They remained at the salon that night.
Fragile and Wander could hear the Seeds drink and boister down in the public room. For the moment, the clamor remained in a faraway space.
They had taken up residence in the cell that the Salonier had offered them. They accessed it with a short flight of steps that brought them above the hall, up to a hinged wooden door. Many large, raised, covered frames awaited therein, each equipped with a smooth blanket that only regained a bit of softness after Wander’s presence had brought up the temperature. The mats they were expected to sleep on were built of liq, sewn together and stuffed with soft red seeds. Some of these spilled out of tears in the fabric, and the corners were littered with them.
The room featured a series of shutters which gazed out over the houses of Partplant, onto cloudless dark. Soft starlight swept across the country and flitted within their lampless quarters. They sat down by one of the viewlets, and looked out from it.
“I’m sorry,” Fragile said.
“It’s okay. But why did you speak?”
Fragile looked away and squeezed and tugged at his robes. “I believed you were about to hurt them.”
Wander studied him and placed an arm onto the sill, looking about the koropole. “So did I.”
They watched the stars for a while.
She flicked her gaze back to Fragile. “You’re going to need to be very careful.”
“I’ll stay close to the stronghoof.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Wander untied the knot binding her shoulderskin, which dropped to the ground. “I’m going to show you something.”
She gripped Fragile’s hand with her glove and guided him to the back of her neck. “Look,” she said.
The room was dim, but Fragile could make out a mark something like the one pressed into the neck of Manor and the workers of Eighty. It was lighter than Manor’s; his had kept a dark slash through the middle. Wander’s had no such mark.
“What does it mean?” he asked.
“It is something they must not find.” She put away his hand and pushed him back, then stood up and threw the shoulderskin on one of the mats. “So you must not speak about it, and if its place is uncovered, you should tell me. If you do not need to talk, I will not want for it.”
Fragile nodded. Wander walked over to one of the mats and sat on it. She laid her blaith across her knees. “I’m going to need you to point to someone,” she said. She looked up at him. “They won’t be breathing. I will show you with my hand. When I do, you must say the words: ‘dzhry-min.’ Can you hear me? ‘Dzhry-min.’”
Fragile mouthed the peculiar Sprak phrase, which resembled a half-remembered noise with extra sounds attached, and sprang out from the chest rather than the mouth. “I can hear you,” he said.
“We’re not going to walk,” she said. “The hoof will carry us. That’s how Laruns move. Can you hear me?”
He nodded, and tilted his head. “Wander…”
“What is it?”
Fragile kneaded his fingertips. “Why are we going with these men?”
Wander squeezed and released the grip of her weapon.
“You seem to shake at them,” he said. “I am afraid of the big one.”
“I need parts,” she said. “Many parts. I need them now. Laruns have many. If we do this, they will give some to me.”
Fragile did not inquire further. He removed his coldover and the pads that bound his feet, covered himself with a blanket, and laid down on the floor. They rested.
-
Fragile tossed and turned in his sleep. He always cried, and he was crying now.
Wander watched him as the sunrise swam inside and across the clouds from their room’s viewlet. She sat on the edge of her cushion, her gaze unblinking in the absence of any strangers to set at ease.
His whispers were half-formed and infrequent, and little more than unanswered protestations and apologies. He blub-blubbed out pleas to names she didn’t recognize and put claw marks in the floor. Splinters bit at his fingertips.
His eyes fluttered open. Wander was binding up her vest and tying on her shoulderskin.
“Get dressed,” she said. He ran an arm against his face, which he was surprised to find as wet and dripping.
They left the salon. They moved out into Partplant; in the night, the fog had cleared from it, depositing itself wholly in the countryside, over fathoms of watery snow, perking plentitudes of wingtrees that looked like grains of thorned sand, and crouching wings that pecked at the seed of the soil and fled a howl who stopped at the treeline. The houses of Partplant were still, and the dawnsun painted their sky with strokes of gold. The houses’ pointed, starry silhouettes cast shadows much bigger than the way they lay.
