5.7

On the severed base of a tree, with his hands in the air, a young Rauman was tracing the contours of the land and motioning the act of shaping it, like the hand of their Creator. Unmoved by the long grass rippling gently in soft waves, he gazes coolly out over the deforested hills of his homeland and remembers when five strangers first appeared at the top of a hill –now he is slowly calculating.

Later, seated at a fireplace, Rauman is grinding his teeth on the seeds from an apple he is eating, before pondering aloud to a few of the small group of Tekah Ahn that had taken him in. ‘If I wanted to reach out, as if with an arm, in, over the land… just how many men would I need?’ His excitement grows as he imagines a line of his own people stretching out to sweep the land. ‘Fifty, one hundred? Imagine an arm of ten hundred men, or one hundred-hundred men! We could have whatever we wanted –wood, water -’

Drishti interrupted, ‘Like untaught children of lesser vision, self-centred and careless? No. We are able to take, just as you are able to muse, but we take what we need with care… for if we scar the land she will not continue giving –how can she, if everywhere we have touched her she is sore?’

Rauman would not grasp the idea of the land being capable of injury; instead, he wondered why they chose to be nomadic people, at the mercy of nature –did they enjoy listless wandering, or were they running from something? He did not care to learn how the pattern of movement this small group of Tekah Ahn followed throughout the year, was in harmony with the seasons, and an ever-growing knowledge of the lands florae. Rauman wanted a sure dwelling again, with a sure food supply; a place where the same food could simply be made to grow again, and again, on the same land forever. He imagines a place to settle all his days, and he imagines possessing an orchard so vast that it will give him influence over men.

‘What do you really want Rauman?’ asked Drishti.

Rauman glances their light shelters and notes the lack of manmade creations; he shrugs vaguely, ‘more.’ He turns the words over in his mouth, a rich orchard… rich or charred.

The Tekah Ahn sigh inside as they look upon young Rauman glaring intently into the fire. Unlike Rauman, Drishti’s son close by is noticing cheerful women carrying baskets of fish up from the river –whose water Rauman feared – and men weaving sleeping mats to trade, as they practiced one another’s dialects. But Young Rauman was so concentrated on the fire, he absently ate an unpleasant piece of his apple –then quickly spat it into the flames.

Sensing Rauman’s disconnect, the Tekah Ahn scout Drishti makes an offer, ‘Rauman, let me teach you a… a way of seeing about things.’

‘Of seeing?’ repeated Rauman, feigning interest.

As Drishti threw some leaves onto the fire to fragrance its smoke, Rauman threw the core of his apple to the edge of the fire and watched the last seeds scorch and burn, while the pod of another plant cracked open.

           

~

Desert sage decorated the corner borders of the playing card Richard was inspecting, as he entered The Hall and his throne assembled itself. Stepping up onto the muscled flesh of the foot of his throne, he easily seats himself high into an array of knife-edge cushions.

‘Where did you say you found this Roderick?’ queried Richard, as he turned the card over in his fingers to see one black shovel.

‘On a tavern floor, Murn Rinehart.’

‘Indeed, this is fine printing –but what’s so special about it?’

‘The… decorations,’ stammered Roderick as he twirled his hands in the air awkwardly. He was attempting to refer to the use of long, sinuous line, depicting plant forms, combined with complex geometric patterns and most significantly, the almost flawless print; it was unlike anything Ashen –but Roderick lacked the language to explain.

From his throne, Richard flicks the card at Roderick. ‘I’ve seen similar drawings on scrolls in my Library,’ he reveals disinterestedly, meaning the Alecsee Library. ‘Fine craftsmanship it is. If not from here, maybe it came from a workshop in Nahul. My Armin travel far and wide, they’re bound to collect odds and ends, sentimental scraps, here and there.’

Roderick’s clerk picks up the card and pockets it, saving Roderick the embarrassment of touching the ground in front of everyone.

Roderick continues, ‘Speaking of which… We’ve intercepted another message between Nahul and Reagan. The centurions Cornelius and Paul –it was I believe –had active contingents in those areas most recently, in order to give us this information.’

Richard is listening.

‘They have, I regret to inform you, been unaccounted for at the same time –several times – but I assure you we have done our utmost to discern their whereabouts,’ he snivelled.

‘They conspire against me,’ concluded Rinehart in Prue’s absence.

‘Today, we interpreted this message: meet me under their stars.’

‘Stars… not stairs?’

‘Stars.’

‘Whose stars? Fetch me a map.’

‘Of star constellations?’

‘No, of the land –there’s no one above me.’

Promptly, two of Richard’s servants ran out of the stone meeting chamber.

‘Shall we reconvene after lunch?’

‘No. We wait,’ ordered Richard as he motioned for Roderick and his clerk to be seated aside in wooden chairs.

Half a flagon of bourbon later, two serving girls return with a map.

Steadily, Richard stands to receive it and lay it easily, flat, upon his table. ‘Now, show me where they were last seen before disappearing.’

Roderick’s clerk hastens to read some papers in his hand, before speaking to Roderick. Roderick steps forward, and points to two different locations on the map. Richard places square carved stones as markers accordingly.

