. Fox had been with him, he knew. Fox was always with him, just as he was always with Fox. So where was he now?

“Fox!” He tried to shout, but his throat was raw, his voice a weak, raspy, croaking thing.

How far had he rolled from the breach? Stone looked through his veiled vision up the glacis. He was no more than halfway down, but could he make the climb back up? No witches were left to set him on fire or make the earth itself move beneath his feet. So he only had to face climbing back over the cold bodies of his onetime comrades.

Fox was up there. Had to be up there. Stone would do anything for his brodir. Spitting once more, calling on his god with it, he started back up, doing his best not to step on the bodies. Desperately, he tried to reconstruct events. Through the breach, kill the crone, fire the houses, next street.

They’d checked the dead archer. They’d fired that house. They left the house. There was a child. An Adaran child. Boy or girl, Stone couldn’t tell. Never could when they were that young, especially the way Adarans dressed them alike. The child was huddled in a doorway, terrified, staring at them with witchy pale eyes, waiting for death.

But they didn’t make war on children. “Run!” Fox shouted.

“Hide.” Stone opened the door behind the child, shooed it inside. Fox had marked the door when it was shut again, designating the building “Not for burning.” It was far enough from the wall that they had discretion as to which building to burn, and it was—hopefully—far enough from those already burning that the wood inside the stone walls wouldn’t catch. And then…Stone paused in his climb, pulled his hand back from the corpse it touched to wipe it on his filthy jacket.

And then, the air around them had exploded, the sun had gone dark and the world had come to an end.

Except that it obviously hadn’t. The same sun—at least Stone thought it was the same one—still shone overhead. The same wind blew past him on its way inland from the ocean. The same bodies still lay in the same breach of the same wall around the same Adaran city.

Not…exactly the same bodies. He’d noticed it on his climb, but only now began to piece together what he saw. There were more bodies. Hundreds had fallen in the charge on the breach, but some of these dead men wore badges from divisions Stone knew were not scheduled to advance until the walls had been taken.

Many of the bodies bore no marks at all. Others looked as if their heads had exploded, or their hearts had burst, or their internal organs simply decided to crawl out through their skin. Perhaps the world had ended after all.

End of the world or not, he had to find Fox. Something drove him upward, a desperate need to find what he was searching for. And what would that be but his partner? Stone tried calling his name again, quietly this time, for he sensed movement on the walls above and inside the city. Did Tibre hold it, or had the Adarans driven off the assault with their witch magic?

He reached the place where he had regained his senses, as near as he could tell, and began turning bodies over. Most Tibrans had hair some shade of yellow, but Fox’s was brighter than most, with a hint of red in the sunlight. Stone concentrated on those bodies with the brightest hair.

“Fox!” He called in a hoarse whisper, looking for some faint motion, some response. Fox had sworn to do his best to live. He couldn’t be dead.

His desperation growing, Stone searched through the gray-and-red-clad fallen there in the breach. His breath rasped louder in his ears with every step he took. His vision dimmed then cleared at whim. He called to his partner, sometimes forgetting to keep his voice quiet. Body by lifeless body, he worked his way through the breadth of the breach, from one broken wall to the other.

On the south side, where ladders had been propped for warriors to reach the Adaran witches and wipe them from existence, Stone saw yet another head covered in bright curls. Heart pounding in his chest, he rushed toward it, tripping over the corpses in his path.

Fox lay on his side, curled around the base of a ladder. His face looked peaceful. No, happy. A faint smile curved his lips. Stone’s vision blurred again and he wiped the wetness from his cheeks. He was afraid to touch him. Afraid to discover his partner had found Khralsh’s welcome.

Swallowing hard, Stone set his hand on Fox’s shoulder and tugged. Fox rolled to his back, his arm falling limp to the rubble beside him. Blood pooled on the ground from a gaping wound in his thigh. A man could bleed out in minutes from such a wound. It wasn’t bleeding now.

Stone swiped his sleeve across his face again and, fingers shaking, touched his partner, searching for a heartbeat. He could feel nothing through the short, padded jacket. Stone ripped it open, sending bone buttons flying, and laid his hand flat over Fox’s heart. Even the shirt could interfere, so Stone opened that as well. Nothing.

“Damn you.” Stone pounded on the silent chest, weeping openly now. “You swore to live. You swore to try! You broke your oath! You broke—”

The grief took him over and he sank back on his heels, crying out his pain to whatever god would hear him. He curled over until his forehead touched the rock where he knelt, and let the tears come, let them mingle with Fox’s blood on the ground. Tears and blood, the most precious thing a man could offer the warrior god.

He was still there when the Adaran patrol came. They tossed the bodies of the Tibran dead—including Fox—down the slope where what was left of the Tibran Fifth Army could collect them and burn them. They put Stone in shackles and marched him away. He didn’t care. He had nothing left to care about.

Aisse lay bleeding in the mud and dung of the cattle pens, waiting for the farmer to return and finish his punishment. Likely, it would finish her as well. Dawn had broken while she lay here and bled, and with the sun came a whisper of hope.

She could see her bag, the one she’d packed so carefully, lying tossed aside just beyond the rough rails of the pen. The tin cup was bent nearly flat, the biscuit crushed to powder, but perhaps the cup could be reshaped and the dirt brushed from the dried beef.

She dug her fingers into the mud and pulled herself forward. It hurt. Ulili, it hurt. But she moved. Focused wholly on the bag, she crept toward it bit by painful bit.

