Book 2, Chapter 21.5

Boy, it was hot.

After that first day, Gaz vowed that he would forever shut his mouth any time a southerner claimed that Vasa folks couldn’t handle the heat. The salt flats had redefined what heat was. All the times in Gaz’s life when he’d been sweaty and swampy and overheated were just precursors. Warm-ups, if he allowed his sense of humor to get that morbid.

Considering how terrible they all felt by nightfall on day three, morbid wasn’t starting to look too far out of the question.

The mountains were closer, there was no denying that. Before night fell and veiled them from view, Gaz guessed they’d more than halved the distance they needed to reach the foothills. The ravine still gaped across the salt to their right. More than once they’d discussed whether it was worth climbing in to walk in the shade. Unfortunately, unless Calay could get his hands on some blood, that option no longer seemed viable. While they had plenty of food, they were down to their last day or two of water. The heat was baking their brains to custard in their skulls.

If they climbed down now, Gaz wasn’t sure any of them would be strong enough to climb back out again.

Their nighttime walks were growing shorter and shorter. Adal had been the first to admit their pace was just too much for him. He’d either developed a tolerance to whatever uppers Calay had been feeding him or they’d simply run out. Calay had stumbled next, unwilling to ask for extra rest breaks himself but first to fall asleep whenever they stopped walking.

Gaz, on the other hand, was feeling a little better. His leg was holding together all right. He felt a little shitty, improving while the others began to falter. He had no real explanation for it beyond the fact that he’d always been a hardy sort. Riss, who was of similar stock, also seemed to be struggling less than the rest.

On this particular break, it was Torcha who seemed to be feeling it hardest. While Riss built up the fire, Torcha kicked pebbles over the edge of the ravine, unbothered by her closeness to it even in the near-complete dark.

“Doesn’t that spook you?” Gaz asked, watching her in the glow of his lantern-staff.

“Nah,” she said. Kick, kick. “Heights don’t bug me none.”

Which Gaz knew already. He was too tired to attempt making further conversation, sinking slowly to the ground. He thought of rooftop chases back in Vasile, he and Calay racing across crumbling tenements into the decay of the Sunken Quarter. Heights hadn’t bothered them none, either.

When Torcha stepped over to join him, she stumbled. And unlike she usually might have, she couldn’t catch herself. She skidded down to the salt on her ass, cursing, and landed with a great, discordant clang like a clock going off.

Everyone turned to look at her, puzzled by the noise.

“The hell was that?” Riss asked. “Sounds like someone dropped a piano.”

“My guitar,” Torcha mumbled, rolling over. She swung her pack around into her lap, withdrawing the little guitar Gaz and Calay had stolen for her in the pit-stop town of Wishes. Fortunately, the impact didn’t seem to have broken it.

Riss stared at her in abject bewilderment. She scratched a hand across the scar at her temple.

“You carried your guitar all this way?”

With care she typically reserved for her rifle, Torcha turned the guitar over in her hands and inspected it. She twisted a tuning peg and plucked a single string. Gaz watched all this, slightly puzzled. He’d never been one to form much in the way of emotional attachments to possessions. Stuff tended to come and go out of his life. Sometimes he missed a particularly nice tool when life’s twists and turns eventually parted it from him. But most of the time, stuff was stuff, and it seemed to be the role of ‘stuff’ in life to disappear eventually.

Everyone bunked down, too tired to give Torcha shit for the guitar thing. She continued tinkering with it, trying out a few slow, cautious chords. She was getting better in the same way that a snakebite ‘got better’ after a few days. 

“What a way to go,” Calay mumbled, curled up on his side. “Always hoped the soundtrack to my inevitable death would be a bit more dramatic.”

“Ha ha.” Riss tossed a pebble at him; it didn’t hit its mark. “Nobody’s dying, I’m afraid.”

That was all the banter they had energy for. Everyone nodded off, glad to be off their feet. Gaz kept an ear cocked as he settled down on his side, wondering if he’d even be able to tell what thousands of scuttling scorpions sounded like. Would they just wake one morning to find the ravine alive and wiggling and full of them? Would they–

He must have fallen asleep mid-thought, because when he was shaken awake an indeterminate time later, he couldn’t remember what he’d been wondering.

They woke.

They walked.

This time, nobody said a thing.

Gaz’s feet felt heavy. His leg was healing up well, but the rest of him felt slow to respond, like he was sleeping off a big night of drink. 

Cheeks scorched with sunburn, face tucked beneath one of Torcha’s scarves, Adal and Riss kept them all at it, mindful drill-masters with a pack of cadets that couldn’t keep up.

Calay had trouble walking in a straight line.

The distant sky began to glow pink. Dawn was coming. Gaz hated it, hated the heat the coming day would bring. Throughout the course of his entire life, he’d had had very little energy to hate things. Now it felt like he hated the daylight with all the hate he’d ever had in him. Honestly, though, hating left him really tired. He wasn’t sure he could keep it up.

The mountains were close, but not as close as they’d hoped.

They rested.

They got back up.

They rested again. Was it on purpose, or did someone simply fall?

It was getting tough to keep track.

<< Book 2, Chapter 21 | Book 2, Chapter 22 >>

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Book 2, Chapter 21


He’d toughed all that out.




























“I know I did.” 








Gaz understood. He didn’t like it, but he understood.






“You sure?”


“Is that your jacket?”



“… It’s Torcha’s jumper,” Calay admitted. 



















He couldn’t help but ask.







An uncomfortable thought lodged in him like a splinter.


Sleep came harder after that.



Book 2, Chapter 20













In the end, Renato supposed he was merely nosy.























Suddenly, he had an investigation on his hands.



Book 2, Chapter 19

In a twisted, discomfiting way, Riss was almost glad that things had gone completely pig-shit. Had only one thing gone wrong, seeing Adal like that might have broken her. It was only by virtue of the completeness, the totality of the failure cascade that she was able to push through unburdened with emotion. 

Not that there were no emotions. Oh, they were there. They prowled at the fenceline, half in shadow, circling her like wolves. Just you wait, they warned her.

Now, however…

“Good news,” Torcha reported, rolling a wooden cask across the ground so that it came to rest near Riss’ feet. “At least one of these is intact.”

Riss knocked it and was rewarded with the deep thunk that signified it was nearly full.

If they were going to traverse the last of the Flats on foot, they’d need all the water they could carry. 

Torcha climbed back up and into the wreckage. Riss rolled the water cask over to the small heap of supplies that was gradually accumulating in the shade. By her estimate, they had about five hours before it would be time to set off. After Calay had cautiously, carefully pieced Adal back together, he and Riss had made the call together: they’d travel after dark, both to take advantage of the cooler temperature and to allow their wounded friends a little rest.

Currently, Calay was doing what he could for Gaz’s leg with old fashioned non-sorcerous medicine and a bit of lizard blood. Riss wasn’t sure how it all worked, but he’d explained the basics: blood was at its best when it was human and the person who’d bled it was still alive. A lizard’s blood would suffice for what he called “minor works.” A dead lizard, that was trickier.

He can have some of mine, Riss had offered without hesitation. But Calay had put that idea to rest with a shake of his head. He reminded her of Harlan Vosk, how badly he’d suffered when they’d used him as an unwilling donor during their trek through the swamp. 

She recalled the shaking, the night sweats, the chattering teeth. Vosk had appeared as though in the grips of a terrible fever. He’d been unable to walk on his own. And apart from the pain and weakness, there was his unsettling behavior back in Tarn’s dungeon. Riss wasn’t sure how much of that was a side effect of the blood magick and how much might have simply been Calay taking his revenge.

Either way, if they were crossing the Flats on foot, Calay was right: be it one man with an injured leg or one man with a healed leg and a donor who was wobbly in the knees, their options were limited.

Once he had Gaz fixed up, Calay intended to dig through the wreckage for his supplies. If by some miracle he found the rest of his blood, they’d be in business. Riss and Torcha were occupying themselves with more mundane concerns: food, water, ammunition. 

Crouching near their cache, Riss took inventory. On some level she knew she was doing this to avoid turning her head, to avoid looking that last little bit to her right, to avoid letting her eyes fall on the bloody smear upon the rocks where Adal had landed.

Two pistols. Three empty waterskins.

She hadn’t even seen him fall.

Fourteen cartridges. One map case.

Heavy, slightly-lopsided footsteps crunched up behind her.

“Hey,” she said, pushing up and turning around. “How’s the leg?”

Gaz, who had loomed up behind her, rocked his weight from side to side. “Still testing it out,” he said.

Whatever Calay had managed to wring from the lizard blood had cleared away the clots of bruising at Gaz’s temples and eyes. The scrapes, too, had mostly healed. The wide wrap of gauze around his thigh had been reinforced with what appeared to be a strip of curtain. 

Riss recalled the haste, the urgency with which she’d screamed at Calay to cease treating him and felt an abrupt need to apologize.

“Listen,” she started. “About earlier. I’m…”

She was sorry. But sorry felt like too small a word.

