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The days passed. The year slipped away.
King Mudt and his champions rode the land in pursuit of Ink left for them by the gods, yet found their progress ever impeded by the banishments enacted across the north. Thus, the last Orvesian King spent his days chasing power and his nights screaming at invisible walls, promising those who would shield their lands from him that they would all be put to the sword upon the island. But the world was large, and his shouts small by comparison, and much like his blade and his armies, his words could no longer reach his enemies.
And meanwhile, the soft-bodied King Hectore of Infinzel marked his own champions and left them to their own devices, hiding within his rooms at the top of his grand pyramid. It was from there he watched the return of Guydemion’s host, and felt grateful to see an army once again massed in the fields beyond his walls.
And meanwhile, the mage-prince Cizco Salvado prepared the pyramidal city’s champions for what was to come, acquiring Ink in lands the Orvesians could not reach, and making bargains with those factions who would stand with Infinzel.
And meanwhile, the estranged Queen Jocelyn, freed from her marriage to the cowardly pig Hectore and his scheming brother, returned to the southern continent with her marking of a dagger and coins, and found a beach where men and women had been marked like her. A man in the mask of a Crying Otter waited for her there, and offered her a mask of her own, and so the former queen left her name behind and became the Laughing Monkey.
And meanwhile, the oca’em watched from their towering fortress of coral as their leviathan devoured a fleet from Merchant’s Bay, too proud to see how those who sailed upon the seas made plans against them.
And meanwhile, the tomes of the Magelab gazed out across the lake that had long imprisoned them and discussed what might be done about their candles.
And meanwhile, the horse riders of the Gen’bi desert heard a whisper, though there was much fantasy in those days since the intervention of the gods, and no shortage of false visits by the divine were declared and discarded.
And meanwhile, the retired Captain Sulk who had abandoned the blackbird for the shield came to the quiet city of Beacon on the southern continent, a place where many once lived but now were few, the residents taken by the war, or fled, or forgotten. “Here will be the place,” Sulk declared. “Here we shall build something and show the gods we have learned their lessons.”
And then, it was time.
Thus, began the First Granting.
--Record of the First Granting and Dawning of the Second Age
Lyus Crodd, Scribe of the Dead Kingdom of Orvesis
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Carina Goldstone, Logician of the 3rd Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, seeing limited futures
Vitt Secondson-Salvado, Hunter of the 9th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, a surprisingly tolerable traveling companion
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28 Trollove, 61 AW
Heading north on the Troldep River, North Continent
122 days until the next Granting
Carina Goldstone crawled on her belly across the ice and stone. She could see the sky in front of her—crystal blue and cloudless—and a drop. The cliff ended up ahead, but she had seen a ledge there before, twelve feet down. Or maybe it had been closer to twenty? Usually, she could keep details like that firmly in her mind.
Blood dripped into her eye. Carina had been hit very hard in the head. Her swollen tongue worked across her teeth. She tasted vomit.
Carina couldn’t feel her legs. That was, by far, the worst part. They dragged behind her like two dangling weights and she had to buck her hips to jostle them loose every time they snagged on a rock or a root.
Actually, no, the desperation—that was the worst part. Her plan to survive boiled down to throwing herself off the side of a mountain, hoping that the ledge she’d seen earlier wasn’t so far down that she’d die in the doing, and then praying she could stay hidden long enough for her Ink to fill back in. Gods, she had fucked it. If it came down to hoping and praying, what good had been all those years of planning? Wasted time. A sad, fruitless life. She shouldn’t have ended up here. She shouldn’t—
Footsteps crunched behind her. Carina groaned and dug her nails into the ice, trying to worm her way along faster. But, it was useless now. He had returned.
Carina tried to turn her head, scraping her chin across the rocks in the process. She wanted to get a final look at the man who’d done this to her, the man who had so carelessly destroyed all of her meticulous plans. Carina suspected that he wielded a hammer, but she couldn’t see him. She could never fully see him.
Something blocked her. There was a piece missing from this possibility—like a page ripped roughly from a book. She could tell it had been there, but had no idea what it said. Without that page, nothing after quite made sense.
What could leave a hole like that in her future?
Carina gasped as she came back to herself. On her chest, buried beneath a sweater and two blankets, her [Future Sight] Ink faded. Once again, she’d used it all up probing this most frustrating possibility. She bounced her knees up and down to prove that she still could, the wooden chair beneath her creaking. Her nose had started to drip from the cold and she tilted her head to wipe it on her blanket. She swayed back-and-forth with the motion of the barge as it steered around a block of ice in the river.
Ahead of her, Nortmost loomed. The mountain at the top of the world, the source of the Troldep River, and the towering peak where Carina thought she might be killed if she couldn’t sort out these visions. A fresh dusting of late winter snow glittered in silver bands across the mountain’s icy face. From her spot at the front of the barge, she could see the Nortmost’s frozen waterfall, hanging like an old man’s beard into the cold Troldep. These last few days, their barge had frequently scraped against floating chunks of ice and twice they’d needed to break up an ice dam before proceeding. The water-wheel at the back of the barge shuddered as the gears tightened from the cold.