They arrived at Partplant’s tithechest. It was dissimilar to the hearthouses of the Goals, in that it was dark, cramped, tall, and difficult to access.
They found entry through a door on its side, clinging to a hinge. The animals were kept in tight pens stretched out in long lines, fenced off from each other. The stink of their breath, feces and vomit permuded the building and its air. Slates of rock were kept on the swinging barricade of each pen, covered with marks that Fragile could not read, detailing minutiae he could not grasp the significance of. Wander saw all the lines; she saw that they kept the drag of each one, how many each would feed if its throat was cut, how angry they were, what their kind was, how far their kind could walk, and how fast it could run.
The stronghoof was there, locked in a stall and moaning. Fragile leapt to free it.
Joyborn, De, and their followers were waiting there, the spots for their mounts open and exposed to the dawnsun and clean winter air. They ate cakes of white bread, filled skins of water from a cracked well, and belted weapons to their person. Each was covered in straight langnivs, short bevelled ones for chopping wood, and the wooden arch of a broad shooter that they kept roped over their back.
Joyborn saw Wander approaching from the stalls. He picked up and turned towards them. “Little sister,” he shouted. “What did you see?”
Wander ripped the metal binding off the stronghoof’s pen. It snapped into pieces and the door swung open. She led the animal out before the nivmen.
“I have seen a fall,” she said.
He smiled. “Then let us go into it.”
-
The company rode out into Partplant’s countryside, towards the distant woods.
Wander and Fragile rode the stronghoof. Fragile sat behind Wander, and he steadied himself by gripping the saddlebags. He was hesitant to cling to her, and she did not tell him to do it.
De and Joyborn rode in front. The little player wiggled and shivered and guided the whole column, occasionally slowing to tilt up his nose and catch the wind, before leading them on. He tugged his animal to a broad distance from Joyborn’s.
They went past the last of the formed and cultivated fields of Partplant and entered a sight which had long awaited Wander. A tall stone block of some twenty tons, blustered smooth and bleached, stood upright in the snow on the side of the road. A nest of wings garnished its peak, and a message had been hammered into it in Sprak. It was large enough that all could read as they passed by.
THESE WORDS ARE PLACED BY THE KEEPER OF THESE POINTS
THEY ARE HERE TO HELP BUYERS SELLERS AND GATHERINGS OF THE OTISER AN
BUYERS SELLERS AND GATHERINGS OF THE OTISERANHAVE LOST FRIENDS BEHIND THIS ROCK
BEHIND THIS ROCK THERE IS MUCH DESTRUCTION
BEHIND THIS ROCK THERE IS MUCH DESTRUCTION
PATHS CHANGE BEHIND THIS ROCK
THE FIRM CHANGES BEHIND THIS ROCK
WIND AND RAIN ARRIVE SUDDENLY BEHIND THIS ROCK
THERE ARE MANY TIPPERS BEHIND THIS ROCK
BEHIND THIS ROCK YOUR LEARNERS WILL LEARN WRONG THINGS
YOU WILL LEARN SCREAMING THAT CANNOT BE FOUND
YOU WILL LEARN SHAPES THAT CANNOT BE FOUND
YOU WILL LEARN ASH THAT CANNOT BE FOUND
ALL LEARNING SHOULD BE PASSED OVER FRIENDS
BRING NO FEWER THAN TEN FRIENDS IF YOU GO BEHIND THIS ROCK
BRING LANGNIVS IF YOU GO BEHIND THIS ROCK
BRING A FEURKUN ONE IF YOU GO BEHIND THIS ROCK
DO NOT GO BEHIND THIS ROCK ALONE
DO NOT GO BEHIND THIS ROCK ALONE
DO NOT GO BEHIND THIS ROCK ALONE
Fragile squinted at it. The message was not repeated in Goalish.
“Do you know what it says?” he asked Wander.
Her eyes flicked back at him. “Nothing,” she said. “It’s a list. Some names.”
He looked away from it and focused on the growing pain between his legs. Joyborn’s head tilted when he heard their exchange. He fondled the hilt of his langniv.
“Seen,” Joyborn ventured, “have you ever moved through this cantfowkat?”
