It seems only days ago that Fragile the Sixbraid was living a quiet life in his people’s village, in the ancient and storied land named Goal. Without provocation, a group of soldiers from a hate-filled empire entered into it, killing his friends, his family, and all the keepers of their tradition. A Wandering Star, a lone warrior from a distant land, arrived just in time to save Fragile and the Sixbraids from complete annihilation. Finding pleasure in each other’s company, these two, a stronghoof, and an enigmatic presence named Bell now plumb the countryside for work and residence. Wander helps the people of Goal, and searches out a new home for her companion; in secret, she pursues her long-standing vendetta against a blind and destructive enemy.
-
Freemen could walk the woods at night. Eight of them, eight brysts on them, which itched, clung tight, and made sweat that turned to ice. The gray of their covering became a beacon that loved starlight and stood over Goal’s pines, rocks, trees, and brush. Bigeyes walked among them, his friends. They were chasing something divine.
Hundredbreaks, an especially large Freeman with a lazy eye, clapped his hands to his face. “This is a hard cold,” he said. “A harder cold than this country has ever offered me. You sidacif men, who are so deprived of its right shape, and who have never went across the lines to our true kind-home, would not know cold if it had wrapped its hand around your knife. Keep this feeling, Joyslip. Keep it in, Songsinger, and Snowfield, and all you young ones. It is most like the thing we need."
“On he goes,” mocked Snowfield, a shooter. “On and on. Larunkat’s shape, Larunkat’s trees, Larunkat’s cold, Larunkat’s knife. We’ve been informed of your passage, friend. There is no more delight to be had in it.”
“If no other sees fit to pass the time, I will do it myself,” Hundredbreaks replied. “Although it is sidacif cold, it is a cold night. A lonely night, without friends. And with silent friends, I might as well be lonely.”
“It is good for a warning,” Joyslip said. “It is so quiet, and we can all hear the other. A good night for a warning.”
“A good night,” Hundredbreaks agreed. “How about you, Songsinger?” Any songs you could sing? And what of you, Bigeyes?”
Bigeyes glared at them. “Keep it quiet. We have come here to break apart the wind, not push it by chatter.”
Hundredbreaks shook his head. “You are a bitter drink, friend,” he said. “And you are too unhappy. There are few of these left for you or I; why waste them frowning?”
"I work for the group," Bigeyes replied. "A night where I could not but frown is better than an end I smiled for myself."
“Huh!” Hundredbreaks emphatically brushed his shoulder, as though he were pushing off dust. “You ignore him, Joyslip. You tell us. Tell us about a windy thing. The kind we are like to find out here.”
The young, twiggish little armsman lit up at his inclusion. “I was told many warnings,” he whispered, “of the Cave Caller, of the Two-Headed Twentytithe, and of the Weeping Woman.”
“The Weeping Woman. I know this warning,” Songsinger said. “Speak that one, Joyslip.”
“Yes, tell us, Joyslip.”
“Tell us of the Weeping Woman.”
Joyslip took a deep breath. Then, he began.
“Once, there was a woman who wept by a river… a small river, that ran through trees. She had met a great burden, by wind and struggle. I think she was intruded on, or was it a lost child?” He shook his head. “I cannot remember. But it was too much for her to bear.”
"A man wandering through the wild found her. He asked her for her grief, that he could share in it. She told him then, and they had happiness for many seasons."
Snowfield laughed. “A high thing, he is. You have passed over days, Joyslip. They must have lingered together more than that.”
"I only know the way it was told."
Joyslip cleared his throat and continued, his confidence growing as his audience was enthralled by the yarn.
"For their happiness, the woman grew frail and became cold. The man had the woman's sadness, and now a sadness of his own. So he returned to the river where they met, and he wept there every day."
“A nettingwoman came wandering through the same place. She asked the man why he cried, that she might conclude it. So he told her, and they embraced one another.”
“This embrace incensed the woman’s I. Her I reached out a finger from the Ice-Covered Chamber, and put it through the nettingwoman's body. She was struck by the same injury as her predecessor, and was cold also.”
“The man mourned, but he could no longer weep. He had become stronger than they, and he took confidence in his friends.”
“The crying continued. If we were to come across a creek, or a rushing gully, we might still hear it there as you might have then. This sound is the Weeping Woman, and she no longer knows why she cries.”
As Joyslip ended the tale, they came across a large aperture in the trees. It was comprised of torn up roots and saplings. The hole it had produced in the woods’ facade was round, and taller than their lot stacked together.
“Prodda.” The Freeman spoke anticipations in their special tongue. Their voices did not breach anger or retreat into fear. “Prodda Bring air Prodda-prodda Bring air. Prodda bring cold prodda-prodda bring cold. Prodda-prodda...”
Bigeyes turned to the group and adopted the diction and measured timbre of their war-speech. “All. All Hear All-all Count air All-all Hear me All-all Out niv.”
Their heads spun in unison as a great shadow lurched through the woods, clawing past branches and turning massive thicktrees at the roots. At the sudden noise, the Freemen ducked their heads and fled to the nearest cover, which took the form of a rocky outcropping that concealed them from the sky.
“That Wind,” Songsinger hissed. He blinked twice at it. “That Wind!”
“You Quiet,” Bigeyes replied.
Bigeyes peeked out from behind their hiding place to survey the area. Hundredbreaks touched him on the shoulder. “Show ways.”
Bigeyes put his finger to Hundredbreaks' eye and directed it out, toward another set of rocks just past the creature’s shadow. “Pinch.”
“Wind Not Man Wind-wind Dark push Here-here safe.” Hundredbreaks tapped his foot on the ground.
Bigeyes grabbed Hundredbreaks’ arm and squeezed. “First say.”
“First say Eye pick.”
Bigeyes briefly assessed the lumbering creature. “Pinch.”
Hundredbreaks nodded. He whistled softly to alert their friends, whose eyes fell on him.
“Group four,” Hundredbreaks said.
All six of the Freemen made to move forward, and then backward. He held out four fingers and closed his fist, and the selected Freemen advanced.
He beckoned them forward and directed them toward their goal. Then the whole of them gathered into a circle.
“All Move All-all Push,” Bigeyes whispered. “Save no breath Prodda-Prodda sees.”
Joyslip, Snowfield, Songsinger, and the other Freemen nodded. They assembled behind the rock, awaiting Hundredbreaks' word.
He threw up his hand. The shooters let their arrows fly. As their volley pounded away at the beast, the Freemen rushed out from their cover.
A mouth opened up and breathed, sending out gusts of stink that drew back their brysts, blew back their hair and passed over the rock and onto the ones who hid there. The advance was stopped cold. Slowly, the other Freemen emerged, and stood in full view of the beast.
Bigeyes rose up last.
“I can hear Wen,” Hundredbreaks said, his passions and words elongating. “My sweet Wen. Bigeyes.”
Bigeyes stared at the creature’s mouth. Tears came to his eyes.
The beast unhinged its jaw and lowered it to the ground.
“Do you hear it?” Hundredbreaks asked. “Wen is in there. She cannot breath.”
“I can hear prodda,” Snowfield whispered. “Our prodda. The higher one.”
“It’s terrible,” Joyslip said. “It’s the kontor. Why is it him? That cannot be right.”
“Your Wen is three counts breathless,” Bigeyes said. “Our prodda is fifty counts breathless.”
“Can’t you hear it, Bigeyes?” Joyslip asked. “It cannot be anything but him!”
“Come away from there,” Bigeyes insisted. “Come away from there.”
Hundredbreaks threw down his weapons and began to undress. “She needs me. I'm going.”
Bigeyes grabbed him as he removed his bryst. Hundredbreaks threw him off, and he collapsed into the dirt holding the cloak. The other Freemen began to follow suit.
Driven to desperation, he seized Joyslip, the lightest and youngest of them, and wrestled him back from the darkness. The other Freemen remained, removing their clothes, and walking into it.
“The kontor!” Joyslip cried. “I must get to him!” He blubbered and roared as Bigeyes forced him away and lifted him up by the waist.
He turned back one last time and called upon divine office. “Prodda," he said, "Get them back from it.”
But prodda did not. The last of the Freemen walked into the jaws of the beast.
“Kontor,” Joyslip wept. “Our good kontor… we cannot leave him…”
“There is nothing,” Bigeyes insisted. "There is nothing there."
