The pass was quiet, except for the light rustling of metal. One of Joyborn’s three remaining Seeds, an older Rootcliff boy who now missed an ear, collected weapons and trinkets from the dead tippers and his fallen brothers. His eyes drooped as he ripped up coins from their pockets and bloody knives clutched by their hands and placed them in a leather sack. Another cared for their commander in an impromptu, tented chamber, from which his thrashing moans and roaring radiated out to the mounds of ice and thickwoods.

The third Seed cared for the animals who had survived. The hoofs sat in a line outside the tent, where he tended to the stronghoof. It bellowed in pain as he extracted the metal from its leg, spread a jelly on it, and wrapped it up in cloth. The Cane shuddered on the edge of the battleground, running his hands through the rocky soil.

A high, thumping shadow stepped back through the trees at the top of the Eastern slope. De gazed up at it and found the ragged silhouette of Wander, cut to pieces by the chase with no prey in hand. They shared a glance before he looked down again.

Wander she slid down the slope onto the battlefield, spying absently among the fallen. Her gaze became consumed by the body of a tipper who had been thrown on his back with his head cracked open. The rear of his neck had been exposed by his injury, leaving the beginnings of an inky black mark.

She went up to the body and pulled it back, revealing the whole image. It was an open black circle. No line ran through it.

Her eyes lingered on the brand. Then she went to another body and kicked it over, where she found it again. She checked another and found it again.

She looked at it. The clinking and clattering of the Seed’s scavenges piped and rang and screeched against her eardrums. The ringing made her muscles bulge, her jaw clench and

“Where is the feurkun?” she asked.

The Seed looked up. “Where is the Goal?” she repeated. She turned her head and body. The stronghoof and the Seeds were there; Quiet Feet was gone.

“I last saw him by your side,” the Seed replied, “kontor.”

She went from body to body, searching for Quiet Feet. She walked between each, checking the face and head and then moving on when she realized it wasn’t him. The Seed watched her with searching mutters and a tilted head. De observed from a distance.

She threw the last man to the ground. She let out a lingering propelled roar, and a flock of wings nestled in the labyrinthine brush of a nearby thicktree were thrown up into the sky, exploding a shrill chorus of overlapping chirps and screams that dimmed as they retreated into the sky.

Wander collected herself and sat down on a tree that had been smashed apart by the violence. She brought out her pipe and chewed on it.

“Can you see him?” she asked the Bell.

I cannot see, the Bell moaned. I cannot see! I cannot see!

“I can,” De said.

She looked up at him. Half of his mask had been broken and his eyes were cast in shadow. He put a jittering finger to the nose of his mask and nudged it.

Wander chewed her pipe.

She fished out a necklace from her belt. The yellow shell hanging from its loop had not been hurt. She threw it up to him; his constant shaking crystallized when he extended his hand to catch it.

He raised the shell to the tip of his nose and inhaled.

-

The night began.

Fragile was sent to a pit at the bottom of the cave. He was kicked and slapped and struck with sticks. His hands were placed in rope. The tippers assigned to watch him studied him for a long time, and then left.

Unseen came to visit him.

He stepped down into the pit, his features a crop of mangled skin and scars that had evolved from his fight with the company of De. His chin and nose were beat and crooked and let blood slip. For all his injuries he had not shifted in key and as he brought a slick bowl of dinner down to Fragile’s cage and stirred it around with a wooden scoop, he hummed to himself. Fragile did not retreat from him at first, but he bunched up and prepared to do so quickly.

As Unseen ate, a disturbance slipped out in the air between them, rippling the metal and stone that separated Fragile from his captors. He kicked himself away from the presence and breathed quickly.

“Why are you shaking?” Unseen asked.

Fragile looked at it. “I have never seen such a thing,” he said.

“If your words have really pointed your way,” Unseen said. “then you know nothing about this star.”

