“We’re getting close,” Thyma said and adjusted her broad brimmed straw hat.

As they approached Tamirra, more and more farmsteads and buildings appeared along the highway. Grevail didn’t know much about the town, other than what everyone else did. It was on the border with Uruca and whenever people talked about the civil war, they talked about Tamirra. He wiped the sweat from his brow, squinting up at the sky. Otash beamed down on him. The giant orange ball was orbited by a smaller, but just as radiant orb of blue-white that was his wife, Seren. There was no escape from their judgment in the cage. It was the first hot day of the year—the kind of unusual heat spring occasionally brought to Eudan.

Thyma again ignored his silence. “The caravan was here not long ago. I thought we would go north for the summer…we were in the south all winter. We were almost to the capital—it’s been ages since I’ve been, but Joszi turned around as if an army of Breakers had been spotted.”

Grevail assumed Joszi’s change in direction was no coincidence. Lyphon must have alerted Joszi to the events at the tomb and then tracked the Sifters to the inn. The seething anger burning inside him flared whenever he looked in the Arbiter’s direction or heard mention of his name.

Thyma cast a concerned glance at him through the bars of the cage but didn’t comment and instead continued to voice her thoughts, refusing to let him stew in peace. “Tamirrans are not concerned with Breakers or even Stricken as much as they are elsewhere. The Urucan are the problem they want dealt with, and there isn’t much we Thava can do about that. Even during the Sprouting, Tamirrans keep watch across the Phantha for Urucan.”

After discovering the Shimmerbeast attack on Grevail’s friends, Lyphon returned him to camp. The Purifier told Thyma he removed Grevail from the cage to give him lessons on the Paragons—the Sprouting was an apt time to do so, he claimed. Thyma had seemed to accept that answer, even as she watched Lyphon fit a new padlock on the door after ushering Grevail inside.

A sharp bump in the road brought him from his thoughts. Thyma had not stopped her ramblings. “A reasonable person might think no grudge could last so long. The civil war was a hundred and fifty years ago after all, but on the other side of the Phantha is Uruca. Many folk have family on both banks. Emotions still run hot over what happened all those years ago.”

“I’ve been to Uruca. Have you?” she asked, then went on without a pause. “On this side of the river, people say they are ten feet tall, hairy and fierce as bears.” She shook her head. “They are no different from anyone else, but they do love war, the Urucan. After the Prosperity Coalition and so many years of peace the Toads must be itching for a fight.”

Toads? Grevail resisted the urge to tell her to be quiet. He moved again to wipe the sweat from his brow but stopped. The buzzing was back. The scratching slither on the inside of his skull was pointing him south. It was faint and distant, more nebulous than he remembered, but it was there. A rush of relief overtook him as he realized he could find the relic, but it was then swept away by yet more anger.

He would find the stableman, and whoever else was responsible for what happened to his friends. He would have his revenge. The stableman led them right into the jaws of a Shimmerbeast, and if Joszi wouldn’t have been so slow…so careless, Raela, Dell and Tessyn would still be alive. If I didn’t push them into stealing this relic… He tossed the thought away. They would pay for what they did.

His gaze strayed to Amma riding behind them. He’d thought long and hard about what he would do when this moment arrived. Did he tell the Thava where the cube was? If he wanted revenge, he couldn’t think of any other way to do it. Joszi might kick down the door of wherever the stableman was hiding in rabid pursuit of the relic before it could bring another Long Dark.

Standing on his knees in the cage, he waved his hands over his head. Amma took her gaze from the scenery long enough to notice him and kicked her horse toward the wagon, bringing the mount to a walk behind it.

“What is it?” she asked, drawing her brow down at him.

“It’s in Tamirra,” he whispered. Thyma never turned around, but at this point, he didn’t care if she heard.

Amma’s eyes widened and she wasted no time heeling her horse toward the front of the column and Joszi.

