Not Exactly

Ciaran made the rest of his trades, keeping a weather eye on Brenna all the while. He managed to avoid getting into an argument with Aidan while bartering for some rabbit meat. When Aidan became distracted by Aednat, Ciaran ducked away, wandered slowly but deliberately over to where Brenna was singing a song in some unknown language.

“Hello,” he said.

She smiled up at him. “Hello, Ciaran.”

“You remember my name,” he said.

“Yes. Do you remember mine?”

“It’s Brenna.”

“Indeed,” she said. “Are you looking to trade?”

“Not exactly,” Ciaran said. “It’s just...is it true? About those bowls?”

Just A Girl

“Seeing?” Aoife echoed. “Seeing what?”

“Your fortune or fall, your lover or your child - whatever you desire, if you’re willing to pay the price,” Brenna said. She strummed a glissando of notes, and Ciaran went still, listening intently to the conversation. “You can see the living and the dead, and the yet to be born.”

“You’re a witch,” Aoife said flatly.

“Hardly,” Brenna said. “I’m just a girl, waiting for a boy or a war or something to make my life matter.”

“How much for a bowl?”

“What have you got?”

“I’m a decent spinner,” Aoife said.

“One spool, then.”

Holding or Seeing

Ciaran waited until Fionn the fisherman was distracted before he made a trade with Fionn’s grandmother, Fingula, who took pity on Ciaran, “the poor, motherless mite”. He glanced over his shoulder to where Brenna was minding her wares and wondered what she was doing at market. Didn’t druids spend their days dancing in the trees or something?

She had a sword by her side, as fine a weapon as any chieftain carried, but she seemed languid, amused by all she saw.

Aoife stopped to talk to her.

“What are you peddling, lass?”

“Bowls, for holding or seeing as you need.”

A Girl Amused

Brenna sat on the ground next to a blanket laid with fine pottery and some woven cloth folded in neat stacks. She had her hood tossed back, and her hair - blacker than any Ciaran had seen - gleamed in the sun. The blue swirls on her arms looked surreal, and she seemed less interested in making sales than in playing a small lap-harp, picking out idle melodies the likes of which Ciaran had never before heard.


Several children from the village ventured close, but their mothers pulled them away, making the sign against evil in Brenna’s direction. She just smiled.

Until

Ciaran wasn’t sure whether he liked the days when his father sent him down to market by himself to trade peat for supplies. Some days, when the weather was fine, Ciaran would huddle miserably beneath his cloak and curse his pale skin, his odd freckles and unnaturally red hair. Most Gaels were dark-haired, and even though Fingula and the old wives said he was lucky, the rest of the lads in the village - strong, hulking farmboys, hunters and fishermen - liked to mock him.

Today Ciaran was determined to make the trades and go straight home.

Until he saw her.

Son of Brighid

“So you’ve met him,” Deagan said.


Brenna nodded, finished skinning the rabbit with a swift tug. “Hair almost the color of wine, eyes the color of the sea - as you said.”

“I’m surprised Eoghan let you near him,” Niamh said, handed Brenna a spit for the rabbit.

“Eoghan didn’t,” Brenna said.

Malachy laughed. “That’s our brave lass. What did you think of him?”

“He’s just a boy,” Brenna said. “Nothing to be afraid of.”

“The son of Brighid is a mighty force. We should all fear him,” Odran said, his blind gaze fixed on nothingness. “He isn’t human. Not really.”

Brenna

Before Ciaran could take a bite of the apple, the bird took to the sky with a harsh cry.

“Farewell, lad,” Brenna said, and she vaulted over the stone wall after it.

“My name’s Ciaran,” he protested, but she vanished over the crest of the hill almost too quickly to be humanly possible.

“Lad, bring your father some wine, would you?” Eoghan called from the other side of the hut.

Ciaran jumped. “Yes, Da!” He took a bite of the apple, then ducked into the hut for the jug of wine kept cooling under the table.

Her name was Brenna.

Apple Seeds

“My name is Brenna,” she said, and she smiled at him, held out her cupped hands. “Would you like some of my apple?”

Apple. She was just holding an apple. The red was the skin of an apple. Fruit. Edible. Poison seeds, yes, but --

“Thank you,” Ciaran said. He set the bricks of peat down by her feet and reached out. He jumped when her fingers, sticky-damp with juice, tangled with his, and then she pressed half of the apple into his hand. She’d cut it in half, and he saw that the seeds formed a five-pointed star.

Blood Magic

One gold coin would keep a family in peat for a month. Ciaran nodded and accepted the coin, then ducked around to the shed. He darted a nervous glance at his father, but Eoghan was still working and whistling to himself, assuming his son was still hard at work too.

Ciaran drew several bricks of peat out of the shed and wrapped them in old sacking for good measure before skittering back around the hut.

“Miss,” he began, and drew up short.

She was leaning against the wall, cradling a handful of bright, damning red.

It was druid blood magic.

Suffice

“Your kind,” Ciaran echoed. “What is your kind?”

“Some call the men druids, or holy men,” the woman said.

Ciaran had heard of the druids, the mad men who prayed to trees and worshipped goddesses and conducted rituals by blood. He drew back.

The woman smiled. “I suppose you’ve heard the stories, then?”

“I...cannot take so much money,” Ciaran finally said. He wasn’t afraid of old wives’ tales. Even if the other village lads weren’t there to see him, he would be brave.

The woman paused and looked down at the coins, then up at him. “Will one suffice?”

By Fire

Ciaran nodded and started back toward the shed where he and his father stored their cut peat, but something in the woman’s eyes made him falter, pause. She’d come buying peat the day before - that was what she wanted, right? But then he listened to her words in his mind once more, and a bright blush stole over his features.

“Er...how much peat do you want?”

The woman held out a hand; again with the mass of gold coins.

“It is peat you want, isn’t it?”

The woman laughed softly. “Yes. Warmth by fire is preferable for my kind.”

Warmth Tonight

Ciaran raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I mean no harm.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at him, and Ciaran saw something like recognition flash in her eyes. But then it was gone, and she let her hand fall to her side.

“You startled me,” she said. She glanced up at the bird, and then she whistled.


Ciaran could only stare as the thing settled on her shoulder. She reached up, stroked its crest absently.

“I don’t think your father would like you talking to me,” she said. “But I am still looking for a little warmth tonight.”

Lure

Ciaran checked over his shoulder for his father once more, but Eoghan was on his hands and knees, cutting peat neatly with his knife. He wouldn’t be able to see if Ciaran, say, went to talk to the lady. Ciaran set down his spade and rose slowly, ducked around the side of the hut.