Joyslip would not hear him. He wept as his captor ran.
----------------------------------------
Once upon a time…
In the Goalish rounds.
Wander, Fragile, and the stronghoof vanished from their camp, plodding through the billowing white fog that encompassed the rounds. They reached the top of one last hill, Fragile huffing and puffing all the way, and the mist cleared. They laid their eyes on a new and impressive sight.
A sprawling black road – unpaved, overgrown, and otherwise untended – wrapped around and over the hills to the South, and in spite of its dishevelment, appeared nevertheless serviceable to their purpose. “What splendid heart is this?” Fragile gasped. “A braid that wraps and twists about the whole riversland!”
“It is not a heart, but man’s work,” Wander replied. Noticing the sweat on his brow, she handed him her cloth. He wiped the filth, instead, on the sleeve of his coldover. “A contributor to the Ash road, where I must go. This should do well to carry us down to the way of its source.”
So they quit the rounds. They slid down from the hill (in Fragile’s case, tumbled) and pressed on South. Wander stuck a clump of green resin in her mouth and chewed on it. Their animal’s hooves clip-clopped in time with the clinking and clanking of her metal boots. Fragile shortly became infatuated with a strange material which was spread over their new pathway; he picked up a handful, squeezed it, licked it, and swirled a finger around inside.
“What are you doing?” Wander asked.
“Does this have a name? It has a very interesting smell.”
“It is rock,” she said. “Helpful rock. The Laruns carry it up from deep underground. Have you no experience with this place?”
Fragile dropped the rubble, letting it scatter in the wind. “When I was young, maybe,” he said. “We had to hide for a while, during the Response.”
“The Response? The Goalish Violence?”
He nodded. “How many of these have you seen?” he asked.
“A few.” Her eyes never deviated from the trail in front of her. “But I am new to this work. There are old ones who have travelled every road.”
“They are paths?”
“Yes, they are paths.”
“Where do they lead?” He stretched his hand out to the horizon. “Could one go anyplace he pleased if he were to follow them?”
“Many places, in Goal and Josmee and Harmony,” she said. “But everything and everywhere is not Goal, or Josmee or Harmony, as great as they may seem.”
Wander and Fragile marched through the day. They guided the stronghoof into a frozen bog that had risen up through their path, and he could not walk. So Wander cut her armor loose and handed it to Fragile, who buckled from its weight and dropped it in the mud. Then she lifted the stronghoof up onto her shoulders and the four of them carried on, plowing deep into the chilly interior with their boots and hoofskin shoes.
As they trudged through the moist woodland filth, Wander’s shoulders began to ache from the beast’s weight. She temporarily set him down and extracted a bottle of the nightholder’s leavings from her vest. On uncorking it and shoving it at a group of hesigns on her lower back, the material leapt into them, causing them to glow, and relief to wash through her upper body.
“What is that?” Fragile wheezed.
“Residue,” Wander replied. She holstered the bottle and shouldered again the stronghoof, which brayed scathing complaint. “Or ‘remains.’ It has many uses. It’s the skin of the thing that attacked you.”
“The nightholder?”
“Is that what you call it?”
“I heard tell of such hearts,” he said. “When I was a boy. My birthman said that of all those that inhabit the forest – the trees, the winged things, and the walking ones – the nightholder was the strongest.”
“It’s not of the forest. The Family knows its like by many names: malignant things, againstfollow, brightplague. My birthwoman called them something else. In your words, it would sound something like ‘dry-crafted animals.’”
Fragile nodded, his brow raised as she rattled off the different names of the forest heart. As she talked, his eyes wandered around the scars and dilapidation she had collected from the Freemen and the nightholder. In particular, he kept returning to a large, long blotch on her neck where she had been shot.
“What is it?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” he said quickly, his eyes snapping back to the road. He struggled with her armor. “Well, actually, I mean – the drymen. They cut you all over.”
“Yes?”
“I could… we could find a fireworker.”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” she said. She itched at the wrinkling mound in her throat. “The marks will stay, but their work is no more.”
“Already?”
“I had to rest for a few days, after you left, but yes.”
“A few days?” he whispered. He shook his head in disbelief. “You must have many concealed strengths.”
“More than I’d like,” she said. “Less than I need.”
“How did you grow so strong?”
“Work,” Wander said. She kicked aside a stone. “Pain, when work would not suffice.”
Fragile looked to the side as though he were reluctant to say something. Finally, he blurted out, “Are you really riverborn?”
“What’s that?” Wander asked.
“Ih...” Fragile searched for a way to explain. “You know, of the river, and its banks. A… a heart.” He tugged at his cheek to illustrate.
“A breather?”
“‘Breather’?” Fragile did his best to move his tongue around the unfamiliar syllables. It sounded like a Larun word.
Wander nodded. Fragile gave a look of confusion.
“You don’t know ‘breather?’”
Fragile shook his head. “What is it?”
“A heart,” Wander said. “Sort of. It’s a body, like yours or mine, one that thinks and goes away. Yes, I am one. But there’s not much that can hurt me.”
“It is surely a great thing for the riversland,” Fragile remarked.
“What is?”
“Your strength.”
“How do you imagine this?”
Fragile looked at her in surprise. “In such a short time,” he said, “you have made amazing works of living and responding. You have destroyed men with weapons. You have a spectacular push!”
“Yes, I hit well,” Wander said. “It is my best practiced craft. But I do not do such a thing for the riversland. It is for my commands and commanders alone, and that is all.”
“What kind of a strength is in the riversland?” he asked. “In the other places. The ones past the rounds, and towards and after the Larun shells. Are there many like you?”
“Like me, how?”
“Hearts who push as you do. For good things.”
“Every man pushes for himself,” Wander replied. “This I have seen. To most men, his own hunger, the calm of his bedplace, and the life of his sons are the first and working good of his riversland. You can surely attest to this.”
Fragile did not. Instead he scrunched up his brow and thought hard about it. “If it is so,” he said, “is it only women who will push for others?”
Wander cocked her head at him. “That is a peculiar thing to suppose,” she said. “You have not known much of my kind.”
“I have only known one.”
“What of your birthwoman?”
“I had birthmen,” Fragile said. “Although that was uncommon, Sixbraids do not put men and women together. Not before they move house. The Lodge said that this pleased the rulers.”
“The separation?”
Fragile nodded. Wander chewed. “Not many women push in the way I do,” she said. “Even in Shaminkat. Where I was born.”
“With canes?”
“With canes.”
Fragile looked at her huge, heavy swords. “But they do push?”
“Everyone pushes. There is no other way to be,” she said. “When I was a girl, I was taught a woman’s power lay in work, speaking, and arms. But this was strange, and it brought no friendship to the Onnpeople.”
“The Onn-?” Fragile mouthed the curious word, struggling with its own syllables, which were unlike his and the Laruns’ too. Wander did not seem to take any notice.
They rose up and out of the sludge. Fragile hitched the armor back to the stronghoof, and they pressed forward.
“Aren’t you curious where we’re going?” she asked.
Fragile looked up. “Hm?”
“Where I’m taking you,” she said. “What I intend.”
“We’re going away from the sun. Toward the nearest safe place.”
“…yes.”
There was a pause. “What more is there to it?” he asked.
Wander took a moment to respond. “You are quick to follow others,” she said.
“I have been.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“Why not?”
“There are those who will fail. Those who will lead you wrong. They do it all the time.”
“You have not done it to me yet.”
She grew quiet for a time. She cracked her neck.
“I’m going to the New Wild,” she said. “We’re already moving toward its edge. I’m going to find somewhere for you inside, in the quiet and unbothered parts, before I must travel to the deeper ones.”
A combination of dread and excitement collected in Fragile’s stomach. “Why are you going there?”
“For gifts,” Wander said. “There is need for trackers, trappers, and drycanes. All my talents.”
Fragile paused. “I wouldn’t mind to see the Wild. Everybody had something to say about it, where I’m from. They said it was somewhere that hearts had escaped the drymen. Somebody said that it… ‘embraced each,’ and ‘did not submit.’ It sounded like a wonderful shape.”
“It’s dangerous,” Wander said. “There are kinds there that can cut me. It’s no place for delicate things.”