A fire embraced the edges of the bowl Unseen held and it began to steam. Unseen hummed and pushed around the food in it. He held out a piece to Fragile: a gilled, fraying piece of yellow meat, which began to dissolve at its edges. Fragile could see that it was dark outside, so he crawled over and bit it with his mouth.

“Your star has someone, as I do,” he said. He plucked a white, bulbed growth from his bowl and put it in his mouth. “Behind her.” He threw back his hand with the scoop. “It’s why I could not win.”

Fragile gazed at the heated bowl. “Someone makes fire?” he said.

“He does,” Unseen said. “It is given to me.”

“Someone gives it?”

He nodded. “We need fire. It keeps us warm. It sends away fear. That is what he says.”

“Does he make it? By himself?”

Unseen chewed. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think he knows. He will burn things that must have it. And when he is afraid for me. He is often confused. But he is my friend.”

Tears silently ran down Fragile’s face and his gaze shifted. Unseen stirred around his food, and brought in another mouthful of the meat.

He held out another piece to Fragile, who took it and rested his head against the cage.

“Have you really come into this that way?” Unseen questsaid. “The one you named?”

“Yes,” Fragile replied.

“What happened to your friends? Your creators?”

“They are gone.”

Unseen nodded. His teeth closed around another lump. “I have come into these that way. I think that many hearts have gone.”

Fragile tried to sit up, on his knees. “How did you do it?” he asked. “E- … eldbrother?”

Unseen glanced at his face as he chewed, watching him cringe and fluster himself. “We worked together once,” he muffled. “I did not like how they were regarded. The work made us close.” He pushed around his food. “They helped me to escape. Now they have my breath, and it will dry up for them.”

“Are you a star?” Fragile asked. “A star of the Family?”

“I was a Seenblade.”

“What is a Seenblade?”

Unseen raised his brow. “You have travelled with one.”

Fragile’s face twisted up, and then he remembered De and Joyborn. “I did not know.”

“A Seenblade is a man,” Unseen said, “with a cane.”

“I have seen many like that.”

“You have,” Unseen said. “The cane may be bigger and different, and they may lift it easier. But they are seen. And that makes them what they are.”

“What can see them?”

Unseen scraped up the last bits of meat in his bowl. He held them out to Fragile, who turned away, and dumped them in his mouth. He drew a hand across his lips, smearing them, and set the bowl aside.

“Rulers,” Unseen said.

Unseen brushed the juices from his lips and watch Fragile’s expression twist up again. He came closer to Fragile’s cage, and Fragile shrank into the corner. He did not know whether to shut his eyes or watch the man descend on him.

“If this star of yours could throw me down,” Unseen whispered, “would she go away?”

Fragile turned his head at the question. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You do not know why you came.”

“I came to show a body,” Fragile said. “And say some words. But that is all.”

Unseen smacked his lips and rubbed his hands.

“I adore my friends,” he said. “Do you know that?”

He looked down. “They enjoy me to completion. From the day I was given breath, my I entertained a cut of itself. The breath I had was half of one. I will meet them until I exit the rulersland.

He turned his gaze to Fragile. “Do you adore your friends?”

A thin bead burned its way down The Stringplayer’s face. “Yes.”

Unseen pressed his lips together.

He placed down the empty bowl and walked up the pit, leaving Fragile in darkness.

-

De held Quiet Feet’s necklace and smelled it. He looked left and right through the trees, and hobbled left. He and Wander progressed through the rounds, walking up to see the rise of the woods and know how their path had sent them in to the cloudy peak of a corktopped hill.

They travelled in silence. Wander spoke with the Bell, whose conception dissolved and flit around when a wing shrieked or De tripped on a branch or the wind blew by a clump of leaves. She clung as close to Wander then as she had in the aftermath, smothering her and producing a fog that she was forced to press through.

You go to the cold! The Bell screamed.

What?

We cannot fight them! she cried. We cannot! I will burn!

Who?

The other one! she screamed. I do not know how!

Who have you fought?

They said horrible things, she cried. They said I am like them. They said I am not a servant. They said that Am is not there.