“I have some chicken lungs, if you think those will lure your pet down,” he said.

The woman turned to him, and Ciaran saw that her eyes were bright golden. And then he saw that she’d reached beneath her cloak - for the hilt of a sword.

Wide-Eyed and Lovely

Ciaran knew her voice - it was the woman who had come seeking peat, the woman her father had turned away. He’d tried to ask Fingula about the ‘holy men’, but she’d just shuddered and shook her head and asked him to help her build a fence to pen in her goats. Ciaran glanced at his father, but Eoghan hadn’t noticed.

Ciaran rose to his feet, started toward the hut, and then he paused, for the woman was standing beside his window, and she’d flung back her hood, raised her arms as if she could catch the bird.

She was lovely.

Memory

Dawn off the horizon turned the sea pale lavender tinged with gold. Ciaran looked up from his work and dragged a hand over his brow. Heat came early in the summer, and he’d been working hard for an hour already.

A harsh cry broke the morning stillness above the sound of his father’s labor, and Ciaran turned, saw a massive black bird swoop across the sky and settled on the roof of the hut. Ciaran thought it looked at him, but then he’d been imagining a lot of that lately.

And then a woman called out, “Machnamh! Return to me!”

And Her Eyes Were Golden

Ciaran started, shocked at his father’s rudeness, but then he saw it - blue ink curling up the woman’s wrist and vanishing into her sleeve.

“My kind?” the woman asked.

“We don’t serve the holy men in this house,” Eoghan said.

“I am no holy man - just a traveler looking to have some warmth for the night.” The woman sounded amused.

“You wear blue,” Eoghan said.

“Some days I wear red,” the woman said.

Eoghan shook his head. “Please leave.”

The woman inclined her head beneath the cloak. “As you wish.”

Ciaran swore that as she left, she looked at him.

Your Kind (Reprise)

Ciaran twisted around to see who had caused confusion in his father, who was endlessly polite, and he saw a shadow in the doorway. Or rather, a person, short, dressed in a long cloak, cowl obscuring features.

“Eoghan?” a woman asked.

“I am he. What can I do for you?”

The woman extended a fist, and Ciaran tensed, reaching for his father’s cutting shovel, but then the woman turned her hand over and revealed a fistful of coins, more money than most people saw in a lifetime.

“Peat, please.”

Eoghan reached for it, then stopped. “No. Not for your kind.”

But Someone

Ciaran knew it was strange, that is father wouldn’t let him do something as simple as start a fire, especially since they were peat cutters and their peat burned well, but he knew his father had become a bit...strange after his mother’s death, and Aoife and Fingula and the other women in the village warned him to let it go, so he did.

Aoife’s creaking voice faded, and hope lunged in Ciaran’s chest - food time!

But someone knocked at the door.

Eoghan, who’d been halfway across the hut, turned and opened the door.

“Can I help you sir...ma’am?”

For Himself

“Da, ‘m hungry,” Ciaran said. He hunched next to the hearthstone, flint in hand, and stared despondently at the cauldron full of stew waiting to cook.

“In a moment, son - Aoife and I will be done in a moment.” Eoghan was especially nice to widows.

Most days Ciaran would join in his father’s sympathy, but today he was too hungry to care.

“Can I just -”

“No,” Eoghan said. “I’ll start the fire. In a moment.”

Ciaran sighed and sat back on his haunches. He’d seen the fear in his father’s eyes the first time he’d started a fire for himself.

Ciaran

Everyone knew Eoghan had found a four leaf clover in his time or something equally lucky, because he had a hardworking son who hadn’t gotten anyone’s daughters into trouble, and the peat he cut always burnt better than anyone else’s.

The entire village had been sure Ciaran was trouble as a child - it was his cheeky grin and propensity to make things disappear with a slide of his hands - but he worked alongside his father day in, day out, and managed to be decent despite not having a mother.

Ciaran had red hair and eyes the color of the sea.

Interlude 7

He stood on the edge of the field and watched the flames crackle and dance, golden-bright against the black of the sky. His eyes glimmered green, briefly in the glow, before turning sea-blue once more. He’d roamed for several lifetimes before settling here, where he was meant to be, near the sea.

The man stood at the edge of his small farm, clutching his squalling infant son and staring, wet-eyed and terrified, as his home burned down.

The village would know the truth of the man’s wife, the cause of the fire, and always suspect his son.

Each Have

“Nine eagles,” Angel murmured. He sounded proud as he and watched the legions depart.

“Eagle of the ninth,” Ella agreed. “They’ll get lost.”

“Lost how?”

“In time,” Ella said. “But they’ll do well, conquering and fighting and killing.”

Angel huffed, exasperated at the way she spoke her knowledge of the future without warning. “So what now? We return to Old Master?”

“No,” Ella said. “You must travel east. The Sarmatians need help. And the Persians. Also the Hellenes.”

“Why do you always know these things when I don’t?”

“We each have jobs. Mine is to see. Yours is to do.”

Birds and Reptiles

“What’s this?” Angel asked. He leaned in the doorway and watched Ella stitch a complicated pattern into bright red cloth.

“An eagle,” she said, “for the legions.”

“An eagle?”

She’d seen it in a vision. She shrugged. “I think it looks nice. And they’re fierce creatures.”

Angel scooped up the other red pennant she’d made. “And this creature? I don’t think they exist anymore.”

“It’s a dragon,” she said, which she knew he remembered. From Andrev.

“Why a dragon?”

“It will confuse historians,” she said. So many battle leaders, so many dragon standards. “Have you heard from Lucius Artorius yet?”

Treat, Tread

“It’s a good thing you kept your hair short like a boy,” Angel said.

“They all know I’m a girl,” Ella said. She glanced out over the ranks and ranks of men standing in neat formation. Then she considered their spears, wondered at ways to improve accuracy, distance, durability.

“Shame works wonders,” Angel said. “A man’s ego is a fragile thing. Treat it carefully.”

“You mean tread carefully,” Ella said.

Angel glared. “Or don’t tread at all.”

“They won’t learn if they’re proud,” Ella said.

“You speak from experience?”

“You forget General Shanka?”

“Never, my lady.” Angel said, louder, “Attention!”

Changes and Forgettings

“If we keep training random foreign armies to take over the world, won’t that give us a bit of a bother when it comes time for Dagaz and the rest to march southward?” Engel asked.

Jente cast him a look. Didn’t he realize that Dagaz and the rest were dead? But she lowered her head and continued sharpening the short, wide sword he’d been given by the Captain. Gladius, she thought it was called.

