Rien's Rebellion: Wisdom's Fire

By C. Z. Edwards

The House of Galene shall fall, and with it, the legacy of Galantier. The late Razin’s daughter was declared illegitimate and then died. His elder nephew has been sordidly, brutally murdered in the border zone. Only the unreliable, weak, celibate Razin Savrin remains.
Not for much longer if Laarens and Rien have anything to say about the matter. Rien continues to gather her army in the far north, while Laarens brings his own skills and talents, and an entire people, the Comitae, to resist the end of their world.
But the idea of war and the practice of it are as different as the idea of justice and the practice of law. Mending a broken state starts with mending broken lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C. Z. Edwards
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732710832

C. Z. Edwards

C. Z. is a writer in Boulder, Colorado. She can often be found on Twitter, snarking about fashion, posting kitty pics, and word counts. She is a fan of the Oxford comma, epic fantasy, The West Wing, and cinnamon.

Book preview

1 Orcharis, 1139 — Laarens

Grey light showed in the east when I left the Ranse road for the Watable drive. The mount Hilmon Kurzon loaned me exceeded his promises — sure-footed even in moonlight, sound wind and a good stride. I’d miss her, but I’d need to be ordinary when I left Watable. I’d have a long walk.

My equerry was dead. My co-conspirators and I killed him. I couldn’t make my conscience call it murder. Vengeance, ayuh. It wouldn’t be justice until we managed to fix everything his treason broke. He sold out my uncle for half a year’s salary. He’d been selling me for years. If I could resurrect him, I’d kill him again. Maybe repeatedly.

All four of us — Old Kurzon, Mikos, Paval, me — could keep the secret. Two, Paval and Kurzon, were practicing Advocates who lie with the best. Mikos, a Healer , had his own means of protecting his patients’ privacy within his memory. Paval had already planted a file of documents in Lynel’s room, and Mikos would identify a dead Spagnian’s ashes as mine. They planned to conceal Lynel’s treachery for now. My equerry murdered me because I was an idiot. Lynel, according to the forgeries, had been scamming me for years, and writing the sort of explicit fantasies that might prompt a rebuffed lover to snap. Useful, that, because I’d spent half a year mortgaging every half-teander I could claim, usually three or four times over on the same future income. I wanted my financial legacy so disastrous that the inheritance courts will still be untangling it in a decade. Wars always need hard money, and so do the Comitae.

Maxim of war: let your comrades do their duty. You can’t worry about their part — you can’t control it and you can’t change it. I needed to add my communication protocols to the Comitae system, then find Rien. The next few days carried most of the risk, while my death was fresh. The bottle of walnut dye, among the other contents of my ruck and my soon to be walking self, would protect me better than a score of guards. Security through obscurity.

I recalled just in time that Jeren and Jon Watable’s wives had gone top over tip for Lethism . They probably just aped Curia fashion, but shouldn’t be risked. I avoided the paele , but went to the byhouse, where the Patrona lived, giving the lit bakehouse a wide arc.

As I approached, a light flared. I dismounted, pulled Resha’s saddle and bridle off, then scratched the door.

Jednik Fennist wore only breeches, his hair screwed into a dozen whorls on his head. He didn’t look quite awake, but when he saw me, he blinked the sleep from his face. Your Valor?

I pushed past him and closed the door. Got a place to hide a saddle? A woman in a creased shift, equally muzzy with sleep, stood by Jednik’s stove. Who’s this? I asked.

My betrothed, Jed said vaguely. What’s all this?

By sundown you’ll probably hear I’m dead. Tomorrow, certainly. That’s intentional. You didn’t see me, you haven’t seen me since... that last time I was here. I need to talk to Jon today and borrow a bed and a bathry. I’ll be gone after moonrise. And I need this hidden or destroyed. I indicated the saddle.

Where’s the horse? the woman said. She ducked into the room to the left. How’s its temper? Will it take to a stranger? she called.

Ayuh, she’s sweet, I said. She returned quickly, a pair of breeches pulled over her shift.

I’ll take her down to the south granary, Jed, she said, balancing on one foot, then the other, to tug on her boots. We’ll find her there later today, lipping up the last of last year’s stores. Whose is she?

Kurzon’s, I said.

She considered for a long moment, then nodded. That’s just reasonable that one of his might have wandered this far. How’s her condition?

She had a hard night, I said, but she looks all right.

Damn, the woman said. Better if she already looked rough. Well, can’t be helped. I’ll lead her through the brambles. She took the bridle from me and a heavy waterproof coat from a hook. A pleasure, she said and was gone.

She’s amazing, I said.

Syvil’s quick, Jed said absently, chewing something else over in his mind. Scares me sometimes. You can’t see Jon.

Why?

He took the saddle and dumped it in a cupboard. Just for now. I’ll tear it down tonight. Jon got thrown last tenday. He broke his hip and Cel’s doing her damnedest to keep Naeka and Ellanie from bothering him, but they’re hovering. He can’t come here and you can’t afford them to see you if you’re dead.