Joszi’s giant maroon hat rotated to the Conveyor when she pulled beside him. They spoke briefly, Joszi casting a glance toward Grevail, then Amma returned. “Tell me immediately if you sense anything,” she commanded as she fell in behind the wagon.

Grevail sneered at her command. If he saw the chance, they would all pay for what happened to his friends.

The wagon crested a hill and the large stone wall of Tamirra rose from a flat plain like a giant wave crashing down on a smattering of huts outside the city. The river rock battlements formed a collage of colors from red to gray, joined by thick lines of white mortar and a steady stream of people moved through the square gatehouse. The trail of the cube went right toward the open mouth of the gate, but the itch pointed him further north, toward the towering walls of the city.

As they rode into the jumble of buildings near the gate, townspeople occasionally waved at Joszi and called out to him. “Give my beseechings to Aurin! My crops need rain!” bellowed one bronzed farmer from the steps of a tavern. A flag with the image of a toad impaled by a sword hung on the wall behind him. Words at the bottom read, ‘Not then! Not now!’.

“Even after all these years,” Thyma said with gentle scoff, looking at the flag.

At a signal from Lyphon, many of the Thavan soldiers broke from the procession and moved toward the shops and taverns along the street. Grevail wondered where they were all going and why Joszi wasn’t camping outside of town like he usually did. Surely he wouldn’t cough up the ess to buy a room for all these Keepers. The few remaining wagons trundled onward toward the gate.

“Thavak! Thavak, I need the help of Siberus!” A woman in a tattered dress dashed into the road and fell to her knees in front of the column. Joszi jerked his mount to stop. She looked up at the Arbiter with crazed eyes in a filthy face.

A man walking in the street stopped beside the woman, looking down at her. “Can’t you see the hat?” he said, gesturing at Joszi. The man shook his head, then spit on the ground. “He’s no Thavak, you loon!” He swept a handkerchief hanging from his coat pocket, embroidered with a purple rose, to wipe his mouth.

Joszi spared a grimace for the man, who was already moving away, then turned his gaze to the woman cowering in the street. “What is it?”

The woman clenched her hands together and waddled forward on her knees. A necklace laced between the fingers of her fist dangled a pendant in the shape of a bear—a manifest of Siberus, the Paragon of winter, dreams, and thought. “Siberus! He must help me sleep! He must! He must! I need his help. I need him! I cannot sleep, not with the dreams I have!”

Joszi raised a calming hand. “I will see that Siberus knows of your plight when I next return to the Spiritkeep. He will help you sleep and guard your dreams.”

The woman scrabbled forward further and clung to Joszi’s stirrup. The Arbiter corralled his mount with a few words before digging into a pouch at his waist and extending a fist to the woman. “Here, take this,” he said and dumped a pile of small bronze coins into her outstretched hand. Vita. Grevail saw them plenty in Lowtown, though that handful could hardly buy a roll of bread. The Thava sometimes gave them to the poor so they would have something to give back at a Spiritkeep.

The woman stared at the coins in her hand and mumbled, as if in a trance. Joszi reached into his saddlebags and after some rifling around, produced a thin slip of paper that he also extended to her. “Go to the nearest Spiritkeep and give them this. The Paragons will shepherd your spirit to the Shrove, Sacar.”

The woman bobbed her head, and with the vita clutched tight, scampered from the road. Joszi kicked his horse into a walk and what remained of the caravan jolted forward after him. Grevail scowled at his back. Sacar was what the Thava called believers, those who followed the Accord and the Paragons. Compassion when there is someone to see it, lies when there is not.

Joszi waved to acknowledge more calls as they went on, bulbous maroon hat rotating this way and that, but kept the caravan moving toward the gate. Those at the roadside followed the cage and Grevail with dark, suspicious stares. Some shouted curses and called him Cythraul, while one boy even threw a rock that clanged off the cage bars, then dashed out of sight before Thyma could raise her voice. Thankfully, most townsfolk didn’t do much more than glare.

