“This is wonderful to see,” said Klar.

Buri remained still, his arms folded over his chest and face as plain as a granite slab, and looked down at Koll, Farin and Nava from the balcony, pretending to be unaware of Klar’s efforts to draw his eyes. He found himself thinking back to before his own time in the doomed. He had ended every day learning stonecraft from his uncle, who had been a both a quarryman and a builder before taking up arms for Grar. While Buri found the company of other children taxing for the most part, it pleased him to learn useful skills from his elders, and his uncle had always been so kind to him. Buri always found his voice when working with Gund, asking detailed questions of stone craft and mining, and of course he asked of his mother. His uncle seemed to find comfort in telling tales of his dead sister, and spoke spoke of her wisdom and knowledge, and of her dry and cutting wit. The Hammer Queen, her friends called her, for she could crush a person’s pride with her tongue.

Buri’s reminiscing was crushed when he recalled his uncle standing quietly as King Grar ended his young life. If Gund had been like a father, the King and his brothers were as uncles. He would never have expected Lobuhl to have acted differently than he did. He raged at Grar, threatening to leave the kingdom one moment, and to finish Valung’s work the next, but ultimately he did nothing. Balvor wept openly, and offered Buri comfort, false comfort, a hand on the shoulder and a half hearted embrace to see him through the waking demise of the Underguard. Grar had always seemed to him a fair king, and a caring father to his daughter and sons. Buri had hated Valung for his vile betrayal, and yet there was his fair king committing an equally vile act. And that was before Buri had learned the full extent of Grar’s cruelty. Training, he’d told him, but he was every bit the prisoner as any criminal in the Underguard. His uncle had said nothing. He stood as a man defeated with tears in his eyes, and could not even face Buri through his shame. I blame you not, Uncle, he thought. Gund’s shame was great, Buri would learn, though over a decade later and by accident.

Klar placed a hand on his arm. Buri looked down at her and offered a slight nod. They turned and left the balcony. Buri replaced his dark memory with the sight of Koll sitting between his wife and daughter, and in a well practiced manner set his pain aside.

“Did you enjoy my uncle’s wedding?” Klar asked.

Buri’s jaw tensed along with his gut. It bothered him to hear Klar speak of weddings. Has she forgotten everything?

“I saw you standing along the wall with my brother and Prince Hale. You seemed quite taken by the play. How do you measure the Stars of Casimir?”

Buri disliked players and mummers. “With caution. Players are practiced liars. It’s dangerous to have them within ones walls.”

Klar laughed. “Then my whole family should be ousted. Each person I meet witnesses a unique performance which I’ve carefully crafted. I think I enjoy stage plays because for a time I don’t have to be the one in costume. I learn from them as well. Mummery is one of the most powerful tools of governance.”

Buri had no reply for her words, only quiet contemplation.

Klar refused to relent to his silence. “I noticed Farin and Koll are Risen.”

“Low tier initiates,” Buri replied.

“I could tell that from their use of the Armitage Hail. Were there many of the Risen in the doomed?”

“No, but they speak openly of their devotions down there. Those loyalties are meaningless next to loyalty to one’s Ring. Novian, Exi and Fell all serve their Rings side by side.”

“Interesting. I’ve always wondered how the orders became known to the populace. When I was a child it seemed only monarchies bothered with such devotions.”

Buri thought for a moment. It was a puzzling thing to be sure. “Merchants seem drawn to the orders. They feel a sense of greater purpose. They know nothing of the higher rites or their meaning. Instead they’ve developed their own versions of each. The higher tiers allow them to do as they please so long as they don’t cause any disruptions.”

“Master Yormun,” said a voice. An old dwarf in a dark green robe set with black gems approached from behind. He had a long and narrow nose, slightly hooked, white hair and a peppered beard of black and grey, and his right eye was clouded over and scarred. Buri turned to face the man silently, inquiring with a look what the man might want of him.

“Forgive me Dread Highness,” he bowed graciously to Klar, a wise move, “may I offer a few words to the Reborn?”

“The Reborn?” Klar looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Why of course. I’ll stand apart, so you may have privacy,”. She pressed her hand on his arm again, letting her fingers trail down his mailed sleeve as she stepped away.

“The Titans have blessed you with more than rebirth,” the old man said, looking Klar’s way with jealous eyes. Buri continued to silently await the stating of the man’s business with him. “Master Yormun, “ he said after an arduous moment of staring and fidgeting with his hands, “it honors me to welcome you back to Thrond. My name is Dolos. I’m no one of import, good master, I work in an asset forge on the third canto of the city Shelek. You were so young when you were taken that you may not remember…”

“You’re a maker of coin,” Buri said abruptly. He was two and forty years when sent to the doomed, young but not a child.