“What about Herdetopp?”
“Herdetopp is safe,” she said. “The safest you can get, farther inside. But this is only because the Laruns still care to make it so. I doubt you would prefer their company.”
Fragile’s curiosity was piqued. “Why do you believe this?”
She looked down at him, perplexed. “Because they destroyed your family.”
“Who?”
“The Laruns,” Wander said. “The heartless ones.”
“I saw you pierce those men.”
“I did.”
A murky gulf had wedged itself between them.
Wander spat her chew into the bushes. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. We shall be parted long before I reach that point.”
-
The road became thin, and ran up a high, rocky path. Rays of gold were flung about their file as the sun rose over the country, refracted by dew and a few remaining swathes of fog. As midday approached, Fragile began to make out an enclosed hilltop fortification, out of which were rising thin tails of smoke.
“What kind is that block, which is meeting our horizon?” Fragile asked.
“If we’re in the right place, it should be a Couth,” Wander replied. “Laruns stock food and drink there, space for travellers, arms for bite-catching.”
“Is it safe?”
“It should be.”
As they approached, they could see ahead that it was a Larun outpost as she had predicted; their divine signal, and several others, flew from a flagpole on the inside. A wooden stakewall surrounded it, as did a few armed sentries, but it appeared primarily domestic: the gate was open, and a panoplic assortment of traders, small families, peddlers, and seasonal workers could be seen milling about the interior, alongside their carts, cargo and animals. Next to the Couth’s doors was a flat mound of dark soil, cleared of shrubs and debris. One was large – big enough for the foundations of a house, and unadorned. Its sibling was much smaller, and the marks that had shifted it, cut it open, and closed it up were fresh. A cluster of langnivs had been planted into its surface.
“Take this,” Wander said, handing him the stronghoof’s lead. “I’m going to say some things. I might not appear to be myself.” Fragile nodded. She rolled up her sleeves, revealing her hesigns.
They approached the Couth’s gate, which was guarded by a trio of Freeman. The smallest of them sat on a large rock, clutching an empty bryst like those that he and his fellows wore. When he saw them approaching, he folded it up, placed it on the stone, and walked up to them. His smile and hearty gait reeked of pathological jollity.
“How fare you, friends?” he asked in Larun.
“Very fine, brightman,” Wander said.
The Freeman’s eyes widened when he saw her tattoos. “Why, you’re Seen, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been so accused.”
“You’ve a face?” he asked excitedly. “A face I could see? To be sure and certain?”
Wander handed him her cloth. The Freeman laughed and revelled in its image. He held it up to the sun. When he was satisfied with what he saw, he cried out,“Marvelous! That’s marvelous!” He turned to the other guards. “Prodda delivers to us, friends! Prodda delivers!”
Wander cleared her throat. He folded his hands and bowed his head in a gesture of supplication.
“I neglect you, Seenblade. It is an indignity.” He gave her back her rag. “Where you two headed from?”
“From the Greats, brightman,” Wander said.
“No slipping? I hope? Not a slip?”
“A slip or two.”
“This is Bigeyes,” he said, gesturing to himself. “Little Bigeyes. I want to grab your names for my commander. I’ve no mind to try and write for a few travellers. But he’ll have your love to know. You’ve come at such a time, Seenblade. Such a time.”
“I’m Hill-Measure,” Wander said. “This is Camp, my given helper. We are headed on to Herdetopp.”
“That tongue’s twisting fine, Seenblade,” the Freeman said. “You must be from a far place.”
Wander threw her head back and laughed - a bright, mirthous thing, that rang between Fragile’s ears like a pair of bells. “Most places far from here!”
“Real thinking,” he said, a note of bitterness creeping into his voice. “No Firstpoint visiting here.”
It was at that moment that Fragile noted the bloodied dishevelment that afflicted the Freemen of the Couth. Rather than travelling in groups of twos or threes, as they had in the Houses, many wandered without company, living solitary within the Couth’s palisade.
“Where sits your commander?” Wander asked.
“The kontor is inside,” Bigeyes said. “He is confined to our house. His wounds are great, and must be tended by our majam.” He shook his head. “We are in a slip here, Seenblade. We are in such a slip. But you don’t need to worry about that now. I’ll hitch up your beast, and you can head on in. It’s almost time to eat.”
She handed him the stronghoof’s lead. “You’re kind.”
“It is my labor,” he replied. “You enjoy it. You all are lucky! No snow on the ground yet. Soon that shine will cover up our place and hide away all things, and you will know its size.” Bigeyes pointed upward. “Take pleasure in Goalland. Don’t let the Wild take you!”
As they exited the Freeman’s company, Wander’s unaffected demeanor resumed. Her eyes grew sharp and wary, her gait measured, and her posture stiff and immovable.
The Couth was inhabited by two large residences on opposite sides of its courtyard, and between them was a water well. Both buildings were plain and hacked together from wood; one was painted with the divine signal on its wall and was populated by Freemen, who lounged about its entrance. The other was long and thin and painted by no signals. From the inside, Fragile knew scents that made his stomach bubble with excitement.
“What is the reason of that place?” Fragile asked.
“Its kind is named ‘salon,’” Wander replied. “We can sleep here.”
They walked through its doors. The Couth’s motley denizens lounged about smoking, playing table games, and drinking sweet milk. A bearded man stood behind a long trencher, wiping it down with a rag, and stocking shelves filled with honey and liquor.
Wander handed Fragile her coinpurse, newly stuffed to its gills with Larun gold, and pointed out the man to him. “I’m meeting somebody here. Ask the salonier if we can have some spots for the night. I’ll find you when I’m done.”
Fragile retreated to the Salonier and entered into dialogue with him. She surveyed the rest of the room’s inhabitants until she found her man: a diminutive character in a coat and a wide-brimmed black hat. He had put up his legs on a game-table, and read from a sheaf of papers bound by leather. It flaunted a degree of opulence that belied his seedy, pauperish figure.
She went over to his table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. Without looking up, the Hood asked her, somewhat judgementally, in Rootcliff, “Why are you late?”
“An incident. I was entered into an exchange. I removed myself from it.”
He flipped a page. “It does not look like the exchange agreed to that.”
She suppressed the urge to itch her throat. “It will fix.”
“The next one may not.” He waved his finger at a spot behind her. “What’s tied you to this animal?”
In the distance, Wander heard something break, followed by mutters of irritation.
“I broke that,” Fragile’s lilting voice echoed. “Sorry. I broke it.”
“Is it a problem?” she asked the Hood.
He shrugged. “You haven’t been in the territory for very long. You already have one cannotfollow. What use have you for a second?”
“He’s not a cannotfollow. I’m letting him work for me. We will find a place for him to live.”
“You take your Taking very seriously,” the Hood said. “Perhaps you should become a meiam, put off your shoes, and give yourself to the poorest of everywhere.”
“He’ll labor for his keep.”
The Hood scoffed. “I don’t care. Your appetites are your concern.” He sniffed, and looked up at her. “Try to keep him above your waist.”
Wander didn’t respond with her mouth or her face. Instead, she waited expectantly.
The Hood uncrossed his legs, put down his reading, and slipped a roll of thin fabric out of his satchel. He passed it to her underneath the table, and she slipped it into her belt.
“Now you have the ways," he said. "You should have them for a day, and then you should be able to write it all again, even if it is burned up. A next spot is close, ten binyaks in the way of sidedark. A nothing place. Enough for the two of you to refresh, if you’ve met trouble. But better to go on.”
“And then?”
“You continue.” He looked back at his reading. “One turn, yes? Remain low to the ground. Clean the Wild, and forward all divine will. Spread word of He and his Family.” He waved a hand at her in dismissal. “I have nothing else for you. Go away, little star. Go to your cannotfollow, if that is what you like.”
-
While Wander met with her friend, Fragile hurried over to the bearded man she had pointed out to him. After he apologized profusely for knocking over a jar of honey, the Salonier brought out a clay pitcher full of coins. “How many?” he asked in deep, rumbling Goalish.
“There are two of us, eldman,” Fragile replied.
“How long?”
“The night, I think.”
“Five,” he said. Fragile put out five Lofte.
“Each,” the Salonier clarified. He brought out another five. The Salonier scooped them into the pitcher.
