The covered market rushed around Alize, the dead and injured still sprawled on the floor. Alize’s heart pounded and her fingers clutched Davram’s soul. Her friend’s life force struggled against the salt prison, desperate, mirroring her own pain in an entirely different way. Too many ways to feel pain. Alize dropped the halite into her pocket, unable to cope with the additional heartbreak.

The covered market filled with exodus. The survivors limped forward in shock and Alize fought against the tide to arrive finally at the banquet hall. Her gaze swept across the room. It was littered with mangled bodies and people bent everywhere over the dying. The tear streaks on Alize’s face felt crusty with salt.

But when Kell looked up from where he bowed over Davram, her hope flared again, stronger this time. Kell rose to his feet, crossing the room, his bloodshot eyes not breaking from Alize’s gaze for an instant.

Alize began running towards him.

“What are you doing?” A voice rang out, so cold Alize almost did not recognize it. Behind Kell, Princess Greer approached. Her anger disfigured her face far worse than her mangled cheek. “You,” Greer spat, “a Deku! You brought this reign of horror down on our heads, my father assassinated, my citizens murdered and Davram,” Greer choked.

“I can restore Davram,” Alize interrupted. “Give me his body and I can save him.”

“I will do no such thing!” Greer roared, “to allow such sacrilege to further desecrate the man you have destroyed!”

“It was not my doing!”

“What is that?” Greer demanded. She had burst the stitches holding her cheek together and now the blood flowed forth anew, dripping like fingers down her neck. “You proclaim innocence? Your guilt will last far beyond your sorry lifespan even if you live a thousand years!”

Alize looked to Kell. He drew a deep breath. “Deku!” he shouted, “a coward claiming to save her sisters while assisting her depraved family!”

“Arrest this woman!” Greer shouted before Alize could internalize Kell’s words.

Hands clamped Alize’s arms but she scarcely noticed as she prepared to beg for mercy from a province princess. A ruler even, now that her father was dead. But Alize would rather grovel at a ruler’s feet than accept her association with the Deku perversions. “Greer-”

Greer stepped close to her, “Your existence dishonors life.” She spat her own blood into Alize’s face. “At least now you’ve unveiled this human mask you use.”

Alize balked, clenching her fists, though the soldiers held her fast. They encumbered her body while Greer condemned her soul. “I am human!” she shouted.

“Then prove it,” Greer sneered, “die.”

Alize saw only Kell’s back as he walked away while her screams echoed against the walls of banquet hall. Greer had become deaf to any explanation, not matter how loudly Alize shouted. The guards pulled her from the room, and though Alize tried to keep pace, they jerked her forward. They did not let her recover when she tripped, opting instead to drag her behind them like a carcass. The cobblestones pried at the tops of her boots and dug into her ankles. Each time she managed to catch her feet, the soldiers forced her down again. Her shoulders ached from trying.

When they plunged into darkness, Alize recognized the stench of the prison rather than any visual cues from her downcast perspective.

The soldiers shoved her into a cell, clanging the iron behind her.

Despite the futility, Alize shook the bars, jostling the hinges as she screamed at the departing soldiers. “Nocturne take you all!”

But she slumped again the frames, regretting even the words coming from her mouth. She misplaced her anger with the soldiers. They believed they protected Greer from the Deku, from Alize’s own family. From her own hunger.

Innocence was the luxury she had never before understood.

Alize collapsed to the ground. She could hardly claim she would have acted any differently than Greer, faced with a Deku.

What would Celile think of me now?

At least, Alize tried to comfort herself, some of the Hrumi would survive. But in her mind she could see only Sosje, whose life dangled yet unclaimed by either death or life. Perhaps Alize would never learn which would triumph.

Yet the Hrumi had placed their hope in Alize to restore Davram’s soul. What a farce, now that she lay in a prison cell, the salt of his soul in her pocket, slowing dying a second death.

