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.

-

A howl and his man emerged from the rounds. In the night, the howl had become placeless and colorless to the shell-dwellers. Its shape was born of ancient visions. In the dark they could see nothing else. So they peeked out from their roundseats and performed offerings. They lit fires, burned meat, covered their eyes and watched out. They looked at the man and the howl, and wondered always what they were, these things that went out of hills.

The howl and his man paraded through the shell, in search of what? No one knew. They went to the Place for Hearing, and an elderly woman who sat in its dirt. The monolith at its center had been cracked in two, its dominate proclamations shattered into rubble by a heavy force. She scrawled shapes in the soil at its base with her cane, uttered her mother’s words to herself, and spat up smoke from a long pipe. She placed a hand on her chin.

The howl and his man approached the woman, who took up no business at their presence, or their disquieting of the shell-dwellers. The man knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder. He whispered into her ear.

She took the man’s hand and spoke a word. She set aside her pipe and her stick and he helped her to her feet. They walked across the shell and set out from it arm-in-arm. The howl brushed against her, and roamed by their side.

An arrow swung out at them.

The first was loosed suddenly, and out of step with any others. It stuck into the ground at their feet. A great aimed volley followed, cast at them from five shaded points, from between the seats and below the snow and atop a few trees nearby. The man wrapped his arms around his companion and pushed down on her before he was struck by the bulk of them. The howl rushed out at their attackers before it was struck down by the rest. A bowstring snapped at last and the air was soothed.

Shadows began to emerge, and fires. The shell-dwellers found the woman caressing her supine companion’s face as he choked on his own breath.

“Bata,” she whispered tearfully. “Bata…” She spoke no more.

Their lights fell on the howl and its broken coat. It had become wet with freezing blood. The Walls’ sharp stones had bound to it and that which poured out was the color of its hair.

When they first passed their fire over the howl and turned up its hue, the Walls cried out in fright and jumped back. Then they went closer and more tentatively to it, touching their hands to the howl’s fur and putting its blood on themselves. They began to wail and moan.

An anguished vibration spun through them. The first cry was wordless, and an ear over the horizon could not distinguish it from the wearied exhales of the wind, or a hot stone in water. Words arrived that were simple and coughing. They were fragile and fell apart when they collided with the shaking that this foul enormity had wrought, and they pleaded for the safety of children.

People came out from between the seats, getting fire, and going over to their dead voicewoman, and they moaned too. The shell’s young were shooed and went by the monolith, to see what she had written in the dirt.

First a hand

A hand felt out

Out must speak

A hand will hear

A hand will hear

----------------------------------------

Once upon a time...

Near the shell of Our.

Wander's eyes snapped open.

Snow had fallen in the night, dusting over the pocket they had chosen for shelter after their departing from the shell named Rootyard. It was still very dark. The wingtrees that towered over them smelled like ash and her mind made them tall enough to scrape the sky. The wind pulled hair in her face and rushed battering against her head and body. In the shade, Goal’s things did not sleep or watch; they only were, and they had no end.

She stood up, threw her blaith over her shoulder, and turned to Fragile’s sleeping spot on the other side of their withered campfire. The little Goal was resting his three-string beside the sack of feed he used for a pillow. He sat down and let out a weary sigh. It pitched up on the way out.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Fragile jumped up when he realised Wander was awake. “I-I’ve- been getting ready,” he stammered. He yanked up the three-string and hitched its strap over his neck. “I couldn't shut my eyes.”

"You'll learn how. Time will bring it to you."

-

Fragile could feel, although he could not see, snowflakes brushing against his face and lips and eyelashes. He stumbled over a rock. Wander’s head pivoted toward the noise, and she realised his eyelids were drooping.

“You can ride him, if you like.”

Fragile looked up in confusion. Wander gestured to The Stronghoof.

“I’m fine,” he replied. “This reminds me of the Houses.”

“How?”

“In the Houses, I’d walk. Usually in the morning and evening, but if there was a party, I’d do it in the day.”

“Where were you going?”

“Some place. Not nowhere, but… not somewhere.”

She gave him a blank stare.

He thumbed at his tuskleather bag. “It wasn’t just to do it, you know? It wasn’t fun, or anything like that. It hurt. It pierced my legs. There are those who thought I would go away, and become a knower for it.”

“A knower?”

“There are those who go to the rounds,” Fragile said. “They seek to join with rulers, and with the hearts of the riversland.” He rubbed his nose against his sleeve. “They are called knowers. They give up their voices and are like a walking one.”

“And you didn’t?”

“No. Not always.”

They walked in silence for some time.

Wander spoke up. “The Defense Building had something called a Wooden Room. I’d go in there sometimes, at night, when no one was around. I’d climb for three steps-of-the-sun.”

“Climb?”

“Right. They had a wall you could climb up, and over and around, to get better at it. So I’d do that.”

“For a couple steps-of-the-sun?”

She nodded.

“It sounds exhausting.”

“Wherever we are is an exhausting place,” she replied. “That is its purpose. We are born by pain; stay by pain; go by pain.” She rattled the words off as though they were a project of memory.

“There must be happiness,” Fragile asked. “Somewhere outside us.”

“I am not certain.”

At that point, they were forced to halt. Fragile felt the ground beneath him become flat and slippery, and he had no sure footing. The darkness availed itself only to Wander’s sweatsight, which revealed to her the passing of the trees and the great gap that sat before them. Beside them, a long wooden pod had been encased by the ground. In its belly sat a brown length of wood, shaped for pushing water.

Wander knelt and put her hand to the surface. “What is this place?” Fragile asked.

“A lake,” Wander replied. “The cold has brought ice into it.”

“Can we walk across?”

“No,” Wander said. “It’s not thick enough.” She gave pointed tug on The Stronghoof’s lead.

They retreated from the ice. Wander handed the lead off to Fragile, walked up to the shoreline, and hefted a large stone. She wound up and threw her missile at the ice surrounding the one of the boats. The force of impact cracked it apart and sent heavy chunks drifting through the water underneath. The boat rocked gently on the water.

-

“It is a frightening thing, this lake,” Fragile said. He pushed down the paddle, propelling them through the water and the lingering cuts of ice. The Stronghoof brayed, its legs folded up in the center of the boat. Wander reclined on its opposite end, smoking, and propping her head up with her arm. Her eyes wiggled, shivered and glowed, uncertain whether to give themselves to sweatsight. For the first time, Fragile realised that they really did change at night. “I feel like it may swallow us.”

“Fear is a companion to all breathers,” Wander said. “If not of hunger, then of hurt or want, or the feeling that another is in those things.”

“And those like this,” he said. “The quiet and the dark.”

Waves lapped against the boat. Something scurried through the water, out of their path. It left bubbles that popped wetly as they met the air, and dove beneath an ice floe.

“These things, too,” Wander affirmed.

“Do you fear them, Wander?”

Wander contemplated the inky night that had enveloped them. “I did.”

She turned her head and stared at him with an expectant gaze. Uncertain of it, he tried to focus on rowing before he realised what she wanted.

“Ih… well, yes. They frighten me.”

“Why?”

“It is right. There is this word, ‘outness.’ It is how we call it, a warning from the Night Ruler. That we are entering his place, where he and the things he spoke to walked.”

“This displeases him?”

“No.” He shook his head lightly. “It was a way of speaking. Sometimes it asks from us, and takes much.”

“The Makars think the dark a place of things to be fought,” Wander said. “A home of bad-danced beasts. An incorrect territory. I met a Shamar who said something similar.”

“What do you think of it?”

Wander held her pipe between two teeth. Smoke flowed out from a gap in her lips. “My birthman spoke of ‘badwork.’ Things in the dark that we did not know, and should not be seen or spoken to. It was feared by us and I was warned of it. But I was younger then. I have worked at night. I have found much there, but it is like all other things I know. ”

Their boat collided with an ice sheet. Wander took out a stone from her fibrous bag and hurled it into the obstruction, which shattered into a million tiny glaciers and opened up their path.

Wander’s throw rocked the boat with such force that Fragile’s balance was thrown. He teetered on the platform’s edge and lost his footing. Before he hit the water, a hand reached out, grabbed him by his coldover, wrenched him back from the edge, and returned to its seat just as quickly.

“Do not fall,” Wander said. She stuck her pipe back in her mouth. “It is cold. You would freeze.”

He pulled in shallow breaths and gulped air and fixed a hand to his chest. The Stronghoof grunted and blew air from its nose. Then he rowed.

“I… I have always wondered how far they are. From us,” Fragile said.

“Who?”

“The rulers. They sit in a house outside the riversland. There are those who have seen it when they are about to go; the virtuous fallen find residence there. One day, the riversland will be swallowed up by fire, and then there will be nothing forever. It is the last place anyone will be.”

“And did you see it?” Wander asked. “Just now?”

Fragile rowed. He bit his lip.

Wander turned her head forward.

-

On reaching the far shore, Wander leapt into the water. Steam rose from its surface as she locked a hand around their vessel’s edge and dragged it out of the lake. Fragile hopped out, and they continued on their path. Their new hinterland was full of many small young trees, whose buds had retreated due to the cold.

“Do you know anything of this place?” Fragile asked Wander.

“I should be asking you that.”

“It is the Dip,” he replied. “I know the land draws down in places, and that there is a kind of hard rock in its dirt. I know that there are way-keepers, here, but I know little of them. They kept the ways and fought with us. They are like all the others.

“I have an image of their country. It indicates shells of good size. Any one would make a good spot for us to part ways.”