Dolos bowed. “maybe I misjudged your age. Please forgive me my ignorance, I’m not a very informed man. I’ve spent all my long years bent over my mint hammering out coin for others to spend. I never met you, and you’ve never even clapped eyes on me, but your departure echoed through even my deep halls.”

Buri sighed. “Thank you for your welcome…”

“I bring a message, if you’ll hear it.” The timidity in the man was gone. His hands no longer fidgeted, but he held them still and together, his fingers steepled towards the ground.

“Say it quick,” Buri cast his eyes briefly towards Klar.

“A single coal can ignite a forge, and the bellows have been pressed.” The man offered a gracious bow, then turned and left without a word. Buri watched him carefully as he departed. Men, women and children milled about the plaza, but the man managed a straight path to an ohr-tempus left empty by the busy crowds.

He turned to Klar, who was conversing with a mother of three. Two of the woman’s children scurried around her and Klar’s feet, and she held her third in her arms. Buri looked at the young boy. The thought struck him that he had not seen a babe in decades, and it pleased him to see one now. The helpless little creature lay backwards, threatening to fall from his mother’s arms as she shifted them to keep the child in her grip. The boy clutched curiously at his little beard, as if testing if it was properly attached to his cheeks, and would start to cry for no apparent impetus, then find something to fix his attention on and his distracted countenance would resume.

“Strange to think we were all that small once,” Klar said after the mother had rounded up her brood and left.

“You weren’t,” Buri said.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

They walked through an arcade that lead to a bridge over a magma troph and paused on an octagonal apse. Klar leaned back against the railing of the apse and shook her head, soaking up the warmth. Her skin glistened in the orange light of the magma, a sight Buri once found intoxicating. “You’ve always been old,” he said, allowing the hint of a smile to creep across his face.

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Klar played at a scowl, then shrugged. “It’s true. I was robbed of my childhood, I suppose. It seems an awful bore to me, so I don’t complain. And besides, Yemi is childish enough to compensate.”

Buri grumbled softly at Klar’s words. His mother too had died, and his father fled from the kingdom without a word, yet he had continued to be Buri. Klar had always tried to be half her mother, never accepting the cruelty of death as part of the gift of life.

“Don’t make that sound,” she said with a grin. “As your Princess I’m going to require you to refrain from groaning. If you have thoughts you care to express, do so with words.”

What good would it do, he thought, what could possibly be accomplished by speaking these thoughts to her, now or ever? “Yemi,” he said. That one word was enough. Klar rolled her eyes and turned to look over the magma. Buri restrained himself from leaning next to her.

“That child…” she said. “If Balvor had been a girl… well, that about says it.”

“She’s a near twin of her mother” Buri said, “and shrewder than Balvor by half.”

Klar nodded. “She is clever, that I’ll give her. And she’s kind to Audun. You remember the line of Hur, don’t you?”

Buri gave in and leaned forward on the rail next to her. “I remember them to be a clan of would-be sycophants. I can’t recall them ever showing any merit. I’m surprised to see anyone with wits spawn from their lackluster stock.”

“Wits?” Klar turned sideways to look at him. “He’s far more gentile than his siblings, but I’d hardly attribute him any wit.”

“I do. Though not in its traditional form, I’ll grant. He reminds me of an old woman below. Feriv was her name, and she had a sister named Hazzel. She’d look at a rock wall with the usual scars and pits in it, and say that we’d best set up camp right there. Or she’d peer into a lava flow and say there was danger to the east, and hours later the tunnel would cave in and we’d have been spared an uncomfortable end. One dwarf asked her how she knew these things. She said she read signs in the air as one reads words written on a page.”

“Audun does see things differently, for sure. Halfi swears he’s invaluable, but all I see him do is trail after Yemi and read the Book of Tides obsessively. Your uncle thinks it’s how he escapes from the beatings his mother used to give him. By filling his mind with legends and mysteries he’s spared the heartache of being hated by his own blood.”

“His mother beat him?”

“Continually, until Halfi took him into her service.”

“A wealthy woman beats her own child and nothing is done, while thousands of regs are sent to the doomed over trifles. ‘Tis a grand kingdom, Thrond.”

From the corner of his eye, Buri saw Klar’s face darken.

“Forgive me.”

“No.” She gazed unseeingly into the magma vents far below. Ormazzum was carved into the mountain in the shape of a star, with a spherical center and numerous shafts spreading out from the core. The lava seeping out of them into the trophs almost seemed to be flowing both directions at once when one peered into them long enough. So it was with Buri’s heart. He felt at once drawn to Klar and repulsed by her. He saw her as a path to reconciling with his past, and as an anchor preventing him from defining his own future. He wanted to hurt her, so that she could see what the Underguard did to people, and he wanted to care for her, because the by she once knew was not completely dead.