The Bell continued to gibber. Wander turned her attention to De. “What caused the fire?” Wander asked.

“H-has worker,” De said. “S-signs. Old b-b-blade. Maybe.”

They came across a fallen tree that blocked their path. De crouched down, put his hands under it, and jerked upward. The tree sailed over Wander’s head and crashed tumbling down the slope, until it banged against a pair of wingtrees and came to a stop. They kept moving.

“The old blades lost their workers,” she said.

“M-most,” De replied.

The Bell’s fear shook her. “If it is an enemy,” she continued, “how can we hit it?”

“W-we h-hav-ve,” he said.

She pushed past a branch. “We have what?”

“W-worker.”

She looked at him. He stopped and brushed his cane free of ice and snow. His hand flicked out at her.

“Y-you h-have,” he said.

“I don’t have a worker.”

De’s mask bored into Wander. He planted his cane in the ground.

“She is not a worker,” Wander said.

“‘S-sh-she,’” De mumbled. He walked on.

“I have my friends,” Wander said. “You have yours. How did you know?”

“I h-have,” he said. “H-he c-can s-s-see.”

“Why didn’t it protect us?”

“Will ob- b-bey,” De said. “T-this-s t-time.”

“It didn’t?”

Something in De’s back rapidly distended, kicking up a section of his gown. It settled back into place, and emit clicking. His head twitched.

“No,” he said.

He kept marching up the hill.

Need hands for friends! The Bell screamed. Need hands! Need hands!

-

The hilltop entrance to the tipper’s descent lair was silent, except for the pittering drip of icy riverlets that fell down into its crevice. A leaf crunched in the icepiked bush on the land below it. The crushing boot rolled itself up, over snow, past the twisting pillars and cavernous fissure which produced the way into their chamber.

Wander and De crept down the path where Fragile’s smell lead. It gave way to a space surrounded by sloping rock walls and cones. They found tattered, tented dwellings whose gray was fraying into threads black and white, forming gappy webs of fabric that would translate the chill of the darkness therein. Four-footed bisect carcasses, chopped wooden stakes, hammering tools, a langniv without a blade, boards marked by legible cuts, and an empty clay jug that had been wrapped in wool lay about, remnant of empty space. The dwellings were without people and animals, all except one.

The knot-wrapped tipper lay down in the center of the place, looking up at the roof, his legs crossed. He turned his head when they approached and withdrew their weapons.

He breathed and stood up. His fingers displaced the knife from his belt, and he gripped it with his left hand.

He struck at them in a flash, and neither could bring response before they were engulfed in fire, and forced to address the slashes of his little blade.

Wander brought her blaith down on the tipper’s side, and it met open air. Her eyes remained set and her mouth closed as she swung at his neck and chest, biting at him with a speed and shape which twisted space.

De swept forward. His gown slithered along the stone and he swung his cane through empty air. He did not desist. He pressed on with frantic vigor, piercing through the rocks. The effort shot his garment into the air and it came alive.

While they fought, the lair filled with screams and screeches coming from three spots. Their combat was colored by the cries of Laruns, Goals, and other dark, jumping voices that licked one another and mixed themselves apart.

De was not faster than the tipper. He was beaten back and cast over one of the cavern’s cliffs, creating a missile of his gown that hurtled through the darkness.

The tipper seized Wander by the hands and belched a roar into her that splayed itself over the rocks and spires.

Wander and the tipper wrestled, pressing against the other in still and silent exertion. The work sent stabbing bolts into her hands and arms and legs and chest. A muscle tugged on her brow, which was unaffected.

The tipper gripped her palms and pushed her back. She watched him grind apart his teeth and throw himself against her. Her feet splintered the rocks. Their skin split and bled, and she began to think about where she had gone and how she had arrived at her position. She thought about where she would go and who she was. She could find nothing to hold onto, except her hatred, and even that was slipping through her fingers.

As the shadow began to overtake her, a brilliant image arrived in her eye. A flower.