“Take those by the wall,” the Salonier said, gesturing to a pair of beds wedged next to the far door. “I’ll put something out at sunset. Don’t leave after dark.”
“What happens then?”
“The Laruns. They’re chasing some heart that’s been coming around at night, disappearing their walkers and watchers. They’re armed and they’ve become angry.”
“What kind of heart?”
The Salonier shrugged. “A bigger one than them.”
Before he could inquire further, Wander had finished her business and was coming over.
“Will you be okay if we sleep on the road?” she asked Fragile.
“O-of course,” he stuttered. “But there’s a-”
“I heard. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Should I get your gifts back?”
“No,” she said, turning. “I just want to- get going...”
The door to the salon rattled shut. The table where The Hood had sat was empty.
“Wander?” Fragile asked.
“Forget what I said,” Wander replied. She slid her sword off her back. “We can stay.”
-
Clouds crept over the decrepit late-autumn sun, and the first snow of winter began to fall on outer Goal.
Fragile and Wander occupied two side-by-side wooden bunks in the salon's fireroom, where its residents drank, recreated, conversated, and slept. They spent the remains of the day in silence and moderate isolation, after the acute and lingering togetherness offered by the road. Wander cleaned her weapons. Fragile watched – first the traders and walkers who inhabited the Couth, but mostly the Freemen, who displayed a more somber character than even those who had brought disaster on his home. He watched their commander, Bigeyes; the Freeman looked out wistfully over the horizon, gripping tight his empty bryst.
After night had fallen and the snow had already made a white blanket of the country, the Salonier struck up a fire in the hearth of his salon. It filled the complex up with warmth, and with smoke that dissipated too slowly through its outlets. He prepared an extravagant supper for the Couth’s residents: eight loaves of bread, a platter of dried meat, a large pot of stew, and twelve pitchers of watered-down, fermented grain – the only ingredient which the Salon kept in true abundance.
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The first words Fragile and Wander shared again did not come until the other eaters had gathered. The wind howled and crashed against the doors. While ice crept up and over the gates of the Couth and the dense shutters of its salon, Wander seated herself in the dining area. Fragile covertly seated himself next to her.
Without greeting him, she said, “An odd time to eat.”
“Huh?”
“The Laruns take later meals in the afternoon,” she explained. “Those in the light of Josmee, who call themselves Rootcliff people, do it at three times. The Sotu of Shamarkat, six times, all between dawn and dusk. Even the Makars eat but once, at the sun’s highest point. Most don’t eat at night.”
“I think the one who cooked keeps our ways,” Fragile replied. “I suppose he insists on it. It’s not respectful to eat while the sun can see.”
Wander took hold of a pitcher and drained it in a single swig, chugging until it was dry. She shook it out over the table with a frown.
Fragile looked at her in awe. He took hold of another pitcher, took a small sip, and exploded into a fit of coughing.
“You’re a little young for this kind of water,” Wander said.
He tilted his head. “How old are you?”
“I have seen nineteen colds.”
"And I eighteen," Fragile replied. He pouted. "Have I been denied some power?"
“It’s different. My body can accommodate dangerous drinks.” To wit, she took a large gulp of the receptacle Fragile had drank from, soured at the taste, and slammed it down in contempt. “A full barrel of this couldn’t tilt me, even if I wanted that.”
A hearty laugh carried to them from across the room. A large group of Freemen had retired from their duties and begun a drinking game.
“Pour it out, friends!” one cried. “A cup for friend Snowfield, cold; a drop for friend Rootson, colder still; a drop for friend Youngbeard, older and still colder!”
They cheered. Many of the Freemen were sobbing as they did it. One of them had already collapsed and was being dragged out by his comrades into the snow. Wander and Fragile watched them leave, and Bigeyes enter, holding a cup full of grain liquor.
The great Freeman, who had to duck to fit wholly under the salon’s narrow roof, stumbled over to the fire. He raised up his hands.
“Friends,” Bigeyes said loudly. “Friends. I’ll be speaking now. If you want, come speak with me.”
The clamor ended. Even the loopiest and most distraught Freemen grew quiet. All gathered around the fire and turned toward Bigeyes.
“We are, at present, afflicted by a dreaded and windbringing influence. Prodda has willed it that our strength be tested this way. It feels hard,” Bigeyes said, his voice breaking, “when one has been deprived of happy kinship, and of all prior company.”
His cup shook as he carried it to and from his lips, sloshing liquid over the side. He pressed his mouth shut as though he had swallowed fire. “We are a kind of man. This is our condition. Our gift is helping, even if it should bring pain and problems on us. But we are born to be strong, too. Isn’t that a terrible thing? One cannot be strong when he is cold and underground.”
The Freemen broke out in befuddled whispers. “I put out those words, friend Bigeyes,” one of the attendants said. “I acknowledge that your count is twice mine. Still, I cannot but feel – there can be a power in our becoming cold.”
“What power?” another cried out. “Although we need it, cold makes a cold thing. It cannot move.”
A small, blue-eyed Freeman spoke up. “We know this is wrong. We know what has moved us.”
The Freeman crowd did not twist and jump about the way Fragile had seen other crowds do it. Although he didn’t speak their language, there was a mournful, contemplative energy to their grain-fuelled gathering, which drowned out the cold and wind lapping at their doors.
Bigeyes spoke again. “Joyslip knows it,” he said. “Every night, when I lay down my head – I try to find them, the ones we have lost, in my eye. I can see nothing there; I seek that it be given to me. There is something missing, which I lack the hands for. I do not know its name.”
He wept. He was consoled by his friends.
A smile emerged on his wet, contorted face. He pointed out towards Wander. “But it has never mattered what we have hands for. We are provided for. Hands are delivered to us. Such hands would surely push off any problem by which we were afflicted. Isn’t it so, Seenblade? Isn’t it so?”
“It is so, brightman,” Wander replied. “And how I regret that they are not mine. What a happy chase awaits you men!”
Bigeyes’ face fell, returning to the despairing pout it had acquired before, but the other Freemen were otherwise unbothered by her apathy. He mumbled angrily to himself as his companions escorted him from the room. Those attendant to the sermon dispersed to where they had been, and the room soon regained its prior gaiety.
“What did he want?” Fragile asked.
“To be safe.”
“They make a miserable sight. How do you imagine they’ve been brought to such a state?”
“A fight,” Wander suggested. She poured herself a cup of liquor. “This whole place smells of some injuring power.”
Fragile looked at her. "It does not injure you."
"And why would it?"
"These are sad, and in some trouble." He itched his chin. "I have thought sadness may be like a heart. Like a heart you'd find among leaves. It eats at hearts, and then gives itself to others. How have you managed to push it off so easily?"
"Sadness is not a heart," Wander said. "And if there are any who need it, it is the type you see here." She spread her arm at to the miserable pack of lang-niv-men. “They have handed it to many.”
“How did you get us past them in the first place?” Fragile asked.
She gestured to the circular hesigns running up and down her arms. “The words,” Wander replied. “They have friends who wear them too. I’ve allowed them to suppose I am one such friend. How much Sprak can you hear?”
“‘Sprak?’ Is that how they speak?”
Wander nodded. Fragile shook his head. “Not much. A few sayings.”
“What did you hear me say to them?”
Fragile strained as he tried to think. “I think I heard… ‘helper’ - ‘house’ - ‘commander.’”
“You’ll hear them again,” she said. “One needs to know Sprak for most places. It marked most places they walked. I thought they had marked Goal, as well.”
“They did.”
They were silent for a while.
“Do you know any other ways to speak?” Fragile asked.
Wander nodded again, scarfing down another loaf of bread and wiping her mouth on her arm. “Makar. That’s a Sidedark way. I can speak to Rootcliffs. I can speak to Shamars. And I can speak your words, but I can’t read them.”
Fragile looked at her in amazement. “How did you come to learn these so quickly?”
“I’ve been a study since my sixth cold. There wasn’t much else I had to do for fun.” She leaned back in her chair. “Fight others. Run or climb. Read. Lie down.”
“Where did you do this?”
“Makarland,” Wander said. “That’s where our Defense Building is.”
“Is it a far place?”
“Parts of it are on the To-Light lake. Other parts are in a lake of sand. It’s about as far as you can get, that way.”