Fragile looked aside wistfully. “Yes,” he said. “A good spot.”

Wander’s eye swivelled in his direction for a half-second before it turned back to the road.

Five fighters! the Bell shouted.

“Stop,” Wander said. She jerked on The Stronghoof’s lead and held her hand in front of Fragile.

“Sorry.”

They stopped dead in a snow-covered thicket. Neither spoke. Pearly motes sank down to the forest floor. The Stronghoof shifted its legs and shook its head.

She decided to question the Bell. Just then, forty yards away, boot-wearing heels crinkled the snow.

Wander seized Fragile by the chest. She threw him over The Stronghoof’s back and whistled. The Stronghoof bolted into the brush, breaking a path between the trees through branches and small foliage. The lead swung and flailed about behind it.

Out her blaith and short blade. At the moment of their availability, she was met with five swords. The force and speed required to beat each of them away bent and contorted her wrists. Her opponents recovered quickly, and then struck at her in earnest.

Wander had no time to assess her attackers, who she could only glean a vague, muddy impression of. The air heated with the temper of their contest. She killed a swing whipped at her head. Sparks shot bright and wild from the rebounding metal.

She spun free of the blades’ caress and swept her blaith up through the nearest fighter. Every one but he bounded away; a large slice of his scalp and skull splashed down in the snow.

The five – then four, as the afflicted armsman broke in half – were Goalish people. Three appeared as women to Wander’s eye, along with another man. All were clothed in pointed, piecemeal overs cut from hide and hitched to jagged lumps of wallrock. Each carried a small, narrow length of bendrock, whose surface was stained to cover up any light or shine. Wander did not recognize their style. It was not a blade of Freemen.

One of the women, a Goal with a grey cloak, spoke. Her words were reminiscent of Fragile’s, but they were in a strange order, and their construction was idiosyncratic. Her voice was bent and scratchy and it thudded to the ground, and Wander could not fully grasp it over the wind. “Outheart… becoming inside… from the heartless words… that heartless thing...”

They think you’re a Larun, the Bell whispered.

“I’m not a Larun,” she said. She sheathed her blades, held up her hands and repeated her words in Sprak and Rootcliff.

“Outman,” the Goal replied.

They closed in on her. Wander punched her leg into the nearest, flattening her out. She caught the man’s blade in her glove and struck him in the nose. He clamped his hands to his face and his blood ran freely.

The third and fourth, including the one who had spoken to her, plunged their metal at her chest and abdomen. She dodged their blows, unsheathed her short blade, and brought up its handle. It collided with the third’s jaw, knocking her down.

The fourth, with grit teeth and bloodshot eyes, narrowly evaded Wander’s blows and thrust at her stomach. Wander let herself be pierced and seized her opponent by the throat. “I’m not a dryman,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Wander shoved her away, leaving the Goal’s blade stuck in her lower body. She grasped its hilt and tore it free with a flourish, before tossing it beside its owner. The Goal looked at it uncertainly before she snatched it up and leapt to her feet.

Wander’s assailants alternately groaned and grunted and wailed on the ground. The grounded woman considered their condition before turning back to Wander.

“Unheart words,” the Goal insisted. “Outman.”

Wander sheathed her blade.

“Who?” the Goal asked.

“Star,” Wander said. “Star that wanders. Not Larun.”

She looked Wander over, assessing her more closely. Her eyes traced the unfamiliar contours of her weapons, which poked out from her waist and above her shoulder. “Strange canes,” she noted. “Strange mouth.”

At that moment, a deep, rumbling tone sounded in the distance. The Goal’s eyes widened and she rushed to help support her friends.

“What is that?” Wander asked.

The Goal did not answer. The dawn was coming up and golden light poured into the clearing where they’d fought. The four of them left it in a hurry, shambling off at an awkward pace. Wander watched them go, until it was just her and the corpse of the Goal she’d killed.

Wander placed a hand over the wound on her chest. She put two fingers in her mouth and blew.

-

After Wander had thrown Fragile over The Stronghoof, it proceeded to carry him West at an imperiled pace. Fragile was scared and quite confused for the duration, holding on to The Stronghoof’s leather straps and having his tenders smashed again and again against its hide.

When at last The Stronghoof stopped up its tireless flight, he drew his eyes open. His ride halted only after it broke from the woods, and carried them into a sparsely dressed marshland. A brook ran by them; in the far distance were hills and trees and tall grass, thin and icy pale.

They were surrounded by Goals.

A silent host had enveloped him and The Stronghoof. It was large, in the way of twenty men or more, and wholly comprised of hidewearing backwoodsmen. They bore twisted noses and squat jawlines. Each was heavily armed with metal weapons, waterskins, cutting tools, and braced leather armor. Some were short, and some were like trees, and others stood between the two. Every man was smeared with dirt, dust, black ash, and flakes of red clay; these had been frosted over. All looked down at him from toned, meatless cheekbones.

Two men lifted Fragile off The Stronghoof and set him on the ground. Another came forward. In addition to bearing similar equipment to his friends, Fragile’s addresser carried a flat paper fan in his hand, and his head was wrapped up in a yellow bundle.

“I am Voicer,” the Goal said. “I and my families are Under. What families are yours, longhaired yon?”

Fragile started at Voicer’s atypical dialect. Words he vaguely recognized were rebuilt strangely, and others had been replaced wholesale. Nevertheless, he endeavored to explain himself. “I was Key,” he said. “Key of Six Braids.”

Muttering went through the woodsmen.

“Sixbraids?” Voicer asked. Fragile nodded.

“You have the mouth of a Sixbraid,” he said. “But these are all gone. The Sixbraids, and the others on the river. Their seat is empty. It was heard.”

“It is true.”

“We do not know its reason,” he continued. “But we have heard too of fallen Laruns. A great host, cut apart by your families.”

“It was not our families,” Fragile said. “It was accomplished by the one I help.”

The muttering continued. Voicer raised an eyebrow. “You have a creator? From where did he come? Does he lead a gathering?”

“She came from the dawn,” Fragile said. “She is alone, eldman. She is the greatest power in the entire riversland.”

Whispering began.

“What is he saying?”

“An outman saved the Sixbraids.”

“An outman?”

“A woman.”

“A To-Light woman.”

“A destroyer.”

“Where is your creator now?” Voicer asked.

“The one I help threw me atop her heart, eldman,” Fragile said. “I was dragged this way, but I do not know for how long. I fear she is in danger.”

Voicer raised up his fan about the host, at a place where all could see. He bent it twice, and spun it in a circle clockwise. One of the Unders took up a hollow tube and blew through one end. His device echoed out a low rumble across the riversland. The still company started to slouch and shuffle East, the way Fragile had come.

“Atop your seat, Key of Six Braids,” Voicer said. “We will go to your creator, and see about your words. If they are true, she may be water for our fires.”

A long whistle shot out from the rounds. Fragile had grabbed and wrenched and slid his face onto The Stronghoof’s back just as Wander’s distant note made itself known to them all. The Unders’ eyes widened as his mount scrambled past them and back the way it came, its comports and munitions rattling just as wildly as they had before, and Fragile returned to his turbulent agony.

-

The Unders chased Fragile and The Stronghoof back through the rounds and their path, where they found Wander, along with her vanquished foe. They took up the body of her attacker, chopped up trees with which to fabricate a litter, and continued on, shepherding all three of them through the country.

In spite of the Unders’ easy feeling, Wander could feel eyes on her. All were watching the two of them very carefully.

“These men,” Wander said. “They speak like the felled one. Who are they?”

Fragile didn’t respond. He goggled wearily at the gash in her chest.

Their guides chattered and giggled to one another, trying to keep their voices down. She could glean only a little of their meaning, anyway.

She pushed his shoulder. “Aie.”

“Ih!” Fragile snapped out of his horrified reverie. He placed a hand on his face. “They are Under. That is the name they gave.”

“Where is their shell?”

“I suppose one is like to be nearby.”

Wander got the sense that he hadn’t understood the question. “I mean their settling spot,” she said. “Their always-home. Where they take water and lie down.”

“I do not think they have one,” Fragile replied. “The Lodge said those who move are all bites to the Laruns now, because they are too much like fighters elsewhere, and anyone is cut and beaten who does not shell forever.”

“‘Those who move?’”

“In the rounds,” he said. “Those who do not always sit. Those who would press and turn about the riversland, make living, and tell of it to those who could not. It is a thing done.”

They walked along a gentle, ice-encrusted slope. The Stronghoof brayed. In the distance, columns of smoke piled up before the primlight sky. One plume rose larger, thicker, and higher than its peers.

“Is this your shell-seat, eldbrother?” Fragile asked Voicer.

“It could only be a shell-seat,” Voicer said. “This one is called Our. It is small among the others.”

Fragile scratched his head. “Do you have cause there?”

“To help our friends with response, and to gather water. I expect too that some of us will seat here, and wait out the Cold.”

“Response?” Fragile questsaid. “Who asks for it?”

“Meeters.” Voicer drank from a skin of water, gargled it, and spat into the snow. “A group of hearts. They live in the rounds.”

“‘Meeters?’” Fragile shook his head. “I have heard this word. Is it like a knower?”

“What is ‘knower’?”

“They work in the rounds.”

Voicer nodded. “For many seasons, they have guarded the outside, and kept safe a great gift to our people. But they have changed and now live a wrong way. They have drawn out seatwomen into it, and small ones from the shell. That has drawn on men and Walls. We will approach them and drive them out.”

Wander watched his discourse with the Under. “You can hear them?” she questsaid.

