“So it’s gone.”

She draws her mouth into a thin line. “Yes.”

“And… you’re okay with that.”

When Iseult shrugs, she does so with half of her body. Her left arm, bandaged at the stump just below her elbow, doesn’t move.

“Not much I can do.”

Íde peers out solemnly, through uneven glass, into autumn. Half of the leaves in the city have started to turn, and the streets have become thick with sodden leaves. She’s glad to be in Scannell’s, where the fireplaces are blazing against the sudden, swinging chill. Her hearth in the Lugrough house was boarded up decades ago, and she has grown tired of sketching a stockpile of low-burn sun sigils for the lengthening nights.

Her brothers are enjoying their new autumn cardigans, at least. Courtesy of her share from Colt & Tumble’s final payment, back on Inskoet. Before things went wrong.

They are once again in a pleasant room, surrounded by the agreeable trappings of old Ildathach. The cushions are deep. The walls are panelled with stained Aergan wood. Tastefully half-drawn curtains provide ample light, as does the small, happily crackling fireplace.

Both women are seated with the false casualness of housecats, perched on comfortable armchairs. Both have cups of coffee, though Íde has opted to mix hers with water, and sips from a traditional Yvreathan mug. Iseult, of course, rests her remaining hand on a saucer holding a tiny Bani Yahtrib glass. A pair of coarse garlic-sausage sandwiches lurks between the pair, untouched.

The sigilist’s brooch on Iseult’s chest is a bright, fiery crimson. Like an engine halo.

“And how do you know that?”

Iseult raises her eyebrows and follows Íde’s sight line before responding. “Well, I mean, Corr Vreackan is hundreds of miles away, and I’m here, minus a hand-“

“Not that.” Íde cuts her off. The force of her tone warrants another eyebrow twitch from the older woman. “How do you know it’s gone.”

“Ah.” Iseult shifts in her chair and reaches, wincing, for her coffee cup. She settles back into the plush leather with a grimace.

“Two sources. The first, obviously, Captain Omarin Holofernes. Sailors do enjoy tales. Especially when they’re the main characters. After we left, the privateers and navy ships took about a day to show up, only to find the entire moon anchored in place by strands of Noble rot. You know the stories about ships being marooned and enveloped by floating rotbergs? Nobody has ever documented that happening, until now.

“The Gundog Walking came back to Ildathach to put Sean and me in hospital. It resupplied, and immediately sailed back, part of a little fleet financed by the handful of people in Colt & Tumble who haven’t yet been arrested. Half a week to sail here, half a week to get back out to the moon. Although we got to the moon basically immediately, it took a bit more time for any serious missions to be sent up to investigate. So sometime between when the last of the first arrivals left and the first of the official ships arrived, the entire thing vanished. Captain Holofernes sends her regards, by the way.”

Íde doesn’t react, so Iseult continues. “Also, I’ve got a contact in northern Khazraj, and have been signalling to her for a few days now. The Principality of Dhahii has been experimenting with subnautical craft for the last several years. Underwater boats. They dispatched one of the reliable ones to investigate the ocean underneath where the moon was last seen.”

Rain begins to patter gently on the windows.

“They expected to find the thing, coated in noble rot, plugging the vortex. But it’s not there. Nothing’s there. They can’t reach the ocean floor, of course, but they should be able to find some trace of the moon. Nothing. Not even any rot left.”

Íde inhales forcefully.

“I know. Unusual. Corr Vreackan is totally gone, too.”

Iseult closes her eyes and lets the noise of the rain and the fireplace suffuse her, like she’s trying to clear her head. She takes a moment and sips on her drink, waiting for the caffeine to jitter her back to normalcy.

“Actually, it’s not just that. Every vortex is gone. Every single mapped vortex in the seas from Khazraj to Yvreathe have vanished.”

She lets this fact settle. Unable to explain it, and with no protests from Íde, Iseult continues the story.

“I think I know what happened. Or, I have a piece of the story. We know Colt & Tumble did something in the Wraithwild, almost two years ago, around the Salting Bleaks. Turns out some very interested people in Khazraj have been looking into it, as well. They found an excavation site. Absolutely devastated landscape, couldn’t tell if it was a crater or a mine. Everything, not just the equipment but the ground itself, had been burned. Colt & Tumble almost certainly found something. A few months after that, the moon showed up,”

She pauses, slowly looking around the room. “Well, actually, maybe they made the moon show up. Nobody to this day even knows why it appeared in the first place. But Colt & Tumble wanted it. I just can’t figure out why.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The younger sigilist tilts her head from side to side. “Do you think Mister Tumble used what they found, in the Salting Bleaks? Maybe they dug up some strange Wraithwild science, or magic. Maybe that’s how he was able to dupe so many people. Maybe that’s how he convinced the three of us to help him.”