‘How long?’ he bellows. ‘How long was Jona gone for most recently?’ he pressed impatiently when Roderick didn’t answer immediately.

‘Ten days gone from the city, one day unaccounted for.’

Richard motions drawing a large circle around the city of Reagan to mark five days travel, and a smaller one around the site last seen to mark one days travel.

‘And him? Milo,’ added Richard, pre-empting Roderick’s inanity.

‘Twenty four days gone, two unaccounted for Sir.’

‘Two!’

‘Yes.’

Richard draws another, larger, circle around Nahul, and the site last seen.

‘What are you not telling me?’ he reckoned, as he closed in on the connected circles.

He plants his finger on a tract of land between places, saying ‘here, search here.’

Turning to a man and woman seated quietly at the side of the room, who had entered during their protracted wait for the map, Richard now stressed, ‘Lonigan, I want an arm of fire that can reach Reagan, if not Nahul, from within Asher. Behma, see to it that he gets the means he requires. And Roderick, surely there’s a way of decoding these messages faster? Get yourself a more capable assistant, a suited mind or instrument of some sort. Perhaps tomorrow you could go to Mario and re-examine our sequestered machineries for something.’

Following Roderick, Lonigan and Behma leave Richard’s charge.

Mena Hahn commences overseeing the serving of dinner for Richard. Tonight he would not dine with guests nominated for invitation by Bons, notable Societies, Associations, and Regalian Department Officials within Asher, instead he would dine with his own personal friends.

To serve Richard and his guests, there was a hidden army of invisible hands lighting fires, changing sheets, filling jugs and baths with water. These servants ensured the movement of tonnes of coal to multiple fireplaces, and several hundred gallons of water for cooking, cleaning and washing every week. They scurried through low ceilinged, damp tunnels, passages and backstairs as summoned by bells triggered by the pulling of strings.

Mena Hahn retrieves a great handful of keys from a sand filled bag at her side; the jangle and clink of metal echoes through the Grand Dining Room, breaching the silence as a serving girl warily enters.

Mena Hahn opens a small wooden door in a wall. Inside, there hangs several pieces of string, each with a different ornamental metal bobbin on their end. She easily pulls a few strings that retract before finding one that seems to be stuck and tugs on it more firmly until it gives way –it’s clearly broken. Alternating hands, Mena Hahn pulls on the thread hastily and its excess falls onto the floor. Pausing, she wonders how to fix it, as she cannot shut the wooden door on it properly to hide it. She again continues drawing out the thread, and it begins ravelling on the floor in a pile. Seeing the growing pile of thread on the floor, she stops to take a paring knife from her pocket with which to sever it, but hesitates. It can’t be that long, she told herself in earnest, as she nervously recommenced drawing out the thread –all the while picturing the end.

Mena Hahn was startled when the overlooked serving girl unexpectedly stammered, ‘Mena Hahn, shall I go and…?’

‘No, I can. Please continue the dinner preparations,’ ordered Mena Hahn with simple directness. The serving girl nodded and went to the crockery cabinet aside in the room. Mena Hahn resumed teasing the thread from the wall.

≈

The cavernous underground room is barely lit with candles, and it is hard to gauge its size, though I know it is vast. Everywhere there are high wooden tables, long and narrow.

One of the overseers is standing several metres away, twice the height of a regular human, and faceless in their costume with two dark eyeholes cut into the white cloth. The overseer is silently watching two helpers carry a hollow shell, like a man sized boat, into the room. Walking further into the room, I begin to see white mounds set on the tables that have been cast using such shells. I can feel my body tensing, my spine rigid, and my cheeks warm as I try not to let my thoughts spiral out of control.

I am grateful for the dim candle light as I pass where one has already been sliced cleanly, all the way unto its midsection. I try not to look directly at the dark shape in the side of my vision. I’m afraid to see any details, I’m afraid to see what I cannot unsee.

~

Rotten drunk, Murn Richard Rinehart is eating cheese, coated in a layer of waxy mould, as a serving girl enters with a plate of thinly sliced and rolled meats; she places it carefully on the long table. Richard raises his chalice to the forty other men at his table, and cheers.

‘Wait! You, don’t go,’ he snapped at the serving girl walking away after placing the food tray. She stopped where she stood, waiting for the next direction with her head bowed.

‘Mena Hahn! Bring me those wood seeds,’ he bellowed, motioning to a vase by the crockery cabinet.

As his daughter, Mena Hahn had been seated in a corner where she was allowed to sit and eat at her own table, separate from the gathering where he could keep an eye on her.

‘Father, let me show you a game,’ grinned Richard eagerly to one of his guests as Mena Hahn rose stiffly from her chair and brought him the vase.

Smirking, Richard took the vase in hand and stood up with it, sending Mena Hahn back to her place. Curious silence settled in the room as he turned the plain but shapely vase around in mock admiration, and raucous drunken laughter burst out when he forced it to the floor with a crash, sending chestnuts scattering across the polished marble floor.

‘Well?’ prompted Richard.

Richard eyed the serving girl as she approached at his command.

Trembling, Mikaela kneeled down to begin picking up the chestnuts, and as she reached out her fingers, they began to dance on the floor –the ground beneath them quaked, and began to shudder.