“… You don’t deserve to be in pain,” she finally said. It was completely stupid, but she felt responsible, somehow. She was in charge. She’d made the call. She’d deemed Gaz’s pain less worthy than Adal’s.

Gaz stilled, looking down at her. His brows knit. With slow, deliberate, careful movements, he turned the water cask upright onto its side and sank down atop it, using it as a stool. 

Resting his elbows on his knees, back slumped tiredly, he stared at her for a long while.

“Nobody deserves to be in pain,” he finally said. 

Riss wasn’t sure about that. She could think of a few. But she realized that wasn’t what he meant. 

“I know,” she said. “But… I feel like I shouldn’t have done that. Like I was overstepping. Even though I know I had to.” Even though she’d have done it again.

Gaz picked at the skin around one of his thumbnails, tired eyes falling from her to his hands.

“We both know what would have happened if Adal didn’t get every last drop of that blood,” he said. “There was no way.”

She hadn’t ever really looked at the top of Gaz’s head before. He usually towered over all of them, even her and Adal. For the first time, she noticed the fine latticework of scars that decorated his scalp, just barely visible through the stubble. Most were old and minor, mere lines of faint pale discoloration. But there were a couple that weren’t. 

That was a lot of scars for a man whose best friend could heal wounds with a wave of his finger. Years and years of scars.

“You’re right.” She stared at those scars. “That’s the funny thing. The stupid thing. I know we just did what had to be done… But it still feels wrong. Like I shouldn’t have given you an order like that.”

Gaz’s big, blunt fingers ceased their idle picking.

“You and him both said that,” he said. “But I don’t recall anyone giving me any orders.”

“We’re all in this together,” Riss said. “Nobody needs to–”

“To what?” 

To martyr themselves. The words got clogged up somewhere between her brain and her tongue. 

“Riss.” Gaz grabbed her attention before her thoughts could venture much further. He looked up at her with clear, steady eyes. When he spoke, the words were possessed of an even-keeled calm. The man’s conscience was a serene, cloudless blue sky.

“Neither of you have seen just how difficult it is to force me to do something I don’t want to do.” His eyes crinkled mischievously for a moment, but then his expression went somber. “It was my choice. I made it. You don’t get to turn it into an order just because you feel bad.”

And… what could she possibly say to that? Gaz didn’t often jam a wrench in her logic, but when he did, he was a tough man with whom to pick an argument.

“Suppose there’s no point feeling guilty about something completely outside my control.” Riss gave him a wan half-smile of commiseration.


He pushed up off the water cask, rolling his weight on his foot, testing out a few steps on his bandaged leg. 

Already, Riss could feel her emotions crystallizing into a sharp, many-pointed shard of something she could actually use: a slicing, decisive motivation to get the hells out of the gulch and get them somewhere that would have what Calay needed to set things right.

“I’ll get you blood,” she said as parting words, striding off toward the wreckage. That she was so ready to promise blood for sorcerous purposes didn’t even give her pause until after the fact. My, the difference a year could make.

Everyone scavenged what they could from the shattered wagon. Then, one by one, fatigue claimed them all. They napped.

When Riss awoke, she noticed that they’d all piled their bedrolls close together, as if huddling around the warmth of a fire that didn’t exist. As if circled against some threat they couldn’t yet see.

Only once she’d roused everyone did they actually build that fire, both for light and one last warm meal before the push. Shadows came on thick and heavy on the ravine’s floor before the sun had even fully set.

“Right,” Riss said beside the fire. “Calay has kindly volunteered to rig the rope for our ascent. According to the map, the mountains to the north are closest. We won’t have much time to rest, but it’s doable.” In theory. “I wouldn’t waste the weight on anything other than water and the necessities, but you all know that already.”

Every last one of them was a soldier or a vagrant. They were used to leaving things behind. Just how exactly they’d arrange a meeting with Rill having lost their primary bargaining chip, well… Riss would think of something on the walk.


Riss marched up front because Riss always marched up front.

She didn’t think of herself as The Leader in the pompous, proper noun in capital letters sense, but she was the commander of this expedition. She was the owner of the company, had been ever since Gaspard’s death. It made sense to march up front. 

She marched up front because she was handier with a machete than a firearm. Guns at the back. That, too, made sense.

Listening to the repetitive crunch and grind of crystallized salt crushed beneath weary, heavy feet, she knew one other reason why she marched up front: those lurking, prowling emotions that she’d worked hard to stave off. 

There was far, far less to distract her now. The purple gradient of the sky, the endless salt, the distant rise of mountains, the dry, still air–they were unmoving and still and constant and thus in danger of becoming a backdrop, becoming surroundings that would fade and leave her thoughts front and center.

One set of those weary, dragging footsteps behind her was Adal’s. The ones directly behind her, in fact. Blinking her eyes as if to dislodge some grit, she rubbed at her face, brushing that notion away.

Someone sped up so that they could walk beside her, the crunch-crunch quickening. She tried to guess who it was by sound alone and found she could not. She glanced to her left, finding Calay there. His skin looked pale and cool in the purple cast of the deep twilight. When he looked up to meet her eyes, his shone with an unnatural glimmer, reflecting ambient light like a nocturnal animal’s.

“Hells,” she said, staring at him. “You look like a possum.”

Calay’s face wrinkled in a fine, delicate way, just a little twitch around the eyes and nose.

Hmph.” He ticked his chin up at her. “And here I was coming to see how you were.”

“Out of everyone out here? I think there are patients of yours more deserving of a check-in,” she deflected.

“Yeah, well,” Calay folded his arms across his narrow chest as he walked alongside her. “Funny thing about shock. It doesn’t restrict itself to the injured.”

“I’m not in shock,” Riss promised him.

And once she took a moment to consider, she knew it was true. She’d felt the numbing bite of shock before, felt the way it held her in its muffling grip and dulled the world and made it all not make sense. Things were crisp now. She was thinking clearly. 

Briefly, she considered whether she could be a little more honest. She thought back to their conversation, standing over Adal, Calay bristled with tension at the thought of leaving Gaz’s leg untreated. He hadn’t liked the way Gaz so easily conceded. 

“I appreciate what you did back there,” she said rather abruptly. “For Gaz. You stand up for the people you care about.” Even to me. 

Calay all but spit-taked. He coughed a little, footsteps stutter-stopping, and then wielded those big, shiny reflective eyes up at her in accusation. She waited for his reply, assumed it would be something sufficiently witty or perhaps just exasperated. Of course I stood up for him. I may be a liar and a highway robber and a sorcerer, but I’m not a complete bastard. 

But her words seemed to have stunned him silent for a time. And when he finally did speak, it wasn’t what she expected at all.

“You were right, though. Gaz is walking all right. Adal needed it more.” 

Riss recalled how furious she’d been when Adal had sought the same treatment for her. How she woke righteously angry, carried that anger in her like a mouthful of bile. How dead certain she’d been that Calay’s ministrations would deform her somehow, damage her, tarnish her person way down in her soul–which was funny, given she barely believed in souls and never paid her own much thought.

A thought struck her then for the very first time:

Calay had worked as a physiker in Vasile for years, but he’d no doubt concealed his secret. He’d had to stand by and watch his patients suffer and die, knowing all the while that he had an instant cure up his sleeve.

How had he managed that? Had it hurt him as much as Riss imagined it would hurt her?

She didn’t phrase it that way, though.

When she finally spoke again, she swallowed once and said, “It must be a relief not having to hide it anymore.”

For the second time in a day, she left Calay speechless. That must have been some sort of record. 

Night was rapidly winning its battle against the loitering traces of sunlight. The last image Riss was able to fully make out before the dark grew too murky was of Calay regarding her sidelong, his mouth lifted at the corners in a smile. Not a smirk, not a self-satisfied grin, but a small, warm smile that sanded down the innate sharpness of his features.

She chose to carry that image in her mind rather than everything prior. It warmed her more than the thoughts of shattered wagons and too-far-away mountains and the horrible, red-white mess of blood and broken teeth that had been Adal’s mouth when she’d found him.

“I’m… gonna check on our walking wounded,” Calay murmured in the dark. Riss heard him moving off. A torch sputtered to life behind her, throwing wobbly shadows into the night.

Riss raised her voice. “Let me know when you need a rest,” she said for Adal and Gaz’s benefit.

You’re more resilient than the last time this happened, she told herself. You’ve been through so much more. 

But she still couldn’t bring herself to look back. She knew she’d cry, and there was enough gods-damned salt on the ground. No point in contributing to it.  

<< Book 2, Chapter 18 | Book 2, Chapter 20 >>

Book 2, Chapter 18

It’s Riss who finds him.

The sky is dark and fast and it is all he can see until he’s also seeing her. When she sees him her face goes pale and she looks sick to her stomach. Adal doesn’t feel good either. His ‘not good’ is very non-specific. Maybe it’s a small thing or maybe it’s everything. He isn’t sure.