“Travellers told us about Makarland,” Fragile said in hushed tones. “They say that is where they hit the big lodge of the drymen. They say that is where the anguish of the riversland began.”
Wander nodded. “Their ‘prodda.’ But that was many seasons ago. And he was no divine, or he would still be alive.”
“Who do you offer to, Wander?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “Who do you?”
“We were made by the Ruler in the Soil, but the Lodge said that he has been silent since the riversland’s beginning. So we were taught to speak with the Ruler in the River. They said that long ago, Athad-Kathr came and ejected him and put his words on us. All the way-keeping hearts spent many seasons fighting in his name, awaiting his return.” He looked down. “They say there are other secret rulers, like the one who rules sun, and the one who rules fire. But these are not as good or as kind as the Ruler in the River, who is loud, a safekeeper, and learned of all things. They are more interested in themselves, and do not adore hearts as he does. These others may be greater than him still – but, even with all of their strength and glory, he stood for us when no others would.” His jaw dropped in awe as he realized what he’d said.
“Perhaps you are the Ruler in the River!” he cried, giddy with enlightenment. “If only I had recognized it sooner!”
“I have no interest in ruling anything,” she said. “Need I rule the water to aid it, or it me?”
This idea tempered Fragile’s sudden ecstasy. He scratched his head. “I don’t know. I suppose not.”
“It’s a mighty call,” she said. “My wiser told me one like it, once. But I remember so little of it and of her. And I’ve met nobody yet who carries it with me.”
“‘Wiser’?” Fragile asked.
She realized that she had spoken in Shamin.
“You’ve said that word before,” he continued. “Is it how you call a birthwoman?”
“Yes,” she said. “My birthwoman.”
Fragile furrowed his brow. “Why don’t you tell me of your rulers? If I learn their names, I can carry them too.”
Wander shook her head. “Their call – what was once done – it is a secret item. I could only tell it to one or two. If I were to give it out, I must have known them for many seasons.”
Fragile leaned forward. His leg began to bounce with excitement. “Are there any less holy things you know? Ones whose telling will not hurt?”
Wander took a bite of bread and chewed thoughtfully. “There is one,” she started, “of Onn – the first breather. She had a son named Vol. He was taller than the highest darktree, and stronger than its maker. He forged the first stuf – the first drycane. He-”
“How did he do that?” Fragile asked.
“With fire, from a bolt of lightning. I’m getting to that.”
“Was it a very long drycane?”
She looked at him silently.
“Sorry,” he said. He folded his hands, and tried to still himself as best he could.
“Vol was challenged by a beast to do battle. He fought with a tall tree, shaped into a wooden staff; hard as it was, it could not pierce the beast’s hide. So, with his bare hands, Vol dug a pit in the ground-” she said, clenching her fist for emphasis. “Took out a ball of wallrock, and shaped it like the staff. He took it up to the highest mountain, and prayed there for many seasons…”
-
Dinner ended, and most of the salon’s inhabitants began to retire to their quarters and sleep. By the light of a candle, Wander and Fragile talked into the night on their beds while the traders and road people snored, burped, and muttered themselves to sleep. As they swapped stories and bits of history, Fragile sharpened Wander's hunting knife on a stone, and she picked curiously at his three-string, which he offered at her request. The icy gale that had blown through earlier still thundered away beyond their shelter’s walls, but now seemed, somehow, not so bad. Fragile offset the chill that it had bled into the salon with a thick woolen shawl. Wander needed only the thin black shirt that she kept beneath her vest and armor.
“...after they had been so humbled,” Fragile went on, “the Storm Rulers would no longer demand such a great offering from the watercatcher. They would send him only good catches, and in the cold, would come down onto his seat, where he would host them, and allow them meat and drinks.”
“Very kind of him,” she remarked. “After they destroyed his kind for a feat so small.”
“I think that must be the ending,” Fragile said. “It has been displayed, and given me a good feeling. The others tell it so that the wind does not help him. But that seems so cruel. What would the point be, otherwise? A Ruler could not be so wrong. They are great and wonderful hearts.”
“You make a credible alteration,” she said. Fragile scratched his head. Wander plucked at a wire, producing an out-of-tune echo. “This instrument of yours – I do like its sound. Can you use it?”
“Only a little,” Fragile said. “It was my birthman’s.”
“And did he teach you any…?” She raised a finger to her ear and whistled.
“Not much,” Fragile said. “It’s a woman’s instrument; for the two-season, or to give to children, sometimes. He’d play and sing to me at night, when I couldn’t sleep.”
“Was he a woman, also?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. He slid her blade against the stone. The metal let out a pained, rasping note as he pulled it across. “Its sound put a softness in him.”
“I haven’t heard that kind since I was a girl,” Wander admitted.
“You haven’t?”
Wander shook her head. “There was a rule against it at the Defense Building. I can no longer remember what it sounds like.”
“That’s awful.”
There arose a loaded silence.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” she said. “You should go to sleep. We’ll be moving by sunrise.”
Wander drew up her pipe from her belt and laid the three-string at the foot of his bed. The wind howled when she opened the door to the salon, and stopped abruptly as a gust slammed it shut.
Fragile put aside her blade and ran his fingers over the three string’s delicate architecture. He did his best to strum a chord the way Peak did when he began his song.
The sound was weak and shaky, but still familiar. He repeated the motion with greater strength, and it rang out. One of the road-people growled in her sleep at the noise.
"'A rule,'" he whispered.
He strummed it again. And again.
-
Wander went outside and fed some residue to her pipe, which lit up at once despite the torrent which was filling up the landscape. As she puffed, her eyes shrank away from the shadow of the storm, and gave way to sweatsight.
Most of the travellers who hadn’t taken refuge in the salon had walled themselves off in their covered carts or stables; the only light being thrown on the greater Couth shined out from a few of them. Most of the remaining Freemen, save some wounded sentries, had massed in a dark, lumpen host near the its center. The lot was dressed in heavy brysts, built for the cold of Northern Larunkat. All had armed themselves with bowed shooters, rockthrowers, and baskets of hurled shafts. None carried nivs, stickers, or armor of any kind.
The Freemen’s heads and hands were raised up to the sky. They were offering a dedication to their slain and ancient lord, one too soft for Wander to appreciate over the wind. What she could make out sought loyalty, love, and salvation. Their voices were light and airy, and sang in tune with the blizzard's howl. Before long, it was ended.
As though responding to some unspoken command, the Freemen picked up their equipment and began to walk out into the dark. Bigeyes reviewed them as they departed on their chase. In taking one final look at the salon, he spied Wander through the storm. He smiled and raised his hand to her in greeting. Then he threw up his hood, hefted his shooter, and walked through the gate. Its guards pushed shut the doors behind him.
-
A scream woke Fragile.
He shot up from the bed and spun his head about his roundseat. Architecture bent and unmoulded as rays of light trickled in through the gaps and shutters of a place that did not yet exist.
“Bata?” he cried. “Bata? What is it- what-”
The door to the salon slammed. Wander had already alighted and snatched up a sword and her hat on the way outside. He brushed the sleep from his eyes and threw on his coldover before following her into the snow.
The Freemen at the Couth’s South gate moaned as they dragged it open. The snow had halted for a while, but clouds remained.
One by one, the survivors of the midnight expedition fell back in to the Couth. At the rear of their diminished host, an especially large Freeman was being dragged on a makeshift wooden litter, and wrapped in an empty bryst.
One of the Freemen hobbled over to Wander. “He’s asking for you, Seenblade,” the Freeman said. “Our friend is asking for you.”
The litter-bearers set their passenger down in the Couth’s center, which Wander approached. As she drew near the victim, the extent of destruction that he had taken onto his body became more clear.
With his remaining arm, Bigeyes beckoned her.
She came by his side and knelt. He reached out and snatched the back of her head, jolting her hat off her head and into the snow. Wander acquiesced to this, and even leaned in closer when he tried to drag her down.
“Seenblade,” Bigeyes gasped. “Please help us. Help my friends. Help the ones like me.”
Wander said nothing. He continued, as though he hadn’t received her silence. “I have won,” he said. He smiled. “I have beaten the thing. It will not have its way with me. I could give myself to what it needed.” His grin fell off his eyes, and his face twisted and wrinkled in pain. “But I am in the wrong, now. I have done wrong to these friends of mine. Will you release me from it? Will you let it pass?”
