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Death's chill cut through the hot sun upon Zhaleh's folded wings. She clutched the poorly bandaged stump of her right shoulder, nothing remaining of that arm, and hurried down the old path towards the river. Blood soaked the cloth and dripped from her claws, sprinkling a reddened trail in the dry plains. Not much of that blood was hers, though her hasty sealing of the severed artery wouldn't last much longer.

Nor would she.

Hyenas whooped and barked hunting howls in the distance. Zhaleh's crest feathers bristled, but not because of the predators.

She fled along plains without cover from any watchers upon the lonely mountain rising behind her. Hundreds of good perches dotted the cliffs, where she and her fellow disciples had trained and played. The crags and rocks had been so friendly before. Now they towered behind her, threatening and foreign.

Her foe bloodied talons dashed, sometimes stumbled, across the dry ground and grass. Through great effort and luck, Zhaleh didn't trip.

Fear turned her thoughts instead of her head.

Could those monstrous raiders have followed her through the tunnels? The caves were well disguised, but the raiders had entered through the hidden eastern passes. As if they knew all of her sect's secrets. The legends of what nested in the mountain long ago, before her sect settled it, must have been true.

Nothing else could explain the monstrosities she witnessed.

Zhaleh panted, beak hanging open, trying to center herself. Moving commanded all of her remaining focus. Her vision blurred every other step, making her blink sluggishly to clear it. The pain of flesh hardly touched her heart. Instead, deep in her chest ached a wound worse than any upon her body.

Her sect and home burned, and she couldn't glance back. The smoke rising from the village hidden in the lonely mountain's bowl shaped valley would deal a mortal wound to her if she saw the black plumes now. Everything, everyone, had been taken by monsters she never believed in before today.

Her talons kept moving, lifting sure and steady despite her wobbling upper half, just as she was taught.

"One foot after the other," she heaved.

The river, mostly mud after many moons of the dry season, was a mile away. Then it was five miles upstream to the nearest village. Whether she made it or not hardly mattered now. She'd promised her teacher to keep going, and put his last words into practice.

Wild grass parted quietly for her thanks to her Wood qi training, yet she was far from her teacher's skill. He had dashed atop the grass stalks as easily as a stone road, outrunning khrett and antelope with ease.

But now he would never again...

Her breathing threatened to falter. Tears tried to spring free. Zhaleh fought them back with the focus earned from years of self-mastery.

She was alive. For her teacher's sake, for her fellow disciples, for all their attendants, she had to survive. To carry on the last memories and embers of their sect. So she half walked, half ran, one painful step at a time. She strode plains once so free and inviting, but now menacing and vile, while those hyenas barked and cackled ever closer.

Zhaleh burst into a small clearing next to a few large stones and thorny scrub bushes and heard a sound that sent her crest feathers sticking out in all directions.

Something rustled through the grass behind her, the unmistakable sound of a charge upon two feet instead of four.

Zhaleh drew her sword and whirled about—realizing as a masked man burst from the tall grass that her right arm was no more, the sensation of her sword in hand entirely imagined. The blade remained on her left hip, in its scabbard tied onto her teacher's bloodied and tattered sash. She hadn't noticed it was a problem until now. Same side sword draws were a skill she'd never practiced.

The masked pursuer kept his hand off the curved sword he carried, leaving it in a many colored scabbard as he jumped the brush and towards her. A bright, blue and gold tassel dangled from the weapon’s hilt.

He landed with barely a sound, yet didn't rush to strike her right away.

Instead he stalked around the small clearing, his blue and red painted mask twisted in a mouthless frown of bronze. The eyes were too big and cast in a mournful expression, the nose pointed and cruel, while the lower half was unsettlingly blank. It was just a flat and featureless curve free from paint and hammer marks, smooth but not polished.

"There you are," he said happily, voice at odds with his mask and the horrors his ilk had inflicted upon Zhaleh's world. Dozens of masked monsters like him had swarmed the sect, slaughtering and torturing with glee. "I was worried you'd bleed out before I found you. I owe you for what you did to my brother."

Zhaleh scowled, not that she expected him to know that with her beak. To him she must look half as angry as she felt.

"Was he one I gutted like a fish?" she tried not to pant or shiver despite the pain and haze edging into her sight. "Or the one I left screaming and not a man anymore?"

"Pretend to be brave all you want," the man chuckled, moving his head to make it clear how he leered at her, "terror colors your eyes beautifully."

She scarcely repressed a revolted shudder. The man's intentions for her couldn't be more obvious, the screams of the dying Zhaleh had heard upon the mountain still gnawing at her soul.

The fortunate had died in battle, the rest were mortally wounded in vile rituals performed for all to see. Blood profanely anointed her home. These masked monsters were known far and wide in the plains, though few seemed to really believe in them. But they were real, as all of Ngnun, the sect she called home, had learned before the sun reached noon.

Blood-Drinkers, the monsters were called by the people of the plains, though she knew they had a different name for themselves. Something cruel only they knew, a secret name unfit for those without corroded souls.

She glared defiantly at this one that found her, all while guilt pressed coldly against her sword wound.

“When your leader realizes you're gone," she nearly spat, "what will he cut off of you?"

"He'll forgive all when I bring him that sword on your pretty hip." The frowning mask tilted down, his empty hand wagging a finger for her to come closer. "Let's not make this nasty. We can be kind, even towards a gzgigi."

The insult, calling her a cast off pleasure woman after his kind slaughtered her sect, hurt as much as her missing arm. She'd never let it show.

Zhaleh took half a step towards him, instead of back as her instincts screamed, and snapped her sword from its scabbard. The bloodbronze weapon's weight felt strange in her left hand, but not unfamiliar. A few of her techniques involved switching sword hands, but she was only exceptional with her now severed right arm. Against a fresh, uninjured masked monster, what chance did she have? Instead of lunging at the masked man and into the blade he was prepared to quickdraw and cut with, Zhaleh acted as if she fumbled her weapon.

He stayed put, even when she actually came close to dropping it. She recovered, held it out, balancing the blade on the flat on her palm.

Her dear teacher's wisdom whispered in her ear, a lesson he tried to etch into her heart over and over. 'A tool isn't your life, Zhaleh. Break a sword and it's cast anew.'

"Wise," the masked man shifted closer, a chill deeper than lost blood shivering down her back. "I want a prize, and you want to live, little gzgigi."

Metal hissed from a wooden scabbard. Dirt scrapped, the masked man snapping forward in an upward cut that would take her remaining arm, his bloodbronze saber maddeningly fast. An instinctive step back, begun soon as she heard him move, saved Zhaleh, but not her sword.

Its hilt rang against his weapon, spinning away as he stepped into his failed cut.

He was quicker than she expected, but about the same as the raiders on the mountains. She'd wanted him to get closer.

Zhaleh kicked, not at his leading leg that stomped forward to finish her with a sword thrust, but to throw dirt and dust at his mask. Anger sputtered out of him, head shaking as grit got through tiny, hidden slits that let him see.

His blade still cut true, staying on the path and whistling so close she felt it shave fluff from a few feathers from her neck. Saved by the sway of her kick, and nothing more.

Head hazy and swimming, Zhaleh pulled upon all her strength and qi remaining in her vessel. She leaped over the killer, legs bursting with supple power.

Her talons hit dirt behind him and she whirled into a kick, hand clutching her wound so hard it bled, all of her focus going into what might be her final technique. The masked man turned, sword going high as he expected her to attack with The Eclipse's Crescent, a high kick that her fellow disciples killed several of these Blood-Drinkers with.

She instead struck with First Dawn, which started from the same footwork as The Eclipse's Crescent, but was a much more direct blow. Sudden and forceful as the moment of the day's first light, giving the move its name, but hers was different. It thrummed with the power of Wood qi. Her knee and ankle whipped out parallel to the ground in the twisting back kick, like a green sapling snapping back into place, thousands of days of practice smashing the flat of her foot into the masked monster's ribs.

Qi struck qi, his power shifting reflexively from his arms where he'd thought she'd strike from above to crack his skull.

It didn't stop her 'First Dawn'.

A wheezing, crunching sound erupted from his mask, and the man shaped monster flew backwards from the blow. His legs crashed into the nearby rocky outcropping and flipped him into it. His spine and head cracked against stone, his arms flopping out and twitching.

Her foe groaned, curved sword falling from his fingers. Blood welled up from behind that mask still affixed to his face, drooling down his throat.

Zhaleh’s raised leg trembled. She'd killed a charging buffalo with that technique, without being moved back an inch, but that was at her full strength.

That one blow took too much of her dwindling strength. She lowered her shaking limb, vision speckled and darkening at the edges. Fighting back against the haze, she staggered towards her foe as he tried to rise, racing to end him before he managed to get back up.

A wounded animal was still dangerous.

The masked monster turned, grabbing for his fallen sword, and collapsed off the edge of the flat boulder. His legs slumped at awkward angles, unmoving as his arms scrabbled through the dirt for his weapon. Zhaleh wobbled closer, watching as her foe hacked up more blood.

His inner wounds sounded fatal, but his injuries could be a trick. One last mockery. Zhaleh would put nothing past her enemies after all she'd seen.

Drawing on strength she shouldn't waste, Zhaleh leaped over him. Landing softly, she swept around and kicked his curved sword into the grass.

The wounded monster glanced up at her, eyes hidden by dirtied bronze. She stamped at his wrist before he could lunge for her, but his fist struck the ground and threw him away before she could hit him.

He collapsed on his back in a gasp of true pain, lifting his hands to plead for mercy as wet coughs overtook him.

The smell of burning flesh and screams of her fellow disciples boiled in Zhaleh's head.

Mercy was for mistakes.

Not monsters.

Leg snapping up high, talons above her head, Zhaleh swung an axe kick down. There was no real technique, no flow of qi, no special preparation. Just the feeling of already broken ribs splintering underfoot and the sounds of limbs spasming in the dirt. Blood splattered from the edges of his mask, trickling down with his sweat to water the dry land.

The grasses would endure, unlike her home slaughtered root and branch.

Grief turned to fury, Zhaleh swinging kick after kick into the wretched thing shaped like a man.

Only when her beak hung open and tongue lolled out panting did Zhaleh finally stop. Her foe had long since settled into death's stillness, his crushed chest starting to buzz with flies. Nothing went to waste, even in the dry season.

She stood over his body, wavering in the wind like the grass.

Everything felt so cold.

Zhaleh stared up at the clouds the sun tried to hide behind and choked back tears.

How could there be any more warmth without her noisy brother and sister disciples to keep away the frightful silence of the night? Without Sironka to compete against, Tam to tease, Naen to bicker with, and Tovu to scheme with? Most of all, how was there a world for her without a teacher to guide her?

Zhaleh wondered if she'd died up on the mounting and her soul simply remained as a forlorn spirit.

Then she gasped and shivered against the cold creeping through her. The chill ate at even her agonized thoughts.

She just wanted to lie down on those boulders soaked in the day's warmth and go to sleep, to wake up at dawn from this nightmare—or not at all.

Would she see her sect, the closest she'd had to family, again? Did their souls wait in the Gods' halls for her, or had they moved on?

Her remaining hand brushed against the unfamiliar sash on her waist. Sickening guilt and a jolt of grieving fury, hot enough to cut through the chill grasping her, forced the bird to move.

Slow and stumbling all the way, Zhaleh hunted through the encroaching dark that had nothing to do with the midday sun in search of her sword.

If those masked monsters wanted it then she'd deny them for as long as she still drew breath. The blade didn't matter. What her teacher gave her with his sash on her waist, what she had left of her home, that needed to live. Even if it was only a few breaths longer, she had to try.

"One foot," she uttered lifelessly, talons bumping her fallen blade, "after the other..."

Onago grimaced beneath his mask when he found the corpse of his friend, Hoonu.

They hadn't known each other's true names, but they knew each other's faces. Onago wasn't that close with anyone else. Rage clawed inside him at the end his friend met. Hoonu's chest was crushed almost flat, blood and gore soaking the grass. It revealed to Onago that he could indeed feel hate from the death of another person, not just animals.

Their Master, ruler of their secretive sect, forbade the outer team Onago belonged to from chasing any survivors. So it had been a surprise when Hoonu, part of the raiding teams, had come to Onago with a simple plan. Not to disobey their Master, as it was Hoonu who would capture the one he said would flee from a hidden tunnel. Onago just had to find her trail and guide her instead of fight.

Others, especially those on the raiding team, would call Onago cowardly if they saw how he'd agreed after much convincing. They always called him a coward.

Onago, of course, agreed whenever he heard it. His role wasn't battle, like theirs. He existed to hunt down their Master's foes, and hunters had to do things warriors shrank from. Stalking, waiting, preparing traps, letting the easy chances slip by for a sure chance days later, and allowing warriors to take the most glory.

Their Master considered cowards the best predators, if trained right.

Hoonu, being faster on his feet and part of the inner raiding team, had found the birdkin first. Onago had been a mile away. His friend gave chase, and Onago was slow to realize it. A pitiful plan, but Onago eventually found the trail's scent. Fresh blood, mingled from many sources. It led him a mile or two from the lonely mountain, his thoughts all about how their Master might punish them. Tempered only by Hoonu's assurance that their brethren slain in the raid would rest easier when the two friends performed the slowest of their sect's rituals, Thousand Thorns Array, on her. Their Master wouldn't deny them that right, even if he would surely see through them.

'He will respect the boldness. We will be punished with a season or two of isolation, if at all.'

That had been what Hoonu promised.

Now, Hoonu was a mangled corpse starting to rot in the midday sun.

That birdkin bitch would suffer for this. Standing over Hoonu's mangled body buzzing with flies, Onago reassessed how long the birdkin would live through the Thousand Thorns Array. Performing it by himself, draining her life to bolster his strength and nourish his qi, he guessed she'd last half a year, instead of the two cycles of the moons it would have taken Hoonu and Onago to finish the ritual.

The efficiency would be halved, the Array meant for two practitioners, but Onago would savor her fear for the sake of his departed friend.

Offering a quiet prayer to Hoonu, Onago took the man's mask and refused to look at what was below. He wanted to remember his friend's laughing smile, not agony twisted death. Instead, Onago picked up the fallen sword Hoonu crafted for himself and hewed off his friend's head in a single stroke. The head he bundled up, while the ownerless sword he added to the sash on his waist.

Their Master would decide if Hoonu deserved a proper burial upon their reclaimed skull wall, or if he was to be forsaken.

For now, Onago tied the bundle to his back and whistled through his mask.

Hyenas slunk into the clearing, dozens of them, all eyeing the headless, mangled body with hunger. They'd been promised the flesh of enemies, but would never turn down disposing of a friend.

"You," Onago said, pointing to the eldest and most faithful of his pack, a mated pair he'd named Yellowclaw and Redtooth. Giants of their kind, connected deeply to him through his Vinebound Soul path of The Art. "Wait here. The rest of you, get the scent of the bitch from his body. Trap her on rocks or a tree."

The beasts obeyed him.

Once they had the scent, only a few of the young ones needing to be nipped at for daring to try and steal a bite they hadn't been granted, the pack disappeared back into the grass.

Onago waited for them to be truly gone before looking at his favored pair. He'd raised Yellowclaw and Redtooth from the time the great Master of Masks took him in and showed him a suitable path of The Art for a coward. The huge, armored hyenas trusted Onago, and he cared for them as he did his legs or arms. As his strength grew, so did theirs, and so did the pack.

Onago pointed at his friend's body, clever eyes following. "Clean up. Wait here. Obey the Master if he comes."

The ravenous predators jumped to the grisly task with smiles. Bones crunched, Onago glad that Hoonu could serve their Master's forces one last time in death. It was an honor all should aspire to.

---

"Master Emrys, come quickly!" shouted the guide, shoving through the tent's flap and bouncing from foot to foot anxiously.

A sigh heaved out of the caravan's sponsor and master, Emrys. He stood up from the game of chess against his apprentice, plucked his broad brimmed hat off the central pole of his tent, and gestured for his guide, Osso, to lead the way. A quick sign to his apprentice told the young man to prepare for the worst, then Emrys took his sun faded staff from its spot.

Osso ducked his big volpes ears out of the tent and held the flap.

Oppressive heat pushed against Emrys as he walked out, staff tapping into a walking rhythm as he leaned on it. This deep into the dry season rain was a distant memory and desperate hope. The caravan, all ninety souls and their herd of pack animals, had stopped near a well known watering hole for a few days of rest, their porters and guards at ease thanks to Emrys' two loyal wolfkin guards. They were at the end of the trip and returning to Tpocic-tal, everyone hoping to make it back before the rainy season began.

As he moved through the camp, Emrys nodded to everyone who called out to him, be it in genuine appreciation or sycophantic guile, and followed Osso.

"What is it now?" Emrys grumbled, irritated from the heat. He had to wave off a cook woman wanting him to taste the camp stew before he could speak again. "Signs of another khrett pack?"

"No, no, no," the volpes nervously shook his head. Osso led the caravan's master to the edge of camp and whispered urgently, "Look at Old Man Ngnun! Don't you see?"

The volpes pointed to the lonely, weather beaten mountain. The tree covered granite rose a mile or two away, in what the clans in the area called Old Man Ngnun. Osso had insisted they not get too close, and the small settlement upriver had found every excuse not to talk about the odd mountain. To Emrys it seemed as Old Man Ngnun, a long and almost serpentine mountain, likely hid a valley or even ancient lake. The mild interest he harbored for the odd feature jutting above the dry Mgan Plains vanished as he saw what agitated his guide.

Black and white smoke billowed from the jagged mountain. Far too much of it to be from a secretive settlement.

"A bushfire?"

"Can't be, can't be," Osso fidgeted, "the masters of Old Man Ngnun would have it out by now!"

Emrys took note of that, but didn't press the volpes.

"No one else seems to care," he observed, glancing about at the men minding the pack animals.

A few watched the mountain in the distance with some interest, but most of them were far more intrigued by Emrys being out of his tent.

"Because," Osso whispered, turning and holding his hands up to his snout to signal privacy, "none of them know about it. Not like I do."

"Oh ho," Emrys raised a brow, "so you aren't as ignorant as you pretend."

"I meant no disrespect, master Emrys," the volpes pleaded, eyes filled with a new fear.

"And I mean no threat," he sighed. "What's this secret you want to share now?"

"This is why we like you, master Emrys," Osso grinned, still holding his hand by his snout.

The caravan liked him for the pay and the safety his two guards provided, and little else. Even so, Emrys endeavored to be friendly with them.

"The hermits on Old Man Ngnun, they trade with the clan my older brother married into," Osso explained. "Before I came into your generous service, I helped him. I saw, from the other side of the Old Man, the lake they've got up there. And I..." The volpes swallowed, leaning closer. "I saw the War-Dancers on the mountain."

"War-Dancers?" Emrys raised a brow. "That superstition of powerful, magical hermits hiding in these parts?"

"They're real. Magicians and masters of metal and killing," Osso said, words pouring out of him rapidly. "The elders said that when they were still children, their elders told them the War-Dancers won the mountain from Blood-Drinkers, monsters without mouths that would hunt the clans like we hunt antelope."

"And this has what bearing upon a bushfire?"

"I saw War-Dancers walk across burning coals," Osso said, words still pushed too close together. "Not run, walk, slower than you when you don't have a staff. They wouldn't fear a fire, wild or raging. They'd put it out, with their magic or the waters of the lake they have up there."

A lake on a mountain? Magic? Emrys felt the first stirrings of real, actionable curiosity this entire trip. There could be many intriguing materials for his crafts to trade with such people as these 'War-Dancers.' This trip had procured him many oddities from the oasis villages and cities, but he rarely turned down the chance to find more for his workshop in Tpocic-tal.

Emrys drummed thick, hardened fingers against his staff and stroked his long, black beard.

"Take me," he decided, turning his gaze to the mountain, "to Old Man Ngnun."

"Why the fire still burns should be—what?" Osso blinked, so taken aback his hand dropped away and he shuffled back half a step. "Master Emrys, what did you say?"

"I need three fearless men," Emrys announced, not needing to shout for his heavy voice to silence the nearby parts of the camp, "to join me and my two guards on a trip to Old Man Ngnun. We will be back, or send word of our return, by nightfall."

Summoned by those words, a pair of wolfkin twins left their comfortable shade and walked over. Scarred patches on one tall wolf's bare chest marked him, Tross, from his brother, Tass. Other than that the pair were identical, down to the beads they had woven into the fur of their tails and neck. Even the crystal embedded spears they carried were perfect copies. Everyone in camp made way for the pair of sorcerers—or magicians as they called all who worked magic—not out of fear but a respect bordering on reverence.

If Emrys was a source of fear and trepidation, Tross and Tass were nearing worship. Real magic was rare in the plains and always seen as a blessing from the gods instead of a curse as it was on the northern half of the Istillian Sea.

Bold plainsmen glanced about, weighing their superstition against the protection of Emrys' loyal sorcerers. Everyone had seen them blast apart hunting khrett that tried to harass the caravan, feathers from the giant, axe-beaked terrors proudly worn by the cooks and their daughters that had quite the carnal love for their protectors.

"I'll go," volunteered a Tpocic man, dusky shoulders broader than his brother-in-law's that stood up a moment later.

"Me as well."

Emrys recognized them but had forgotten their names. He'd recall them soon enough.

"That makes three," he said, hand clapping onto Osso's shoulder. "Get some of that smoked antelope meat, and Tass get a bottle from my private stash. The one I told you not to touch. We can't be visiting without gifts."

"Do I," Osso whispered under his breath, "have a choice?"

Emrys gave a few more orders, then turned around. He shuffled his short guide into a quiet enough space and spoke in the bartering language of the Istillian Sea far to the north that few plainsmen knew. "Five more silver coins for you to introduce me to these War-Dancers."

"Fifteen," Osso countered, eyes flicking about suspiciously. Like running away seemed a better idea than staying.

Long practice kept Emrys' gaze steady and grip loose, but gods how he hated this verbal dance of suffering people called 'haggling' and all who engaged in it. "Five. Etrucian made silver."

"Ten," Osso countered, seemingly born and bred for haggling. "You won't find anyone else that knows how to respectfully greet them."

Giving in now would only make Osso try to cheat him in the future. Not out of malice or disrespect, it was simply the way of the plains. Take what you can get, because who knows how long the next dry season will last?

"You know my generosity," Emrys said. "Six."

"Ten or you're hobbling to the Old Man without me. Your magicians will get you enough respect to be seen."

"Five," Emrys kept his face unreadable, "for threatening me."