When he tries to talk, his teeth hurt. Hurt isn’t a big enough word, but he can’t remember any bigger ones. Riss leans over him and touches him on the neck and he tries to sit up but she pushes him back down. Something is loose in his mouth. Things feel loose all over.

“Don’t move,” she says. “I’ll get Calay.” 

Riss is smart. Adal trusts Riss. He always has. He tries to nod. She grabs him again.

“Don’t. Move.”

Then she’s gone. He’s alone with the sky again. The sky is getting lighter. The storm is blowing away. He remembers being afraid of the storm but he isn’t afraid now. The clouds are fast and high and lighter than they were. Looking at them makes him tired. He can’t focus. But when he closes his eyes the pain feels like it’s getting closer. 

He waits for Riss. There are other things he could be doing, maybe, but he can’t think of any.

He broke his arm once when he was a boy. Fell while climbing a tree. On the long walk back to the big house, he felt like if he didn’t look at it, it didn’t hurt as bad. 

The big house is called the Estate. He remembers that now.

Riss is gone for a long time. Long enough that the sky turns blue again. It’s washed-out blue, like someone poured too much water in it. There’s a word for that. Adal does not know it anymore. 

He hears voices but he can’t see people. He wants to turn his head, but Riss told him not to move. She was very serious about it. 

“I don’t–I think he fell.”

“… All the way from the top?”

Did he fall? He isn’t sure. The last thing he remembers is being afraid of the storm. For some reason, this thought makes him nervous. His heart speeds up. The next time he breathes, something in his chest feels sharp and out of place.

“My bag’s still in the wagon. I’ve only got this much left.”

“He’s breathing, though?”

Boots crowd around him. Two of them belong to Riss. He can tell. 

“Hey,” she says. Her eyes are wet. “Just hold tight. We’re going to fix you up.”

He tries to talk but his mouth is loose and all the little shards of things in his mouth hurt and it bothers him that he can’t remember what they’re called. Not knowing things is starting to scare him and make him angry.

His chest feels weird. His legs feel far away. His hands are numb. The list of small things that feel not right is growing.

Calay leans over him. His mouth his flat. His eyes aren’t as cold as normal. Adal is surprised by how young he looks. 

“I gotta say, pretty boy…” He reaches down and unbutton’s Adal’s shirt. “You are some combination of phenomenally lucky and much, much tougher than you look.”

“What’s…” Adal tries to talk. All the tiny shards of pain in his mouth come back. Something is really wrong. His face feels like it’s burning. He tries to lift his head so he can see what is wrong, because once he knows he can try to fix it, but Riss is holding him down again and Calay’s hand on him is very heavy and it takes all his energy just to keep his eyes open.

There’s another voice.

“Go ahead.” It’s Gaz. Adal can’t see him.

Calay moves away.

“I told you to sit down.”

“Walking kinda takes my mind off it.”

“Calay.” Riss again, speaking over him. “We don’t have time.”

“Well I don’t have enough blood. I’m trying to–fuck, let me think.”

“Just do as she says. I’ll be okay.” 

People talk around him. Adal stares at the sky. Calm, clear, watered-down blue. Like a pool. He remembers feeding the little things that live in his family’s ponds. Orange and silver things. Fast things. Why is he forgetting so many words?

Riss walks past him. She’s walking back and forth. Sometimes he sees her, sometimes he doesn’t. She isn’t talking anymore.

“Are you sure?” Calay sounds angry. Adal isn’t sure who he’s mad at. Him?

“It’s my choice. You don’t get to make it for me. Riss is right.”

“… I’ll do what I can. Later. I promise.”

Calay told him once that life never let him be soft. But he isn’t always as sharp-edged as he thinks he is. 

When Calay comes back, he’s got his jacket off. He rolls up his sleeves. He pulls a face when he looks at Adal. Riss comes back, too. She reaches down and holds his hand.

“You stay real still,” Riss says. “Calay’s only got enough blood to try this once.”

He can’t see her, but he can hear Rodelinde sniffling. She always hides when she cries. She doesn’t want Mother and Father to see.

“It’s okay,” he tells her through the needling pains in his mouth. It hurts too much to say the rest. 

It’s okay, he wants to tell her. I miss Berin too. 

He tries to swallow but the things in his mouth are thick and clattery and wrong. 

Calay tells him to close his eyes.

Calay is kinder than he thinks he is.

In the calm, slow dark, the sniffling stops.

Diluted. That’s the word he was looking for. The sky, it looked diluted. Washed out. Weak.

<< Book 2, Chapter 17 | Book 2, Chapter 19 >>

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Book 2, Chapter 17

Calay’s final year in Vasile had been one of exuberant highs and disastrous lows. Before he’d fled the city in the aftermath of his own would-be execution, he’d been a valued contractor of the Landed House Talvace, taken under Lady Rovelenne’s wing and fluttered through the vaulted halls of their Estate, their vineyard, even the city’s Leycenate House, where laws were ratified and kids from Blackbricks rarely got to tread.

Talvace was the city’s penultimate Landed family, second in wealth and power only to Ambarro. In a city that stressed egalitarianism, that promised its subjects they had no kings, where thrones was a curse for a reason, Rovelenne Talvace’s word had still carried royal weight.

But before all that, before the veil had been pulled from his eyes, before he’d been kicked to the curb, paid the thieves’ toll with so many of his own fragile tendons, Calay had been a believer. He hadn’t trusted Lady Rovelenne as closely as he trusted, say, Gaz. Didn’t trust her with his life like he did Sylvene. But he’d gotten all wrapped up in her legend. Gotten swept away on the swell of her knowledge of history and procedure, which seemed infinite. He’d gotten carried away on the currents of his own daydreams about what doors she could open.

And before he’d been a believer, he’d been a guest. Lady Rovelenne had invited him into her personal retinue for a day, asked if he wanted to see the halls of the Leycenate, where the Landed and the Common both worked together to regulate the swaggering economic juggernaut that was Vasile during wartime. 

Vasile’s Leycenate House loomed prominently in the city skyline. Its ancient grey stones were each half Calay’s height, a foundation so solid that all the earthquakes and all the great waves and all the coastal storms that had ravaged the city over the centuries had barely even discolored it. Moss eked out a tenuous existence in the grout, but even it was dutifully scraped away by city workers when it dared poke its fuzzy head out where Landed eyes might see.

Inside, the building smelled of old stone and ghostly wakes of perfume left behind when prominent citizens passed through. Its high windows let in diffuse, mist-muted sunlight, each frame a tall archway with a little peak on top.

Though its lines were elegant and every facet of its decor–thick carpets, runners on the stairs, sparse white marble patterned with slate across the floors–was built to last, the building didn’t radiate wealth like Calay expected it might. Apart from the city insignia tiled over the doorways and impressed in relief beneath the light sconces, there was little distinguishing it as a civic building. It might have been a monastery for some well-heeled anonymous cult. A union hall. It was austere, an ageing yet venerable eagle perched by the side of the road.

This was intentional, Lady Rovelenne explained when he voiced these thoughts.

Leycenate House was the building where the Landed worked for the good of the people. If the city splashed out heaps of australs on gilt and stained glass, that wouldn’t be a responsible use of public funds now, would it? Responsible use of public funds was a phrase oft on the lips of the Landed since Anvey Rill’s riots.

On the second floor, though, there were drawings. Out of all the impressions he took back from his tour of that building, it was the drawings that registered most prominently in his memory. They were en route to House Talvace’s offices, which were up many flights of steps, occupying prime upper floor ground where the heat rose and the ground floor damp couldn’t reach.

By Landed standards, the sketches were simple. Later on, Calay would glimpse colorful works of art at Talvace’s actual properties. But the sketches displayed in the hallways of Leycenate House were the first artistic masterworks he’d ever seen up close. They depicted the story of Vasile’s founding told in serialised panels, each rendered in charcoal on the purest, most crisply white paper Calay had ever seen. Paper that looked like it had been milled by some fae spirits, the grain was so fine.

The first panel depicted a ship at sea, its sails full of wind. Rays of sunlight pierced the high, fluffy clouds that stretched over a frothy, lifelike ocean. Which meant the second panel was of course the shipwreck. Even Blackbricks kids with no formal education knew the story of the Far-Leaper, the first vessel to explore the far northern coast. 

The next few panels portrayed a clean, idealized version of the Far-Leaper survivors’ story: washing ashore, gathering debris, building a shelter in the shoreline caves. And then the arrival of the dogs. Their tall, high-eared silhouettes prowled around the survivors at first, sketched in black. It was the dogs, historians said, who protected the settlers from the Things Below, the hard-shelled creeping evil that once kept the Vasa bays to itself. First the dogs were sketched in shadow, then in negative space, a cool-toned white, their color evolving as their status shifted from threat to friend. 

The human mind was a funny thing. 