“Your Prodda sees you,” she said. “Be at peace now, Freething.”
He let out a ragged sigh. Blood surged from his wound as he breathed. He pulled her close and hissed into her ear.
“Do not let them keep on this thing,” he whispered. “I… I do not work. I should have told them. I should have fixed it. But they should not go. Do not let them do it. Do not let the good ones go. Please, Seenblade! Do not let the good ones go. It is the good that hurts them.”
His words devolved into spittled mumbling, and then to nothing at all. His eyes turned round and glassy. When Wander moved away, he looked toward the stars.
-
The Freemen took up Bigeyes’ body and carried it beyond the stakewall, toward the sword-covered monument.
“What heart could’ve made that terrible wound?” Fragile asked Wander.
“It’s not our problem.” She picked her hat out of the snow, brushed it off, and placed it on her head. “You should gather your things.”
An agonized shriek turned them toward the survivors who had carried Bigeyes back in. A small group of wounded was being arranged for care by the North gate.
Fragile turned to Wander. “I wish to attend to them,” Fragile said. “Can we wait any longer before we depart?”
“Attend to them? In what way?”
“I…”
Fragile found that he could not answer.
“They have helpers,” Wander said. “They are not in danger anyway. That one was struck the very worst. And they are hard to strike.”
Another screech of pain echoed out from the wounded. Fragile made a face, wrung his hands and turned back toward the salon.
Wander closed her eyes. She opened them, dug around in her belt and flipped a coin at him, which landed in his hair. He picked it out and raised his eyebrows at her.
“Get them food,” she said. “I’ll take a look.”
He nodded hurriedly, and rushed off to the salon.
She walked over to the Freemen. Only two were still present by the gate, and one of them sleeping, with the rest hauled by porters back to their house in the Couth. The Laruns’ majam, a gray-haired man wreathed in a brown-and-yellow cloak, stood by them with a jar of bloodsuckers; a round tube containing paper and holy words was kept hitched to his back even while he performed his duties. He was applying the parasites to his unconscious patient’s open wounds, and as she and her hesigns approached, he ducked his head and tried to appear engrossed in his work.
She addressed the conscious soldier. “What is your name?”
“I am Joyslip, Seenblade,” the Freeman said. He groaned and clutched his leg, which had been torn to an unusual angle. “If you have judgement to carry against me, please do it. I will not be awake much longer.”
“I am not so Seen,” Wander replied. She got down on her knees.
The majam noticed her beginning her ministry and unbit his tongue. “Seenblade,” he called out. “Seenblade, that may not be-”
She popped her patient’s knee into place. He unleashed a bloodcurdling yowl.
“I know what’s needed,” she said. “Tend to your own, brother.”
The majam reluctantly dipped his head back down. Joyslip looked up at her, aghast. “I feel like I should not breath,” he said.
“You should not, but you will.” She spread some snow over his knee. “Stay off the leg for three days.”
“Will you chase it now, Seenblade?” Joyslip asked. “Will you chase it with Bigeyes and the rest?”
“The thing named Bigeyes no longer breathes.”
Joyslip looked up. He shook his head. “It cannot be right.”
Wander got up to leave. His hand snatched out and locked onto her wrist.
“We did not see much,” he said. “This enemy, it does not need battles. It sends out a draft from itself, and our friends will remove their cover and submit themselves to it.” He put a hand on his face and bit his lip. “Twice have I been taken from it. If were not for our friend, I would be twice cold. It overcomes by fear, and we become certain that…” He clammed up. “That… something important to us… he lies inside it.”
“It’s called a hump,” Wander said.
“You know its name?”
“I might,” she said. “Your words are like those I’ve seen on paper. It’s a rare beast. It prefers your type.”
“It is wind,” the Freeman espoused. “Or an agent of the wind. I cannot think of any other thing that would press against us like this.”
“Like wind.”
“That’s right, Seenblade,” Joyslip affirmed. “Do you know what it is?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Wind...” Joyslip searched for words. “Wind is… it is the end, and the air. It is the end inside the air. Wind is a mouth, blows away cloud, blows away fire. It blows away rocks that fall into water. Wind is what the hand cannot lift. It is the end inside the air,” he repeated. “This hump is a giver of it. I wonder if you can fight it, Seenblade. Perhaps it is not a thing for knives.”
“Then I won’t,” Wander said. He released her, and she stood up.
“Your friend told me,” she continued, “Do not seek out the wind again. He is right. You will not breath.”
“I do not think I have any choice, Seenblade, “Joyslip said. His eyes became wet, and he gritted his teeth, and he propped himself up on his elbow. His voice tremored. “You and me were made in this way. We are born of cold, and brought into cold. We rise against the wind. With Prodda’s help, we can come back to ourselves again.” He laid back down and smiled. “Yes. With time, everything we need will do it. That is how our warmth was born.”
Wander clenched her jaw.
Fragile made his way over to the injured Freeman, bearing a platter of bread and a bowl of stew. As she made her way past, Wander turned over the stew from his tray with a flick of her finger. Its piping hot contents splattered into the snow, turning it shades of red and green.
-
After he had deposited the food with the recovering nivmen, Fragile rushed to catch up with her.
“Wander?” Fragile asked. “Wander.” He held out her coin. She narrowed her eyes at it.
“Where did you get the bread?” she asked.
“The man who cooked for us wasn’t in,” he explained. “I found it in the room where we slept.”
“Give it to him later,” she said. “Or they’ll think a bite of you.”
“Are you… did something happen?”
“Nothing happened,” she replied. “Where is he? The Salonier? The cooker?”
“He’s outside. I think they’re opening up a hole.”
They went over to the Northern gate, where worked the Salonier just beyond the stakewall. He was helping to dig a grave for Bigeyes in the large of plot of cleared land, plunging a spade into the dirt with two Freemen. He noticed her approaching and nodded to her.
“How’s your heart?” the Salonier greeted. His Goalish was heavy and slurred.
“Eldman,” Wander said, "how long has their kontor been breathless?"
The Freemen shovelling perked up at the mention of their commander. The Salonier leaned on his shovel.
“Forsnow, Wingcall,” he said in Sprak. “Bring water.”
They put down their tools and retreated to the salon.
“Twenty days,” the Salonier replied. “First chase. The first. He went out in front.” He gestured to the patch of ground filled with swords. “And they built that.”
“Why all this sneaking and false telling?” Wander asked. “What was its design?”
“It is not false to them,” the Salonier said. “It could not be false to them. A different way of knowing, maybe. It is the way they have gone on.”
They looked over Bigeyes’ body, which had already started to freeze. The Salonier’s skin was ashy, and his beard was frayed. “There is pain,” he said, “and mourning in this country. It is terrific. Its roots are well-watered. But I do not wish disaster on these drymen. They have always been forward in our talks. They do not raise arms for any excited mood. When I was young, the road was emptied by their hands. This one-” He gestured to Bigeyes. “-would’ve made a fine son. The kontor, a fine birthman.”
“They must have needed the man more,” Fragile said, “For the loss to have cut so deeply.”
“They do delight in their Laruns,” the Salonier explained. “When they are relieved of them, I have seen them become desperate and empty-headed. Some of them try and start telling each other what to do, but they do not prefer this. So I have come to know ones of this type, who are loud, and make many friends.”
“I am glad you think well of them,” Wander said, “this kind that eats up others.”
The Salonier looked at her. “I’ve watered here for eighteen colds. I’ve seen one or two Blades, across my seasons. Only one, or two.”
Wander said nothing.
“I cannot appeal to you as a Larun,” he said, “So I will do it as a man. If this thing is not stopped, it will keep attacking until they are all gone. I do not know how it will behave then. I do not want to find out.”
Wander was silent for a long time. “Quiet Feet,” Wander said, “I wish you would return to the Freemen. Ask them if they remember anything more about the beast.”
Fragile’s eyes nervously flicked between the two of them. Then he bowed his head. “I will do it,” he said.
He hiked back up to the Couth.
“There’s something wrong with your helper,” the Salonier said. “Whatever you really are, I would find it out. He trembles when men have done nothing to him. He is like a woman.”
“I will do your work,” Wander said. “But not for them. And not without gifts.”
“There are coins.”