And what of Kell? Had he turned against her, now that he had witnessed the soultrussing of his best friend, and the destruction of his world’s anchors? His accusation blurred in Alize’s memory, but his distain remained vivid. If she lost him, he could tell the world all the Hrumi secrets of the dagger binding, and the children’s camp. If she lost him, the Hrumi would lose everything.

In the depths of her shock, Alize barely registered the cold floor and the damp of the prison. Her teeth chattered, but the darkness she faced was so much more than lack of light. It tore open old wounds, burrowing deep where the agony was most acute. Alize wept for Sosje, for Hesna, for Onder and Davram and for all her sisters hanging from the walls, for Prince Tamer and his hints of amnesty, and for every dead soldier that would have obeyed him.

Because fighting for peace was still a war, a gushing torrent of casualties. Alize was no longer certain that it mattered which side she took when the bodies amassed all the same.

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She wished for the trees. She wished for a mother that would fight for her like Qaaru sought to fight for her daughter. She wished for anything to keep the sweeping loneliness and anguish at bay.

Night had lapsed into despair and turned frigid. The darkness changed tenor. It felt alive around Alize, an unwanted companion in the jail with her, slowly suffocating her.

At first when a light flickered in the dungeon, Alize assumed she had imagined it. But a tiny flame bobbed forward to shudder against the dripping stones. Then the soft murmurs of footsteps and the sweeping of fabric. A figure emerged, shrouded in shadows.

Alize swallowed, hugging her knees to her chest. Her eyes were still hot with tears and she no longer cared who witnessed her weeping.

The figure approached, the candlelight casting the shadows of the bars onto the floor beside Alilze. When she looked up, she could not help recoiling.

“Is this what you planned, Deku?” The gray lady asked her. The Mage’s features looked more pointed in the low light.

“What do you think?” Alize spat.

The Mage blinked. She held her head as high as ever, as if she had no reason to regret her actions earlier in the evening. As if she refused to acknowledge the consequences. “I think not.”

Alize glared at her.

The gray lady spoke again. “You have made poor use of Mage Onder’s sacrifice.”

“Have you come here to mock me?”

A moment passed. “No.” the gray lady answered finally, “I have come here to understand. Why would a Mage as powerful as Onder think you were worth his life?”

Alize dropped her hands to the floor and shivered. “I don’t know.”

“Come to the bars.”

“Why?”

“I would like to release you. For a price, naturally.”

Alize looked up, poised between relief and apprehension. “What price?”

“Your memories. Let me review them.”

When Alize hesitated, the Mage’s expression soured. “There’s a stake in the courtyard outside that may burn before sunrise. You have no understanding of your role, you have no idea what enemy you’re facing. The powerless rarely have anything to teach us, but there’s something about you that keeps pulling you up. Tonight Hrumi defended Sargons, and a Ginmae surrendered to the Deku. You’re the only common thread. Did Onder know what you are?”

Alize scrunched her eyes shut and inhaled. Then, opening her eyes again, she staggered to her feet to approach the bars. She leaned into the Mage’s hands. “You tell me.”

The Mage’s fingers alighted on her temples. “At least you are brave.” she murmured. “This will hurt.”

And Alize screamed as the process began. The Mage pierced through her memories to thrust her backwards in time, too quickly. She slowed to see Alize capture Davram’s soul from Iedaja, then sped up once more, to her fighting beside Greer, her horror seeing the Hrumi bodies on the ramparts, Fergana shouting in the dungeon, Qaaru deriding the Hrumi. Viken burning the black mark over her heart. When the memory replayed of Iedaja screaming as Viken beat her, Alize reexamined it too. She had always been in another room, had never witnessed any of it. Had it all been staged to rouse her conscience? The Deku had played her too well.

Then the explosion at the Temple, and Onder’s dear face strained as he fought Omurtak. The battle with the Kogaloks. Celilie dying. It all spun by faster until the Gray Lady slowed it for one memory. The day in the woods when Alize had sent Sosje away so she could tend to Onder. Alize watched it through the Gray Mage’s eyes and saw that she had not acted with any altruism. She had not worried for Onder, she had worried for her clan, for her own safety. The Gray Lady would find no answers here.