In all his anatomical training from Alfend, Calay had never really covered it beyond the basics: how to recognize signs of concussion and dementia and bleeds in the brain. How to wiggle little chips of skull free from a head wound without causing further damage. He knew,  though, that there was a line between the brain and the mind. The brain was the spongy stuff inside your skull. When crushed, it snuffed a man’s life out even quicker than a bolt through the heart. But how that lumpy, boiled-cauliflower looking thing worked, how it animated an inert lump of flesh and bone into a person… that was a mystery he was unsure he’d ever know the answer to.

All of that was to say Calay had no earthly idea why he was reminded of the artwork in Leycenate House as he watched the lizard rear, flip the wagon onto its side, and drag it into the ravine.

The human mind was very, very funny.

Rooted into place on the salty ground with the force of his shock, he sprung into motion embarrassingly late. Running flat-out, he dashed through peals of soul-rattling thunder and skidded to a stop near the ravine’s edge. Riss, who’d been on the other side of the galania, arrived at his side a split second later.

In the chaos and noise, it took them both a hesitant moment to agree, eyes roaming in all directions, that Adalgis was not present.

Neither were Torcha and Gaz, because they’d been in the wagon.

It was not until that exact moment, until he thought he words in the wagon that the full implication of that statement punched its way into Calay’s head. He dropped his eyes to the jagged darkness of the ravine. The wagon rested down–far, far down–on the sandy floor, pitched forward at a steep angle amid a halo of shattered wood and glass that fanned out in all directions. Its back wheels turned in a slow, useless wobble, dangling above the ground. All the wreckage was swallowed by shadow.

When lightning next lanced across the sky, Calay used it to survey the ravine floor. His eyes took it in, a brief flash: the lizard’s crushed body, no sign of anything moving.

Riss was saying something. Either the storm muted her or his brain simply didn’t care enough to register the words.

The walls of the ravine were more craggy than sheer, well eroded by wind, riddled with nooks and crannies for a determined climber. His eyes traveled a path down the wall, searching out the more promising handholds, measuring their prominence against the wall–too long, too long, it would simply take too fucking long.

Ducking a hand into the stash pocket inside his coat, he snatched up one of the three precious vials hidden inside. He didn’t dwell on the fact that the rest of his supplies were gods-knew-where in the wreckage. Didn’t dwell on the fact that it might not be prudent to waste blood when there might be two people down below who needed it. His mind touched on those thoughts like a stone skipping across the surface of a lake: barely there, passing through to other, more important places.

He did not have time to climb.

Popping the vial open with his thumb, he tugged the neckline of his shirt open, dashed blood against his skin. His feet were already moving as his fingers sketched the glyphs, symbols he’d memorized from Alfend’s old journals: density, weight, stone.

He flung himself off the edge, hands not quite done yet.

When he fell, he fell quickly. The canyon wall sheered past. He understood why his memories had conjured those images from Vasile: in the flash of lightning, life almost seemed to move as a series of still pictures. Magick sizzled and flickered; his body greedily absorbed the blood and with it the instructions he’d written.

He hit the ground, formed a small crater. But his bones were sturdier now. He stumbled up and out, toward the wreckage, fighting through the wave of dizziness generated from the impact. His skeleton held.

The bottom of the ravine felt too quiet compared to the windy chaos above. The comparably still air, the sand instead of salt, it was like he’d fallen through the crust of the earth and into another world. He jogged toward the wreckage, stepping through the puddled blood of the crushed galania. In a pinch, he could use it. The effects would be weak, growing weaker still as the magickal properties dissipated as it dried, but at that quantity at least he had a lot to work with–

Torcha climbed out the frame of a window, balancing lightly on her feet. She did a double-take when she spotted him, then glanced up toward the ravine’s edge.

“I took a shortcut,” he said. And then: “Where is he?”

“Dunno yet.” Torcha wiped her hair out of her eyes, stepping away from the wreckage. “I’m callin’ for him, but he ain’t…” She took a moment to collect her thoughts. “He was inside when it crashed. Headed for upstairs.”

Well, best make use of the charms he’d put on himself while they were active. He’d been sparing with the blood; the spells wouldn’t last long. Calay stomped up to the shattered wagon, heaved its crooked, leaning door aside, and climbed in. The cargo hold slumped at a high, awkward angle, but from inside, it was evident that the rear of the wagon wasn’t in terrible shape. Unfortunately, the central corridor with all the ladders and hatches to the second floor was buggered. Cursing, Calay peeled planks and overturned furniture out of his way like it weighed nothing. The giddy high he normally felt when the fun kind of magick was coursing through his blood was nowhere to be found.

Thunder grumbled distantly. The storm was whipping past, off to terrorize another patch of salt. Something nagged at him, something he couldn’t quite place, something he would definitely come back to later but it was not a priority now.

Finally, after shoving heaps of debris aside, he found a trapdoor to the second floor. Its frame was warped, squished into a thinned diamond and bowing visibly with the weight of the wagon’s structure atop it. Climbing through that would be stupid; if it collapsed it could slice him in half… 

But it was the quickest way up. And he was clever with his hands and careful where to put his feet. He pulled himself up and through, into the listing wooden-walled barracks.

Everything not nailed to the floor had come loose. Chairs, supplies, the contents of their cargo nets, some of the nets themselves, all but the big meeting table which remained bolted down. The barracks looked like it had been hit with one of Anvey Rill’s bombs.

“Gaz?” His voice came out quieter than anticipated, less that of a confident rescuer and more a man cautious of waking a sleeping dragon. He cleared his throat and tried again. Everything was such a mess. He had no idea where to begin looking.

A rough, cough-rattled groan answered him from somewhere in the wreckage. Calay tried to zero in on its source, walking carefully on the steeply-pitched floor. He skidded and slid a couple times, gradually nearing the wagon’s bow and the biggest heaps of debris. It felt like walking through a shipwreck, treacherous corners and jagged wood snatching at his clothes with every step.

“I’m here,” he said, watching where he put his feet. “Just gotta–rgh–find you!”

There came a knock to his right, then another, deliberate. Turning and nudging a precariously-balanced crate out of his way, he picked through the wagon’s wreckage like a vulture at a carcass. Finally, when he began to shift a rolled-up carpet away from the wall, he heard a wheeze from beneath. Gripping the carpet by the edge, Calay lifted and shoved in a single motion. He could feel the effects of the blood sorcery ebbing; it was harder work than it would have been merely minutes ago. But still he managed.

Tangled in the wreckage, red in the face, was Gaz. He’d fallen onto the wall directly overhanging the pilot’s bench, then been showered in debris when everything had come loose. He was conscious, and though he was beaten moderately to shit and the proud owner of numerous shallow cuts and bruises, he didn’t appear hurt hurt. His eyes fixed on Calay with a groggy slowness. His eyebrows lifted.

“What took you so long?” he grumbled, spitting out a wad of dust and grit.

Now that his arms were free, he reached down, attempting to shove the cracked frame of a dresser off his legs. Calay stooped down and pulled on the opposite end. Thrones, it was heavy. Actually heavy. The legs scratched and scraped along the floor, catching on every gods-damned thing as they moved it, but finally the two of them were able to wrench it aside enough for Gaz to sit up. He winced as he did so, a hand immediately going to his thigh.

“Can you–”

Calay leaned down, way ahead of him. He looped Gaz’s arm over his shoulder and stumbled up the incline, not providing as much leverage as a taller person might have but still capable enough. 

“You good until we get outside?” Calay asked, wary that the wagon might collapse under its own weight if left too long.

“Yeah,” Gaz muttered. “I’ll live.” He sounded tired, but he could walk. He limped along as Calay shuffled them both sideways.

Rather than deal with that dubious trapdoor sans magickal protections, Calay kicked out a window. He climbed out first, then helped Gaz through, and together they navigated the wreckage in a careful climb, emerging into disorienting sunlight. The storm had blown past.

Gaz collapsed into the dirt, hissing. Calay fell back beside him, exhausted. Torcha scurried over and found them both just lying there, catching up on breathing.

“Tadivach’s tits, Gaz. Your leg.”

Calay lifted his head, propped himself up to look down.

A shard of wood as long as his forearm protruded from Gaz’s thigh. Calay’s stomach turned to look at it.

“The fuck!” He rolled up into a sit, reaching into his jacket for his vials. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Gaz–who, come to think of it, did look a little pale in the sunlight–let out an awkward, pained wheeze of a laugh. He tried on a reassuring smile which came out looking more like a grimace.

“Nothing that couldn’t wait,” he said through his teeth. “But… yeah… please fix that now.”

He had enough blood for that. But first he’d have to yank the thing out, and that wasn’t going to be pleasant. And once they got Gaz all fixed up, there were bigger problems to confront. Such as the rest of Calay’s supplies being lost somewhere in the wagon. And the hundreds of thousands of scorpions they now had to outpace on foot.

One disaster at a time. Calay put his hand on Gaz’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“Afraid this isn’t going to be pleasant,” he said. 

Gaz closed his eyes. It was admirable, the amount of effort he put into trying to look calm. “Just like pulling out a big splinter,” he said.

