Ora’s sixteenth birthday was approaching rapidly. She had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, her fifteenth birthday had passed her by as she was settling into Haven and it would be nice to do something, even if it was just a shared meal with friends like they’d used to do back in Outer Light.

On the other hand, sixteen was the age at which Ora was supposed to become ‘ripe’ and she was fairly sure she didn’t like that too much. If she’d been an actual citizen of the Lord’s House, her sixteenth birthday present would have been a husband. In theory, had she not escaped, after her sixteenth birthday was when she would have been expected to start having children.

In all likelihood, she would have had two children already, if she hadn’t died giving birth to them.

And so, despite everything that was going well, Ora was in something of a mood as autumn rolled around again in Haven. She was sure she should have been ecstatic about how things were going, not worrying about the passage of time. But she was doing her best to not feel guilty about it.

She hadn’t even mentioned her birthday to anyone this year. She figured no one would remember from last year. She had no good reason to figure that no one would remember. Still, it was what she figured.

Her figuring was only reinforced when Tengu announced an outing, only a week before Ora’s sixteenth birthday. She had noticed that Ora was in a bad mood and decided they should go and hunt down some slave catchers in the northern wastes.

In the last year or so, Ora had very much gotten over the reflex to vomit when she killed someone. She’d also gotten reasonably proficient with a bow, and was making progress on the weird scuttling that Tengu and the Sand Crawlers did to disappear into the sand at a moment’s notice.

Ora was a little surprised and a little disappointed when it became clear that she and Tengu weren’t going alone. In fact, they were going with rather more people than Ora thought were needed for hunting slave catchers on the border of the Lord’s House.

In the last year, Haven’s population had grown to about a hundred and fifty, though it had settled at closer to a hundred an thirty. Many of the freed people from the Sand Crawlers’ last raid, and the last couple of forays from Haven’s new residents, were still staying in the bunk house.

Despite a steady increase in the price of property in Haven, eleven more houses had been built and a second well had been refurbished. A big lot of space around the bunkhouse had been turned into a common garden, shared by everyone in Haven, so that Tengu didn’t have to buy several hundred more square metres of land to feed the constant stream of freed people staying there.

Ora should have been ecstatic. She was in a mood.

Nine of the thirty-odd freed people who had fully moved into Haven over the last year accompanied Tengu and Ora out of the town. Ora knew all of them and liked them well enough. She gone with them on raids and slaver hunts before. But she’d been hoping to spend more time with Tengu.

Even those freed slaves from the Lord’s House who, like Ora, tended to be much more in need of companionship than those slaves freed on the way to Ovek, gave Ora and Tengu plenty of space.

Ora appreciated it. She was in a mood.

Three days into the wastes, Ora was surprised and slightly less disappointed, but still disappointed, by a group of armed travellers off in the distance. They were getting close to the border of the Lord’s House, and it could well have been a large band of slave catchers who were atypically without camels or dogs.

Except that the silhouette of Jules was unmistakable. She was so big, and she always wore her hair in that messy tail on top of her head. Despite being slightly shorter than Tengu, Jules was distinctly bigger. She was very hard to miss.

Jules wore clothes when she was out of the Sand Crawlers’ hideout. Long-sleeved, padded shirt and pants, plated vest, heavy boots. She was armed with her quite nice spear and a very big bow.

Ora could still see her ankles and wrists, but she was alright with that. Ora had decided, some months ago, that the casual nudity of the Sand Crawlers was a good thing. This had nothing to do with any ‘ripening’ that wasn’t happening. It was just good for Ora to be less judgemental of how other people dressed.

She was still judgemental of Jules, though, who never seemed to wear a hat. When confronted about the issue, Jules would insist that her dark skin made her less likely to burn in the sun. Her constant sunburn begged to differ.

Ora finally worked up the gumption to ask. ‘Why are you all here? We don’t need twenty people and both of you’ – she pointed to Jules and Tengu – ‘to hunt slave catchers.’

Jules grinned. ‘It’s a surprise.’

Beetle smiled. ‘You’re smart, you’ll work it out soon.’