“So they call you Angelus,” she said.

“Angel,” he agreed. “What shall we call you?”

“Ella,” Jente said.

“Why Ella?”

“Short for ‘puella’. It means ‘girl’.”

Agreement

“How so?” the Captain asked.

Engel nudged Jente in the elbow with his leg. She rose up slowly, so as not to startle the guards. Then she shrugged off her cloak and lifted her head, squared her shoulders. The Captain gave her a once-over, and his scowl deepened. He’d noticed what his guards hadn’t in the initial fight.

“Why would he train a slave so?”

“To protect his business,” Jente said.

“Your Master could teach my men?”

Jente glanced over her shoulder at Engel. “He could teach them to take over the world.”

The captain smiled. So did Engel.

Bare Hands

Engel enjoyed it a little too much when Jente knelt at his feet.

“What says your master?” the captain of the guard asked. He looked bored and skeptical of the entire proceedings.

“Master Angelus says he apologizes for the harm caused but he does not apologize for the incompetence of your men,” Jente said.

The captain scowled, irritated. Engel stood behind Jente, arms folded across his chest. He was smirking.

“Your master thinks he knows combat better?”

Jente translated, listened to Engel’s haughty reply. “Master Angelus says he can train a woman to defeat a man with her bare hands.”

For Years

As there was no war imminent, Engel decided the best way to find himself a spot with the local military was to earn it. By sacrificing Jente, of course. She got into a fight with some local guards, and when other guards showed up to arrest her, their comrades had to confess their humiliation at having been beaten by so delicate a boy. Jente murmured that her master had taught her to fight so as to protect herself while on his business, and then the curiosity came.

“Who is your master?”

She suspected that question would haunt her for years.

Power of Surprise

They ended up finding a house on the edge of the city and crashing there for the night, emerging during the day to learn the language and customs of the locals. Jente had a better knack for learning languages than Engel, so they started the master-slave farce early on and let the locals think Jente was translating for her master out of a sense of duty. When one vendor became difficult, Engel stepped in to prove he did know the language, which left the locals unsettled.

Unsettled was what Engel wanted, but then he enjoyed the power of surprise.

I Think One Day

Engel wasn’t at all amused at winding a sheet around himself as clothing, because he preferred the vanity of the Egyptian kilts, but Jente cottoned on quickly to the fact that the men who went so scandalously shirtless were usually slaves.

No one would listen to them if they looked like slaves.

“You still look like a boy,” Engel pointed out and ran a hand over Jente’s silky cap of dark curls.

“That’s why you’ll have to do the speaking,” Jente said.

“Up there? In that building? What is it?”

“I think, one day, it will be called The Senate.”

City With Seven Hills

They walked for ages. Engel whined and wished they’d kidnapped a camel or two. He declared Jente several different kinds of masochist for just walking in the sun day in and day out. When they finally stood on the edge of the nation Jente had declared as their “one stop” on the way back to do Old Master’s bidding, Engel enjoyed a handful of the little green fruit-vegetables Jente had told him were called “olives”.

“...What’s so important about the city with seven hills?” he asked, and popped an olive into his mouth.

“We’re here to teach their armies.”

Attempted Diplomacy

“Pharaoh won’t be happy with us up and leaving in the middle of a war.” Engel shouldered his pack and stood at the top of a ridge of sand, gazed down at the muted fires of their old camp where medics tended to the wounded and priests tended to the dead.

“Actually, he’ll probably be glad we’re gone,” Jente said. “He wasn’t the Pharaoh who took us on, after all. He never appreciated us as much as his great-grandfather.”

“I think you mistake lack of appreciation for fear,” Engel said drily.

“I was trying to be diplomatic,” Jente said.

On The Way

“What was that out there?” Engel stood over Jente where she was kneeling behind a fallen chariot, trembling, bleeding from a wound in her thigh.

“I saw --” She swallowed hard. “It’s time.”

“Time?” Engel turned to gaze across the battlefield, at the fallen soldiers from both sides.

“I saw him. At least, I think it was him. It was either him or a memory.”

Jente might have been talking to her herself; Engel wasn’t sure.

“So we have to go back to Old Master?” Engel asked.

“No. We move on. But we have to make a stop on the way.”

Past and Present, Tense

Jente danced with her sword, carving destruction and death, painting the air with blood, moving to the song of screaming soldiers. If she closed her eyes, she could remember the first time she clashed with the Hittites in illusion, in dreams, staring down at charioteer with hair like frost and eyes like a fjord at dawn.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a man standing on the edge of the battlefield, pale-haired, ocean-eyed, white-robed, and her heart stopped, her rhythm stuttered. She didn’t even scream when an enemy stabbed her. She stabbed back, and she fled.

Sides

“What? What is it?” Engel asked.

Jente was kneeling at the mouth of the tent, gasping and choking, coughing.

“I - saw something.” Jente clutched at her throat, eyes wide. Engel scrambled to kneel beside her.

“What did you see?”

“It’s almost time,” Jente said.

“Time to what?” Engel asked.

“Return.”

“To Old Master?”

Jente nodded. She dragged her hand across her mouth and stared out at the golden desert sands, at the thousands of tents arrayed beneath the stars.

“How soon?” Engel asked.

“Not until this battle is won,” Jente said.

“Won by which side?”

“That only time will tell.”

For A Time

“Who taught them how to fight before?” Engel asked.

Jente scrubbed a cool, damp cloth over her face, scrubbed a hand over her short hair. “Who knows. Someone who wasn’t taught by Old Master, obviously.”

“They’re strong and fit,” Engel said. “It’s a question of technique and instinct at this point.”

“It’s an adjustment for us,” Jente said. “When was the last time we fought with troops on this massive a scale? Some ingenuity and wit is sacrificed for the sake of controlling so many men.”

“So we’re just here learning?” Engel asked.

“Not just learning. Waiting. For a time.”

Like That

Jente joined the troops three days later, hair shorn short, fitted in the smallest, cheapest armor the armorer could find. He’d sneered at her and scorned her for her paler skin (which gave her an excuse to wear a tunic for modesty’s sake), but she’d just bobbed her head politely and skittered into place.

She scared the daylights out of the man next to her when she surged into action at Engel’s direction, swinging her sword with practiced ease, dancer’s grace.

At the lunch break, one of the soldiers smiled at her. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

In a Few Days

“No one’s going to respect me if you loom there in all your girliness,” Engel said between gritted teeth. He and Jente stood at the top of the steps overlooking the courtyard where Pharaoh’s army trained. Engel wore the simple leather armor of Pharaoh’s troops, though it was more ornate as befit a commander.