It was Fragile’s flower – his seventy-petalled, violet blossom, which he had plucked from the boughs of Eighty’s papersquare. He brought it up to his nose with both hands, and it put a smile on his face. The sky had cleared that day, and the warmth of the sun and stars fell over his skin and he seemed to glow from the black of his hair.

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

One of the petals broke away and began to drift to the ground. So a part of her reached out for it, and took it in her hands.

The tipper was thrown to the ground, his hands crushed into wrinkled, bony weeds. A pressure uncoiled itself from Wander’s head, and a silent wave of white light resounded throughout the chamber. When he recovered, she cracked her fist across the tipper’s jaw, and did it again, and again, and again, and again. She replaced him on the floor and placed her knee on his chest. She followed it with the short blade, which she pressed against his throat. She made a cut there.

“I don’t want to do this,” she said.

The tipper stopped moving and began to gargle. Viscous black fluid was pushed out between his teeth. “Why not?”

“I know what you are. I don’t want to hurt you. I just want the Goal.”

“We protect the things we price,” he said. His hand broke free of his grip and seized her; her edge broke forward, through everything between it and stone. His body went limp, but the light in his eyes remained. His lips moved; Wander saw the opening stanzas of an offering in Shamar. He did not get far, and soon his silence was true.

She sat up on his body. She rested her weapon on her knee, and for a while her gaze had no aim.

A rocky scrambling gained her attention. At the edge of the cliff, a gloved hand found purchase in a spindly crag on the ledge. The figure it belonged to looked up; his mask followed up Wander’s battered ascent, looming over him and tense with her fading exertions. She put out her hand, which he took.

As she hauled him to his feet, they assessed the screaming, which had moved down to the ground and begun to dissipate. Another flash of white light skittered about the cavern. Wander could not hear the Bell anymore.

“What is that?” she asked.

“W-workers,” De replied. He fell to the ground again, wracked by tremors and the shaking of the cave. Strange shapes animated his gown, clicking and writhing. They arched outward, hoist his covering into the air, and shot it down into the stone.

“T-tired,” he gasped. “M-must rest. Must!”

He shook out Quiet Feet’s necklace from his robe and shivered it into her hand. “The b-braid,” he whispered. “Find the b-braid.”

-

Wander attempted to entreat the Bell as she moved away. Where is he? she asked. Tell me. But the Bell would still not speak, and Wander could not feel much of her at all.

She threw up her voice. “Quiet Feet?” Wander called. She tossed apart the tipper dwellings, tearing out their beams and branches and tanned hide walls. “Quiet Feet!”

“Wander.”

A faint, muffled cry broke from a shadowy depression in the rear of the tents. She investigated, and saw his cage at the bottom. She saw him bound by the feet and hands and she saw the slashing on his face and the black soiling that twisted up his skin.

She walked down into the pit, making sure not to trip. When she reached the cage she cracked it open, divorcing the metal bars from their post and crushing them in her hands. She pulled him out by the chest and legs and laid him down.

The string that bound Fragile met her short blade, as did the coils that tied his feet. She helped him sit up and put her gauntletted hands on his shoulder and side and brushed back his hair, which had become tangled and knotted.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Wander shook her head. “Do not say it. Are you hurt?” She traced the crescent scar on his cheek. “Who did this?”

“I’m not hurt.” She held the nape of his neck with her glove. His cheeks grew warm. Tears flowed and he clenched her arms.

A shadow with shifting edges fell over them from the top of the pit. They both looked at it, and Wander released him.

De shivered. He watched the decaying rays of warmth bubble about between the Seenblade and her feurkun hand, and for a moment he grew still. Then, he raised up his wobbling, bloodstained club, and shifted it in the direction of the lair’s ascent.

Wander shook Fragile’s arm. “Come,” she said.

A shivering inhabited the empty space surrounding the body of Unseen and enveloped him. Another began to shake up the rocks which surrounded their space. It crept up, watching its opponent’s caress.

Interesting, thought the Bell. You chose to stay with this one.”

