With the moon high in the clear night sky, the gloomy courtyard of the Creator’s Eye was quiet but for the slight gurgle of its fountain. Jiyi sat on the fountain’s edge, tapping her foot impatiently at us as approached.

Andiya and I melted into Jiyi’s delegation. Over tough riding clothes, we wore bright scarlet robes with silken belts of celadon green, our sleeves embroidered with magpies in flight. To any passers-by, we looked no different than anyone else under the Go-ah empress’s employ.

“When we hit Etvia,” said Jiyi, “Andiya’s cloak stays on. The Novoski are far more relaxed than the Etvians are about covering daemons.” A delegation member tossed a raw steak on the ground for Hae, who lay down at Jiyi’s feet and picked at it daintily. “She is not to speak, nor may she look humans in the eye. When meeting any Etvians of rank, Andiya is required to bow her head to the floor. Under no circumstances can she used magic.”

To my surprise, Andiya only ground out “Fine.”

“If the Etvians realise you are a High Order, they will kill Rozin. No questions asked. The Etvians believe that magic is an unforgivable sin. They bond daemons to purge them of the sin they bear; sin that can be cleansed with contact from a pure human soul. The High Orders are, to them, the apotheosis of all they fear.”

“Fantastic,” I grumbled.

“That’s the spirit. They’re insufferable bastards, Etvians. You’ll be wishing for the Shrikes after a day with them.”

We mounted Hae. With any luck, it would be hours before the Shrikes realised we were gone. Andiya patted Hae’s black-scaled side, and I again wondered why she didn’t seem to effect Hae’s bond to Jiyi. Was it because Hae was a Bestial, not sentient? Or was it that Andiya was relaxed, her magic fast asleep?

Jiyi spoke to her delegation.

Andiya listened carefully. “She’s telling them when the morning comes, they are to answer the Shrikes truthfully. Jiyi took the High Order. As her subordinates, they could not stop her.”

“She’s right to tell them that. The last thing we need is her delegation getting hurt because Jiyi helped us.”

“I doubt the Shrikes would harm an official delegation anyways. They seem primarily concerned with their own position. Making an enemy of an empress is a stupid move.”

“What I don’t understand is why Jiyi is helping us at all. Taking us from the Creator’s Eye puts Seo Jie Go against Maxsim. She doesn’t need to run that by her empress first?”

“Maybe she knows what her empress would want.”

“But what could the empress have to gain from joining a dispute of succession?”

“I don’t know. Politics are a mess of back-deals and machinations. There may be some benefit to Jiyi’s regent that we could never fathom.”

Jiyi nodded her head to her delegation, and they bowed deeply back. We set off. Hae leapt up the labyrinthine archways and towers of the Creator’s Eye, pausing on the edge of the outer wall.

“No screaming,” Jiyi whispered. “We’re trying to be discreet.”

Hae stepped off the edge.

We free-fell from the Creator’s Eye, wind tearing at my eyes, lungs. The city rushed to meet us as a sea of glittering lights and blocks of darkness. I gripped Hae’s mane, white-knuckled. I lifted from his back, my hold slipping. But Andiya’s arm clamped around my stomach, drawing me close. She held me fast as the world blurred.

Our fall slowed, and Hae touched down lightly in a quiet, sleeping street.

“It’s about two hours to Etvia,” said Jiyi. “So settle in.”

I knew for a fact it was a hell of a lot longer than two hours on horseback. I prepared myself for a stomach-turning ride.

Hae plodded happily through Ryalgrad. Unlike any other city I’d been to, its night was just as alive as its day. Coffeeshops flooded light into the roads, their patrons seated at iron tables as they chatted and smoked and laughed. Couples danced on a corner to a pair of violins. We wove through a night market in full swing, Hae’s nose flaring at the smell of cured meat and succulent skewers. We attracted little attention. Just the average travellers on their way.