I hadn’t heard. Is he —

Cel’s the best there is. He didn’t bleed out — could have, she says. Hips are bad. But he’ll be laid up for at least a half-year. If it had to happen, timing could have been worse, but I need him at harvest and he won’t be up by then.

Cel, I said. "Celadane sator Archilia ?" There couldn’t be that many Healers who specialized in bones and muscles within a hundred milliae of Watable. If Celadane had his care, he would heal.

He nodded. They’re the closest hospital. The Healer in Wat’s Landing held Jon together til the helio got to Archilavast. Cel came the next day, but Jon’s dodgy.

Damn. I needed to talk to him. He couldn’t tell his father that I was alive. Teregenitor Watable could not afford to have that knowledge in his head if Mathes and the Lethians had Perceptives monitoring the Prava. If Celadane can spare a quarter hour, I gotta see her. Mind if I use your bathry?

Through there, he said.

I started, then paused. I’m gonna drain your boiler. This can wait —

It heats fast. Go on, I need to get awake and don’t have much time. I should be at the wheat field by sun-up.

I’d delay the dye-bath then. I scrubbed my face, changed out of my borrowed Captain’s uniform — necessary to get out of the border zone, even with Paval’s passes — and into a rough shirt and breeches. Delicious smells wafted past the door — smoked bacon, frying eggs, fondal , bread browning in the grease.

Jed had a cup of something black in his hand, frowning down at the eggs. "You know I’m prosaic , he said. Keeping you secret’ll be tough."

Why would anyone read your mind? I asked. "What would a Patrona who spent his night with his lady-love and his day in the fields have to do with a Prenceps’ murder three langreves away?"

Because I don’t keep secrets well, Jednik said. Your Valor —

I told you I’d beat you for that, I said. The bacon was starting to scorch. I flipped it and snapped my fingers in Jed’s face. Get your mind on Syvil. Did you have a good night?

He looked astonished, then grinned. Yes.

Think about that today. Keep thinking about it —

I can’t be thinking about that or we’ll get no work done.

Then think about your work. I’m not here. Does your boiler chimney smoke?

He nodded.

He wouldn’t leave a burning boiler. I’d have to bathe thoroughly, and take cold rinses. Will anyone come here during the day?

I can’t guarantee they won’t, Jed said. Cornor brings the bread to everybody, same with Syvil’s nieces for eggs and veg. I can’t tell ’em not —

No, I said. Will they come in your bedroom?

He shook his head. Just in here.

I looked around, got an idea of the byhouse’s layout. Bedroom left of the kitchen, a sitting room straight ahead. There’d be another room left from the sitting room. Is that your office? I pointed.

Ayuh, Jed said. He shoveled food onto plates and handed them to me. He added another inch of something from the kettle to his cup, then put the kettle on the table, beside a honey pot and a jug of milk.

The pot indeed contained fondal, black as my parent’s heart and stiff enough to hold a spoon. I adulterated the bitter, spicy brew, not wanting to be awake all day, and pitched myself at the food. He cooked plain food well, and the front never has eggs and proper bacon. Chickens make noise, and even cured meat spoils in the heat. "You’re nominated for the Dominatum , I said, pushing back my plate. Thank you, Jed. Not just for breakfast, but helping."

Not that you give me much choice, he said. You’re welcome. I an’t gonna ask what you’re doing next. I don’t want to know. All I’m gonna ask is you’re not abandoning us, are you?

Absolutely not, I said. "It won’t be tomorrow, but Savrin won’t be Razin for too much longer."

I hope you know what you’re doing, ’cause I don’t.

I doubted I did, but I’d burned my other choices and time. If Cel can find time, tell her to come. I’ll be awake until closing on noon. I’ve work to do. Which room has the fewest windows?

That would be the bedroom, Jed said, but the office has blinds. Sun gets hot in there. Either room, you can’t be seen, but try not to be in the parlor or here. Them curtains don’t do much. He nodded at the plain white linen strung on wires above the windows. The glass had been removed from the windows and gauze tacked into the frames. The heat must be bad, then, or about to become, and it was early for such heat. If Jed needed to let the house cool completely overnight, I doubted I’d want to be here when the sun blazed. No choice, though. Flies and mosquitos wouldn’t bleed me to death by drops, but I’d have to be silent. At least I don’t snore.

Jed went about dressing and packing his ruck for the day while I set to mine. First order, I’d construct a code block for Cel and Jon Watable. It should be simpler than a book code or the numbered construct Rien and I used. Then again, no. Rien and I use hard to break, but easy to use code. Between Rien and me, it now failed, since Savrin might have it. However, he wouldn’t expect anyone else to use it. I could leave Cel a copy of the first few pages of my codebook. Rien and I used it based on date, but we need not change the code daily. Five pages should do. I wouldn’t need to send Cel and Jon many messages before I found Rien — hopefully, none. Laarens Revinsel would never send another message. The names I’d use now wouldn’t be associated with me, would have no associations with my codes. Watable langreve shouldn’t be associated with my murder. There’d never be a reason for anyone to look here.

