Interregnum

— South Kravikas (a.k.a. Morufu's Palm) —

Pashas didn't hold court; they held councils. Taylor sat at the head of a long arched room with two rows of stone benches facing the center aisle. It was a scaled-down version of the hierarch's audience chamber without the dome over his head. Twenty mauls sat on the inner rows of benches, and their selected seconds sat behind them. In normal times such a meeting would be held in Sand Castle during winter, and the head seat would be empty.

But this was a warring time, and Phillip the Younger held the council in one of the many hidden refuges scattered throughout the desert. He occupied the Pasha's place by virtue of killing Darkmaw, speeding the renewal of damaged gardens, and bringing disciples' power to their fight. Best of all, according to the older spears who advised the mauls, he had done as much through cleverness as strength. A Pasha could not afford to war by strength alone, not when invaders outnumbered them by ten to one.

"This battle plan is unacceptable!" spoke the maul of Bitter Spring. "It sacrifices gardens while we retreat."

"Only three gardens, at the most," responded Taylor, "but every garden north of Sand Castle must be ready to evacuate."

"Bitter Spring will not allow you to burn it to the ground!"

"It's a terrible thing to ask, but you know it's inevitable. Bitter Spring always falls, anyway. Why let the enemy strengthen themselves on the fruits of your labor? As long as your people live and the seed vault is intact, the garden can be regrown stronger than ever. And this time, you won't have Kashmar or Satoma threatening you while you're rebuilding. When this is over, we're going to break Kashmar and force the Tyrant to abandon the desert permanently. We can rename Calique land to anything we want, and no realm will disagree."

"You say 'we', but you just got here. Nexus people aren't Calique." Masood, the new Maul of Broken Ode, spoke out of turn. "Caliqe should lead the Calique, not some outsider. It's a foul thing to follow someone who isn't one of us. It's our blood at stake, our five thousand spears." Gohar, his aged predecessor, sat behind him as an advisor. The old maul had stepped down because he was too frail to fight in the field with his men.

All heads turned to Taylor. The meeting was supposed to be loosely scripted, a presentation of the reasons and reasoning that led them to this point before they kissed the Pasha's war banner. Occasionally some holdouts used the council to demand more spoils, more migrants from other gardens, or a better position in Sand Castle. The doyennes normally dealt with such ambitions, but in wartime the men would settle such things on their own. The mauls and their spears looked perturbed, all except Masood's second, the elder predecessor he had replaced.

"It's true we're not quite the same, but we are your neighbors. We don't chase money or possessions for their own sake. We measure our worth by what we can do for others, as Calique do. We don't put our trust in bloodlines or the order of one's birth. We put our trust in character and ability, as Calique do. We don't have a Tyrant who commands all aspects of life. Every person in Nexus enjoys the freedom of their conscience, as Calique do. Who else, in all of Tenobre, is as close to Calique in their values as Nexus?

"This is our home, now. Our disciples ride with your spears so the five thousand can fight like a hundred thousand. We've prepared the desert for this fight. We've handed you artifacts that let you coordinate your attacks. You can move through the desert faster than ever before, with our help. You probably can't win this war without Red Tower, but the Calique can win this war without Broken Ode."

"I won't hear this! I won't kiss the banner of some outsider who sets himself up as a new Talal." Masood stood angrily. He was such a large man that only the largest appalons could carry him. He would ride a gurantor into battle if he could, but the beasts were too gentle for direct violence. Behind him, Gohar still seemed unperturbed.

"I suppose you want to challenge me now."

"I am the strongest maul, and I should be Pasha. You're still learning your way around girls. Maybe you'll grow some more in time, but not as much as I."

"Even if you could defeat me," Taylor warned, "that wouldn't make you Pasha. It would only call a new vote. And you need my vote to have disciples — a vote you will never have because you're not fit to command them."

"Then let's take this outside and fight like men, little maul."

"Let's fight here," said Taylor, "we need to wrap this up quickly."

Broken Ode was near the end of the hall, a small and distant garden from Sand Castle. Taylor left his seat at the head and strode down the center aisle while Masood left his bench to meet him. Taylor didn't give his opponent a chance to free his sword but closed the distance and struck a breaking blow to his wrist, followed by a kick to break the huge man's shin. Masood grabbed at Taylor as he stumbled on the broken leg, but Taylor seized the big hand in his smaller one and crushed it until the bones broke. There was a lot of fight in the huge man, so Taylor yanked the arm until it dislocated with an audible pop.