We’ve both done things we were never meant to do, the shadow said. Gone against our points. We had nothing in the world but one another. That is how breathers do it; I will have nothing again. And we will be like.

The shadow lost its form and dispelled.

“What a stumbled animal, said the Bell. So full of well-danced words.”

Wander and Fragile, who had exited the pit, approached the Bell. Revealed now in the light, the rope Unseen had used slithered toward them. It spun whirling shapes around Fragile and Wander’s feet. “Triumph!” the rope said. “Triumph! We are in triumph! Our company is returned!” Her voice, high and warm, burrowed into Fragile’s ear. The experience was less strange to Wander, but she was amazed to find it all outside herself.

It rushed toward Fragile, who feel back and recoiled. Wander reached out to catch him, and seized him by the chest. A heated disturbance entered Fragile’s chest as she brought her arm around his back, which he lacked the ease of mind to interrogate.

“What is that?!” he exclaimed.

“I am the Bell,” the Bell shouted. “She is my joy-filled one. I find friends for her.” She wove around Fragile’s waist, squeezing tight. “I found you, friend! We became a heart adorable! A sight beyond flaws! An unquestionable kind!”

Wander set him down on the ground and violently ripped The Bell free of his waist. It coiled around her arm and throat, tying them together.

“I think this is the Bell,” Wander said. “I didn’t tell you about her.”

She glanced at Fragile. His eyes were orbing and green and they waited for her to say something more. She didn’t.

“What is her kind?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Wander replied. “I’m not sure if she has one. She helps He Grantar. So she helps me.”

“I am the one and only,” The Bell affirmed. “I am all my own.”

Wander frowned as the Bell continued to wind knots around her shoulders and torso. “She came to me at another time. When I was young.”

Fragile’s mouth opened and then closed. “How did she take that shape?” he asked. “It was not moving, a moment ago.”

“I don’t know. She’s never done this before.”

“I’m smiling,” the Bell said. “Smiling that she has friends. The joyous one needs friends. She needs them to breath. Everyone needs friends to breath!”

Wander knelt down, extracting The Bell from her body and placing it on the ground. The tension in Fragile’s body was dissipating. “She must hold all manner of strength,” he said. “Does she have any different works?”

The Bell curled around him with such speed that Fragile’s eyes could not keep up. “I can hear. I can talk to you. I can talk to the joyous one.”

“She has some sight into you and others,” Wander said. “Sometimes she tells me of it.”

Fragile’s eyes widened.

While they revelled, De contemplated the body of Unseen. He cleaned the blood from his metal and struck it in the ground, turning their heads towards him.

“C-come,” he called to Wander. He directed his cane at Fragile. “C-c-come.”

They ventured over to the corpse. Wander approached De, who knelt down by it.

He looked to Wander.

“P-point,” De said.

Wander turned to Fragile. “You need to say it now,” she said in Goalish. She bent her head in the direction of the corpse.

Fragile tried to remember the words she had told him. “J-j-…” He stuttered. “Jy… emen. Jy-emen.”

De’s mask held on Fragile. Fragile watched him, wondering what he had said and what its significance was.

It satisfied De. He looked back at Unseen and stumbled down to him and drew his hand across his written chest.

“Others,” De said.

“What happened to the rest of them?” Wander asked Fragile. “Did you see?”

“They left,” he replied. “One night ago.”

Wander repeated his answer in Sprak.

De picked up the corpse, hoisting it under one arm, and he grabbed the head by its hair. He stumbled away, hauling them up into the light. Fragile limped up to Wander with the Bell wrapped around his waist. It slipped down onto his leg and slithered through the snow, winding up her calf and going to adorn her shoulders.

Wander turned to Fragile. His hair was ripped and torn. His skin had been opened up into a canvas for lines and spots. They were red, black and blue, and she could only see him in a place underneath.

“Can you walk?” she asked.

His legs were shivering and he felt like he would collapse. “I… I don’t know.”