As long as the Teregenia and the Pronatia never learn I’ve been here. Are the Teregenia and the Pronatia Ingeniae ? I asked Jed as he damped a kerchief and tied it around his neck.

"Ayuh, both, but neither’s Perceptive . The Teregenia’s fiendish clever, but she’s a Botis — makes plants grow, you know? Not that she does, but that’s spite. The Pronatia’s not so bright, book-brains but not much sense. Some cunning, but she’s just got a little Incendas and weather-witchery ."

Anyone else here a Perceptive?

He settled his hat on his head, checked his belt knife and the various implements about his person as he spoke. Nyuh. Not now, anyway. One or two Perceptives spring up every generation, just like everywhere else, but His Grace always gives the strong Ingeniae a good start in the world and the Perceptives he takes off to Cimenarum for teaching. Nobody to worry you now.

Good. Thanks again. Where’d you stash the Comitae?

"Down at Frumentara, ’bout sixty milliae south. They have the best dock on the Ranse and that’s as far from those bitches as I could put ’em. I’d rather have ’em closer, but you said protect ’em first."

I had. Is there anything I can do?

Don’t leave me money. Make me feel bought, he said. Don’t leave a mess. See you after sunset.

I rubbed dye into my hair, turning it the muddy brown of a rich field, and into my skin until the face looking back at me in my signal mirror was the coppery shade of a man who spent his hours in the sun. I dyed my hands to the elbow, and my chest, the back of my neck and my shoulders. When I finished, I looked piebald, my natural skin almost reflecting the light. Just in case, the rest of me needed browning, but not as tanned. I poured the second bottle of dye into the tub and filled it with water to soak it into my skin. Walnut dye only lasts a few days, but it’s common, used for everything from polishing boots to staining wood. I’d buy more as needed.

The hot water leeched a tenday of tension out of me as the dye seeped into my skin. The water had cooled and I must have dozed because I almost startled when I heard a door open. I didn’t — the water would have made noise — but I froze and thanked my foresight for closing the bathry door. If the baker’s boy or the egg girls were delivering Jed’s provisions, they’d not bother me.

Laarens? I heard the whisper at the door.

Cel, in here. Give me a second.

I don’t have it. The small, veiled priestess let herself in, but turned her back while I climbed out of the tub and blotted dry. She spoke quickly. "Jed talked to Jon. They’ve agreed to give you 8,000 teanders . That’s all they can afford until harvest and without the bitch figuring it out. Jed’ll bring it tonight. I’ll have travel food and a letter for you to take."

Thanks, but I have money —

"Armies always need more. Now, sit down and be quiet because I’m not stitching your head and I don’t have puissance to spare."  She glanced over her shoulder to check my compliance.

I wrapped my towel and sat. I know that tone from Cel. It means don’t argue .

Rien’s alive and somewhere north of Reva. I know that, but not where.

I doubted I had capacity for surprise left, but that did it. For more than a half year, I’d been unable to convince myself that Rien died , but I didn’t have much confirmation that she actually lived . The Comitae gave me hints, but cryptic ones, because they don’t know Rien from six sheep wearing a shepherd’s cloak. But Cel and Rien were as close to friends as Rien ever got. I lost my breath and the world turned a little grey. Smart woman, Cel. Had I been standing, I might have fainted. How do you know —

You recall Kya sator Archilia, the ginger Wisdomian? Went south with us with the ashes?

Ayuh, I said. Nobody could forget her.

She told you about her work — well, her beloved is with Rien. She only figured it out recently. We’ve kept it between us. I sent Rien what help I could — through several dead drops. I don’t think it’s traceable, but it arrived. Kya says it’s helping. She doesn’t get details so that’s all I have. Rien’s probably within a couple days’ walk of Reva. She turned around and peered at me in the dim room. It’s almost convincing.

What did I do wrong? I asked.

You got your brows, but your eyelashes should be black. I can help with that. I’ll send soot paste with Jed. You’ll have to practice and it smears, so don’t rub your eyes, but it’ll work. Kya’s your contact. She’ll be at Archilavast through next winter. She’s writing her monograph now.

Anything she gets, you’ll hear? I asked.

She nodded. Until Jon’s ready to travel so I can take him back or he’s stable, I’ve got a runner coming three times a tenday. He’s in bad shape, I won’t lie, but his mind survived. He took a bad knock on the head, too. She shook her head. This is a bad place. I want to take him home, but...

What’s wrong? Beyond the obvious. Cel didn’t look just drained, but terrified, and something else. Almost... soft.

Who do I call for a Perceptive?

What? I went cold.

