Many leagues away, across mountains and rivers, the city of Anthusa watched the smoke clouds rise.

A young woman watched the sight from her balcony, jutting out from a high, spiraling tower, tallest of all the ninety-six spires from which the city’s great families judged the masses below. She was draped all in finery; her robe was velvet and cloth of gold, and sapphires the size of quail eggs dangled from her ears.

She swirled a fine wine in a diamond glass. It was a deep maroon color, with hints of burgundy. The grapes were harvested from the private vineyards of the Holy Son, planted in holy ground and drinking only sanctified water. The juices were pressed in the Meidin workshops and fermented in casks fashioned from the sacred rowanwood that grew in the lowlands of Tirol. Of this vintage, the Antigo Bonnel, only ten bottles were produced each year, with the remaining casks kept within the Sanctum Summum for the exclusive consumption of the Holy Son and his cardinals.

These bottles were never sold, but only given as gifts to favored clients. To reach her lips, it had passed through the hands of a dozen nobles, each passing it upwards as a gift.

Now that the Holy City was burning, there was nobody above her. She could enjoy the fruits of her labor in peace.

And yet… the Bonnel tasted sour and pitiful.

How could this farce be called a victory? The Holy Son’s vineyards burned to cinders, trampled under the hooves of foreign invaders. Her rivals died or fled for other planets, yet she did not grow any stronger for it.

She sat at the peak of this world, but only because everything above her had been shorn away.

She figured that the Sultan was laughing at her even now. To think, she had been so obsessed with destroying her rivals that she destroyed what they had instead of taking it for herself.

More than that, she killed them with a borrowed knife, not by her own strength.

The wine bubbled and boiled away as the glass in her hand cracked and vaporized. No, the sight of the Holy City in flames could bring her neither satisfaction nor relief. It was only one more stepping stone toward the top.

“Lady Ursula.”

Her manservant stood behind her, unfazed, another diamond vessel and the bottle of Antigo Bonnel at the ready.

“Put it back, Michelotto. It doesn’t suit the mood.”

He bowed and retreated into the spiraling tower, leaving her alone with the wind and smoke. Now that she thought about it, this was a perfect new beginning. The Orczy and Kolonn families were weakened and sent running, the cardinals were in shambles, and the whole planet would be in turmoil for years to come.

She could already sense the kings of faraway planets making their moves. Fleur would already be marshaling his soldiers to strike back against the sultan. Achae would be begging aid and hiding behind the Emperor’s skirts, worrying they were next. They probably were.

And then, when the dust settled, everyone would remember that they needed to control the Holy City.

By then, Ursula Tor would have her roots in so deep that even the Emperor and the Sultan would have to seek her favor. From Anthusa, she would control the universe.

She snapped her fingers, and Michelotto appeared as if from thin air.

“Paper.”

A sheaf of fine, scented paper and a phoenix-feather quill were in front of her almost before she had spoken. A slow and gleeful smile spread across her face for the first time in many years.

The whole world was a blank canvas for her ambitions now. Schemes and plots sprang to mind, eager to serve, but she stayed her hand.

“On second thought, call Archbishop Forna for lunch. Serve the Bonnel.”

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

At first, Cato was afraid that a world with four multi-colored suns might be harsh or, at the very least hot.

But it wasn't. The grass beneath his feet was a strange variety he had never seen before, with jagged fronds and vins of gold and red amid the green, yet the scent of late spring was the same he once knew dimly and from afar, only now it was vivid and intense. Even through the cover of the dark smoke clouds, he could still feel the position of each sun. Their lights did not compound each other and create oppressive heat, but complemented each other, as if each one was nourishing a separate need in him.

The riverbank was surrounded on all sides by rolling hills that narrowed his vision. If not for the immense size of both the Holy City and the smoke rising from it, he wouldn't have known there was anything else in the region but water and wildflowers.