Iseult’s mouth drops open, very slightly. Her teeth are very white. “That’s certainly an interesting hypothesis. What makes you think that?”

“Oh, nothing,” Íde lies, hastily. “Just a thought.”

The fireplace sparks in the silence.

“What about Sean?” Íde eventually asks, changing the subject.

Iseult doesn’t open her eyes. “He’s alive. But not doing well. Secondary infection of the digestive tract. He’s on laudanum, most of the time. The doctor tells me there’s more than half a chance he’ll make it.” Her eyes snap open. “But when I visited him he wasn’t himself. I actually met Brianna, on my way out of the hospital.”

Íde looks confused. “Brianna?”

“Brianna Whelan? His sister. Younger sister. The older one is busy in Llancreg.”

The young sigilist mulls this over, and looks slightly lost. She slumps, her free hand wedged into her coat pocket. “I never actually knew her name. He didn’t really talk about his family that much.”

“She wants to speak with you.”

When Íde replaces her coffee cup on the saucer, she does it too forcefully, betraying her anxiety. “Why? What could she want with me?”

A loud laugh explodes from a group on the far side of the room, and Íde twitches at the sound. Iseult clears her throat. “Well, closure, I suppose. I told her what I remember. But I’m not sure I have all the details in order. It would be good for you to reach out to her. She wrote down the address of her lodgings for me.”

Neither speak, and Iseult takes a folded square of paper from one of her chest pockets and slides it over the smooth tabletop.

“I hope he’s alright,” Íde says eventually, her voice cracked. “I’m glad we took him to Ildathach, but maybe he would’ve been doing better in Crowmere. The doctors are- the doctors, they are, uhm.” She flinches, tears forming at the corner of her eyes.

“Hey. Don’t,” Iseult seems to struggle with the words for a moment. “Don’t blame yourself. He knew what he was getting into.”

Íde Ceallaigh cries quietly, trying and failing to not let Iseult see. After half a minute, she wipes away her tears, bitterly. The coffee cup before her steams gently.

“Why don’t you seem to care about him?”

Iseult sits, thunderstruck at the question. Íde looks up angrily at her, tears rimming her eyes. The air between the two thickens, and Iseult looks away.

“I care about him very much.”

“Then what the fuck is wrong with you? I try to get in to that hospital every day, and they won’t let me, and you are allowed in, and you’re spending that time elsewhere, instead of with him.”

They could be reflections of each other, with those stares.

“You didn’t ask me,” says the older woman, eventually.

Íde has matured meaningfully, over the course of her travels with Sean and Iseult. Her mother noticed it. The other lodgers at the Lugrough Club noticed it, as did her landlady. Her brothers didn’t, but they are children, so they are excused. She has aged, more like leather than like wine. She can tell when someone is trying to misdirect her.

“I didn’t ask you what,” she says, bulking her words into a flat demand rather than a question. Not in the mood for games, now.

“About what Tumble said about me, in the moon.”

“No,” says Íde, still bristling. “I was being polite. And we had other things to deal with. Just like we have to deal with Sean, now. So please get to the point.” Neither of them look at Iseult’s missing arm.

“He wasn’t completely wrong.

“When I was fifteen,” Iseult starts. “I was a Bani Yathrib adult. I inherited very little save for a millennia of skills and the unyielding love of my tribe. It’s difficult to explain this to you, in terms you understand. A fifth of Bani Yahtrib children do not make it to adulthood. It is a difficult life.

“My tribe taught me many things. How to survive in the darkest parts of the Wraithwild. I know that you have been told the Shorn Peak will kill you, if you see it. This is a lie. It lets us keep hidden places. I grew and learned under the Wraithwild skies, and I began to understand the heritage that my ancestors built for us. The love of the stars, and the great and lonely emptiness between them. The quiet meditation that must be undertaken to hollow yourself of desire. I carved notes in little stone places, just as my family has done so for centuries. I have read poems and theories that are old enough that the rock they are written on has begun to decay. I have read your poetry as well, and that of al Khazraj, and Brixa Thalaam, and even some Tecuani sonnets. My people are alone in the acceptance of the banality of our lives. We are the only people who do not worship the Saints. We have no buried desire to lust over immortality. Even their version, the broken immortality.”