Jente was dressed like one of Pharaoh’s queens, all silks and linens, head held high, eyes lined with kohl. She admired the neat rows of troops, their gleaming dark skin, their alert faces.

“I’ll cut my hair and dress as a boy in a few days.”

Of The Matter

“Well done,” Jente said. She sat on the edge of her luxurious couch bed, combing out her long, dark curls. “Now his royal holiness has a new general.”

Engel said nothing.

Jente arched an eyebrow. “Not pleased at your success?”

“Pleased, yes,” Engel said. He studied his hands. “Just...I cannot forget my past failures.”

“We’re human - it is human to fail.”

“Are we human? Andrev wasn’t human.”

The heart of the matter. Jente said, “He was a person, wasn’t he?”

“I thought so. He was just a boy.”

“What’s done is done. We have a new job to do.”

Sticky Situations

“How dare you mock the efforts of my soldiers!”

Pharaoh roared, and the guards standing on either side of his throne went to draw their swords.

Jente dipped into a low, graceful bow, one more befitting a dancer than a warrior. Engel wished he knew what her skills were before they got into these sticky situations.

“We do not mean to mock,” Jente said. “We watched the battle, and we sorrowed for your men. We merely wish to help, to prevent as many men dying in the next battle.”

Pharaoh hummed thoughtfully, turned to Engel. “What would you have done?”

Watch and Learn

“Are we just going to watch them slaughter each other?” Engel asked when Jente made no move to draw her weapon and charge down the hill into the fray. Something in her expression was distant, dangerous, unreadable.

“Not just watch - learn,” Jente said. “About how those chariots function in battle, what their typical formations are. And then see how we would do it better.”

“Would we do it better?”

“Pharaoh had better believe we would.”

Engel watched spears and arrows zip through the air. “Pharaoh would be the man dripping in gold jewelry?”

“Yes, that would be him - the Pharoah.”

In the Market

Engel and Jente stood at the top of a massive sand dune and stared into the distance at the massive stone structures, gleaming, peaked, that arced toward the sky. Jente noted, idly, that they mirrored a pattern of stars and wondered if they were religious markers beyond tombs.

“What is this place called?” Engel asked.

“I don’t know what the locals call it,” Jente said, “but I’ve heard people call it Egypt.”

“What are we doing here?” Engel asked.

Jente nodded down at the approaching army of rumbling chariots. “I’m thinking Pharaoh is in the market for a skilled general.”

Try to Rule the World

“I like these things,” Engel said, popping another small, green pitted fruit into his mouth. He smiled as he chewed. “They’re good, but not too sweet. Not like those other ones on that tree. I think I much prefer this vine business.”

“That’s because you like wine,” Jente said. “The oil from those green things burns clean, if you ever need a torch.”

“How do you know these things?”

Some things Jente had seen, like how armies of the olive-skinned men who roamed this land donned armor and marched from the seven hills to try to rule the world.

On Their Own Now

“I don’t like this one bit,” Engel said. He and Jente stood on the edge of a massive fjord that emptied out into the icy ocean.

“You didn’t seem to mind it when we sailed here.” Jente hefted an axe and started for the nearest useful-looking tree.

“I just don’t see why we have to go alone, just the two of us. You saw how well that worked last time.” Engel glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t see why we couldn’t have brought Dagaz or the twins or --”

“They need to learn to make boats on their own now.”

Memories Long Lost

“So...we trained them all, and now what?” Engel asked.

“We leave them to train more, train others. It’ll be a while before they have numbers sufficient for our operation,” Jente said. “But for the record we do head south. And east - further east than they’ll be going in a few centuries.”

“In a few centuries?” Engel echoed. “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere I saw,” Jente said. “A while ago.”

She closed her eyes, and a voice echoed in her mind, one from memories long lost.

“For Pharoah!”

Golden sand, rolling war-machines, spears, dark-skinned warriors, giant stone tombs.

Somewhere Else

“You’ve never had the urge to go somewhere...else?” Engel asked. “Somewhere much, much further east? East of where we met?”

Dagaz and the Red Twins peered at the map. “Where are these places?”

“Old Master scouted,” Jente said absently. “As for further east - for the moment, I think we can trust it on its own. You and I do need to visit some other places, though, while this lot gets ready to move on out.”

“Can we trust them on their own?” Engel asked.

“They need time to train and grow and build,” Jente said. “And they’ll need boats.”

The Plan

The fire had almost died and the mead was gone; the Red Twins were snoring on each other loudly. Only Dagaz and Engel were awake, staring into the redness of the embers. Engel thought it looked like blood crystallized. He wondered if Dagaz had ever seen real blood earned in battle. He was about to ask when the door of the hut creaked open and Jente stepped out. She looked pale, exhausted.

“Well?” Old Master asked.

“We mobilize, sweep south and east, and we mingle, settle, drop roots, and wait.” Jente handed him a crudely drawn map.

Old Master smiled.

An Answer

Engel had never seen Jente looking for something; it always seemed impolite to watch her work her...whatever, even though she’d seen him use his gift dozens of times. Engel had never considered that Old Master might not be allowed to watch Jente do her thing. The two of them sat outside of Jente’s hut, drinking mead and keeping warm with a small fire, and waiting to see what she saw.

Eventually the Red Twins and Dagaz joined them, bringing more honey-mead, meat, logs for the fire.

“What are we waiting for?” Dagaz asked.

Old Master said, “An answer.”

What I Cannot

Old Master appeared in the doorway of the empty mead hall where Engel and Jente were arguing over tactics on a raid to one of the southern lands.

“How goes training the ranks?” he asked.

“It goes,” Engel said.

“They’re natural warriors. Sometimes they have to learn to curb their enthusiasm lest they sacrifice the element of surprise,” Jente said. She rolled up the map. “What do you need?”

“I wondered if you would look for something for me,” Old Master said. “I have a plan, but I need your guidance.”

Jente blinked. “Mine?”

“You can see what I cannot.”

At Least Ten Times More Weird

“Seen him before how? Have you been to the North with Old Master before?” Engel asked.

Jente shook her head, tapped her temple. “I think I’ve seen him. Before.”

“Oh. Seen.” Engel knew his own ability to move things without touching them was inhuman and uncanny, but he was pretty sure Jente’s ability to see things before they happened was at least ten times more weird. “Do you think he’s important?”