“You’re all right,” Calay said, and all at once the relief caught up with him just as the exhaustion had. A crack in the dam, the moment before the flood. He directed Torcha to help him, readying a cloth that he wished was a little cleaner.

Thunder ran its drumroll off over the Flats. Something about that storm, he thought again. But then Torcha yanked the shard free and Gaz yelped and Calay held tight on the compress and the weather was the last thing on his mind.

Putting pressure on the wound, he nodded his thanks to Torcha and readied the vial. He felt useful again, felt like he was salvaging some control from this clusterfuck.

Noise exploded across the sand, a stampede of footsteps and yelling. Riss rushed over to where they sat, telling him to stop, stop, hold on, don’t use the blood yet. Her face was a color he’d never seen before; she hadn’t gone that pale even when she’d nearly died. 

Adal still wasn’t with her.

<< Book 2, Chapter 16 | Book 2, Chapter 18 >>


Book 2, Chapter 16

Lightning hadn’t ever worried Torcha growing up. It wasn’t a problem for her the way it was for other folks. In the textile districts, floods were a bigger worry. Everything was too marshy to burn, too wet to catch even when lightning struck. But all that rain had to go somewhere. Hence why all the towns were balanced up on hilltops like little crowns.

But even Torcha knew it was bad news to be sitting in a wagon this tall on a plain this flat during a lightning storm. 

For a while, she could hold onto the fiction that they might outrun the clouds. Riss was pushing the lizard hard and it had more stamina than Torcha gave it credit for. But it could only go whole-hog for a couple hours. Soon its run slowed to a dragging, exhausted lope, each of its footsteps scraping hard and loud against the salt. Neither she nor Riss had any idea how much longer it would last.

The mountains were closer, no longer vague suggestions on the horizon, but they weren’t close.

In the meantime, the sky grew darker. The wind shifted. Huddled on the pilot’s bench, Torcha shared a long look with Calay behind Riss’ back. He knew it was coming, too. 

When Calay got scared, he didn’t really look scared. He just looked wild, like a spooked dog, ears perked and back stiff, whites of his eyes showing. 

Straight ahead, the low, dusty mountains beckoned them like a mirage. The Flats threw off her sense of distance. There was no sense of scale, nothing to compare anything else to. Exactly how close they were was anyone’s guess.

“We’re not gonna make it,” Riss declared, watching the lizard from above. Its sides flared out with quick, hard-rasping breaths. It lashed its tail stump side to side, threatening and irritable.

“So we shelter under the wagon?” Calay asked, considering the sky.

“No,” Riss said. “Too risky. Unless we unhitch this guy, he could pull the wheels right over us if he spooks.”

“We should unhitch him regardless,” said Calay. “If the wagon catches fire, it’ll burn him up. And he’s our only ride out of here.”

“We could shelter in the ravine,” said Adal. “Climb down in, find a ledge or something…”

“There’s an idea.” Riss nodded.

Torcha was up in an instant, grabbing Gaz by the arm. They hurried into the barracks and began loading up packs with food and water and ammo. Torcha could lose the wagon. She couldn’t lose water. Not out here.

Thunder rumbled through the wagon’s walls. Strange. She only just noticed, but that was the first thunder she’d heard since they’d spied the storm on the horizon. That wasn’t normal…

But there was no time to ponder that. Food and water and guns secured, they hurried outside.

Out on the salt, wind whipped glittering dust through the air. If you squinted, you could trace them: currents of sparkles, salt thinned out to ribbons on the wind. Riss, Adal, and Calay surrounded the lizard on all sides, slowly closing in, attempting to pacify it and free it of its tether. 

“What if it runs off?” Torcha called. 

“It’s massive,” said Gaz. “And this place is flat as. We’ll be able to see it for miles if it does.”

The wind began to squeal, shrieking through the ravine below. Riss said something. Torcha didn’t hear it. She put a hand to her ear, signalling. Riss gestured, pointing toward the wagon. Was she asking her to stay back? Torcha backpedalled, then tucked herself into the doorway, sheltering herself from the wind. Gaz hurried up a moment later, ducking low, jacket raised up over his head to shield his face from shards of windborne salt.

“What?” Torcha called.

“Calay’s bag.” He squeezed past her into the hall. “He says he can calm it down, but he’ll need blood to–“

Thunder cracked directly overhead. It sounded like the ground beneath their feet was tearing apart. Torcha’s ears rang. She didn’t hear the rest of what Gaz said, but she got the gist. She found it hard to care whether Calay witched the lizard. Apart from her general mistrust of witching, a lizard was a lizard and it wasn’t a person and it wasn’t her, so he could do what he liked. Anything that would get them out of there any quicker.

Through the howl of the wind, she couldn’t hear any rain. A dry storm then. Like Adal had said. 

Voices outside caught her attention. She clambered up onto the pilot’s bench, wondering if there was anything she could do, some rope or harness she could unhook from here to assist.

Riss and Adal had got half the lizard’s harness off. It had puffed up threateningly, facing Calay with an open mouth and a hiss that might have been a hiss or might have been the wind. Torcha had never seen a galania angry before. It gave a warning stomp, claws digging into the salt just beside Calay, who faced it down calmly, without moving. His spooked-dog look was gone, replaced by an icy scowl of concentration.

The air took on a funny smell, sharp and crisp and acidic.

Then another funny thing happened: Torcha’s hair rose up, curls lifting off her neck. Goosebumps prickled up her arms.

She didn’t have long enough to fully form a thought, to wonder what was going on.

Electric blue light exploded across her eyes. Lightning struck something outside, whiting out her vision. Something squealed–lizard? wheels? wind? person?–and the floor tilted and shook. Bright-edged dark blobs danced through the air, afterburns like from looking at the sun too long; she couldn’t see shit. Grabbing for the closest doorway, Torcha held on tight as the wagon veered abruptly sideways. Something outside gave a horrible crunch. The walls shuddered and cracked and the sound of thunder and wind all roared together. All her senses but touch were flooded; she tasted copper in her mouth.

Funnily enough, there was just too much going on for panic to set in. Torcha dug her nails in, then braced one boot against each corner of the doorway. She held on tight as the wagon whirled, dragged all off-kilter. Had the lightning struck the lizard? She couldn’t say. 

Her ears rang like someone had fired a rifle indoors. She wondered if Gaz was all right upstairs. All these thoughts came as split-second flashes as she reacted more with her body than her brain.

Through the high ring of endless, off-tune bells in her ears, she caught one word: out!

But before she could throw herself out the door, the wagon trembled once more, the planks beneath her feet vibrating and flexing as though they might fly apart at any moment. This was bad. They had to cut that lizard free, kill it if they had to. If Torcha had a clear shot, she’d ready her rifle and put one right between its eyes.

She never got the chance. The next impact jolted the wagon crazily. Her world tipped onto its side. She held on tight but then lost her grip as debris smashed into her from behind, something sharp impacting directly between her shoulder blades.

When she caught her last glimpse out the pilot’s window, she realized she couldn’t see the ground anymore. Only sky. A dark, boiling sky lit up blue from within, ribs and veins of lightning streaking across it like a glowing, living skeleton. 

The wagon bounced, skidded. The sky was snatched away. Darkness swallowed her from beyond the windows and something deep within the wagon’s structure groaned and crunched.

Gravity punched her sideways into the doorframe as the panicked lizard dragged them down into the ravine.


When she came to, everything hurt. But hurt was good. It meant nothing was broken bad. In the early days of the woodland cells, their patchy camps beneath fat, dangling silkspiders in their webs, Jalacho had given lectures on rudimentary first aid. Torcha hadn’t really listened, young and angry and distractible as she was, but she remembered vividly his descriptions of what it felt like to get shot. He’d talked about slow, spreading numbness and pain and pain and pain until his brain grew kind of overloaded and the pain became an absence.

She’d always liked that morbid stuff. 

She was tangled in what appeared to be a curtain or awning, a disorienting swaddle of scratchy dark canvas. Crawling up out of it, Torcha felt smooth wood under her palms, bonked her elbow into a light fixture, and realized she was laying on the ceiling.

Outside, the storm still raged, but at such a distance her nerves couldn’t summon concern about it. 

She blinked and thought back to Mosz’s story. The boy in the ravine, pursued by his far-off pile of hungry, vengeful bones. She wondered if this was the ravine from the story. She wondered if any bones awaited them. If anything was gaining on them besides thousands of scorpions.

But those thoughts were soon replaced by more practical concerns. 

Could she walk? Yes. 


So where was Gaz?

And what had happened to everyone else?

And–at this, her hand went to her belt–was there a pissed off building-sized lizard down here with her?

Her sidearm was gone. Her shoulders throbbed. Feeling along the wall, aided by the occasional flash of lightning, she groped around in the dark until she found the curtain rod. Bracing her boot against the wall, she pulled hard until it snapped free in her hands. Then she felt for which end was the sharpest, the most splintered, and aimed it out before her like a spear.