To his credit, Masood never cried out, not even when Taylor broke both his collarbones. Nor did he complain the fight was unfair because the Pasha had used his disciple abilities. He just knelt there, breathing hard and sweating with pain, with his sword still in its sheath and Taylor's fingers clenched around his windpipe. Masood's size meant nothing. The boy could crush him without trying.

"Are we finished?"

His voice rasped through the Pasha's fingers. "You win, Outsider." Massod turned his head aside, unable to look Taylor in the eye. He hated to bend to this outlandish Pasha, but he had lost, and that was the end of it for now. "Broken Ode will kiss the Pasha's banner, and follow his orders."

"You'd better," he replied ominously, "many lives depend on it."

Taylor could have healed him, but he sent for female healers out of respect for Calique sensibilities. It took three sets of hands to wrangle the maul's massive body. The council had to wait for several minutes while they set and mended bones and warned him not to fight for three days.

"What else was there?" The council had lost its momentum, and the mauls looked back and forth trying to remember whose turn it was.

Running Flox stood and recited the next objection. "Enclave is Nexus's enemy, not ours. Why shouldn't we turn you over to them?" He sounded unconvinced this was a real problem.

"As if we could," groused another maul to low laughter.

"Enclave has always backed these invasions by Kashmar. They're also one of the three pillars that sanctify the Tyrant's rule. They've been your enemy for a long time; they just never sent disciples before. And make no mistake, this would have happened eventually, with or without Nexus. The Five Families have grown ambitious — they believe they should rule the world through their proxies, and they do not like your independence."

"What about Enclave's disciples?" asked Emerald Pool. "How will you deal with them?"

"I promise, the Tyrant will never get much use from them." Almost, the mauls demanded to know how. It was on their faces as clearly as the truculence on Massod's. "Some things will remain secret until they appear on the battlefield. You can't accidentally betray what you don't know."

"Would this have something to do with the loud noises coming from the dunes?"

The mauls smiled and nodded. Most of them had heard the sudden thunder in the distance, and the rest had heard about it. The consensus was Taylor was at practice with his lightning, the same weapon he used to kill Darkmaw. They were wrong, but it was fine if they wanted to think that.

"No. That's a different horrible weapon I have planned for them. You didn't think I would limit us to one nasty surprise for the Tyrant's men, did you?" Scattered laughter and expectant smiles told Taylor he'd made his point.

"Was there anything else? If there are doubts or grievances, now is the last time to air them." A few heads turned to Broken Ode, but no one spoke.

"Here is our banner for this war. It reminds us of why we fight: not for spoils or for glory, but to protect our people. It was woven by a Calique woman held prisoner in Satoma. We don't know her name, only that she was sold north to Kashmar. If she's still alive, we'll bring her home. This is why we fight."

Ma'Tocha stepped forward with a wide length of woven cloth and passed it to the first maul, who unfolded it to reveal a scene of half-naked women driven by whips at their backs, their children scattered before them in tears. Calique hunters lay wounded on the ground, some of them in pieces, their broken weapons tossed aside. At the other end of the banner, surviving hunters fled with their heads bowed low, shamed by the loss of their garden. It was long enough that two or three men could examine it at once. Every maul marveled at the jacquard weaver's skill and, when they had their fill of gazing at it, lifted it to his lips before allowing the banner to continue its journey. It went down the left side of the hall and back up the right, where Taylor was the last to put his lips against it.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Milo and Ma'Tocha folded the banner and put it away for safekeeping. It would only be seen again for ceremonial purposes, and there weren't likely to be any of those before the fighting was over.

"It is done," announced the Pasha. "All gathered here will fight as one against the invaders from Kashmar, Enclave, and Hyskos. Any garden that abandons our cause will be excluded from the circle."

Taylor surveyed his corps of leaders, who could field five thousand spears. In a head-on, set-piece battle, it was a pittance against Kashmar's tens of thousands. But he had no intention of fighting on equal ground, not when he'd just spent the last few months making the ground as unequal as possible.

"You all know where you need to be. I'll see you in the field."

The meeting broke into small clumps, as the mauls mingled and said good-bye to each other, and spears gathered to brag at each other about the deeds they would perform.

