Alize let Davram try to tie up her hair in something respectable looking and the group passed through the city gates without incident. In the distance, their road disappeared into the mountains and Alize pushed Josoun to a gallop to pass through the steppes. She waited for the men at the forest boundary. When they caught up, Onder looked relieved to see her and Davram wore a stern expression. Kell’s face did not betray any concern at all.

The trees remained apprehensive, but not as before, when the Conjurer had been following her. Their tone reflected their normal vigilance in regions of traveling marauders and bandits. Alize relished the comfort of their protection. She had worried over their reception to the Sargons, but the forest seemed untroubled by her companions. Perhaps there were even hints of approval.

As night drifted from the east, whispers of dread darted through the forest. Alize strained to listen over the sounds of her companions. The men kept their discussions terse without her prompting.

Over the Sargon’s protests, Alize insisted on taking the first night watch. They were not wrong that her injuries had exhausted her more than usual, but she was not going to concede some needed time alone.

Once assured the men were sleeping, Alize began performing her exercises in silence. Midway through, her eyes found Kell’s curved sword. The Hrumi had long ago discovered that swords were too large to hold souls, so the clans neither forged them nor trained with them. Alize drew the sword soundlessly and tilted the blade to reflect the moonlight.

Having witnessed the weapons deployed a handful of times, she could mimic the movements she remembered. The sword weighted lighter than she had expected, but she wielded it with more difficulty that she would have liked.

She recalled Hesna’s voice suddenly, from a time well before Alize’s dagger binding ceremony. “It is not my goal that you learn to fight well with the dagger, Alize,” Hesna had said, “I want you to learn how to learn. That way I can give you the gift of not just any weapon, but of any lesson.”

Alize sheathed Kell’s sword carefully before replacing it next to him.

Neither he nor Davram appeared have brought their Sargon helmets, and Alize felt better to be away from them. The few times she had seen the slitted headpiece in the forest had preceded only fights or narrow escapes. She could scarcely comprehend how men like Davram and Kell could ever don armor and commit such aggressions.

Alize sat on her heels and sighed. When camping with the Hrumi, guard duty represented a time for peace and contemplation. Under the teeming constellations, though, she found herself wishing for someone to talk to. Her hand hovered over Kell’s shoulder, but she stopped herself from waking him. She had the trees. They were her companions. She did not need anyone else, especially not a Sargon.

Not to mention, she thought ruefully, in truth there is no one else.

The moon swam between the branches and the trees indicated that the areas nearby remained devoid of any threats. Their previous failure to warn Alize left her more cautious than normal, but she reminded herself that before the Conjurer arrived, they had been warning her for days. Tonight there was safety.

She woke to Davram shaking her. “Well, we won’t be putting you on guard duty again. You’re supposed to wake someone else up before you fall asleep.”

“The trees stood guard,” Alize yawned. “I told you I can hear them.”

“What? Is that safe?” Davram demanded. When Alize nodded he turned away from her and said to the forest, “My apologies your graces.”

The trees fluttered in response. Behind Davram, Alize chuckled.

“Okay, I’ve got one.” Kell announced as he chewed his pistachios. “A farmer walks into a butcher’s shop. Butcher says, ‘Is that a boar’s head you’ve got?’ Farmer gets mad and answers, ‘I ain’t about to go shaving my face every day!’”

Davram’s laugh came all the way from his stomach. “Ah Kell. Terrible. I’m embarrassed for you.”

But Alize laughed quietly too.

Over lunch Davram grabbed the yellow fruit that Alize had selected. “I haven’t eaten one of these in years! What are they called again?”

“Bost fruit,” Alize said, snatching it back from Davram, “and they give most people rashes, so I shall eat it, for your own protection, you’re welcome.” She took a large bite of the fruit and grinned wickedly. Davram watched her horrified as the juice trailed down her chin. Alize took a bigger bite and purposefully chewed it with her mouth open.

“I don’t know why I try with you.”

“Try what?” Alize asked, spitting a little.