“I have moved in Partplant,” Wander answered. “The places before that one.”
“And the ones after?”
“No.”
“Then we will share something precious,” he said. The cant of his mount bounced and swaggered them and his smile rolled with it. “The Goallandish price high a firm’s scarcest parts, in theirs and ours. So we will see them too. An unseen place. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Wander urged on the stronghoof.
Hours passed as they drew into the bushy, uncut country. The sun rose overhead and the stars circled around it. The warmth began to weaken and liquify the layers of snow, and streams glittered on its surface over the covered flats and tree trunks and twisting complexes of black-blue rock, which formed fingershapes and prickling hulls and stone slices that they filed through and around.
At noon, they dismounted, and lead their animals while they ate. The Seeds stuffed themselves with thick loaves of grain. Wander gnawed on a bone, and Fragile pretended to drink water. De ate nothing; Joyborn ate cuts of dried meat from a species that Fragile didn’t recognize. In spite of its confounding hue and stringy texture, the smell was familiar. An image of brambles and fire flashed in his mind, and he gagged, falling to his knees and vomiting on the side of their path.
As he coughed up the dregs his stomach, and as Wander knelt to steady him, most of the Laruns – save De – turned. “These feurkuns are breakable,” Joyborn laughed. “And in ways unexpected.”
“What is it?” Wander asked Fragile.
“I’m okay,” he said.
She helped him stand up.
“What is it?” she asked again.
“I’m okay,” he said. “Really, I’m okay.”
De watched the two of them. They pressed forward.
The way lead them in the direction of a frozen highland, and Joyborn became restless. “Ehhh- such a chafing, so long before the clash!” Joyborn shouted. He wiped sweat from his brow. “And this silence does it further.” He glanced over at Wander. “How is it you became Seen, Hill-Measure? Discover that knowing to us, your newest friends.”
Wander strode along on the stronghoof. She clicked its harness. “What is there you want discovered?”
“A one like you, who carries nivs, is unseen,” Joyborn said. “A one like you, who does work like mine, is seen less. A one like you, with her own steps, who does not move them for Points, or for any telling firm, is seen less too. And I am brought to wonder by what cause this new Coster has emplaced you in his gathering. It is surely a fastening report!”
Most of the Seeds greeted his words with nods and assent. Two did not.
“My kind does like.”
Joyborn’s teeth caught the light. “Well, show it to me, little sister,” he said, “and if I cannot see it, you can show me farther still.”
“It is written. It is so everywhere.”
“It is easy work, little sister,” Joyborn replied. “It is only delight which is required. You will not put away, little sister, the knowing and seeing of men in fights, and men who carry metal.”
“I would.”
She did not elaborate. “What would you put away?” Joyborn asked.
“I have seen metal carried. It cuts meat.”
“Carrying metal? Cutting meat? That is not a fight.” he said. “It is simple, little sister. A fight is a journey towards knowing. Metal set against its kind. Screaming learners, who come so near to breath’s end. That cannot be found in the cutting of meat.” He shook his head. “A fight will teach the breath of its contestants, and whose good is the keeping of it. That is the cut of blades. It lets out the ordered qualities of our people, and puts breath where it once was absent. Have you read Abhokar, little sister?”
“I have read the Otiseran.”
Joyborn’s heartbeat jumped with delight.
“The Otiseran has colored her blade with fights,” Wander said. “The contest ‘we can observe, brings itself out in all conditions. It does not begin or end with hands, but with the movement of eyes, the exchange of calls, and the direction of the I.’”
Joyborn’s gaze shifted and for a brief instant, the course of his words shivered. Something pulled at Wander’s cheek. “If it is so,” he said. “Then the infant is fighting. And you would use that way? The Otiseran is a valiant leader, little sister, but she is no reader.”
“The infant is fighting,” Wander said. “The fight is continuous condition. A fallen producer is a thing that brightens our mass, has our Otiseran shot in.” A drop of venom flew off her tongue.