“Where do you think you’re going, witch?” The farmer’s harsh voice made her cry out.

But she couldn’t stop, couldn’t give up. Not until she had no breath left with which to whisper a prayer, no mind left with which to hope.

The farmer snatched her up by the hair and dragged her over the fence, the rough boards scraping her battered body mercilessly. “If you got life enough to move, you got life enough to feel this.” He raised his fist, but before he let it fly, screams echoed through the camp. Screams coming from masculine throats.

He dropped Aisse in the dirt, spinning to face the noise, his face going pale. “What—”

She didn’t care what caused the screams. He’d let her go. She stretched her arm out and forced her pain-racked fingers to close around the leather of her bag.

“Achz preserve us,” the farmer whispered, and took off at a run toward the battlefront. Though what he thought he could do, Aisse didn’t know. He was Farmer caste, not Warrior. But he’d left her blessedly alone.

Aisse dragged the bag close and clutched it to her chest as she crawled the few feet to her cup. It took her several minutes to fumble it into the bag, then she worked her way to the discarded beef. She didn’t try to clean it. She didn’t know whether she still had teeth strong enough to chew it. But she pushed as much of it as she could gather into the bag. Once that was done, she began to crawl the long, endless distance toward the cover of the trees outside camp.

The sun climbed higher in the sky while she crawled. At first, she flinched at every noise, tried to hide from the sound of running footsteps. But she couldn’t move fast enough to hide, and the footsteps always ran past, toward the city. Voices shouted one to the other about witches and evil and death magic. She didn’t care. As long as no one tried to stop her, they could blather about anything they liked. She was getting away.

Finally, she felt the cool shade fall across her head. Then her shoulders, her back, her legs. She kept going. She needed to find a place to hide. With so many dead—she’d understood that much, that thousands had died—they surely wouldn’t try to find her. They had more important things to do. But she didn’t want anyone stumbling across her accidentally and finishing the job the farmer had started.

Aisse crept off the path already formed by people walking to the nearby branch of the river. The trees were short compared to the high forests of her home, and most of the fallen wood had been collected and burned in fires over the last week. But down near the rivulet, she found a tree whose roots had been undermined by seasonal floods. The brown tangle had left a gap big enough to hide her.

She filled her bent cup with water and drank. Then she crawled into the tangle of roots. Her passage left marks in the sandy grit of the bank, but if she tried to erase them, she’d only leave more. Aisse curled into a ball and prayed that no one would find her. And if they did, she prayed for a quick death. She wouldn’t go back.

“Are you hurt?” Kallista whispered, searching Torchay for signs of injury.

He shook his head. After a moment, he stood. They huddled together on the city wall, staring out at what Kallista had wrought.

Nothing moved on the walls of Ukiny. After a time, a crow fluttered up and landed with caution. No arm waved it away. It cawed and pecked at the body where it stood.

Nothing moved on the plain west of the city, as far as the beginning of the white tents in the Tibran camp. The misty wave seemed to have lost power just there, for Kallista thought she could see wounded attempting to crawl back to safety.

On the waters of Ukiny Bay, Tibran ships sat at crazy angles, their masts snapped and splintered. They’d all been anchored closer to the city than the camp had been. Some ships had already sunk, the rest sinking or so damaged they’d never sail before next spring.

Within the city, Kallista could hear shouting, some of it joyous, some frightened. The mist hadn’t harmed Torchay. Could it have been so selective as to kill only Tibrans, leaving Adarans untouched?

“My gloves, Torchay. I need my gloves.”

“Yes, Captain.” He pulled them from his belt and helped her put them on, both of them fumbling at the task with shaking hands.

“Don’t be afraid of me, Torchay.” She fought to keep the quaver from her voice. “Please don’t be afraid of me now.”

“I am afraid for you. That’s a different sort of thing. Blessed One, Kallista, what happened?”

“I don’t know. I don’t—You heard what I said. And then there was power. So much—” She shivered and Torchay wrapped his arms around her, sharing his warmth as he had before. Her shivers weren’t due to cold this time, but still his presence stopped them.

“It sounds almost as if…” His voice came hesitant, fearful. “Could you have been…marked?”

Terrified, Kallista stared at him. “That’s just legend. Children’s stories. It isn’t real.”

“Isn’t it?” Torchay looked over her head at the devastation on the plains below.

Kallista shivered again. Or perhaps it was more of a shudder. “Isn’t it supposed to leave an actual mark? Something you can see? Or feel?”

Torchay’s hand that had been absently stroking the nape of her neck came down to claim her hand. He carried it back up to where he’d been touching her. “What do you feel?”

There, beneath her untidy queue, she felt a faint raised ridge on her skin. Her fingertips followed it down to a sort of knot, where another ridge intersected the first. Cold gripped her heart.

“Can you see it?” She held her hair up, out of the way, while Torchay bent to look.

“Yes,” he said. Nothing more.

“Well? What does it look like?”

“A scar. A red, raised scar.” He paused and his fingers touched. He traced along her spine, then perpendicular to it. “North. South. East. West.” He touched the point where the lines crossed, where Kallista had felt the knot. “And a rose in the center. It’s a perfect Compass Rose.”

She dropped her hair, pressed it down over the mark, over Torchay’s hand. “Maybe it was there already.”

“No. It wasn’t.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Kallista, I’ve braided your hair almost every day for nine years. It wasn’t there.”