Hae stepped outside the city limits, and he took off. The landscape distorted. We raced over grassland and low hills, Hae’s paws so silent that all I heard was wind. We leapt over farmland fences, whipped around small cottages. We skirted the edge of the mines, our hands over our mouths to block out the horrible smoke. With the sky so dark, the mines were a chasm of black, the bottom of the pit so far down that it was only a flicker of firelight. The mines stretched an age. I couldn’t see where they ended; from so close, they shredded the entirety of the horizon.

On flat ground, Hae’s stride was so smooth that I relaxed. Andiya kept her arm around my stomach, reassuring me that I could slacken my grip and simply watch the world fly by. We seemed separate from the land we ran on. I felt free, floating. Is this how Jiyi felt all the time?

For two hours, I let the gentle wind fill my heart. I was safe, here, moving so quickly that the world couldn’t keep up. It just had to wait.

Hae slowed, and we approached a towering wall of perfectly-cut stones.

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The Curtain surrounded the entirety of Etvia, shielding it from the world beyond. It was another remnant of the elvhen; the early Etvian monarchs had simply built their country within the walls. Now, the Curtain sealed the hermit kingdom away. Few ever got in—or out.

Hae plodded happily to an enormous gate, its braziers pouring light out to the field beyond. Guards waited at the mouth.

Jiyi slid from Hae and waved amicably. From her pockets, she handed the guards a set of papers stamped with tiger seals. The first guard glanced at me and asked Jiyi a question in a language I didn’t understand. She laughed and replied.

“He asked who we were,” said Andiya. “Jiyi told them you were her new assistant, but she might replace you soon. Not too bright.”

Jiyi chatted with the guards in the way that only old friends did, and soon we were waved on through. She gave them a lazy salute as we left, and we went at a leisurely pace down a countryside road. Jiyi stretched her arms and yawned.

“That gate doesn’t have a sensor,” she said. “It’s too far from anything important for anyone to use it. I normally pass this way if I’m bringing an unwelcome guest.”

“You’ve done this a lot?”

“Sure. Some people would pay anything to disappear into Etvia.”

“Your empress allows that?”

Jiyi chuckled. “My empress gives me the passengers.”

We stopped for the night at a patch of oak trees surrounded by whispering fields of wheat. Distant farmhouses dotted the countryside, glowing warmly under a starry sky. Jiyi lit a campfire in a well-worn pit of bricks, then relaxed against a felled log. Hae settled into a bare path of soil beside her, his head on his paws. I wondered how often Jiyi had used this camp, and how often she’d secreted passengers through Etvia’s gates.

Jiyi shrugged off her blade and coat, letting her head roll back and rest on the log. “So, Kain,” she began. “Tell me about yourself. Azherbali, you said. From anywhere I’d know?”

I looked her plain in the eyes. “Barje Vos.”

Her easy expression froze on her face. Andiya’s interest flickered the bond.

“Heard about that,” said Jiyi. “Heard there was nothing left.”

“Not much but trees and ruins. Those who survived never went back. What’s dead is dead, so our saying goes.”

“That why you joined the military?”

I nodded. “Didn’t have anywhere else.” I lounged beside Jiyi, and Andiya sat beside me with her knees to her chest. “Left after the attack, like everyone else. Spent a few months feeling sorry for myself and drinking anything I could get my hands on, then I met a sage who trained bonders for the Canavar. He told me I had potential. So I listened to him. Been a soldier ever since.”

“So you owe everything to the Canavar.”

“I do. Without them, I’d be dead. And so would many of our people.”

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Jiyi clicked her tongue. “Huh. You know, since I met you I’ve been trying to figure out why you could bond a High Order. Been what—fifty, sixty years since anyone’s even tried? Because we all know how the previous attempts turned out. Humans burnt up to ash, brains exploding, all that. Why you, is what I want to know.”

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“But you have theories.”

“No way to prove any of them even if I wanted to, which I don’t.”

“All right. Good enough for me.” Jiyi took a swig from a flask and handed it to me. She glanced at Hae, who rumbled contentedly and stretched his paws. “You can relax too, Andiya. Hae doesn’t feel anyone nearby.”