"Threaten you?" Osso nearly squeaked. "Master Emrys, you know I am only worried about you and my unmarried brother and sister. If I die, ten coins will be just enough for them to have a proper funeral for me."

Slapping the short volpes across the back of the head was so tempting, because this same excuse had been used in three prior negotiations. His brother and sister, who did exist, would be able to buy their way up to and across the Istillian Sea with all Osso was owed from this trip.

Emrys ignored the urge to smack sense into the volpes and instead stroked his beard. This was all part of their rituals. It didn't need to be something he liked or respected, just appropriately navigated. "If I die, your family won't get an extra ten. Possibly any of what I owe you."

"So is it ten?" Osso asked, pitifully hopeful.

"For that I should ask my apprentice to come with me in place of you."

"Okay, okay," Osso relented easily. "I don't dare disturb the young master studying to be a great man like you. Nine Etrucian silver coins and I will lead the way."

"Seven."

"You are tougher than leather," the volpes hissed, glancing over his shoulder at how fast supplies were being gathered for the two men who would act as porters. "Okay, okay. Seven coins. Etrucian silver. That should get Teppi and Ussa a nice funeral for me."

Emrys, opinions firmly kept to himself about funerals, held out his hand for the volpes, who had missed his calling as a merchant sailing the Istillian Sea.

Once Osso shook on it, Emrys had Tross tell his apprentice to record the deal in the ledger.

Osso was satisfied with that, as no one would accuse his apprentice of ill dealings. The young man was beloved, and the target of every father and mother with an unwed daughter.

When the scarred sorcerer returned, their small group left the rise the camp was founded on. A hundred paces through plains, slowed by Emrys leaning on his staff, brought them to the mostly dry river. The boards they'd set up across a narrow spot creaked underfoot, but the magical wards secretly carved into them would allow even a pack beast to cross over without so much as straining the makeshift bridge.

Escorted by two sorcerers carrying gem enchanted spears, their group feared little out here in the plains.

Whoops and cackles chased Zhaleh. The hyenas remained just out of sight, rustling through the grass instead of overrunning her.

She pushed onward, numb hand holding her aching stump. Each step was a struggle, because it was a reminder. Her recovered sword weighed too much upon her hip, and her teacher's sash sat strangely against her feathers. Aside from his many lessons it was all that remained of him, ragged cloth stained crimson.

Hunting howls and cackling grew closer and closer. Grass rustled, baying yips threatening her when she strayed too far one way or another.

Some distant, weary part of Zhaleh's mind not set upon the task of staying upright knew what the predators planned. There was an ambush waiting for her by the tree. The harassment from the hyenas reeked of cunning, but she expected no less from the most hated predators of the plains.

She couldn't even contemplate stopping. Her vessel felt cold like the rest of her, terribly cold even with the boundless Wood attuned qi of the plains all around her. Breathing just as she was taught, she attuned herself to the element, but it wasn't enough. She needed to meditate to gather all the qi dispersed in her fight.

Whatever tiny wisps of strength she could get back had to be enough. She hurried onward, trying not to sway or stumble too much, towards the spot the hyenas directed: a huge karr tree twisting above wind rippling grasses.

She had fond memories of racing the younger disciples, and even her rival Sironka, to that tree. Many had shared pledges in the branches of that tree. Friendship, wagers, confessions, promises to travel, it had been a place of hope for the entire sect.

An unmarked grave at the hut sized trunk, she decided, was better than her bones scattered and forgotten in the plains. What remained of her blood could water the roots of the old tree, giving life to seeds that would one day spread on the winds. In a new life, if the gods granted her another turn through cycles, maybe she'd find that new tree and live peacefully, unaware of The Art and all its suffering majesty.

And perhaps, when she finally reached the spot beneath familiar boughs that would be her grave, she could water its roots with a few hyenas.

Zhaleh would fight to her final breath. That would honor the final embers of Ngnun, letting them die in a final, purifying blaze instead of crumbling from exhaustion.

---

"Hyenas," Osso whimpered, clutching his bronze dagger at the sounds ahead of their group.

"Hm," Tross hummed happily. "Fresh pelts."

"That won't make Sassa like you any more," Tass chided, eyes and ears sweeping about.

"Her sister wanted some of their teeth."

"More than hyena teeth from you," Tass snorted.

"If you want to join us, brother, you only have to ask. I'm sure that widow sweet on you would—"

"Quiet," Emrys hissed, exhausted with his guards' love lives already. "Did you hear that?"

"They're hunting wounded prey," the broad shouldered Tpocic man whispered, gripping the woven straps of his pack tightly.

Emrys closed his eyes. The two sorcerers lost their mirth instantly, each facing a different angle and pointing their spears in the peculiar grips their kind favored.

Far off, something yowled in pain again.

"They got it," Osso barely breathed.

"That was no prey," Emrys opened his eyes and pointed a finger northeast of the path they'd been cutting. A large, twisting karr tree was the only feature in that direction. "Something wounded a hyena."

"Go around?" Tass asked, brisk and serious.

Emrys shook his head. "Towards it."

Osso's tail bristled with genuine fear. "Master Emrys, this is an ill omen."

"The twins will protect us," Emrys promised, eyes flicking to the twin wolfkin sorcerers. "Come along, all of you. Nowhere is safer than with these two."

"Don't need to tell us," the lankier porter said, his brother-in-law bobbing his head in agreement.

The volpes nervously nodded and set off with them, clutching his dagger close to his chest.

Emrys grit his teeth and leaned harder on his staff, gripping it with both hands to limp quickly. If Titus saw that, the boy would have his head, but some matters required throwing good sense away. The set of his jaw frightened the men he'd hired, their affable caravan master replaced with a frightful man they rarely had a chance to see but knew all too well lurked beneath.

Or so they thought. None of them truly knew the mind of the caravan master, and Emrys intended to keep it that way.

Furious snarls floated across the Mgan Plains, pierced by sharp yips of pain.

Tross sprinted ahead several strides, just far enough so no one was in danger of a large spell, while everyone else kept pace with Emrys' jogging limp. Grass hissed and crunched under sandals and paws. Metal clinked inside Emrys' white robes with each laborious, lurching step. Despite the condition he never spoke about—and no one was brave enough to ask about his lamed leg—he wasn't slow. The rest almost ran to keep up with his long, lurching stride.

Suddenly, ahead of them, Tross' tail flicked three times.

Tass and Emrys stopped, the human leaning on his staff and huffing as sweat dripped off his nose. The porters and Osso carried on a few more steps before scurrying back to the safest spot: behind Emrys and his sorcerers.

When nothing happened for a minute, aside from yips and rustles of grass farther off, a question started to form on both the porters' lips.

"Hya!" Tross bellowed, Potential ripping from the air around him. Ice crackled around his feet and mist billowed off his instantly frosty fur, the blade of his spear glowing along with two green stones.

That was all the warning a sorcerer casting a war spell gave.

Lightning shrieked from the spear tip, striking stones and grass as it lanced towards hyenas hiding within. Four of the beasts collapsed into spasms, another started to flee with a smoldering mane, and one tipped over dead, joints stiff and quivering.

Tass took a step forward and thrust his spear, a softer mist billowing out of his mouth. Grass parted in a straight line following his jab, as if a ship's hull careened over the plains, the motion swiftly overrunning the burning hyena. Raging wind hit the predator in the flank, sending it tumbling in a mess of breaking bones and snuffing the flames on it.

The beast quivered, but would soon die.

Emrys, unafraid of the magic, hobbled forward on his staff. He made for the karr tree towering over the plains.

Small fires smoked all around Tross, yet snuffed out as the wolfkin walked, and gems on his staff glowed like stars. He left icy, wispy pawprints as he moved to trail half a step behind Emrys.

Osso and the porters watched, transfixed, as the sounds of terrified hyenas scattered in all directions across the plains, fleeing the sorcerers that had killed half their ambush.

Tass went to stand watch over the porters, the guide, and the supplies.

Emrys trusted both wolves with his life and more, so he focused on not letting pain slow him.

Ahead, on the other side of the karr tree, the sounds of fighting had stopped. If it was a wounded lion, there would be rejoicing in the camp. But if it was a person, then Emrys wasn't about to abandon them to an ignoble death and scattered grave.

Silently cursing the heat and how slow it made him feel, Emrys shuffled around the absurdly wide tree trunk.

Where the grass grew on the other side, it was shoved down in a ragged circle. Five very dead hyenas littered the clearing, with signs of more that had been wounded before fleeing.

'Too many so far for a local pack,' Emrys coldly observed, leaning on his staff and taking stock of the situation.

All but two of the hyenas were dead from their heads or chests crushed, as if a millstone had dropped on them, the leaking blood and brains and innards already drawing in flies. A beast cut in half at the jaw, top of its skull a stride forward from its body, promised a blade. That killing stroke was far too clean for something that cleaved bone, reminding Emrys of something he couldn't quite place. He'd remember days later, when it hardly mattered, and that irritated him.

Strangely, he saw no sign of the one responsible—and he was confident only one fighter had been involved. Someone light on their feet, probably no bigger than a Shorsiel crow.

Emrys considered what to do when Tross tapped on his shoulder and pointed to the enormous karr tree.

There, standing on a branch several dozen feet up, was the fiercest birdkin he'd ever seen.

She was no eagle or hawk, despite a clear resemblance, and the raw intensity of her blue eyed glare at the wolfkin impressed Emrys. He noted details quickly, out of a well practiced habit. In her left hand, that side facing him, was a remarkably crafted cinnarbronze sword that dripped the same shade of crimson as the metal. That along with the splatter of red on her talons and legs explained the dead hyenas. A sash of similar bright red held up a scabbard to her waist, on the left side instead of the right. That detail was curious, considering swordsmen he knew preferred a crossdraw.

Her glare shifted from Tross to Emrys, as if she just now noticed him.

So he continued to observe the bird, not as a dangerous figure standing straight on the tallest branch but as a person.

Fatigue sagged long, quill-like feathers sticking up behind her head, beads somehow attached near the roots of a few. He thought she wore partially red clothing, but as she shifted to face them better, Emrys recognized her right side to be drenched in blood. It stained feathers white and gray and shone upon the black. Bandages did little to cover her ample chest, and where they pressed against her right shoulder they had almost soaked through. Her right arm was entirely gone, tension in her slightly unfurled wings suggesting a pain she otherwise refused to show—something Emrys understood all too well.

A single question rested in her eyes, the orange coloration around them like a war mask as she glared right through Emrys.

He approached, taking off his broad brimmed hat for manners that mattered little in the plains, and gave her a respectable nod. "Do you need help?"

She blinked once, twice, her unspoken question apparently answered.

The bird dropped from the branch, landing straight and stiff. That should've broken her ankles, at least. Instead, long legs brought her close enough she could easily skewer him with that sword.

Emrys held a hand out towards Tross to keep him back and didn't break eye contact with the bird that easily stood a handspan taller than him. He'd gotten used to female eagles standing over him after decades in this southern continent, but they were so rare to meet it still felt strange; other than some wolves, Emrys usually had to look down.

"What," she heaved, putting on quite the front for someone that looked inches from death, "are you?"

"A traveller headed towards Tpocic-tal, with quite the caravan." Emrys nodded towards the bandaged stump where a right arm should have been, impressed yet deeply worried that she hadn't bled out yet. "Do you need help?"

"Hold out your hand," she demanded.

"Master Emrys," Tross growled, "you should step back."

"Silence," he snapped at the wolfkin, who reflexively bowed.

The birdkin's crest feathers stood tall, ready to fight over the intensity of his tone, but Emrys gave an apologetic smile and lifted his right arm, palm facing up.

"Like this?"

The sword stabbed between Emrys' feet, hilt wobbling. He hadn't even seen her strike. The bloodied bird snatched his wrist, thumb over the vein, while the light of awareness threatened to waver in her gaze. From the pale look of her tongue barely staying in her beak, he knew her to be dangerously anemic.

He twitched, something he'd never experienced happening, and it fascinated him.

Something not at all like magic intangibly flowed through his skin and probed at his pulse. His spine prickled, the sensation bizarre but not hostile, so Emrys kept silent.

A garden. The sensation was akin to walking through a lovingly cultivated garden, rich with both useful and beautiful plants.

The birdkin glared down at him, ready to spend her last scrap of life crushing him with whatever strange strength she possessed. Emrys ignored that along with the lively sensation coursing across his veins, and examined the edges of her eyes. They weren't bloodshot, if anything they seemed unhealthily pale. Nor was her hand as warm as a bird's should be in this heat.

Then there was all the blood soaked into her bandages. She was barely alive.

Still, the grip on his arm tightened, claws threatening to break his skin as that bizarre sensation of a lovingly cared for garden retreated.

Her head tilted, an interrogative yet confused look bearing down upon him.

"What..." She blinked hard, as if to clear sight that wouldn't obey. "What are you?"

"Someone that can help," Emrys said. "If you let go—or hold on, I don't mind—I can take you back to one of the best healers to visit these plains."

The bird considered him, then the wolfkin standing back and trying not to growl protectively.

Blue eyes turned back down, as if seeing Emrys for the first time.

He felt weighed. Not upon the intangible scales of a merchant or conniving helpfulness of the Mgan Plains. She judged harshly, openly.

And quickly.

"Fine," she muttered, releasing him.

The bird's eyes fluttered shut, the strain of staying conscious finally too much. She collapsed right into Emrys' arms, his good knee taking the brunt of the weight.

Not for the first time, he was grateful to come from such a hard people.

---

The hyena pack harried the birdkin bitch.

Onago kept far away, listening and creeping through the grass silently. He wasn't fast like Hoonu, nor any of the warriors of their sect. Onago was, however, so attuned to the Wood qi that only their Master could quickly spot him in the grasses if he really tried to hide. Their Master said that one day he could turn it into a technique to pass on, once Onago reached enough enlightenment.

But for now, Onago kept two hundred paces away from the hyenas. Even when his pack cornered the bitch at an old, lonely karr tree, he kept his head down and stayed far from sight.

Onago drew a small throwing spear from the quiver on his back, that he'd bundled Hoonu's head to, and watched the bird realize she was surrounded.

Instead of climbing up the tree, she drew her sword and fought back.

One armed from her encounter with Onago's Master, or so Hoonu had said, and half dead, the birdkin whirled about in that terrifying war dance of her sect. Her sword swished through captivating patterns, feet bouncing from spot to spot, and even Ongao had to admit the technique was beautiful.

But it cleaved mercilessly through his precious pack.

She cut down one hyena at the same time her talons crushed another underfoot, the blade flinging a perfect arc of blood as it sliced through bone. She dodged with kicks or stabs, making his pack scream in pain. The horrible dance faltered on a few steps, disrupting the violence of her techniques of The Art, but against hyenas she could afford the missteps.

Onago swallowed the pain that each yelp and yipe of death stabbed into him.

Even near death, she outmatched him. He understood now how she'd killed Hoonu and crippled the man's brother. Hoonu hadn't said much of what happened on the mountain, only that the thieving sect there put up more of a fight than expected. That it had been costly.

If this birdkin was an example of the mockingly titled War-Dancers, then the battle must have been brutal.

Slowly, Onago stalked forward. Grasses parted for him before he touched them.

He stopped, ears straining as something whispered along the plains. Steps, too far off to hear, but he could sense them. They were coming from the opposite direction, where a mostly dried up river waited for the approaching rainy season.

The hyenas felt it as well, alerting him through their thin connection with Onago. His bond with Yellowclaw and Redtooth from the Vinebound Soul went the deepest, flowing out to the lesser hyenas taken into the pack, but even the lesser could send him intentions, and he could give them commands. Not true communication, only vague impressions, but it was good enough for a cowardly scout and hunter.

Half the remaining pack pulled away, creeping towards the group approaching from the direction of the dry river.

Onago bounded forward on two legs and an arm, hunched over in the awkward gait of his quietest swift Art, a nameless thing he'd been creating, and left his pack to occupy the bitch.

He needed to see who intruded.

The raid had been planned for years. No other sects should have been within five days of the mountain, but surprises always happened.

Onago left the tree behind and smelled the foreigners mixed with plains people, right before a deep voice shouted.

"Hya!"

Lightning shot across the top of the grass, power surging up from the land itself to angrily strike at the pack stalking toward the group of travellers. Onago hissed and crouched, stopping dead still and peering through the swaying stalks at the nightmare foe of all who practiced The Art.

A wolfkin magician channeled arcing bolts of crackling fury from an ornate spear. Lightning made hyenas scream and panic, set several on fire, and terrified most of the pack. The bright power burning his eyes, Onago still saw the others behind the magician, including another wolf.

Onago held his breath.

The two identical wolfkin were the same, down to their spears and bead woven fur. He blinked, afraid he'd been caught in a grand spell of the magician, but no. He focused his sight with qi and confirmed there really were two identical wolves, only the scars on one's chest setting them apart.

The second advanced and thrust his spear.

A wave of air surged across the plains and smashed into the hyena on fire. He was swatted away, limbs breaking as he bounced across the dirt, the spell snuffing out the flames before the grasslands caught fire.

Onago lowered himself to the ground, breathing carefully as qi vibrated within his throat. With tones below what human or beastkin could hear, he sent an absolute command for his hyenas to retreat. Not a word or a whistle but a single, primal sound meant only for his pack. He'd lost too many against the birdkin bitch, he couldn't have them all die to a pair of gods cursed magicians wandering the plains.

Though he couldn't see it, Onago could feel his pack retreat, scattering in all directions. So many were missing. The bravest slaughtered by that bitch, and at least five killed in an instant by the magicians.

Anguish filled Onago's chest, but it drowned under his rage.

What could he do against magicians?

Other than keep them away from the mountain.

Between swaying stalks, over the stench of burnt fur, Onago crept closer instead of fleeing. There was more than loyalty to his sect and Master. He had to see for himself if the bitch lived or died. To both those ends, he needed to remember the scents of these travellers.

He got as close as he dared, Wood qi humming all over him as he trusted in the cowardly strength his Master praised. Onago barely breathed, except to sniff like one of his hyenas.

One of the group had a familiar odor. The sharp, dreadful scent of a Mark left by his Master. Chosen survivors carried it after fate set them to cross paths with the Master of Masks, forever imbued with a sign that any in the sect could sense. And only their sect.

Yes, Onago wasn't wrong. He smelled the Mark upon one of those hiding with the sorcerers.

Not the man in a broad brimmed hat, going towards the tree. That one had commanded the magicians, but that didn't matter for now.

Onago had an ally, no matter how reluctant the Marked one might be. Such was the reach and wisdom of his great Master, that none in the plains were truly safe from the sect of Ngnandra once they met.

Emrys, long hair and beard still wet from washing off in the curtained space behind his tent, eased himself into his favorite camp chair, happy to get off the knee he struggled not to favor. A strap around his calf needed adjusting before he could get truly comfortable, the leather, wood, and metal device on his left leg as unpleasant as ever. Still, there were improvements in how he walked. Most days there wasn't even lancing pain that drove down to his toes and up his back. He marveled at the brace, letting old aches wash over him.

He ignored the familiar pain. A long day was finally at an end. He wanted a moment to savor simple stillness.

Not that his mind ever allowed him much rest, all that happened floating through.

The mountain had begun to really burn when he'd brought that wounded bird back, billowing black smoke rising ominously. Half the caravan wanted to go on. Emrys refused and hobbled around in his bloodied robes, barking instructions about how to set up firebreaks on the other side of the river. Tross and Tass had no rest, doing most of it themselves while Emrys organized an early departure for tomorrow morning. His presence settled the unease throughout the camp, whereas the magic convinced those with doubts. After all, seeing earthworks come together in wagon sized chunks, ripped out of the ground as if scooped by giants, left quite the impression.

Motion drew Emrys from his thoughts.

He stared at his apprentice, Titus, as he cleaned the tools of his father's profession. The young man washed surgery tools in a basin of magically distilled water, reddish stains already marring the once clear fluid.

Titus had said nothing to his master when he'd limped into the tent, and Emrys knew better than to interrupt his apprentice when he was focused.

But now the young man stole a glance across the tent.

"How is our guest?" Emrys asked, picking up his pipe and precious pouch of dwindling gimth.

"Alive," Titus breathed out heavily. "For now."

Emrys raised a brow as he pinched strong smelling leaves into his blackwood pipe. "Is there a problem?"

"Aside from my patient having her arm cut off?"

The young man's irritability was easily forgivable, considering the state of the patient he took on. Then again, Emrys couldn't recall ever scolding him for tone. Maybe he should've, but what did it matter? Titus understood him enough to never believe such a lecture.

"An imitation of an arm is possible, as a sort of tool, isn't it?" Emrys asked. "I swear I saw a few in Etrucia."

"A false hand? Possible, even ones good enough to hold a sword. But there are few craftsmen who can make anything so complicated as an elbow and false hand that wouldn't be more frustrating than useful. An entire arm?" The young man stared intensely at Emrys. "Even if we had an engineer like Wendmane's Anonymous Source, I'd focus on tools to make life easier over constructing a fake limb."

"Surely they're not that difficult to engineer," Emrys grumbled, not caring for mention of that mysterious engineer.

"With the right magic and mindset, probably not. But false limbs are painful, dangerous, and require constant care. I wouldn't mention them for a while."

Emrys touched his brace. There were times, during the first two months of wearing it, that he'd wanted to throw it into a smelter. How bad would it have been if he'd needed a false leg instead?

"Is that an order from you as an apothecary?"

"I'm not an apothecary." Titus took a deep breath and spoke like one anyway. "If you have some plot in your head, keep it away from my patient while she is in the most delicate stage of recovery. I can't promise her, whenever she wakes, there won't be festering and fevers, despite all I've done. Any additional hope or despair could crush her."

"Not an apothecary, he says," Emrys grunted, eying the elaborate tools the young man washed. They were Uur made sunforged gold, the finest implements that coin could buy, and worth a third of the caravan. "Why, then, did your father gift you those?"

"You know he meant to buy me away from your tutelage."

"Thinking of leaving when we're next at a port?"

"I've never thought that, nor will I," Titus pointedly said, setting his tools down. "If I had isinglass I could properly seal her wound. Thread, even the silk you got for me, has too many dangers to be called real medicine."

"Someone so fierce won't die that easily," Emrys said, picking up a brand from the small bronze brazier and lighting his pipe with it. "Any other wounds on our guest?"

"A few bruises."

Puffing on his pipe to get it going, Emrys contemplated that. "No hyena bites?" He asked. "Scratches?"

"No. Her bruises looked to be from a stick or staff, maybe fists if they were in a gauntlet."