Fragile looked at her. “It’s hard,” he said. “I miss pieces. Can you?”

“Not yet. Too much of it doesn’t make sense.”

This apparently registered with Voicer’s company. The Goals glanced at each other and were eaten up by laughter.

The smoke stacked taller and taller and soon enough the roundseats of Our had come into sight. Their facade was diverse, filled primarily with seats whose supports and roofs had been devised of long thin fibres rather than chopped wood, the surfaces of which were still fresh with the muddy handprints of those who had stuffed them inside their bindings and supposed their form. Their sloping and uneven construction posed a sharp contrast to the kind Fragile had acclimated to in the Houses, where the vital scent of fired bricks had become a feature he stood up to each morning.

Their train jaunted past all thresholds, passing through the shell’s main thoroughfare, where the seats became tightly clustered and governed by use and family. The shell was quiet, and only a few watchwalls, adorned by sashes painted yellow, clapped and hollered at them as their company moved beyond its limits.

They arrived in Our’s Place of Hearing, where a crowd of Unders had gathered. Weapon-dressed movers, the old and the sick, the children and every man were in it. All the people were bundled in furs, coldovers and great black hides. The flames of a wooden mound at their fore flew up and over them. The Unders had set alight a mound of logs and placed three bodies on it, spewing out a scent of ash and soot. It swam up Fragile’s nose and ate at it until his face was heavy and his head had begun to pound.

“For who was this made, eldbrother?” Fragile asked.

Voicer raised an eyebrow at Fragile’s foreign diction.

“For who was this made?” Fragile sheepishly pointed out the crowd and the fire. “Why was this gathered? Why?”

Voicer pursed his lips as the Sixbraid’s feverish mumbling finally turned up sense. “A voicewoman has been sent to the rulers,” he said. “But I do not know her name. We will go to the Lodge, and he will tell you how it is. Keep close; you two will send fear into the seated ones.”

They moved around the crowd, past the roundseats on its periphery, towards a larger building adorned with Goalish script. Many of the shell’s inhabitants turned from veneration to marvel and then snarl at Wander’s hesigns, which elicited accusing and accusation from lumps of Goal that shifted in their direction. By the time they had reached around the mass of people, most eyes had left the fire and turned directly onto them.

They received a view of the corpse-fire. To Fragile, the bodies were indistinguishable from one another, but Wander could discern their anatomical nuances. Three bodies were on it: the slouched architecture of an elder, the frame of a less injured one, and that of a howl. All had suffered impact fractures.

In front of the fire before the script-written building was the Unders’ entrance chair. Seated in it was a young man with black hair and a round face, surrounded by eight men who stood higher than he.

“This is where we part ways,” Voicer said. “My own creator is shelling here, with all the friends he could find. We must go to him, and likely move after; then, you may see no more of me.”

“I hope you will be safe, eldbrother,” Fragile said.

“I hope you will be safe, Sixbraid yon.” He clasped his hands together and shook them at Fragile, who happily returned the gesture. His eyes turned to Wander. “Be safe by this outish power.”

The Unders began to disperse. Many of them plucked at Fragile’s cheek or pinched his hair as they went by, smiling and laughing.

Voicer stepped over to the seated Under, spoke to him, and went on his way. With his people’s eyes on him and the fire raging, the man got up from his seat and approached the shell’s visitors.

“I am a Lodge for Our, once Stonecooker,” he said. He gestured to his retinue. “These are my Lodgesons.”

The Lodgesons glared at Wander.

“Is it true what we are told?” Stonecooker asked. “You could touch a meeter?”

Wander looked to Fragile. “His family is named Stonecooker,” he interpreted. “He is the Lodge here. He wants to know if you hurt the man they found.”

Wander rubbed her temples. “I did.”

Fragile replied in the affirmative. The Lodge stroked his chin. “Strong,” he said. “Very strong. It is a difficult and wrong thing to fight such a one. By what aim have you drawn through this place?”

“I am seeking gifts,” she said, “in exchange for my hands and metal. I am searching out a spot for this one.” She gestured to Fragile.

“She is is trying to obtain Larun gifts, eldman,” Fragile conveyed. “She offers her push, and her use of weapons.”

Stonecooker stared at him blankly.

“Larun gifts,” Fragile emphasized. “Gifts of rock.” He made a small circle with his thumb and forefinger and traced around its edges. “She is a fighter, eldman.”

“What is your name?” Stonecooker asked.

“Fragile, eldman.”

“What is your cause with her?”

Fragile nervously shot his eyes at Wander, who was studying him intently. He wondered how much she could understand. “I am her helper, eldman.”

“You are a braided man? A way-keeper?”

He nodded.

“Does this outman keep any wrong hold on you?”

“No.”

“Does she want to hurt us?”

Fragile shook his head.

“Then she shall have gifts.” He turned to those by his Chair. “Her heart should be watered.”

One of the Lodgesons yanked The Stronghoof’s lead from Wander and moved it toward a hearthouse on the other end of the Place.

“You have been cut?” Stonecooker questsaid, nodding to her chest.

“I have been cut.”

“Our firetenders are working, but they will not be soon,” he replied. “I will give myself to your name, and they will help you with your injury.”

“I just need food,” she said. “And a seat."

Fragile repeated her request. Stonecooker raised his eyebrow, but assented. “We will find them for her.”

He directed them to the building behind the Entrance Chair. The flames of the mound threw the shadows of Our’s people onto its facade.

“This is our roof,” he said.

-

“Why have you come into this place, outman?” Stonecooker asked.

Stonecooker’s roundseat was smaller and more domestic than the Thought Lodge of the Houses. Vines of fruit wound about a round pillar for cultivation in the Spring. There were enough untended sleeping spots wrapped around the center to accommodate a company of visitors. An oval leather covering placed over the dirt floor was populated by baskets of yellow flowers. Stonecooker moved toward a cushion near the head of the covering. Wander fell to her knees on it, trying her best not to claw at her wound. Fragile sat at her side. The Lodgesons stood nearby, talking and listening.

“Grain,” Wander said.

Fragile looked up at her questioningly.

“Drink,” she said. “Ask for grain. And tell him I already answered that.”

“She needs drink, eldman,” Fragile told the Lodge. “She comes for gifts.”

Stonecooker called to one of the Lodgesons, who retrieved a clay jar of liquid from the center of the covering. He brought it and a cup toward Wander. Wander grabbed the jar, pushed back and grabbed the Lodgeson, and threw back her head. She drained it in one gulp, and the bubbling liquid spilled out over her lips and her chin and onto the floor. All looked on the spectacle in amazement.

She returned the jar to the Lodgeson. “Grain,” she repeated.

He looked to Stonecooker, who nodded. In its pursuit, the Lodgeson rushed off from the covering and out the doors of the seat.

Stonecooker sat down. “It is this place I speak of. Of this Wild. Of Goal.”

“Goal is a place in trouble,” Wander said. She wiped her mouth and licked her fingers. “It pleases my rulers to see it safe.”

“So this is a work of virtue.”

“You’ve said it.”

He scratched his head. “Well, if you are strong enough to fight meeters, you are a more virtuous Wall than any of us. There are gifts we would release to you, should you offer to my families’ cause.”

“Who were the ones who attacked us?” she asked.

“They are a group. They are not all of our kind. For many seasons, they have given themselves to the Night Ruler,” he said. “They inhabit his virtue, and stay only in the rounds.”

“They’re meeters,” Fragile said. “I think this is like a knower. They’ve dedicated themselves to the Night Ruler.”

Stonecooker nodded. “They are strong ones. A gift of the ruler has offered power to them. Once there were many Laruns, and though the meeters’ strength is great, it was much for their hearts to bring conquest into the outmen. They lost many during the response, but it is over. The Laruns are diminished, and so they have come about to their activities again, with such anger that they have been made empty-headed. I suppose it is why they hit at you.”

Fragile relayed his words to Wander with an odd look on his face. “What?”

“It is strange,” he said. “You would think they were troubled or attacked, but he is not speaking of it.”

“Ask him what his trouble is,” Wander said. “And not a Larun’s.”

Fragile did. Stonecooker shook his head. “Once it was not such trouble. But it has come, between those here and those there.”

“Eldbrother Voicer spoke of it,” Fragile replied. “He spoke of taking.”

“It is true.” He sighed. “I think the meeters do keep ways, but they offer out their gift to whoever lives, and many have left our place for theirs. So it is supposed between the men of consequence that their way is wrong, and that their help will soon be the end of us. They have begun to think them Laruns, which have always sought to take the women and the children.” He rubbed his eyes. “It has not been changed by our most recent indignity.”

“What indignity?” Wander asked.

“You’ve seen our dedications,” Stonecooker said, and his brow dropped at the thought of it. “We do not fire without reason. This reason is called Earcatcher. She was going to the rounds. Men shot her in the night.”

Wander tilted her head. “Why would they do it, if it would draw in such crying?”

“They say that it was dark, and they could not see,” he replied. “I think they are right. But I think too that she is Earcatcher, and that they would not see her go.”

Wander removed her hat and placed it on the ground. “Ask him about the gift.”

Stonecooker pursed his lips. “It is impressive. It puts light in their eyes and lets them lift heavy things. It also takes much.” He shook his head. “It takes the rulers from them, and our way of speaking, and all sense in their head. They are not at that moment like us. They have lost their name, and the name of their family, and the names of where they are.”

“What is it?” Fragile asked. “What is the thing itself?”

“It is peace,” he explained. “Peace and no trouble. There has been trouble here since they were born. And sweat. A fight. So they go. They forget virtue, their position, and who their birthwoman was.”