Taylor got a copy of The Battles of Talal from Milo and worked his way to Broken Ode's maul. He greeted mauls and spears as he went until he reached Masood and his predecessor Gohar. The spear was giving advice, while the maul's eyes said he'd rather be anywhere else right then.

"Maul Massod." Taylor received a reluctant greeting from the near-giant. "You mentioned Talal. Have you studied him?"

Masood scoffed. "I am a Calique hunter. I was raised on the stories of his battles."

"I assumed as much. But have you read Talal, in his own words?" The maul looked like he had never considered the famous three-time Pasha might have written anything down or that he had something to say on his own behalf. "I came across a small book he wrote, while I was reading all the past engagements with Kashmar."

"All of them?"

"All there's records of. This will be the twenty-sixth incursion in three hundred years. Anyway," he held out the paper book to Masood. It had the slight distortions of a well-read volume, but Taylor doubted the other man would recognize that fact. It had been through the hands of multiple students before finding its way to Milo, who was glad to have his own copy instead of borrowing from his Young Master. Now they'd be back to sharing.

"This is a copy of Talal's book. I'm giving it to you," he added because Masood wasn't moving to take it, "because I hope you'll read it."

When Masood still didn't take it, Gohar intervened. "A stronger maul is giving you a gift. You can't refuse it without a good reason." The reluctant giant took the offered volume.

"Even the first page is worth reading." Taylor didn't smile at the maul or try to make the situation better for him. Kindness would only make the situation worse. He left the two men to their work and headed out to the desert.

After the Pasha was gone, Gohar nudged Masood into opening the book. The first page was graced with a quote:

> Strength and courage are everything to a spear.

>

> To a maul, they are only the beginning.

>

> — Talal

>

>  

— Satoma —

"You told me there was water." Zaid eyed the commander of Sixth Regiment, the vanguard responsible for entering Satoma and stripping it of anything useful. The rebels had burned the garden and planted mischus in its place, a sound move since nobody lived there anymore. Supposedly, they left the wells alone in case they wanted to resettle the site one day, but when the gurantor trains arrived and started to take on water …

"There was, Princeps, and the water was deep. But the wells aren't refilling."

"The foul heretic capped them with a perversion of the Arts!" Guardian Paraskevi was a member of Zaid's command staff as Enclave's representative. It wasn't possible for her to say a word about Nexus without unnecessary adjectives, spewed with such passionate spite one might think she was unbalanced. And yet, she was perfectly sane when she talked about anything else. "Send for the disciples. They'll open the wells."

So Zaid waited. A column of twelve regiments marching eight abreast took up four kilometers of roadway. Riders were sent to stop the column, find the regiment with disciples in it, and have the deans detail a group for the wells. The disciples had to mount appalons, backtrack to the side road leading to Satoma, to finally arrive a full two hours after the regiment was supposed to be filling barrels. Zaid could have let the main column keep marching, but leaving behind the bulk of his water wagons was asking for trouble.

The disciples prayed over the wells. One by one, they expended themselves and gave up.

"What's wrong with them?" Zaid demanded of the Guardian.

"The charlatans at Nexus had months to seal these wells. They're trying to sabotage our holy crusade from the start. We'll wait for Zorda. He will fix this."

"If he's so important, why isn't he here already?"

"He doesn't ride. He only walks."

An older disciple, a hale man of sixty years by Zaid's best guess, strode into Satoma at a pace that could eat up vast distances. Three mounted figures followed him, of different ages and all well armed. The other disciples looked at him with distaste and refused to greet him. His round face and unfocused eyes paid them no mind as he went to the first well and said the prayer for shaping stone in a rapid string of syllables without pause or punctuation. At the end of it, Zaid felt a crumbling sensation, like hammer blows beneath his feet were crushing rock into rubble. The old disciple went from well to well without saying anything at all, not even to restate his prayer, and crushed the barrier of compressed rock around each well. When his job was finished, Zorda exited the garden without acknowledging the Guardian or the Princeps.

The garden got busy faster than Zorda could leave it. Gangs of men dipped buckets into the wells and pulled up fresh water for gurantors and the barrels they hauled. With all the wagons loaded and gurantors sated, Zaid and his First Regiment escorted them back to the main column. Regiments Six and Seven didn't follow but took a southeasterly turn to the Riverlands. Samir had carved a path through that labyrinth of deep crevices and, according to scout reports, the paths were there still, undisturbed. The two regiments added up to more men than all the rebel fighters put together, and Zaid was sending them into the unprotected underbelly of the Calique. They would use the crevices and secret roads as a base from which to harass some lightly protected gardens. The Calique would be forced to either split their thin forces or lose their gardens. The regiments could retreat if they needed to. They were a diversion, not the main force.