Anything else like animals. Insects. Worms, even. The perfume of flowers surrounded him, but where were the bees that pollinated them? Where were the birds in the sky? Cato saw only a handful of bugs in the river, and all of them were heading downstream, not just following the current, but rushing as fast as they could.

In the exact opposite direction from the smoke.

He resolved to find other people, and soon.

It was then, as Cato was wringing the water from what remained of his ragged clothes, that his hair stood on end.

The first pulse started in his spine, rising from the pelvis up to the nape of his neck, and then exploded across his body. He felt the animal urge to flee.

The watching eagle, the hypnotic serpent.

The second pulse originated in his guts. That now-familiar surge of willpower suffused his body from the viscera out, and the paralyzing panic was replaced with a sense of control. Fight or flight. With this power propelling him forward, Cato instinctively chose to fight.

The fear shrank, and became concrete. Cato felt a pair of eyes upon him, coming from behind, over the hill. He turned, and the ghostly image of two pupils hovered in front of him.

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These were not quite real, not quite a hallucination. It was the same feeling of looking for something in a familiar place, where one did not need to even look, just move and feel. Though he couldn’t see over the hill, Cato knew this spy lay a quarter mile southwest.

His body was taut and full of energy. He was in control. The offending eyes were within his reach, as easy as just putting out his hand and grasping.

Within a second of detection, he was on the move.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

Inna was bored. Bored out of her gourd, as her brother would say. She might roll her eyes, but at least his antics would alleviate her boredom.

She kept expecting the ring of a bell or the bleating of a goat to pull her attention, but they never came. She was ready to give attention to some needy lamb that bumped against her leg, or to yell and pull apart a couple of kids locking their half-grown horns.

But there were no lambs anymore. They’d sold the whole flock. Myshkin was taking the last of them over to the butcher in Inillo. Silver went with him too, and she had been left to guard the bag of silver hidden in the ground along with the old book. A year ago, they’d never dream of making so much money so quickly. But now it felt dirty, taking so much from such desperate people.

Not that they were any less desperate. Actually, she and Myshkin had been a lot poorer than the villagers for a long time. But she couldn’t bring herself to see crying children and hopeless farmers and feel smug. Especially now that they needed her help.

So she sat on a mound of dirt like a chicken on an egg, and waited for her brother to rendezvous.

She looked to the east. She looked to the west.

There was nobody on the horizon. No surprise. Even sitting atop a hill, she didn’t expect to see anyone. The moment the black smoke started filling up the sky, crops started to wilt and discolor. Even the birds were gone. Everyone who could manage was moving as far away as they could.

… which meant there was nobody around to catch her using witchcraft.

She wasn’t a witch. Not really. But a witch used to live in a hut near where she and Myshkin led their flock, and she taught them a few tricks.

Agatha said never to use these techniques where other people could see them unless there was no other option. The far-sight spell was mostly safe, but someone much more powerful could detect it, and would probably kill a poor shepherd for knowing even such a simple spell.

But there was no way to know if there was someone nearby without using the spell, was there?

Inna sat up straight, closed her eyes, and breathed. After a few minutes, she felt the energy of nature filling her body, and concentrated on her eyes. It took her weeks to really get the hang of it. A simple spell like this didn’t need words, just a feeling, connecting the mind and body to magical power. Learning it for the first time was like learning to wiggle her ears.

She could wiggle her ears, and Myshkin couldn’t, a fact of which she was terribly proud.

This movement was like opening her eyes even as they remained shut, like the half-state between waking and dreaming. With a few moments of focus, she pushed them open, and reveled in her second sight.

She could see the dewdrops on each blade of greying grass and the mites that fed on the fleeing ants. She sent her vision soaring across the hills, rushing forward with the speed of a charging horse. Beyond a tall hill she saw the Fusirlo river, and kneeling beside that river, wringing out his clothes, was a man.