Not for you, idiot, she snapped. For the Teregenia. I’ve known Jon since he was born. He’s a good rider. He wouldn’t have been thrown. Jed says Jon’s gelding was sound and stolid — I don’t know, he broke the cannon bone so they put him down — that horse shouldn’t have startled. It doesn’t seem right and the Teregenia... Holy Fire, that woman’s turned cruel. She’s horrid to the children, but they don’t know better. There’s a family argument that Jon hasn’t mentioned yet. The Teregenia won’t leave him alone — Syvil’s with him but I don’t have much time. I think... I think she did something to the horse.

"You’re an Archilian — "

"I’m not Perceptive enough and we’re not Justiciars . There’s no circuit Justiciar for this district now. Who do I ask?"

"The Teregenitor , I said. But Cel, he can’t know I was here."

Yes, I figured that.

I doubt a Perceptive investigator is a good idea — wait. There’s one. I gave her Aron Taranov’s [1] information. He may be unable to help, but he’s a good man and I trust him with my life. But only him and Old Kurzon, and right now, Hilmon needs to stay at Kurzon.

Thanks. I must go.

I’ll have something for you just before I leave. Can you manage another quarter hour after sunset?

She nodded. But just that. She kissed my cheek and was gone.

I copied the pages, wrote out the mechanism for coding and decoding, then flattened myself on the floor of Jednik’s office. I didn’t think I’d sleep, but I did, and well. I felt safer, and cooler, in the shadows behind his big worktable.

The hand on my shoulder startled me awake, but it was only Jed. He offered me a small cake and a brush and I learned how, over several tries, to darken my eyelashes. Jed fed me cold chicken wrapped in flatbread, stuffed bacon rolls in my ruck, and handed me a pouch of magnas , royals and teanders . I separated out the last for immediate use. The rest didn’t fit with the itinerant laborer I looked like. Jed, what was your da’s name?

Yannim, he said.

And your Mam’s da?

Jednik, he said.

That wouldn’t work. Syvil’s da’s name?

Macko.

That did. Yan sune Macko, Yan sune Macko, I repeated it to myself a few times. From Alvard, originally — I’d use Cel’s accent, shifted down the social ladder a few dozen rungs. I put the name into the accent and rubbed my sword callouses. They’d have to serve as shovel callouses. The dye under my nails looked like dirt. Woul’ja hire me? I asked.

What can you do, mate? Jed asked, nodding.

Not much, but I kin shift what needs t’be shifted. So I’ll do?

Don’t go looking for work. There’s jobs... in Silvalt. That’s far enough. Cel said you had something for us? Jon’s fever’s up so she don’t want to leave him.

I showed him the codes and he caught on quick. You take care, he said as the moon rose.

And you, I said and started walking towards the river.

Follow Quin

Follow Laarens

13-30 Orcharis 1139 — Quin

I should have been exhausted. I’d walked forty milliae yesterday, run the entire gauntlet of emotions from joy and delight to despair and grief, waked at dawn and was seeing my second one. But I could do it all again. Not bad, for thirty.

Her eyes were sleepy and calm, a rarity. Her shirt was bunched under my hip, mine was... somewhere, with my sleeping breeches, and the sheets lay creased across her hipbones. Prominent, those, along with her collarbones and ribs. My Rien — mine! — is in my very biased opinion, the most beautiful woman in the world. She’s lean where she should be plump, skinny where she should be lean, scarred, tough-minded and pretty much made of equal parts whipcord, will, compassion, and brains.

And apparently, passion. Completely untutored, though not ignorant of the academics. I spent most of the last decade without knowing any women at all, save Fanik’s beloved, Linzara Teregenia Silvalt; I certainly don’t qualify as rake. I was a one-woman man long before I ever met Rien, but even I know the difference between a virgin and a woman who has taken a lover. Which confused me. What I’d been led to expect, long years back when I’d been tasked to rape her and force Rien and her father to my father’s will... well, it hadn’t happened. Yet it should have, if I believed her and my own senses. Rien had been willing, eager, sensuous... but inexperienced.

I pushed her now sun-bleached, white-blond hair from her face. It just brushed her shoulders now, a length that frustrated her. Until a bit more than a year ago, it had never been cut, as is customary for all Royal women. Savrin sheared it off, the most visible and the least brutal of his mutilations that night. I doubt she will ever admit it, but I believed Rien came to prefer her tidy crop, if only for the simplicity and speed. It suited her, when I first saw her, a half-year later. But I doubted she would cut it again. I traced the long line of her jaw to her neck, across her breast and down her side. Some part of me never believed this would happen. She arched into the caress. If she were a cat, she’d purr.

My every fiber vibrated against its neighbor with happiness. I don’t know when I fell in love with Rien. It was too subtle a shift to define that way. I don’t even know how old the connection to her I feel is — at the very least, it was born ten years and twelve tendays ago, on her sixteenth birthday. But it might be older, which is strange, because until the day of her Elevation to Prima Ascendara , I don't think we’d ever met. I spent no more than a  quarter-hour in her presence that day. Then I didn’t see her at all for nine years. But it certainly feels much older. And richer.