She pauses. Iseult is not naturally a story teller, and frowns, very slightly.

“But I am not a member of the Mahrin tribe, now. Officially. I call them my tribe, but they are not, because I was exiled when I was fifteen. You must understand, what it is, to live that way- to wander from place to place, over spaces so vast that they could normally only be travelled by animal or by boat. To walk through landscapes that change yearly, that might be desert or scrub or mountains, that might be a sea of cracked ash half the size of the Aergan. There is no arguing with the tribe. It lives and dies together. There is no dissent. Dissent means doubt, and doubt brings death. And I dissented.”

She runs her hand through her hair in a tired gesture that Íde has never seen her make.

“It was very simple. There was another tribe, another family. Thamaut tribe. Ghazw clansmen, merchant-raiders. There was no conflict between us, of course, because my tribe were predominantly philosophers. Our tribes, Thamaut and Mahrin, had a perfect respect for each other. Then I met a Thamaut my age. And then met him again and again, throughout the season.

“So, yes. My parents discovered this. This meant the tribes discovered it. And both of our peoples punished us, humiliated us. It could not be allowed, not yet. Perhaps not for years. Perhaps not ever. There was already a different marriage scheduled between the tribes, and these things have to be balanced very carefully.

“When we met again, and were discovered, the justice was simpler. I do not know what happened to him. But I was sent away, with my clothes and some water and a gun. Forever.”

She exhales heavily. “I never wanted to leave the Wraithwild, Íde. I was made to leave. I didn’t talk or cry, when they tattooed me,” she waves a hand in front of her face. “It took hours. I never spoke to them again. Had I stayed, had I become the person the Mahrin tribe was trying to shape me into, who knows what would’ve happened. I don’t think I was wrong to do what I did. But I don’t think my clan was wrong in their decision either.

“Back then, I had never been without a people. Brixa Thalaam was closer than Cotton Castle, so I spent a fortnight walking there, looking for a new clan. I didn’t know any better. Seeing that many humans all at once almost stopped my heart. The first friends I made took the belongings I’d scavenged from the wilderness, promised me a safe haven, and robbed me blind. I had just clothes and my gun, which I of course held in my arms when I slept. I walked to Ildathach, over the Aergan, through the plains. I lived outside the city, hunting simple prey. For months. When I joined the army, I did so with nothing but the skills my family had given me. It turns out that Bani Yathrib gunners are rare enough that I was noticed, and the military took me in for as long as I was useful. After the war, when I thought I had found a new family, the Ildathach government wanted nothing to do with me.

“I haven’t seen my tribe in two decades. I don’t even know who is still alive. My contacts in Khazraj once sent me a dossier of the Mahrin clan, from a company who’d done an exhaustive study of their Bani Yathrib trading partners. I didn’t recognise a handful of the names. Several I was looking for were missing.

“So you’ll excuse me, sigilist, if I don’t seem to be concerned about Sean. I care about Sean a great deal. More than you might ever understand. He is one of a very few number of men who has never expected anything from me. I have killed for him. I would do so again, without hesitation. But I am not the kind of person who lives life wearing her emotions openly. Truth be told, I have spent a great deal of my life wondering if I should keep living. So I will tell you this story once, then I will expect you to never, ever question my loyalty again.”

Íde apologises, folds her hands across her lap, and nods at a passing waiter. Iseult stares at the fireplace, as if incredulous of her own temerity. The afternoon drags on for half an hour more, and melts into a polite entente. They discuss a handful of more trivial matters: their health, their plans, the fate of Wynne Colt (fled to Cabochon, as far as anyone could tell).

When Iseult excuses herself to leave, Íde rises with her and shakes her remaining hand. They leave a small constellation of crumb-flecked plates and coffee cups in their wake. Neither mention how empty the table looks, without Sean to dictate the conditions of the meal. Iseult walks out alone, leaving Íde to ponder in solitude.

She sighs, stares out the window, and watches the black-robed figure of Iseult Morrin march away through the dreary autumn afternoon.

Íde Ceallaigh shushes the clamouring in her head. She releases her grip on the sigil sculpture in her pocket, and decides to visit her family.