“To make you decent.” Davram handed her a napkin and Alize laughed, soon coughing on her food slightly. “If the prophecy is true-”

“Davram,” Kell interrupted, “don’t.” Alize missed their next words as she flailed for some water to wash down the fruit flesh in her wind pipe. When she regarded the Sargons again they both seemed oddly distracted. Alize watched them as she took another bite of the bost fruit.

Later Davram brought his horse next to Josoun. “I hear Camacas is more beautiful than even the High Magi’s residence in Sarytash.”

Alize tilted her head. She had never heard of such a place. “What beauty is there is a city? Nothing compares to the Berej headwaters with its clear pools and waterfalls.”

“An ascending journey with many diversions,” Davram mused, “one can only hope life will grant them such a path.”

Alize shook her head. “I seem to just be stagnating or stumbling.”

“You and me both,” Davram sighed. “But at least you’re fighting for something you can accomplish – soon you’ll have all of this echo magic worked out.”

“And what are you fighting for Davram?” Alize prodded.

Davram’s smile faded. His eyes traced past Alize, to the forest, and whatever lay beyond it.

After a moment, Alize prodded. “You don’t want to tell me?”

“It’s not that. I’m just wondering how you could relate to it.” Davram replied slowly. “You see, my whole family was murdered when I was twelve.”

Alize inhaled sharply, but Davram’s gaze was frozen, focused far away from her. And Alize remembered Kell’s words about Darvam fighting his own demons. They were not so far below the surface.

Alize cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”

Davram nodded, still silent, the muscles in his throat straining.

“My mentor was killed when I was thirteen,” Alize said softly. “It was terrible.”

“What did you do?”

Alize shrugged. The last four years of her life had been spent trying to ignore this pain, and that made it harder to acknowledge. “There was nothing to do. She died.” But for Alize’s brave words, the truth ached as she said them aloud.

“It’s easy to feel like that. But you may find that peace won’t come until you address what happened.”

“How? Revenge?”

“And perpetuate the violence? That strikes me more of vanity than valor.” Davram said bitterly.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“What then? What would you do?”

Davram turned to face forward, inhaling deeply. “Work to prevent it from happening again. The problem is not only the deed, but the dogma that justified it.”

For a moment Alize’s vision turned red. “Please don’t tell me the Hrumi killed your family!”

“No, no, these people were murderers. If the Hrumi did that, you wouldn’t have Kell on your side.”

Alize furrowed her brows. For all their disagreements, she had not thought that she and Kell stood on the same side. But she did not wish to revisit that conversation. She drew a deep breath. “How will you change their dogma?”

“That’s my own personal mountain. Although, I might be lingering in one of those pretty pools for the moment by staying with you all.”

“Eh,” Alize shrugged, “it’s impossible to know the fastest way up a mountain from the bottom.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

Onder insisted on a slow pace, stating loudly that his old bones could go no faster. Alize suspected it had more to do with her own injuries. But she prepared some autumn herbs for her wounds and already the pain lessened.

Throughout the day, Kell and Davram played word games with each other while Alize and Onder listened. Their quick answers suggested they had been playing such games for years. Kell kept grinning at Alize while he flicked pistachio shells into Davram’s hair when the older Sargon was not looking. When Davram noticed, he shook them to the ground, grumbling.

“You missed some,” Kell ribbed.

Alize tried to think of an amusement to offer up, but she knew only Hrumi heroic tales, and she could not muster any enthusiasm for them.

Instead she began asking Onder about his life as a Magi. The stories he told made Alize a little wistful, as if maybe her life had not been as complete as she had believed. Onder’s relationships were not competitive like the ones that Alize had known, but nurturing.

Hesna was nurturing, Alize reminded herself. But her devotion to teaching had been extremely strict, rarely gentle. And that has only benefitted me. But another voice questioned whether that was true. Alize listened to the hearty chuckles of Kell and Davram up ahead and felt disturbed by her shortcomings. She wondered if it were too late for redress.