“This gift,” Wander said. “Is it handed to them through a mouth?”

Stonecooker turned to her even before Fragile had attempted to work her words. “Yes,” he said, his eyes wide. “How did you know?”

Before she could answer, they were interrupted by another group of Unders entering the seat. All were dressed in the same rough manner as those who had brought them in to the shell. At their head was a man whose head was wrapped up in a yellow bundle. His skin was cleaned of grit and the sand of the world. A light layer of steam rose off his body, which was damp.

Fragile scratched his head. “Eldbrother Voicer?”

Voicer nodded to him and to the Lodge. “Our friend wants to see the outman.”

Fragile repeated his message. “What friend?” Wander asked.

“He is called Waterdraw.” He extended his hand. “Please follow me. We are not shelling much longer.”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

They turned to Stonecooker.

“If Waterdraw wants to see you, you shouldn’t wait,” he said. “When you have spoken, come back to my roof. Whether or not you wish to enter our cause, you can rest here. I will see to it that nothing bites you.”

-

Voicer, Wander and Fragile left Stonecooker’s seat. On their way out, the Lodgeson who had ran off returned panting with a jug of grainwater. He bowed his head as he handed it to Wander, who took a swig from it.

The crowd were dispersed, and the Lodgesons preserving the ashes and embers of the mount in fibrous bags. The fires of Our had been put out and its people returned to their ordinary lives. Its inhabitants still regarded the outman with glares and bewildered chatter. There was a tension underlying that stilled the rocks and the sky and chilled the water in the wells.

They passed by the center of the Place for Hearing, where a Larun monolith had been dropped. A group of men and women sat at its base in the midst of an offering. They wrote in the sand and surrounded a patch of it with bundles of grain and cuts of meat. A man at the head of them was crying out in an affected and antique strain of his dialect.

Voicer noticed his companions’ gaze. “He is called Canemaker,” he explained. “He is saying that the Unders have made a great pain on everything. He is afraid that the meeters will put them right for it.”

“For what?” Wander asked.

“What pain is this, eldbrother?” Fragile inquired of Voicer. “What has he done wrong?”

“I heard that a howl was shot,” Voicer replied. “The one we saw? It had fur like heartswater. Those are way-keepers who have come before you and I. It is an error to shoot them, or suffer response in their presence. It must have been brought here to keep out fighting, and it should’ve accomplished this. By the Walls’ choice of virtue, it was not.”

They moved on and reached the edge of the shell.

Violent life had pierced Our’s air. It was a hooked up, arcane composite, derived from the scents and sounds of the leaking, jittering, convulsant spirits that a master will mass for war. So gathered, the life made stuff had begun to bleed; its armor, the roaring and squawking and stomping of bridled objects, the piss and feces that they bury and burn, and all the pungent acridities exuded by the swamp of roast roots and fermentations eaten up and pounded in by these people were washing into their body’s heat and descending on whatever space they were directed to inhabit.

Wander drank. She didn’t blame the Goals for the noise, but she could hear it. The air’s weight had become something she inhaled. It was a toxin to beings blinder and more deaf. There was no other way to sustain that antipossible position. It could kill a mind that hadn’t died.

The features of this gathering grew stronger the more they followed the Unders out of town. They discovered the large host Wander’s acumen had sensed, the match of Voicer’s own company by ten times or more. All manner of Goals milled about in a sea of tents and pens, cutting wood, wrestling, caring for hoofs and maintaining tools.

“The air is very soft,” Fragile murmured to Wander. “I would think it loud.”

“They think of a fight,” she replied. “This can end a voice.” She drank.

The association had been anchored around a seat much unlike its peers. It was larger than most; the wood in its columns and walls had warped and rotted and frozen, and these had been adjusted and engorged many times over the years. Above its entrance, which was covered over by a hanging fur, was a circular, antique glyph nearly chipped off by the wind and the rain. Drawing close, Fragile realised it was of the kind which adorned Wander’s body.

Wander handed her empty jug to Voicer, who delivered them inside. He did not follow them there.

The seat’s interior was lit by a round gap in the ceiling that permitted light, and beneath which an icy white cone had built up. The floor was little more than cleared and exposed soil. At the center of the complex was a broad circle of stones, bleached white, and stuffed deep in the ground where they had been sown. They were all surrounded by sacks, bundles of grain and feed, casks of water, tools, and piles of every skin and fur which one could derive from the riversland.

One man stood alone by the far wall, his back turned to the door.

“Do you know its meaning?” he asked in Sprak.

Fragile followed close behind Wander as she approached the figure. “What?” she asked.

The man turned and stepped into the light. Much of his face had been cut apart by burns or metal, leaving jagged marks. His left eye had turned milky white, the same as the shocks that ran through his hair. A black trench pressed up against his throat, and he spoke in a bubbling hiss. “The word on this place,” he continued. “Do you know its meaning?”

“I have my own words,” Wander replied. “Yours isn’t one of them.”

“It was never mine.” He looked away, at the hesigns that adorned the seat’s walls. “I have heard its sounds. ‘Murseda,’ we can call it. But I do not know its use. I have found no memory of its purpose or quality; it has been struck from us, like other things.” He drew his fingertip across further glyphs etched into the wood. “If I could speak like its creator, I could know it. And we could all hear it together.”

“What do you want?”

“It has been many seasons since I saw a star wander,” Waterdraw said. “When last we had, my creators were still here, and leading my friends to defeat in the rounds.”

“There are few stars left to do it.”

“And one has come here,” Waterdraw said, “into the place which hates the sky.”

Wander said nothing.

“I am told you offer to us. That you hit a meeter, and may do it more.”

“I need gifts," Wander said. "So I may.”

“You have bitten off a heart from us. A way-keeping heart. I am curious about your design.”

Fragile had not understood their discourse up until this point, but something did click into place when he heard bitten off, way-keeping and heart, in conjunction with their shared glance at him. “I am not bitten off,” he protested in flustered Goalish. “Wander has kept me from the rulers. I would be enjoyed to follow her commands, but she gives me none.”

Wander put a hand on his sleeve. He suddenly shrank back and became quiet. “I am here to work my craft and collect gifts,” she said. “I have no further design.”

Waterdraw shrugged. “It may be so. If it is, then our purposes are uncrossed, and we will have no trouble speaking with one another. But if it is not, and they were crossed, then there are other needs I would prefer to tell you.”

Wander inclined her head.

Waterdraw’s eyes misted up with sentiment. “Have you been told about the fallen ones?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“The eld was our path to happiness,” Waterdraw said. “Her words were like the rulers’ water. She could take our words and make a jewel from them. She was all-adored, before these days arrived, and before her birthman tried to bring her out.”

Wander held her head, trying to understand as he jumped between Sprak and Under Goalish. She thought back to the mound.

“The man in the fire,” she said. “He was younger than she.”

“He was a meeter,” Waterdraw replied.

He let it hang in the air.

“I am tired, eldman,” Wander said. “Bring now your need, so that we may sleep.”

“I need only your will.” He folded his hands. “I entreat you, word-dressed outman. If you should find our friends first, I wish you would give them greater kindness than virtue should allow, however you should see it.”

“Why?”

“If virtue permitted, I would not cut a point on any meeter,” he continued. “Even if they struck us. Their work is the center of what we are. Their name was called in old seasons, before all the tears and hunger the outmen carried in.”

“But I keep ways.” He wiped his brow. “I was born into this virtue. And it is not my kind to leave its country in trouble. To do so would be cause for shame, and my defeat.”

Wander mulled over his words, and then she nodded. She turned and made her way back from the circle. Fragile noticed her leaving and followed.

With one foot out the door, she turned around and spoke to him.

“You have entreated me to kindness,” Wander said. “I entreat you into fear. You have men I see, many hundreds. Do not seek out this kind. They can fight me. So yours will lose. There is no way from it.”

She exited the Murseda.

-

They returned to the Lodge, who they found pacing around his roundseat and the spot where they had spoke. He looked up when he heard them enter.

“I will help remove the problem of your meeters,” Wander said. “And I ask a gift for it.”

Stonecooker exhaled in relief when Fragile relayed the news. “Our pickings are not great, outman, but this is a problem for which we will offer all.”

“If I am successful, I wish you would accept my helper in to your houses.” She extended her hand to Fragile, who could not meet her gaze or that of the Lodge. “You know that his kind have passed out of this land. He is able, good for work, and offers no burden.”

Fragile mumbled over her request. Stonecooker bowed. “It is in our power, outman, although this is not much of a gift. If he is way-keeping, then he may keep with us. It is virtuous.”

“How are they to be found?” Wander asked.

“They are moving hearts,” he replied. “We doubt that they stay in any place at once. But when we have met with them, it was in the rounds To-Sidedark.”

“I move too.”

Stonecooker nodded. "I wish you would know,” he said, “The meeters have a possession of ours. You should not touch it, or ever bring it back here.”

“A possession.”

The Lodge crossed his arms. “It is a stone. The stone of the night ruler. It is dark, and of great speaking. That is a power of the meeters, for only they may keep it. It should never be put in our place.”

Wander was perplexed. “Is this common to your hearts?” she asked Fragile.

He bit his lip and tried to recall. “I have not heard such a thing, but I was not often listening.”

“The air would be distended, and the winds incorrect,” the Lodge emphasized. “The young children would see differently. Please, outman, let it rest with them, or there will be discontent.”

“I promise that I will do it,” she replied.

He clasped his hands together and shook them at her. “Will you rest before your journey?” he asked.