Again, Emrys felt like he was forgetting something. No matter. Whatever conclusions could be drawn from that wouldn't change any of his plans. They'd leave tomorrow and rush towards the caravan's final destination, the lake city Tpocic-tal.

"Titus," he suddenly said seriously, Emrys' expression straightening his apprentice's back, "keep a close watch over her, would you?"

The stern faced young stared, piecing it together from intuition and context. Just as he'd been taught. "You don't trust our hires or companions."

Taking a slow draw from the pipe, letting the earthy taste linger in his mouth, Emrys shook his head. Smoke curled towards the top of the tent when he spoke. "I don't want to learn if they see our guest's presence as an ill omen, what with Old Man Ngnun burning."

Titus said nothing and polished his tools. That was fine. Emrys knew his apprentice was already going to take good care of the wounded birdkin. Such was the young man's nature, and why Emrys even agreed to take him as an apprentice. But it never hurt for a master to give permission.

Emrys took a deep drag of his pipe, limb soothing gimth smoke filling his head and tent.

Surgical tools clinked, then silenced as they slipped back into a tightly packed roll. Titus took a change of clothes from his chest, a spare bedroll, and gem encrusted dagger with him out of the tent. The bustle of the dining camp outside momentarily invaded Emrys' sanctuary before the flap closed. Only a dim muffle floated in afterward.

With no one watching him, he practiced blowing smoke rings and exercised his braced knee. Against the strain of a joint creaking more than leather or metal, Emrys thought about the birdkin and his red stained robes.

By that karr tree he'd taken her remaining bandages off to see for himself the damage. At her shoulder there had been a clean cut, done in a single stroke that would make an executioner envious. Bone was severed as easily as a razor going through mulberry paper, not a chip or crack in it. However, losing an arm meant a vital artery was severed. Something, the gods and that bird alone knew what, had kept the major blood vessel from bleeding. Once she collapsed, however, it tried to bleed again. Emrys had to clutch it shut with his fingers and get Tross to cauterize the artery, and even then neither of them had been sure she'd survive the trip back to camp. Somehow they managed, and the moment they hurried into camp Titus was there.

His apprentice took over without asking who the bird was or what happened, the young man a natural born apothecary.

The caravan was lucky to have him.

Emrys considered the fates of everyone in camp as he refilled his pipe. He'd be out of gimth before he returned to Tpocic-tal's bazaar, but they might not make it there easily. For now, he wouldn't ration himself.

Too much for him to consider and he needed to keep himself busy somehow, or else he'd be up on his knee again.

He needed to think clearly, to plan, for the sake of every soul in his camp.

Whoever had attacked the bird, Emrys reasoned, had set Old Man Ngnun ablaze. He had little evidence. But there was simply nowhere else the bird could've come from; the nearest village was in a different direction and she'd never have survived running for that long. And whoever bandaged her up had done so hastily, but with care. She likely hadn't lost an arm as punishment, meaning she wasn't an exile. 'Stray, that's what they call them on the plains.'

Smoke drifted up in his tent, along with his gaze.

Emrys decided not to worry about the bird's attackers, even if they wanted to finish what they started. With the twins blasting mounds of dirt out of the ground and making a terrible ruckus before nightfall with firebreaks farther out, anyone watching his camp for miles would think twice about even approaching. Sorcerers capable of turning a hill into a fort gave even those accursed elves second thoughts about getting too close.

More than that, he mused over an old saying. 'Where there are two sorcerers there are either three—or worse.'

That twisted Emrys' mouth.

He was sure about one thing with Titus' patient, their unexpected guest. Tross and Tass both confirmed she wasn't a wizard, and a sorcerer knew best whether someone was. From Titus' examination, he was confident she wasn't a sorcerer either.

Such a confounding thing, magic.

A sigh left Emrys' lips. 'Nothing to be done about it now. She's here, and I've got to get us back.'

Emrys stood up, slowly, and stretched his back. At that moment, his knee feeling like a freshly knapped chunk of flint was stuck in the joint, he decided to get the camp rumors tomorrow while they were on the road instead of going and checking right now. And if talk of 'War-Dancers' wasn't everywhere, Emrys would have a cautious conversation with Osso once the fox seemed less jittery—the poor bastard was so terrified of hyenas that no amount of silver could ever willingly set him on their trail.

Still, it was concerning how quiet Osso had gotten. He'd lost his parents to the beasts. That sort of mental wound could reopen easily, and deeper than ever before. Emrys needed to check on him.

Already envisioning the conversations he'd be having tomorrow, he took one last drag on his pipe and blew a near perfect ring, perhaps the best he'd made.

The loop drifted away, but he couldn't appreciate the private accomplishment.

'What am I forgetting?'

It tingled in the back of his head, some unremembered fact that mattered.

He sighed, putting it all out of mind so that the memory would strike sooner, and sat back down to enjoy how the gimth lessened the sensation of a rock stuck in his knee.

---

Dawn approached, brightening the haze of smoke behind the mountain. The fires had stayed on the other side of the peaks instead of spreading to the trees or grasses they could see. Still, the camp roused itself in such a hurry they hardly noticed Emrys until he passed by, his staff quiet against the dirt.

Dozens of lives moved along perfectly well without his guidance. The caravan could run itself, or at least reach their final destination, without him. He knew that. But watching them, he wondered if all these people knew it. Did their subtle fear of him convince them that he was needed for everything to remain safe? Did any of them even care about Old Man Ngnun burning, since he heard no such whispers flit about? Did they fear nothing because he walked about?

Emrys pondered much on his way around the double spiral of camp.

He stopped at one of the tradegood wagons used to pen the pack beasts for the night, the rest of the fence magical wards, and tapped a few knuckles against a wheel.

Immediately a volpes man scrabbled out from underneath the wagon, stuffing a flat stone into his pack. Osso's frantic eyes twitched about as he spoke. "There trouble?"

"Expecting more hyenas?" Emrys asked.

Osso shuddered, and Emrys regretted his choice of words. "They love blood."

"No more than any other predator."

"No." Osso scowled eastward, at the sun peaking up from the horizon. "People's blood turns them. Makes them savage."

"They'll be too terrified of Tross and Tass to get near, animals remember the scent of a sorcerer."

The volpes grunted, hands wringing the strap of his pack as he stared at the rising sun. "What brings you here, master Emrys?"

"Matters of your pay."

"Eh?" The volpes' head turned at last, surprise etched into his fur.

"I promised you silver for introducing me to the War-Dancers, but circumstances prevented that."

The fox blinked, then nodded. "I'd forgotten."

"Somehow I doubt that," Emrys chuckled.

Osso's gaze lowered in shame. "Even I can forget about good silver."

"But not my generosity." Metal clinked in a small pouch that Emrys tossed.

Osso's hands fumbled, bouncing it from one to another. When it settled in his palm, the volpes pulled the string to stare inside. Then he swiftly cinched it shut. "For risking my life against the worst of the plains?" Osso guessed hopefully.

"Indeed."

"I didn't know you had coin left, after buying so much ancient wood," the volpes smiled broadly, and insincerely—yet there was still gratitude in his eyes. "None will forget your generosity, master Emrys."

"A new day makes men forget much."

"Not what we want," Osso said, his smile sinking into the bitter frown he no longer hid. He stuffed the coin pouch into his pack, then nodded. "I don't know anymore than I already told you."

"I haven't asked anything."

"You were going to. Old Man Ngnun is all anyone wants to talk about," Osso's voice soured, "that and the dying stray you found."

Emrys ignored his guest being insulted. "They've been talking about the mountain?"

"Only on the edges of camp."

'So they're avoiding my ears. Superstition?'

Emrys pushed that disgruntled thought away, as he always had Tross and Tass to rely on for rumors. Instead, he reasoned that the volpes' bitterness towards the wounded bird was entirely due to the hyenas. And if not, well such a resentful tone towards the birdkin wasn't uncommon in camp. Those that didn't speak with pity seemed to blame her for the rushed pace, without directly mentioning the bird. Even the plainsmen wouldn't speak too ill of someone who survived an encounter with hyenas.

At least, that's what they all assumed happened. Emrys had been clear to Tross and Tass that no one was to know her wounds weren't from hyenas. Titus knew better than anyone else, and Emrys trusted his apprentice to be appropriately cautious with the truth.

"And what have people been saying about her?" Emrys asked, leaning on his staff and folding his arms.

"Not much good. Not much bad."

"Tell me a scrap of good, and a morsel of bad, then."

Osso dipped his head. "Only because I trust master Emrys to know they're not my words."

"You're but a messenger."

"If you must send my head back to my family, I beg of you to keep it on my neck."

"I'll keep that connected to the rest of you as well."

The volpes let out a dry laugh, dusty as the fading season. "Ah, I will not forget your generosity."

The laugh seemed a good sign that Osso was starting to return to his usual self.

"I have heard," Osso began, lowering his voice and getting closer, "that she killed one of the beasts."

"Is that something good from you, or rumors in the camp?"

"Both," he nodded. Then the volpes leaned in, fox eyes showing more than bitterness or the frustrating favor seeking falseness of the plains. Curiosity, but wary and frightful as any herd animal, lingered within. "Did she?"

Emrys smiled. "Why ask me instead of her? She'll wake up eventually."

Osso leaned back. "If I know you, master Emrys, your charmed tongue will ask long before me."

"Time shall tell. Now, though, I am curious what is the bad you have heard."

This time Osso whispered. "That she's a thief, to have been found with a sword, or a stray that should be left behind."

To the people of the plains, there was no difference between an exile or those without kin nor clan, they were all strays. Just because Emrys understood it, however, didn't mean he accepted it. "I've not heard that."

"They seem scared you will hear it."

'That explains why they're avoiding my ears.'

Osso tapped his fingers, unease real as he whispered the next part. "Some think she might be a gzgigi."

The word wasn't immediately familiar, so Emrys asked, "And that is...?"

"Ah," the volpes flinched. He actually swallowed. "It's... it's much worse than a stray. A cast out, ah, pleasure wife? No, that is not the right word. It is—it means gzgigi. Such a strange feeling, knowing what it means but never having to explain the word before!"

"You get used to it the more languages you learn," Emrys grunted. "I expected ill rumors, thus I'm far from surprised."

"Few have uttered that last rumor."

"Well if you feel like spreading new rumors, good rumors, it should keep peace in camp."

Osso hesitated, then nodded.

"What matters is that she's alive," Emrys said, "and I'll hear her story soon. No one else need worry about her."

The volpes' smile was placating, not real.

"However, Osso, I wish to know one more thing." Emrys adjusted where he stood, holding his staff with both hands to lazy lean on it. "What stories of War-Dancers and Blood-Drinkers do you know?"

"Ah?" The volpes' head tilted, eyes suddenly widening as his memory must've caught up with him. "Ah, only what all know. I've seen the War-Dancers, yes, but they speak so little of themselves! They're great warriors, great enough to long ago drive away the Blood-Drinkers. War-Dancers are supposed to be masters of many magics, grand magicians that all envy!"

"Do you know the sort of magic?"

Osso stared stupidly at him.

Emrys wanted to sigh, but held it in. To the Mgan Plains all things magic were the same, and as such their word "magician" lumped sorcerers, wizards, and the odd rituals at the corners of the world into the same category. Emrys was half convinced the confusion was an ancient conspiracy by wizards of the plains that had somehow carried on.

"What can the War-Dancers do? Not rumors, but what you know?" Emrys asked, trying again.

"Run on water, cut through metal, skip across the wind even! Or," the volpes' smile thinned, "so they say. I only saw them walk across burning coals, used to cook after they walked so I know they were hot, and flip and dance about in ways no man should! My little brother said he saw them skipping across a lake up there."

"Teppi, was it?"

"Yes," Osso nodded, warmth in his eyes. "Yes, he likes to wander more than me. He claimed he snuck out at night and saw it, but I don't know if I trust it wasn't a dream."

Emrys hrmed at that, then asked, "Were there any women among them?"

Fox ears stayed honest as Osso shook his head. "We were met by a group of four young men, who carried the supplies of twelve porters by themselves back up the mountain. Then the ritual was all men, but they talked about their 'sister disciples' training somewhere else."

"I suppose that's what got Teppi curious."

"It was," Osso chuckled.

"Has he married yet?"

"No, master Emrys, but soon." The volpes fidgeted, almost reaching for his new pouch of silver. "Soon, I hope."

"If you're in Tpocic-tal for his wedding, send word to me."

"I'd never want to trouble you with something so small, master Emrys."

"Weddings aren't small. I won't bother the gathering with my presence, and all the commotion that would bring, but we've known each other for a few years, Osso. It's only right I send my well wishes," and gifts, Emrys deliberately left out, "to such a happy occasion."

"Ah, I can never tell you my gratitude often enough, master Emrys! Your well wishes would be a great honor for my brother and his wife."

"So he's already sweet with a girl?"

"You guess too well! Yes, yes he is," Osso laughed, genuinely, shoulders finally relaxed. "I don't know if he's serious, but he should be."

"Scare him with Tross or Tass if that'll help."

"Maybe," Osso mused, rubbing his chin. Then he glanced suspiciously at Emrys. "What is the question you aren't asking?"

"Those are too many to count."

"Gah, I walked into that trap. Alright, what other rumors do you want from me? You can ask about my family another time, when it's not so hot."

"Very well," Emrys fake sighed. "I've asked about the War-Dancers, so you should know I want to hear about the Blood-Drinkers as well."

Osso's mouth shut, drawing tight. He shook his head. "It's ill omen to speak of them, master Emrys. They hunt and devour the clans, so it is said, but no one seems to know how or why."

"And you don't even know rumors?"

"I will tell you a few, but only because it's you, master Emrys," Osso fidgeted. "They're strong, fast, almost silent in the grass. Their faces have no mouths, so their fingers drink the blood of those they rip apart. They can skip across water, and cut metal, but fire is supposed to be their greatest fear."

"You speak as if they're monsters.

"They are," Osso uttered, tail fluffed and shivering. "Children hear stories, how they'll be taken up, and I believed them all."

"Don't fear them now," Emrys said, almost reaching out to pat the volpes on the shoulder. "If you remember anything else, or hear more about either group, come tell me."

"I will, master Emrys."

This time a false grin settled on Emrys' face, but the fox didn't know that. Osso quickly stared east, fingers squeezing the leather strap of his pack. "How soon do we leave?"

"When Titus is finished with his tasks."

"I will ride ahead while I can," the volpes decided, turning with his tail twitching.

"Before you go, I've something else for you," Emrys said, reaching into his robe and pulling out a silver disk on a braided cord. "If, gods forbid it, you get chased by hyenas, or worse, then squeeze this in both hands and whisper for help. Tross and Tass will sense it and come find you. Day or night."

"Ah! You bless me with a wonderful gift, master Emrys," the fox smiled, almost ear to ear, with relief that didn't reach his tail. He took the pendant, rubbing a finger over the big garnet centered in the etched silver. "This is a grand treasure."

"I won't last long," Emrys grunted. "The rest of the trip, if we're fortunate. Be sure to give it to one of them every day or two, to reattune it, otherwise it'll just be another pretty bauble."

"I'll not miss a day," Osso promised, looping it over his head to proudly wear instead of hide.

Emrys knew the fox would keep such a treasure close, so he left the guide with a wave. Along with a silent prayer that Osso would use the amulet if he needed help.

The caravan didn't try to hide as it travelled onward for two days.

Each night they made such a ruckus they could be heard for miles. But first those twin magicians carved trenches and piled up bulwarks before dusk with terrifying spells, filled most of them before setting off a handspan after dawn, their purpose no longer mere firebreaks. Those were the earthworks of war. Yet they must have feasted for there to be so much laughter, the mood unafraid.

Sounds and smells wafted across the plains, day and night. Masses of humans and beastkin. Roasting herbs and prey. Beasts for hauling kept close together.

Onago kept the sight of them at the edge of the horizon, his cowardly nature keeping him far away.

Any closer was too dangerous for his remaining pack of hyenas. Magicians were the greatest danger Onago's Master had ever warned about.

Hunters, other sects, even the might of cities were all prey. Dangerous, but prey.

Magicians were monsters that could summon lightning, rip ground apart, freeze lakes, enchant your clothes to strangle you, curse swords to shatter, charm crystals to defy the gods, and some even exploded in torrents of fire if captured. Onago's Master had been clear. Magicians were to be avoided if possible, struck at a distance if they were foes, and never offended if talked to.

Onago hadn't seen a real Magician before they killed part of his pack, let alone had to track two.

His mouth felt dry the last two days no matter how much he drank.

The trail of wagon ruts made the hair on his neck itch whenever he saw the wolfkin at camp or wandering from front to back of the caravan as it traveled.

Onago kept far away from the trails those two left.

And this evening he did the same, watching from so far away even his qi enhanced sight could barely make them out as they toiled with heavy booms to create fortifications.

Onago had Yellowclaw and Redtooth stay near him, their dulled armor and giant size a comfort. The rest of his pack he had hunting farther back to leave their own trails, but most importantly to find new hyenas for his Vinebound Soul technique. The new pack would be weaker, but numbers had strength.

Eventually someone would come looking for Onago, find all the markers he and his pack left, and then he could explain. They would have revenge. Not just for his pack, not only for Hoonu, but for the pride of Ngnandra, their great Master. Anyone sent to find him would know how to deal with Magicians, as surely the sentries would've noticed the lightning.

Once they had the birdkin, there would be a suitable tribute for their Master.

For now, Onago waited with his favored pair of hyenas. He talked to them, sharing his thoughts and fears. They understood, but couldn't speak back. They shared emotions and intent through his Vinebound Soul, the communication more pure than words.

Yellowclaw, her scarred snout resolute, was confident in Onago's strength, even if he wasn't. He had raised them, after all.

Redclaw reminded him of battles on the plains he'd been part of. Not just surviving, but how he'd earned his mask and their armor.

The pair wove a story of their glory.

It was one he sensed many times, their eagerness chipping a smile onto his unmasked face.

They understood him, better than any brother or sister ever could. Onago patted their necks, grateful to have such faithful companions.

At sundown, he reluctantly sent Yellowclaw off, at her request. She wanted to take command of a local pack the lesser hyenas discovered, but mostly it was so Onago could calm himself by tending to Redtooth's armor.

Redtooth had needed to wade through a muddy patch of a mostly dry river in the morning, his fur and armor plating coated in dried muck.

That wouldn't do, the pair had insisted.

Onago thought Yellowclaw wanted to keep Redtooth safe with him just as much as she hoped to soothe his remaining fear.

It would, of course, work as she wanted.

He took the soot darkened plates off and started cleaning. Redtooth used his teeth to dunk each into the watering hole to loosen the dirt, then Onago wiped them down with a rag, memories coming with every plate.

Each piece of bronze was crafted from the melted weapons and tools of those who had slighted Onago in the past. Warriors, herdsmen, even the anvil of a smith that cheated him. Their blood and marrow had fueled the strength of his qi, flesh and bone filled the stomachs of his pack, and their possessions became Onago's. It was all part of the great yet simple cycle revealed to him by his Master, the most revered Ngnandra.

Onago smiled when Redtooth dropped a plate and had to dunk his head underwater to retrieve it.

He didn't know what he'd do without the pair.

He was already calmer, and Redtooth could have his armor back on before they settled in for a short nap.

As he watched the hyena shake his fur dry, a new idea, a daring one instead of cowardly, came to Onago.

If someone strong from the sect came, perhaps they could do the unthinkable and capture a magician. There were sealing techniques of The Art that, if they were applied quickly, could subdue even a magician. It was risky, but it would be a fine gift for their Master, who benefited little from the lives of most prey. A magician and the birdkin bitch would be excellent gifts to make up for Onago's mistakes, and with luck put Hoonu's spirit at ease. Of course, seeing one of those wolfkin suffer under Ngnandra's grand Arrays would serve as revenge for Onago's pack that had been so diminished.

But only one of the magicians. Both would be too risky, even if they could capture them.

Predators, after all, shouldn't be greedy like merchants. The prey needed to replenish, to grow and strengthen between harvests, and his fellow predators must be nourished as well. The sect helped each other.

Redtooth quietly huffed, his scar covered ears twisting in a nervous smile as he left an armor plate on the water's edge.

Onago's beast sensed someone approaching before he had.

Accepting his weakness, and feeling grateful for a companion to make up for it, Onago put his mask back on and set down the armor he'd been cleaning. Slowly, to make it seem natural, in case a wandering expert of The Art walked the plains tonight.

More rare than the eclipse, meeting fellow practitioners of The Art still happened. Onago's Master ensured his disciples understood to treat any wanderers stronger than them with great respect.

Whoever stalked through the grass had skill. Onago had to focus to find them.

They were sixty paces northeast, upwind, and going around long abandoned burrows.

Quiet footfalls instead of silent. Small, whoever it was, as they barely disturbed the grasses revitalized by the rain.

Onago focused on how the qi of the grass flowed. Part of the yet to be named skills his Master wanted him to polish into a technique one day, Onago could stretch his awareness out along the thousands of swaying stalks.

Qi rustled with stalks. A practitioner of The Art became so attuned to qi that even those of Fire instead of Wood didn't disturb the grasses like that.

Prey.

When the intruder was twenty paces away, Onago was ready.

He spoke in a low voice. "Come out."

A frightened mouth stifled an inhale, quiet as the brush of fur against grass stalks.

They hadn't expected Onago to notice?

He smiled and looked right at the shadow while using his bond with Redtooth to command the hyena to wait. Redtooth obeyed, but badly wanted to sink his fangs into the prey's neck to taste fresh blood.

Onago stood to his full height, which wasn't that impressive. He didn't need to be imposing. The five misshapen eyes of Onago's blank mouthed mask stared hungrily, each crafted so they seemed to snarl when he held his head just right.

"Terrified, thumping, so afraid," Onago mused, grabbing a short spear left sticking out of the ground. "Come out and I won't skewer that trembling heart."

In his head, Onago counted to eight. A trick of his mentor, that even their Master Ngnandra was said to use.

On what would've been the ninth count, Onago flipped the spear around, arm pulling back for a throw. Qi soaked his limbs, strengthening him and making veins stand out on his deceptively thin limbs. His blank mouthed mask smiled better than he ever could, the thought of fresh blood whetting his hunger as he took a single step forward.

Though he wasn't enlightened enough to imbue his weapon with qi, Onago could punch through bronze shields at fifty paces. On ten count he would—

"Wait!" pleaded a pathetic voice.