It barely felt like being armed.

Was it bad that she hoped the lizard had died in the fall? Sure, it was their only way out of the Flats, but firstly, this disaster was its fault and therefore it was a bastard. Secondly, she wanted to call out to Gaz, but if the damned thing was down there, pissed off and wounded, lashing out as critters were wont to do when hurt…

Broken wood crunched under her feet with each step. It was slow going through the ruined wagon, ducking and crawling through spaces too narrow for most people. But the sporadic lightning helped her. Soon, she spied a way out: a busted maintenance hatch that led down toward the wheels and axles. She slid through it at a steep angle, feeling along with the tip of her curtain rod. The big front axle was splintered; no matter the state of the rest of the wagon, it wasn’t going anywhere. But even broken, it served a purpose: she was able to follow it out to freedom.

Falling onto her stomach, Torcha had to wiggle on her front to escape the wagon’s wreckage. She pulled herself along the ground, which was still dusted with salt even down this far.

She planted her palms on the ground to lever herself free. They touched something slimy and wet and warm.

With a heave of her arms, she dragged herself entirely free of the wreckage, palms slip-sliding in dark, viscous liquid. Rolling onto her side, she emerged from the wagon’s shadow, saw the slick stuff down her arms and torso was the lizard’s blood. She stayed like that for a moment, sitting at the bottom of the ravine, eyes raised toward the spread of storm clouds overhead. 

The dry air tingled when she breathed it. Wind whipped past the ravine’s mouth, screaming up above like a vengeful ghost. The impact had scattered her brain so fiercely she couldn’t remember any warding words, any good prayers, anything from the old town that might lend a scrap of ritualistic calm. 

She couldn’t see a trace of the others. It was like she’d fallen down into hell.

Slow, wobbly on her feet, she took a walk around the wreckage. She had to step back, to give it some distance to really take in what had happened. Up close, it was all just a mess of wood and lizard meat. Distance gave her the perspective she needed. 

The wagon had careened into the gulch nose-down, crushing the lizard from behind. Its bow was embedded in the galania’s back. The lizard’s forelegs were twisted and mangled beneath itself; its head lolled sideways, tongue a slab of sticky meat upon the salty floor. Possible the fall had killed it. Possible it had bled out after. The very front of the wagon had taken the worst damage, its axle cracked, wheels bowing out awkwardly. The pilot’s bench and the frontmost frame of the upper floor and roof were crunched in against each other in a folded v-shape. 

But that wagon must have been made of sturdy stuff, because the bits that hadn’t directly impacted the ground looked all right. In fact, apart from the fact that it was tipped forward and its wheels weren’t touching the ground, the back half looked almost driveable. Torcha had just been unlucky enough to end up in the squished bits.

Gaz, though. Where had he been? 

It was unfamiliar, this immediate nagging concern for others in the aftermath of a catastrophe. She hadn’t really felt that in the war, at least not ‘til the end.

This was new. It was inconvenient. But now that she felt it, she couldn’t just ignore it.

“Gaz?” She cupped a hand around her mouth and hollered in toward the wreckage. The wagon stayed silent. Nothing stirred inside.

Torcha planted the butt of the curtain rod onto the crunchy ground. She was going to have to climb back in there, wasn’t she.

“Gaz!” she yelled again. “C’mon big guy, at least tell me which window to crawl in!”


She just had to find him, that was all. He was in there somewhere. No way he could have tumbled out. He couldn’t even fit out the windows if given the opportunity.

Oddly enough, it didn’t even occur to her to worry that he might be dead. Somehow, on a level so deep she didn’t even consciously think it, Torcha assumed that if he was dead, she’d know. That whatever fucking unknowable fungus bullshit had Bridged them in the swamp had left some permanent smear across their minds. The three of them were mingled dye bleeding together over the edge of paper or cloth. 

It wasn’t like she could read their minds, the boys from Blackbricks. It didn’t work like that. But ever since that moment, there’d been a strange thread of understanding woven through them. Gaz especially. He had a mind so unlike her own. So gentle and careful. Not in a nervous way. Not in a walking-on-eggshells way. More like he treated every person he ever met as though he was handling a newborn kitten: something precious and important that you had to be real careful with, not because you were worried you might destroy it but because it was alive and all things that were alive mattered. 

Gaz had a fundamental goodness in him that Torcha wasn’t quite sure what to do with. A goodness she was cynically surprised Calay hadn’t exploited yet. 

She’d feel it if that goodness got snuffed out of the world. If something so rare and unique was suddenly gone. 

The world was vast and uncaring. But the Collective, the thing that had put its mark on all three of them, was not.

Wiping half-dried lizard blood off her hands, she climbed back into the wagon’s wreckage.

He was in there. She just had to find him. 

<< Book 2, Chapter 15 | Book 2, Chapter 17 >>

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Book 2, Chapter 15

(Short author’s note – I’m finally back in my regular time zone and from next week forward, updates will be less erratic!)

Sleep came and went. Dawn came and went, too. No one roused Calay for watch. In fact, the barracks was entirely empty when he awoke. Waking to see sunlight streaking through the windows was disorienting, even if it was the fresh, infant sunlight of an early dawn. The dry air of the Flats lent itself well to reusing linens; his shirt and glove still felt crisp and dry when he pulled them back on. He didn’t bother buttoning the shirt nor belting his trousers as he climbed all over the wagon in search of the others. The polished wood of the wagon’s floor was appealingly cool against his feet. 

He found Torcha on the roof. She looked like she’d been awake for hours, or like she hadn’t slept through the night at all. Either was possible. Bent low beneath the glow of a lantern, she was in her element: stripping and oiling the parts of someone’s sidearm or another. Adal’s, by the look of it. 

“Warm out already,” Calay said by way of greeting. “Gonna be a hot one today.”

“Hope the sun don’t put our lizard to sleep,” she said, twisting a pipe cleaner down the barrel of the pistol.

Calay’s brow wrinkled. “Does that happen?”

Torcha shrugged with just her head, tilting her chin. “Well, little ones do it…” Trailing off, she finished her cleaning and then started to piece the pistol back together, hands moving with the absent, mindless confidence of repetition. “Anyway. Everyone’s down below.”

She didn’t mean the cargo hold, nor the pilot’s bench. So Calay climbed out of the wagon and beneath it. There he found Adal and Gaz inspecting the wheels and axles, the most important ritual of the morning.

“How’s she looking?” Calay asked. 

Gaz gave him a wordless affirmative gesture. Adal, shimmying around with a lantern, nodded from where he crouched. 

“I was curious how the wheels would handle the salt,” he said. “Never traversed this terrain on wheels before. And technically speaking, we’ve been off-road this entire time…”

Calay tuned out, listened to the drone of Adal’s technical explanation as merely background noise. Riss arrived a minute later carrying a hefty woven basket and one of those leather-strap slings all the Beddos used instead of bags. She was laden down with interesting-smelling food, loaves of some bread that used ground rice instead of flour and bottles of black and red berry spirits. 

“I figure interesting booze might buy us friends when we rendezvous with the Rill gang,” said Riss. 

“What’s our plan for all that, anyway?” Calay asked. “We ought to discuss it in more detail…”

“C’mon.” Riss beckoned him up top. “We’ll chat while we drive.”


Tightening up the wagon, rousing the galania, and setting off was something that came quicker and with greater efficiency every morning that passed. It took mere minutes this time. Soon Calay was sitting on the bench alongside Riss, who flashed a mirror in the sun, signaling to the Beddo wagon. Both began their steady trundle across the dawn-pink salt.

“So,” Riss said. “The plan for Nuso Rill.” 

Calay listened with interest even as his eyes swept the horizon. 

“We’ll follow this ravine north by northwest,” she said. “It crosses almost the entire Flats; should reach the other side in two, maybe three days. Due north from where the ravine terminates, there’s the canyon Leonór told us about. Inside that canyon is a spit-fleck of a stopover called Frogmouth, up in the canyon wall itself–“

Calay had to cut in. “I’m sorry, called what?”

“Frogmouth. You heard me.”

Calay laughed from deep down in his diaphragm, surprised by the force of his own laughter. Frogmouth. How daft. Sure didn’t sound like the sort of place to search out a famous outlaw. An apothecary who sold dodgy portions to horny old men, maybe…

“And Rill will be there?” he asked.

“He’s been sighted there, at least.” Riss nodded. “It’s a known haunt for all sorts of disreputables looking to fence ill-gotten gains. We’ll hang around town, see if we can send word that we’re looking to offload this wagon. If at all possible, we’re to find out where Rill camps.”

Reclining back on the bench, Calay sniffed the dry, salty air.

“All right,” he said. “So we roll into Frogmouth and see if Rill wants to have us over for tea.”

“Mhm. All we have to do in the meantime is avoid thousands of scorpions.”

As far as plans went, it was diabolically simple. So few moving parts. So few opportunities for things to go wrong. 