“For now, he’s the only one who has a decent sense of stealth,” Jente said, and she lifted her bow, fired an arrow. One of the Red Twins cursed.

Seen Him Before

Dagaz was a golden-haired boy, green-eyed, more slender than some of the others - like the Red Twins - but strong all the same. He wasn’t nearly as surly and aggressive as the Red Twins; rather he was charming and boyish, at times inappropriately loud and enthusiastic, like an overgrown puppy, but he showed promise with a sword.

Engel didn’t like the way Jente looked at him.

“He’s too young for you,” Engel said.

Jente rolled her eyes. “Everyone is too young for both of us, and I’m not interested in him. I just feel like I’ve seen him...before.”

Dagaz

“What do you mean, ‘yet’?” Engel asked. He swallowed hard, remembered Andrev.

“Old Master has not spoken to the pale-haired stranger in a while,” Jente said. She lowered her hand and straightened up, hands clasped behind her back as if she were standing guard. “Dagaz is on his way.”

“You said they had to come unseen.”

“No mortal would see him.” Jente elbowed Engel lightly, and he realized this was the first time he’d seen her smile in a long time. “Now come on. Pretend. So they can learn.”

Engel sighed and obeyed. “Dagaz is your favorite, isn’t he?”

For the Sake of the Exercise

“What are we doing, exactly?” Engel asked. He and Jente stood atop a glacier in the middle of a fjord, swaddled in furs to protect them against the bite of the winter wind.

“Stealth exercise,” Jente said absently. She shaded her eyes and scanned the horizon. “There’s a sword in the ice behind me. One of them must approach without being seen and then defeat one of us in battle for the sword.”

Engel blinked. “They’ll never defeat one of us.”

“We’re going to pretend we’re mortal for the sake of the exercise - there are no more of us. Yet.”

Runic Names

“What kinds of names are those, anyway?” Engel asked.

Thurisaz and Hagalaz were a pair of giant twins, red-headed, with full beards. There was something amusing about the fact that they were terrified of Jente, who was less than half their size.

“Not real names, sir,” Thurisaz said. “Not people names, really. Just - letters. From our alphabet, as it were.”

“What kind of an alphabet?” Engel asked.

“Runes,” Hagalaz said. “Jente teaches us to read and write.”

“Right,” Engel said. He raised his sword. “All right! Show me a backhand sweep!”

Both twins obeyed. Swords sang through the air.

Earn Your Keep

“Mission? What mission?” Engel asked in a low voice.

Jente lifted her head and called out, “Thurisaz, Hagalaz, don’t drop your shield arm! Keep it up or you’ll lose a limb.” She continued working on the boot, puzzling over the soft leather of the sole.

“What mission?” Engel asked again, nudging her in the ribs.

She sighed. “Did you listen to anything Old Master said during your graduation ceremony?”

“Mostly that I’d get to come down off the mountain and finally see some women again,” Engel said. “Why?”

Jente sighed. “Never mind. Come help me teach - earn your keep already.”

The Mission

Three days later, out on the ice, Jente was drilling the lads and lasses in keeping their feet in slippery places; she was also toying with a pair of boots, experimenting with ways to create more traction.

Engel stood at the edge of her demarcated battlefield beside her and watched her work.

“Are you punishing me?” he asked finally.

“It’s not my place to punish you,” she said.

“Then why are we here in this hellishly cold place with these ghost-pale children teaching them to fight?”

“We have a mission, and some of us are working to complete it.”

Unthinking Acquiescence

“What are you doing?” Engel asked. He leaned in the doorway of the mead hall, watching Jente showing a young man how to use a staff.

“Training our new troops,” she said.

Engel raised an eyebrow. “Since when do we need new troops? Is there a war going on that I missed?”

“Old Master has requested that I train new troops,” she said, and turned away from him. Engel eyed the golden-haired, ice-eyed youth and freely admitted to himself that the lad was bigger and stronger than anyone Engel had ever seen. Still, Jente’s unthinking acquiescence was disturbing.

New Names

Rastaban didn’t know how long he’d hung from the posts of the fortress walls, arms strained beyond feeling, lashed by the icy wind and driving blizzard snows. He just knew that he replayed Old Master’s angry words over and over again while he hung there, cringing at the disappointment in his teacher’s eyes.

The pale-faces of the north accepted his immortality when Kana came to let him loose, and they seemed uncaring of Kana’s easy magic and Rastaban’s easy gift. They called him Engel, and they called Kana Jente, and after a while, Rastaban answered to his new name.

Cold and Colder

Rastaban had the entirety of the march toward the white kingdoms to ponder what he had done. Kana said nothing. She didn’t bother to eat or drink, and some nights she didn’t even sleep. Kana hollowed out a tree trunk with a small knife and her bare hands; Rastaban hovered awkwardly on the sidelines until his guilty conscience moved him to carve a pair of oars.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Rastaban asked.

Kana pointed toward the sky, toward the north star.

“It’ll be cold,” she said.

Rastaban didn’t think it could get much colder than it already was.

His Own Good

Kana stood at the edge of the grave she’d dug - with her bare hands, because sometimes she just needed to feel.

“He was too strong for his own good,” Rastaban said.

“We were supposed to be for his good,” Kana said. She lowered Andrev into the grave, smoothed her thumbs over his eyelids in a last farewell. She buried his spear and his pipes beside him, and then she lifted her voice in a song to the wind, to carry his spirit away to eternal peace.

“You don’t really still believe in that, do you?” Rastaban asked.

Kana turned away.

Interlude 6

The third wound in his shoulder had half-knit and no longer bled, but it still burned with every motion. He stood on the windy steppes, gazing down at a freshly-dug grave. In the distance, two figures walked. For one moment, his eyes flashed golden-bright, but then they returned to lifeless, dark brown. He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. The moonlight turned his hair ageless white, and for one moment, he seemed little more than a ghost. Then he opened his eyes - now sea-blue, glowing with trinity-fire, and turned toward the ocean.

Your Kind

The hunters recoiled, spears drawn up to throw.

Kana sank to her knees beside Andrev’s body where it was broken and bruised, scooped it up. Wards shimmered in the air around her, and the first few spears bounced off it. She could feel the next spears chipping away at the invisible barrier, but she knew the people were too afraid to get too close.

“Fine,” a woman spat. “Take him. Your kind isn’t welcome here anyway.”

Kana turned to her, eyes dark and wet. “He was your kind, too. If you’d just loved him, he would have been your kind.”

You Will

“Don’t touch him!” she growled.