Joyborn’s grin fell. “She is no reader, little sister,” he said. “And her words are unneeded. We certainly cannot throw out the steps of your type, or your breath, which is closed, and preserved to smiling in big numbers. They have been hit, circled and won over, and the need for it is revealed.”
“A smile is a garment,” Wander said. “In Harmony they are thin, and few of parts or warmth.”
He frowned. His stonehoof reared its head, and would go no further. He extracted a wooden cane from his saddle and whipped it. It belched out pain, and he returned the cane to its place.
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“Let it beside,” he said. “Hand it to us, little sister. Your beginning.”
“The Lotaslager took me,” she said. “They stole me out of house with tricks. I rode into Sidacif places, and discovered the Otiseran’s promise.”
Joyborn laughed again. “A delighting vision. You have breathed always in the Laif, with Laifsh breathers?”
“No,” she said. “Now I breath in Goalland.”
“Goal,” Joyborn murmured, “and the Goallandish.” He sucked air through his teeth. “That, I am sure, is something we can speak in one voice on.”
“I would not expect it,” she replied. The stronghoof grunted.
He laughed again. “Little sister, do not tell me you have not put learning to it.” He threw his hand at Fragile. “You have looked at this hillkind for many days. Your eye so able must have discovered some room for its collection! It calls us out – in all regard, this hillkind must be the closest of any to the Freemen, and without their gifts so precious. They are a kind of lowerness. They have such a desire for cuts and beating, such an out-of-place easiness of the I and brow. And they have stubbornness – like they were made in your shape.”
He shook his head. “Even for it, there is still waste. Theirs is delivered to an even more intense fight versus firms and firmmakers, delivered even less way to find new words, new parts, and new gazing at the all-every. And there are Points, Hill Measure. This is accepted. There are Points, and there are slopes sat between all hills. We can expect caprice in this arrangement, shot in by any mixture of I and fluid. And these can diminish and preserve the less-well sides of their number. I have seen it happen.”
Joyborn shrugged. “Still, this lowerness persists. Perhaps you have found a preferred way in this one overall. Perhaps, with time, their number may be cut down into the way of him, split apart from the most descending sides of their current. It need not be in the way of fire – although fire is a good device. This I have looked at; and what must one really do, but cut away their producers? It is the feurkun producer who empties the mind; the feurkun producer that shapes them with pillars that no Firms needs. We can be kind, Hill-Measure. We can find them some precious end. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Speak in Goalish,” Wander said.
Joyborn turned to her, tilting back himself and his expression.
The column had halted. Wander had departed the stronghoof and stepped closer to Joyborn, such that even he was forced to roll his eyes up at her. Her gait remained loose, and her finger drifted around the handle of her short-blade. Her placid affect had been replaced by that which Fragile had seen only once, in the papersquare of Eighty. “Speak in Goalish,” Wander repeated.
Joyborn opened his mouth in amazement. When she said nothing else, he burst out in laughter. “What fun is this, little sister?” he cawed. “What aim do you shoot through?”
“I want the feurkun to hear,” she said. “I want him to have words.”
Joyborn looked to Fragile, who shrank back behind her. He laughed again. “Little sister, even if I did it, why do you think this one would consider them? He is a feurkun. He cannot yet learn the precious way.”
She kept her gaze. Her glove gripped the hilt of her weapon. Although he maintained his feeling, Joyborn placed both hands behind his back. When this happened, The Seeds flanked Wander and unsheathed their weapons.
At this instant, De burst inbetween them, facing Joyborn.
The Larun stared down at The Cane, who shiverred against him. His smile broke.
“Kontor?”
Crack!
Joyborn fell backwards onto the snow, reeling from a stroke of lightning. Blood leaked out from a long, thin cut that split across his cheek.
De stumbled forward. His hand displayed a red streak. He jammed a knee to the Larun’s chest, making him a screaming bellows. He lifted up his cane.
Crack!… Crack!
Crack!… Crack!
Crack.
Joyborn’s roaring grew softer and withered away to quiet. De lifted himself up. He wiped his bloodsoaked cane on his shawl, and turned back toward Wander.
“T-thank - y-you-u,” De said.
“What?”