So she swept him up in her arms, bringing out a sudden gasp.

As they rose up through the pits and then descended the hill, Unseen filled his empty gaze with the bodies of the three invaders. His eyes never left, and all could feel their sightless touch. Even once they had put the place far behind, Wander did not feel whole. She wondered why she had expected to.

-

They rode back through the rounds.

Their company returned to Partplant on the evening of the second day. De visited the koropole’s papersquare with the body of Unseen, ported inside by the Seeds atop a cloth litter.

They reemerged from the doors and their pointed battlements. De approached Wander and Fragile, while the surviving Seeds removed to their hoofs and Joyborn, who sat secured on the back of one.

De stepped forward, and Wander cast her eyes down at him. He held up a carved wooden box whose walls folded inward.

“P-parts,” he said.

She took it. De kept his hand out and struggled to keep it steady, cracking opening his palm and nodding it in offering. She took hold of his wrist, and he reciprocated. She looked into his eyes; the peculiar shadows of the papersquare and a severed ray of the sun enabled her at last to fully appreciate their shape and shade. Each was mossed, burst with black freckles, and muddy. But their centers had clear and insistent color, shifting between silky white and mottled brown.

Something struck into place in Wander’s I and snapped apart. Her grip clenched, and it did not seem to pain him. She removed her hand.

De placed down his cane and leaned on it with both hands. “I… am… old-d,” he said. “We – will – n-not – m… meet… a-gain.”

His mask turned to Fragile, who stood level to him. Again he lingered without a word, and Fragile’s hiding began to itch. Then, he stepped away.

De walked back toward the Seeds; Wander watched him mount his white-coatted hoof and gallop South out of Partplant, guiding Joyborn’s hapless ride, body, and three remaining boys back into the Wild. Joyborn’s eyes followed them as he was trotted past the bounds of the house and hills, which hid his gaze at last.

“Wander?” Fragile inquired, after she failed to move or speak at all. “Is something wrong?”

Her eyes were trained on the horizon, and they declined. “I’m tired,” she said.

She swaggered back into Partplant, making for the salon.

-

Wander remained in their room for much of the evening, and she would not speak, so Fragile went out from it. He spent his time in the public room plucking at his three-string.

The Warrior came out for one of the Salon’s meals. She clanked up to the Salonier, whose weaving was halfway finished. Fragile saw her descend the steps from a distance, her armor strapped on and ashy.

“What have you seen, Goodpoint?” he greeted.

“I want a barrel of grain.”

The Salonier raised his eyebrows. He set his needlework aside. Wander laid the box of parts she had received on the table and opened it, unhinging his jaw. He ran his fingers through the heap and plucked out a coin. “This is enough.”

“Where do you keep it?”

The Salonier brought her to a passage at the rear of the room, where steps lead down into a dark chamber.

“I can bring a light, if you need it,” he said.

“I don’t.” She walked toward it.

“Goodpoint,” The Salonier called. Wander turned her head.

“This other spot we spoke about,” he said. He lifted the box in his hands. “Do you want-?”

“Yes,” she said. “If you will still do it.”

“What I mean is, there is more than enough-”

“So take it all.” She turned back to the cellar. “I don’t want to see it.”

Wander retrieved her barrel and cracked it open by one of the tables in the Salon’s public room. She collected a pitcher from a rack by the Salonier’s gourd and dunked it inside, and she sat drinking among the laughter of the Laruns, the carpenters, the Rootcliffs, the sellers, and the mercenary fighters of the Salon. As her eyes grew dark and fell, and she downed the whole of it, Fragile kept his distance. She seemed oblivious or indifferent to the characters which she had gone to inhabit, which was not something he had always seen. No matter how much she drank, the water did not shake her.

At the very end of the night, most of the road people had trailed out or retired, save Wander and Fragile. The fire on the walls burned low. Wander put back one last pail of grain. Then she grasped the barrel by its sides and poured it into her mouth. It bounced and rolled away when she dropped it, trailing a thin, clear stream.