The fissure in her chest itched. “If you have a spot for me, I will lay in it.”

-

Fragile and Wander retreated to Our’s hearthouse, which was smelling and had been filled up with meatbearers that groaned and lowed in their stalls. The Stronghoof hummed happily when it saw them.

Wander picked among The Stronghoof’s saddlebags and equipped herself for the journey ahead. Fragile wrung his hands on her outskirts.

“Are you going out alone again?” he asked.

“Perhaps not,” Wander said.

Fragile’s eyes widened. “Really?”

“By some means, I have the intent of most people, but I’d like to talk with them. There are already things I struggle to hear from you, and they are afraid of my signs. It may help if I have someone who was born among their ways.”

“I’ll be there.”

She looked at him. “Why are you smiling?” she asked.

Fragile hadn’t felt his face change, and this upset him. He touched his jaw.

“I didn’t… I’m sorry.”

He began to squirm beneath her gaze. She turned back to The Stronghoof. “Be ready for tomorrow,” she said. “We may search for days.”

-

The two of them put down in the Lodge’s seat and left Our at dawn. Wander took her weapons and waterskin, and left her hat and hair by The Stronghoof. Although he was loath to do it, Fragile left his bag and three-string with them, taking only his littlecane.

Their departure was watched by Stonecooker and his sons, the moving Unders of Waterdraw and Voicer, and all the other people of the shell: mothers and infants, the cut and bloody, the pickers and catchers. Every one observed as they were consumed by the white and the green and the shadow of the rounds.

“Where do you think we’ll find them?” Fragile asked. “If they’re as quiet as the Unders say-”

“No life is quiet. It is the hardest thing to conceal. It needs smoke, holes it can hide, and bodies to eat. Do knowers gather together?”

“Not so often,” Fragile replied. “It is a work known lonelier. It is attended by women who have been abandoned, by fighters, and by lost children. But this is a strange group, and they are called a different word. Perhaps it is different for them.”

They hiked through steep prickled hills and over winding rivers, over soil and rocky gradients that Fragile would slip and tumble off. Two nights passed, and they made no fires on each, out of fear that they might scare off whatever meeters came near. With her short blade, Wander hacked out and cut together a hideout of sticks and brush from the rounds which would trap in her body’s heat, so that Fragile would not freeze to death.

Fragile’s body ached, and his mind felt sore. Wander’s body ached and sored the land she touched. Snow fell in the night, and a dark, moist radius formed itself around their shelter each morning.

Wander ventured out from their hideouts twice in search of food, returning with the carcass of a howl or a roothead. Fragile noted that her weapons were never bloody, and the corpses were never cut. Their necks hung limply, and twisted too well.

On the third night of their expedition, Wander returned with the body of a brown-coated howl. She threw the beast down on their place, atop a gravelly frozen up bowl of a hill thinly picketed by thicktrees, at a spot where the sky opened up on the sloping landscape of the Dip and the rolling Goalish country that lay further East. The life there was quiet, suffered, and plentiful: sleeping wings and rootheads that shiverred and curled up in the icy Southbound wind, which produced such a constant and trembling whisper throughout their safe place.

Wander took off her gloves to butcher the howl. Fragile noticed a large, blackened jag on her right hand, but said nothing.

She took the knife from her belt and sliced up the howl’s stomach. She briefly churned around inside, before ripping a red piece of meat out from its bowels. “This is safe for you,” she said, handing it to Fragile. He was starving and the sun was gone, and it smelled like feces and carrion but he trusted her so he put it in his mouth. His mouth filled up with slime and acids, and water poured from his eyes. He retched as his stomach tried to leave his body.

He forced himself to swallow and take another bite. Then he took his own knife and cut out a portion of the meat and placed it into the snow. He wrote words in the snow with his finger.

“What are you doing?” Wander asked.

“It is an offering,” he said. “I ask the rulers to protect us, and to ensure the happy conclusion of our journey.”

She sawed out a piece of gristle from the Howl and threw it out toward him.

“You can use that, if you want,” she said. “You should eat.”

Fragile replaced the good meat with the gristle, and covered it up. He wiped out the blood on his sleeves, leaving streaks of red over the white coldover.

“Do you offer, Wander?” he asked.

Wander continued to skin and cut apart the howl. It drained into the snow. “You already asked me that.”

“I know,” Fragile replied. “But I think we talked about other things instead. And I have not seen you do it. I thought that you might not.”

Wander took out the howl’s guts and laid them out on the ground. She tore the raw pelt from it and quartered a section of its meat with her knife. “I offer,” she said, “with my life, to He Grantar.”

“Who is he?” Fragile asked.

“A man. Like a ruler. Like your rulers. He is the creator of creators. He has rings that shine like the sun, and a great winged beast, and an eye with seven hands.”

Fragile’s jaw dropped. “I have never heard such a thing!”

“That’s surprising.”

“It is?”

She sat back against a rock with a lump of flesh the size of Fragile’s head. She plunged her teeth into it. They and her chin became stained by freezing blood.

“Josmee,” Wander said through her chewing, “where we are now, it’s his home.”

“I thought we were in Goal.”

She took a bite. “Goal is a part of Josmee. To-sidelight-” She pointed North. “There are Rootcliffs, and to the dark-” She pointed West. “There are Laruns. Most know of He. Some offer to him.”

“Why?”

“His followers were a great power, once,” she replied. She took another bite. “Now they are not. There came a new ruler, and new ways.”

“Was it so in Shamkat?”

Wander swallowed. “What?”

“You said you were from Shamkat,” he said. “A place called Shamkat. Was this ruler there too?”

“There are rulers everywhere.”

Wander had a sour taste in her mouth. She threw aside her meat.

The sky had turned a dim blue, carpeting up and curling around the stars. A flock of rootheads massed and galloped by the forest below them. Soon, Fragile and Wander laid down in their shelter and went to sleep.

-

A sunless sunset shined on a hand, which scrabbled and clawed its way across a beach, moving toward the surf. The waves gently crashed against something in the water that she could not see. The hand moved toward it.

Salt and wind blew in her face. As she dreamed, Wander heard the clanging of bells. She saw herself in a featureless world-field before the danceshape. She stood alone there. The beast was drenched in hair and hide that was the color of the sky.

He looked down at her, past his long nose, through her mother’s eyes. “Where are all the others?” he asked.

She could not speak, and was terrified that she had lost all the sounds she had been given.

“Where are all the others?” it asked. “To where has the sun gone?”

She looked down and saw her father’s head in her lap. A thin trickle descended from his nose and landed on her thigh.

She felt her hands moving. Blood that no longer pumped surged from the wounds she had been given on her chest, and it spilled out her mouth. It sowed itself in her covering and turned the fabric red.

-

...waken! Awaken! AWAKEN! the Bell cried.

Wander felt a dull, throbbing pain in her abdomen. Her blade was already in her hands. She jumped to her feet and brandished it.

No more time! the Bell cried. Fighters! Eight fighters! Nine fighters! Ten fighters! Eleven-

She dragged Fragile out from their shelter. “Get up,” she said, lifting him to his feet. “Get up. Keep standing. Fighters have come.”

He blinked his eyes open. They stood back-to-back. Wander’s vision was hazy. She could only detect fuzzy shapes shifting in the brush, moving in and out of bushes and wingtrees.

“Wander?” Fragile asked. “What’s happening?”

A blur leapt into them from the dark. Wander spun about and reached out her hand. A scream of pain sounded, and Wander tore back a clump of hair from the space where Fragile had stood. A meeter with a vacant patch of scalp pressed up a knife to Fragile’s throat and screamed at her in the Unders’ language. Fragile’s eyes were wide with unseeing fright.

“S-she wants you to throw over your drycane,” Fragile replied. “Your ou-outcane. The-the Wall...”

Wander threw down her blaith. The meeter continued shouting.

“She asks for… other ones,” Fragile said. “Two other ones.”

Wander unfastened her knife and short blade from her belt and let them fall to the ground. The meeter huffed at her companions, who pounced on Wander, threw her down, and collected her weapons.

Wander’s hands were bound by links of Larun wallrock. They were blindfolded and lead down from their hideout, and marched back into the rounds.

-

She was pushed and bashed through the dark. Wander complied with her captors, unsure whether a knife still bit at Quiet Feet’s neck. Sometimes the meeters’ meandering grew quiet for a time, and she thought about breaking up her chains. But then she would hear him cry out, and know he was still alive.

The terrain flattened, and they were knocked to their knees and pushed onto their chests. A foot came down on Wander’s back, and her blindfold was torn away. Fifty sets of hands and eyes began to prick at her and run over her signs, hair, skin, and clothing.

“She is an outman!” one muttered.

“She wears the words. The words of Athad.”

“The old words.”

“The words of those who hit the rulers. The words of those who hit the night.”

They poked at her, and sent questions after it.

“From where have you come?” an elderly meeter asked. “What has happened to her eyes?”

“What is your meaning?” a man wearing rings demanded. “Have the outhearts sent you? Are you here to take us all away?”

“What is your name?”

“What is your purpose?”

“Who is this heart of yours?”

A short-haired woman spoke. “Why did you cut my friend Lone Wall? My children’s birthman. My most preferred one.”

“Are you here to cut us?”

“Be quiet. Lone Wall – speak of Lone Wall! What path was walked when you took him from us?”

“Yes, speak of Lone Wall!”

“What path was walked?”

“What path?”

They hushed up, and she didn’t realise they expected her to speak.

“They say that you sent away a friend.”