After passing through the buildings scattered outside Tamirra’s walls, the remainder of the procession meandered through the half-open portcullis of the gate. Lyphon appeared with Joszi at the front of the column, bald head swiveling as if spotting a threat in every person who passed.

The tingling inside Grevail’s skull had only intensified as they approached the city. It now slid over his mind to the right, and as it did, the faint, sickly sweet scent disappeared. He turned until the scratching rolled back across the inside of his head to the front and found himself looking down a street that paralleled the north wall.

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He motioned at Amma and pointed toward where he felt the itch guiding him. “Down there.”

“Thyma,” Amma said, “stop.”

Thyma pulled on the reins as asked, craning her neck to give Amma a curious look.

“Joszi!” Amma called.

Joszi and Lyphon reined in together, staring at Amma with questioning looks before spurring their mounts toward the wagon.

Amma motioned toward where Grevail had indicated. “It is down here.” Her dark eyes slid from Joszi back to Grevail where they narrowed in suspicion.

Joszi nodded and ordered one of the few remaining Keepers to lead what was left of the caravan onward. “Thyma, follow Amma please.”

Amma heeled her horse down the street. Thyma pulled the reins to follow while Joszi and Lyphon rode on either side of the cage near Grevail.

“I do hope you are not playing games,” Joszi grumbled for Grevail’s ears, resettling his hat with a grimace as they moved off the highway. “If so, you will regret it.”

Grevail clamped his mouth shut and instead studied the way ahead as if the relic might be laying in the road. There was nothing that stood out to him about this street. He assumed it was like any other in Eudan, but the answer to what happened to his friends was somewhere along it.

A throbbing pain gripped his head, accompanying the itch, and they both intensified as the wagon lumbered further along. The houses grew larger, more ornate, and became surrounded by walls. The gates to these properties were embossed with crests and symbols. On one home, a large tree was etched into the metal and painted so the trunk was white and the leaves purple. A red bird of some kind graced the gate of another house, while yet another had the moon Arulan quartered.

The buzzing slid to the right like a bug skittering across his brain. A huge mansion of gray stone with a slate roof sat on the other side of a waist-high brick wall. Many windows marched down the side of the broad, rectangular building, and a rearing white horse, eyes rolling in fear, stood on the gate. Grevail’s head throbbed so badly he thought it might explode.

“There,” he groaned, squinting at the building through the pain. On unsteady feet, he stood and grabbed the bars of the cage to keep himself upright, peering at the windows. I know you are there, stableman.

“Sit down,” Joszi growled under his breath. The Arbiter heeled his mount to put himself between Grevail and the mansion.

Grevail searched the windows, hoping to spot a clue. He didn’t think he’d ever seen so many windows on one building, except perhaps a few in Hightown. The answer of what happened to his friends that night was inside…and so was his revenge.

Joszi’s face flushed a deep crimson. “If you don’t sit, I’ll have you sent to the swamps immediately. By sunset!”

Grevail met the Arbiter’s eyes, challenging the spiteful anger he found in them. He did not sit, and instead continued to cast his gaze over Joszi’s bulbous maroon hat toward the mansion.

Joszi sputtered and waved at Lyphon.

“Sit, scamp,” Lyphon said.

Something in the man’s voice made Grevail turn to meet his eyes too, and he was surprised to find a mote understanding in the Purifier’s pale blue gaze. Lyphon shook his head, casting a furtive glance at Joszi. Despite the warning, Grevail spent another moment standing in the back of the wagon before he sat.

Joszi tore his eyes from Grevail and spoke to Lyphon. “Find out what you can about who lives there,” he said, inclining his head toward the mansion. “Send word when you have something…and don’t let yourself be seen.”

Lyphon acknowledged the order, but his eyes remained on Grevail, sharing a look that told him not do anything stupid. Then, the Purifier turned his mount back the way they had come.

“You’re not going to do anything?” Grevail asked. As the wagon rolled down the street away from the mansion, the throbbing in his head began to subside.

