“You can take people’s emotions?” Tif asked, more than a little awed.

Strangely, the question seemed to pain the cyclops. “Of course…” she dropped her large head, shaking it. “For you to have carried my grandfather’s seals and not known such a simple use for the first. “It is…it’s…”

“Maddening?” Plumya chirped. “Hurtful? Awful? Too much to bear?”

“Those things, yes,” Teerog agreed. “Yet she fought well,” the cyclops added, sounding surprised. “Teerog did not think you would be so competent a warrior, Tif.”

“Thank you!” Tif said. “The Death ris is a big help.” She looked down, seeing that it was mostly gone, and she could actually feel her arm for a change. Unfortunately, it hurt from Jer’s kick, the purplish bruise she had expected already forming.

Tif sensed more than saw the cyclops step over to her--the size of the Blood warrior and the heat she put off were impossible to miss, especially this close.

“Teerog cannot heal your arm, but she can take that type of pain away, too, should you wish.”

Tif reacted immediately, pointing a leather finger up at the cyclops. “Don’t you dare. Travel companions don’t take from each other.”

Plumya snorted. “You just made that up.”

“You’re fine giving stuff up?” Tif asked. “I’d be happy for her to take some of your sass.”

The fairy blinked and then looked at Teerog. “What she said.”

“As you wish,” Teerog replied solemnly, turning her lone eye back to Jer. “What are we going to do with him?”

Tif stared at the dazed keshe a moment before shrugging. “Bring him with us to Sah’Sah.”

“You’re still planning to go there?” Plumya said. “You’d think getting caught once by Death would’ve been enough to knock the stupid out of you.”

“They were actually kind to me, for the most part,” Tif said. This pronouncement left her looking at two faces that were vastly different in size but held identical expressions: one of utter disbelief. “....anyway, Plumya, Awt is paying you to help, so you don’t get a say, and Teerog, I already told you, the first step to getting your Blood ris back is in Sah’Sah.”

“How’s that now?” Plumya said, and Teerog immediately looked skeptical, like this was the confirmation she needed to not believe Tif’s previous claim.

Tif was starting to feel some of that frustration Plumya had brought up. She was used to hiding her tiles, true, but only for a few minutes at a time, and ever since getting the crest from Torgath it felt like she had been forced to lie or half-lie to everyone she met. It had been day after day of this now, and she just couldn’t do it anymore. A quick glance at Pep was the only confirmation she needed that it was well past time to trust some people. It hadn’t gone well with the underground in Sah’Sah, but that didn’t mean the same thing would happen this time.

Believe in better to make it true--that’s what her ma would say.

“Look,” Tif said. “In Lercel, they think I was part of a conspiracy to kill the Archon.”

Teerog’s eye widened considerably. “The family debt,” the cyclops whispered, which from her was a rumble. Teerog pointed at Jer. “Her son?”

“Yup, yup,” the fairy said.

“I wasn’t part of it,” Tif said, feeling it was an important point to clarify. And when nobody looked like they believed her, she repeated herself, emphatically.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

“Wasting a perfectly good chance to increase your notoriety,” the winged bounty hunter said, sounding wistful. “You know the types of jobs you could get with a Chon on your kill list?” The fairy whistled. “And the pay? Rot, maybe I’ll start saying I did. You won’t mind, will you?”

“He’ll mind,” Tif said, pointing at Jer.

Plumya gave the keshe an offhand look. “I don’t know. He seems pretty relaxed to me,”

“Normally, I care, yes…,” Jer said, surprising Tif and Plumya, both. He didn’t continue though, as if unsure what to say next.

“Did you just take his pain?” Tif asked Teerog, starting to worry about Jer. Crippling him to the point he couldn’t even speak wasn’t much better than killing him.

“The pain had filled him more than most,” the cyclops said, sounding rather defensive. “So when it was gone, not much remained. He will be fine.”