Fur bustled out of the grasses, hands raised up and beastkin face bowing against the dirt. He scampered forward on his knees. The fox, small and weak even for his kind, wore no beads of clan or great deeds, just an antelope skin waist wrap and cloth vest.

Onago, having stopped at the sound of the voice, suddenly lurched. Shoulder, elbow, then wrist all snapped forward. The spear slammed right between the fox's legs, haft bumping into his chest as he ran into it. The plains' stalker shivered, frightful eyes glancing up to see Onago twirling a second spear out of the ground.

"Please, please spare this pathetic one great master!" begged the fox. "I did not know, I did not know of your greatness!"

A coward enslaved by his fear.

Onago barely savored the fear scent. He whistled, too high pitched for beastkin ears, and Redtooth immediately slunk off in search of allies of this coward.

Such an obvious ploy, if it was one.

Send a pathetic scout while the real hunters encircled. Onago might not be a raider, but he was still a student of the greatest Master of The Art to ever walk the plains! He had faced down five warriors of the plains by himself, and without weapons, as the trial to earn his mask. It shone in the moonlight with the metal he'd won from their daggers and spears.

Redtooth would find the scent of the other hunters. Pick off the weakest, so that Onago would know where the rest were. By sight or scent.

Scent?

Onago breathed in once more, a whiff of something familiar boiling his blood.

The fox had a unique, but familiar odor. Nothing natural, yet close to fermented blood, and tinged with the most sacred qi.

Onago, instead of throwing his second spear, advanced. He swiped it around, putting the soot blackened blade against the fox's throat. "I've waited two days for you to answer the call."

The fox's quaking hands clasped together above his head in a prayer for mercy.

Onaga had none for prey, but he resisted the urge to hit the fox. "My Master left his Mark on you. You heard the call, saw the signs summoning you, and you only now appear?"

"Mercy, great warrior, mercy! I could not leave while the magicians watched everyone."

"Tcha," Onago growled, pushing the volpes' head up.

At the fox's neck was a silver amulet that smelled of strange oils and familiar leather. Good Tpocic-tal leather, not antelope but braided strips from a buffalo. No symbols of the gods on the silver, just a decently sized purple gem set into it. Either a garnet or an amethyst, Onago could never tell the difference.

For several heartbeats, Onago considered taking the amulet. Those his Master put a Mark upon were property of his students, slaves in spirit and body. Any treasure the Marked had was for the needs of the sect.

But if the fox was expected back at camp, he should return with a treasure worn so openly. It was a simple idea, but cunning. Send a scout out with bait that a greedy heart would leap upon.

Onago snapped his spear away. He knew the suffering of greed. It had killed Hoonu, and cost Onago much of his pack.

"Sit," he pointed to the ground. "Tell me how my Master gifted you his Mark. Then tell me all you know of this caravan and its magicians."

---

Terror thrummed through ground and air.

Flames snarled at sky and timber.

Screams silenced from slashed flesh.

Zhaleh wanted to shriek as burning buildings collapsed in the bowl shaped valley. Laughing masked monsters, in the shape of beastkin and humans without mouths, danced about her dying home.

Desires more depraved than murder were slaked by those monsters and their masks, vital essences stolen before bodies died.

Bare bronze delighted and mocked amid the carnage. Blood stained swords, fingers, claws, and spears of those monsters pretending to be people. But never their masks. The mouthless, bare spots drank up whatever crimson splashed upon them. Disciples, attendants, travellers, innocents, no such difference mattered. Only the spilling of blood, screams of pain, and rain of ash interested the masked monsters rampaging through the village and valley.

Not everyone died right away.

Disciples fought back where they could; years of training together and their homes burning bringing the bitterest rivals together. They were of one sect, one purpose, one home. Ngnun was theirs.

Zhaleh killed to keep it that way.

She danced alone between two foes, her sword ringing and talons stomping to keep distance. Three dead monsters lay crushed or sliced apart around her already. She couldn't allow any of them up the stone steps to a higher tier of the terraced village. The youngest disciples, barely more than children, had been in the cliff carved building behind her. Fire couldn't burn it down. But bronze and claw, swiping and lunging at her, could shred those escaping into the hidden tunnels.

Five minutes. She just needed to hold off these monsters for five minutes and the young ones would get far enough into the tunnels to seal the passages behind themselves.

The lustful cackling of the masked monsters Zhaleh fought curdled her blood. She couldn't see their eyes behind the paint of their masks but felt them crawling across her like spiders, the lingering webs revolting her.

A spear lunged for her leading leg, aimed at her thigh.

They meant to cripple, not kill her. Then they'd drag her into one of the buildings that didn't burn.

She swatted the spear away with a kick, her rising sword soon skittering against the axe trying to hook her lifted leg. A qi strengthened leap threw her over the pair, her wings beating once to flip her for a counter attack. She struck with talons, ripping into the chest of a masked monster she sailed over.

He only laughed, sweeping his spear after her, but she touched the ground out of his reach.

The other monster rushed her with a movement technique that made his body seem hazy as the hottest day.

His axe swung for her shoulder. The flat of her sword clanged against the haft, her foe hooking the thin blade with the beard of his weapon just as she wanted. He barely saw her hips twist before she swirled into First Rain_, a sweeping mid-kick of her sect meant to be thrown from nearly all angles. Zhaleh's shin broke the monster's ribs and sent him skipping across the ground like a flat stone over the lake. The monster's mask refused to come loose no matter how he tumbled._

Zhaleh didn't see what else happened to that foe.

She had to sway back and slap her hand against the ground to avoid being skewered by a spear.

Her talons snapped out, the spear holder underestimating the reach of her legs. Her attacker's mocking laugh turned to a gasp of pain. A glancing blow on his thigh, right where he tried to spear her earlier.

Shoving herself up, qi buzzing through her limbs, Zhaleh struck in a flurry of short cuts. Wood and metal clashed, the masked monster unable to retreat fast enough on his bleeding leg. She focused on his injured side, baiting him into defending it with all he had.

She needed only five moves to get an opening.

Her foot smashed down, crunching bones in his toes.

The monster didn't get a chance to retreat or even scream. Her sword severed his throat and spine, that insulting mask with its four smiling eyes flipping away with his head.

Shaken, Zhaleh took a defensive stance and composed herself.

None of the monsters rampaging through the village were near her. Yet forty strides away, near the central well, was a sight that stole her hard earned breath.

The monsters' leader, the infamous Master of Masks Ngnandra, had his back to her. His skin was painted blue and patterned in white, his blank mask of a darker black than a stormy night turned away from Zhaleh, as he raised a fist drenched in red.

Clutched in reddened fingers and held aloft was the quivering heart of Sironka, the First Disciple of Ngnun and her dearest rival, caught by the throat as if he were a tiny fish instead of a burly warrior. Ngnandra released Sironka's dying body. His feet touched down, life burning in a final bout of strength that kept him standing—he drew upon the well no practitioner of The Art dared touch unless death was at hand, for it would slay them to tap into.

Ngnandra seemed to regard the willpower shown with interest, his head cocking to the side.

Sironka's blood flung as he leaped, legs enveloped in qi for the arc of his best attack. The full might of Sunset’s Glory_, a flying spin kick Sironka had defeated Zhaleh with at the last Rising Plains tournament, flung towards the Master of Masks too fast for Zhaleh to fully track._

Ngnandra's empty hand swung out, his vile and corrupted qi overwhelming the First Disciple of Ngnun's strike.

Sironka's leg cracked, bending back as the rest of him kept moving into the attack, his face contorted in frustration instead of despair. His hands lunged for his killer, ready to take an arm or finger before the god of death beckoned him across the final river.

Ngnandra's fist smashed Sironka's face in, driving him down into the monster's rising kick.

The First Disciple of Ngnun dashed across the ground, spinning and twisting like a child's doll, before he slammed against the stone wall of a nearby building.

Everything went still.

Her rival, who she practically thought of as her brother, didn't get up. His neck bent sickly, head shoved against the well and chest ripped open right under his ribs. A bloody streak followed from the well to where he ended up.

Zhaleh couldn't breathe.

Sironka would never stand again. He'd never chastise her for being too harsh with the disciples again. Never again would he give her that arrogant smile, then prove himself worthy of it. She knew he was dead, yet Zhaleh still expected Sironka's stubborn reliability to pull him up anyway. For him to throw one more attack, stronger than the last, and strike down the leader of the monsters destroying their world.

Instead, Sironka's head slid across the side of the well, smearing the stone red, his eyes emptier than the masks of the raiders.

Her lungs drew in an agonized breath.

Before her tears could come or a sound made it out of her beak, a roar shook the sect.

Pebbles trembled and her ears rang as Zhaleh's teacher let loose a cry of rage and grief that could only come from a father and expert of The Art.

She saw him, far away near the shore of the lake. His roar ended, the raiders around him dazed.

A simple bronze sword glowed a shimmering blue from qi as her teacher charged the masked monsters between him and Ngnandra.

Her teacher's blade rent through masks and the bones beyond, swords and spears lifted to block him, arms glowing with qi_, everything severed beneath the strikes of his_ qi cloaked sword. Only the pinnacle of experts could achieve such a feat, and even then it was maddeningly hard to maintain. That didn't appear to matter for the Master of Ngnun, who had abandoned his name to take on the title of the mountain for himself and his sect.

He performed no war dance that had earned them a name from the plainsmen. He simply slaughtered his way forward.

A huge monster, a human before he adorned that wicked mask, jumped to tackle her teacher from behind. Arms layered with muscle snapped like an ant's, her teacher's jumping kicks swirling him down the same as a falling spinner-leaf. His qi enhanced sword cleaved from top of mask to groin, splitting the monster in half so that both pieces landed on either side of him.

Ngnun stood straight, turned, and kept marching towards the monster that attacked his home, slaughtered his disciples, and had killed his son.

As if summoned by Ngnandra, who stood still by the well, seemingly every raider on the far side of the village swarmed towards Zhaleh's teacher.

She breathed in, as did the masked monsters throughout the village. The shock of the qi infused roar faded quickly.

Most ran to the aid of their vile master. But four shifted, seeing her standing amid their dead companions. Their decision was swift as the legs that came running for her blood.

She was no longer the third strongest of Ngnun, but the second, and they seemed to know it. She wanted to weep, but the battle was far from over.

That grief melting her heart, she grabbed hold of it so it might become rage long enough for her to fight.

Zhaleh swirled through a deadly sword dance, parrying blows meant to kill her and leaving long gashes with every riposte she made. Desperate to aid her teacher as he spent only one or two cuts for every stride he took, she struck down one of the monsters in her way.

His headless body collapsed.

Three left.

She whirled under coordinated sword forms, the masked monsters trained to fight together, and swept the legs out from the most aggressive of the trio. The other two pressed her before she could make a killing blow, forcing Zhaleh back four steps.

Until she riposted and sliced between the ribs of the biggest monster facing her. Heart blood splashed, his body pitching towards his companion as the one she tripped rushed to help. She danced aside several steps, the remaining pair not following her right away but blocking her from advancing.

She couldn't run or hope to exploit overconfidence in the remaining pair.

The young ones still needed time to cover their escape through the tunnels. But even their teacher couldn't hold back the dozens of raiders charging him; a lucky blow was sure to get past his furious advance.

What should she do?

Ngnandra, Master of Masks, threw aside the First Disciple's heart and pulled his curved sword from where he left it embedded in the side of the well. A hazy shimmer of red, like curdled blood, engulfed his blade as it snapped up, catching the full force of her teacher's overhand strike and stopping the cleaving blow as if it had hit the mountain.

Qi rippled through the air, two experts of The Art clashing in a flurry of blinding blows.

For a moment, everyone stopped, half a dozen life and death battles across the mountain freezing in place.

No one but the two experts even breathed.

All watched the battle.

Ngnandra barely moved, arm whipping about unnaturally to parry every killing strike her teacher made. But the sect of Ngnun could strike from every angle, her teacher spinning and whirling about so much that Ngnandra's feet shifted. A simple slide at first.

Then he took steps aside and back to dodge blows he wasn't confident in deflecting.

Swords crashed into the ground with the might of hammers, slashed through walls in explosions of dust, as the deadly back and forth battle began in earnest.

Zhaleh knew she'd be of little help to her teacher, but she had to do something other than stand in place.

The masked monsters watched their leader battle with reverence, too distracted to help him either.

Zhaleh took a few breaths to steady her qi and hoped the young disciples had escaped by now.

She attacked the pair near her before they thought to strike at her first.

Both went different directions, clearly waiting to counter her instead of enchanted by their master's fight against her teacher.

Zhaleh spun, deflected a sword strike, and kicked a wrist before it could get at her. Her talons stretched up high before she slammed down into a masked monster's head, smashing him to the ground hard enough for stone or bone to loudly crack. With the force of the blow she threw herself into the air, wings beating with qi to give her more height.

For a moment she soared far out of reach, like a legendary warrior of the time of the Greys' Rampage, and beheld the devastation. The disciples' halls burned, her teacher's private building smoked ominously, and the attendant buildings scattered about were stained in flame or blood. Bodies were everywhere, both raiders and those of her sect. Red splatters and soot stained painted stone.

Nothing would ever be the same.

She couldn't stay in the air any longer, being far from a master that could truly fly—the dream of all birdkin, that only those following The Art could hope to achieve.

Zhaleh knew she lacked the skill to face the Master of Masks. But she was Sironka's rival and couldn't bear to watch the teacher she considered a father stand alone. With flaps of her wings she went farther, faster, but the pull of the ground still commanded her. She raised a leg and descended.

Ngnandra's sword locked with her teacher's.

Two swift masked monsters bounded towards the fight, weapons cast aside to lurch forward on all fours like beasts.

Zhaleh slammed down on the first, shattering his skull, and snapped her raised foot out at the other. Talons slashed his legs mid leaping stride, sending him off course and skitting away.

Sword clashes boomed, the ripples of qi from the experts behind her shaking the world. Zhaleh fought, comforted by her teacher's might. She couldn't think.

Monsters came at her as she protected her teacher's battle.

First Rain swirled from the monster she crushed, and into a slice of Cloud's Parting_. Blood flew from her sword and talons whipping about, sudden twists throwing her away from the monsters rushing in threes and fours._

Glimpses of other disciples falling or fighting flashed through her eyes, but she couldn't help.

Zhaleh danced, qi thrumming.

Blows made it through her twirling defense, fists and the hafts of spears. Nothing with an edge. She took the pain and bent like the grasses of the plains in a breeze before swaying back with deadly ripostes.

Rattling metal crashed nearby.

Her teacher's hand grabbed Zhaleh's shoulder and threw her aside several steps. The corrupted qi of Ngnandra's sword cleaved through where her talons had been, a plume of dust obscuring the unnatural darkness of Ngnandra's empty mask. Her teacher swirled in front of her, the swipe of his foot dispersing the cloud.

Two sword exchanges, almost faster than her eyes could track, finally shed blood in the experts' fight.

Ngnandra staggered back, painted chest oozing a line of red. His own blood, two of his ribs visible from where her teacher slipped through. But bright heart blood didn't pour forth.

"Will your thieving sword never stop trying to take from me!" hissed the Master of Masks, voice crawling with the sounds of a hundred different mouths.

That voice made all the masked monsters stop.

Their master tapped points around his wound, stopping the bleeding. Zhaleh shivered as she realized he did it with his now empty sword hand.

That sword was buried up to the simple, tasseled hilt in her teacher's chest. The blade punched out of his back, and though it missed his spine and heart, one of his lungs was surely pierced. He stood resolute, staring down Ngnandra as the masked monsters gathered around, blocking any escape.

Zhaleh hadn't seen it happen.

One moment their blades met, the next—the next the man she loved as a father was impaled.

"Let me show you theft," Ngnun said, coughing blood without his shoulders shifting, "you festering fly."

Her teacher lurched forward, then swayed as if falling.

His clothes rustled past Zhaleh, his movement technique a trick. His blue qi cloaked sword cleaved through masked monsters. He ran among them, cutting and striking with speed instead of precision, as if he meant to kill or cripple every corrupted monster by himself.

"Scatter!" screamed the Master of Masks, his followers obeying before more were cut down.

Wind buffeted by. Zhaleh's feathers bristled. Ngnandra swished by her, close enough to rip her heart out if he wanted, but the lord of all the monsters ignored her.

He struck, arms glowing in a haze of red like curdled blood. The greatest swordsman of Ngnun chopped and stabbed, but his qi cloaked blade wavered.

Then cracked, splintering in the grasp of Ngnandra. He swatted aside the broken bronze sword, grabbed her teacher by the neck, and lifted. A hand soaked in the blood of the First Disciple held the blade now run through Ngnun, ready to swipe it free.

Fear, anger, and love threw Zhaleh at the monster trying to steal her world from her.

The vile expert, wounded and holding aloft the only man capable of putting up a real fight against him, jumped straight up. She turned, sword rising to take a foot or split an artery.

Ngnandra crashed down instantly, ground cracking beneath him and sword ripping from her teacher's chest before he threw the man away like a rag. She saw the edge glow in a curdled red haze, her knees bending and hips twisting to throw her away from the killing blow.

Hot, corrupted qi burned through her senses. Her sword fell away, her teacher landed upright five strides away, and Zhaleh fell onto her side.

She tried to push herself up with her sword arm. She had to get away from the crushing foot Ngnandra raised up.

But her sword, and the arm that held it, clattered to the ground. Hot blood coursed down her side.

The severed limb lay out of her reach.

Zhaleh didn't understand why there was no pain.

She could only stare at the arm that had been a part of her seconds ago, helpless before the killing stomp about to fall.

But Ngnandra, back to her mortally wounded teacher, didn't see the movement technique that slammed a mortally wounded man against his back with the force of buffalo.

The Master of Masks went flying towards the well, his sword clattering out of his grasp.

Blood sputtered from her teacher's lips and out of his chest, but instead of pursuing the enemy, her teacher reached down and jabbed fingers against her wounds. Qi invaded her pathways at precise acupoints, sealing the blood flow spraying against her side. A sliver of the warmth from his Wood qi lingered, suppressing what should've been immediate agony.

He smiled at her, the same look he gave a terrified and alone birdkin child lost on the plains without memories so many years ago.

Then he picked up Ngnandra's fallen sword, and Zhaleh...

Zhaleh gasped, lurching up and reaching with a phantom limb for her teacher's slackening hand.

Neither her right arm or he was there. Visions of him against the well, chest leaking blood from the sword that took out a lung, burned in the back of her eyes anyway. The end of the battle against the Master of Masks happened so fast, or she'd lost so much blood, that she barely saw any of it. One moment she'd been on the ground, the next her teacher helped her toward the well. Not a single masked monster had been in sight, but she heard their rampage and fires burning.

She gasped in more air. There wasn't smoke. She didn't think there was any smoke. It had to be that nightmare. The same one that kept waking her up, stretching out of dreams and into the world of light, but this time the entire memory crawled away.

She didn't have to relive him telling her how to escape as he suddenly collapsed against the well.

She felt ill.

The world shook and rattled all around her as daylight and the unfamiliar surroundings overwhelmed her senses. Nothing made sense. She wasn't in one of the disciple halls or huts, or her favorite trees to rest in.

But why would she be? They all burned.

Lightheaded, weak, and cold, she sluggishly looked about to chase away the visions.

Everything was a blur, but she knew she had solitude. Just as she knew the nightmares were memories of days before instead of fevered imaginings.

Her shaky left hand rested on her beak instead of the stitches. The sensation of blade slicing her bone still haunted her, returning when she least expected it.

Zhaleh, wavering dangerously, focused on nothing but breathing.

That always cleared the fog in her sight.

After far too long, she recognized the back of the covered wagon. A space had been cleared for her between tied down chests, caged glowstones rattling above. The smell of burning homes and spilled blood still stung her nostrils, but she knew it to be a phantom. Unlike the scents of people, pack beasts, unfamiliar herbs, and the shifting grasses outside flourishing with qi.

For five days she'd woken in this wagon. The caravan it belonged to traveled from near dawn to dusk. No one bothered her, aside from a thin limbed young man, Titus, who was a healer and one of her saviors. The old mothers he brought to assist him obeyed his every word, knowing less about medicine than such a young man and being remarkably accepting of it.

To Zhaleh's shame, she'd been too weak to eat without help or even speak on the first day she woke into their care, which led to her strange situation.

Nobody thought she could understand their languages. From the Istillian spoken by Titus with somebody riding in the front of the wagon, to the dialects of Tpocic-tal and Zunna, even the trade language of the herding clans, they'd tried everything while she could barely keep her eyelids open. Then they'd given up that evening, settling on a few simple hand signals and pointing as if she were a child.

'Perhaps I am, hiding like this. Not speaking for days.'

Dark thoughts crossed her mind.

Zhaleh couldn't resist it any longer and touched the stitches sealing up her stump.

A ragged sigh interrupted her measured breathing.

Her right arm really was gone. She'd wanted to hope that, at least, had been a nightmare. That her shoulder was just badly wounded instead.

She'd silently cried the last four days whenever the realization first settled over her.

Today she refused to shed a tear, even as her eyes stung and watered. There had been enough mourning for herself.

It wasn't only the loss of her limb that ached. The sword arm her teacher had guided, corrected, and even praised was gone, slain with those she considered family.

Eyes burning, she swallowed to keep a sob from breaking through.

'We start with breathing, Zhaleh,' her teacher had said on the same day he gave her, a lost orphan of the plains, a name. 'In through our nose, we let the peace of this wonderful world seep from our lungs to all throughout the body. Then breathe out, pushing the bitterness we have within away, over our tongues, so it leaves through the mouth lest we forget the taste.'

Eyes wet, she shifted into a meditative position. She was limber enough to sit cross-legged without her right arm, but she still felt unbalanced in the back of the creaking, rumbling wagon.

Not everything from her teacher had been stolen. Despite how horrible it felt, Zhaleh could envision his hands on her back, beneath her wings, guiding the breathing exercises that laid the foundation of The Art of Ngnun within her.

She could keep the embers of her sect alive, but did they even have a name anymore? Could it even be called a sect when only she'd been in the hidden tunnels?

In and out.

Zhaleh tasted salty tears, but she kept breathing. Seeking peace, finding only more pain, and breathing out a bitterness with no end.

Gradually she felt the qi move through her, circulating on a rhythm akin to her heartbeat. Everything was in disarray, the vessel within her abdomen still recovering and paths through her polluted from her wounds. Thanks to Titus, with his many potions and poultices, she escaped the edge of death when she'd first woken up. What he said to the mothers often helping, he hadn't expected her to wake for at least four more days.