But still the memories poured forth. Years alone in the forest, and the trees, the beautiful voice of the forest. Celilie in the tent announcing death. And before thar, the lovely memories of Hesna smiling, of lessons and normalcy. Of sitting at Hesna’s side while she cast runes in the salt minerals. It was a time when Alize had flourished. She nearly sobbed for the loss.

Still the Gray Lady pressed deeper. Here the memories became cloudier, disjointed, bits and pieces. They were coming to the end, to the point before remembrance. And then the Mage stopped altogether, letting the very last one replay.

“What would you have me do, Celile?” Hesna demanded. Her dark eyes flashed as she rose to her feet. “She is a child! She needs protection! Isn’t that the Hrumi task? Isn’t that our only mandate?”

“And what if they come for her?” Celilie retorted. She stood opposite Hesna in the tent, younger, softer, but just as cold. ”You will endanger us all, once the Deku discover your crime!”

“They will not discover it.”

“You place far too much faith in Arouah,” Celile sneered.

“Do not,” Hesna narrowed her eyes,” call him that.” She let the silence hang for a moment before resuming, her voice pure determination. “All we must do is keep her hidden until her dagger can be bound. Then we take her to the Temple, and the Priestess can salvage Saikal, and Alize will be free to make her own choice.”

“No clan leader would permit such a perversion of Hrumi customs.”

“I have already spoken with Touma,” Hesna countered flatly.

Celile bristled, drawing her face into a distaining grimace. Even then that look had terrified Alize. And maybe this was why.

“Pray then, Hesna, that Touma continues to favor you and your eccentricities.”

“Justice is not an eccentricity.”

“What you call justice is nothing more than the misunderstandings of fools, sister. I’ve no patience for these stories. Know that if I catch your precious mentee using her magic once more, I will not forgive it again. Next time, I will kill her myself.”

The wind followed Celile from the tent.

And in her memory Alize felt herself lifted into Hesna’s arms. She must have been so small. For once, she could see Hesna clearly, her skin dark as the beauty of dusk settling into the salt plains. Alize felt Hesna’s coiled hair on her cheek and caught whiff of frankincense. Hesna’s arms held her tightly, flinging the nightmares back into the darkness.

“Do not cry, Alize. Celile is not clan leader, she has no power over you. Shhh, hush, shhhh. We will go for a trip now, you and I, to the salt fields in the West. You’re not too young to begin learning the runes. But you must learn too, Alize, how to speak so Celile will never again suspect you.”

Alize gasped as the Mage released her. The gray lady had paled, and she stood back from Alize, panting. “Where,” she uttered, “is Saikal? Is she alive?”

“I don’t,” Alize stammered, “I don’t know what that means!”

“Your magic,” the gray lady breathed, “you had magic. Where is it?”

“The Deku took it from me in the citadel.”

The Gray Lady’s face twisted in misery, in anger, and for an instant Alize thought the Mage meant to slap her. “Onder didn’t know?”

“Know what?!”

“He must not have known. Rehsan have mercy on us all.”

“What are you talking about?” Alize shouted.

But the gray lady only sighed. Instead of answering, the door to Alize’s cell swung open. “Come,” the gray lady beckoned.

“Saikal – wasn’t she a Mage?” Alize remembered her name. Had not the Temple Priestess mentioned her in the autumn?

The gray lady only scowled at her. “The Hrumi aren’t the only ones with secrets to protect. Now, do you want to leave this prison or not?”

Alize hesitated before stepping forward. At least one obstacle had been cleared, but how many more remained?

The Gray Lady produced a cloak to cover Alize’s bloodstained clothing. As they emerged from the prison, Alize could scarcely believe the same moon shone as the one she had seen rise earlier in the evening. Now that the night had settled, the moon drowned in a sea of new stars, each one a reminder that Alize should no longer expect constancy. These unstable constellations had swarmed all the reference points she had studied her whole life.