The argument started over breakfast.Dara had brought food to the command tent at dawn — flatbread, dried meat, something hot in a clay pot — and looked at the two of us with the expression of a woman filing a significant amount of information for later review, and left without asking any of the questions she clearly had.Xavha had unrolled the siege map across the table. The eastern breach, the wall sections, the coalition positions, three months of notations."The southern approach," I said."Is a secondary position," she said."Is an uncontested secondary position that your engineers have not assessed since the third week of the siege. The stone there is older than the eastern section by at least sixty years. Different quarry, different binding composition."She looked at me. "You know the quarry age of Cinderwall's southern wall.""I went into the city yesterday. I looked at the walls."A pause. "You assessed the structural composition of a city's fortifications while simultaneous

Moira arrived four minutes after Xavha went to find her.Moira had already been moving when Xavha reached the southern perimeter. She had seen the skirmish from her position. She had seen the angle on the third tower. She did not say any of this, she came through the tent flap with her satchel and looked at the wound with the physician's assessment she had spent four hundred years trying to stop using, and sat in the dirt beside me without ceremony and began working.Xavha stood at the tent entrance and watched.Eighty years since that dead ground window. Two people who had spent those eighty years existing in the same world without occupying the same space, now in the same tent, three feet apart. Moira, for her part, worked on the shoulder and said nothing."You saw it happen," Xavha said finally."From the southern position. Yes.""You were already moving.""I was already moving.""Before I reached you?""Yes."Xavha was quiet for a moment. "How long have you been monitoring his p

The eastern contingent's commander was named Halvos and he wanted someone to blame.This was understandable, he had launched a full assault on a city that had signed peace terms while his assault was in progress, which meant he had technically committed an act of aggression against a non-besieged population, meaning his employers' legal exposure had shifted considerably overnight and they were looking for somewhere to put that exposure that was not themselves.He chose me.The negotiation happened the morning after the siege ended, in the city's main assembly hall. The northern contingent's senior officer, a woman named Praxis, was already seated when we arrived. The eastern contingent filed in after. The city's administrator sat at the head of the table with the sealed peace terms in front of him and putting on a neutral expression.Smart man.Xavha sat on my left, Moira sat on my right. Elpida sat behind me and slightly to the side, which was her preferred position in any room — pre

The Sarreth envoy was waiting at the junction — the split in the road where the eastern trade route met the northern Reach road, standing beside a single horse with no escort visible."Envoy," Elpida said, riding up beside me. "I see him.""He is not from my faction."I looked at her. "You are certain.""The insignia on his saddlebag. Wrong color for the eastern governor's office, that is the Sarreth capital's diplomatic corps — the faction that wants you removed, not managed.""So the dissenting faction has escalated from unauthorized contractors to official envoys.""It would appear so." She paused. "Which means they have enough internal support now to use official channels. That is a significant development.""How significant?""Three months ago they were operating in the margins. Now they have the capital corps." She kept her voice level. "Someone senior changed sides."Behind us, Xavha came up on my left. She had already seen the envoy. She had the focused stillness of someone r

The Verdant Reach announced itself three miles out.After weeks of the Reach's gray contested territories and Cinderwall's scorched siege ground, the green that appeared on the northern horizon was too dense, too saturated. Crops that should have been a month from harvest standing at full yield, fruit trees bearing simultaneously along three different growth stages. The particular excess of a land where the natural processes had been running at someone else's pace for two centuries.Moira pulled her horse alongside mine and looked at it without speaking."Two hundred years," I said."Yes." A pause. "She cannot eat any of it, she tends it for everyone else.""I know.""Knowing it and seeing it are different," Moira said. I let it land and said nothing.Xavha had moved to the rear of the group, she did this sometimes on the road — dropped back, gave the front to Moira and me, ran her own calculations at a distance that was close enough for security and far enough for thought. Dara st