Tif inspected Jer again, watching him stare off and away. He didn’t seem particularly happy or sad, just there--well, mostly there, or so she hoped.

“Okay, anyway,” Tif said, turning back to the other two. “I can’t go into Lercel until I get evidence that I wasn’t part of the plot to kill the Archon. And I need to go to Sah’Sah in order to do that.”

“Why don’t we just sneak back into Lercel using the same side gate we used to leave?” Plumya said.

Tif resisted the urge to throw something at the irksome fairy, and instead tried to look at the question as an opportunity to share more of her tiles. She had told Sur-Rak of all people, why not these two?

“Because I want to be the Archon someday”--predictably, Plumya screeched in laughter, but Tif ignored her and pushed on--“and I can’t do that if the knights think I helped kill the old one.”

The fairy had doubled over and was swaying back and forth in the air while cackling. “And you thought,” she squeaked between gasps, “Blood seals would get the job done?” Tif crossed her arms in answer. “Ahahahaha!” the fairy squealed, her delight spinning her in loops.

“You are mocking Teerog,” the cyclops said from where she stood, her voice lower than normal and heavy with accusation.

Tif looked over with a frown. “What? No. Why would you think that?”

The cyclops rolled her shoulders as if uncomfortable. “It must have been when Teerog was speaking of her blood-family. You heard her say that she wished to be the Vychon of the Plains.”

“What a pair!” the fairy chortled

Teerog grimaced, glancing at the tiny creature before looking back at Tif. “So you claim the same so this one can laugh.”

“That’s not it at all,” Tif said, shaking her head. “Being the Archon has been my dream ever since I was a little girl. And between you and me,” she added, pointing a thumb in the fairy’s direction, “I never knew a mouth that small could be so mean. If I could make her shut it more often, I would.”

“She is rather loud,” Jer agreed from where he sat.

Teerog considered them both, then palmed a stone as big as an egg. The rock looked much smaller in the cyclop’s hand than it had on the ground, but it didn’t stay there long because Teerog whipped it in the fairy’s direction.

Plumya stopped half-laugh to zip to the side, narrowly dodging the stone. “You’ll have to do better than that, you one-ey--” The rock whacked into the fairy from behind, pulled back toward the cyclops with a tether of Blood ris Tif was sure. Why hadn’t she thought to use the third seal that way when she had it??

The fairy shot to the ground, bouncing on the patchy grass a few times like a skipped stone before sticking into the ground face down and her little rump up in the air. Tif belly laughed at the sight, and Teerog joined in, her mirth a lovely deep boom.

Plumya popped up, arm raised in anger and surely brandishing her Life ris sword. Since the weapon was practically invisible, to Tif it looked like she was shaking her little first over her head, which just made her laugh all the harder and Teerog did the same. Tif even noticed that Jer was grinning absently.

The fairy’s face grew red, then she shot straight up into the air with a huff.

Their laughter died down soon after that, and Teerog gave Tif a considering look. “You truly wish to be the Archon?”

“I do,” Tif said. She was glad to have trusted her new travel companion with the truth.

The cyclops’s great eye looked her up and down, and the large creature nodded to herself. “It is a good dream.”

Tif grinned. “Yours is, too.”

Teerog smiled back, the first time Tif had seen her do that, and Tif realized that she may not just have someone to travel with, but a friend.

“Lercel will never accept you,” Jer said from where he sat, and the moment slipped past.

Tif turned to him, and she could already see some of the anger tightening his features as he looked up at her. She did her best to give him a gentle smile.

“Hoping Udaru will help with that. Think you’ll like him.” Then Tif remembered that it was Udaru who had killed Jer’s ma in truth, and that meant being completely honest with everyone was going to a good sight harder once they reached Sah’Sah. But harder didn’t necessarily mean bad, and it could end up being exactly what Jer needed. Tif had said to bring him on a lark, but now she knew they had to. “Sooner we get there,” Tif said to his growing glare, “sooner we find out.”