The voice of Fragile came from her left. Fragile had also been placed in the snow. His face was wet and bloody, and he was shaking. She could see his eyes flailing and turning over the dark, searching for the light that only he of all required.

“I did,” she said. She stood up. She snapped free of her bonds, and the speed of her work shot metal fragments about the crowd. They gasped.

Wander judged the span of the meeters’ shell. It was beat of a swerving valley, flourished with withering bushes of yellow flowers, and peopled en masse by the prolific swingtree, whose taut, swaying branches would read pink and grey in the light. She looked upward and made out the long walled ridge that cornered their country, concealed by mist, and interpreted the thin and winding gravel slopes beneath it as those which they had been driven down to arrive at this place. The flatter land of the meeters’ shell still tilted their feet, and couched little in the way of monuments. It was flush with a hundred huddles, all wrought from sticks and fur, hide covers stretched out between trees, and splintered wood logs cut into cones and painted figures. The whole place was unlit and freezing cold, but the economic gaze and general ease of the meeters belied its every effect on them.

“Do you think you will freeze?” she asked Fragile.

“No,” he said. He wiggled and vibrated like a waterlogged pup. “I will not freeze.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders, brought him up, and kept close enough that he could benefit from her warmth.

“They have asked you to explain,” he said.

“Tell them that I will not, until your hands are let out.”

There was angry muttering before Fragile had even started to speak.

A woman wearing a Goalish blade and a grey cloak emerged from the crowd. “An outman who speaks like river hearts,” she said. “An outman who bears two strange canes.” She stepped before them and turned to her kinsmen. “This is the outman who kept her blade from us.” She pointed at Wander’s effects, held up by the meeters who had apprenhended her. “And those are the canes I have seen.”

A man said to her, “We are sure of it, sister Bestplace. We are sure of it. That is why we went by them when we heard the noise. We have not hurt them, don’t you see? We have lost no virtue here.”

“And yet you strike her in this way?” the one called Bestplace replied. “She turned her blade from us without good cause. It is by her hand we are not all fallen. Outman or not, she will not suffer like this, no.”

The meeters began to clamor in protest. Wander spoke at Fragile’s ear. “Ask them if she sits here,” she said.

Fragile repeated her words. He thought that they would be lost in the dark and the cold, but they brought about a lull in the noise, and the crowd turned to him.

“There is not sitting here,” said a woman with grey hair and no brow. She declared, “There is no Lodge, and there are not eldmen. We mind the rulers and the night ruler. Our work is not a sitting heart.”

There were mutters of assent.

Bestplace went up to the bereaved meeter who had accosted Wander. “Lone Wall is fallen because of me. I wanted to fight this outman, who has pressed on no heart in this country, and has suffered our punishing and hurt due to kindness. Whatever pain you would give her should be put on me. That is the virtuous path.”

The woman stepped forward. She struck the cheek of Bestplace.

“I will condone your want,” she said. “But my pain cannot be put. It is not a touchable thing.” She left the crowd and stormed off into the dark.

Bestplace appeared paralyzed. Then, she wrested a key from the man who had spoken and approached the prisoners.

-

Fragile massaged his wrists. Despite much protesting and gnashing of teeth by the meeters, Bestplace guided the freed ones before her huddle. She hit sparks and then fire into a wooden switch and handed it to Fragile, who gripped it tightly and held his hand to the flame. There was a cry of irritation from those nearby, who shied their gazes away from the sudden piercing light.

“Thank you, eldsister,” he said.

They sat down at a meeting of three trees. In Fragile’s view, the meeters formed tall and dismal shapes that pressed against and painted up and down the darkness.

“There are no elds here, riverbrother,” Bestplace replied. “Only older ones. Could you not hear my friend?”

He gripped the torch. “It was wrong of me to say.”

Bestplace turned to Wander. “This one speaks like us,” she said to Fragile. “But you speak for her?”

“I speak for myself,” Wander said. Fragile glanced at her in surprise as a rough approximation of the Unders’ words lurched off her tongue. “But speak slow.”

Bestplace frowned. “Outmen are a different kind,” she muttered. She sat back and fixed her eyes on Wander. “Have you name, outman?”

Wander stared at her as she thought this over. “I am a star,” she concluded. She jerked her head at Fragile. “That is my helper. All this is name enough.”

“It may not be,” Bestplace replied. “My friends’ jaws are wide open, outman, and I have snatched you from them. So please tell me – what way has caught you in the rulersland?”

“I have been asked to cut up your hearts, and open your position in the rounds.”

“But we are not cut.” Bestplace raised her brow. “And if you meant to start a fight, you have brought a soft friend to it.”

“I did not come to Goal to hurt Goals. It serves my command to keep more standing.”

“Then what is your intention?”

“To measure your kind,” Wander replied, “and, if it is sound, to put back your friendship with the Unders.”

Bestplace nodded. “Long have I wished for such a thing. We have been told that the Unders are where we were created - that once, before all this response, there was free exchange between all our hearts and all our shells.”

“You have been told?” Fragile questsaid. “You did not know?”

“The gift takes all,” Bestplace replied. She pulled down the neck of her over, revealing a black mark on her throat. Wander’s eyes fixed on it in alarm, but she said nothing. “The friendship and adoring of the night ruler. It does not leave in mind our home, our heart, or our words, and we receive them again from the ones without a gift.”

Bestplace stood up. “If you wish to determine our kind, then come on and do it. It is almost time to eat.”

She disposed herself to the black. Wander rose and followed her, with Fragile close behind.

They set out, guided by Bestplace through the meeters’ shell. Their domain was abuzz with activity that only Bestplace and Wander could see. Fragile’s senses were adrift in unexplained stimulus, in swirling laughter, the rush of water on the ground, a forceful scraping noise, footsteps crunching through the snow and snapping branches, and idle muttering that he could not wholly understand. Only a few fires shone through the dark, surrounded by vague and gesturing figures.

Wander measured the meeters’ numbers, arms, and construction. She could see shapes of all kinds, primarily Goalish, but there were Laruns among them, and a Freeman. Most were young, and she thought they would prove capable in a fight. Howls loped freely through the shell, and gathered at a trough of meat erected by the meeters. A circle of men performed shadowplay at a fire in the distance. Another recreated Goalish words written in the dirt and spoke aloud those of a meeter at their head. All the meeters passing them by stopped for a moment and looked at Wander whenever they passed with a mixture of indignation and curiosity.

A thin pack of howls bounded up to Bestplace when they drew near. Fragile yelped and flinched at their sudden emergence, but relaxed when they began to lick and nuzzle him.

“You’ve befriended beasts,” Wander noted, as one sniffed her hand. “I’ve only seen them used for fighting.”

Bestplace knelt and scratched one of their visitors on the head and neck. “Howls like the dark as we do. And we are not sent away as quickly as those without the gift. They are all our friends.”

At the heart of the meeters’ shell, around which the covers and huddles were spread, rose three pillars of stacked rocks. Each was leaned over and united at the apex of a glassy black node. Scattered around the pillars were distributions of tools, meticulously woven overs, red gemstones, and small clay figures.

“This is the stone of the Night Ruler,” Bestplace said, waving at the monument. “It is a cause of our gathering.”

Wander stepped up to the stone. “What does it look like?” Fragile asked. “Do you think it adorable?”

“It is dark,” she said. “That is all.”

He rubbed his chin. He asked Bestplace, “What purpose does it serve? Why is it carried with you?”

Bestplace shrugged. “I do not know. But we have held it and kept it shining since the days when there were no Laruns and the old word-wearing outmen descended on the rulersland.”

“The Unders know it,” Wander said. “They seem afraid to even see it. And you cannot remember why it stays?”

“I know it,” Bestplace replied. “It is my friends who prefer it, not I. They offer to the rulers; and, I think, it is a guide. It puts them back somewhere they can no longer know.”

“Has it no past?” Fragile asked.

“Ih, I’m sure it does.” She stepped forward. “One of some detail. It is a piece of night or like that kind, carried beyond its passing; a word from the ruler that tells his own as not a place, but a thing touched, and held at our side.” She crossed her arms. “If it were my place, I would smash it down and scatter its pieces at every shell in the rulersland.”

Fragile balked. “Why?”

“The stone holds the night, and the night the stone,” she explained. “Neither is a thing for just one.”

They passed into an area covered over by pelts and leather. Many meeters sat in circles and drank from wooden bowls. A man in one such circle nearest to them took a littlecane to his palm, and allowed blood to fill his dish. He put it to his lips and then passed it to his neighbors, who lapped from it in kind.

“Sister Bestplace!” Fragile cried. “Those hearts are being hurt!”

Bestplace put a hand on his shoulder. “Be still, riverbrother. It is a meal; their last before sleeping. They have just begun.”

“I have never seen or heard of such a meal,” he protested. “Won’t they suffer for it?”

“The cut will sting,” she said, “but I do not think many dislike it. We can no longer fill ourselves with meat, nor with the milk of hearts, or with grain from the soil. Heartswater is the last thing we need, and it is made pleasant. There is no cause for catching or growing, and so there are not times of hunger.”

So the mass of meeters merrily slurped one another’s fluid. Fragile’s heart could not totally divorce itself of an essential fright at the idea, but he was brought back to the nature of their eating in the rounds. With it in mind, he began to see an avenue towards their way.

Wander’s eyes narrowed at the blood feast. She took note of a pair of men on the cusp of the meal-place, watching the many meeters sing out and boister among themselves. Neither had the hair of a Goal, and were shaven in the mouth and head. Their skin was slightly darker than their friends’, and each displayed many more scars than was plausible given such apparent youth. The majority of their wounds did not align with the straight indentation of Larun knives, nor the shivering cuts of Goalish canes. The bending mounds of silver tissue could only have been made by an older styling of metal.