As Carina judged it, they would make the village at the base of the mountain by this short day’s sundown. Tiptop, they called it. The place didn’t have its own faction—it seemed only to exist to host champions for these few weeks every year, and otherwise was home to a few dozen hermetic ice fishermen who didn’t mind the long nights and freezing temperatures. At least, she’d been told, the inn was supposed to be nice. Carina would be grateful to stretch her legs and regain some privacy—even though there had only been the three of them journeying northward on the barge, the environs still felt cramped to her.
Stolen story; please report.
“And how was it this morning, then? Watch yourself die again?”
Carina half-turned at Vitt’s approach. The hunter appeared rosy-cheeked, underdressed for the cold, his growing curls poking out from beneath a knit cap. He wore a scruffy beard which, at first, he’d claimed to grow because there hadn’t been time to gather his many grooming implements as they fled Infinzel. But, after they’d stopped at two trading posts and still the Secondson remained grizzled and itchy, she’d gotten him to admit that he didn’t know how to trim a beard and had never, in fact, shaved himself in all his life. He’d always paid for hot towels and a beautiful woman to do the grooming for him; the thought of soap lather and a whetted knife repulsed him. Eventually, Carina took pity on him, and trimmed his beard with scissors from a sewing kit she’d acquired.
It was the least she could do. Vitt had saved her life.
Even after the healing, Carina had not been herself. There had been damage done to her mind that Henry Blacksalve could not fix—damage she worried still lingered. It had been Vitt who decided they should leave Infinzel, that it would be a good idea to get some distance from his father. They needed to go north for Ink anyway. So, what better time than that very night, while Soldier’s Rest still smoldered and the very boundaries of Infinzel were being redrawn?
Carina had been too loopy to decide whether that was a stupid idea or not. The arrangements all fell to Vitt. He had found this barge on its way north, strong-armed its odd little captain into allowing them on board, and paid handsomely for their passage. The Secondson had sold a ring and a bracelet at the first river trading post they passed so that they could purchase various sundries. Of course, the noble hadn’t a notion of what metalwork forged within Infinzel was worth and thought haggling beneath him—so Carina had intervened to broker them a better deal.
When Carina didn’t immediately respond to him, Vitt took a deep breath in through his nose. “I like the taste of the air here,” he said. “I could have been happy as an ice fisherman, I think.”
Carina chuckled and shook her head. It wasn’t lost on either of them how Vitt’s lungs had cleared as they traveled further north. He nudged her shoulder, handing her a steaming mug of rapidly cooling coffee.
“That’s the last of it,” Vitt said. “You managed it all exactly right. Not an angle overspent on superfluous beans.”
“A logician at work,” Carina said quietly.
“What good does it do to keep poking around in your future, huh? Nothing but second-guessing and playing against your own instincts.” Vitt tossed his head. “It would drive me mad.”
“I need to be prepared.”
“Prepared.” Vitt snorted. “Were you prepared for this? Did you have a vision of being stuck on a barge with me and the little diddler for weeks?”
Of course, Carina had not. Vitt knew that. But, as they traveled northward, Carina had become obsessed with probing the sudden gaps in her [Future Sight]. She arrived at potentialities—like her death on the cliff—without a clear understanding of how. Pivots were missing in the mechanism of fate—gears plucked loose, yet others turning still.
And then, there was the strange sensation from her [Alert] Ink. Carina could not explain the lingering dread that thrummed through her body—like the Ink was always on the verge of signaling danger, but never quite getting there. She imagined a hand clasped over a screaming mouth.
Were these residual effects of her misfired chanic? Her Ink looked normal—well, red-flecked, but normal for her—after Henry had healed the burns and peeled flesh. Or were these malfunctions caused by whatever ward the king had hidden in her room? Vitt had told her of the glow in the ceiling, and Carina assumed that Cizco had planted one of his traps beneath her stones, ready to punish her for digging. She’d hoped to use this time on the barge to recover her wits. But, as they closed in on Nortmost, she still felt lost.
Carina hadn’t realized she’d lapsed into silence again until Vitt cleared his throat. “You know, you used to be a challenging conversationalist,” he said. “Annoying, yes, but good for a laugh. Not so much of this haunted gazing into the distance.”
She looked up at him. “I’m sorry.”
Vitt sniffed in response. He gazed back the way they had come, downriver, scratching his cheek. “Well, if you must live in your head, at least be useful about it. What are those other ones doing right now?”
Carina had explained this enough times to him that she was now sure he asked this question merely to draw her out. “I told you, I can't see what they're doing.”
“But you know they're three days behind us.”
“Because that's when they intersect with my future,” Carina said. “Two or three days hence. Although there are some variations where they show up much later, or not at all…”
A smile spread across Vitt’s face and she could tell he’d stopped listening to her. All the better. It was a waste of breath trying to explain these potentialities to Vitt. Perhaps he was right and she had been looking forward too much. She took in a deep breath of steam and then a sip of coffee.