Eleven years ago, I would have said such a connection is impossible. Love at first sight is a myth, right? Ten years ago, improbable. Five years ago, I called it inconvenient. Two years ago, when she was deposed, it was infuriating because it demanded I figure out a way to serve her, which was impossible. When she’d come to us in the autumn of last year, I certainly called it terrifying — suddenly becoming responsible for her continued life had driven me half-mad and into overprotective fits that drove her half-mad. And in the last dozen tendays or so, as we both came understand what her war would mean, what her life would have to become... it had been agonizing, exasperating, frustrating, joyful, incandescent and incomprehensible... sometimes in turn, sometimes all at once. Maybe the best word there is exhausting.

I didn’t doubt that I love her. I couldn’t imagine a day when she would not thrill me, challenge me, inspire and fortify me. I couldn’t love her if she didn’t stimulate every sense, every feeling. So yes, I expected that we’d continue to battle. At least the reconciliation will be more pleasant than a mere ‘I’m sorry.’

You’re smiling, she murmured. Something I did?

I chuckled. Every day.

A specific instance? she asked archly. That’s my lawyer, always wanting details.

"Marry me. Let’s send the others home, we’ll go to Sardanivast . We’ll only be two days behind... unless we delay and we can... we’re not too busy right now. Bran and Nekane can get Marli settled."

No, Quin, she said. We can’t.

Why not? I asked, offended.

Because legally, I don’t exist. And I’m not Sardani —

"Which doesn’t matter to you, or me. You’re Pantheist and I’m Archilian and Sardani . We can use any temple."

I’m Archilian, a novica, recall? I’m also dead. The priest will ask for a name and I haven’t one to give her. Not one she can know. If I give her a false name, I’m not married to you, and you’re married to a fiction. Legally, it’s impossible.

Let’s go over to Archilavast, then — your friend, Celadane, who sent you the book. She knows —

She hopes, Rien said. She suspects I’m alive, but Savrin likely has spies watching Archilavast — not because of me, but because the Archilians are his biggest threat amongst the temples, and Archilavast is their stronghold. I can’t go there.

But — I started, growing frustrated.

I will marry you the day it is possible, she said. But I may have to win a war first. Can that be enough? I flopped over on my back and she slithered up against me. I let her pin me, not minding at all the sensation of her smooth, almost fragile, pallid skin over long, light bones and muscles. But she frustrated me, no doubt. Well, we do that regularly to one another. I love you, Quin. In my heart, the only place it counts, I married you... oh, a million years ago.

So recently? I teased, and made myself accept the unavoidable. Fine. So be it. I knew I should try to get a few hours’ rest. We still had a long walk back to the treehouse, not to mention all the work we’d abandoned when Lin Silvalt had summoned us south. The sun was rising, and though we’d all gotten a very late night last night, all of us live on the sun’s clock. Our companions might not wake until seventh or eighth hour, but that was sooner than I wanted.

I wanted to love her in light. She’d come into my arms and taken me after moonset, and though Lin’s hunting lodge’s walls are thick, Rien had been almost silent when she shuddered and fluttered around me, her lips pressed hard against my neck, my shoulder, my mouth. It had been dreamlike, a union accomplished by touch, taste and the faintest whispers. Extraordinary, yes, but I wanted her to fill all of my senses.

I understood her silence — she didn’t want to advertise. Rien may be one of the most private people I’ve ever known, and she’s managed to stay that way, despite living with five, now seven others, in just over six hundred square feet of treehouse. Until last night, I’d never seen her naked, and we’ve shared a bed for more than half a year. I raised my arms to her flanks, smoothed my palms across her hips, drew her down against the change of state she’d caused. She didn’t even hesitate as she engulfed me.

I thought I’d have to hurt you, I murmured.

Do you think I lied? she asked, keeping still and holding my gaze intently. About my virginity? That Savin did more damage than I wanted to admit?

"No, but that’s what I can’t figure out. Rien, I was warned... you’d bleed. It wasn’t the only reason I didn’t want to dose you with acantha and rape you all those years ago — close to the bottom of the list, in fact — but... you didn’t. You said you’d never had opportunity and I trust your assessment of attempted rape. But… "

Now she looked mischievous. State secret. I’m not being dramatic. Only the midwife, Da, Ethene, and I knew, because it would have caused such a crisis. Sometime between sixteen and when I had to be examined before Kelfan of Adelbahan came to propose... I managed to blood myself. I don ’t know when, nor how. I certainly wasn’t trying to do, since so many treaties would depend on a bloody sheet... Galloping, probably. I could never restrict myself to a ladylike amble. She bit her lip. Are you angry?

Gods, no, I said. Bleedin’ grateful. The idea of hurting you... kept turning my guts to ice-water.

Awful pun, she said, stretching her spine so she ground into me. Her body pulled me deeper into her, a bliss that blazed between and around us.