Behind her, she could sense Rastaban stirring. She didn’t care what he had to say - he’d made enough of a mess as it is.

The woman screamed, and the hunters whipped around, leveled their spears at her.

“She was dead!” one of the said. “We killed her!”

“She’s another demon - burn her too!”

Kana sketched runes in the air with easy hands, clawed open her own palms to use her blood to stain them. “You will not touch me,” she said. “You will give me the boy, and I will give him a proper burial.”

Just to Make Sure

Kana struggled to push herself up, but it was too late. Another hunter, and then another lunged in, driving his spear into Andrev’s body. There was no response, just the sick, slick slide of stone through flesh, the sluggish gurgle of blood.

“It’s dead,” one of the hunters said.

They stood around the corpse, staring. Then a hunter lifted his spear over his head and cheered. “The demon is dead!”

The other hunters joined in the cheer.

And then a woman said, “We should burn its body, just to make sure it doesn’t come back.”

Kana managed to stand up.

No Response

The sound of tearing flesh and bone made Kana wish her ears were bleeding. Andrev couldn’t even screen. His body jerked once, twice, and then went still. The dog growled, thrashing its head wildly, and then it spat a piece of bloody flesh and bone into the grass. The hunters stared, awed and confused. The dog took a step back, then another, and swayed. It crumpled to the ground, a woman once more.

“He’s dead,” one of the hunters said. “The demon is dead.”

“How can you be sure?” another asked.

A third prodded Andrev with a spear. No response.

The Final

The hunters circled Andrev and the woman warily, spears poised to throw once the battle had settled into two static forms.

Kana lay still on the grass, hyperalert, listening. Andrev was going to kill the woman, and he would never receive the answers he needed, about who he was or what he could do, but -

Quick as a snake striking, the woman reared up, shifting into a dog mid-lunge, and she sank her teeth into Andrev’s skull, jaws locked around the final horn. He let out a cry and toppled backward, humanoid once more. The dog shook its head.

Slowly

She was devious, quick, but he was just as fast, just as strong, and half a dozen blows in he knew. Which way she would move, where she would strike, how fast she could turn. The battle raged in cycles, from ground to air to ground again, claws and beaks, talons and tails, poison and quills.

It ended when he had her pinned to the ground, one paw on her throat, his eyes animal-silver and her eyes wide, human.

Kill her, the voice inside him whispered. Survive.

He leaned down on her throat slowly, watching her struggle to breathe.

He Smiled

“Andrev, no!” Kana cried.

He didn’t hear her, not really. One moment his body was a slow-burn of agony, the next he was lightning, quicksilver, moving through the air faster than a blink. Then he coalesced into anger and hurt, body lupine-sleek and darkly-furred, and he tasted-heard-felt the satisfying crunch of a human spine in his jaws.

Kir was dead. Andrev turned on the blonde woman, rose onto his hind legs, shifted into a form that was neither man nor wolf, that was all strength and all rage, and he flexed his claws.

He smiled.

Survive

Survive, a voice inside him whispered.

You are stronger than them all. Survive.

The light was blinding. Andrev was dizzy, confused, - he couldn’t feel. Anything. Not his body, not the grass --

You still have power.

But then he could feel the sluggish sting, the burn of deadly-poison-gold. Kir was cutting him again. His last horn. No. If Kir cut him off, he could die, it would all be over --

He arched his back and roared.

Beneath the roar, he could hear people screaming. He opened his eyes and he was on his feet, and the earth was cracking.

See The Light

Andrev couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew Kir was standing over him, crowing, hoisting another horn high. Three gone. Two to go. Andrev wondered if he would die before Kir reached the last one.

Andrev was cold, but his body couldn’t shiver. Something inside him was splitting apart, fracturing, breaking, like the shaft of a spear dashed over a boulder again and again.

Kir leaned over him again, and he was hissing, snake-like. “This one is for me.” And he drove the golden blade down.

Andrev’s world vanished, and he saw light.

What Happens When

Kana had to play dead, marshal her strength. Every time she moved, one of the hunters stabbed, disabled her again. If they were distracted by the spectacle - if Kir kept up the torture long enough - she could heal fully, pull herself together. She could save Andrev.

Rastaban was face-down in the grass with a spear in his back. He wouldn’t be moving for a while.

Andrev screamed again, writhed, and the scent of blood in the air thickened. Kir hacked doggedly at his opponent, and lightning lashed the sky.

Kana thought, This is what happens when a god dies.

For My Father

Andrev couldn’t think for the pain. Kir rose up, the tiny horn clutched in his fist, and turned to the cheering, roaring hordes of hunters who had come to see the monster laid low. Andrev tried to move, to push himself up so he could crawl away, but his body had betrayed him, and he was frozen on the ground. A hollow ache gnawed in his chest, a counterpoint to the raging fire in his skull.

“The creature is laid low,” Kir said. “This is for my father.”

And he knelt to cut off the second one.

Andrev screamed again.

Four More

Andrev’s head was filled with the sickening crunch and creak as Kir severed the first of his five little horns. His entire life, Andrev had avoided touching them, looking at them, acknowledging they were even there. He’d never sensed cold or heat with them - they were like fingernails.

He’d never expected the pain.

Andrev thrashed, screaming and begging and pleading, clawing at Kir to make him stop, but he could feel something inside him curling up, shuddering, withdrawing. The earth beneath him roiled, and the sky turned black.

The other hunters watched.

“Four more to go,” the blonde woman said.

Each

Kir dropped down, planted one knee on Andrev’s chest and pressed. Andrev writhed, tried to dislodge him. Kir grinned and brought the knife lower.

“Do it,” the blonde woman said.

Kana cried out. “Don’t do it - no --”

Andrev didn’t want to think of her, couldn’t think of her, gaze fixed on the blood-stained gold coming closer and closer.

“You’re not a gift from the gods,” Kir said, voice low, almost gentle. “You’re just an animal.” And he hacked.

Andrev screamed. His entire being was on fire. He could feel each scrape of the blade against his flesh, his bones.

Once More

“Andrev!” Kana cried. She was sprawled across the grass, body broken, bleeding. She heaved herself up on her hands, dragged herself toward him.

He shook his head. No. She’d betrayed him, pretended to die, turned him into the monster he’d told himself he wasn’t. But her eyes were wide, pleading, and she was crying.

“Andrev, don’t --”

Kir kicked him in the ribs, spun him over onto his back. Andrev lay there, panting, gazing up at him.

“Not so strong now, are you, beast?” Kir leaned over and sneered, his breath foul, features twisted with hate.