“T-thank...” De said. The bindings of his mask shook. “...y- you.”
Joyborn writhed on the ground. None of the Seeds moved to his aid, their gazes switching quickly between Wander and De. Her hand fell from her blade, to her side.
De dragged Joyborn to his feet and pushed him by the throat at his hoof. He remounted his own and urged it forward.
Joyborn turned toward them, panting. He smiled at them, revealing his chipped and broken teeth. The wound under his eye had been reopened by De’s hits and flowed freely, pouring down his face. One of his boys rushed forward to bind it. At that moment Joyborn struck him, putting him down into the snow. His smiled never broke, and he clung to it with a gashing grip.
With no way of interpreting the violence, Fragile looked to Wander.
She plucked him off the ground and jumped on the stronghoof wordlessly, setting him in place behind her. The other Seeds mounted as well, and they rode forward.
-
When evening came, the group settled down in a concealed, precarious alcove beside an oval pit. Its entrance wound with prickly vines sprouting flagellae that drifted in the wind. The rocks overhead would help conceal any smoke they made, and they got stuck into it.
The Seeds chopped away the webs and stalks with their knives. Wood was cut apart and set on fire, and they pressed themselves and their mounts in to the cramped spot. The Seeds laid out blankets spun from liq, and cushions whose surfaces were wove from hoofskin. They helped Joyborn - whose broken bones kept him from moving except to scream - to bed down, and they bound his jaw shut.
Wander knelt down by the fire, where De and Fragile sat amid the other bodies tucked in and spread around. “We should go out and watch,” she said. “Three steps each. Everyone must rest.”
De failed to move or give any indication of interest in the job. He held his bare hands by the fire. His fingers were an explosive coupling of red, orange and silver wrinkles, and they took on a steadiness from the heat.
She looked to Fragile. “If you need anything, I’ll be nearby,” she said in Goalish. She briefly threw her eyes at De. “Prefer the side of that one.”
Fragile nodded.
She took out her pipe and climbed out of their slog, into the brush. Joyborn snored softly, and De moved closer to the fire. Fragile’s hiding managed a great pressure in his presence, one that pushed on him and made him afraid. They were left alone, in silence.
The stars spun overhead. Sometimes Fragile watched De, on the outskirts of his vision, but he restricted his best attention to plucking out notes on his three-string, which he only did after scurrying over to the entrance to ensure that Wander was not anywhere nearby.
As Fragile struck his chords, De shifted. He brought up his knee, so that blood would be able to flow to his posterior. It was a thing that Fragile himself had done.
Fragile put down his three-string and licked his lips. He looked up at De. “P-pain?” he stuttered in Sprak.
De looked over at him.
He shook himself in the way De did. “Pain?” he repeated, louder. “Pain?”
De shook his head. “C-cold,” he whispered. “Cold.”
Fragile bent his head. Then he slipped an arm out of his coldover and scooted over, scraping aside rocks that brought on a dry knuckling as they were swept elsewhere. He slightly, hesitantly, pushed the garment out towards De.
De’s gaze held on Fragile and his shivering green eyes, filled with fire-glitter. He looked back at the flames and shook his head again.
Fragile looked away and flushed, but he slipped his robe back on. “Cold always you?” he asked.
De nodded. He poked at the flames with his cane.
Fragile wrung his hands. De tilted his head toward the little Sixbraid, who rubbed the wound on his arm, which was still red and tender.
De lifted his cane and pointed to it. “P-pain?”
Fragile looked up. “Cut.” He shook his head. “Cut good. Cut good – cut… help. Close – pain, close was.” He rubbed his hand, searching for a sound that would serve. “Man, close was. Hand, close was. Close pain. Cut…” He shrugged his shoulders, and waved his hands to and then away from the scar, pouting emphatically.
“Touch pain?”
Fragile cocked his head at De. “‘Tuch?’”
De put down his cane and plucked at the fabric of his cloak. He reached a shaking hand over to Fragile and poked him. “T-touch,” De said. He poked his fingers together. “T-touch.” He pressed his hands to his knees and arms. “T-touch.”