“Coins I have. You will tell others what I did here. You will tell them of the words I wear. And you will tell me of the man who rules this place.”
-
With payment duly remitted for Wander’s services, there was a shortage of things left to do in the Couth before she departed on her hunt.
Fragile did help to tend the other wounded Freemen, and for it received some rudimentary supplies from the majam. After he had bound and dressed their wounds, he retreated to the Couth’s stables, and advanced a secret project therein.
The few Freemen who remained on their feet spoke softly to their friends, fortified their compound, and set about to their ordinary service of the Couth and its residents. Although affected by the absence of their companions and commander, news of Wander’s intention travelled quickly. They fed and pampered the stronghoof, offered her swords and provisions, and aided Fragile in his efforts.
Wander waited for nightfall on a walkway that ringed the stakewall, smoking her pipe. Fragile joined her as the sun dipped below the horizon.
“How will you find this beast?” he asked her.
Wander puffed out a cloud of smoke that the wind spun and blustered apart. “It’s big and loud enough,” she said. “And it leaves a trail. It shouldn’t be anything.”
“Have you ever done it before?”
“No. But I will do it here.”
They were silent. Wander took her pipe from her mouth. “I lack something,” she said. “I wish to have it from you.”
“...I will give you what I have, Wander.”
“I’ve seen ones pained like us,” she said. “Because there is something of them that is no more. Many have shouted or hit for it, and sought out leaving. There is a shaking in us at the thing that did it.”
“Response,” Fragile interjected.
“What?”
“It is like response, what you say.”
“I thought ‘response’ was… fighting. To strike another.”
“It is,” Fragile said. “But I think the shaking is also a fight.”
“Its name isn’t important,” she said. “I do not see it in you.”
There was a pointed silence. “I have no one to respond to,” Fragile said. “Who remains who has pained me?”
“The Freemen,” she said. “The Laruns. Also those who struck you and threw you and left you in the ice.”
Fragile shivered when he realized she was talking about the Sixbraids. “You knew that… I…”
He hugged his arms to his chest. “These did not bring pain to me. Or they are already gone.”
“There are many in the place behind you.”
“They did not bring it to me,” he said. “They have different eyes.”
“Please explain.”
Fragile tugged at his hair. “The eyes I have seen – I have seen few, but they are all beyond me. They have seen different things, and they see different things. The Lodge said that we shared a seat, so that our eyes were alike. But I could not swallow that. Those saw me different, and these see me different. My creators too… and they all must see me. They cannot look away. Each sees only what he can. And I will be there. I do not think I should hurt them for it, or anything else.”
He coughed. “I have always spoken wrong. Can you hear this?”
“So you do not put your anger on a gathering.”
“How could I do it?” Fragile asked.
“A man does not ask to hurt, or to produce these things.” She knocked her foot against the wood of the Couth. “A man enters a gathering. He is carried, and he carries. It carried them here. It carried me here. So others look for the marks on them, to see what they carry, and turn them out from themselves. Anger is passed against them then.”
Fragile mulled over her words. “I do not think I am great enough to hear it,” he said.
Wander shook her head. “I can hear you,” she replied. “But yours is wrong. I am not how another sees me. I know what I am.”
“I do not think they can see you,” Fragile said. “Their eyes must have been shut, even if they were still open. I am not a thing for eyes. But you really are different. You can speak all manner of words. I do not think there is an eye you cannot push open. When you do it, you will be adored. I am sure of it, because it would be the Rulers’ way.”
Wander looked at him. His eyes were very wide.
“Maybe it is so.” She looked down at her pipe. “But there are many eyes in Ourland. They are more closed, and sharper than you know.”
-
Fragile approached Wander in the Couth’s stables, as she strapped on her armor.
“Why does this shine?” she asked.
“I cleaned it,” Fragile said. “A little. I tried. I tried my best not to hurt it. Did I hurt it? I should’ve asked.”
“You didn’t hurt it,” she said. “You should’ve asked. Why did you try?”
“I made it dirty.”
She rubbed a hand across her chestpiece. “And the shine?”
“The Freemen. They gave me some firewater.”
Wander finished tightening her breastplate. She fumbled through the stronghoof’s saddlebags.
“How long do you think we’ll be gone?” Fragile asked.
“I’m going alone,” Wander said. She slipped a metal mould into a pouch on her side.
“Okay. I’ll try to help these men.”
“Do what you can,” she replied. Wander took off her hat and stuck it on the stronghoof. She lifted up the back of her hair and brushed a hand across her scalp, driving flecks of white into the air. A moment later, she tugged the wig free from its roots and stuffed it into a belted vault on the stronghoof's side. She scratched his chin once, and turned to Fragile. “If I’m unable to pierce the beast, and it starts to head back here, a voice will say so.”
“A… voice?”
“Yes. It will feel like it is inside you.” She tapped her temple. “You must trust it. It’s a part of me.”
He bowed his head. She removed the coinpurse from her belt and handed it to him.
“If I do not return," Wander continued, “it is because I have been put away by this beast.” She directed him toward the Couth’s Western gate. “The road to Herdetopp is that way. With this, you can purchase passage from any kind of wheeled group or company heading into Herdetopp. Once arrived, it will enable you toward a long stay – there, or wherever else you should like.”
“It will all be done, just as you say.” Fragile’s hand curled tightly around the cold sack of metal. Wander began to march away, but stopped.
“I will come back, Quiet Feet,” she said. “I will come back. Even if I must do something terrible.”
“Yes, Wander,” he replied. “I will wait here. I will not go away.”
She walked on, and out past the Southern gate. The Freemen standing guard there pressed them shut, closing out the last light of evening.
Fragile spent some time on the stakewall, watching out past the edges of the Couth, and the stars falling down below distant mountains. When the sun had fully set, he returned to the Salonier. “What did she say, that Wall?” he asked.
“If the one I help does not return by sun’s rise, eldman,” Fragile said, “I am to follow her into the rounds.”
He held out the pouch to the Salonier. “She asked you to hide this for us while she’s away, eldman, and to make use of it if we cannot return,” he said.
“What is it?”
Fragile pulled opened the top, displaying its gleaming contents. “They’re gifts, eldman. You’d be able to care for these men, and move them away from this place.”
The Salonier’s stoic countenance melted into wonder when faced with such world-changing wealth. “Your creator is wise,” he said. “Wise and virtuous, for a dryman.”
“She is my friend,” Fragile replied. “And she is a giver.”
-
After the gates shut behind her, Wander walked up to the nearest copse that stood on the edges of the Couth. She invoked the Bell.
What can you see? she asked.
Wander felt the Bell’s hands fly outward, touching everything as far as she could stretch. Boiling! she cried. And scorn, all around us!
What can you see?
The Bell would not answer. She ventured into the hinterland.
Their expedition into the rounds soon demonstrated promise. She came across a large, egg-shaped path through the trees and made to follow them. She bounded across the pines and leapt from branch to branch.
You must alert me when you touch the thing, Wander said. I don’t want to address it from the front.
Do not address it, the Bell implored. Get out from this place. Get out now. Resign from this useless work!
Wander ignored her, hoping that her noise and angst would dim after she had tired of it. But she did not. As they traversed the rounds, surveying the birds and nighttime animals from the height of the canopy, the Bell continued to pester her.
Wrong path, the Bell protested. Wrong path. What has pushed you in this way? You should not have left the weak thing. You should not have put him to those strange and hungry beasts.
I am doing your haver's labor, Wander responded. You should be happy for it.
This labor is not my haver's. Why help beasts fight beasts? Let them freeze. Let them eat each other apart. Let them be removed from all view.
Before Wander could retort, a great shape crashed through the underbrush, tearing up trees and pushing up the snow beneath them. She perched on the limb of a thicktree and looked down.
The outerpeople would not think well of this action, the Bell chattered. And what would your producers say?
Quiet, Wander chided the Bell.
I will not-
Be quiet and look! Look out! Wander tried pointing out the hulking mass to the air, before she felt foolish and stopped. The Bell did see, anyway, and ceased her scolding.
The hump’s great hide gave itself to darkness. It was hairy and oval, with a great pointed mound rising from the crown of its skull. Wander wasted no time; she unsheathed her short blade and flung it through the beast.