Alize dismounted with Kell at the next river crossing. The low water levels exposed the stream bed, leaving it prone to erosion from careless footsteps. Alize tread delicately. The winter rains would replenish it soon enough. Alize cupped her hands into the shallow water and gave silent gratitude to the gods. To the Hrumi, every spring was holy.

Next to her, she watched Kell’s shoulder blades shift under his shirt as he bent to fill his water skin. They had spoken sparingly during the journey. Alize’s questions, meanwhile, kept forming on her lips, as much as she tried to ignore them.

“Kell,” she murmured, “what happens to the other captured Hrumi?”

Kell cast her a sideways glance as he rose. “I’m not sure we should discuss that right now.”

Alize nodded. “I understand.” She splashed some water on her face, shivering slightly with the chill. She scrubbed her cheeks. “I won’t get angry though.”

“You can’t know that before you hear what I will say.”

“I’ve decided to be more open-minded.” Alize responded firmly. The stream water numbed her fingers as she held her water skin under its flow. “Besides, if they’re your own experiences, how can I dispute them? Don’t you see all the captured Hrumi?”

Kell nodded.

“Are you going to lie to me about it?”

Kell shook his head.

“Well, then I don’t really have a choice but to believe you, however it makes me feel.”

Kell exhaled. “It’s not a cheery subject.”

Alize waited. She could be patient like Kell.

Finally he continued, “They all start by starving themselves. I can sit in the cell with them, promise them we don’t soultruss, beg them to eat. Nothing works. I’ve tried kindness. I’ve tried force feeding them. They refuse everything. It’s mindless almost.”

“We were raised that way.”

“To sacrifice your life rather than risk your dignity?”

“Is that so ignoble?”

Kell bristled. “So the Hrumi save children but force us to hunt them as adults and watch them starve in our prisons?”

“Force you?” Alize scowled. “Take some responsibility for your own actions, Kell. You put them in prison. You don’t deserve pity for it.”

“That’s not what I meant. They make the choice to starve. Every time! And I can understand fearing soultrussing, but we don’t soultruss. No one in our government possesses that type of magic. Of course I tell the women that. And they all work very hard not to hear me.”

Alize shook her head. She needed something to grasp on to, to confirm her own story so she could prove Kell wrong. “Then why bother capturing us if we have nothing you want?”

Kell spoke haltingly, “The villagers demand protection from Hrumi incursions.”

Alize did not want to hear about the kidnapping again. She could not fight this claim without revealing Hrumi secrets. Secrets that would inadvertently reveal the location of the Hrumi children’s camp.

Instead she shook her head. “Try to understand that when we’re imprisoned, suicide becomes the only choice we can exercise. There’s some comfort in controlling your own fate.”

“But I’m trying to give them control. You see, I have convinced Jorin to try a new tactic – an alternative to prison. And maybe it’s stupid. Maybe what I’m presenting the Hrumi with is just totally ridiculous.”

Alize waited.

“We offer them a chance to live in a province without ostracism. I want to encourage them to experience our way of life, to enable the Hrumi to understand why the kidnapping is so cruel. To meet our citizens and witness the strength of family.”

Alize shuddered. She wanted to keep this conversation civil, but Kell did not seem to have any awareness of how offensive this was. “Family is what endangered us. I had to be saved from my family.”

“But that’s not universally true – not even close. Every province keeps detailed records of all the missing girls. The parents that report them are heartbroken, but no Hrumi seems to believe that possible. What I do,” Kell continued, “is tell them why they are hunted. And, as you have demonstrated, the story of the kidnappings are never well received.”

Alize did not want to hear that word again. “You shouldn’t be surprised,” she said, rather more harshly than she intended.

“Apparently. But I have to try something. The other princes just let the Hrumi die in their prisons. Although Jorin says that my tactics are worthless if the ends are the same anyways.”

“So they all die?” Alize asked sharply.

Kell slouched, his eyes losing focus. “They all die.”