“Quiet yourself,” Joszi said with a scowl. “How do I know it is in there? What if you are lying to me?”

“I thought it was going to start another Long Dark? Isn’t that what you said?”

Joszi scowled. “Watch your mouth, Cythraul.”

Grevail challenged his gaze again. “If it were a shack in Lowtown you wouldn’t waste any time at all.”

Joszi sneered. “No, I wouldn’t…and nobody would care. I’ll turn you from a deceitful, cowardly Cythraul. Your spirit has become corroded, but you will be purified…mark my words.” The Thavan kicked his horse, galloping ahead to speak with Amma.

Thyma watched Joszi speak to Amma for a moment before turning a confused gaze on Grevail. She was still under the impression that he was just some Cythraul who Joszi had shown an odd interest in. Who only knew what she thought now.

Joszi led them through the city, occasionally pausing his conversation with Amma to cast a suspicious look at Grevail. Tamirra was smaller than the capital, but Grevail felt a familiar comfort in the city as opposed to wilderness, even in a Thavan cage that drew scowls of townspeople.

The street ahead ended in a huge curving wall and surprised, Grevail’s eyes traveled up the looming form. His mouth went dry when he recognized the maroon and gold banners hanging from it, wavering in the breeze. The lantern and the flame was on one, and another with the three ‘R’s representing the Thavan creed. There was a Refuge in the capital, too, though Grevail had never been inside. These walls were the last thing of the outside world most Cythraul ever saw. His heart sank as the fortress rose ever higher above him, towering over the street and buildings around it.

Grevail realized now what Joszi planned for him. That liar, he thought. Even if I handed him that cube today, he’d never let me go. He stared at the Thavan’s back as they arrived at the iron portcullis of the Refuge, wishing he had escaped the night of the sprouting.

Joszi cupped a hand around his mouth and called to the top of gate. “The corrosion has been repelled!”

A face capped by a kettle helm appeared atop the wall, then disappeared, and not long afterward the portcullis began to crank upward. Joszi’s mount pranced through, followed by the wagon and Grevail.

Inside, buildings crowded against the battlements, crammed shoulder to shoulder with each other and between them, narrow lanes cut through like a river burrowing into a hillside. Thavan Keepers in maroon and gold marched down these avenues, comfortable in the unnatural shade the buildings provided. The industrious cacophony of taverns and shops accumulated into a nearly overpowering din. The streets moved with people, and yet more popped heads out of windows or strode through doorways. Everything seemed to be built from stone and featured circular inspiration in the architecture. One building had a round door, while another appeared to be constructed from many circular stone blocks stacked one atop the other. Despite his confinement in the cage, Grevail had to marvel at it. It was like an anthill, and in a way, it reminded him of Lowtown.

They passed a blocky barracks, beside which a training yard occupied a rare open space, where more Thavan Keepers practiced with wooden weapons. A lone Purifier stood beside the entrance to the training yard, copper sallet helmet hanging from his belt and diamond-shaped silver amulet laying against his chest, just like what Lyphon carried. Grevail wondered how many Purifiers there were in all of Eudan, surely not many.

Beyond the barracks, a massive Spiritkeep towered over everything else like a mountain. The circular tower dwarfed even the four story buildings beside it and the round windows were twice as wide as Grevail was tall. A gaggle of Thavaks milled around outside, maroon chaperon hats piled atop their heads.

The Thavaks became agitated at the sight of him in the cage and exploded into a noisy rabble. A chunk of bread threaded between the bars to hit Grevail in the chest. “Cythraul scum!”

Soon, a deluge of debris was battering the cage.

“Forswear!”

“Dawnbreaker!”

Grevail huddled into a ball on the floor of the wagon, shielding himself as the attack continued unabated. The Thavaks followed the wagon with excited shouts, becoming especially boisterous whenever one of them landed a direct hit. After what seemed an eternity, when the onslaught finally waned, Grevail raised his head to wipe what he thought was tomato juice from his face. The Thavaks had been left behind and various bits of food were scattered across the floor of the cage. Thyma caught his eye. To his surprise, she looked on the verge of tears, yet the old woman only turned forward and flicked the reins.

