“Wake up, grandpa.”

Taras groaned. His eyes fluttered open. Three pale faces floated into view, smudged in ash and ringed by dark, short-cropped hair. The one in the middle wore Taras’s shield on his back, but it was so big that it covered him like a turtle’s shell. He spoke again, his voice accented like he was in an old-timers street performance.

Rough bristles chafed against his wrists and ankles when Taras tried to stand. Ropes. He was a prisoner.

“Thank you for shelter from the storm,” Taras offered.

“Are you the holy man for your sect?”

Taras stared down the boy, who couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen. His words were understandable, but the diction was strange; the speech pattern sounded a little like Taras’s great-great grandfather. He frowned at the boys and spoke haltingly. “Are you the leader of your . . . sect?”

The other boys snickered, elbowing their friend in the ribs, but they fell silent when a big man stepped into the room. Taras catalogued his prison. Little more than a closet, the room only contained a blanket and a coil of rope. His staff was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t hear the wind or see any dark clouds, so they must be deep within the Bridge’s superstructure.

The big man shooed the three boys out with a look of annoyance and pride that marked him definitively as their father. Brothers, then, not just friends, though close in age. The older captor knelt down in front of Taras and spoke in the same antiquated accent, but his voice was harsher, more guttural. “What are you doing in our territory?”

“Looking for a way up after we landed on the shore. It’s a tough climb.”

“You claim to come from over the water?”

Taras nodded. “Laurentum.”

The man drew in a sharp breath. “The elders used to speak of this mythical land. But I’ve never seen Laurentum, even in my pilgrimage to the Edge of the World.”

“You can’t see it through the storm, but we’re only about a league from the city’s harbor.”

“A league? We would hear you. I am not sure I believe a word you say, even if you have strange garments and weapons.”

“My name is Taras. I’m a cleric of the light, and I’ve sailed here to end the storms.”

“I am Aravind, the keeper of the Western Crèche.”

Taras tried to place the word. At his blank look, Aravind drew his eyebrows together and leaned closer. “You have no crèche?”

“I’m afraid I don’t even know what a crèche is,” Taras said.

Aravind gestured around them. “This is where all the children on my side of the world are raised. We train them and provide shelter. My wife and I are the parents of this crèche.”

That explained the pride. Maybe the three boys were just friends after all, but treated like surrogate children. Taras nodded at Aravind’s explanation. “I was trained in a temple with other acolytes. It’s not so different from a crèche. But it’s a long way from here, or from Laurentum for that matter, far across the sea.”

“The others that were with you, are they also from this temple?” Aravind asked.

Taras shook his head. “We met up in Laurentum for this journey. We didn’t know anyone even lived on the Bridge, until we saw your boys down dockside.”

Aravind struck him casually, with his open palm, spinning Taras into the wall. “Ah, now I know all you have said is nothing but lies. No one is allowed on the ground by the water!”

“Ask them yourself,” Taras said, forcing himself to regain clarity of thought. His entire head rang with the impact like he’d been turned into the clapper for a giant bell. “We were still approaching the first support pillar when the three boys strolled out of the mist, singing together and laughing. I’ve never seen such terror when they saw us! Took off running like they thought we would eat them.”

Aravind pressed himself backward against the wall. He drew a short cudgel from his belt. “I’ll die before I let you eat my children.”

Taras could sense unbridled fear flowing from Aravind in powerful waves. It didn’t feel at all like the same parochial superstition at work. “I’m just a man. What have you seen down there that terrifies you?”

“Monsters patrol the waters beyond the world.”

“The seafolk? We had to fight through some Adaro on our way in, but you look like you’d be able to handle them.”

Aravind shook his head. “The ones who look like fish men? They bleed, as you say. The spirits of the deep . . . I’ve only had the misfortune of seeing one, when I was still a child, back in the Eastern Crèche. We lost our crèche parents that day, along with half my brothers and sisters—and it would have been worse, but many of us were out on a hunting trip with an elder, and so were spared from the slaughter.”

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He broke off, eyes glazed over as he looked back through his history of fears. “The elder told of a time when his great grandfather’s great grandfather lived free of the storms. He claimed that if we destroyed the storm spirit, then we could be restored to paradise.”

Taras held out his fettered hands. “That’s why we’re here. Cut us loose. We will continue our hunt.”

Aravind laughed. “When the storm came, you thought you would survive without shelter? You were wrong. And now you think you can kill the storm spirit? You were too weak to fight the children of the Western Crèche. How will you fare when you meet the might of storms?”

=+=

Rhae winced. She had come to a few moments earlier, lashed hand and feet in the courtyard of an old building that looked like it had once been an inn centuries ago. The inn squatted near a broken up road wider than any she’d seen in Laurentum or Fair Haven. Children ran around in the courtyard, kicking a ball stitched together from old skins, and a small group of youth cooked a bird on a spit over a campfire.