Nausea washed through Alize. How did I think this conversation would go? It was a double blow because for a moment, while Kell had been talking, Alize had almost believed that her sisters’ fate could have been different, kinder, that maybe they lived somewhere, waiting to be rescued. She had almost believed that Kell could have granted them that. But he was a Sargon still.”

“They all die,” Kell repeated. Searching Alize’s eyes, he spoke his words deliberately, “But almost never from starving. It’s something else that kills them.”

Under Kell’s gaze, Alize shuddered with apprehension. “Something else?”

“They become unresponsive, blank eyes, limp bodies. At first just some of the time, but eventually they stop coming out of it. It’s like their mind disappears.”

Alize jerked, feeling her belly begin to boil again. Kell sounded perplexed but the implications were plain to her. “That’s a slow soultrussing, Kell! It must be another Sargon-”

“Soultrussing? That’s impossible - we don’t know how, and we don’t have a reason to. I don’t know what kills those women.” Kell paused. “But ever since I saw that Soulless in Mizre…I don’t know, there are some eerie similarities. But how could they become disconnected from their own souls?”

Alize stiffened. That sounded like an allusion to the dagger binding ceremony. Was he was manipulating her into revealing something? She prayed he spoke in ignorance, but was not prepared to judge.

“It takes about six weeks, on average. Longer if two are captured together, for whatever reason.” Kell paused. “It’s really terrible. I’ve been doing this for almost four years, and I’ve watched…twelve?..twelve women die, the last one in Taraz just a few days before I met you.”

Alize shivered. Though the Parousia province was in the territory of the eastern clan, she probably had known those dead women from her youth in the children’s camp.

“I can see that the women are going to die, and I,” Kell spoke in short staccato, “can’t help them. It’s…devastating.” For a moment he paused, then drew a breath and resumed. “But if I can convince a few to listen, maybe we could release them.”

“Ah.” Alize nodded slowly, brushing the dirt from her sac. “I see your intentions. You want to find a Hrumi, convert her to your way of thinking, and let her tell the clan your ‘truth’ about the kidnapping a way they will understand.”

“I can’t communicate with the Hrumi about, well, anything. We speak the same language, but I need a translator.”

“Or, Kell, we don’t take kindly to falsehoods.” Alize corrected. She drank one last sip of water and began walking back towards the horses.

Kell caught up with her. “Even so, I appreciate that you’re listening to me.”

“Well, I suppose there is some value in understanding how you see us, even if it’s based in lies.”

“Except it’s not.”

“Even if it’s based in lies,” Alize reiterated pointedly. “You’re not trying to make me a messenger, are you Kell?”

“No,” Kell assured her. “You aren’t part of this. I mean, if you were, you would be my biggest success story. We’re having a conversation and I don’t have to tie you up! Well, mostly,” he said as he fell behind her. Alize turned back to see him grinning hopefully. “And you’re young. The older women don’t listen. The younger ones yell over me.”

“I’m the same age as you, don’t you think?”

Kell evaluated her half-seriously. “Hmm. I’m a full Sargon…”

“And I’ve been serving my clan for years. I am a very good warrior.”

“Modest too,” Kell said with a smile.

Alize pulled herself onto Josoun without laughing. “I won’t ever be your messenger Kell.”

“And you’ll never tell me where the children’s camp is.”

“That’s right.” But Alize glanced at him in surprise.

“Those are the two concessions my grandmother refuses to make, so I realize it’s a thorny subject. I’m not asking you to do either.”

“But I’m telling you that I never will. I can’t, because…” Alize struggled to confront her memory of the renunciation but it only made her feel ill. “But,” she rushed on, “that means you don’t have to tell me your agenda. Tell me the real truth, even if it’s ugly. As long as you understand that I will never represent you.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. I’m being honest with you anyway. We have more pressing tasks at the moment. I would be just as surprised as you if you ended up helping me reach to the Hrumi.”

“I won’t, ever.”

“And I don’t expect you to.”

To Alize that sounded like the best she could get out of the Sargon. She sighed. The forest pressed her forward to Camacas.

Alize wondered if she dared hope to find answers there.