The earth trembled once more.

Won't Last Long

Andrev’s eyes went wide, the breath driven from his lungs even as the searing pain buried itself between his shoulder blades. He staggered forward, landed on his knees. He twisted to look over his shoulder, eyes wide, and saw Kir, who looked shocked and triumphant, clutching a gleaming golden blade.

Gold.

Andrev willed his body to shift shape, to shake off the wound, but it wouldn’t respond. He could feel his power constricting, tightening in his chest, unable to obey his call.

“You were right,” Kir said to the blonde woman.

“I know,” she said. “But it won’t last long.”

She Smiled

The blonde woman signaled, and the remaining shapechangers moved into battle formation. Andrev crouched, ready to spring, ready to take on any form. He charged first. Even as an animal he was lightning fast. He was tiger, wolf, bear, hawk, lion, eagle, slashing, biting, tearing, clawing.

A cacophony of animal growls and roars rent the air, but Andrev ignored them, reveling in the quicksilver sensation of going from shape to shape without stopping. When he returned to his human form, the ground was littered with bodies.

The blonde woman looked pale, shocked.

“I don’t believe you,” Andrev said.

She smiled.

Believe Me

“No,” Rastaban said. One of the men lunged at him, turned into a bear midair. Three more creatures dove at Kana, and Andrev could only watch as they fell on her and tried to tear her apart.

“It’s true,” the blonde woman said, “we would not have found you but for the witches and their magic. But that matters no longer. Your time here is ended. No one creature is meant to have the power you have.”

“If you want to end my power, you will have to finish it yourself,” Andrev said.

The woman smiled. “Believe me, I will.”

Ours Is

“No,” Kana began, started toward him.

“I fought to avenge you,” he said. He turned to Rastaban. “You told me she was dead, that she -”

“I never asked you to avenge me,” Kana said.

Andrev felt rage boil in his chest. The ground shook. “I loved you!”

“That’s sweet,” the blonde woman cooed. “The little boy learned to love.” She sneered at Andrev. “You fool - our kind can never love a human. We do not love - it is not in our hearts. Ours is to create and destroy. And right now - it is our time to destroy you, five-horn.”

And Then He Realized

“You’re not stronger than us,” the blonde woman said, and she rose up from the fray of the other shapechangers. “We are the dragons, the spirits of the earth, the creatures of all forms. We are indestructible save to each other. Your petty magic cannot harm us.”

Rastaban flicked his wrist, and one of the men was thrown to the ground. “We don’t have petty magic,” he said.

Andrev felt his heard wrench. “Kana,” he said. “You were dead. I saw you --”

And then he realized. All those nights, all those dreams - they’d all been real. “Did you betray me?”

Neither of Them

Andrev spun around. He saw her standing on the edge of the fray, beautiful, alive. No. He’d seen her die. He’d seen Rastaban die. What was going on? Unless - unless neither of them were human.

Something about her was different. She didn’t have the same careless, mercurial air about her. The lucidness in her eyes was almost - frightening. The hunters turned and saw her as well, and Andrev heard some of them scream.

“She’s a ghost!”

“She’s a demon!”

“He turned her into a monster!”

“I am none of those,” Kana said. “I am human. I’m just stronger than you.”

If He Wasn't Careful

“Wait!” Kana cried, but Rastaban burst from the shadows, dove into the fray, laying about left and right with a broken spear he’d scooped up from a startled hunter.

Kana supposed it was better that he hadn’t gone straight to using his gift, because he’d likely kill everything in the vicinity if he wasn’t careful.

The wolves howled in pain, shifted back into human form, circled Rastaban. Andrev reappeared as a human moments later.

“Rastaban - you were dead! How --”

“We need you alive,” Rastaban said. “I’m here to help. Come on --”

“We?” Andrev asked.

“Kana,” Rastaban. “Kana needs you too.”

Going In

Andrev leapt into the sky, a fierce eagle, his shriek tearing through the air, but the crows were too many, outnumbered him. Feathers and blood spattered, and then a stag landed on the grass, took off running. The crows swooped, dove, and then a dozen wolves took off after the stag. The stag leapt mid-air, changed direction, and a lion landed in the midst of the wolves.

Yelps of pain made a sharp counterpoint to the fierce roar, and then hunters circled the mass of writhing bodies.

A wolf dissolved, reappeared as a snake.

Rastaban said, “I’m going in.”

To Them

Later Kana would reflect that it was called “a murder of crows” for a reason. Right then, she and Rastaban were riveted to the spot, watching in horror as Andrev’s own kind turned on him.

“How the hell did the hunters summon them?” Kana demanded. “They hated his kind and thought he was an aberration. How --”

And then she saw, on the edge of the crowd, Savva’s wife, clutching a poultice of herbs and chanting. A witch. Of course.

Rastaban dragged a hand through his hair. “They’ll kill him. What do we do?”

“Nothing,” Kana said. “To them we’re dead.”

The Balance of What Should Be

Andrev gazed, awed and confused, at the people who stood on the edge of his camp, an array of strangers dressed like foreign kings and queens from fairy stories, all of them with their heads held high, horns unhidden.

None of them had more than three horns.

“What brings you here?” he asked. “Dalinor is dead --”

“Kinslayer,” the woman spat.

“He was no kin of mine, that he abandoned me to these mortals,” Andrev said.

“You’ve ruined the balance of what should be,” the woman said, “and we are here to punish you.”

Then the air was filled with crows.

Understanding

On the eighth day, Andrev woke when a rock landed near his head. He’d dodged in his sleep, inhuman reactions lightning-fast, and then he saw a little girl standing at the edge of his camp. Her mother handed her another rock.

Andrev rose up, uncurling carefully. He twitched his hands, and then he had claws, ready for slashing.

“I thought we had an understanding,” he said.

A woman said, “You don’t understand anything. Not your power, not who you are. You waste your gifts - a petulant child.”

She was tall, lovely - but for the three horns marring her brow.

The Waiting

The next seven days that followed were fraught with even more tension than before, with the mortals tip-toeing around Andrev’s nest of furs and his cooking fire. On the second day, some of the hunters from various tribes began leaving kills by Andrev’s pallet - a brace of coneys, a pheasant, a string of half a dozen fish. Sometimes Andrev accepted them, sometimes not. Sometimes he lounged in tiger form, eyeing the mortals lazily, tracking them with his eyes, making them twitch as if they sensed his hunger, and others he was humanoid, a boy, weaving grass mats.

He waited.