A stonewall collapsed, its heavy block stones barely missing Mena Hahn as she jumped up from her table. Richard’s guests cried out in shock as they left the table and fled the room in fear.

A servant’s passageway was exposed, and they climbed urgently out of the walls and over the rubble, seeking to escape the collapsing building.

Richard was so drunk he fell down, and his servants were now running over him.

Mena Hahn was standing in the archway of the door, shepherding the guests and servants out, as Richard shakily stood up, lumbered over and grabbed her tightly by the wrist.

‘Where’s Prue?’ he spat to himself as he shook Mena Hahn.

‘Let me go!’ she cried, pulling away so forcefully she managed to free herself from his grip.

He was standing alone, leaning on the doorway as she backed away, when the keystone of its arch cracked, and the first earth tremor ceased.

~

Maine smiles charmingly, ‘is it the apple sauce or is it your sweet nature?’

Remi blushes as Maine pours himself another red drink.

Seated beside one another at a great banquet table as it is being cleared, Maine confides to Remi he has enjoyed her company and offers to walk her home. The glow globes lighting the room flicker off and on, as another tremor reverberates through the earth around them.

Remi laughs, insisting she was safe and he would only get lost on his way back.

‘When are we leaving here?’ asks Luc and Alesandra, frightened by the earth quaking.

Maine shrugs, and turns back to Remi. ‘Don’t you want to live up there? I mean, would you… with the right person? Or people, should I say.’

‘My calling is here,’ stated Remi politely.

‘We just need to find out a few things,’ assured Lenshu to Luc and Alesandra. ‘These people know a lot about other tribes across our land –many we’ve never met before. People like us, and people very different to us.’

‘How different?’ pressed Luc.

Lenshu hesitated. ‘The way they dress, the things they do… the way they think… the way they dance!’

Luc and Alesandra ponder. ‘So when do we get to meet them!?’ wonders Alesandra excitedly.

‘Soon,’ smiles Lenshu, glancing Barbuak discreetly consoling Jacklyn.

~

‘Why did you not leave?’ implored Mena Hahn to the servant at her spinning wheel, her baby squirming where he lay in folded fabric on the floor.

‘Where have I better to go? I’d rather serve quietly in the corner of a great house than live and work locked up in a Reynard’s pen amongst crowds, sweating for their shops. Better the fiend you know.’

‘You have chosen the greater of two evils… don’t you know why they call him The Hollow Man?’

‘Because he knows how to hollow out a man and make him something other? Well, I’m no man,’ declared the weaver.

‘No, this will not do,’ choked Mena Hahn as she dropped the tangle of thread she had earlier drawn from the wall and tied one end of it to the foot of the spinning wheel.

‘His dark gift is but the trickery of blindness,’ continued the weaver. ‘Your soul is beyond the arm of his reach.’

‘Unless your spirit is broken?’ challenged Mena Hahn as she began drawing away from the weaver with the fastened thread.

The weaver smiled, ‘the soul is ever more child, neither created nor destroyed, only moved –all things grow from this.’

Mena Hahn paused in the doorway to regard the woman with child; neither mad, nor scared, nor stressed. The weight of a world surrounding them was fading away at the sound of simple truths she had long sensed but been unable to grasp.

Mena Hahn brought herself back to the moment, fumbling with the thread as she trailed it along the ground.

‘Where are you going?’ asked the weaver as the baby chortled.

‘This house is collapsing, if there is another tremor you may be killed. He may die,’ marked Mena Hahn, looking to the baby. ‘You have to leave,’ she implored, ‘tonight.’

‘And where do you intend to lead us?’ frowned the weaver.

‘To the garden,’ asserted Mena Hahn as she vanished from sight. ‘I’ll leave something there for you, to help you carry on.’

~

‘You will need these,’ asserted Lonigan as he lifted a handwritten list of men and women on a stiff piece of parchment into the air. Judy gazed coolly into the eyes of Richards’s right hand man as she took the paper, and then marched quickly out of the room.

In the town square outside the Alecsee Library, Judy removes the parchment from her jacket missing a button, and commits the list of names to memory by sight.

Passing through the shadow of the obelisk, she then crumples the parchment in her hands. Walking sternly with a tightly balled fist of information past the Alecsee Library, she spies a young boy shepherding bons around a girl dressed in blue, as she was prying a tiny green sprout from between the pavers.

Minutes later, on a quiet street in the shadow of the Arena, Judy entered the shop of a metal worker and tossed the crumpled parchment into their forge, before interrupting the smithy busily sharpening an axe.

Standing at the front of the room, Mar Wilrein addresses another group of cavalrymen for the first time. ‘Imagine walking alone in the land of the dead, a field of those fallen –how are you to find your way home? Today, we study navigation by the stars.’

~

A troop of Judy’s legion had entered the Marlowe settlement without stealth, and been ambushed by expectant inhabitants seeking to protect their reserves of precious stones and diamold. She now found herself tearing the clothes from a deceased young boy she had killed, to bandage her wounds, gushing from his pickaxe.

Fallen down amongst the dead, she laboured to breathe as the sun lowered and her bloody wounds set. She lay with the dead, mourning how much higher could the cost of surviving climb from here? 

