"Commander.” He said. "The prince summons the squad."…………….The planning quarters were exactly as they had left them.The big round table. The map spread across it. The pinned corners and the markings and the lines that stopped where they were supposed to stop and didn't tell you what came after.Except now Yuki was at the table.Both palms pressed flat against the surface of the map. Her eyes were open but still, the particular stillness of someone looking at something nobody else in the room could see. The flame lines of her technique were running across the map in a warm, steady glow, spreading out from her palms in every direction, filling the markings and the territory lines with a living layer of orange that breathed as she breathed.Wabash was standing at the far side of the table. He looked up when they came through the door."You're back." He said."We're here." Egries said, stepping in.Roderick was already moving across the room to the table. He looked at Yuki, then a

The horses moved at an easy pace through the dark road, the torchlight from the column behind them throwing long warm shadows across the tree line on either side. The night air was cool and carried the smell of deep forest,damp earth, old wood, something green and alive underneath all of it.Asta and Jabber rode up from the middle of the formation, nudging their horses forward until they came alongside Prince Wabash. He looked over when he heard them coming, easy and unhurried, the way he looked at most things.They rode three abreast for a moment without saying anything.Then Asta said, "So. How did you find out you were a vessel?"Wabash turned his head toward him.Then he let out a short quiet laugh, not at the question, just at the directness of it. The laugh of someone who hadn't expected a conversation to start that fast and found it refreshing."First." He said."Please stop calling me Prince Wabash. Both of you." He looked between them. "Just Wabash. We're riding through

Asta took his and sat cross-legged across from the prince. Jabber sat beside him, wrapping both hands around his cup.A comfortable quiet settled over the three of them for a moment.Then Wabash looked at Asta."You were about to tell me.”He said.“Before Yuki called the stop. How did you find out."Asta looked at his cup. Then up."Right." He said. "Yeah."He took a short breath."It was my first day in the academy mine pit.” He said. "The underground labour section,first-year students, grey uniforms, pickaxes. Clank clank clank in the dark for hours." He looked at his hands briefly. "I had blisters within the first hour. Didn't stop. Just kept going."Wabash listened without interrupting."There were two older students." Asta said. "Crimson uniforms, proper rank. They had a girl pinned against the tunnel wall." He said it simply, no drama in it, just the shape of what happened. "I put my pickaxe down and walked over and told them to let her go.""Just like that?" Wabash

The men in black cloaks were still on their knees.Every single one of them, heads bowed, hands flat on the ground, not one of them willing to be the next person to look up. The silence in the space had that particular quality of a room where something bad just happened and everyone is very focused on not being the reason something bad happens again.Dero stood above them. Unhurried. Looking across the tops of their bowed heads the way someone looks across a field,with no urgency, just observation.Then, from the second row of kneeling figures, something started.A trembling.One man. His shoulders were moving, small and fast, the involuntary shake of someone whose body was doing something his brain was trying very hard to stop. His head was down but his lips were moving, the faintest murmur, barely sound at all.‘’’Oh God.’’’He wasn't saying it to anyone. He was saying it to himself, or to the ground, or to whatever part of his brain was still processing the last two minutes.‘’’It

Then the side of her mouth moved. Just slightly."I won't kill you." She said. "You're too useful to me." She looked at him for one more beat. "Don't do it again."Gull exhaled.The exhale was quiet and controlled and the relief in it was absolutely genuine.He stepped back to his position.Dero looked at the men still kneeling on the ground."Is there a bed somewhere in this place?" She said. Not specifically to anyone. "Somewhere I can rest and recover my strength."Two or three of the kneeling figures began to speak at the same time.She held up one hand.They stopped.She looked at the competing voices, then at the ceiling, then back down."You know what.”She said. "Never mind. I'll find it myself."She turned.And then she looked at Web.The look she gave him was different from anything else she had produced in the last hour. It was slower. And warmer. In a way that was not entirely comfortable."Web.” she said.Web looked at her."Would you mind accompanying me?" She s