“It’s unfair for me to speak ill of your father. He’s all you have left.”

She turned and looked at him through widened eyes. “He’s all I have left? Look around you Buri. I have all of Thrond left to me. I refused to forgive you for your slight because I have no right to take offense. Next time my words surprise you, ask me to explain them.”

She’s right, he thought, I assumed to know her mind, and not out of presumption, but because I see everything in terms of combat. My apology was a strike, and I saw her refusal to forgive me as a parry. I can’t hope to achieve anything on those terms, especially not with her. “That’s a fine gown, Dread Highness.”

Her face softened a little. “Thank you. I…“ she trailed off into a sigh. “Tell me of the drow you found on the snowlion hunt.”

Buri was surprised by her words again. He thought to please her by addressing matters of the heart, and acknowledging her gown for what it surely meant, and here she was deflecting the subject. What a feeble way of doing so. What is there to tell her of the drow that she hasn’t already heard? Buri shrugged. “You’ve heard the Owl Captain’s report. He was drow, male, of smallish build, and he died from a fall.”

She rolled her eyes the same way Halfur did. A bad sign. Buri opened his mouth to offer further details to try and appease her, but Klar pushed away from the rail and began to walk back down the bridge towards the gatehall. “Klar,” he said, reaching out with his hand as if to stop her from leaving.

She did pause for a moment, and thanked him for accompanying her to meet Koll and Farrin. She’d started down the bridge again when Buri heard shouting from the plaza above. He turned his head in the direction of the voices. Three men stood atop a pile of crates, one above the other two. They each took turns speaking to a crowd of twenty three men who listened raptly, while more men and women too were beginning to gather round them in a circle. Four guardsmen held their spears ready, but their stance was slack and they looked to the men on the crates while ignoring the gathering crowd. Buri put his hand on the mace at his belt and walked quickly toward the scene. He heard Klar’s footsteps close behind him. “Stay close to me,” he said, “ and keep behind.”

“You do not issue me commands, sir,” she hurried ahead of him. “If you wish to protect your princess, keep pace and be watchful, and stay at my back until bidden.” She hurried across the bridge and found a marble statue of a bull with broken horns which she stood behind and out of view from the crowd. They were close enough to hear and so Buri stood by his princess and listened.

“And who’s to keep us safe?” the man on the lower crate nearest them was saying, “our guards? Aye, they will for now, they’re strong soldiers and loyal. But the Chieftain of the doomed was once the greatest of all our guardsmen, and he turned on the realm and sought to kill our King. For all we know this saved soul could be his agent, sent to pave the way for the next attempt on our King’s life.”

“Surely you can’t truly think so!” shouted the man on the high crate. “What could you even base such a claim on? The man was an iron monger, a mere peddler…”

“And a criminal!” the man on the near crate said.

“He could be innocent!” the man on the top crate shouted back.

“It makes no difference,” said the man on the far crate.

“No difference?! It makes every difference.”

“If he committed a crime, then he lacks honor and can’t be trusted. If he did not commit a crime, then he has every reason to despise King Grar, and every one of us.”

Klar looked back up at Buri and put a hand on his arm. “Go to Koll, make sure they’re all safe. I want them guarded, all three of them, at all times.”

“And what of you? Those four fools are too bewildered by the men on the crates to protect you.”

“Protect me? Buri, you’re not in the underlands anymore. I’m their Princess. They’ll do nothing to threaten me. But if people here are speaking like this about Koll, then worse may be happening elsewhere. Now go. I’ll be alright, I promise.”

He looked past her at the men on the crates and the four guards. He could end all seven of them without breaking a sweat, and the crowds would scatter. “How is his return such common knowledge?”

“He was a popular man, Buri. People recognize him. He married the Iron Maiden afterall, so Ror thought it wise to make the matter known beforehand. Now go. See that they’re alright, before I get cross.”

She was his superior in rank, and every fiber of his being was trained to obey orders, but something moved him to hesitate.

“Buri,” she held his hand and squeezed it tightly, “I’ll be safe. Go to Koll, please.”

He nodded, then turned and left. When he’d gone halfway across the bridge he looked over his shoulder. She hadn’t moved from her place. She means only to listen, and she’s hiding so they’ll speak openly. Clever girl.

Buri turned back and resumed his trek to the central ohr-tempus that lead to the highest tier of Ormazzum, where he would then take a military lift to the citadel, and then to the apartment where Koll was being held. Buri did not expect any harm to come to Koll while in the citadel, but then the man on the near crate did have a point. One way or another, directly or not, Valung was likely involved in the matter.