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The Dinner and the Blade
The granary clerk's name was Petra and she arrived with wine.She set it on the camp table without ceremony and sat down looking at the assembled group with the particular expression of a woman who had walked into something considerably larger than she had prepared for and had decided to find it interesting rather than frightening."You are all real," she said."Sael said the same thing," Reth said. "When she first came aboard the ship.""I said you were all real," Sael said. "I did not say I was not surprised."Nikos sat beside Petra with the look of a man who had been holding himself carefully together since the scribes' house and had decided, with wine now on the table, to stop."He told me about you," he said to Moira."So you said.""He wrote about you in his old texts, in the margins."Moira set down her cup. "He annotated my library.""He wrote in a letter to the loyalist network — I intercepted it, I'm sorry, I wanted to know what he was doing — he wrote: there is a woman here
Korrath
Korrath was smaller than I expected.Three streets with a well, a granary built from better stone than the houses around it. Elpida went in first alone, she came back in twenty minutes."He is at the scribes' house," she said. "East end of the second street, he is working.""Does he know we are here?""The village knows," she said. "We are not a subtle group.""Does he know specifically?""The scribes' house has one window facing the well," she said. "He has not come to the window.""All right.""Do you want me to come with you?""No.""Xavha.""No."I walked to the scribes' house alone, the door was open.A boy of about twenty-three years sat at a desk by the window with a quill and a ledger. His hair was darker than mine, he did not have the silver streak. He had our father's jaw, which I had not seen in nine years, which hit me before I was ready for it.He looked up when my shadow crossed the floor."Kyros," he said."Nikos," We looked at each other across the room."You look ol
The Brother
Elpida found the record on the twelfth day.She came to me at the morning stop and put a single page on the ground between us, sat back and said nothing.I picked it up.It was a refugee settlement record from the Kaleth western territories, dated four years after the fall of the Valeborn Kingdom. The handwriting was a settlement clerk's — standard and impersonal.Third entry from the bottom: Nikos, approx. 17, single, no clan affiliation listed. Occupation recorded as: scribe's assistant. Settlement: Korrath village, western Kaleth.I read it twice."Korrath," I said."Two days south of Kalephis," Elpida said. "A small agricultural settlement, population approximately three hundred.""Four years after the fall.""Yes, which means he survived the initial collapse. He was seventeen in this record, he would be twenty-three now.""Scribe's assistant.""Yes."I set the page down. "Is the record current?""It is four years old," she said. "I do not have a current record, I have a name and
Lyss
The letter from Lyss came on the ninth day east.Kosmos landed on Moira's arm at the morning stop, and Moira unrolled the capsule, read it and handed it to me without comment.The letter said:The second thinning is done, the eastern yield is up twelve percent. Dexios came through three days ago — the Church man you released from the tower. He did not come for me, he came to see if I knew where you were. I told him I hadn't seen you in weeks which is true and then he left. I did not like the way he asked the question. The Thressos first payment arrived, it is significant. I have put aside what you need for the next stage, also I made the blackseed drying compound Moira described. It works. The eastern field smells extraordinary, I thought she should know.I handed the letter to Moira.She read it again."The compound works," she said."Yes.""She implemented it correctly.""From your instructions, yes."She folded the letter and put it in her satchel."Dexios," she said."I know.""H
The Southern Passage
We moved at dawn.Reth walked point, she stepped to the front before the camp was fully broken and started walking south and everyone followed.The passage was narrow, two miles of volcanic corridor, rock walls on both sides, the path worn into the stone by centuries of Reth's feet going back and forth and nothing else. No army had ever moved through it. "How long has this path been here?" Sael asked."Since the second century," Reth said. "I made it.""Made it how.""Slowly," Reth said. "It was not a path before. It was just rock.""You walked the same route until the rock remembered it," Xavha said."Yes.""How many times?""I stopped counting at ten thousand."Halfway through, Elpida came up beside me."The counter-documentation filed at the fourth bell last night," she said. "Church court received it. They cannot enforce the injunction while a counter-filing is pending review.""How long does review take?""Standard provision is thirty days.""Thirty days," I said."Yes, which me
Four at the Fire
I came down from the caldera at midday, Reth walking behind me.The camp went quiet when we came through.Xavha stood. "Well.""Yes," I said.Xavha looked at Reth."The marks went gold," Reth said."For three seconds," I agreed."How long do yours usually last," Xavha asked."Mine were dark silver," Moira said. "They do not go gold.""Mine either," Xavha said.They both looked at Reth."Renewal," Reth said. "Not destruction, the original domain function." She sat at the fire. "Apparently it looks different."Moira sat beside her, she opened her satchel and produced the compound bottle without being asked and handed it to me."The absorption was the touch at the caldera," she said. "Yes.""The gold tells me the mechanism was lateral to the others. The compound will need a different adjustment than the previous two." She took the bottle back. "Sit down, I need to look at the marks."I sat, while she worked. Reth watched."You do that without being asked," Reth said to Moira."Yes.""Ev
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