Sometime later, the sound of trickling water woke her thirst, waking to a growing fear people would soon come to sweep the field of conflict and properly end her, she began stumbling around the eerily quiet woodland. After choosing not to sip the murky water from a nearby spring, Judy checked the bodies she found for people she knew, and took their cloth wrist ties. It was during this time she found a young woman, uncannily similar to her in likeness. Previously Judy had only seen her reflection in murky mirrors and dark glass, never really connecting with it, but here now she felt faced with her self. She pondered the blood spattered kind face and plain clothes of this other being that could have been her, if only she had been born elsewhere. She imagined the maiden’s life had been quiet in the woodland, before her violent end –or had it?

Again, Judy feels the dark arms of the mire she is a part of tighten around her heart; threatening to end its relentless beating towards some distant light, some imagined place of being in the future –she questions whether or not she deserves to be there, or here, at all.

Judy reached out to open the eye of her doppelgänger, and was so morbidly absorbed in the moment, she didn’t notice someone approaching close behind her until the eye was drawn open.

Camilla gasped as she looked down at Judy crouched over her likeness.

‘Help me!’ insisted Judy as the eye fell shut again, and she frantically began to remove the maidens clothing.

~

‘You are certain?’ appealed Lonigan, and Roderick nodded.

‘Do we need Richard to check?’ ventured Lonigan threateningly.

‘We have proof,’ replied Roderick as his clerk rummaged in his own side bag, drew out some coloured patches, and a circle of thread. The clerk handed the items to Roderick, who placed them on the table for Lonigan to inspect.

Glancing the instantly recognisable service dots and decorations, Lonigan reached out and took the unassuming bracelet in hand. It was an Armin weave, with colours revealing one’s races, rank, and time, combined with a unique stitch that he recognised.

Lonigan sighed, straightening his broad shoulders as he leaned back into his chair. ‘So, Judy Wilrein is dead,’ he declared as Roderick nodded.

‘…and dust to dust,’ mused Lonigan as he deftly swept Judy’s decorations from his tabletop into a rubbish bowl for burning. ‘Have her replaced by Cornelius… and send the Armin that saw her body to Richard –to be sure,’ ordered Lonigan spitefully.

Roderick nodded reluctantly, and left wordlessly with his clerk in tow.

~

In the darkness, behind closed eyelids, she suspected she had lost consciousness a few times during the meditation. Judy turned to the person nearest her on the grassy ground in the shade of a tree, and asked quietly, ‘Did I snore?’

‘Yes, you certainly did,’ the group replied to her embarrassment, laughing together.

Venturing back out into the unforgiving midday sun on the edge of the little desert, Judy goes walking with her thoughts, to recall some of the healing visions the Tekah Ahn’s healot Iksha had given her.

Iksha was the eldest of the Tekah Ahn, who had finally agreed Judy could be taken into their makeshift camp. Iksha summoned Judy to the river, and having made her goodbyes, Judy went –in her odd clothes, walking vigilantly.

Edy and Mica smiled at Judy as she passed them by in an Amacite skirt, undecidedly Tekahnian shirt, chameleon hair now clean and brushed like an Ashen, with earth paint on her face failing to hide her freckles.

‘You’re a real jewel Judy,’ marked Edy.

For her face and dress made it difficult to place to whom she belonged, Judy was happy her puzzling appearance amused them and grinned, ‘then call me Jewely.’

‘I envy the man who comes to be decorated by you,’ teased Mica.

Judy allowed Iksha to help her into the boat on the river as she called back to Mica and Edy, ‘I’ll be by, if not back,’ she soothed with determination. ‘You with me?’

Edy and Mica linked arms on the bank, ‘well, as long as we don’t actually have to be seen with you,’ taunted Edy.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll get myself a decent costume before the city gates,’ avowed Jullee, as she tapped a pocket on her belt, and pushed herself out into deeper water.

Iksha’s silence was palpable, and as the strong current of the river caught her little boat, Judy now looked to her knowingly for the last time. She could see through her love to her fear, and back again; an infinite spiral mirroring her dharmic path of the universes transformative waves. Empowered by the Tekah Ahn’s benevolence, those descendants from various reaches of their world, Judy returned her attention to the river, feeling that no matter how far into the unknown she pressed, she would never be alone again.

~

The weather was mild, and the grass was growing longer where the students sat amongst the shade of a variety of apple trees, individually copying the lettering from printed scrolls onto their small chalk boards. To the students delight, some chickens interrupted the lesson –running and flying over their work, to avoid a boy pursuing a panicky goat.

Jullee laughed at the scene from a distance, as she finished inspecting the wool of someone’s sheep, then began to approach Dee dismissing the students. Before making their separate ways, the children and adult scholars returned the few scrolls and chalkboards to Dee’s handcart –already half loaded with layers of coloured fabrics.

This encampment Jullee was visiting was located several days from the outskirts of Nahul, and –thanks to a great band of wild forest with an eerie reputation – had remained untouched by Ashen hands for over fifty seven years.

‘You here for some more drift seeds and fruits?’ asked Dee as she lifted the handle of her cart, knowing Jullee would wish to walk and talk with her.