I’m not sure when I realized that her defenses were entirely gone. We’re both Ingeniae — defending our minds so we neither leak nor can be invaded is almost as natural as breathing. Her normal defenses are most like the rays of Sardan Unconquerable, or the quills of a hedgehog — a million sharp points extending in all directions. But now they weren’t just down. Maybe I realized when I heard her Evocata voice in my head, sharing the thousand little cries and sighs she wasn’t making with her voice as we loved in the early summer sunrise. Her eyes were still open, but half-rolled back in her head, and her bloodless skin had gone lightly pink. Her pale pink nipples on her tiny breasts looked like rosebuds as I nuzzled them, sitting up so I could draw her closer to me, merge more deeply with her.

I let my defenses fall, too, and for a long moment, the world around us shifted entirely away. Nobody remained in the world but Rien and me, enveloped in light so brilliant it would have blinded me had it used my eyes instead of my mind. The breathtaking, deep blue-indigo of dusk and the gold of sunrise, silver of sunlight on the sea and brilliant white of a snowy field on a perfectly clear day. Sounds — not music, but perhaps what the universe used for music before we invented it — poured out of the light and for a long moment, something like a voice or a chord wrapped around us. Every voice, every sound, throughout time, echoed through the world and rebounded until they became one, perfect and whole. We lived within it for a moment or a year or all of eternity.

The sense of a gear turning over, of rockets behind my eyes, of recognition, of communion, of completion, of union... of the universal yes and yes! and YES!

We’re not going anywhere today, I said.

Everyone will wonder, she said. Would it be wrong if I asked that we not announce... well...

Feeling squeamish, clove? I asked.

Shy. She rolled to her side, away from me and I pulled her back against me. Whatever that moment of union contained, it had compounded yesterday’s exertions into actual exhaustion. Exhilaration, too, and worth every moment, but tiring. We’ve other matters which must take priority, Quin, my gallant. But everyone else will treat this like a wedding. It will distract them and now isn’t the time. I’ve a war-plan to rebuild now that I don’t know where Laarens is, and I need us focused upon that. So... can we not?

Just behave as normal, save when the door is closed? I countered.

When we’re at least a millia from anyone else, she said. We’ll take long walks.

She wasn’t wrong, and I couldn’t disagree. Until this was less... new, I wanted privacy, too. It’s not really a lie, I told myself. Just maintaining a boundary. Is anyone awake?

Her puissance tingled on the back of my neck, like a cool breath blowing beneath my hair. Just Fanik, in the kitchen. Everyone else is out — no, Nik’s with him, but he’s blurry, so not quite awake yet.

I’ll go tell him we’re not going anywhere until tomorrow morning, then. This would be easier for me. Lawyers should be good liars, but she’s not, at least with the people she cares about. Usually, she doesn’t; she prevaricates, omits, evades, and just lets people draw their own conclusions. Most of the time, that works fine, but today, we’d need a lie.

I pulled on my creased sleeping clothes and retied the cord that held my hair out of my face. I should cut this all off, I thought. It’s mostly long because I didn’t leave the Foreti often and it’s easier when it can be tied back than that awkward half-year between being shorn and getting long. But hair can be a liability for a warrior. It’s not like anyone cared how it looked. Rien drew on her shirt and kissed me quickly in thanks, then curled up in one corner of the large bed. I think she was asleep before I hit the stairs.

Lin’s hunting lodge wasn’t like some in the south, where Teregenis have been extending and improving their properties for generations. Down there, a lodge differed from a paele or manse only by designation. All three will have acres of formal gardens, a manicured lawn and artificially wild chasing ground, music rooms, parlors, dining rooms, morning rooms, offices, servants’ quarters, a dozen guest suites, individual and communal bathries to allow for privacy, licentious trysts and conviviality.

Not here. Lin’s paele differed little from this comfortably modest house high on a crag between a glacier and her forests, except this one stayed cleaner. The walls were thick, like most up here in the harshest part of Galantier, made of stacked strawbales covered in clay slurry. Practically fireproof, and comfortable in all weather. Small windows, low ceilings. Just four rooms and a basic bathry with a boiler and small tub upstairs, each room just large enough for a true two-person bed and a wardrobe. She kept it whitewashed, and won’t permit trophies, even antlers, to be mounted.

The other four doors were closed; I expected that Fanik and Lin had claimed one, so they could be the partners they are for at least a day. I knew Pols had dragged Bran off. The third bedroom probably held our two newest recruits, both women. Nekane had been with us only a few tendays, and Marli... well, she was part of why we were here, having come from Savrin’s household with news of horror and death for women who had the misfortune to look like Rien and attract Savrin’s eye. And the news that Laarens, my oldest friend and Rien’s cousin, near-brother, friend and ally, was dead.

Or at least wanted everyone to think so, or was missing, or... Rien couldn’t bring herself to believe Laarens was dead, and her logic was good. The people most likely to have killed Laarens — Laarens’ own parent Mathes, my father, and Rien and Laarens’ cousin, the pretender Savrin — really didn’t have a good motive to do so, and the way it had supposedly happened didn’t ring true to her. I didn’t know if I agreed, but I was willing to let her believe it for as long as she needed to believe, as long as she didn’t make plans that relied on him being alive.