The missile flew straight and true. Its shaft pierced one side of the hump, exited out another, and became lodged in the ground. She leapt high into the air and plummeted down, crashing her body and sword into the hump’s eponymous growth.
The beast did not cry out in pain or anger. It opened its mouth to disgorge wind, which blew out, up, and past Wander’s head, sending her and her blaith flying off. Her feet stove great trenches in the snow where she landed and the soil underneath, adjacent to her short blade.
Wander extracted herself from the ground. She and the hump stared at each other. The bright white of the creature’s wounds shone softly in the darkness.
It is speaking to me, the Bell said.
Wander gritted her teeth. There is someone in there.
There is nothing inside that thing.
She unfastened her breastplate from her chest. If you go in there, joyous one, you will freeze, the Bell said, and I will be left alone.
I know the truth, Wander said. But she wished she did not. The knowing was tearing her up inside.
She felt an overwhelming urge to open up her body and let herself on the world. She dropped her armor to the ground, stepped forward, and addressed the beast directly.
“I can hear you in there,” Wander said. “It is not lost on me. I know you need what I have. Like I need you.”
The blaith felt as though it had frozen to her glove. “But you left us all alone,” she continued. “I want to give you everything I have. And I can’t. I can’t go yet... I won’t go yet.”
She brandished her sword. “Goodbye, wisi.”
She swept against it.
-
Fragile sat on the stakewall and waited. The night’s passing was glacial.
The Freemen who remained looked toward him from the Couth’s belly. They brought him blankets to keep from the wind and the cold, and babbled softly at him in their language. When they realized he couldn’t understand them, they went away, although their eyes did not.
The sun’s first ray broke out across the sky. When it struck his brow, he picked up his bag and tumbled down from the heights of the Couth, crashing into the snow. The Freemen crowded the walls, watching him trudge through it toward the forest.
“What happened?” one asked.
“Look! Somebody left.”
“They left?”
“Who?”
“Who left the wall?”
“It was a visitor.”
“A friend.”
“The helper.”
One of the nivmen, a shooter, raised up his weapon and notched a missile to it.
“What are you doing?” his companions asked.
“He may lead it back here,” the shooter said, “Toward the people and the smaller ones.” He struggled to keep his eye on his little target. “It is not what our friend would want.”
The other shooters present followed suit, and levelled their weapons at Fragile’s retreating figure. Just as they were about to loose their volley, one of his comrades gripped the arm of the initiating Freeman with a hand. He leaned on a heavy cane.
“This one is walking with a kontor,” Joyslip said. “So let it be, please. Do not dissolve this fellowship.”
The shooter grit his teeth and flexed his knuckles. He lowered his weapon, and his friends did it also.
“Look!” one of the onlookers cried. “Look to the rounds!”
From Fragile’s view, a large, stomping form lurched its way from the darkness of the copse, where the dawn had yet to penetrate.
“Wander?” Fragile whispered.
The sunrise rebounded off the figure’s polished breastplate, and fell on her face. Wander pushed her way past the roots and branches, covered in cuts, bruises, and dirt.
“Wander!” He rushed up to her. “Are you well?” he asked.
“I've lost no water,” she said. She raised her eyebrow at him. “Where’s the stronghoof? What are you doing out here?”
“I - it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I fed him a step or two ago. He should be awake."
“Good,” she said. “That’s good.”
The sun reached over the trees and into the world. Its sight smiled on their brows and those of the Freemen, and joined with the snow, and delivered gold into every other color that made a home of the riversland.
Wander stuffed a wad of chew in her mouth. “Come along, Quiet Feet,” she said. “My work is done. We have lingered here a bit too long.”
She headed back toward the Couth. Fragile jumped after her and followed close behind.
----------------------------------------
"We've arrived, then?" Fragile asked. "This is the Wild."
"We have passed over its most distant limit,” Wander replied. “There is a long, long way to go.”
The storms they weathered from the warmth and safety of the Couth had turned out the country and its road for a new type of being. The trees around them hissed and whined incessantly, their branches burdened by thick locks of white that the wind could and did send cascading into their hair at its pleasure. Fragile, who stood knee-deep in the accumulate, scrambled to keep up with Wander and the stronghoof; neither of these was paying great mind to the icy terrain. Every few meters Wander would strike through the snow with enough force to create a window beneath and reaffirm their course. Then they would continue on, passing deeper into the chilly and wild beast which they now inhabited.
Wander’s eyelids drooped. She had adopted a pronounced swagger, in which her arms and head hung loosely, and were not kept high like usual.
“It must have been difficult,” Fragile said. “This thing you did for them.”
She blinked. “It was not easy. We will stop before nightfall. ”
“Yes, Wander.” He paused. “I’ve been wondering… about something.”
“Yes?”
“Back at the Larun-place, when you first spoke to the heartl- to the Freeman. You appeared to become filled with happiness, and easiness. And you…”
Wander waited for the question.
“I haven’t- I mean, I’ve never seen you- You don’t-”
“What?”
“...nevermind.”
They continued to walk.
“I was taught to speak, and to speak falsely, in many ways. Only a few of them include words. Does that answer your question?”
Fragile marvelled at the idea. “You can speak with a face?”
“You can speak with a face. And with a hand, and with a body. And with an eye. With all the items in your power.”
Fragile paused, before asking, “Can you teach me this way?”
“It’s a many-figured craft.”
“I know. You were… you could be glad, as you wished.”
“I wouldn’t say that. But I could be like other breathers.”
“Right.”
Wander paused and stopped walking.
“What’s wrong?” Fragile asked.
Wander hung her blaith on the stronghoof. “This is a decent place.”
“We’re stopping now?”
“Are you not feeling up to it?”
“Up to-” Fragile blanched. “Don’t you have to-”
“I’m hungry,” she said. “And tired. I will call it respite.”
They established their camp on the side of the road, beneath a dense pine canopy. They built a campfire and boiled water from a burbling stream, where a bed of stones glowed pale shades of blue, white and yellow when they were received by the dark. At that time Wander waded into it with a fibrous bag, her clothes and body bringing up a cloud of steam from the freezing water. She exploded open its surface by shots of the hand, and soon emerged with a great bounty of swimmers that she gorged herself on.
Then they cleared an area of snow and sat down together alongside the stream, which ran smoothly enough to reflect their countenance.
“First, feel the edges of your mouth,” Wander said. “Try and bend them out.”
He complied. She gestured to the water.
Fragile had not seen his face in several years. Looking at it now was like seeing an old, weathered, ragged animal. The smile it bore was a weak approximation of mirth.
“You look like you’re in pain,” Wander said.
He tried smiling harder. She put a hand to her chin.
“Know that it’s not all about effort,” she said. "When you pull yourself apart like that, they might see some anger, or find the face that you've hidden. You must give this thing over to a kind of gentleness."
He pared back his smile’s intensity, and the curves in his face eased.
“Better,” she said. Then she looked into the water, smiled, and looked back at him. Her expression appeared very warm and genuine, and a bit suggestive; he blushed and cast away his eyes. “How can you do it so naturally?” he mumbled.
“It was not a simple feat. I practiced like this,” she said through her teeth, “About two steps a day. With my lines, during study and fighting and half a step before the night’s passing.”
Her mouth slipped back into a hard line. “So it is an uncomplicated discipline, but it does not come without time.”
“How much time?”
She shrugged. “I never stopped working on it. That’s just how it is.”
Fragile furrowed his brow, and then he smiled. He turned to her for evaluation.
“Aat,” she said. Fragile looked at her in confusion.
“‘Aat,’ I said.” Wander pinched her nose. “I mean- lower. Under. Down.”
“Less?”
“Less,” she affirmed. “Less. ‘Aat’ is less. Aat.”
“‘Aat,’” Fragile repeated. He eased the curves.
“Mm. Good,” she said. “That’s how happy is. Repetition is important.”
He dropped the expression, and then did it again.
“Oot, on this one. More - Oot.”
He did it again.
“Aat, Aat.”
“Aat.”
“Oot, I think - yes, certainly. Like this.” She threw out a lazy, gummy smile. “Oot.” Fragile giggled.
“A little less.”
He smiled at her. “Tue,” Wander said. “Good. Tue.”
“Tue,” Fragile exclaimed.
“Good.” And it was good.
Perhaps it was respite.