‘I came bearing these babies,’ explained Jullee, producing two avocado seeds that Dee had never seen before. ‘Among other things. Say, I’ve been wondering…’

‘Ah, here we go,’ chuckled Dee looking up at the clouds.

Jullee subdued her laugh as they noticed two brothers arguing discreetly over something in the central gathering space. Dee dropped her cart handle, but Jullee smiled good-humouredly to say, allow me, and handed the seeds to Dee to study.

Walking into the space –with rugs rolled up on its edges and an elaborate set up of carved stones, fragrant herbs, and flowers grown around a dais –Jullee quickly realises the symbolic central hearth fire flame had gone out, and the brothers were arguing about what to do.

‘We found it like this! We didn’t put it out,’ they yelped when she reached them by the oil lamp. ‘Honest!’ they avowed at her playfully unconvinced expression.

They had been charged with the duty of attaching a fresh length of string to the old one –at an entry point near the top of the body, where the string fell down into the oil, before being pulled up through the collar to the burner – and found the lamp unlit.

From her pocket, Jullee retrieved a box filled with tiny sticks of pine, each with a little blue head.

‘Who needs to know it ever went out, right?’ insisted Jullee, motioning to Dee nearby, watching them. The boys nodded as Jullee grated one of the sticks against a coarse edge of the dais and it caught fire.

As she guarded the small flame towards the lamp, the brothers hastily removed the clear stone chimney and elaborate coloured stone shade, so she could reach the burner.

‘Good work,’ smiled Jullee as they replaced the lamp shade and chimney together. ‘Next time, use this fire steel into a clump of that dry grass, okay?’ instructed Jullee as she handed over a sharp piece of flint and small chunk of fire steel. ‘Keep these somewhere here for everyone,’ she added, walking away without ado.

‘Could we have a firestick too? Please!’ called out the younger boy eagerly, as his older brother wacked him for being so bold.

Jullee paused, took a tiny bundle of paper tied with string from her pocket and threw it on the dais. As she caught up with Dee, they unfolded the paper she left behind, and found several red headed pine sticks.

~

Que spent the first moments of the morning placing one stone to make a ledge, from which to step from the mud bank onto the water. From this stone perch in the shallows she knelt, dipped her hands into the freshwater, and washed her face; it was too cold to bathe and dry just yet. As water dripped from her fingers onto the rock, she mused upon its changing colour.

Later, after scraping some ground ochre into a dusty little pile, she added some water until it was a smooth paste, then painted three dots on the back of her hand.

Sunni collected more rocks from the sparse landscape she had passed through unto this area close to the cliff face, returned to her camp and continued painting the rest of her body with patterns, tracing the peculiar soft shell she had been born into with curiosity –defenceless without agility of mind.

Late afternoon, Sunni-que made her way towards the waterfall of the river, to watch the sunset over the colossal mounds of sand sticking up through the tree tops in the distant jungle below.

Along the way, having climbed down into the canyon towards the crest of the cascade, she recognised a single broken piece of wood with a blue, green and yellow stripe as being from the boat she had leapt from many days ago.

Now standing at the top of the complex waterfall she could see the white water at its base, and a plunge pool leading to a short cataract gorge. Carefully climbing over rocks and fallen trees, a little way further over the water, Que finds a somewhat safe place to stand and watch the sunset from. It was close to the edge, and the wind was gently threatening to push her over if she wasn’t heedful.

Looking at the three marks on her hand, and remembering painting pictures with Jakyln in the time before the earthen flood, Sunni-que now mused about the way the solid world could manifest out of dust. She dipped her hand into the water close by and watched the earth flowing away from her hands, while contemplating the way stuff moved from one place to another, possibly ever shifting and changing without being created or truly destroyed.

She lifted a pebble underfoot and was tempted to throw it over the waterfall into the pool below, but carefully returned it to where she had lifted it from.

Then, as she gazed deeply into the yellow amber light of the sun, and moved into its rays over the land, the earth seemed at once vaster, yet more graspable, than she had ever felt before.

Time slowed and was felt to be passing backwards as she became aware of the changing rocks, trees, and creatures the sun giant beheld before her time, and would continue to behold beyond the end of her days. Deeply comforted, she calmed as his rays moved through her like sound.

Sonique wonders of the life of the sun, the stars, and the earth; of their dying and their birth. She concedes that if the world of worlds is older than her mind can comprehend, then every possible thing –every possible movement or exchange of energy – has probably already happened, or is happening again –she briefly disappeared into the sea of everything.

Resisting a stoneish moment, she decided to determine her human cycle, and deviate where possible.

As soon as the sun vanished beneath the horizon into a dark blue band in the distance, she left the waterfall. Walking quickly under a blushing sky as it faded, she arrived home after dusk in the light of the first moon.

In her sleeping place, drifting deeper into dreaming, Sonique wonders of the stream of time across the land she has been following; and hopes it will bring her joy.

~

Orana is lightly dragging her hands over the ground, combing it of dry leaf leaves for kindling. Comforted to have her hands stained with a little fresh soil, she gently harvests the dead, dry fern leaves, collects twigs and various sized sticks to place around the hearth fire where Jullee is conversing with a group of people over a map, hand drawn with graphite.