Andiya removed her hood, taking a deep breath of open air. Firelight flickered on her face; on her thin daemonic horns, on her half-closed, tranquil eyes. “Tell us about yourself, Jiyi. This conversation is too one sided.”

“Fairly put. What did you want to know?”

Andiya’s smile was like a cut. “Why don’t you start by telling us why Hae isn’t bonded?”

The field echoed with Jiyi’s laugh. “Well! Aren’t we observant?” She patted Hae’s massive paw. “Seems we’ve been caught, my darling.”

I looked harder at Hae’s black bonding collar. It was hardly visible against his scales, but seemed as real as any I’d ever seen. Was it painted on?

“My sister found a litter of Hae’s kind in the woods after a particularly early frost. The mother was dead beside them, as though she’d used her last body heat to keep her pups alive. So, being about eight and a complete fool, my sister brought the pups home with her. I expected my parents to throw the daemons back into the cold, but my mother was always very religious. She told us that these daemons might be a gift from the Creators. So we raised them. Two of the pups left when they were grown—the other three stayed with my brother, sister, and I. We didn’t bond them because we didn’t want to.”

“I’ve never heard of this happening,” I said. “The Shrikes raise daemons too, and Eva said they bond the daemons once they get old enough. Too feral.”

“The Shrikes are heartless. They lock their dogs in cages and have the audacity to feel wronged when the dog bites them. Let me be clear on one thing. Hae is my partner, not my slave. Should he want to leave, I would not stop him.”

Hae’s chest rumbled, and he pressed his nose tenderly against Jiyi’s side. Seeing it now, it was obvious that Hae was different than other bonded. His eyes were bright, clear. He lounged and yawned and licked his paws. Like a beast, and not a mindless puppet. Andiya couldn’t affect his bond, because there wasn’t one to begin with.

“How many know?” I asked.

“Very few. The empress, my family, trusted friends. You, now. Hae allowed the tattoo so we’d be safe. The empress’s sorcerer spelled it on. Not everyone would allow a ‘wild’ daemon in their lands, and many would demand Hae be properly bonded so he would no longer be a threat. I can’t do that to him.”

Andiya said something to Hae in the daemon tongue. Hae only cocked his head.

“He doesn’t speak our language?” asked Andiya.

“He has a pretty good grasp on Go-ah, but he doesn’t pick words up too quickly. I don’t think his species uses languages, so to speak, but it’s all just guesswork. I have no idea what kind of daemon he is, and neither does he.”

“He’s from Ifri” Andiya said. Jiyi’s head snapped up.

“How do you know?”

“His kind are fairly rare, but well known—they live in the cities, mostly. Ifri’s courts use them to test someone’s character. The Ki, as they’re called in Ifri, can tell if someone is of strong or weak moral fibre. That’s likely why Hae and his siblings stayed with your family. They judged you well.”

Jiyi stroked Hae’s golden mane with wonder. “Ki,” she repeated. She smiled warmly at Andiya. “Thank you. I can’t tell you what knowing that will mean to him.”

Andiya shook her head. “No. Thank you, Jiyi, for being exactly what Hae believes you are.”

As the fire burned down, I lay on my bedroll and watched the stars. So much rode on me, on this mission, but I was perfectly at peace. With the border behind us, and with the sleeping countryside all around, I could breathe. All the burdens we’d left behind felt eased, held back by that stone wall.

I rolled to my side to find Andiya watching me. She was stretched out on her own bed, nestled under the blanket. Sleepily, she smiled.

“What are you thinking about?” she whispered into my mind.

“I’m thinking that … I like it here. That I have been miserable for too long.”

She frowned gently.

“I was thinking,” I continued, “that Jiyi asked me about Barje Vos, and I was able to answer. Because I’m … not healed, not free of it. But I’m better than I was before I met you. I have not been better in many years.”

Andiya’s voice was barely a murmur when she said, “I’m better, too.”