It had just gone midday when Calay first spied the ravine on the horizon. The sun was punishing, hovering straight overhead as if to scold anyone who’d dare be out at this hour. So when Calay saw what appeared to be a shadow on the horizon, he had to double-check. Heat shimmer made everything wobble and waver, but soon they drew close enough to confirm it. 

What began as a crumbling crack in the salty ground soon opened up into a wide gulf easily four or five times the width of their wagon. When Calay peered down its steep, salt-encrusted sides, he couldn’t quite see the bottom due to the angle. Riss directed the galania to give the ravine a generous berth. The Beddos did likewise. 

Something inside Calay relaxed. The old twinge in his jaw unclenched. They’d made it. And not a single scorpion in sight. 

He took a turn manning the rear guard for a while, rifle balanced in his lap. Not that there was a soul behind them. Only the dance of heat off the flat, off-white ground.

More uneventful hours passed. Calay’s mind retreated into that quiet, contemplative place where he considered his goals: Frogmouth, Rill, the postwoman’s mysterious collection of letters. Then Riss shouted something, a relaxed-sounding order directed down below. 

There was no urgency in her voice. The wagon rolled to a gentle stop. Calay climbed down to see what was the matter.

Nothing, it turned out. They were merely parting ways with their caravan companions. The whole Beddo family came out to say their goodbyes. Calay lingered at the edge of the crowd, standing in the wagon’s shadow as Riss bade them all farewell. He picked up bits and pieces of their conversation. The Beddos were heading straight west from this bend in the ravine, climbing up into the distant mountains and into plateau country. Continental geography still twisted his brain into knots a little, but the plateaus weren’t far from where Riss grew up, if he had it right. No wonder she was making nice with the traders.

Calay had played it out in his mind a few times, how he’d respond if he ran into fellow Vasa travelers. He could not envision a scenario in which they weren’t sent to kill him.

The elder Beddo woman spotted him, waving to his spot in the shade.

“And you,” she called over. “How did you sleep?”

Calay gave her a thin, shadowed smile. 

“Like a baby,” he said. 

As he watched their small, gaudy wagon disappear into the distance, he once again felt that subtle, seismic tug. Felt like the Flats were thinning their numbers.


It hadn’t been that impressive when it was merely a mark on Riss’ map, but soon the ravine crumbled and tumbled deep into the earth. Calay appreciated it over his left shoulder from where he lounged at the rear boarding plank. It was there whenever he turned his head, providing a comfortable barrier against the flood of incoming scorpions. They had time on their side now. 

So when he heard Torcha whistle the alert, he wondered what could be the matter. It certainly wasn’t scorpions.

Climbing up onto the roof, he was joined by everyone but Riss. Torcha sat beneath her sun-shade, eyes to the east, her mouth a thin flat line.

“You’re right,” Adal was saying. “I don’t like the look of them.”

Calay followed their stares out toward the horizon. From where he’d been watching, south and down below, he hadn’t seen the clouds mounting. They looked unlike any storm clouds he’d ever seen, lacking the grey-black-brown gradient of the storms that ravaged the coasts of his youth. These clouds were grey-red, towering higher than any he’d ever seen. They looked like great heaps of dishes in the sky.

“Doesn’t look like rain…” he started.

“No,” said Adal. “But keep watching.”

It only took a couple seconds. They all watched the distant clouds as lightning lanced from one to another, forking out in all directions. 

“That doesn’t look like any storm I ever saw,” said Gaz. There was no curtain of rain beneath it at all.

“Storms behave differently out here over nothing but dry land,” said Adal. “The plateau near Carbec, down the dry side you can get dry lightning. Thunderstorms with no rain. They can develop into dust storms, too. Sudden gusts of wind, grains of sand like knives. They’re real bastards.”

“But do you reckon it’s headed this way?” asked Torcha.

Adal thinned his lips. “Hard to say. I’m not familiar with the terrain here. And we’re on a moving wagon, makes the wind tough to gauge.”

“I’d say our first order of business ought to be finding out,” said Calay. 

Something unseen raced through his blood, dread and anticipation rising through the hair on his arms like steam. Was it the charge of the storm? Was it normal to feel them even this far off? Adal disappeared down the hatch, calling out something to Riss down below.

“That ain’t a dust storm,” Torcha said, as if in some attempt to comfort him. “They’re like a solid wall of red coming at you.”

Calay’s shoulders twitched.

“I’m more worried about the lightning,” she said. “All this wood we’re sitting on. And we’re the tallest thing for miles.”

Beneath their feet, the wagon juddered. The ravine began to speed by quicker. Riss was urging the lizard into a run. 

The wagon’s occupants all leapt into frantic action. With the same expedience they’d shown in their morning routine they now latched and shuttered all the windows. Torcha rolled up the awnings. Calay ducked inside, slid down the ladder, and met Riss on the bench. Her jaw had tensed, her eyes on the distant storm. Calay watched it for a while too, peering past her.

“Headed our way, then?” he asked.

“Adal seems to think so. Could miss us depending on how hard it’s rolling, but I’d rather not take that chance.”

Calay slid his tongue over his teeth. Nerves prickled in his mangled arm. “Is there anything I can do?”

Riss didn’t look up. “Not unless you can control the weather.”

Calay didn’t know if his talents could ever extend that far. There was so much he’d never learned, so many characters in the alphabet he’d never practiced. He wondered where his skills might be if Alfend Linten hadn’t disappeared. If he’d had an actual tutor showing him the way rather than scraps of diaries and notes and wary, careful experimentation.

“Afraid not,” he said. “But… I can put out fires, at least.” 

That one had been a priority after the riots in Blackbricks. Flames needed air to feed themselves; he could swallow the air above them, muffle them with shadow. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the closest he’d been able to teach himself.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Riss said.

Calay wished it wouldn’t, but as the wind turned and began to pick up speed, licking through his hair with a chill that seemed almost beckoning, he didn’t hold out hope. 

Soon they’d secured every loose item they could. Riss urged the galania into a full-on run, its massive claws churning up salty spray as it dashed along the alkali fields. The wagon behind it shuddered and bumped and creaked, dragged along at a speedier pace than its groaning structures were used to.

Calay couldn’t tell at first, with the height of the clouds and the width of their spread. Hard to see whether they were coming or going. But soon he felt the telltale drop in his lungs and his gut, the sensation of weather turning. Their wagon wasn’t a ship; it lacked a barometer. But Calay didn’t need one to know the storm was hot on their heels.

<< Book 2, Chapter 14 | Book 2, Chapter 16 >>


Book 2, Chapter 14

“And it’s a good thing that Petrilo dug, too.” The old woman, Mosz, leaned forward in her sling chair as her story entered the home stretch. “When his fingers cracked through the salt, he heard down below him the scratch and drag of the lang-dolac’s footsteps. In a frantic scramble, Petrilo dug his way free. He smashed through the salt, pushing his head through like a bird hatching from an egg. He took his first breath of fresh dawn air. Then he wriggled his shoulders free.

“His imagination filled his head with thoughts of sharp, cold bones grabbing at his ankles as he dragged himself up and onto the salt. The scratching beneath him drew nearer, nearer…” The old woman bounced her thick grey brows a single time. “But it never breached the surface. That day, Petrilo discovered something that would serve his people for generations to come: things bewitched can’t cross the barrier between salt and sky.”

She hesitated for a moment on that note, allowing those gathered around the fire to absorb that wisdom. Calay hadn’t noticed that he’d been holding his breath, but he released it in a slow exhale. He’d been hanging on her every word.

“These restless bones walking beneath the salt, these creatures, some say this explains the poison.” Mosz gestured with a gnarled hand. “Why some colors of salt turn you ill.”

Calay spent a long while pondering her words. At first he’d been ready to dismiss the story as an old wives’ tale–literally, given the age of the woman telling it. If certain varieties of salt from the Flats made people sick when they ingested it, that must be due to the chemical composition. Something in it turned the stomach. That could be useful in medicine, he knew–emetic powders were tough to measure, difficult to come by in Vasile. Expensive compared to the mostly-effective if crude method of suggesting a nauseous patient consume charcoal.

Now, though, he found his mind open to more unnatural possibilities. The swamp at Adelheim had changed him. No alterations in chemical composition could explain the way those trees moved. Or the strange mental connection that withered corpse had opened between he and Gaz and Torcha. The blinking motes of light inside his consciousness, little eyes opening and closing in the swamp like so many doors.

He knew it was silly that those experiences had shaken him so fundamentally. He was a sorcerer, for fuck’s sake. But the thing about sorcery that regular humans didn’t understand was that sorcery was simply a language. Sorcery had rules. Calay’s magicks sometimes had effects that weren’t as powerful as anticipated. Rarely they exceeded his expectations. Sometimes a new combination of glyphs had an effect that wasn’t quite what he was aiming for. But by and large, sorcery was simple mechanics. It was levers and wheels. It behaved in a predictable way that he could rely upon when needed.