Joszi came to a halt beside a stately building of huge stone blocks and dismounted, handing his reins to a liveryman in gold and maroon. At the top of stairs leading from the street, double doors with ornate gilded glass sparkled in the morning sunlight and Joszi motioned at two Keepers standing beside them who then followed him to the back of the wagon.

Grevail went to the cage door as Joszi unlocked it. “You lied to me, didn’t you?”

Joszi swung the door open and the Keepers surged in, grabbing Grevail by the legs and dragging him out. They hauled him to his feet, each holding an arm. The Keepers seemed to take some kind of pleasure in manhandling him, laughing and making jokes while Joszi looked on with a smile. Grevail writhed in their hands, scowling at the Arbiter. “You are a liar. You won’t let me go. I showed you where it was! You said—”

“Consider yourself lucky that I do not send for the Postulators, Cythraul.” Joszi smirked at Grevail’s struggling, then walked toward the building and the Keepers hauled Grevail up the stairs toward the gilded glass doors the Arbiter propped open.

With Grevail between them, the Thavans shuffled into a grand foyer. Polished stone lined the walls, all the way up a second and third floor above that carved staircases on each side of the room ascended in graceful spirals.

A woman sitting at a desk just opposite the entrance ran muddy brown eyes over Grevail, twisting thin lips as the Keepers puppeted him toward a door beside her post. Her eyes warmed when Joszi entered behind them. “Joszi! I didn’t expect you back so soon!”

“I did not expect to be back so soon, Franthe,” Joszi said.

“Should I have a Postulator sent for?” the woman asked.

Joszi turned to regard Grevail, studying him for a moment. “No, not yet,” he said finally.

The Arbiter marched past Grevail to open the door beside Franthe’s desk, which the Keepers then hurried him through and onto a flight of stairs. Down they went into a labyrinth of cold stone and lantern filled hallways, turning here and there, passing doorways and intersections but few people. The Keepers kept a tight grip, dragging Grevail along with little more care than if he were a sack of grain.

A man standing beside a doorway in the hall ahead watched them with interest as they approached, the gold stripes on his maroon uniform sparkling in the light of a nearby lamp.

“Nasos…” Joszi said, inclining his head. “I have someone here for you to look after.”

Nasos narrowed his eyes at Grevail before his lips, surrounded by a dark beard, tilted in a smirk. “Company?” The man turned and threw open the door behind him.

“A Dawnbreaker, but a…special case.”

Nasos shrugged and gave Grevail a wicked grin as the Keepers hauled him through the door. “They’re all the same to me…but it will be as you say, Arbiter.”

They entered a dungeon, well-lit by lamps, where empty cells occupied one wall. Nasos skittered into the room and took a ring of keys from his belt to unlock one. The Keepers pushed Grevail inside and he fell to his knees at the center, the door clanging shut behind him.

Joszi came to the bars, looking down his nose. “You do not share the same space we reserve for your brethren. These are for…distinguished guests.”

Grevail stared at the cell and thick stone blocks sealing his fate. He was in the bottom of a Thavan prison, where he would likely die, just like his parents. He’d lost his friends, he’d lost everything. “You are a liar, Joszi! Let me out of here! You killed my friends, you coward!” He realized tears were streaking down his face but made no attempt to stop them, even when Nasos began laughing. “You killed them!”

Joszi offered a mocking smile. “I need no admonishment from a thief with the Emberfolk’s deeds staining his hands.” The Arbiter’s disdain laden eyes studied him a moment longer before he spun from the cell and left with the Keepers in tow.

Nasos chuckled and took a seat atop a stool as the door closed behind Joszi. He smiled, as if relishing Grevail’s sobs. “You’ll die in here, Breaker scum. I’ve seen many like you do just that.”