Fork nodded seriously. ‘Very smart.’

Beetle nodded seriously. ‘Very smart.’

In short order everyone except Tengu and Ora was nodding seriously and repeating ‘Very smart.’

Despite her apparently extreme smartness, it took Ora another day to work out what the surprise was. She may not have worked it out at all, if they’d gone a different way. She wondered if Tengu was taking them this way just to make sure Ora knew what was coming.

It was early in the afternoon when the twenty of them passed through a valley lined by cliffs that looked very much like snakes. Ora’s mood lifted. Her heart hammered in her chest. She took the first opportunity to give Tengu a big hug.

So far, Ora was the only person Tengu would accept a hug from. Ora also felt very good about this fact, even if hugging Tengu was a lot like hugging a brick column. Ora had done experiments.

She was practically bouncing along as dusk drifted lazily across the desert. Until she spotted the watchtowers. Her heart leapt into her throat and made a valiant attempt to escape her body. She needed to sit down.

Ora noticed vague frowns from her fellow escapees from the Lord’s House when she knelt to pray after the sun had fallen. But Ora figured if there was ever a time to pray to the Mistress of Night, it was right now.

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Tengu was smiling under her bird-faced mask.

Ora was smiling under her bird-faced mask.

They waited Outer Light’s guards to change shifts. Ora noticed that the night shift was still much smaller than the day. Though she hadn’t run into any other escapees from Outer Light in the last year and a bit, everyone she’d met who’d escaped from the Lord’s House had escaped at night.

Almost everyone she’d met who had escaped the Lord’s House was uneasy about being up at night.

Though Ora was fairly good with a bow, she thankfully wasn’t good enough to stay back with the Sand Crawlers. Tengu, Ora, and the others from Haven started their approach as the guard changed, running, crawling, and skuttling over the sand and somehow avoiding being spotted by the time they reached the big storehouses.

Outer Light was exactly as Ora remembered it. Four watch towers, one for each cardinal direction. Three big storehouses on the northern edge to block the watchtowers’ sightlines. Two of the four guard barracks.

Down the long, wide ramp into the quarry and mine would be the two, massive slave barracks, one for men and one for women, and the other two guard barracks, along with the kitchens and chapel.

It had taken Ora a long time to work out why the chapel was down there with the slaves, when they weren’t allowed in.

A man called Owl did his best impersonation of an owl from where the Sand Crawlers were waiting with their bows. His best impersonation of an owl was extremely convincing.

Ora, Tengu, and the rest hurried from their spot behind the storehouses to the first of the two barracks. Ora was vaguely offended by how many of the guards seemed to still be awake. It was night, after all. They should be sleeping, not listening to the Mistress’s whispers.

She glanced at Tengu, who answered by way of opening the door.

Ora was both less offended and more offended by the main room of the barracks. On the one hand, only eight of the fifty-odd guards in this barracks were still awake. On the other, three of them were clearly drinking alcohol.

Fifty-one beats of Ora’s heart and one muffled shout later, no guards were still awake or drinking alcohol. If Ora had been ill-at-ease about killing the pious citizens of the Lord’s House, which she had not, she would have gotten over it by now.

One of the guards had a pamphlet full of images of naked women.

The guards slept in rooms of eight, on soft straw mattresses on sturdy beds. The slaves down below slept in rickety bunks on old blankets and clothes that they had to hide when the proselytisers came by to inspect.

Ora’s heart was beating at a much more sensible pace by the time the barracks had been emptied of guards. Her sleeves were a little bloody, but she had washed blood out of enough of her dresses to know that it would be fine.

Ildos did his best impression of an owl from behind the closed door of the barracks. He was not as good at it as Owl was, but he had been picked for the job for a reason.

Owl hooted three times.

They waited.

Owl hooted twice.

Quick as eleven people could manage, they were back out into the dark of night. The second barracks was right next to the first. It wasn’t all that far to rush, stepping lightly and half-holding their breaths.

A man in the western watch tower, closest to the barracks, got all the way through the word ‘alarm’ before he choked on something. Much worse, he got through two tolls of the bell.