Yet here she was, flesh healing. And little else.

Today was the first time she'd succeeded in cultivating The Art while the cart moved. Not that she went deep, for fear of deviations undoing all of Titus' efforts to save her.

Zhaleh, breathing steady, gently corrected the flow of qi throughout her body.

It helped her feel lighter. Not healthier, but more complete. Qi was within everything, said to be the very essence the gods used to craft the world, and eternal. Never lost. Only changed. Building a vessel for qi was the first lesson of every path of The Art, and hers still remained.

Unlike her right arm. The qi pathways there had nearly ruptured and her spirit was in disarray. Her arm felt so wrong, missing, yet still there. The contradiction left her unbalanced in every possible way.

It would take weeks, if not seasons, for her to properly adjust to the loss. The healer's work to seal the wound, somehow, didn't interfere like she'd feared on the first day, but she still needed to untangle and cleanse all her qi pathways.

The wagon jolted on a stone, breath dangerously catching in her throat as she tilted over.

She flung her hands out, kept falling despite grabbing the wooden arch holding the stretched covering, and realized her mistake. Zhaleh's left hand stung against the wagon's boards, catching her just shy of her beak smacking the woven rug used for her bedding.

'When will I accept it's gone?'

Elbow shaking, head light as a cottonwood tuft on water, she untangled her still crossed legs and sat on her knees.

That could've been worse than an embarrassing fall.

No, if she'd gone into a trance to speed up the healing of her injuries, as she did at night after running out of tears, then the wagon's jolt could've killed her. Disturbed pathways could rupture surrounding veins or cause her qi to reverse the direction it flowed. That could damage organs, destroy her vessel, or shatter her mind. She scarcely had the blood to spare, even with the generous meals Titus brought her, to risk such wounds.

Thoughts of the healer brought not so bad memories to her.

"Drink slowly," he had insisted when she'd been able to sit up on her own, the young man mimicking the act of lightly tipping a bowl to his lips. He'd then tapped the clay jug he always brought, his smile trying to reassure her, as he talked slowly. "There's more. Don't rush."

'Slowly,' she'd thought. 'Yes. Teacher would've said the same.'

A new pang settled in her ribs.

Zhaleh knew exactly what her teacher would've said about her bad manners of staying silent while cared for by that kind healer.

'Is that how a Disciple of Ngnun shows the honor of her sect?'

It didn't matter how much she hurt or wanted to curl up into tears, Zhaleh owed a debt of gratitude to Titus and whoever else saved her from beneath that karr tree. All she remembered in that haze of her escape from the mountain was killing hyenas and meeting someone, another human, with unforgettably green eyes.

She wondered, not for the first time, if that encounter had been a delusion from blood loss.

The only way she'd learn was by clearing up the misunderstanding she'd allowed to fester. If she could trust them.

The followers and slaves of that dreadful Master of Masks could be anywhere, even if her direct saviors weren't manipulated, for under their masks they seemed normal people. She had to be careful. Especially on the plains. If Titus and her saviors' kindness went no farther than their own well being, as was common of the clans and plainsmen, telling them about the Blood-Drinkers could have her betrayed.

But Titus, if he was a kind healer like she thought, deserved to know even if it put her in danger. Right?

If it was only her life in danger, she would have told him right away. But if there were Blood-Drinkers watching, and they hadn't made a move, then they'd use anyone and everything against her. They killed, and worse, to keep their secrets.

More than that, Zhaleh bore the life of her sect upon her back.

The chances were thin, but the young disciples might have escaped through the secret tunnels she'd defended. She'd seen no one in her own flight through the hidden passages, but after all that happened in the village, she couldn't imagine any other disciples surviving. Only her teacher's cunning and final sacrifice had kept Zhaleh alive.

'One foot after the other,' she told herself. 'I get my strength back and see what I can learn in Tpocic-tal. If anyone escaped, they'd head there. To the city's sect. The leader knew my teacher, didn't he?'

Heart tattered instead of settled, Zhaleh reached for her teacher's sash left on her sheathed sword - with her left hand this time. Slowly, to avoid making mistakes, she pulled the silky cloth from the scabbard.

The ends were ripped and frayed, worse than when her teacher wore it. It had turned a deeper red from his blood and hers, defying everything she knew about cloth and remaining a bright crimson instead of fading to a dead brownish-red. As if to remind her of that moment his dying hand pushed it into her palm, his fatherly smile telling her to flee.

'One foot after the other.'

Zhaleh had to keep moving. She had to heal and find out about her saviors, then she could make the painful decisions.

Patience tested by the bumping wagon that seemed to look for every rock and stone in the plains, she tied her teacher's sash onto her waist above the annoyingly long skirt gifted to her. The old mothers had tried to turn her blood stained sash into rags along with the rest of her ruined waistcloth. Fortunately for them all, Titus got the sash away from the old women before Zhaleh had to rip someone's throat out, the healer understanding whatever pathetic look had been in her eyes along with the weak groan that came out of her.

"If she cannot forgive you for what you've already destroyed, you will answer to me. Understand?"

A young man able to make so many old women cower, without a single threat or show of force, was remarkable on the plains. It might have been her fever, but Titus appeared to glare sharper than her sword at that moment. He tied her sash onto her sword after that, reminding her of the tassels given out by Tpocic-tal's sect as marks of identity, then left her blade within easy reach of her remaining arm.

Titus seemed like a good man. Zhaleh liked to believe she had a sense of that. She didn't want to hurt him, and she certainly owed him the truth.

Eventually. When she was sure she could set out alone or trust her saviors.

Zhaleh cinched a one handed knot in her sash and got her sword stuck through the cloth. Tying the scabbard on tested her patience up to its breaking point. After too many tries, her fingers shaking with self-loathing anger, she succeeded.

She vowed to practice one handed knots instead of stupidly meditating whenever the wagon was moving.

Weapon tied to her side at last, she weakly shuffled towards the front of the covered wagon, lifting a tied down flap and sticking her beak through.

Wispy clouds drifted through the bright blue sky, dusk still several handspans off. Zhaleh let the faint crosswind and breeze of the moving wagon rustle over her feathers for a moment, then pushed her way into the small spot behind the driver's bench. She had just enough space to kneel comfortably, though her talons stuck back into the covered area.

In front of her, Titus sat with another human, a robed man obscured by the wide brim of his towering hat. She ignored the driver for now. This was the first she'd had a good look at Titus in the sun's light.

Even from behind, the young man had strong features. His distinct nose and angular jaw set him apart from any other human she'd seen. Though he was shorter than her, as nearly all humans were. He seemed even smaller next to the driver, but Titus' impeccable posture kept his loose tunic from hiding well developed shoulders. Nimble hands hid on his lap, and with those wiry arms he would've made for an excellent swordsman if he wasn't a healer. Straight, short hair a few hues darker than his kind eyes protected strangely light skin—she'd heard of the swarthy Istillian traders, far to the north, before, and wondered if he was one.

The driver called to the pack beasts, and Zhaleh had to make sure he really was a human. A single huge hand held the reins of the pack beasts, the shockingly pale skin turning red where light touched it. The white clothes he wore were of the finest quality, hemmed in vibrant yellow accented by green, but aside from hints of a long black beard and hair she couldn't see anything else past his absurdly sized hat.

Neither human noticed her as she slid her arm onto the back of the bench, steadying herself against the jostling and trying to get a better look.

Zhaleh's hand rested near Titus, close enough she could almost feel the warmth of another person. Until her time in the wagon, in her self imposed silence, she hadn't realized how much she liked the simple presence of others. It was simply how life had been, always having brother and sister disciples around. The noisy nights had been comforting, the hard won moments of privacy all the more precious because of everyone. But now her nights were like those of her earliest memories, a lost child wandering the plains alone and following a river without hope or kin.

Then her teacher had saved her from the first death that should have found her.

And now Titus, along with others in this caravan, had saved her from that second death. There had been fear in her heart for the first day or two, for what they intended to do with her, but the healer dismissed them without knowing. He'd made certain her sword was always in reach if she wanted it, always showed her how to leave the wagon if she wanted, and cared for her like she was kin instead of a stranger.

Most travelers would've tied her up or marked her as a slave, if they helped her at all. That was simply the way of plainsmen and the clans. But she knew foreigners, from the rare visits by practitioners of The Art and merchants, could be different. More arrogant in some ways, strangely humble in others, and some meant every word they spoke. The ones that didn't hide anything behind kindness or pleasant words were, according to her teacher, some of the most dangerous people to walk the world. Zhaleh never heard why, nor gave it much thought until now. After all, foreign merchants still haggled and lied like all others even if they acted honestly elsewhere.

She watched the two men before her for several minutes and wondered what they were like to be in such a large caravan. They must have gone to oasis villages near the southern wasteland, or one of the distant eastern cities.

This close, able to observe them without interruption, she grew more and more confident that neither man was trained in The Art. She doubted either was a secret expert hiding their skill. Few bothered. Out on the plains showing strength was safer than hiding it.

Titus rubbed his chin and looked out at the rolling plains ahead, muttering something in a language she didn't know.

How little any of them knew.

Unless one of these men was a secret expert, no one should know she was a practitioner of The Art. Good if the Blood-Drinkers or their allies lurked in the caravan, but it made explaining her silence more troublesome. Any practitioner would understand her wariness around so many unknowns, even if they disagreed with her choice, but it would be seen as rude or devious by everyone else.

Her options weren't good. Zhaleh knew, from how those old mothers so casually gathered up her clothes to make more rags, that she wasn't recognized as particularly important. If she showed her skills, once she was a bit healthier, the people in the caravan would understand. But then she'd mark herself for any allies of the Blood-Drinkers not already aware of her.

For the first time in her life, Zhaleh regretted never going to the city sect of Tpocic-tal. The choice would've been made for her if she had one of the tassels from the city's sect, given to any who passed a test. Only those who knew The Art could succeed, so it served to mark them in this part of the plains. Records of each tassel were kept in the city, so forgeries were harshly dealt with in the city itself. Even those who knew nothing of The Art, which she'd been taught not to openly speak about except around those who could recognize it, would know the tassel as belonging to a greatly honored warrior. Few would dare fake it.

But Zhaleh had nothing so useful. Only her sword, sash, and a few beads on her feathers remained. The clothes she'd been given as replacements were just a couple of skirts and shawls to drape over her bandages, that she hadn't bothered to hide. At best, she looked pitiable.

Nothing she could do about any of that. She had to pick herself up and move forward, but she just didn't know how to introduce herself to the two men in front of her.

'Am I the First Disciple, or the last one remaining of Ngnun? Should I name myself a wanderer, a nomadic practitioner of The Art? Should I reveal anything?'

She knew the names meant nothing to a caravan, but it mattered to her. If she really was the only survivor, then...

Claws scratching the bench as her fingers clenched, Zhaleh's crest feathers fidgeted as Titus suddenly whipped his head around, nearly coming out of his seat when he saw her.

"Gods above, you are sneaky!" he called out in surprise, hand clapping to his chest before his shoulders sagged in relief.

Zhaleh froze.

Instead of speaking, she stared into his deep brown eyes as he settled back into his seat. In the sunlight, they were richer than a karr nut. How had she never noticed that before?

Zhaleh was more unbalanced than her first time training on the poles set up in the lake, but she had no water to break her fall this time. She had nothing.

She swallowed back the pain and focused on the healer before her.

She had her life. And at least one savior. This was like the old tales, an encounter that her life's journey would be marked by, for good or ill. She couldn't fall into despair in front of someone she owed. It would dishonor Ngnun.

Titus looked her over, cheeks warming in that fascinating show of human embarrassment. Like when he changed the bandages across her chest, his eyes pointedly looking anywhere but her breasts, his gaze struggled to check only her condition. Or so womanly intuition told her, especially when he met her stare again.

His nervousness eased the fright that had gripped her throat.

"You, my boy, are as inattentive as ever," the driver sighed from under his tilting hat. His voice was deep, befitting his size compared to Titus, but she could see nothing else of the man. "Relax. You know she won't bite."

"I know she means no harm," Titus said, karr nut brown eyes turning away. "But I wish she understood us."

"I do," Zhaleh said, ashamed.

Titus jumped out of his seat, turning around in a mix of startle and the beginning of a healer's wrath. He looked down at her, appraising her in a new light, but was dangerously unsteady from his haste, both his arms wavering for balance.

The wagon chose that moment to hit a stone, knocking Titus off one foot.

He pitched towards his left, hopelessly flailing his arms. His balance was ruined and he careened towards the edge.

Two hands snatched for him. Zhaleh grabbed hold of his wrist, while the driver clutched Titus' bronze ring studded belt.

"I'm fine," the young man insisted as he was pulled back in.

Zhaleh barely did more than steady him, but it was an overwhelming relief that she'd actually got to him instead of reaching with the wrong arm. It was the driver who had hauled Titus in, and she suspected from a glance at the driver's hand as it retreated that he might have been able to lift the smaller human with one arm if he wanted. All without qi.

Titus knelt on the bench and looked at Zhaleh's hand still holding him.

She released him, hoping she looked as apologetic as she felt.

The driver patted Titus on the shoulder. "Don't be so skittish around your patient."

"Concern moved me hastily," Titus said, shooting the driver a stern look before turning it on Zhaleh.

Her eyes widened, the crest feathers rising off the nape of her neck.

The young man's presence was utterly overwhelming, in a way that she'd only ever sensed in experts of The Art. But that couldn't be. She'd checked Titus' pulse days ago, no traces of trained qi had been in or on him. Was it possible to hide even that, if he was an expert that eclipsed her teacher and even dreadful Ngnandra, like they eclipsed her? But would such an expert have fallen so easily?

No, there was no such danger. An expert's presence was suffocating, a weight physical and spiritual, and that was absent from Titus. Zhaleh grew more confident by the moment as she felt no qi radiating from or within the young man. Something else dwelled within him, some force of will that prickled at her long trained senses.

"When did your speech return?" he asked, every bit the healer interrogating a patient. "Do you remember what I brought you for breakfast?"

"Hammering her with questions right away?" the driver grunted, hat shaking with his head.

"This is serious, master," Titus said. "Please," his gaze softened towards Zhaleh, "my questioning is vital for your health. I've been unsure whether your head was wounded, internally, or if there are wounds I could not sense."

She was right. He didn't know The Art, or else he would've known from her qi whether she had hidden injuries.

"My head is fine," she assured him, voice surprisingly calm to her own ear.

That seemed strange to Zhaleh. She should've sounded frayed and broken as she felt.

"Then," Titus smiled, "you won't mind these few questions."

She tilted her beak in shame. She hadn't meant to avoid a healer's questions, but knew it looked like that. "I was too weak to talk the first day."

"I see," Titus knelt the rest of the way on the bench, gaze not intense enough to make her feathers rise anymore. "What about the days since?"

"I didn't know if I should speak," Zhaleh admitted.

Titus nodded, face unmoved. "And what did I bring you to eat this morning?"

"Buffalo stew, sorghum cakes, and dried dates."

"What about last night?"

She blinked, confused about the purpose of this, but answered anyway. "Antelope liver, heart, and yam porridge."

Titus seemed satisfied, just as she'd been with the hearty meals.

"How long do you remember being in the wagon?" he asked.

"The day you tried to talk to me. The same day those old mothers turned my clothes into rags." She almost touched the sash on her waist. "Almost all of my clothes," she corrected herself.

"So the day you first opened your eyes all the way." An apologetic smile twitched onto Titus' face for a moment. Then he returned to that healer's stare and asked, "Did you understand everything we were saying that day?"

Zhaleh nodded, uneasily looking down due to making such an admission.

Instead of anger, as she'd braced herself for, relief relaxed Titus' jaw. "What was the first thing you remember me bringing for you to eat?"

"A strange potion and broth."

"Starvation curatives," he explained. "I could barely rouse you enough to get you to drink before you remember waking. The potions helped you recover an appetite, which I am glad to say has healthily returned to you with all your senses."

The murky spot from when she fled the mountain to waking wasn't something she wanted to touch. There were memories and nightmares she didn't want to face just yet. But she needed to know about this caravan.

"How long did that take?" Zhaleh asked.

"Five days between when we found you and when you remember waking."

She took the blow well, not showing her distress at being helpless for so long. But Zhaleh wanted to shudder and curl up. If the Blood-Drinkers had sent a raiding party after her then she would've never woken up.

Except the caravan was still moving along, so they couldn't have.

A pang of memory, of Zhaleh crushing the life out of a Blood-Drinker, flashed through her thoughts. It hadn't been on the mountain.

Titus shifted, snapping her from the memory or nightmare.

"I understand you were too weak to talk at first, and I gave up too quickly," he said. "But why have you been so hesitant to speak until now?"

Zhaleh swallowed her recollections. She glanced out at the plains passing by instead of answering his gentle question. It was wrong of her, but she had no good lie to give.

Titus eased into the bench. "We aren't going to abandon you, if you have been worried about that."

'Maybe you should have, for your own sake.'

Zhaleh breathed in and out, the peace of the plains and their abundant Wood qi settling her heart. She had to give him an answer. The truth meant explaining too much, and lying didn't feel right either.

She just couldn't find the words, even if her savior deserved a warning.

"There's no right or wrong answer," Titus said, resting a comforting few fingers on her wrist. The contact, someone just trying to let her know she wasn't alone, choked her into silence. He continued, speaking like a healer with twice as many years as he showed. "I only need to get a sense for how you've been thinking. You lost a lot of blood, and survived something terrible, but there is no hurry. Take all the time you need."

She shook her head, confused by everything. "Thank you. I," she chose her words carefully, "almost died. I know that."

"But your memory is hazy, or feels hard to tell apart from dreams."

She blinked, then stared at him.

"It is typical of traumatic experiences," he said, patting her on the arm. Carefully. As if she might run away into the wagon.

Some part of her wanted to.

"Time, rest, and more good food will help clear your memories up. All of which you have plenty of."

"I won't impose on you for long," she promised.

"If anyone is imposing it's me," Titus flushed, "for not explaining what you woke up into, and assuming you understood our intentions."

She looked at the bandages where her arm had been, a ripple of unease churning her stomach.

"How ominous," the driver hummed, "you make that sound, my boy."

Titus' cheeks reddened, his hand retreating from her.

A memory she couldn't banish flitted through her mind of a brother disciple, Tam, and how he would awkwardly smile or fidget whenever she teased him. How he'd try to impress her, tripping over his own attempts more often than not, but the sincerity in his gaze warmed every room. No real trickery ever clouded his kind eyes. Zhaleh almost folded in half and screamed as a second memory meshed with the first. Tam's dead gaze rolled up, his throat shredded down to the bones and body held up over a clay pot to collect his blood. The masked monsters laughing, too far away for her to avenge. But Sironka, he had been closer. He had—

"What I mean," Titus' embarrassed voice snapping Zhaleh back to the present, "is that you are in my care and must have more questions than me. But you should take everything slow, alright? Healer's orders. It takes weeks to recover from the anemia of blood loss, and you can afford to wait for your strength to return."

"Aye," the driver agreed. "Don't rush yourself."

Zhaleh nodded, unable to make her beak open. She could barely breathe through her clenched throat. It took all of her strength to keep her face unmoved, and the tears away.

She must have failed, because Titus' embarrassed expression changed. His smile was so much like Tam's it made her chest ache.

Would the grief ever end?

"Do you feel alright?" Titus asked, shifting to examine her better.

Somehow, she forced her beak open.

"I will be," she lied, mostly to herself.

"Resting in the wagon might help, at least until we're in camp."

"No," she insisted, terrified of being alone with the memories and no distraction.

If she wasn't near these two then the nightmares would've swallowed her like quicksand.

"Unfortunately I don't have any potions prepared." Titus' jaw shifted. "I'll correct that oversight tonight, so for now do you want to come up here? The seat is more comfortable, and I can sit back there."

Zhaleh shook her head. She already hurt, why not ask the most important questions to see what these two men would do?

"Why are you helping me? Why—"

"Because I can," Titus answered immediately, interrupting her before she could mention she might have been followed.

"Well said," the driver said, head turning to reveal some of the bearded face beneath the brim, but not his eyes. His smile was proud, fatherly even, as he looked at the young man. "But it's easier to understand if you know my apprentice's name: He is Titus Horatius Felix. The first son of Marcus Horatius Medicus, renowned healer of the black sanded coasts of Etrucia."

"Not how I would introduce myself," Titus uttered, eyes shifting away in something more complicated than embarrassment.

"No, it isn't," the driver chuckled. "However, it would dishonor your father and your training to leave a wounded traveller, wouldn't it?"

"That needs no mentioning."

"Well now that I've said it, your patient understands you honor a great man by offering your healing to those in need."

Titus' mouth twitched, like he was going to say something and instantly decided against it. He resigned himself with a deep breath. "True."

Zhaleh, taken in by the pace of their back and forth, could only question the gods on why men like this had been set upon her path. Stupidly, instead of telling them about what happened for her to end up so wounded and chased to wherever they found her, all she could utter was, "I've never heard of Etrucia."

"My father would pale if he heard that," Titus smiled just a bit wider, far too pleased. He must not have seen her being ground under her own embarrassment. "My master, however, is—"

"Capable of introducing himself," he said, turning and flashing a beard hidden smile, "I'll not be hearing 'caravan master' from anyone else. But, ah, forgive me, I forget my manners entirely."

The driver took off his hat and Zhaleh finally got a look at his face. He was nearly the opposite of Titus.

Tall even without his absurd hat, broad shouldered, fingers thick and rough from years of a craft, the driver struck her as a warrior. But also not one at all, despite his face, as there was too much of a calm presence about him. His prominent brow ridge, bushy eyebrows, slight hook to a nose that had been broken many times, and hard cheeks should've made him intimidating. Instead, his face seemed friendly under that black hair and beard that made his age impossible for her to even guess. He was older than her, at least.

The green eyes that beheld her, however, made her freeze in place. "I am Emrys," he said, "master of this caravan and teacher of Titus, though in skills that have nothing to do with healing, I am sorry to say."

"You." She blinked, remembering her hand clutching his wrist and feeling no trained qi. But also how he looked at her, as if he understood her. Those weren't dreams. "I met you at the karr tree."

"Aye," his smile was warm, and something he wore well despite the intensity of his face. Hat resting on his lap, he passed the reins to Titus and turned to really look at her. "Said I'd take you to one of the best healers to visit the plains, didn't I?"

"Yes," she said, head feeling uncomfortably light. "You did." A moment too late she remembered her pride and manners. "Thank you, Emrys."