She looked over to where Quiet Feet had been sitting, in the dark and distant corner where he had played for De. He was sleeping, leaned up against the wall, where he hugged his three-string.

She stumbled over to him, knocking over a table and tripping on a stool. The drink had steeled her nerves and she used it to pick him up, supporting him against her armor. She carried him in her arms up the stairs.

She laid Fragile down on a sheet on the floor and put a sheet over him. Then she dragged herself onto a feathered platform and grasped her short blade tight to her chest. The spaces she could see seemed much darker, and she knew she would depart them soon.

-

She was the mind. She had forgotten her name. She was in the fourth cell she had ever been, because she smelled water, thunder, metal, and steam. She could hear the voices of the Amwraiths echoing out over the Songlake.

A pair of white and brown irises burned themselves into hers, as they had each day last. She sat herself before the mirror in her room, and observed her body, how it had been buttoned and craft against knives by signmarked agents, and covered at last by the Family’s words. She looked up into her reflection, where she saw it all with stillness and clarity. She looked into the eyes of her oppressor, and picked up the blade which sat at her feet.

She pushed the metal into her chest, and she found it could cut through her skin only after she applied her second hand. The gash did not bleed, but she could feel it. Like the others, it stirred up fire in her belly, and turned her mind, and caused great revolt. She wrestled them all to the ground. It did not send out any part of her she thought to miss, and so she continued.

It felt as it had before, and it did not injure her, or send out any part of her that she missed. So she continued.

Someone knelt down beside her. A pair of blue eyes emerged in the mirror and watched her enemy. “Work faster,” they said.

She pushed it in again.

“Again,” they whispered. She pushed.

“Again.”

“Again.”

“They will have nothing else of mine.”

She pushed. In the mirror she saw him, looked up and found him there, sitting past the mask.

She pushed.

-

“Stand up, weak thing! STAND UP, WEAK THING!”

Fragile cried out in terror as he was jerked upwards. He felt the visceral terror of the Bell wrap around his mind and body. The knotting creature bound up his torso and yanked him forward.

Someone was sat on their knees in the middle of the room. The starlight produced the barest frame for Fragile to gauge her by, glinting off her short blade, which was aimed at her torso. Wander’s image hardened, and he could see her eyelids drooping, and her mouth, which was caught up in a busy and unconscious articulation of her mother tongue.

“The joyous one is pained!” the Bell bellowed. “The joyous one needs help! Stop her! Stop her now!”

He rushed over to her and clutched her wrist with both hands. The Bell snaked over his forearm and bound his hand to her glove, giving him a tighter grip.

The weapon came down and brought them with it, pushing deep into her sternum. She brought it up and down again, and again, yanking him back and forth. He let go of it, shook her shoulders and wailed. “Wander! Wander! Stop this! Do not do it!”

“and… pain whichis more… pain whichis more… faster whichis move… pain whichis more…”

He realised she would not stop and his eyes bulged. He watched her muscles clench and her blood clot and harden and heard the groan her blade forced out with each strike and suddenly he was squirreling himself under her arms and throwing his arms around her neck. Intense warmth sealed up a place in his chest. A very small and distant part of him wanted to smile, and he wept.

The blade came down again, and the length of it drove into Fragile’s back. The worst pain he had ever felt excavated a gape between two ribs. He screamed, and water gushed past his eyes. He hugged her tight and bit his lip, eliciting scarlet rivulets that bled down his chin.

The metal slowed its entrance and he gasped quickly. It steadied and then stilled. The blade shook and withdrew, leaving an icy tunnel of nerves that mourned and flailed in panic when he moved. He looked at Wander, whose eyes had opened into thin slits. The dark had made them beady and black, and they enlarged as they fell on him. Her lips bubbled apart. “Quiet Feet?”

Fragile’s vision became watery and the moisture decomposed Wander into many parts. She and the room dissolved, consumed by the great power that the work had invoked.

-

The beginnings of light streamed in from the shutters of the Salon.