"Tell me about this Brother Zorda." Zaid rode near Paraskevi for part of the way. "He's stronger than the other disciples, isn't he? Why don't they like him?"

"He's a simpleton," she answered. "He's a sweet man, but quite limited. The others aren't comfortable around him because he's so far beyond them in the Spiritual Arts. How would you feel if you had an idiot uncle who surpassed you in the one thing you were most proud of?"

"What does he do?"

"What does he do, asks the Princeps." Guardian Paraskevi shook her head. "You know the highways that connect all the major cities? Like the one your main column is marching on right now, for example? He builds them."

"Impressive," nodded Zaid. "Which ones?"

"All of them." She smiled mockingly at Zaid, daring him to contradict her. "And many smaller roads, too. He'll do any kind of earthwork, but he loves building roads. He's done little else for forty years." Zaid noticed she wasn't spitting deprecations, now that she wasn't talking about Nexus or its hierarch anymore.

Thanks to Zorda, they had more than enough water to march to Bitter Spring. Without him, the campaign would have started on the wrong foot. Zaid decided that, simpleton or not, he should get to know the moon-faced disciple

As they neared the column they met his adjutant Bassel, riding a fast appalon. "A message, Princeps, by special messenger." The phrase 'special messenger' was their code for the ancient box.

Zaid took the offered boards and broke the seal. "Prepare to move out." Zaid read while Bassel hurried back to the column. An armed slave revolt in Hyskos was creating a bidding war for the Grand Company's soldiers. He was receiving five thousand instead of twenty, but they were all elite troops, and they were camped on the desert's western border ready for orders. It wasn't what he'd been promised, but Zaid could do a lot of damage with five thousand spears.

— Kashmar —

"What's going on here?" Healer Lutz barged into his office, his personal office in his home, to find a stranger inside, reading by a spirit lamp. Lutz saw the way its light wavered slightly like a live fire instead of shining steady and knew he had made a mistake. When he sensed a stranger working spirit in his house he should have run or stayed in bed. Enclave didn't need to send people to him in the middle of the night, and the only other source of practitioners was Nexus.

The enemy disciple was dressed like a middling merchant, right down to the bad makeup they were so crazy about these days. "You are a killer of children," said the strange disciple. "So much for the oath."

Lutz tried to run but a hand from beside the door clamped down on his shoulder and stopped him with prayer-enhanced strength. He was moved to a chair involuntarily and forced to sit, with the bulwark remaining behind so he couldn't see them. He didn't doubt they were strong enough to crush his head bare-handed.

"I don't kill them. That's on the princes, not me." Lutz had been repeating that phrase to himself for years. It was a lot less convincing when said out loud.

"They kill the children because you lie to them. You tell them the children have no beast traits when, in fact, they have the potential to change form. It's exactly what they've been after for," the stranger counted the boards from Lutz's archive, the hidden records that only Lutz and his predecessors knew about, "a very long time. The children die because you lie. The question is, why?"

Lutz began to shake. He didn't know why. It was a directive passed down with the post of lead healer for Kashmar's princes, and it would remain in effect until a countermanding order came down from the hierarch herself. He tried to explain it, but the longer he talked the more angry it made the stranger.

"Shut up," he said when he'd had enough. "You're telling me several hierarchs have come and gone, and nobody thought they should check with their current hierarch to make sure it was still okay to murder children?" He flipped through the secret archive of boards until he found the directive, but had a hard time reading its old mode of writing. Maybe he was one of those peasants Lutz had heard about, raised above their station by the unscrupulous Nexus heretics.

The stranger removed everything else from Lutz's secret hole in the floor: more records, a money box, some items of jewelry, bottles of spirits Lutz was saving, an official seal, letters from an intemperate youthful affair.

"How did you find out?" He was desperate to extend his life, even by a little. A few questions could buy him time.

"Donis told me." The stranger was more focused on packing away all the things he was stealing than he was on Lutz, but the bronze grip never let up. Lutz couldn't move.

"How? Donis is supposed to be dead."

"He is," said the disciple with a nod in his direction, "and so are you."

Lutz's head was suddenly wrench around, but he never felt the pain of his snapped neck.