"It was nothing. But, you still don't know why I helped," he guessed.

Zhaleh nodded, her thoughts a mess as she reflected on that murky haze of memory.

She'd been chased across the plains. Hyenas, and even a Blood-Drinker, though she couldn't recall whether she drove him off, lost him, or killed him. The feeling of swinging her sword with the wrong hand, the cuts brutal and imprecise, overwhelmed her. Hyenas died underfoot as she ran for a tree. More of the beasts kept appearing. Too many to be a hunting pack, and too eager to throw themselves into certain death. Thunder had cracked in the distance, distracting them long enough for her to scramble up the karr tree. She knew that tree so well she could climb it on a moonless, starless night. But the beasts were down there, circling, waiting for—

A warm palm pushed on her shoulder. Zhaleh remembered to breathe and pulled herself up from the forward tilt that had her curling against the back of the bench.

She didn't want to look at Emrys or Titus, couldn't stand the thought of her saviors pitying her, but they both stared.

She had to meet their eyes.

Titus, head turned and trusting in the packbeasts to not wander off course as the hill rose ahead, tried to figure out if he needed to come over the bench and make her lie down. Emrys, however, pulled his hand away from her and put his hat back on, protecting his reddening skin from the sun.

"For this ailment," Emrys said, face unreadable, "I've got something better than his potions: wine."

"Master, you are not giving my patient recovering from severe blood loss wine."

Of all the things swimming in her head and scattered heart, shame at not telling them her name moved her beak.

"Zhaleh," she half-whispered. "My name is Zhaleh." Her beak sagged down, but she forced herself to lift it. The same pride that let her do that refused to let her tell them about her sect. Instead, she warbled out a pathetic, tired, "Thank you. I wouldn't have my life without your good will. But I should—"

"Hold on," Emrys said, his large hand snapping to steady her shoulder as the wagon jolted up the hill.

She clutched the back of the bench, and Titus shouted at the packbeasts that had taken his distraction as an excuse to try and turn. He got them under control and back on course, but she hardly noticed.

If she closed her eyes then she'd see too many dead faces that had been bright with life not so long ago.

She wanted to go curl up in the back of the wagon. Yet she'd fail herself by breaking down in tears the moment she went in there. Jumping off and running into the plains had a lot of appeal, but Zhaleh wasn't completely mad with grief. She knew she'd barely make it a dozen strides right now. Worse, if she ran off and fell then Titus and Emrys would no doubt come after her with nothing but compassion in their hearts.

"I don't know about you," Emrys said quietly, hat tilted back so the brim avoided her, "but a hot meal always starts to settle my head after a long day."

"I'm fine," she uttered through her aching throat.

"Hm." He considered her for a moment and squeezed her shoulder just a little. She had forgotten his hand was even there. "If you're fine, then would you care to join Titus and myself in our mostly private dinner? No better way to get to know fellow travellers, as my own father would've said."

She swallowed against the rock in her throat.

Dwelling on her pain would do nothing for the saviors before her. She had to move forward, even if she tripped over herself.

Zhaleh spoke the first words that came to her. "Can I bring my sword?"

"Of course." Emrys sounded surprised she even asked.

She was baffled by how calmly he reacted to an ill thought out request, and it must have shown.

"Where I was born," he said, "it's unbearably rude for a host to make a guest leave their weapons behind; says you don't trust them to keep it sheathed."

That sounded odd, but she supposed it had some sense to it. Emrys, she recalled, had faced down her blood soaked sword without a hint of fear. He'd offered his wrist without knowing what she wanted. Whether he was mad or just a merchant with a friendly face, she needed to know more about him. Her slaughtered sect might owe him a debt, if he and Titus were sincere as they seemed.

So she stumbled to sound unwounded, and not shattered into so many pieces that conversation wasn't possible. "That custom sounds dangerous," she muttered.

"I suppose it is," he said, half-laughing. "Although, I must confess, it goes both ways. A guest isn't allowed to complain if a host wears his own sword to a table."

Zhaleh bobbed her head. That sounded much more practical, and it wiped away some of the shame she felt.

"Not that I ever care to carry a sword," Emrys said.

His robes could easily hide one, but she didn't mention that. "What about Titus?"

The healer was too focused on the packbeasts to hear, shouting at them to stay steady as the wagon rattled the rest of the way up the hill.

"A man like him doesn't need a sword. However," Emrys' voice dropped to a whisper, "if you prefer not to have additional company, I can disappear for the night."

She reached for his arm as he let go of her shoulder. The sleeve of his robe was softer, and cooler to the touch than she expected. "You must have questions for me. I can answer them over a meal."

He smiled as the wagon stopped. "You don't need to act like you're a prisoner, Zhaleh."

Her feathers fluffed. At first rising in shock, then furrowing in anger, until they swiftly settled into embarrassment. That was what she sounded like, wasn't it? A resigned captive.

"So I'm just a guest?" she asked.

"Have we treated you any other way?"

"No." Zhaleh released his sleeve. "You haven't."

"But," Emrys drawled, "you can't figure out why someone on the Mgan Plains would help a wounded traveler for nothing."

She stared at him, wondering how well he could read her thoughts from just her face. What else did he suspect from her?

"It's wise to be wary on these plains," he said. "Wisdom, however, is for philosophers, and I am no such man."

"I should be grateful I met someone so..." she didn't mean to trail off, but her throat chose that moment to tighten. The phantom feeling of a blade passing through her flesh clamped her beak shut.

It passed as quickly as it came, nothing but an agonized memory that came at the worst moment.

Emrys smiled warmly instead of taking offense at her sudden silence. "Listen in around camp and you'll hear plenty of colorful things to call me."

"I'm sorry," she muttered, shamefully touching her bandages. "I do not mean to sound ungrateful."

"You haven't," Emrys patted her shoulder again. "We've got at least ten days until we see Tpocic-tal, our destination. Plenty of meal times for a guest and hosts to stop being strangers."

And many more nights to suffer tormenting memories, or whenever else they decided to cut through her focus. Zhaleh's fingers trembled as she forced them away from her bandages.

She needed to be strong. To hold herself up again.

Emrys leaned in slightly, expression tempered by compassion. "You're safe. Rest and recover, there'll be plenty of chances to talk later. Whenever you need or want to."

"I owe you an explanation," she managed, stomach uneasy at the thought of mentioning the Blood-Drinkers.

"No you don't. But if you want to tell me anything, you've got our ears. Mine and Titus', though you hopefully knew that already."

Zhaleh nodded, even though she hadn't known. "I do owe you an explanation, though."

"We'll disagree on that, but I'll gladly listen to whatever you want to tell me," he said, squeezing her shoulder. "But are you sure you're up for it right now? You look like you need some sunlight and a good meal before talking about anything harsh."

"That might help," she admitted quietly, touching the comforting arm.

She'd be dead without the charity of these two, and it had been days. Waiting until dusk or night to tell them about the Blood-Drinkers wouldn't hurt, would it? She knew they needed to hear about it, at least. That was a step further than she'd been only a few minutes ago.

"If you're worried about us, don't be." Emrys let go of her shoulder. "There's no safer caravan on the plains."

That was doubtful, but she nodded anyway.

"Good. But now I must apologize, as I must run off. There's a camp I have to oversee and rounds for me to make."

"Or," Titus said, setting the reins down and turning around to stare at his master. "I can take care of the rounds."

"You?" Emrys' brows raised up, hat shifting to the young man. "Why?"

"Because you, master, should be resting."

"Plenty of time for that after dinner, my boy."

"And before," Titus said, leaning over the side of the wagon. He pulled a long, bent staff from under the bench and handed it over to Emrys. "We're quite low on gimth, aren't we?"

"Aye," Emrys snatched the staff, face losing its warmth for a moment. "I suppose we are."

The robed man sighed, then looked apologetically at Zhaleh. "Well, Zhaleh. Care to stretch your legs around camp? Dinner won't be until nightfall."

Everything moved so fast around these two, but there was familiar comfort in that. It reminded Zhaleh of home. A painful thing, yet not crippling. So she checked the sky, saw that night was at least two hands away, and clutched the back of the bench. She nodded, trying not to seem desperate about avoiding being alone with her thoughts. "Walking would be good."

"Then I'll be off, master," Titus said, standing up. "You can show her around while I make sure the twins don't slack."

Not waiting for a reply, the apprentice clambered off the side of the wagon and strode away, almost jogging. It was unthinkably rude. Zhaleh checked the bearded man for some sign of disapproval, and saw him pinching the bridge of his distinct nose.

"Ah," he breathed out, sounding defeated instead of angry like she expected. His clear eyes only confirmed it. "I suppose that's the healer's orders then. Well."

He patted her shoulder again and shifted to the edge of the wagon. Using his staff, he knocked over a small ladder on bronze hinges and climbed down. It didn't escape Zhaleh's notice that he favored his left leg a great deal. Which made what he'd said make more sense.

Leaning on his staff, taking weight off his left leg, Emrys offered her a hand down.

Despite her weakness, she steadied the sword stuffed into her sash and hopped off the edge of the wagon. A bit of focused qi steadied her landing. Maybe it was pride that had her refuse his help, or the lightness in her head. Zhaleh wasn't sure. Nor did she get to think about it. The rattling of dozens of wagons coming over the hill distracted her, snorts and calls of beasts mingling in with many voices.

The liveliness warmed something in her, enough to drown out the fear of any lurking spies of the Blood-Drinkers. She'd been left alone this long. The best chance to kill her quietly had passed, so waiting to tell her saviors about the dangers seemed more acceptable. That or she was being cowardly.

Sealing those thoughts away, Zhaleh tried to appreciate how nice it was to be standing beneath the open sky again. She didn't feel good, but being upright was so much better than hunching over and hiding away in that wagon.

"Are you alright?" Emrys asked, concern plain to hear. "You're swaying quite a bit."

Zhaleh shifted her stance. Missing the weight of an arm, and her head light now that she was standing, had made her wobble without realizing it. Nothing her training couldn't quickly compensate for.

"Why don't you lean on me, for the sake of Titus' nerves if nothing else?" Emrys offered. "I'm sturdier than I look."

"Even with your leg?" she asked, perhaps too rudely.

The concern was reasonable.

"Ah, that?" He tapped his thigh and shook his head. "That's nothing to be worried about. I could carry you around on my shoulders again without a problem."

He'd carried her? Zhaleh quietly vowed to find out later if he was serious about that, her muddled memories too painful to touch right now. She was standing up and free from the misery of solitude. She didn't want to spoil it, or appear ungrateful.

But Zhaleh wasn't about to leave her remaining arm bound up. So, focusing on each step to keep herself steady, she went to his left side and said, "I can hold you up this time."

"Hah, outdone by my apprentice's patient," Emrys shook his head, hiding his eyes beneath his hat's brim. "Alright, you both win. Although, if I didn't know better you both planned this."

"Titus wouldn't fall off a wagon just for that." She looked questioningly at the tall human, who was within a handspan or two of her own height. "Would he?"

"No, no he wouldn't," Emrys shook his head.

He started to put his arm on her shoulders, but she shifted to stop him. "Under my wings."

A polite look met her eyes. "Are you sure?"

"Where I grew up I'd help people walk home after exhausting days, just as much as I'd be helped back."

"And your bandages?"

"That's why you should go under."

"And everything else?" he asked, face unmoving.

But his meaning, as a man, was clear. It was surprising, with how he acted around Titus, but Zhaleh assumed it was a foreigner thing. She bumped him lightly with a wing, careful not to nudge his leg. "I should trust my host, shouldn't I?"

"Enough to get you away from the chattering chaos about to unfold on this hill, at least," he said, shifting his hat askew and putting his arm under her wings. She adjusted his compliant hand so that he'd be able to put weight on her if needed to, instead of just helping her stay steady.

Zhaleh had his arm settle just above her sash. Emrys, strangely, seemed stiff in how he moved after that.

Not that it showed on his face or in his voice.

"This way," he said, starting off and putting most of his weight on his staff instead of her, "we can watch them get set up from a distance. Then, well, you'll like the show that my guards put on every night."

Ten men hid in the shade of a dry stream bank, the bend offering reprieve from the sun as it dipped west. All were honored hunters, the strongest of their clan. Kimutai, their scarred leader, drew his plan in the dusty dirt with a stick.

"The caravan will pass a hand after dawn," he said, scratching a line through the squiggle he'd drawn for the stream.

"We hit the first wagon?" asked Lemein.

Kimutai dashed out marks for the caravan, half of it across the stream.

"The middle?"

"Get them stuck," Kimutai said.

"We can't dig a trap for just the middle," objected Murran, the youngest.

A few men scoffed and others laughed, but Kimutai smiled. His teeth were white against his dark skin. "But we can kill their pack beasts."

Quiet fell over the hunters. They looked among each other to see if this was a joke, but only Kimutai smiled.

Lemein broke the silence, almost snarling as he said, "You would make war with Tpocic-tal?"

The men all around Kimutai had excited grins, as if they could stand against the might of a city set on crushing raiders or a clan. Kimutai's expression soured. Lemein understood, having seen the massive settlement on the lake, and his bitterness calmed the ignorant arrogance around them.

"The city won't war over a few pack beasts and plundered wagons," Kimutai argued. "We're not worth gathering soldiers. If they even know which clan raided one of their caravans."

"Tpocic-tal will send their great warriors. The ones with tassels on their swords."

"Legends," Murran laughed, the younger men nodding in amused agreement.

Lemein's scowl wiped the looks of their faces. "Legends only because they leave no enemies alive," he said. "I saw them when I went to the city. One man with a tassel is as strong as all of us."

"And one would cost more than ten soldiers," Kimutai argued. "They don't care about the plains. Their rivers need all those warriors."

This time, Lemein had nothing to say.

"We strike once, before the dry season ends." Kimutai tapped his sketch in the dirt. "We wait for a wagon with cloth or spices. Our five fastest take an arm load and run, different directions. They won't chase us."

"Why not?" Lemein demanded.

"Because Murran and I will panic their herd. Why chase after arm loads of spice and cloth when so many beasts run?"

Though his face twisted, Lemein was starting to come around to the idea. The plunder would bring glory and no danger if they never brought it to the city. He opened his mouth, eyes calm compared to his frown.

A hyena yelped in pain above them.

Everyone sprang up. Lemein was the first, whipping the sling off his shoulder and slipping a stone in its pouch. Kimutai leaped up from his crouch and yanked his spear out of the ground, all his hunters joining him in pointing their weapons at the brush covered bank. Thorny branches rustled as the beast up there yelped again and tried to get away.

The hair on Lemein's neck prickled.

On instinct alone he whirled about to face the opposite side. There, in the grass, was a shape that hadn't been there before, so he loosed his sling with a pop.

Stone clanged off bronze, earning not a yelp of pain but a low growl.

From out of the grass came a monster. Lemien thought it was a lion from the size, then he noticed the spotted fur half hidden by black patches. They were soot darkened metal, plates strapped to a beast with eyes burning with malice. The giant hyena's mouth twisted into a hateful grin, its red stained fangs like sharpened knives. It stopped at the edge of the dead stream bed, two smaller hyenas stalking in behind nervously, heads low and hackles bristling.

"There's more," Lemein shouted, tooth scarred fingers trembling as he fed a new stone into his sling.

His fellow hunters turned about, shuffling into a defensive circle of lowered spears, protecting all sides.

Lemien crushed his fear. For all that armor some madman had put on it, the big hyena's head was unadorned. He'd get the beast between the eyes. Lemein stood in the center of the formation and spun his sling.

Wood screamed angrily as a stinging insect diving past.

Lemein's chest crunched wetly, the breath stolen from his lungs. His sling flew from his fingers, bouncing away forgotten as he grasped at himself. Blood gushed from the center of his ribs.

Behind him, Kimutai clutched a slash on his arm, but he hardly noticed the flowing blood. He stared through a hole punched straight through his oldest friend. Lemein's legs shook but he refused to fall, letting Kimutai see through that mortal gap as two legs slunk out of the grasses and onto the dry stream.

Lemein collapsed once he saw his killer.

Five monstrous eyes beheld the hunters, the man owning them unimpressive in stature. He cocked his head, shifting the red cloth wrapped close around his neck. Gray and black braids hung unnaturally behind him, while carved bone charms dangled where ears should've been. A bracer woven with fangs and claws hugged his right arm, his dusky skin rippling with wiry muscle. Several short spears hung behind him, the blackened heads' many shapes too cruel for war or hunting.

But it was those unnatural eyes, on a bronze mask half painted and without a mouth, that kept the hunters frozen in place. Five dead metal eyes of a bright, blue-ish green. A mask, only a mask, but the moment any hunter stopped looking at them, the eyes started twisting and snarling. It seemed too real to be a trick of the sun.

Lemein twitched, hand reaching for help as he watered the dead stream, yet no one could save him now.

Kimutai felt sweat drip from his chin as he watched this stranger.

The masked man walked up to the hyenas. The small ones bowed like their pack leader was before them, and he patted the neck of the big one fondly. The red fanged beast huffed, not letting the hunters out of its sight. The man ran a finger over a scratch on one of the armor plates, and he quickly crouched.

He was inspecting the beast for wounds while Kimutai's friend twitched in death's throes.

Murran had enough courage to dive down and check on Lemien gurgling in the dust. Kimutai didn't stop the young man. It might have been too late for his fallen friend, but it was better to die with a familiar face nearby than alone.

Kimutai ignored his bleeding arm and risked a look behind him. Buried in the risen bank of stream was a bloodied haft, feathered end dangling without a speck of red. No sign of any hyenas either, but he didn't trust it.

He turned back. "What have we done to you?"

Five inhuman eyes flicked to Kimutai, then twitched into a mouthless frown.

"He," the masked man pointed at Lemien, "struck at Redtooth."

The armored hyena chuffed in clear agreement.

Kimutai raised his voice, unwilling to show his fear. "So you kill our friend?"

"He meant to kill mine," snarled the mask.

They had encountered a wandering madman. One that could throw a spear clear through a man, like the tall tales told by the campfire of War-Dancers and Blood-Drinkers. Kimutai's knuckles ached against his spear, his hunch sickening, but he had eight men to see home. How he felt didn't matter. "Then we bury our grudges here. Eh?"

Murran started to say something, but Kimutai silenced him with a glare. Then the rest of his hunters. When they were away from this unnatural man that had hyenas bowing to him, all of them could hate him.

"Grudges?" The masked man laughed, dry as the stream bed.

He lurched up, sinewy muscles flexing as he drew a far too short spear off his back. The head was wide and viciously barbed, almost hooked. "Why hate prey? You all die the same."

Murran bellowed a war cry, scrabbling up and shoving forward, bronze tipped spear in hand.

He wasn't alone, three hunters breaking the defensive formation to join in revenge.

Kimutai spat angrily. There were still hyenas prowling behind them, but he wasn't about to let some young man run to his death. Running or waiting would be more dangerous than diving head first into danger.

"For our ancestors!" he roared, leading the rest with a chant. "Waiting in Zekel's skies!"

The hyenas, even the big armored one, fled up the bank.

The masked man backed down the dry path of the stream with skipping steps, his spear spinning in one hand, facing them the entire time.

Nine hunters chased him, Kimutai shouting coded commands to regain control of his men. He managed to hold them back, even though it was one foe they faced, until they chased him into a wide, flat spot in the stream bed.

The fastest men on the wings of their charge spread out, getting around the masked man while Murran and Kimutai lead the frontward attack.

Spear twirling, the masked man swatted aside Murran's angry strike and ducked under Kimutai's stomach skewering jab. Braids swept against the streambed, snapping up as he twirled to his feet, dust and pebbles flying. A stone hit Kimutai's forehead, grit sticking in his mouth, but he wouldn't relent. He stabbed and stabbed, missing even when Murran tried sweeping at the masked man's legs. Battle fury had taken hold of the hunters, their foe dodging over and over, his footwork and sweeping braids whipping up a growing cloud of dust.

Soon, none of them could see through the haze hanging over their spot in the dry stream. It lingered unnaturally, thicker than the rainy season fog and defiant of the light breeze.

Kimutai backed off, pulling Murran with him. He could see five men, the rest were hidden on the other side of the gritty cloud.

A pained scream rose, dying quickly as it began.

"Wait!" Kimutai bellowed, fingers digging into Murran's shoulder.

Sweat mixed with the lingering dust, Kimutai focusing on nothing to see everything. He prayed to the lost god Zekel that the sound had been the masked man being run through from behind.

A barbed spearhead snapped out of the dust like a viper, hooking the ankle of the man to Kimutai's right and yanking him down.

"No!" Murran shouted, breaking free and running to help as the man was dragged towards the dust cloud.

Kimutai reached for him.

Five monstrous eyes erupted from the dust, belonging not to a man but a monster. A needle-like spear punched through Murran's neck, thrown by now empty hands. The monster grabbed the swirling lunge Kimutai made, a spin tearing the spear from his grasp.

The last thing the hunter saw was his own spear's hooked head rushing towards his eye, and the masked monstrosity that held it.

---

Stubbornly putting the majority of his weight on his staff, Emrys ignored the sounds of camp. He listened to Zhaleh's breathing instead, admiring how steady and measured it was despite the fatigue she hid in her gait. To think she'd been about to collapse in on herself earlier.

He led her towards the cattle 'pen' being staked in the ground, where the flightier pack beasts and all the cattle were already herded in for the coming night. Zhaleh's intense gaze fixated on the creatures, occasionally snapping towards one of the herders before flicking back. Once they were behind the makeshift pen, she finally spoke.

"There are more than I expected." The bird's pace slowed. "How many are there?"

"Your guess would be as good as mine."

Surprise snapped Zhaleh's blue gaze towards him. "You don't know how many are in your herd?"

"They're not mine, not most of them," Emrys chuckled. "My beasts are kept elsewhere. But the caravan is the safest in all the plains, so I agreed to let a herd come along. Once we reach the city I'll get my pick of any two beasts, so I needn't concern myself further."

"A small price if this is your caravan," she said, observing instead of judging.

With how she stared at him, Emrys considered lowering the brim of his hat to sharpen the mystery and keep some distance from his guest.

Instead, his hand across her back, he shrugged it off. For all her curiosity about him, he had some of his own for this stranger he'd picked up. "I don't have much use for cattle in a city. But their village helped me find what I was after, so I bargained them down from five."

Zhaleh's hooked beak shifted as she considered what to say.

"They knew where some rare stones and trees were," Emrys explained, "on the southern edges of the plains. That was payment enough for me having their cattle on my trip back, but they insisted I have something."