‘This space, there, I like it. Here, let’s settle maybe forty five. Here, that gully, twenty – no more, no more. And over here these flats, these flats, see how it leads up onto that bend of the river. Yeah, two hundred and fifty. And put the centre hearth here –for these three.’

Jullee distractedly regards Orana, whom several guinea fowl are following as she comes to place kindling by the smouldering fireplace –in time for night cooking.

‘Did Edy get you some okra?’ asked Jullee, drifting away from the map. Orana nodded in thanks, and placed the kindling and sticks on the coals, as the others talked amongst themselves briefly before disbanding,

Jullee stood quietly for just a moment to regard the smoking coal embers, and Orana caught the melancholy in her eyes.

‘May I?’ sighed Orana, beckoning.

Jullee looked at the elderly Tekah Ahn woman, who appeared Shyrat in descent –of the seafaring mountain people; more than an Amery of the tree top metropolises, or of Osvaldur forest monastics. The Tekah Ahn shared a common language, but their manners and endowments differed as vastly as their birthplaces. Unsure what Orana wanted as she beckoned, but trusting her, Jullee nodded gently.

Orana was looking into her eyes as Jullee thought about the dissenters in Asher being arrested and blood tested, adding to the captive pool of organ donors unknowingly waiting to be killed on demand by sham doctors, the new butchers. Jullee recalled plans to resettle the Ashen refugees still living and hiding in the giant sinkholes of the Paper Plains, and the faces of everyone from the camps she had bridged contact between; the cities she had visited, the taverns she had frequented, the Armin she had trained with, the dead she had lost and found –it was overwhelming and exhausting. Time was passing strangely, as she realised she’d become lost in Orana’s blazing black eyes. A jade green ring began to emerge where the edge of an iris should be… Jullee’s thoughts were interrupted with the image of a young girl she had not seen before.

Jullee became incapable of resisting reliving more deeply repressed memories as she began to also see the famine stricken lands of Orana’s youth and what they ate to survive.

‘Orana!’ interrupted Urik’s voice.

‘Forgive us,’ pleaded Tharwa who had promptly appeared and was now walking Orana away.

Jullee was kneeling by the fireplace, dazed. She kept her face bent toward the ground, her long hair hiding tears.

‘Are you okay?’ asked Urik. ‘I’m so sorry… She’s not herself these days –but she is harmless… I mean, are you okay? What happened? What did she say?’

‘Nothing, nothing. It’s okay. I understand,’ assured Jullee as she cleared her eyes. Attempting to stand, she realised she didn’t remembering falling to her knees. Urik caught her hand and she allowed him to help her to her feet, but didn’t look him in the eye, as her mind still burned with the faces of those she did not want to remember.

‘She’s looking for her daughter,’ said Jullee sympathetically.

Urik drew a sharp breath.

‘You know her?’

‘Que,’ he almost whispered, as ghostly memories returned of Firth, Escha, Utnap, and Pretty Shield.

Jullee was looking around now, regaining her bearings as Urik explained shortly. ‘She disappeared, over a decade ago.’

‘You think she’s still alive?’

Urik was very still for a time, hesitant to answer; Jullee appreciated the time he took in choosing his words, cautious of making something so. She felt for Orana as she stood with Urik in quiet empathy.

‘Are you alright?’ wondered Urik.

Jullee looked Urik in the eyes cautiously as she nodded. ‘It’s okay, I understand –really.’ She took a deep breath and smiled in quiet amazement, ‘she’s a strong woman that one.’

Urik smiled with relief as Jullee brushed her hair away from her face, and a level of mental clarity returned, like the feeling of sobering up after a strong wine.

‘I need a drink,’ mumbled Jullee as she walked off in her own world, leaving Urik behind with the rekindled fire.

~

Nazmin and Judy advanced on the brightly lit Ashen tavern, The Lonely Swan, in the darkness.

‘Don’t make eye contact, or they’ll think you’re interested in them,’ warned Nazmin.

Judy ceased walking, an incensed look on her face. ‘I’m a decorated Armin now.’

‘No, in there, you’re just a woman,’ implored Nazmin. ‘And if you aren’t compliant they’ll become forceful in trying to assert themselves over you.’

‘So they’re short tempered brutes. Well, how do I get to do what I want to do, if it’s always expected I do what they want me to do?’

‘Oh, you usually have to do a lot of things you don’t want to do, before you get what you need.’

Judy scowled. ‘I’m not going in there.’

‘We don’t have a choice. You said so yourself –we need them.’

Judy stared at the closed doorway.

Nazmin smiled sadly. ‘Jude, listen to me, these people value innocence through ignorance. Virtue through knowledge is not just a foreign or an elitist concept… it’s against their religion –you won’t change that overnight.’

Judy looked around the empty courtyard; there was a table and two chairs. ‘Sure we can –one conversation at a time.’

‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ quipped Nazmin as they started walking and she put her hand on the door. ‘In a place like this, the price of a dented ego is usually a good belting.’

~

‘Come now, let’s gamble honestly,’ smiled Judy as she slammed her wooden wine tankard onto the dark timber table. ‘The first question on your mind is – what did I do wrong? Am I right?’

Banoc contemplated, unspeaking for a few seconds.