She could see him front and back, from every angle. Though his face was turned away, she could count the hairs on his head, if she spent the time. He had a handsome look about him, though skinnier than he should have been, and more rugged.

Inna didn’t especially mind. Certainly, the dagger in his belt-loop and the fine cut of his wet clothes, even ripped as they were, made her wonder who this man was. Some lost princeling who would deck her in gold and gems in exchange for help? Maybe a priest wandering in disguise, who might break his vows and share a cold night with a lonely shepherd?

These were just idle fancies, fairytale plots. She wasn’t worried they would actually be true; after all, what prince wouldn’t just fly home if he became lost? So she didn’t think twice before trying out another spell.

It was an extension of the far-sight spell, one that she'd never really gotten a hold of. Agatha said that every person had an aura around them, a cloud of invisible light. If you could see it, she said, you could learn how a person was feeling, what their personality was like, and maybe much more. Inna always wanted to feel like an enchantress out of fairy tales, who meets the heroine in a dark wood and knows everything with a single look.

She fixed all her attention on the man and opened her phantasmal eye further. Just enough to get a peek into his aura.

It was grand and golden, extending so far out that his body looked like the wick in a candle flame. But it was not a calm flame to guide someone in the dark. This was a proud, devouring fire, and Inna swore she could see shapes in it, heads and hands breaking the surface and then being pulled below again by the jaws of great lions. All of a sudden the color changed, a spurt of green filling it up like paint in water.

Then he was gone. Like a wild animal, he had turned, faced her, and scampered off in the blink of an eye.

Inna startled and fell back off the mound, her magical sight fading. She shivered. The spell had worked. She had gotten a glimpse, and his aura was thick with blood and cruelty.

By the time she fully processed that, she was already bolting away in terror.

This man was powerful enough to sense her gaze from a quarter mile away, and his aura betokened a wrathful and violent person, the sort who wouldn’t think twice about murdering, or at least savagely beating, anyone who offended him.

For example, an impudent shepherd with the audacity to peer into his aura with a spell she shouldn’t be able to use.

So she ran pell-mell over the hills without a second thought for the money and the book buried in the dirt mound. Only when she heard someone coming up behind her, heavy footfalls and breaths like a mountain lion in chase, did she realize she was leading this threat directly to the village.

Right to Myshkin.

She made a sudden turn and dove to the ground as her pursuer rushed directly past her. He was faster, larger, and armed, not to mention more magically potent. She stood no chance in a fight. Neither did anyone she knew, maybe not even the whole village together.

But she might be able to draw him away from the others, and keep them from meeting the same fate.

So for the first time she met her pursuer’s eyes, and saw a vicious predator. Even as her heart thundered and her mind felt faint, she held his gaze.

He didn’t step forward.

He didn’t heave or sweat.

Inna had no chance of escape here.

She just took a few moments to catch her breath and prepare to run, uselessly, in the hopes it might protect her loved ones from harm.

She backed away.

He sprang forward.

And the howl of a wolf split the air.

Inna saw her pursuer dive to the side and come up on all fours, turning to regard the new threat.

It was Myshkin, hefting his gnarled staff and filling the air with a palpable wrath and terror.

This was another of Agatha’s spells. While Inna had shown talent in far-sight, which Agatha taught them in order to more easily find lost sheep, Myshkin had a knack with a dweomer for scaring away wolves.

The hackle-raising growl that emanated from her brother’s form was accompanied by shifting phantasms. Wolves and serpents and wild cats crept behind bushes and swirled in the shadows. Inna wasn’t even the spell’s intended target, and she still felt the terror it imposed.

But her pursuer did not.

A deep, inhuman roar burst out of him, and swept away the shepherd’s shadows and wrath like leaves in a thunderstorm. For a moment, Inna was blinded; when her eyes fluttered open, she saw that the man in front of her was flanked on either side by shining eidolons.

Two golden lions.

The shepherd and her brother fell to the ground and knelt in abject terror.