Ced and Daval still slept on pallets on the floor in the enormous open room downstairs, a good four yards between them. That didn’t surprise me. Ced talked in his sleep to a woman who has visited his dreams for almost six years, though as far as he knows, they never met. He didn’t even know her name. This drove Daval off his path. Daval, asleep, drooled, glommed on to his bedmate and radiated heat like a steam-engine at full boil. They never shared a bed well, and in the five years Daval’s been with us, we’ve rarely forced them on each other. They’re better friends — and they are friends, despite enormous differences — when they don’t make each other miserable every night.

Ced’s hair, walnut-black and as long as his arm, splayed around him in a fan. He held a book in one hand, though he was completely asleep and muttering, and a candle-stub had burned out. His reading spectacles were still on his nose. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen that in the nine years Ced and I have been together. That he’s never broken his specs or set anything on fire I count as a minor miracle, and perhaps proof that some god, somewhere, loves him. He wouldn’t agree; he denies them all, though he’s not militant about it. But he used good candlesticks set in dishes of water on bare floors; he doesn’t flail in his sleep and he needs new lenses every year anyway. His far vision is perfect, but his near vision just keeps getting worse, and eyes are something Healers can’t mend, along with hearts and brains.

Daval, small and wiry, was sprawled out, but completely covered save for a few sandy spikes of hair. His pack lay half-strewn around him; we’re still teaching him tidy . But he’s young, barely twenty-one, and growing up in an excellent brothel as the beloved only son of the lady of the house meant nobody ever made him pick up after himself.

Yes, we needed to take that day. We’d all been working flat out for tendays anyway, setting traps, building hedges and raiding our forest preserve for the materiel that let us survive. A day of rest wouldn’t hurt any of us, or our work.

A third small bed had been made of the settle, for Fanik and Lin’s son, Niklan. He’d just turned six, last tenday, and is part of the reason Fanik is with us instead of with the woman who keeps his heart and raises their child. Fanik was a forester on Silvalt land, an orphan who came from nothing. Lin didn’t care. They’ve as strong a partnership today as they had when they kindled Nik, perhaps stronger, though they manage no more than two-score days a year together. The settle was empty, but its occupant was on his father’s lap, at the table in the kitchen.

Two cups, crumbs and a book occupied the space before them. Nik didn’t even look half-awake, his eyes almost closed and his head propped on Fanik’s shoulder. Nik took after Lin in stature — small, delicately boned, with her pointed chin and up-tilted eyes. He had Fanik’s coloring — black hair that spirals every which way if not kept short, sandy skin, and green eyes like spring maple leaves. Fanik said he was a weedy little thing at Nik’s age, too, though you’d never know it now; Fanik towered over me, and I just missed two yards. Fanik also made two of me, if not more. I would have assumed he was a weedy kid thanks to malnutrition; his parents had him young and died in a flood before his third birthday; the elderly great-uncle who took him in wasn’t in good health or wealthy. His community down on Darasynge did their best for the old man and boy, and cared for Fanik when his uncle died eight years later, but Darasynge got hit hard by that flood, and there just wasn’t much for an orphan boy. He lied about his age after he shot up as a young man, convinced Lin to hire him as a forester just after she took over Silvalt, and rose fast. He’d been a gang boss, already on the route to Patrona , when he finally got the courage to speak to Lin.

Fanik called himself our dumb muscle, and anyone looking at him might assume that. He’s massive, strong and he didn’t talk much, except with us, Lin, and Nik. His size and painful shyness hid a mathematical genius that astounded me, especially because when we first met, nine years ago now, he could barely read. He’d just never learned. Lin, Bran, Ced, and I taught him, though not maths. That had been his uncle. He still had gaps in his education, but he was getting there. He’s why we six were worth nearly a million teanders and had a chance of funding and supplying Rien’s war.

You look like I feel, Fanik whispered, so as not to disturb the boy. He pushed a pot of fondal towards me with the hand not cradling his son.

Half-dead?

Happy. Nik snuggled a little closer and Fanik rubbed the boy’s back. Considering last night — well, this morning — when you went to bed, you looked like some demon was squeezin’ the juice from your heart. Odd, now.

I fetched a pair of cups, but only filled one when I took the opposite side of the table. Rien doesn’t think Laarens is dead.

He leveled a direct look at me. That an’t good, mate. It just makes the fall worse when it comes.

She’s got a convincing argument.

You both want to believe. But that an’t why you were up all night. He smiled gently, looked down at his boy, and back up. Gratulations.

Like I said, enormous intelligence. Pretend you didn’t figure that out? I asked.

He looked at me for a long moment, gears clicking over in his head. Right. We got better things to do, but people get distracted. Sure. But I an’t the only one with a keen eye and a good nose, so you might want to sluice off before ever’one else stirs.

Ayuh, good point, I said.