“Outman?” Bestplace tugged at her sleeve.

Wander turned to her. “Who are those?” she asked, pointing at the meeters on the edge of the meal.

Bestplace looked where she was pointing. “They have been here for a long time,” she said. “They bother no-one.”

Wander reluctantly turned away from the couple.

They approached one of the largest circles, a chuckling and muttering people sitting atop a round sheet of leather. The eyes of the meeters squinted at Fragile’s torch. He hid the light with his hand.

“This is my family,” she said, placing her hand on each diner. “These are my sisters, Pare, Pains and Surl. This is my brother, Cranes, my birthmen Runcatcher, Spool, and Frailmaker. These are my birthwomen, Wellmade, Utter, and Poleraiser. Those are our friends, Fisher, Skyspeaker, and Hearscaller.”

Many of the people that Bestplace introduced bore little physical resemblance to her. They demonstrated wide difference in the angle of their jaws, noses, chins, brows, the tendency of their hair, and the color of their skin. Nevertheless each stood up and greeted her with as much warmth and enthusiasm as she had them, with a tug on the shoulder or a touch of the lips or a vocal embrace.

“Tender, what have you arranged with these hearts?” the birthwoman Utter asked. “What is the sort that moves you?”

“It is no sort but mine, bato,” Bestplace said. “These are friends. This is Star and this is Helper. They are here to see us. Come on, sit down. Sit. I’ll bring water for you hearts. Sit and drink.”

So they sat down. Their initial entrance was interrogated by the meeters, who immediately began to push on them with interest and questions, throw back bowls of each other’s blood, and show them scars and gifts and stories.

Sister Pains picked with amazement at Fragile’s braids. “You’re a river-heart!” she said. “When I was younger, there was fighting on the river. I lost my friends and my preference on the shores of the place they called Skymarker. I still yearn for those days, tender one.”

Cranes, one of the smallest meeters, slipped around Wander’s back and tugged at her strange cloak. “Long over!” he proclaimed. “Soft over!” She flicked his hand away as lightly as she could.

“The tender is right,” Wellmade said. She pinched the fabric of Wander’s garment. Wander removed her hand, lightly. “Strange over. Soft over.”

“What is its kind?” Spool asked.

“From where did it come?” Runcatcher asked.

“From what kind was it spun?” Surl asked.

“Its name is shoulderskin,” Wander said quietly. “It is the dress of my home.”

“I think she is from the dawn,” Sister Pare proclaimed. “An outman of morning places. Look at that long face! That curling brow! The dawn is somewhere inside her. Have I struck on it, Star?”

“You have struck on it."

The other meeters exclaimed in amazement.

“Please tell us of it, outman,” Craner said. “We live long. We want to see everything the rulers made.”

Wander thought about it.

“It was once,” she said. “But now it is not.”

Bestplace brought her water, and she drank.

Fragile had also become huddled by other meeters, who proferred him their works and trophies.

“This is my own work,” birthwoman Utter boasted, holding up an outcane. “I cut the stone for it with my own hands, and assembled it in fire. It is like the ones near the dark, yes. Please, hold it! Tell me what you think!”

“I am not one of weapons, eldwoman,” Fragile stuttered. “Wander would surely know it more than me.”

Utter withdrew her cane, and ran a stone across its edge.

“You’re a river-heart,” the friend Fisher said. He held a blue fruit toward Fragile. “None of these grow by the rivers. None of them. You can taste it, if you wish.”

“I’m full, eldbrother,” Fragile said. “Very full, but you are very kind.”

Fisher withdrew the fruit quickly.

“You have travelled far, river-brother,” sister Surl said. She held up a long smooth branch which had holes bored all along its length. “Have you ever seen a piece such as this? It is a Larun piece. Only Laruns speak into it, and when it is done, there is such a tickling sound. Such a fine, tickling sound. Do you wish to speak into it?”

She offered it to him.

Fragile took the proferred pipe. The meeter pantomimed putting it to her lips and blowing. He did, and there shot about the circle a pleasant tickling sound, as was predicted. It elicited clapping and laughter from the other meeters.

As loud as this world was, it enjoyed the qualities of silence that Fragile knew. There was a humming in his ears. His eyes moved around the rollicking silhouettes of the diners, who had infested each other. He observed no anxious hardening of hearts by the men, nor any obligate quiet to be held by the women. There was a grand, honest and pleasant ease. It was adorable and fearmaking in equal measure. He wondered if there had been a waste in his life.

-

At the end of the blood feast, many of the meeters dispersed, either to their huddles or the trees. Wander, Fragile and Bestplace were left alone in the circle. Fragile’s torch was burning down to a nub.

“...and then?” Fragile cajoled. “How did you escape the Laruns?”

“They came at dawn,” Bestplace continued. “Knowing we would suffer greatly by its light. But we were hiding above, in the branches, and jumped on them. Laruns are not careful about their backs. One cut to it, and with quickness, they were vanished from the rulersland.”

Fragile put his hands to his temples. “Eh ye,” he moaned. “How is it you live such a frightening life?”

Bestplace laughed. “Do not be afraid, river-brother,” she said. “It is not so frightening. Not so frightening at all. We are meeters! And you and I, way-keepers! It is in our being, now. The things that drove us drive us still, and we are forever wrapped in it. I say - rulers, pass it to us!” She clasped her hands together and shook them at the sky.

She looked to Wander. “What think you, outman? Can you hear our hearts?”

Wander had been listening without comment, observing Bestplace, and tracing her thoughts illegible. “If I could, what would be your aim?”

Bestplace became emptied of mirth. “Are you earnest in your design?” she asked. “Do you really wish to bring back the friendship by which we were enjoyed?”

“I am commanded, not earnest. That is the greater power.”

Bestplace grimaced. “I do wish to convince the Lodge that our hearts might repair to their own,” she replied. “Even though I do not think that what was could be again. There are those who wish to go to the Unders, and to bring Unders to the meeters. They wish to know their creators. That is my only aim.”

“Why must you plead for such a simple kindness?” Fragile asked. “You are kind and adoring hearts. Surely the rulers would approve of it!”

“If I could, I would make your heart my own, riverbrother,” Bestplace replied. “But the rulers…”

She shook her head and mournfully clucked her tongue. “We have gone where they are. I have sought so long to hear them, these people I once knew. But who I am now... I have found nothing of what was spoken to me, even with their gift. Only the voices of my children.”

Wander’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two of them. Their tongues moved quickly, and their words were fuzzed up by the ease of friendship.

“We need not speak of this now,” Bestplace said. “You’ve had a bad night. I will provide a better one.”

She brought them among the huddles, guiding them to a dome hut comprised of leather and propped up by crossed sticks. “This is the home we made for Earcatcher,” she said. “Now it is everyone’s. You can recover here, if you wish. We can speak more tomorrow.”

-

“The meeters are bryplake?”

Earcatcher’s huddle was dark, cramped, and fresh-smelling. Hashed up bits of an orange root had been sprinkled about its surface. Fragile’s torch began to fill it up with smoke, and it was insulated well enough to conserve Wander’s heat, so she lit her pipe at his flame and he threw it on the ground and stamped it out, consigning himself to temporary blindness. A single spot covered with soft wool and many thick blankets had been prepared on the ground in the corner of the hut. Wander refused to take it, and Fragile did not get into it, so it stayed empty, reminding them both of the unformed kind that was once meant to inhabit this place.

Wander puffed her pipe. “Bright-plague. That is what they are,” Fragile heard her reply. He hugged his knees.

“But they speak, like us.”

“Beasts can speak like us. And be hurt, like us.” Wander held her hands together. “I supposed it back in Our, but I have since become certain. They are night-dwelling eaters. I’ve read about them.”

“What is their wrong?” he asked.

“The wrongs of brightplague. They fight He and his Family.”

“They do not appear to do it.”

Wander threw out her leg and gnawed at her pipe.

“Do you know what to do?” Fragile asked.

“The Unders are bound to them,” Wander said. “Although those we know fear them, my work could make others angry.” She paused. “No, I am not sure what to do.”

“I wish that they would live,” he said. “I believe it may be good, whatever must bring it in.”

“Do not be so certain,” Wander said. “Because a thing looks helpful, it is helpful thereby? We have knowledge only that they truly have done a thing, and by it brought in the leaving of three.”

Fragile became red in the face, and appeared on the verge of impassioned thought, but before it might have burst out, he depressed and bit his nails. “You are right,” he said. “I follow too easily.”

Wander watched him sulk with a raised eyebrow. She removed her pipe from her mouth. “Say something wrong,” she said.

He unbit his nails. “'Something wrong'?”

“I think you are afraid to bring in wrongness,” she said. “But I should have it. It is some of what I gain from you. If what you would say is the wrong thing, then think it right.”

He clenched the sleeves of his coldover. “We do not know face-speaking,” he said. “That is... it is not our craft. They may have learned it before me… or maybe they think differently, and are not right about their position. But my birthman called to the Night Ruler. It was his last word. It was the last thing he said, and did for us. These have given gifts to us and put us in house, even when we have bitten off their yonman. If a foul prospect can do such things, then surely they cannot be worse than us. I think the rulers must have called it in.”