“Gods, to have seen the look on the hammerhead's face when he learned his old drinking buddy turned traitor,” Vitt said.
“I suspect it was no different than the look on your face.”
“How would you know? Passed out as you were.”
Carina had actually regained consciousness while Vitt was still yelling at Henry, petulantly demanding that the healer switch his Ink back. She'd been propped up against a wall, the snow seeping in through the backs of her pants, the sweater they'd covered her with scratchy on her skin. They were on the sideline of a celebration. Henry peered down at her with red-rimmed eyes. She could still feel the warmth from his [Healing Touch] on her face. The older man smiled with relief at seeing her awake and she had a moment to see the familiar-yet-new crumbled wall tattooed on his neck. Then, Henry had turned his back on them and was welcomed into the crowd, leaving her with Vitt.
“There aren't enough healers in Infinzel,” Carina mused.
“What?”
“There’s no replacement for Henry.”
“You think Blacksalve will hold out on us? I didn’t really mean it when I called him a traitor,” Vitt said, his tone softening. “If they're all traveling up here together, then the old men must have worked it out, right? One happy family.”
Carina knew Bel Guydemion and she knew Cizco Salvado. Neither man would want to make the first move unless it would also be the last, and so it had not surprised her that Cortland and Henry together were leading the newly Inked north. There would be time yet to worry about those dynamics. Her thoughts had drifted elsewhere.
“I always assumed it was an unlucky shortfall,” she said.
“Huh?”
“The lack of healers,” Carina said. “But now, I wonder if your father arranged it that way. A talented healer might have discovered his work.”
“His work,” Vitt repeated the phrase grimly. “Henry healed me a hundred times and never suspected.”
“He's a drunk and not prone to deeper questions,” Carina said. “I wonder, was he always like that? Was he selected because of that weakness? Or, perhaps, did your father make him that way?”
“Your wheels never stop turning, do they?” Vitt said. “Gods, what a thought.”
“Will you tell the others?” Carina asked. “Your brothers and sisters, your cousins, your…?”
“Stop listing,” Vitt said. “I know what you’re asking.”
Carina had tiptoed around this conversation before, hoping Vitt would share his thinking in his own time. She hadn’t pressed the matter because, in truth, she wasn’t sure which outcome to nudge Vitt toward. Once again, there were too many unknowns.
“I haven't decided,” Vitt said, after a moment. Carina could tell he wanted to say more, so she waited. “I should have run back into Infinzel that very night and told them what you saw. Explained what purpose we serve for our father. Instead, I left. While on this horrible little boat, I have had time to think things through.”
“And?”
“I’m glad I didn’t act rashly. For once.” Vitt shrugged. “Maybe what he does to us is worth it.”
Carina nodded. “I had come to the same conclusion. Not so terrible a sacrifice, for the good of the pyramidal city.”
“Well, I dislike hearing you say it.”
“However, it’s not sustainable and deeply exploitable,” Carina continued. “Your father must understand the precariousness of his situation. Thus, the extraordinary measures he's taken to keep this information to himself.”
“Like booby-trapping your room,” Vitt said.
“Yes.” Carina paused. “And now, I think it’s likely he's sent Cortland to kill me.”
Vitt guffawed at that. “Gods, you’ve had the hammer master wrapped around your finger since the day you sauntered in. He could never.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“If anyone would be tasked with killing you, it’d be me.”
Carina fixed her eyes on the mountain ahead, larger and larger with every creaking turn of the barge’s water-wheel. “For both of our sakes, I believe the best way forward is to present the king with an alternative to violence, both against me and his many, many offspring. Now that I understand the needs, I think I can design something better.”
“Of course. A new Infinzel with yourself at its center.” Vitt patted her shoulder. “I am sure that will make my father want to murder you less.”
Carina started to say more, but Vitt’s fingers tightened. They were no longer alone. The barge’s captain had emerged onto the deck holding the pickaxe he used to break ice off the water-wheel. A little man from Cruxton with a child’s chubby face and the hunched shoulders of a dog ready to be swatted—Carina found him unspeakably boring. He kept his distance, at least, likely still frightened by whatever threats Vitt had made back on Solstice.
The captain flinched upon seeing them. “Good morning, champions,” he said in his cracking voice. “We’ll reach Tiptop today.”
“Aye, Captain Dell, aye, we will!” Vitt replied with mock cheer. As the captain turned to his work, Vitt rolled his eyes at Carina. “A little pervert, don’t you think? Driven from town for his disgusting crimes. What other kind of boatman would travel north with so little?”
Carina shook her head and retreated into her thoughts. Though gossiping about the man amused Vitt to no end, she spent little time thinking about their captain. He meant nothing. In all the futures she scanned, desperately trying to sidestep her death on the ice, Carina never saw Dell Whittle again.
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