Also, that grin... gives it all away. He grinned widely himself.

I felt my face. Even when I thought I had a neutral expression, I was smiling. Thanks. I’ll work on that. Does Lin have to go back today?

He nodded slowly. She and Nik shouldn’t stay, but she can go late. She’s gotta meet with a chip buyer t’morrow. I knew it hurt him. Lin and Fanik had a half-year together, before Nik was born. Since then, they’ve had at most four days. They’re always saying goodbye and they never know if that will be the last time they see each other. Our life on the other side of the glacier couldn’t be called safe, and it only took one accident when you’re ninety milliae from the closest Healer. Lin’s brother, Teregenitor Trensen Silvalt, had been a threat since he found out Lin had kindled Nik, and he’d come damned close to killing Fanik over it. He would have killed Nik, except that Lin never let Trensen within twenty milliae of the boy. He had only let Lin live because she was useful. Trensen couldn’t manage his sylvagreve , wouldn’t bother to learn, but he liked the rents she paid him.

Fanik and Lin did not yet know that Trensen was dead [2] ; he had killed Rien’s partner and friend, Avah Selenar, and tried to kill Rien. Rien had got the better of him by sheer luck and managed to disembowel him. Trensen’s body let Rien fake her own death and escape to the Foreti. We couldn’t tell Fanik and Lin until after Trensen was due back from the diplomatic mission to Farenze, at the end of this year. When he was missed, they couldn’t afford to have the knowledge in their heads where a Perceptive investigator might read it.

We were all so interconnected... but there were only a half-million Galantierans total, and most of them lived south of Cimenarum . Just one big village, this nation. If Lin’s amenable, I’d like to stay another day. Rien was exhausted when she got here last night; none of the rest of us are any better. We could all use a long day of doing nothing.

He considered that for a moment. We’ll be on pack rations going home, but we all got those.

I grimaced. Normally, we carried food that could withstand a few hours in a pack. Pack rations — dried meat, noodles, and sticky honey, fruit, and grain bars — kept a body alive, but tasted more like pasteboard than food. No choice, I guess. Spread the word as people wake up?

He pointed to his pack, by the back door. I retrieved it, and he pulled out his wax tablet. He smashed out some notes with his thumb, then carved into the thin sheet of blackened wax, Day off. Go back to bed. Quin, Rien, Fanik and Nik say so. Works?

I nodded, grinning. You, too. I propped it against the fondal pot.

I’m letting Lin sleep. The master here is always up at the crack o’, starving. Best troth present I can give her is getting up with the little man. He wiped crumbs from Nik’s face and stood up carefully. Nik didn’t stir. But he’s out again, and he’ll stay out for a couple hours. By then, Dav’ll be up, and the two of ’em can get up to no good. He laid his lips on Nik’s hairline and carried him back to the settle, tucking him in carefully. I poured a second cup of fondal for myself, filled one for Rien and went back to my beloved, my heart, my general and Razia.

Late in the day, before Pols and Lin left to go back down the mountain pass, he to resume his tour of Galantier, singing the songs we’d written to recruit the core of an army, we built a new procedure for dealing with potential recruits. With eight of us now, someone could walk to the Silvalt side of the glacier every third day or so. Anyone coming to join us should wait with a passphrase. We’d make the decision about bringing them further in.

In the morning, we walked home, twenty milliae around a glacier and through foothills. I watched Marli, our newest, to see how she’d fit. She, Rien, and Nekane seemed almost instantly fast friends, walking together and conversing too quietly to hear. Nekane even seemed to unbend a bit, and didn’t snap quite so hard at Daval when he tried to insert himself into their camaraderie. Marli, however, was distantly polite, and by the time we arrived home and scattered for the work we’d abandoned, Daval had transferred his interest from Nekane to Marli. That boy would follow his breeches into trouble.

We left Rien to settle Marli into her place with us, and I accompanied Bran and Nekane to test the bell trap. A moment after we triggered it, Rien’s voice rang painfully loud and clear in my head. It works. It’s not loud, but we’ll hear it.

Can you speak more quietly? I asked, wincing.

Better? she asked. This is unexpected.

Yes, I said. Your Archilian friend’s book mentioned something along the lines... union shifting keys and chords.

True. Um. Marli can’t cook, either. What do you want us to do?

I growled to myself. Can no woman in the entire damned kingdom manage to boil water without burning it? She sounded too pleased with herself, and I was starting to suspect that she was cultivating her inability. Probably self-preservation, I thought. She’s got twice as much to do as the rest of us, and only the same number of hours. There are just too many things she knows that the rest of us don’t. Peel a score of sweet-roots, cube them, and put them in the tall pot. Add water until they’re covered and set the pot on the brazier. Put the lid on. Start a quick fire and when it burns out, leave it alone. Fetch from the ice cave a boar ham. We should have two left. Leave it wrapped to thaw. The roots would be cooked by the time we got back, and I could mash them in the few minutes it would take Daval to slice and