She didn’t wince from pain or fear of imprisonment, however: her captors were using her bagpipes as bellows for the fire.

At least she was outside again. Loma must have told the others how poorly Rhae felt in the cramped closet where she’d been at first.

“That looks tasty!” Rhae called over to them. She tried to wave when they turned to look, but her hand didn’t move. Oh. Right. She was still tied up. “Please don’t burn the bag. That was a gift from my aunt when I graduated from the junior college to the senior college at Fair Haven bard university.”

“Quiet, devil child,” one of the bigger girls called back.

Rhae burst out laughing. “You can come up with a better taunt than that! Come on, let’s hear some more creative options.”

They shifted to turn their backs to her, still stoking the flames with her stolen pipes. Even Loma flashed an apologetic smile, then hunkered down and wouldn’t meet her eyes.

Rhae tucked her legs up between her arms. She had just enough wiggle room to hug her knees, despite the ropes on her wrist. An old, familiar hurt tightened her stomach, and her cheek twitched just under her left eye. She ducked her head so they couldn’t see her anymore, resting her face on her knee, and squeezed her eyes shut against the tears.

The insults didn’t bother her—too much—but the rejection stung just as much as always. Why should it be any different, here on the Bridge? People didn’t like Qeren, and expecting her captors to want to play with her didn’t make sense.

Still, she’d thought they would be nicer. Loma had given her false hope with her smiles and kind words.

“Sit up, child.”

Rhae lifted her head an inch, peering out from beneath her hair to study the speaker. A middle-aged lady, tall even for a human woman, stood next to her, holding her bow harp. “Will you play for me, if I untie the rope?”

Rhae nodded in a burst of nervousness. She hoped the woman liked her song! Holding out her wrists, Rhae stared at the rippling fabric of the woman’s gray and black dress, wrapped in elegant folds around her body. It shimmered like moonlight on pearls. When the lady bent down close to untie the ropes, it paled into a shapeless bonewhite, then transformed into an inky blot that blurred in her sight, obscuring her captor.

Rhae smiled up at her. “I love that pattern. I wish I had a dress just like it!”

“A dress just like this would be too big for you, little horned one.”

Rhae felt her face crinkle even more. “I might still grow! My grandma didn’t hit full height until she was nearly sixty. Don’t count me out so easily.”

“Thenxi,” the lady said, untying Rhae’s feet, too, and bowing.

Rhae wobbled to her feet and returned the bow. “Then she what?”

Thenxi furrowed her brow. “In the Western Crèche, it is not polite to ask a family name if you are not from here.”

“Oh!” Rhae squeaked. “That’s your given name. I thought you wanted me to tell you more of grandma’s story.”

Thenxi handed over the bow harp. “Perhaps you play better than you socialize.”

Rhae ran a hand over the carved wood, inspecting it for scrapes or cracks. It was still in perfect shape, so she flashed her biggest grin at Thenxi. Even her horns lit up with pleasure. A string twanged flat when she experimented with a chord, so she hummed and tuned everything at once. “The magic binding must be weakened, here on the Bridge, or else it would never lose its tune. Easy enough to fix!”

A lilting folk song popped into Rhae’s mind, so she gave in to instinct and let fingers fly. The song’s bridge had a tricky bit, but no one seemed to notice when she dropped a few notes. Rhae giggled and looped back to the beginning, playing faster. A crowd gathered to watch. Even the campfire brigade put down her bagpipe—though a little too close to the fire for Rhae’s comfort—and started to tap their feet in time.

The more people who showed up to listen, the better Rhae played. This time, she hit the notes perfectly in the bridge, even at her new, faster tempo. Her fingers felt transformed, liquid silver flowing over strings of gold, like a spell had settled over her and guided each movement. With a final, triumphant laugh, she spun in a circle and palm-muted the strings just as the song reached its crescendo. The silence hung in the air, expectant faces all staring at her, waiting for more magic.

Rhae flopped down, panting. “Whew! Forgot that part.”

Thenxi shook her head, eyes wide. She turned to the assembly, a necklace clutched in trembling hands. “My pendant knit itself back together while our guest played. It’s been broken for over forty years. My Crèche parents handed it down to me when I took over the Western Crèche from them. What witchery is this?”

Rhae tilted her head, tugging on her horn. “That’s a good thing, right?” It’s not supposed to be broken for some ritual or something? Because I’d feel terrible if I disrupted forty years of history with my mending song. I just wanted to improve people’s spirits!”

Thenxi drew Rhae close, one hand on the Qeren’s shoulder. “Hear me, children of the Western Crèche! As foretold, the key is complete once more. The time has come to fight against the shadow. Our deliverer has come.”

Rhae drew in a deep breath to keep from fainting. “Are you talking about . . . me?”