"But you did more."

"It does sound that way, doesn't it?"

"Charity isn't easily given on the plains."

He nodded, knowing she meant her situation as well. "Watch."

Emrys leaned his staff against his shoulder and pointed to the pen. All the stakes were in place, one of the herders waving the signal from within. His mouth moved as if shouting, but there was nothing. All the grunts of the gathered up cattle were abruptly absent as well, at least from the makeshift area. Farther back in camp the pack beasts still made some noise as they were handled separately.

To his own mild surprise, Zhaleh noticed the change immediately. "Why is it so quiet?"

"See those posts they put up?"

She followed his pointing finger. "Yes."

"They're enchanted so that, once they're all put in place, most sound within the boundary can't enter or leave. It keeps the cattle calm amid all the racket."

"Enchanted?" Blue eyes turned on him, her hooked beak only sharpening her startled stare. "As in magic?"

"Of course."

"You have magicians in your caravan?"

"This is all the work of enchanted trinkets."

Emrys watched as she chewed over the selective knowledge he gave her.

Something worried her greatly. He could feel it in her tense back and the anxious shift of wings above his still, polite arm. Not many men understood the body language of birdkin. He sure hadn't, not at first.

Zhaleh made up her mind, trying too hard to speak calmly. "Won't that deafen the herders if danger sneaks in?"

Not wanting to spook her, Emrys gestured to the man and wife looping string around the top of each stake, connecting them with thin twine. "Once they've connected all the posts by that string, the sound within the pen will come out again. But if anything happens to cut it—"

"The sudden silence will let them know, while an intruder hears only what's in the pen."

"Aye," he nodded approvingly.

"There's more, isn't there?"

"Perhaps," he chuckled. The herders, and the families he trusted most, had amulets that would shake if the string broke. But some things needed to stay secrets, for the good of all. "Perhaps not. The string is far from foolproof, but it's quite easy to teach and explain. And the quiet, I have learned, scares many things on these plains. Men, beasts, even insects are unsettled by a sphere of abrupt silence."

Instead of another question from Zhaleh, a nervous touch had her readjust the sword on her left hip, the same side as her arm. Emrys wondered if she planned ahead having it there, or if it was just a habit to tie the weapon for a crossdraw she could no longer perform.

"What," she began, "are they giving you for those enchanted trinkets?"

"Hm?" He raised a brow at her. "What makes you think they're mine?"

"You taught them to use it, didn't you?"

"Titus worried too much about your head," he chuckled, tapping his staff against the ground three times. "If I don't have to hear cattle panicking from the sound of camp being prepared or waking, that's payment enough for me. Now, come quick, you won't want to miss this."

Emrys urged her along, guiding them around the makeshift pen.

"What keeps the cattle in place?" she asked as they walked.

"More enchantments hidden on the stakes." Emrys shook his head. "But I suspect it's more their nature and secrets of the herders. Better protected in groups, after all."

Silence overtook Zhaleh, heavy thoughts weighing down upon her. It didn't change her gait, the rhythm of her breathing remained the same, but he noticed how her gaze drooped ever so slightly.

A serious talk right away might have been better for her. Emrys had hoped his apprentice would take the hint on the wagon that more than his patient's body was wounded, but Titus deftly left him to deal with that. Or so it seemed to Emrys. He never was sure what that young man did or didn't know, which made teaching him so worthwhile yet trying. But surely Titus, even coming from stuck up Etrucian stock, would've seen how Zhaleh's world was in tatters.

A familiar pain started building in his leg as they walked away from the pens and toward a nice boulder at the edge of the hill top. The temptation to lean on it or sit on the stone grew as each step lanced white hot pain down to his toes.

'Pinched nerve, the boy called it.' Emrys kept his face steady and gait controlled, refusing to put too much weight on his staff and any at all the wounded birdkin.

Only ten paces from the mostly flat boulder, the sun shining at them as it dipped to the horizon, Zhaleh spoke up. "Who are they?"

Emrys followed her pointing claw to where a pair of bare chested wolfkin were quickly marking out lines with string and stakes near the base of the hill. "Tross and Tass, my personal guards. I suspect that—ah yes, there he is." Titus walked down the hill towards the sorcerers, carrying both of their gem encrusted spears. "Come, come," Emrys urged the bird to the boulder, "the camp is bored of this show, but the first time deserves a good look at it."

"How many guards do you have?"

"Two," he smiled.

"Two," she repeated, head snapping to him and her sharp blue gaze searching for a lie.

"When two thirds of the men in this caravan are ready to jump at my call with a weapon in hand, I only need two guards." She didn't believe him, not that he expected such an absurd truth to be easily accepted. "So," Emrys motioned with his staff to the boulder, "would you care to sit or stand? They won't be starting for a while."

"You have a mere two guards. In this caravan of almost a hundred people, with nearly twice as many animals."

"Only the bravest of men were allowed to join in."

Zhaleh stopped two strides from the boulder. "Do you know what is upon these plains? What if a hyena pack, or khrett, or worse comes after what is with you?"

"Those hyenas after you learned how deadly Tross and Tass are," Emrys said, "and they're the darlings of many a woman in camp for what they've done to every khrett stupid enough to approach."

Her wings shifted and resettled, but Zhaleh didn't step away. She was torn between watching him and the wolfkin being joined by Titus, far away.

Ultimately, the sharpness turned entirely upon Emrys.

"If this is all you have, I should leave."

"You don't feel safe here?" he asked, lifting a brow.

"No," she began.

"Then wait a moment before you judge my guards too harshly." He slipped his arm off her back, careful to keep his manners, and shifted away a step. Somehow, Emrys avoided limping. "Whatever's crushing your shoulders, Zhaleh, can wait a moment longer as well."

"This is not about your guards. I am..." the words choked in her throat. She fought through it, letting go of her sword and giving a slight bow. "I am grateful, Emrys. But my pride won't let me bring danger to you."

He had to hold his tongue or else he'd have laughed, and she was far too serious for that. Instead, Emrys leaned on his staff. "Of the hyenas that were waiting for you, those that didn't die immediately to my guards ran away on fire before dropping."

"It wasn't..." She swallowed, eyes casting down instead of into a memory that so clearly clouded her heart. "Worse than hyenas stalk the plains."

"Indeed it does." He turned, waving to the wolfkin as they took the spears from Titus.

Tross went to one end of the staked out area, and Tass the other.

"Emrys, I do not mean to dishonor you. If I am to be grateful, however, I must—"

"Wait a moment," he said, backing up a step so he could slap a hand on the birdkin's back, under her wings. That jolted her into reassessing him, but he already tipped his hat down to shield his eyes from the worst of the sun. "Just watch. Don't take your eyes off of that spot between them."

Discontent rumbled in the birdkin, but she must've felt grateful enough to humor him. Her back stiff as a board, she waited.

It didn't take long.

Tross and Tass reached their corners at the same time, a hundred of their long strides between them. Their spears stabbed down at the marked area. Emrys leaned more heavily on his staff while making certain his arm looped around Zhaleh, the bird bristling at what she likely mistook for boldness.

Titus stood, arms crossed and confident, almost a dozen strides up the hill.

Light flashed on those gem encrusted and maddeningly enchanted spears, the glow disappearing into the soil beneath thick plains grass.

The ground shook, Emrys ready for it and steadying Zhaleh. She made a startled, gasping squawk that was drowned out by a thunderous crack.

An enormous chunk of dirt rumbled up from where the wolfkin had marked off. A hundred strides long, wedge shaped, and tall as them, it flipped over with an ominous groan. Like a great tree being pulled out and turned over, the mass of dirt tipped back, slamming down with a monstrous _ thump _ that Emrys felt in his chest.

Tass cheered, lifting his spear up in a happy cry. Ice would be matted on his fur, warming up unevenly as the sun melted one side faster. Tross just shook himself off and started sprinting to the next section, already marked out, while his twin brother hopped into the ditch they'd just created.

"Magic," Zhaleh breathed in.

Emrys, unable to help himself, tilted his hat back. Her eyes were wide with wonder and perhaps a dash of fear.

"Aye," he smiled. "Both my guards are sorcerers. Not quite the magicians you'll have heard of out on these plains, but one of them is worth every plainsman in this caravan, and then some, in battle."

He tapped his staff three times. "Now, are you quite as worried about my caravan being unprepared for whatever dangers have been eating at you?"

She blinked slowly, head then turning tentatively towards him. Only for her gaze to snap back to the wolves down the hill. "They're doing more?"

"Of course."

The light flashed once more. The ground shook, Emrys bracing the bird less this time, though she still swayed. He suspected it was the surprise of witnessing war magic in person.

"Before the sun sets," he said once the sounds settled, "my little hilltop camp will be surrounded by a ditch and its very own earthworks. Meanwhile, every beast or man for miles will know something terrible is here."

"They would," she uttered.

The sounds went on and on, some ditches much shorter than the others, until Tross and Tass disappeared around the curve of the hill. Titus, of course, followed them, always standing in a center point for where the next chunk would be turned over.

"Especially since," Emrys said, "this has been done every night since we found you."

"What?" Her crest feathers rose, neck fluffing in a mix of confusion and startle. "But I heard nothing."

"Nor would you feel it, seeing how enchanted that wagon of mine is," Emrys chuckled. She was so tense, voice so strained with what she felt more eager to run from than talk about, he patted her back before letting go of her. "Had to put you somewhere you wouldn't be bothered."

"Are there more of these sorcerers in your camp?" she asked.

"No."

Her stare didn't believe him.

"It's the truth," he grinned. "But if it isn't, that only makes us far more dangerous to anything out there that might have followed a wounded bird."

She blinked. Zhaleh looked out at the shifting grasslands, dyed in deepening reds and oranges from the sun. Then she turned in place, facing the east to stare off not at the wagons and tents but memories that Emrys didn't want to intrude upon.

The ground shook beneath them.

Her stance, so steady in appearance, swayed. A hand went up without thinking, hers grabbing his shoulder while he put his on her side.

Emrys let go first, the feeling of feathers and her silky smooth sash something that stirred up thoughts he'd rather not face. He looked into her eyes, which slowly returned to the present.

If she'd noticed him grab her hip, she didn't care.

"Forgive me," she muttered. "Much has happened."

"And you lost a few days," he pointed out. "You needn't rush anything, Zhaleh, least of all yourself."

She considered her words carefully. "I don't know where to begin, or if I even should."

"Then don't make that decision now."

"I must." She grimaced. "I owe my saviors an explanation."

"Well, Titus isn't here, is he?"

"No," she breathed out. "But you are the caravan master. And you chose to bring me to a healer."

"Whatever you are afraid is chasing you," Emrys said, trying a direct approach, "they either gave up or are terrified of my guards. So you can save an explanation."

"You've known?"

"Guessed. And it wasn't a stretch to assume you were in some kind of fight, not attacked solely by hyenas, judging by your wound."

She flinched, then the ground shook again.

"I must keep some secrecy," she whispered.

"Keep as much as you need."

"You give too much, Emrys."

"Hardly," he half chuckled. "You've just never met a man like me, even though there's whole lands filled with them."

Zhaleh fidgeted, clearly not paying attention to his attempt to be lighthearted. "Does anyone else know what you guessed?"

"Titus, Tross, Tass, and I are the only ones who know a blade cut you. Nobody else saw you close enough to make the guess, and if there are any rumors, it's that we found you and hyenas."

"My saviors deserve to know the truth," she said, voice choking up.

Not in tears, but something worse.

A pain that allowed for no such weakness.

"Save any difficult choices for after you've got a meal in you," Emrys suggested. "Then maybe I can convince you to not call us your saviors once we've broken bread together."

"I doubt you will succeed," Zhaleh said.

"I'm stubborn. Nearly as stubborn as you, for surviving and daring to trust someone like me on the plains."

That got a dry, emotionless laugh out of her beak, quiet as a whisper.

"It was your eyes," she muttered. Her crest feathers shifted, as if she realized that was spoken aloud instead of kept in her thoughts. A bit quicker, she said, "I thought you wouldn't try to trick me. And that if I was wrong, I'd die anyway."

"I'm glad you survived, Zhaleh."

He might as well have punched her in the stomach for how hard those words hit. Fingers dug into his shoulder, and he faced her pain as an unyielding tower the winter winds. One finger at a time, Zhaleh's grip relaxed. Her spirit hadn’t healed, far from it, but she wasn't on the verge of giving up anymore.

Instead of speaking, she moved back to his side, her arm draping over his shoulders. "The plains don't suit my saviors," she muttered, trying to forget what had come over her.

"I'm glad someone sees that about me." He shook his head and made sure his hat was tilted back so she could see him. Mystery would only make things worse for her, not better. "Now, I simply have to show there's no need to call me your savior."

A weak attempt at a smile crossed her face. "You may try."

"I'll succeed, I'm sure."

Zhaleh's smile gained a bit more life. Like she approved of how he took it as a challenge, maybe.

"If," she said, looking away, "you lean on me instead of stiffening your bad leg, maybe you will."

He lifted a brow suspiciously. 'Was I limping?'

"I don't mean to be rude," she flustered, unable to even glance at him.

Emrys nearly gawked, not at her perceptiveness, but how she acted. Well, it made some sense, if what he'd heard about people getting closer while on shaking bridges was true. He'd have to be more careful with her in the future.

"You're not being rude," he assured her.

"Then," she collected herself, but not her expressive crest feathers, "lean on me. It's the least I can offer after you kept me from falling."

"My staff is enough for me to walk," he said, tapping it thrice.

However, before he learned if disappointment or doubt would cross the bird's blue eyes, Emrys put his arm across her back once more. "But Titus does get onto me for not accepting help with this blasted leg of mine, so for his sake I'll at least keep up appearances."

Zhaleh's beak bobbed up and down. Hopefully she accepted his deflection to his apprentice, and how careful he was with his arm.

To try and dispel any awkwardness, and maybe create some distance, Emrys set off and started telling her about the various goods he'd gone searching for on the trip. A dull story about rare trees and peculiar stones, along with their general worthlessness, would hopefully do the trick.

It usually did.

---

Onago's chest heaved, his heart thumping hard and qi dwindled from the battle.

Dead and dying hunters lay scattered about the stream bed. He'd meant to terrorize them into fleeing so he could pick them off at a distance. Instead they'd fought to the last man, shouting chants to the god Zekel even when they knew it was hopeless. Every spear he carried was stuck in someone, pinning them down or killing them outright.

Onago hated the faithful of that lost, if not dead, god. They only grew bolder the more of their fellows were killed.

One of the hunters, whose eye had been speared out at the start of the battle, had even grabbed hold of Onago's leg hard enough to bruise his ankle. Of course the hunter's grip failed when his wrist was crushed under a heel, but it nearly let the youngest of the group spear him in the liver. Onago had swayed in time, but it was a near thing, the haft scraping along his side.

He stood up straight and breathed, clasping his hands in supplication to the power that his great Master had revealed.

There was no time for an array or ritual.

Onago gathered up wisps of qi born of death and pain. It was only a grain or two of sand upon the pile of his strength, but the meditation also refilled his vessel with the abundant Wood qi in the plains.

When he finished, the sun had set, and the last hunter had died.

Back to his full strength, Onago retrieved his spears. The dark didn't hinder him at all.

Once he had his weapons and had taken what he wanted from the bodies, he whistled notes only those of the Vinebound Soul could hear.

Redtooth poked his head over the stream bank, chuffed happily at Onago, then led the rest of the hyenas out from hiding.

So far Yellowclaw, who insisted on scouting for him, had sent nearly two dozen from packs she found and took over. His connection to the new beasts was dim, but they had been in awe of Yellowclaw and Redtooth.

Now, seeing him stand among so many dead hunters of the plains, these fresh members of his pack had burgeoning respect for Onago. He waved at the hunters. "Eat your fill. Then drag the rest far away, to the north."

Redtooth, understanding perfectly, bowed his head. He'd have the bodies disappeared so the caravan never knew they were there.

Being third in the hierarchy of the pack, only behind Onago then Yellowclaw, Redtooth led the others into the stream bed. He got the first pick, of course.

Onago prowled about, on guard for hidden scouts from the far off caravan camp. Just because he had a Marked one there didn't mean he trusted the fox. It would be too easy to gain trust and then betray, so Onago never fully trusted the reports he got. Be they markers or their meetings every other night.

Of course, before he set about on a full patrol, Onago retrieved the bundled up head of his friend and slung it onto his back, along with his sword. The herbs would keep rot away, but a scavenger could easily rip through and make his honoring of Hoonu all for naught.

The scents of roasting antelope and buffalo filled the assembling camp. Zhaleh ignored her empty stomach and listened to Emrys talk. She didn't need to understand half the places or materials he mentioned. The presence of his voice and guiding arm, so stiff and formal on her back, were enough to let her ignore the people bustling about.

She had hoped that switching from her injured side would have him put weight on her instead of his bad leg, but he was still stubbornly using his staff. Though her arm across his shoulders made it easier for her to keep steady as the ground occasionally rumbled from far off magic.

Worrying about Blood-Drinkers and their spies would do nothing, not when Emrys all but screamed to the plains how dangerous his caravan was. Instead, she listened to his pleasant and memorized their path through the spiraling maze of tents, hides, and wagons.

Plainsmen hurried about. The smell of roasting meat and herbs tickled Zhaleh's empty stomach as they passed by cooking fires. Pots of water balanced on heads and shoulders, jokes and mirth flowed between families, and the tallest men hung caged glowstones between wagons and tents. The warm light chased off the dark of dusk and let her forget something as small as hunger.

Zhaleh had never seen so many glowstones in one place before. Another sign of the great wealth in the caravan. As they rounded the final corner, she wondered if at a distance the camp looked like thousands of fireflies had settled on the hill.

"Only a few more steps," Emrys nodded.

Zhaleh followed his gaze as they stepped around a mostly empty wagon.

A clear space in the center of camp separated Emrys' wagon from the others. Beside his wagon was an enormous tent that rose higher than any other, made from white cloth instead of sewn together hides. She noticed two entrances, one near his wagon and another on the opposite side that was mysteriously curtained off. Light spilled out from the shut entrance flaps and the oddly shaped top slope of the tent, yet nowhere else.

"More magic?" she asked.

"And excellent fabric," Emrys smiled, reaching the tent flap not curtained off.

He flipped it up and she had to blink, momentarily blinded. Zhaleh had looked right into the glowstones hanging from a net connected to the central pole. An herbal, smoky scent greeted her as Emrys guided her in. Focusing qi to her eyes, clearing the lingering blur of color burned into her sight, she saw the inner space. Several rough carpets were spread over the ground. Two hammocks were strung up near a small bronze brazier, heavy chests sat lined up near a wall, and a round table sat on the opposite side with folding stools around it. A strangely crafted piece of wood was leaned against the center pole, reminding her of folded stools even if it was far too big. Yet it was the openness within the tent that impressed her the most.

She barely had to duck under the flap Emrys held up, his arm leaving her back and shoulders leaving from under her arm.

Taking a few tentative steps inside, Zhaleh turned in a circle to see it all.

"Before you sit, it's my custom to wash hands before a meal," Emrys said, stepping in with hat in hand.

Hiding his limp, a moment of rude curiosity having her wonder what happened, he went to the central pole and set his hat on a hook seemingly made for it. As Emrys started to set his staff next to it, he said, "There's a basin by the—gods," his palm slapped his forehead, "forgive me for my stupidity."

Emrys hurried over to the water basin he'd mentioned. "You're not familiar with how to do this, are you?"

If he was covering up embarrassment for forgetting she only had one arm, it was a convincing act of a foreigner having different manners. If it was anything else then she really couldn't read this man well, if at all. He'd been so stiff when helping her walk, but hadn't hesitated at all to wrap a strong arm around her before the spells first shook the ground. He wasn't repulsed by her nor lacking in confidence, so what was it?

Zhaleh, not wanting to stare too long, dipped her beak politely and said, lightly but formally, "Cleansing hands before a meal was the custom of my home as well."

"I imagine you didn't have an enchanted basin," he said, tapping the edge of the copper bowl in its stand. The water within rippled with tiny waves upon the surface, too vigorous to be from a mere tap. Somehow not a single drop leapt out as the water shook on its own. "Go ahead and dip your hand in, though it will be cooler than you expect."

Slipping her claws in, Zhaleh felt her eyes widen. He wasn't exaggerating. A cave's water, hidden from the sun, would've been warmer. Then an unusual tingle surrounded her fingers and palm, and it had nothing to do with the chill.

Having expected the magic to be enough to cleanse her, Zhaleh's crest feathers rose an inch in mild surprise when Emrys reached in and grabbed her hand. His confident grip gently worked over her claws, and she saw bits of dirt float away from them both in the water. But that wasn't what held her attention. He'd rolled his sleeves up, the bit of forearm he showed revealed sturdy muscle and dark hair over healthy, pale skin. She knew foreign humans could have more hair than she was used to, but this was beyond anything she'd ever seen. The mystery of his age only deepened in her mind.

"In truth," Emrys whispered conspiratorially, "this is Titus' custom. But a master should learn a few things from his apprentice."

Her thoughts froze, and turned from his mysterious nature to a miserable question.

Had her teacher learned anything from her?

Zhaleh's heart ached, but her beak was quick to distract her. "How long has Titus been in your care?"

"Four—no, five years? Ah, time slips by when the only seasons are wet and dry."

Emrys pulled her hand from the basin, and she finally understood what he meant by the basin being enchanted. All of the dust and dirt had settled at the bottom, as if hours had passed, instead of clouding the shimmering water. He dried her hand with a rough fabric. A thorn of offense prickled in her due to him acting instead of asking, but she silently plucked it out. She was a guest, and she sure had not minded when he grabbed her hand to begin with.

Or her back, when showing her the sorcerers' magic, now that she thought about it. She'd been startled, certainly, and made the wrong assumption in the moment. But if she'd been offended he would've been shoved away before the spell trembled the ground beneath them.

"I don't imagine Titus will be here with dinner for a while longer," Emrys said, releasing her to dry his own hands. "There's a spot just out there, curtained off, that you can wash up more if you want."

"Should I?" she asked, quickly touching her bandages before he misunderstood her, or more strange thoughts struck her.

"If you want to, and you're confident you can keep the bandages dry. And because Titus stressed it to me, I must repeat myself: keep your bandages dry."

Seeing how Emrys kept all the weight off his left leg, a touch of guilt hit Zhaleh. He was still standing because of her instead of getting off his bad leg.

"I'll follow what the healer says," she nodded. Then, looking at the cloth seats of the stools, she asked, "May I sit?"