‘Bahh! I win, I’ll have another wine thanks,’ jeered Jude as she stood up from the table, and looked around The Merry Mule, filled with drunken patrons.

‘Why are you wearing odd shoes?’ asked a man with short black hair, neatly coiffured to reveal a chiselled, wild face and hazel eyes. He was standing awkwardly among others, and Judy guessed he was waiting for a friend to finish their conversation so he could leave.

‘Well I couldn’t decide,’ admitted Judy. ‘You see I love this pair a lot, but this pair went missing for a long, long, time, and I only just found them again –so I had to celebrate.’

‘But if you had to choose?’

She pointed to the one from the missing pair. ‘These ones, hands down.’

‘So why are you wearing odd shoes?’ he repeated.

‘So I get to meet fine folk like yourself. What’s your name?’

‘You can call me Rauman.’

Judy shrugs carelessly as she gathers his friends are negotiating over land. ‘And what brings you here Rauman?’

‘A last hurrah. My studies require I leave Nahul and go to work in Asher.’

‘Business huh.’ Judy noted the ram head carved into his hematite stone necklace. ‘I’m a student too.’

‘And how long have you been here?’ he questioned.

‘In Nahul, or this tavern?’

‘Here, tonight.’

‘A while,’ she hesitated.

‘And how many drinks will a girl like you cost me?’

‘Well that depends on how hard you drink,’ she joked.

He smirked without laughing, waiting.

Judy winced and sighed as she turned to walk away. ‘You know it doesn’t actually work like that right?’

‘Come now,’ prodded Rauman as he stepped in front of her. ‘You’re here to land a man, well here I am.’

Judy glances Nazmin. ‘I’m enjoying the wine, games, and most people’s company here actually.’

‘You’re odd for a bon,’ confided Rauman, glancing her clothes.

‘That’d be because she’s an Armin,’ defended Banoc, whom she’d been gambling with. He approached with wine and tugged at the collar of Judy’s shirt, exposing layers of scars along her collarbone. Banoc looked at Rauman as he offered Judy wine, asking, ‘is he bothering you?’

‘Not at all,’ said Judy with a controlled smile, as she took the wine with thanks, and pushed him away light heartedly. ‘We were just saying goodbye.’

At Judy’s insistence, her new friend went away.

‘So?’ pressed Rauman as he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her closer. She resisted calling attention, so as not to embarrass him and have him turn malevolent on her; instead she smiled as if she might stay, so he released his grip on her.

Judy smiled seriously. ‘So… you just keep on going till you get what you want?’ she implied coldly. ‘Take care Rawman,’ stressed Judy as she turned away from him and hastened to sit with Nazmin even though she needed a latrine.

He seemed pleased with the interaction despite the outcome, and it irritated her that he could linger nearby. Judy vowed to cut off giving attention quicker in future; from the first putdown, or at the slightest whiff of nuisance. Sitting with Nazmin, she kept a wary eye on Rauman as he left –leading a handful of men.

~

‘Is that a book or a box? You have to take it out of your bag,’ ordered the entry guard bluntly.

‘Please, thank you,’ she sang sweetly, finishing the guard’s sentence before doing as she was told.

Standing in tall repose, with the air of a Regalian Councillor, they let her walk in carrying a traveling cup.

She sat in the room alone for some time, inspecting the scuff marks, stained timber and graffiti carved by impatient others who had come before her.

Three men entered the locked room and asked of her existing injuries, to note before they commenced. Lightly brushing the fading bruise on her cheekbone, she proceeded to show them her blackened wrists, bruises up and down her forearms, and told them of the deep scratches in her back. The superior did not care to press how she had gained them; though the other stilled a second long enough for her to notice he cared –but wouldn’t break procedure in order to ask her.

Talking as they scrawled on parchment, the third minor Armin took their eyes off her and leant forward –perfect opportunity for her to break their head open on the table top. ‘Stepping on money, throwing confetti, dancing in a memorial which is no place for public expression, riding a horse in a dress…on a Sunday – you have quite a list of priors here. I’d be thankful you’re leaving today after these more recent charges.’

Judy seethed. ‘If I ever set foot in this house again, it will be because I have been deceived, forced here, or come to throw the book at someone. He had no intention of applying himself to educing the innocence in my guilty plea in order to soften my sentence. I made time to be here and yet he frittered our time away; rushed into condemning and ridiculing me rather than unpacking the situation as we came to do. As a guest to this house I was disrespected at the door, and after already accepting financial and social disadvantage, I’ve now been threatened with complete corporeal constraint, but not before watching the umpteenth person, committing far more harmful actions, walk away on a promise. I don’t much fancy the circus you’re running here.’

The minor Armin nodded, shrugged, and shuffled their papers.

When they left the room together, they left a paper with several official stamp marks on it behind –perfect for reproducing – so she quietly folded it, and put it inside her now empty cup. No-one questioned where the paper was when they returned.

The second Armin escorted her to a different door from which she first entered.

They were alone a moment, and he was distracted with trying to unlock the faulty door. As soon as he had pried it ajar, she wished to grab him by his painted arm and land her lips on his cheek… slip out the door, into the street and vanish before he could refix his unsettled eye glasses –but she didn’t.

~

Judy entered The Masked Maiden, and stood at the bar, struggling with the bag the Armin had sealed her money in during the last arrest.