Fragile put his hands together. “Touch?” De pointed at him and bent his head forward. Fragile nodded. “Touch pain.”
De looked at him for a long time. “T-touch p-pain,” he said. “T-touch – al-w-ways – p-pain.”
Fragile wrung his hands and bit his lip.
De held up his hands and touched them to his shoulders. He formed a ring with his thumb and forefinger and swirled one through the middle of it. He held it to his chest and wrapped his other palm around the loop.
“Y-yes?” De asked.
Fragile watched as he completed the circuit, and wanted to cry. He held his breath.
“N-no,” Fragile said. His breathing became heavy. He did not know why he was about to behave in this way.
Before he could change his mind, he went over to De and placed his hands around the icy, shaking palm.
“No,” Fragile pleaded.
De did not throw him off. He looked at Fragile. One or two of Joyborn’s boys who were still awake watched the spectacle. The others dozed.
After some time, he wrapped his hand around Fragile’s, held it, and pushed it away.
He turned to the fire and put his hands back over it, pushing them closer. The flames twisted and inject his fingers, searing them black. The smell of cooked flesh crept out of their corner, and reached Wander’s nose.
A mass that they could not see drained itself from the space where De had been. A gust of wind blew past the fire and onto Fragile, before the world turned silent again.
-
They pressed on the morning after, extracting from their alcove and driving into a dense, rocky wood which sat beneath a range of corktop hills.
They rode into a narrow pass surrounded by steep cliffs. Fragile shivered and wiped his nose. He and Wander rode side-by-side with De. Joyborn rode alone; his face was stitched together by tight red cloth. As they entered a narrow pass, filled with rocks and ice, the wings stopped speaking.
De halted his hoof, and Wander turned the stronghoof to him. Their position in front stopped up the column.
She looked at him. His eyes were cast up to the slopes beside their company. “What is it?” she asked.
“S-smell,” he stuttered. “V-very - s-strong.”
“That’s good.”
“N-no,” he insisted. He lifted a shaking finger and pointed around. All the Seeds arched their necks at the discursing stone ridges, which were packed dense and offered many embankments. One of the boys removed a sleeve of water from his belt and began to unbutton it.
De turned back to Wander. He placed a hand on his weapon.
“Turn your tithes around,” she said to the Seeds. They looked at her and then at Joyborn with open mouths. He did not command them.
“Turn them around,” she insisted. “Your kontor wants us to turn around now.”
Some of them tried to obey, however difficult it was to maneuver in the thin and choppy ground. She turned her head to Fragile. “Get a grip,” she said. His eyes widened. The boy threw back the sleeve, gulping down the liquid.
Water and blood mixed, spat through the air as his throat was shot through.
Ground and dirt erupted and clouds and dust flying from impacts and exploding birds from the treetops and fifty shadows rising from the rocks and dust, teeth baring and blades and shooters and sticking poles they rattled all clad in brysts strapped by metal and skin, racks of hooked arrows and long metal nivs that glared in the sun.
The bodies descended on the Seeds. They shot missiles and hurled stones into them all. A group leapt up from the road in front of them, concealed in the snow by smattered roothide coldovers. Their foremost was half blind, and his head was bound by a white sash and hesigns ran across his body. A punisher’s rope was strung tight around his neck and trailed around his shoulder, flapping and swirling by the sprint. He drove against them with his friends, brandishing nothing but a rusty knife.
The Seeds rallied in columns against each mass of tippers, who attacked with avalanche. Walls of poking rods and ranks of shooters projected at them as Wander’s hand rose over her shoulder, took hold of her blaith, and eject its blade. She swung off the stronghoof, pushed Fragile down against it, and whistled. It was off, thundering past the contest to gallop clear of its centre. As soon as she leapt into battle, a wayward shaft struck it in the leg, causing it to groan and trip and crash into the snow. Fragile was thrown clear.
The Cane leapt to the fore of the first melee, and Wander the other. Each time De swung his bludgeon, the cheek and head of a tipper was broken open, tearing apart the flesh and bone and cutting out loose blood and exposing pale, contorted joints. It colored his weapon.