One Authority

The answer, of course, was to break the sky. Clouds blotted out the sun, and the first peals of thunder were a pleasant counterpoint to the humans’ screams. Lightning struck, and fire broke out across the different camps, and people scattered.


Andrev headed toward the center of the camp, head held high. The humans darted out of his path.

“Hear me, mortals,” he said, and his voice carried over the din of the storm. “The time has come for you to reap what you have sown. From now on, there is one authority in this nation, and that is me.”

An Accord

Andrev hit the ground and rolled, shifted, and the spear was gone, the pain fading as the power washed over him. He rose to his feet in human form, and glee skittered down his spine when he saw the horror on the hunter’s face.

“Did you think you could wound me so easily?” he asked.

“Monster!” the man yelled.

Andrev rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, why do you people insist on repeating yourselves?” He cracked his knuckles, curled his hands into fists. “We had an accord - you left me in peace, I left you in peace. That peace is broken.”

As Good a Time as Any

The woman began to wail. She swept her son into her arms and rocked back and forth, pleading.

Andrev gazed at them and wondered at how easy it would be, to become the monster they had always imagined him to be. Had they been right about him, or had their words been self-fulfilling prophecy? They had never seen him as human, and he supposed that now was as good a time as any to stop trying.

He leapt at the woman, changed midair. Teeth bared, jaws wide - he’d break her neck in an instant.

A spear pierced his side.

Don't You?

Andrev caught the stone midair before it could hit him; even now his own speed and reflexes surprised him. He studied it, curious, fascinated by the way the light glinted off the flecks of crystal buried in it. Then he looked at the little boy.

“Demon!” the boy shouted.

“Human,” Andrev said. He smiled when the ground shook. The boy’s mother screamed.

“Please, have mercy on my son!”

Andrev tilted his head to one side, curious, laughed. “How easily you ask for mercy, yet how unwilling you are to give it. I think this constitutes a broken truce, don’t you?”

Should Have Known

The truce lasted for a week, which was a full seven days longer than Andrev had expected it to last, or wanted it to last. Kana was dead, Rastaban was dead, and he’d had enough of these petty mortals and their hatred. He wanted to see if he could split the sky, and he was just waiting for them to give him an excuse.

The problem with these people was that they had learned to hate from childhood, so he should have known it would be a child who broke the truce.

A child who cast a stone at him.

First Command

Kana and Rastaban lay in the grass, watching as Andrev sprawled out across his own luxurious bed of furs on the edge of Kir’s camp. The hunters had buried Savva, and the rest of the tribes had been alerted. The demon in Andrev had been awakened, and the humans had a tenuous truce with him.

Kana had seen the hunters rattling their spears, and she suspected the truce wouldn’t last for long.

“Nice job you did on your first command,” Kana said. “Now he thinks we’re both dead.”

“Like you did so well,” Rastaban protested, defensive.

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

To Yours

Andrev considered her request. As an experiment, he held his breath, focused, and he was pleased when he felt the ground shake again. He could control it. Good. Maybe a bit of practice would sharpen the skill - and make the others keep their distance.

“I will let you live,” he said finally, and he saw Kir’s grip on his spear tighten. “Make no mistake, however, that I am letting you live. I could end you all at a moment’s notice.”

The hunters bobbed their heads.

“Good,” Andrev said. “Then leave me to my peace, and I’ll leave you to yours.”

Mercy?

Ket screamed and flung herself to the ground. Several hunters cried out, toppled over. Andrev roared again, felt the earth shake, and he realized he was the one doing it. He closed his eyes and felt energy - ten times the energy he felt when he changed - surge through him, and then he opened his eyes, look at Kir and Ket and the men who’d tried to kill him.

“Maybe I am a demon,” Andrev said. He stretched forth one hand, and the ground rumbled again. “What are you going to do to stop me?”

“Have mercy,” Ket begged. “Please, Andrev.”

Earth, Sky, World

His last ally. Dead. Andrev watched Rastaban’s body fall, and he paused. The hunters noticed his stillness and paused too. Andrev shimmered back into his human form and stared. Then he turned to the other hunters.

“You call me a monster, but I have never killed a defenseless man.”

“Demon!” Kir shouted. “You killed my father!”

Andrev pinned Kir with his gaze and was pleased to see him flinch. Then he threw his head back and screamed. He let the rage and grief pour out of him, into the earth, into the sky, and then he felt the world shake.

Sweeter Than Wine

Andrev threw his head back and roared, the sound utterly inhuman. He leapt, changed midair, and tackled Savva to the ground. The other hunters cried out as a wolf bore down on their leader.

It was simple to paw Savva’s jaw to expose his throat, to sink teeth into the soft flesh.

Hot blood tasted sweeter than wine.

Savva was dead before the hunters recovered enough to take a stab at Andrev, but he was already in a different form, on a different target.

Rastaban waded into the fray, calling for the hunters to stop.

One of them killed him.

Neither Are You

Savva raised his spear, poised to throw.

Andrev let his power curl through him once more, and then he had the claws of a tiger. He reached out, placed his foot squarely on Kir’s throat, and smirked when he thrashed.

“Kill me and your only son dies,” he said.

“Savva,” Ket pleaded.

“He’s a demon! He’d kill us all!’

“You tried to kill me first,” Andrev said.

Rastaban looked aggrieved. “Please, everyone, can we just calm down? We can talk about this like rational people --”

“He’s not a person,” Savva said, jabbing his spear at Andrev, “and neither are you.”

Only If

“Because he is my son!” Ket said.

“That’s no excuse,” Andrev said. “After all, I was supposed to be as your son. Am I not a gift from the gods? Did I not always bring bounteous food? Or am I a demon? You called me a demon for so long - perhaps your words made it so.” He let his power rip through him, and then wings - massive hawk wings - burst from his back.

His experimentation had earned him skills Dalinor had not known.

“Spare him!” Ket begged.

“I will,” Andrev said, “only if you spare me and the other Wanderers.”

Not Far Off

“Andrev!”

Rastaban’s voice broke over the din.

“His Wanderer accomplice!” Savva cried. “Kill him.”

Two hunters pivoted, loosed their spears. Rastaban lifted one hand and both spears shattered midair as if they’d been flung against a wall. Andrev blinked. He hadn’t realized Rastaban’s gift was that powerful.

“Andrev, don’t become a murderer, not for her,” Rastaban said.

“I’m already a monster,” Andrev said. “A murderer is not far off.”

“Please!” Ket, Savva’s wife, broke into the circle of hunters. “Please don’t kill my son!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Andrev asked. “He would have killed me. Why does he deserve to live?”