During his sweating plea, the dirty orange glow of Wander’s pipe had faded, and she left no other evidence of herself besides a swirling white thread that rolled up into a thin beam of starlight streaming in from the open tentflap. Fragile tripped over his feet and crawled near the place he believed Wander had been sitting. He crouched beside it, and he heard something nearby shuffle off a ways.

“There are hearts here,” he said. “There is… there is moving. I think there once was not, that it had been stopped. But it is again, and it is happy and kind. It is a becoming place. A coming back place. I have not heard the name of that ruler He, here. If he really does call for life’s emptying, how is it right to help him? If what these are is all a wrong, I think there must be something right inside it. You have seen it, haven’t you? The holding and the speaking and the meeting. You must know it. It is what you have given me.”

As close as he was, Fragile could not make out Wander’s expression in the darkness. Her throat loosed a strange guttural note which he could not decipher. It was not a sob or a laugh, but it emerged from a place beyond her will, and it went as quickly as it’d come. He fell back in surprise.

“We should sleep,” she said, her voice measured and clear. “Day is near.”

-

“Outman,” Bestplace whispered. “Outman!”

Wander shot up and gripped the meeter by the neck, releasing her only when she realised who she had assaulted. A slight gray color, more visual noise than light, mixed in with tongues of red and orange and streamed in from the tent flap behind her. The roar of folk and bruised metal and suffering wood blew in from the outside. “What is it?” Wander asked.

Bestplace rubbed her throat. “It is morning,” she said. She unhitched Wander’s weapons from her back and handed them to her. “You must go,” Bestplace insisted. “Bring up your helper and go.”

Wander hung her blaith over her shoulder and went to the opposite side of the tent. She shook around Fragile, who blubbered fearfully in his sleep. His eyes grew fat with terror before he remembered where he was.

“Take this too,” Bestplace said. She handed a bundle of yellow cloth to Wander. “What I have done,” she muttered, “what I needed to do – the others will not be pleased with me, and it will not end this problem. But it may help. I hope it will help.”

“What have you done, eldwoman?” Fragile asked. “What will we do?”

“Follow the outman, Six Braid,” Bestplace replied. “Bring it to the outhearts, Six Braid. To their Lodge.”

The three of them emerged from the hut to see many Unders addressing a single meeter, pressing at her with gritting teeth and sweaty knives and splintered clubs. She exploded out of their oppressment and rebelled. She took a knife from the hands of the enfeared and beat it into them and wept exertion.

Waterdraw’s forces had approached the shell under cover of darkness. As the black started its retreat and offered up concessions of sight, they rushed among the huddles. Fire had been employed and shrouded the huddles and the swingtrees and the mealplaces in ash, smoke, and engorged, distressed flame. The light it threw out cast in the shadows of men and charging things of more legs. Swarming pickets of Unders strung their bows and shot among the meeters, who were dragged sleeping from their dwellings and whose howls were torn and beaten down by arrows and sticks.

“I must go, yon,” Bestplace said. “I must go help my family. The night has moved before. The night has moved a thousand times. This time will not be different.”

She joined the fray. Fragile looked at Wander, wondering what she would do.

Peopled scenes established and disestablished themselves across the lot of their skinwrought houses, before they would break together and procreate further and greater scratching of eyes and desecration of our bones. It elaborated a screaming array of the distending and dismembering of the association’s littlest, and the providential damning of its greatest and least lucky. Blood sprayed out and hit fire. It seared to smoke and smell of iron.

Waterdraw’s shape dripped out from the rounds. He lashed his heels into a stonehoof ten miles high and thundered out among the meeters. Any knowing of him was tied to the manic whims of light’s tide. On its shores he had become a sign out of distance which scorned all the quiet and temperate air. He and the riders beneath him bore down on the meeters with great hatred and sheer pointed shafts that jostled back and forth in convicted excitement.

All seemed terrible and like it was advancing toward ancient and assured disaster. But the meeters turned from scores of their massacred Under kin and shot upon the riders, tearing them from their mounts and dragging hoofs to the ground. The rounds were gouged out and cratered by their collapse, hurling chunks of frozen soil around the encampment. The contest shook all mortal firmament and birthed clouds of dust, murking all that was battered and bashed and scattering its light with light of fires and light of the arrived dawn.

-

Stonecooker watched Waterdraw’s Unders leave the shell. Then he awaited all return for three long days.

On the fourth day, the outman and her under rose up from the rounds. She and her braided companion emerged bearing a yellow lump of cloth, their unwashed faces freckled with ash and soot. The shorter one trailed her, weary from travel.

They were watched by all manner of folk as they reentered the roundseats. Stonecooker was brought forth by a messenger as soon as they had been sighted by the watchwalls. He rushed out to the broken monolith, eagerly awaiting their arrival.

They passed down the thoroughfare and stopped at his feet, saying nothing. Wander handed Bestplace’s gift to the Lodge.

“I was given it by a meeter,” Wander said. “I was not told its content. She and all her friends desire your friendship. I expect whatever it is to be joined with that.”

Stonecooker’s eyes widened when she spoke his language. He took the bundle in his arms.

Wander said nothing more. She and Fragile walked away, toward the hearthouse. She donned her hair and her hat, and guided their hoof out of Our.

The Lodge started to unfurled the piece he had received. The other Unders crowded around him to see its shape revealed.

After he had unwound the final ribbon of cloth from his package, he was met by clattering. A rubble mound dissolved from it and pounded out the ground beneath him, skipping and drifting into the soil of the Place for Hearing. The crowding eyes of his kin hugged and tugged as he bent down to pick at the ruined article, and raised it to his eye.

He brought the piece into the light. Its shape and black color erupted for all to see. He dropped it in shock and recoiled.

“Outness,” the Lodge uttered. “Outness.”

He was afraid he would fall, and slumped against the monolith. The other Unders collected pieces of the Night Ruler’s shattered stone, bubbling amongst themselves about its state and its presence. One man out of Waterdraw’s movers was brought to tears, and sat silently on the ground holding two pieces in its hands. The Unders’ children took up the pebbles and bits created by the snapping and tumbling of the stone on the Place and held it up to the sunlight, seeing its beauty and obtaining it for themselves.

-

Wander and Fragile walked West from the seats of Our. Its Walls watched them go; Wander could feel their eyes trail them as they moved down into an icy plain that bordered the shell, below a peak and another patch of forest. Wander stopped for a moment after they had drawn clear of its borders, and Fragile looked up at her.

“I have worn out my welcome here,” Wander said. “But I think they’d still be like to let you stay, if you wanted.”

“I will do it if you tell me.”

Wander tightened her hand around The Stronghoof’s lead, and urged it on.

They stepped out from the dawn, which beat down from the clouds, and pressed a line of gold over all that lay behind them. The Stronghoof brayed as they cut through the snow and hit their stride.

“Do you think any of them will mend?” Fragile asked. “The meeters, or the Unders?”

“A broken thing cannot do it,” Wander replied. “Tot, a man of my place, a man learned of words – he said that there is no thing fixed, nor made whole, in Ourl- in the riversland. There are only new things, and new wholes, forever. That is good to Am, and that is why he returns.”

Fragile thought. “If it is right,” he said, “we are much like Ourland. And Ourland is like fire.”

Wander placed a wad of chew in her mouth. “Is it?” she asked.

“My birthman said that fire was the second part of us,” he said. “When fire met the waters, a heart was made. One day, fire will swallow up the trees and the ground, and all waters too. He said we would be ended by it.” He brushed a lingering spot of ash from his face. “But our kind burns just as well as these things. So maybe it is not an end. Maybe it is something else.”

----------------------------------------

In the East of the country, there had sprung into being a pick of roundseats beside a half-empty river. By its far shore was a ruined and stained bivouac of punishing ropes and Larun nivmen, stripped to the flesh and then the bone by scavengers of rival genus. Wings the size of men thirsty for rot screamed and stabbed their beaks at a pack of red-furred howls gnawing at the soil and leavings of the battered dead.

A train of stonehoofs descended from the forests to the North. Their riders wrested them by choice into a compartment of voided bowels, microbial smorgasbords once called manhood, and every article of divine or paranatural significance now congealed and expired and of no use to the beautiful things they must be separate from.

They rode among the ruined Larun campsite. A cauldron of twisted bodies addressed the common center, deprived of all weaponry. There was evidence of a vast conflagration; tents pitched about a group of punishers had been laid to waste and ash. More bodies were stacked up in a cart by the punishers, with broken throats and no drivers.

Two men at the head of the group dropped down from their mounts. The first was a small one, his whole body covered up by a ragged maroon shawl, his face concealed by a mask of stone. His whole figure was consumed by twitching and shaking and jopping. He removed a switch wrought of gray metal from his side, stabbed it into the ground and stepped forward.

The shaking figure’s companion bore a langniv at his side, honed recently. His hair was cropped, combed recently, and he wore a gilded Larun bryst, brushed recently. Strained around his throat, chafing against the veins that bulged and blew out there, was a chain of pure gold. He moved with steadiness and a light step through the bones and their carrion, which recoiled from him. He looked at the ropes and the dead Sixbraids, and a glimmer shined in his eye.

The shaking figure jittered his way through the Freemen and fell to one knee. He trembled his hand into the blood-rich soil and crushed in a fistful of it. He brought it up to his nose and inhaled.

“Shaminkat,” he whispered.

He opened up his palm and gave the clump of filth to the breeze. His gaze turned onto the whooping, hollering, screeching scavengers, and the air became untroubled. The howls let go of their bones and stood up with their jaws opened and their eyes wide. The wings went down from the sky.

After they were finished, the howls sat on the ground, curled up, and quit drawing breath.