The knot-wrapped fighter and his friends wreaked havoc at the party forward, meeting Joyborn face-to-face. He fought the tipper, heaving angry gasps through his nose and keeping his jaw set and twisted. He knocked aside the fighter’s weapon and threw him. He kicked him on the ground and mounted him and wrapped his hands around the tipper’s neck as his Seeds sliced and despoiled the tipper’s companions. A fire started on the garment tying up Joyborn’s jaw. He could not scream, so his grip loosened and flailed wildly at the cloth. The tipper project him Eastward, where he crashed into the snow and rolled around bellowing.
De sprang to Joyborn’s defense. Before he could bring down the cane, the tipper turned his eye on De, and his hand stilled. Then he and his gown erupt in flames, and De appeared frozen by it. His fingers curled and his head tilted to the sky and his shivers receded for a moment.
Undeterred, the fighter threw his knife into the Seeds, cutting apart and burning the ones who remained. Wander broke from her section to press against him. As she approached, he turned his eye to her, and she too went to fire, which land and germinated on her armor, shoulderskin, and vest. The Bell screamed and a great heat and wind blew against the battlefield.
Stop! The Bell screamed. Do not burn me! I cannot see you!
In Wander’s absence, Fragile stayed by the stronghoof, holding onto it and breathing quickly as he tried to press against the bleeding in its leg. It screamed and he cried. A mass of arms and legs seized him from behind and covered his mouth, dragging him away from the stronghoof and up one of the slopes.
The knot-wrapped tipper cut the throat of another Seed. A silent volume thundered toward him, and he turned to see Wander’s immolating, flame-frothed spectre stampede through his guard and break him in half. They became a writhing tangle of limbs and withering fire as Wander wrest him down to the dirt and snow. She knocked him twice on the nose and chin, shooting his head back and forth. She reached around her side and pulled out her skinning knife.
The flames that ate away at De receded. He shook, and then he bashed and swept his way through the tippers that remained towards Wander and her opponent. He raised his cane above his head.
The knot-wrapped tipper broke his hand free of Wander’s grasp and clenched her knife’s blade as it snapped at his throat. He canted his wrist, breaking the metal, and kicked out his leg. De was knocked backward into a thicktree, where the crust and barks splintered into a fine spray of dust. Wander’s hits rebounded against his forearm. He dislodged her with a strike from his boot and ran, scrambling up the slopes and into the hinterland.
-
The hand that had squeezed shut Fragile’s mouth did not release him. He was hauled into the rounds, far and fast.
“Be still, feurkun,” the tipper whispered. “We will bring you to an open place.”
The hours passed. The sounds of fighting became more distant. The impassioned breathing of his captors became measured and husky. He saw the forest move around him. They haulted him up on a fighter’s back, going past the places safe for trees, up sheer ascents and narrow gaps where the ground would part. From these points, one could observe the whole of the descent, and see the only swellings of the world where their territory was matched in grandeur and cloudy refrain.
They climbed up a plate of rocks and then slid down into a sprawling cavity where the stone split apart. Fragile could hear water rushing, and the light retreated from him. It gave way to darkness, firelight, and foresting spines that dripped water. He was placed on a jagged, half-steady rock, and there he was released.
Fragile looked out at the forty faces that had been revealed, gleaming from rays of burn. The tippers were clad in armor and weapons patched together from rags of cloth, the gray cloaks and armor of Larun nivmen, as well as disparate belts, pouches, hooks, sacks, robes, skins and coats that spoke of no clear set. Their eyes looked at his, wide and searching, brows narrowed.
The day passed by and the angle of the sun shining into the keep changed. The tippers reassembled when a large tipper, missing an eye and neck-laced by the severed rope of a Larun punisher, lumbered inside with a companion. They approached Fragile, who had tears in his eyes.
“What is your way?” asked the knot-wrapped tipper. His Goalish was accented in much the way of Joyborn’s. Fragile was too cowed to speak. His captor blinked. “Have you any way at all?”
Fragile nodded.
“That is a beginning,” the tipper said.