"Of course, of course," Emrys waved about the tent. "Wherever you like."

She chose what looked like the least used of the stools, having to shift her upper body strangely to keep her balance. Zhaleh was determined to get used to the change instead of just feeling rage and pain over what happened. She'd never avenge her teacher and sect if she couldn't adapt to living with one arm.

Emrys grabbed the strange contraption leaning on the center pole and unfolded it, revealing a cushioned and backed chair. "You sure you don't want the best seat?"

"That would be my worst seat." She tapped the nearest tailfeather sticking out behind her to make her point.

"Even so, it'd be poor manners if I didn't ask," he smiled.

Sitting across from her, letting his left leg stick out a bit farther, Emrys nearly suppressed sigh. She couldn't tell if it was genuine or an act to put her at ease. Zhaleh didn't think she'd ever feel truly relaxed again, but she was starting to believe there really were strange foreigners who would save an injured woman on the plains and expect nothing in return. Everything about this man would make more sense if he was exactly as he seemed.

'Is anyone so simple?'

"How is the sword?" Emry asked.

The hand that wasn't there flicked towards it first, then she touched the hilt. A terrible habit she needed to break herself of. "It's fine."

His brows furrowed slightly. "You're not from one of the clans that sees their swords as part of a warrior's soul, are you?"

"No."

"So it's not a grave insult if I had the sword and scabbard cleaned?"

"I would thank the cleaner," she tried to smile.

Any attempt at warmth probably looked pathetic on her usually sharp face.

Zhaleh shook her head and explained, "Swords are useful tools."

She squeezed the pommel, remembering the day her teacher gave it to her and the feast held afterward. That had been one of the proudest days of her life, and one of the happiest, up there with her teacher giving her a name. "And all tools can be repaired and replaced."

'Unlike people.' Her fellow disciples smiling at her tried to overlap with their dead eyes and tortured expressions.

"To some," Emrys' voice mercifully snapped her back to the present, "a tool means nothing, but for others that tool is a cherished companion."

She stared deep into those green eyes, searching for some kind of trickery or deception that had never been there. All Zhaleh saw was a man glad to be off the leg stretched out uncomfortably before him. The friendliness in his green gaze was the same as the moment they met, quietly offering shelter without scorn or pity.

Unable to bear his gaze or what he'd said for long, Zhaleh pretended to look at his hat hanging on the tent's center pole.

"Who should I thank?" she asked, tapping her sword to drag her thoughts from the mystery of Emrys.

"You don't need to. He doesn't live for gratitude."

"Titus?" she guessed.

A light chuckle left Emrys. "His talents are with caring for people's health, not tools."

The wolfkin guards and their gem encrusted spears flitted through her mind. The thumping of their spells had ended somewhere on their walk through camp. "Tross? Or Tass?"

"They're far too," Emrys made a show of pretending to find the right word, "busy to be cleaning any weapons but their own."

Zhaleh tilted her beak towards the caravan master, to see if he'd give some kind of hint or stop playing with her.

"Ah," he nodded. "You found the right answer already."

Blinking once, then twice, she turned both eyes towards Emrys. "I thought you had no need for a sword."

"Doesn't mean I'm unfamiliar with caring for them and many other tools."

"What sort of merchant are you?" Zhaleh asked.

One of Emrys' bushy brows rose up, and he snorted in amusement. "When have I ever claimed to be one?"

"Why else would a foreigner lead a caravan?"

"Because I wanted those materials I told you about." He held his palms up and curled his fingers, as if grasping hold of something precious. "And I'm so greedy I had to be the one to earn them."

It was obvious that he wanted her to ask why he would go through so much trouble.

Instead of getting distracted by his rhythm, Zhaleh pulled the sword off her sash, scabbard and all.

Laying it across her knees, she inspected the leather wrapped hilt under the bright glowstones. Since waking up in their care, she had only checked to see if her sword was undamaged, sharp, and easy to draw. Then she ran her claws over familiar scratches on the scabbard and a few new ones that must've come from her escape. The bell style guard had a new dent in the bronze that she'd seen after waking up but couldn't figure out the origin of, but like everything else, it had been polished and oiled. No trace of blood was anywhere, so she checked the blade by resting the scabbard between her feet and drawing it.

Emrys observed her silently, watching not the naked sword but her face. He could read her expressions. She knew after their walk together that he was one of the humans that understood birdkin.

The shade of the wagon had hidden the bright polish on the cinnarbronze blade. Zhaleh inspected it, turning the sword around to stare down its length. It hadn't bent during the clashes with the Blood-Drinkers, nor were there any serious nicks. Even after all the weapons she had to deflect and bones cleaved through, nothing had warped or twisted. Heavy emotions caught in her chest. Pain for what she lost, but also pride in the skills she had inherited from her teacher. Even if they hadn't been enough to save her sect, she was alive and her sword unmarred.

That had to mean something, even if the pain swallowed the rest of what she felt.

In a simple motion she sheathed her sword and left it resting against the stool. Zhaleh held up her remaining hand for a proper salute of The Art, imagining her right fist clasped against her open left palm, and bowed her head.

"Thank you, Emrys. I owe you more than the gratitude I can give."

Her bow would mean little to anyone unfamiliar with The Art, but she conveyed all the gratitude she couldn't speak through it anyway. If he understood the expressions of birdkin, maybe he could understand her.

"If you're satisfied with my meager cleaning then that's more than enough," he said gently.

"You are too humble."

She expected him to laugh and try to distract her, but when she lifted her gaze a seriousness had overtaken his face. "I'm anything but humble."

"I do not mean to offend my benefactor," she dipped her beak in apology.

"You've done nothing of the sort. So please, lift your head and speak like we're walking about still." He smiled, expression complicated. "I'm a craftsman, Zhaleh. What little I did for your sword is barely worth a thanks when I left the edge untouched and all those little dings and that dent unmended."

Zhaleh saw in that moment that he was simply being honest. He took pride in his work and couldn't fully accept thanks when he felt he'd done so little. "It's worthy of my thanks."

He nodded, understanding passing between their eyes.

"You're more than welcome. It's a finely cared for weapon."

She wouldn't mistake him for a merchant again.

"More than my sword was saved." She tapped the hilt. "I know how much blood was on it. On me."

"It was that well cared for blade that served you well against those hyenas."

She swallowed her fear and looked into those green eyes that were a hue too sharp to be compared to jade. Zhaleh could run from the truth and he wouldn't judge or blame her. She saw that, but spoke anyway. "There were more than hyenas."

"I know," Emrys nodded.

Her beak worked wordlessly for a moment. He waited for her to find her voice, which only confused her further.

When she finally managed to speak, what came out was too harsh. "What do you know?"

"Why have this talk before a meal?" Emrys asked, unbothered by her tone.

He'd watched her face intently the entire time. He knew she was worried about him, his apprentice, and this caravan.

'I have to leave before I get good men killed.'

Zhaleh took a deep breath, stomach souring. It would be so easy to skip talking about this when he didn't want to pry. "You deserve to know about my enemies before helping me anymore."

"I'll listen to whatever you need to tell me, but stories are best told without an empty stomach."

Stubbornness wouldn't do her any good against Emrys' unyielding gaze. His eyes might be the wrong hue for jade, but they were far sturdier. All of her instincts told her she would lose in a battle of words with him right now.

She'd waited this long, the length of a meal wouldn't be any more dangerous than days of silence. "If you insist."

Holding up two fingers, first to his lips and then up higher, Emrys glanced towards the entrance they'd come through.

"Hear that, my boy?" he called out. "You can stop lurking out there and come in."

The flap tossed aside and Titus sheepishly shoved in, arms laden with baskets and jugs of many sizes. He stumbled at the last moment, foot catching on a carpet.

Without thinking, Zhaleh rushed over to help. She didn't use qi, but it was clear from Titus' widening eyes that she'd moved faster than expected. With only one arm, and legs that tried to sway, she was barely any help. Even so, she took the large water jug precariously balanced on his arms.

"Thanks," he grinned before bringing the rest to the table.

Zhaleh was glad not to have given the healer a reason to scold her as a patient.

Emrys stood up and helped his apprentice get everything set down, then arranged it while Titus went to wash his hands.

Something feeling off made Zhaleh stop by the tent flap.

The sounds from outside were muffled. Not gone like they'd been at the enchanted cattle pen, but dimmed as if thick walls instead of fabric separated her from the rest of camp. Zhaleh was confident it hadn't been like that before Titus entered, but then shouldn't she have noticed him approaching? Maybe she was in worse shape than she realized.

"Come on over and sit," Emrys waved at her. "Guests should rest."

"As should my patient," Titus added, drying his hands.

Unsure of what to do aside from accepting their hospitality, Zhaleh walked over.

She set the jug down, then went back for her sword, slipping it into her sash. Emrys pulled a stool out for her that she accepted with a nod. His smile trailed off, returning with his heavier chair that he put near her instead of across the table. That, Zhaleh had to admit to herself, was a good thing. She would've watched him instead of properly eating.

Titus was a flurry of movement, setting out silver dishes that he quickly filled with food from the baskets. Roasted strips of buffalo and antelope steamed, sorghum cakes were piled up high, and three different spiced dips were set out in clay bowls. Dried fruit and thin strips of dried fish, of all things, completed the spread of food. The smells brought hunger to the front of Zhaleh's thoughts, forcing her to push it away.

Out came goblets of shining silver so finely polished that Zhaleh could see her distorted reflection. It was as confused and pathetic as she felt.

Titus filled up his and Emrys' goblets with water, from the very jug she'd saved, then he set a wide drinking bowl out for her. From a different jug a familiar potion was poured, the clear liquid identical to water except for the herbal and sweet scent.

"I should have asked sooner." She gestured guiltily with a claw, trying not to let her eyes twitch towards Emrys to see if he was smiling. "What is this?"

"Rhashas," Titus grinned, sitting down on her right side. "It nourishes the body after exertion and when it's weak."

"It also pairs excellently with fire wine," Emrys said before drinking.

"Rhashas is an Istillian brew," Titus explained, rolling his eyes. "Most people use it after laboring, when recovering from an injury, or revitalizing after a night with too much wine. So far, only my master has thought to use it with the easy to burn liquid he calls 'fire wine.'"

"Hm," Emrys hummed, tapping his goblet down. "Isn't the rhashas recipe you use from Uur?"

"Yes."

"That's why no one has thought to mix the two until me. The Istillian brew, Zhaleh, is much harsher."

Overwhelmed by the pace these two easily fell into, and trying not to think about what she'd tell them at the end of the meal, Zhaleh tried to be conversational instead of retreating. If she was grateful to Emrys for saving her, and Titus for seeing to her wounds, she owed them the best company she could give. "Fire wine? Where is that from?"

"My workshop," Emry chuckled. "I could've picked a better name, certainly, but fire wine is perfect for a drink that burns like flame, and as flames if you hold a taper to it."

Zhaleh tried to figure out from his grinning face if he was joking or not.

"He's serious," Titus sighed.

"I've got a few bottles left. I can show you—"

"Don't get my patient drinking wine, master, please."

"I wasn't going to hand her any of it."

"You never drink alone."

Emrys gestured at the younger man. "You're here."

"Why not save it for the next village we stop at?"

"Hm," Emrys stroked his beard thoughtfully, but a sly look turned just his eyes towards Zhaleh.

She shouldn't be genuinely curious when they still didn't understand the danger of the Blood-Drinkers, but trying to imagine what they were talking about had her half convinced he drank some mixture of oil and wine. Such an absurd thought almost made her laugh and had her eyeing him back suspiciously.

Was he trying to settle the tension she couldn't hide from him? Did he simply live like this all the time, unafraid of the plains thanks to his sorcerer guards?

"I suppose wine should be saved for a celebration," Emrys decided, "like when you don't need those bandages on all the time."

Zhaleh's warmed mood cooled like hot metal dipped in water, but she didn't show any of it on her face.

What would happen when she was no longer a patient?

"When I can remove the stitches," Titus said. "No sooner."

"As you say," Zhaleh nodded, putting thoughts of what would be days from now to the side.

She doubted she would be among them by then. All the warmth between master and apprentice, Zhaleh couldn't stand the thought of it being slaughtered because of her. Sorcerer guards and their showy spells would only deter the Blood-Drinkers for so long before they came up with a cunning, brutal plan. Once Emrys and Titus heard her story they would surely see the wisdom in parting ways as quickly as possible.

While gloom overtook her heart, Emrys picked up a sorghum cake.

He made a show of breaking it in half and set a piece on the empty plate before her. The other he stretched over and dropped on Titus' plate. "Enough waiting. Both of you, eat your fill and be merry. There's plenty here, even for the morning when we wake up."

"My master doesn't bless meals, but if it's your custom, I can," Titus offered.

"We revered the gods, but didn't ask them favors or give small thanks."

Her beak closed. Should her sect have prayed to the blazing sun Oteth, or Zekel, the long silent Hero god? Would that have changed anything?

"Well since we're not at the seaside," Titus said happily, "I don't need to make any offerings to the Titan."

Shock made Zhaleh blink. "The Hateful Titan? Father of Storms?"

"Titan, Lord of the Salty Seas," he gently corrected.

"You make offerings to him?"

"Of course."

"Enough talk of gods, they'll hear enough from us later," Emrys chided, using a thin knife to move bits of meat to Zhaleh's plate.

Had he pulled the knife from his sleeve when she wasn't looking?

At the silent insistence of both her hosts, Zhaleh ate first instead of waiting for Emrys, the master of this camp.

To her surprise the master and apprentice barely spoke. Emrys and Titus would occasionally talk about caravan matters, like what villages they would travel near and about herbs gathered throughout the day, but only in short exchanges. She didn't learn anything about their dealings with plainsmen and clans. However, much seemed to be on their minds.

Zhaleh suspected it was about her.

When her plate was empty, she reached out to pluck morsels from the rest. Instead, Titus and Emrys both used thin knives to move more to her plate. Adapting to their custom instead of letting herself feel looked down on for her one arm, she ate in silence. When her rhashas bowl was empty, Titus refilled it with a look that expected her to finish the entire jug he'd brought.

They'd prepared for a long night, and she'd delayed long enough.

Her plate empty and hand resting in her lap, Zhaleh said what she should have days ago. "Did you see the mountain burning?"

"Aye," Emrys nodded, setting down the sorghum cake he'd been about to bite. "Old Man Ngnun was the source of many superstitions among the people following my caravan. That's why I headed out to see the source, only to give up on that when we found you."

"Our meeting saved your life," Zhaleh said, some of the guilt in her heart falling away. Only a few leaves from the great tree that had taken root, but she tried to remember her teacher's wisdom. One foot after the other. The tree would clear one leaf, then branch, at a time. "Slaughter and monsters waited for you on the mountain."

"I hope you can forgive my bluntness," Emrys said, "but was it the War-Dancers or the Blood-Drinkers that wounded you?"

Her beak started to open, then shut.

What did Emrys know?

Zhaleh stared at her sword instead of either man watching her.

"Was it something else?" Emrys asked. "I've only heard murmurings, and mostly from my guide, so it won't surprise me if neither group exists."

"No," she uttered. "No. They're both real. But neither call themselves that."

She took a deep breath and hoped she looked serious instead of as afraid as she felt. "Can anyone eavesdrop on your tent?"

"No."

"Are you certain?"

"Could you hear anything in that cattlepen?"

Even knowing there was magic involved, she could barely muster more than a whisper. "The plainsmen called us War-Dancers. A name made up for Ngnun's sect."

With those first few words out, the rest flowed like a river in the rainy season.

For good or bad, Zhaleh told Emrys and Titus about the Blood-Drinkers. About how their allies could be hidden anywhere and their unending cruelty. That their slaughter strengthened them, though she didn't explain The Art. Thankfully, they nodded in understanding, and Emrys' face seemed to encourage her instead of doubt.

Heart racing and too ashamed to look anywhere but down, she spoke about the attack on her home. The words she said were a blur to her own ears, even if she knew what she told them. Zhaleh started with how she'd always thought the Blood-Drinkers were an old legend, nothing more, until their raiders appeared from hidden tunnels. Her hand started trembling, but she clutched her knee and continued, skipping over who she personally lost. Except for her teacher. She had to mention him when she recounted his fight with the wretched Ngnandra.

Her voice failed her.

A comforting hand rested on her back, almost on her neck, as if to say she didn't need to continue. She didn't see who, but she knew.

Zhaleh closed her eyes and breathed, using the technique her teacher had first taught her as part of The Art. Everything started with the breath. From birth to the end, breath guided and shaped every moment.

She started speaking again, and the craftsman's sturdy hand left her. She couldn't look at him. The past overwhelmed her sight, her story halting quick as it began, all from the sudden feeling of being so alone. Pathetically, the arm that wasn't there tried to reach for the retreating comfort, as if pleading not to be left entirely alone. Before wretched shame could overwhelm her, her silence must have meant something. Emrys' hand laid atop hers on the table. Guilt in her throat, she continued her story, eyes closed.

Telling them about how she lost her arm came with the disgusting sensation of Ngnandra's sword cleaving her flesh and bone. She resisted the memory with her teacher's breathing technique and weight on her remaining hand that told her she wasn't alone. With her failure to help her teacher laid bare, and revealing how her interference had almost certainly seen him mortally wounded saving her, Zhaleh's shoulders shook. She persisted and spoke about how she'd barely escaped when her teacher threw her into the secret passage in the well as his final act.

Her flight through the tunnels and plains had been a blur. She had memories of fighting, but the only firm recollections were against the hyenas chasing her to the tree.

Titus said something then, his words muddled in her tormented head. She understood it, however. He'd said it before. That her memory would clear with time.

She wasn't sure she wanted it to, but accepted it would be for the best.

Her story ended with meeting Emrys.

How would all of what she said sound to someone that didn't know The Art? Zhaleh didn't want to find out, still keeping her eyes closed.

At some point tears had streamed down her face, and she hadn't noticed. Nor did she realize that a square of cloth had been slipped into her hand. A sturdy hand guided hers to wipe her eyes clear.

When her face was dry, Zhaleh couldn't keep her one arm up anymore. It rested on the table, gentle strength keeping her from dropping it lifelessly.

"That's why I shouldn't be here," she uttered.

"Be a good man," Emrys whispered over her bowed head, "and get the wine."

"Master—"

"Listen, my boy." Emrys didn't let go of her. He should have, but he didn't. "Some wounds need medicine, others need the burn of wine with lively company to heal properly."

"One bowl, of a mild wine, and no more," Titus sighed, standing up and heading to one of the chests.

"It's fine," Zhaleh muttered, finally mustering up the courage to look at Emrys.

"You aren't," he replied, green eyes compassionate instead of pitying or fearful. "Cry if you need to, rage if it helps, drink until Titus is pulling his hair out in worry, but don't bury these wounds so deep they can't heal."

"Please don't do that third option," Titus called from across the tent, hinges creaking.

Zhaleh shook her head. "You should see me off soon as you can."

"What for?" Emrys asked, hand relaxed against hers but not retreating.

He'd let her go if she wanted, but his presence seemed to say she had to make the choice.

"The Blood-Drinkers will hunt me. They hate Ngnun and his disciples." Her feathers rankled. "Their allies could be anywhere, in your caravan and any village you pass. I will not have my saviors die for their generosity."

"We won't die."

"I'm so weak one of their raiders would defeat me in a fair fight!" she snapped. "I can't protect myself, nor any of you."

'I can't save anyone.'

"Protecting us isn't necessary," Emrys assured her.

"Don't put your neck under a sword for me."

"If you don't believe in my guards, I certainly do. Along with the warning I've had them send every single night."

Only her breathing technique kept Zhaleh from shouting. "It won't last. They'll strike when you don't expect it."

She expected him to argue about whether or not anyone was following her, but Emrys had a thoughtful look settle onto his face.

"For days I've been trying to remember something, that's been an itch on the tip of my tongue and edge of my thoughts," Emrys said, shifting to look closer into her eyes. "I'm sorry that it took your story to remind me, Zhaleh."

Confusion scrunched her miserable face up. What was this strange man talking about, while so relaxed after hearing her story? He understood. He was too quick witted and observant not to. So why did Emrys not have a hint of fear about him?

"Listen, Titus," Emrys said, voice suddenly commanding as he leaned back, still keeping his hand lightly on hers. "Treat everything she told us as true. What she described, these fantastical warriors, Uur calls them Baramu Nebettu, their Colored Sash warriors. If I remember correctly, if belatedly, this 'Art' she spoke of uses qi. It's akin to magic but something else—I should have a tome or two on it somewhere back in the city. All you need to know is that she and these Blood-Drinkers are warriors without peer; treat them as you would Resevek's Skulks."

Zhaleh blinked. She hadn't mentioned qi once. "You knew about The Art?"

"Not by your terms," Emrys smiled. "Which is why it was itching at my thoughts for so long. I should have put it together much sooner."

"My master," Titus said, standing nearby with two wax sealed bottles of dark crystal in his hands, "is as widely read as he is travelled."

"Knowledge won't save you from a Blood-Drinker's sword."

"If a Blood-Drinker gets near me with a sword, he'll have a lot more to worry about," Emrys said, grabbing a bottle from Titus.

"I don't know what Skulks or Colored Sash warriors are, but—"

The bottle in Emrys' hand opened itself. The wax peeled away in a spiral, falling to the table as one continuous curl. The cork bark seal twirled up with a pop, and Titus caught it.

Zhaleh stared at the bottle without understanding what she just saw. Neither man explained.

Emrys poured a generous amount of red, sweet smelling liquid into her empty drinking bowl. Then more into the two goblets on the table.

Instead of saying how his confidence in his guards was misplaced, since she'd never seen them around him, or even asking about the bottle trick she'd just witnessed, Zhaleh slipped her hand away from Emrys. She turned to look at the tent flap. For a moment she considered leaving, after giving them a bow of thanks, but the stupidest thought stopped her.

Would Emrys follow her, limping and trying to hide his own pain if she just walked away like that?

She turned back to the table. Zhaleh grabbed the full bowl and drank. The burn on her tongue and down her throat was joined by the bitterness and sweetness of fruit, and it found a home with the guilt and misery in her chest.

"Seems we're saving a toast for another day," Emrys said, lifting his goblet in a salute to her.

Then he drained his cup and, much to the displeasure of a scowling Titus, filled her bowl back up.

"Consider it medicine for an aching heart. The kind you can't take alone," Emrys said, gaze mixing with hers.

'What pain has he gone through to look at me like that?'