If Alfend Linten’s teachings had opened Calay’s eyes, the last year of his life had opened a third one. 

There were things out there beyond his understanding. Beyond medicine. Beyond anatomy. Possibly even beyond sorcery. A campfire tale of forgotten bones doomed to shuffle eternally beneath the salt, poisoning everything above it… good, spooky entertainment though it might have been, Calay was unable to fully write the idea off.

Mosz’s son–or was it her brother?–passed around a bottle of something strong, a tart red liquor. Everyone took a parting swig and thanked the elder woman for her story. Calay left Riss to sort out the watch schedules and left Adal to dole out dessert.

He stood at the very fringe of the fire’s light, face turned toward the stars. Closing his eyes, he tried to clear his mind. Tried to focus on the gentle rasp of wind over salt, the crackle of the fire. Tried to figure out if he could sense anything. He was a sorcerer; surely if there was anything mystical or unusual about these parts, he should be able to tell.

All he felt was a little chilly, frankly. His road clothes were loose, breathable, comfortable for the hot confines of the wagon. But the hot desert turned brisk at night. 

The stars, though. They sure were something out here. It was silly, he knew, to be so constantly taken aback by the flatness of a region called the Alkali Flats. And yet he was. He’d never been in a place so flat. Even the widest squares in Vasile were nothing by comparison. There wasn’t a tree in sight, nor any hills or mountains. The old woman had said they’d spy the mountains by tomorrow. For now, there was nothing to indicate any one direction differed from another. Just the sun and the stars–far more stars than he was accustomed to seeing even when out of doors. Whole ribbons of them, little waterfalls of faint light that rippled across the sky.

Solid footsteps crunched at his back. He glanced over, expected to find Gaz towering at his side. Intead, to his surprise, it was Mosz who’d joined him. She wasn’t much taller than him, but her heavy feet had fooled him.

“You have a look to you,” she declared. Her tone of voice didn’t reveal whether she thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. 

Calay said nothing, merely tilted his head, inviting her to explain.

“A quiet man with a loud mind,” she said. Her tone had a vague, world-weary sympathy to it, as if his was a problem suffered by a loved one or Mosz herself.

You don’t know me, Calay nearly snapped. But he restrained himself. The Beddos were, for the time being, their traveling companions. They’d engaged in no suspicious behavior. And he had to grudgingly admit that he’d enjoyed the lively story that Mosz had told, had enjoyed following Petrilo’s ups and downs.

“It’s been a long ride,” Calay conceded. “For many months before this one.”

If he were the type to share that sort of thing, he might have elaborated further on the strange feelings the Flats conjured in him. The way the vast, empty bigness of nature made him feel disconcertingly small. How the lack of walls triggered some primal, ancient prey mentality in the back of his mind. A constant low-key warning to run run run, because there was no shelter, because he was out in the open like a plump mouse in a barren field, cluelessly unaware of the circling hawks overhead.

Calay had always preferred to see himself as the hawk. He hated that vulnerability.

“Where I come from,” he told the woman instead. “It’s easy to see where you fit. Out here…” Too much horizon, too much space, it blurred the edges of everything together.

“Out here a man is alone with his own bones,” said Mosz. “Just your bones and the sky.”

That sent a little twitch through Calay’s shoulders. “Right,” he said.

“We have something that can help you sleep,” she offered. “Bottle of black spirits. Tastes of salted liquorice and calming mixed herbs.”

That sounded like an intriguing flavor profile. Calay wasn’t entirely sure. But then again, he could afford it. And they had a wagon to haul it. And building a bit of extra goodwill with these traders seemed like a smart move. All those justifications stacked up and he passed Mosz a handful of australs. She met him at the door to his wagon a few minutes later, waddling back with a skinny, long-necked glass bottle. She patted the back of his gloved hand as she passed it over, promising him pleasant dreams.

“Uh, thanks,” he said, unsure how to react to any of that. 

If she felt anything abnormal beneath the kidskin of his glove, she didn’t comment. She didn’t even glance down.

Everyone retreated to their respective wagons for the night. Calay didn’t trouble himself with the specifics of who was keeping which watch–he figured someone would wake him when it was his turn. There was a time not many years ago when he’d have never been able to take such a hands-off approach to his own safety. A time when he’d have insisted on first watch to take a measure of everyone else. To watch his own back.

Was he growing that comfortable with his companions or was he merely confident that none of them could kill him? He supposed he’d never know the answer to that.

When his brain got too thoughtful or the world got too weird, he had only one thing to do. He sought out the familiar, the calming. 

Gaz was alone in the second floor barracks when Calay finally found him. The big, thick-walled wagon was generous with its space. You could hardly guess five people slept aboard. 

“I have a mystery drink from our caravan companions,” Calay announced when he strolled in. “Pleasant dreams or your money back.”

Gaz, who was in the process of making up his bunk, finished shaking out a quilt. The skinny mattress of the bunk was built into a recess in the wall, an awkward shape and size. He hovered the quilt over it as though unsure which angle from which to attack.

“My dreams are already nice,” he said casually, without looking up. Finally, he just draped the quilt into place and left it there with a big, pensive shrug.

“Well aren’t you blessed.”  Calay rummaged around in the nook at the rear of the barracks, searching for a glass. 

“I like to think so.”

By the time Calay had located the pair of cups, Gaz had made up his bed for the night and taken up a seat beside the closest window. There weren’t any window slits or portholes beside the bunks. This made sense for safety and security purposes, Calay knew, but at the same time he understood his friend’s desire to have eyes on the sky. Being cooped up in a wagon in a strange wilderness with no sense of one’s place or position in the world made him uneasy. With all the shades drawn down, you couldn’t even tell the time of day.

“I wonder if this is how it is when you’re at sea,” Calay said. He poured two slim measures of thick, shiny black liquor and pressed one into Gaz’s hand.

“Think this place would be awful cramped if we were.” Gaz took the liquor, sniffed it. “Loy says sleeping on a ship is a nightmare. Everyone’s shoulder to shoulder in tiny hammocks. Ship’s only big enough to sleep a third of her crew at once.”

That was the first time he’d discussed Loy in such depth for… well, since they’d left her. Calay couldn’t even articulate how much had changed since then. He felt an impetus to apologize then, to tell Gaz that he knew how badly he’d misjudged his feelings for Loy and that he was sorry, truly sorry, for the cruel things he’d said.

But the funny thing about all those years, all that distance, was that he found the more he thought about it, the more it didn’t matter. Was it worth apologizing for something that occurred an emotional lifetime ago? Was a sincere apology worth doing if you had to tug open old wounds to do it? At what point did one outweigh the other? These, too, Calay figured he’d never know the answer to.

“I meant more the… spatial strangeness of it,” he said, staying focused on boats. “Having a sense of motion without a sense of place. Feeling the wheels moving without being able to see where you’re going or even where you are.”

Gaz sipped his liquor, then made a pleased noise. “Nice,” he said. “And… that part is horrible, yeah.”

Calay glanced down and discovered his cup was empty. He’d slugged his own drink down without even tasting it. Or noticing he’d done it. Too many questions rattling around in his head. 

“We’d be terrible sailors,” he said as he poured himself another drink.

Footsteps creaked quietly across the roof. Calay paused, glancing up, but soon he knew the heel-heavy stomps as Torcha’s. Then Adal’s, tapping with his toes. Riss was the only one he didn’t hear yet; she rolled her feet a little when she walked, a hint of the recon bowman’s woodlands crawl never having left her. When he heard these patterns, he found them calming.

She joined the pair a moment later, strolling sedately across the roof.

Gaz’s features were inscrutable as he studied the Flats outside the window. Or perhaps the stars. There were all sorts of questions and conversations that could have filled these quiet moments, yet the stark state of the land outside seemed to request his silence. Involuntarily, his thoughts snapped back to the sharp sizzle of connection, the flood of racing thoughts and sensation he’d felt from Gaz and Torcha both when they’d touched hands with the Collective. The Bridging. 

This flat, empty place seemed to stretch every human connection thinner. Its silence and stillness wedged into the gaps between people, encouraging vastness between them.

Calay had a lot of questions he could have asked. Were apologies worth it if they unearthed old hurts? Was he starting to call these familiar footsteps his friends? When exactly was one of them going to cave and broach the subject of what are we, exactly, these days? 

Yet as he studied the fire through the window and watched the flames flicker, all that came to mind was a sinister interpretation of the Flats’ quiet. This quiet is trying to spread us out, he thought. Because it’s easier to pick us off one by one. 

He tasted his drink by the third glass. It didn’t quite tuck him into a cozy liquorice bed the way Mosz promised, but it did help him sleep. 

<< Book 2, Chapter 13 | Book 2, Chapter 15 >>


Book 2, Chapter 13






Still the forgotten bones pursued him.


He woke them.












Petrilo couldn’t help it. He looked back. 














Then came the dragging. Skrrrtch. 





















Skrrrrch. That didn’t last long. 





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