He sat down on a rock in front of Fragile. The other tippers dispersed, honing knives and sparking fires, and they continued to measure the stranger in assembly. The ones who stood next to the knot-wrapped tipper kept in front of them, glowering, while he continued. “I am Unseen,” he said. “That is what you say.”
He gestured to the kind around him. “You have met my Points.”
Fragile looked at the cross-armed tipper who had accompanied Unseen. The others regarded Fragile quietly, but the eyes of that one bulged at his face and at his braids and at his cloak. Fragile opened his mouth in questioning, but breath would not leave his chest and his stomach tensed up.
Unseen folded his hands. “You are wondering how it could be?” he questsaid.
Fragile struggled to sit upright. He was shaking. “I believed a Point,” he whispered, “was a Larun thing.”
“Some of them are Laruns.”
Fragile realized he was right. Not all of the tippers were Goalish people; some had skin that was like Wander’s, and hair that was wild and grey. The skin of others was dull or burned some brighter color. Others had flatter, rounder noses and chins and cheeks. Half of the assembly could have come from a different place.
“What creates a Point?” he asked.
Unseen furrowed his brow at him. He answered, “Well, a thing must not be feurkun. It must see great things, and handle them. That is all I know.”
“That is your call? Eldman?”
He nodded.
The man before Fragile shouted at him. Fragile had never heard his words before. A few of them sounded similar to Wander’s, but they were still very different. He looked between them as they discoursed.
“He is called the Looking One,” Unseen said, “He asks, ‘to whom do you offer?’”
“To the rulers,” Fragile said.
Unseen shook his head. “I think he means something else.”
The Looking One unsheathed his langniv and walked up to Fragile. He grasped Fragile’s arm and pressed his head forward with the flat of the blade, inspecting the back of his neck. Fragile choked and sputtered.
He threw Fragile forward onto the jagged stone. He barked at Unseen.
“He says, ‘you are not one of us,’” Unseen said. “He says you are not like them.”
The Looking One spoke again and craned his neck at Fragile.
“He wonders if he should cut you open.” Unseen said.
The other tippers, listening quietly, escaped their leisure and erupted into arguments. Fragile looked around at them in terror, shrinking back against the stone escarpment. Some of them raised arms and struck one another. Unseen kept his spot.
The Looking One stepped forward as the brawl progressed.
“Is feurkun,” he said in Goalish. “And man. Is you?”
“I am Fragile.”
“Fragile – travel it.”
“A Fragile thing is weak,” Fragile said.
“Fragile is weak.” The Looking One nodded. “Fragile is weak?”
Fragile’s hands gripped the rocks behind him. “Fragile…” he stuttered. “Fragile… is me.”
The Looking One held his gaze and sniffed. “What is you walk on them?” He pinched his nose as the words spilled out, and reverted to his preferred tongue. Unseen stepped forward, gently brushing aside a thrown rock that landed at his feet.
“He will know why you would walk with stars, and Laruns,” Unseen said, “if there is no sign that put you to it.”
“I do not know,” Fragile said.
Unseen repeated his words. The Looking One spoke, and Unseen listened.
“He is saying that he does not hate your kind,” he continued, “but that he will cut you open if you have no answer. They must know who your eyes are for.”
Fragile’s breathing rushed, and became shallow. He struggled to speak while he cried. “My eyes are for me,” he said, “And my friend. I do not know her name. She is a Star that Wanders. She fights for riverborn hearts. For breathers.”
Unseen repeated his words. The Looking One kicked Fragile in the jaw, silencing the slap and bellow behind them. A blade dropped to the ground and rattled sharp against the stone.
The Looking One barked. “He says your eyes belong to an enemy,” Unseen said. “It is an enemy I have hit, and who has hit me. Your Larun is filled with great power, and she has put it to my commanders.” His mouth soured.
“She is not a Larun,” Fragile gasped. “She has cut apart many with that name!”
Unseen chattered at The Looking One.
“The name is nothing,” The Looking One muttered. “And Laruns cut their kind.”
Then he put his knife to Fragile’s cheek. His blood splashed upon the rocks.