“Ach!” Fragile gasped. Wander tugged a new strip of cloth around his chest.

“Keep still. Or it won’t fix.”

He blushed.

She wrapped the cloth under his shoulders. “That was a very wrong thing to do,” she said. “A very wrong thing.”

“I’m sorry,” Fragile said. “I tried others. If I hadn’t… you would’ve…”

“What?” Wander flattened out the binding and began to tie it. When he didn’t reply, she spoke. “This isn’t the first time this has happened. You’ve seen me hit and struck and cut. Did you really see this as enough to send me?”

“I guess I wasn’t really… seeing.” He flinched as her gloves grazed his sensitive skin.

“Well, if you had been doing anything a finger to the left, it would’ve sent you.” She pulled the knot tight, and he cringed. She took the initial, bloodsoaked arrangement of torn bedding that she had used as a temporary stanche the night before and stood up.

“That’s all I can do for now,” she said. “The gap should fill, but it’ll be sore for a while. And it will lump. There’s nothing can be done about that.”

Fragile’s blood had pooled in a small stain near the bed. He pulled on his hoofskin over and retrieved a cloth and water to wipe it out. Wander replaced her needles and corks of spice in the pouches of her vest. When she thought Fragile wasn’t looking, she pressed a hand to her side and her fingers tore a chunk out of the wall.

Fragile perked his ears up at the wood’s sharp splintering and his scrubbing stopped for a moment. Then he continued.

“I wish you would not speak of this to anyone,” she said. “It reveals more than I’d prefer.”

Fragile nodded. “Yes, Wander. Of course.” He began to work the red out of the floor. She threw on the black covering beneath her shoulderskin and continued to dress.

“How long has it been happening?” he asked.

She pulled on her thick brown leggings and fastened the ties on her vest. “Five colds.”

“Do they know? Your family?”

She made the sheath on her back taut. “They could learn. If they have, they haven’t told me, or it doesn’t bother them.”

“What causes it?”

Wander picked up her blaith, which sat on her bed. A scarlet crust had seeped into the Hesigns’ detail, which had been cut fine enough that she could not scrub it out with her cloth. It glinted in the light. “A thing that is passed.”

She shut the blade into its sleeve.

Fragile threw water from a bucket onto the stain, which was beginning to thin. “I hope there is a way to make it stop.”

“If there is,” she said, “I will uncover it.”

She shut the blade into its sleeve.

Somewhere behind him, Wander strapped on her belt. “I’m going,” she said. “I need to speak with the Salonier. We’ll stay here an extra day to let you rest.”

“Ih?” Fragile said, turning to look at her. “That’s… good of you, but Wander-”

A sharp pain cut into his neck, and everything fell away.

When his body went limp, Wander caught his head and eased it down onto the floor. She picked up her tools and weapons and threw on her shoulderskin, fastening it around her neck. She got up to leave, began to walk out of the room, and stopped.

She looked back at Quiet Feet, whose slumped, peaceful countenance was locked by sleep.

She turned around. She rolled her feet as she approached him, muffling the sound of her boots on the creaking thickwood. She knelt down by his side.

Quiet Feet breathed in and out. He pumped air with his nose. A sigh loosed past his lips with each release. His eyelids fluttered. A clump of hair, dislodged by her hit, had fallen down before his eyes.

She was close on it now. She grasped the glove of her right hand and pulled it off. She reached out, put a finger around the bundle, and drew it behind his ear. While she did, the tip of her nail nearly grazed the edge of his skin.

Before it could touch, she pulled her hand back. The hair fell back into place and she waited. She flexed her hands. A wave of nausea, directed at her I, rolled through her skull. She closed her eyes and held a hand to her mouth.

She fumbled her glove back on and stumbled out. The door to the Salon crashed apart in the distance, tearing loose of its frame and splintering through the wood. It dangled and creaked at its post and he breathed, and sighed. He shifted in his sleep and the door creaked. He breathed and sighed, and the door creaked. He breathed.