The door of the second barracks burst open and Ora stabbed a young man in the neck. He gurgled and, in doing so, managed to express his surprise at being stabbed in the neck.

Only four of the guards in the second barracks had been awake before the bell rang. But it was really a very loud bell. The trouble, for the guards who scrambled out of their beds, was that almost all of them had followed procedure and left their weapons and armour in the armoury, rather than take them to bed.

Eight more guards were dead before anyone came back out of their rooms with a pocket knife or a stick or really anything they might try to use to push through the four, armed strangers blocking the passage back to the main room and armoury. There were two wings of the barracks where the guards slept. Four for each doorway was more than enough.

Ora hadn’t mean to keep track of how many people she killed in the barracks. She was disappointed to lose track somewhere around ten, when a man with a bed-leg jabbed her in the chest and knocked her off her feet.

Over her ankle- and wrist-covering dress, Ora was wearing padded armour, leather, and plate. She was fine. She was quite annoyed. The man was already dead by the time she regained her feet.

In the few minutes it took to empty the second barracks, three more bells rang and one man got most of the way through the word ‘intruders’ before he choked on something.

At least a dozen guards and two proselytisers were nearly at the top of the ramp as the infiltration team rushed to check. Ora was very glad that, despite not expecting to use it very much, she had strung her bow.

Her first arrow hit one of the men with a whip and a book in his left shoulder and he shouted something he really ought not have shouted. The second arrow hit him in the neck and he collapsed to the ground.

The Sand Crawlers, being kindly sorts, arrived at the top of the ramp before the guards or remaining proselytiser could. Ora was a little disappointed to not kill the second man with a whip and a book, but she let it go.

Ora did get to stab a man with two arrows sticking out of his chest who, perhaps impressively, made it almost all the way to the top of the ramp. There would be more proselytisers down there for her to kill, she supposed.

The ramp down to the dig site was not any longer than Ora remembered. It was distinctly more troublesome than it had been when she climbed up it a little more than a year ago.

A crossbow bolt deflected happily off Ora’s bird-faced mask about a third of the way down. A group of twenty guards and two more proselytisers arrived just as the infiltrators ducked away from the ramp’s edge, pressing themselves against the outer wall to avoid more crossbow bolts.

Ora was only a little surprised that being whipped hurt a lot less when she was wearing armour. Ora was not at all surprised by how much she enjoyed stabbing a man with a whip and a book through the sternum.

As more lights were lit through the mine, it got easier to keep track of where all the guards were. It got easier for the Sand Crawlers to return fire on the guards with crossbows on the dig site. It got easier to leap into the middle of a group of guards climbing the ramp and cause chaos.

Ora was bleeding from the neck, left arm, right side and right leg by the time she made it to the ground. But at least she didn’t have a quarrel lodged in her body anywhere. And if her estimate was right, they should only have ten or so guards left to deal with.

Limping only slightly, Ora pointed to the chapel and went the opposite direction. The two women in the group who had also escaped the Lord’s House followed her. Four men, including Owl, headed for the men’s slave barracks. Everyone else headed for the chapel.

The women’s slave barracks was in a quiet sort of chaos. One of the men with a whip and book, and four guards, were doing their utmost to hold six women hostage between themselves and the door. A hundred and forty-odd women were doing their utmost to work out how to intervene without putting the hostages in danger.

‘Just leave and no one else needs to get hurt,’ the man with the whip and the book announced, sounding much more confident than the middle-aged woman held in front of his face looked.

Ora, Erika, and Ban just stood there in the doorway. Ora was doing her best to remember the names of all the women in the room. She was sure some of them were new.

Apparently the Mistress of Night was better at answering prayers than the Lord of Light had ever been. Ora took off her mask, waggled her eyebrows at one of the hostages, and hurled her sword into an adjacent bedframe.

The bed collapsed. Varin grabbed the sword. Four of the hostages broke free. The room erupted into shouting, screaming, punching, stabbing pandemonium for something like ten seconds.

Varin, with quite a lot of blood on her, handed the sword to Ora. ‘Here I figured you were dead.’

‘Not yet.’