‘How are you today?’ asked Dusty, the barman.

‘Great, I’m out on bail again. Say, do you have a knife I could use for a second?’

As she waits, Camilla is ignoring a group of men wanting to sit with her at her table.

Because she is uncomfortable, she moves away to another table in another room of the tavern. They follow her, insisting, ‘we just want to sit with you.’

She turns around, saying crossly, ‘no, thank you.’

One throws a little piece of bread at her, saying ‘what’s wrong? Are you insecure?’

‘Stop!’ says Camilla, as she brushes it out of her hair. ‘Just leave me alone, please.’

‘Where are your friends huh?’ they mock as she stands up and moves away again.

‘I guess, if you’re not angry, you must be ignorant,’ conceded Dusty.

‘No, if you’re not excited, you must be unimaginative,’ assured Jullee. ‘He may have a throne, but he is no King…he’s no true sovereign, and the final power still rests in the people. Anyway, for now, I reckon the security of the community of the realm will benefit from revising, and shortening, that overtly King-friendly Charter; and she’s going to make sure that clause is included… I mean it has to be, if we are to safeguard individual liberty.’

‘Agreed.’

Judy senses a commotion behind her and turns around to see a finely dressed woman, with sea ornaments in her tangled hair, looking very flustered as she walks toward the doorway. ‘Camilla!’ exclaims Judy.

A group of men follow Camilla, throwing pieces of food at her. Leaving her drink on the bar, Judy walks over and steps between the men and Camilla.

‘Stop,’ orders Judy as she raises a soft empty hand to them.

‘They won’t leave me alone,’ stuttered Camilla, ‘I told them to leave me alone.’

‘We just wanted to sit with you,’ says one as they throw bread over Judy at Camilla.

‘I said no!’ protested Camilla.

‘Hey, stop it!’ repeated Judy. ‘Think about what you’re doing. Look around you; you’re in a shared space right now, you can’t act like that here.’

‘Who are you? My grandma?’

Judy looked into the ringleaders wide eyes. ‘You need to leave,’ and looked to his friends, saying, ‘you need to take him out of here.’

‘So you’re a tough bitch huh?’

‘Look, you’re not welcome if that’s how you’re going to act. This is Nahul, not Asher. Get out of here, now thank you.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

‘Well someone needs to, you’re clearly too childish to know any better. She obviously wants you to leave her alone, she said no so leave her alone.’ Judy turned and walked away, giving them room to leave.

‘Whatever, we all know that no doesn’t really mean no,’ he smirked, and his friends laughed in agreeance.

Judy stopped, turned around, and stared. ‘Excuse me?’

The agitator smirked again, prompting his foolish friends to laugh again with him.

‘Excuse me!?’ repeated Judy hotly.

As they neared one another’s faces, his options for a smart retort had disappeared –unable to express anything sensible or simply apologise, he punched her in the face. Readily, Judy only turned her head for a second, to save her eye, before returning to staring at the imbecile. Suddenly men were brawling around them as onlookers had started laying into the antagonisers. The ringleader was backing away from Judy as she stood rooted to the spot, staring at him with anger and pity. The front door of the tavern opened on the commotion, and in walked Phaeona.

Phaeona sussed who Judy had her eye on; slid some tables, and kicked some chairs out of the way of the brawlers; flung dinner knives and forks from tables out of reach into the wall behind the bar; and ripped open the back curtains, flooding the place with late afternoon sunlight which seemed to bring some of the men to their senses and slowed the fighting. She stood at the window eyeing the ringleader –who’d remained untouched by all the fighting in his standoff with Jullee. Conscious Phaeona was watching him now, he began to back slowly out the front door as everyone who’d become involved slowly quieted and quickly dispersed when an outsider yelled Armin were coming.

Judy and Camilla watched the ringleader tentatively meander away in the street, as bystanders who’d pounced on his friends in Jullee’s defence refused assistance for their injuries.

Camilla shook her head in disbelief, as Phaeona nonchalantly poured herself a water from the tap behind the bar, and women began to reset the tables and chairs.

‘Where’s your fella?’ asked Jullee as she shepherded Camilla back into the tavern and motioned to Dusty to serve them, but he was busy pulling cutlery out of the wall.

‘Oh… this really isn’t the kind of place Mario would want to be seen in,’ admitted Camilla as she composed herself by winding her hair up into a bun.

‘Hmm, yes, sorry about that,’ sighed Judy. ‘When you spar with tomatoes, you do get wet socks.’

~

Jullee approached The Fiddlers Green, walking over a large smiling sun drawn into the sand of the wide alley as children threw a small red ball to one another. At the door outside, she greeted a white haired lady wearing black and orange striped socks who was seated quietly in the shade, reading a book and minding the children.

‘Gimmie three seconds,’ begged a man serving another patron when Jullee entered the cool tavern.

‘Hey there!’ he smiled, ‘remember me?’

‘I’m sorry, I have selective amnesia,’ she smiled.

‘My wife Julie makes hats…’

‘Ah yes, your brother, whose quite the traveller, enjoys women’s company but wouldn’t live with one.’

Jullee noticed a newspaper over his shoulder on another table, of a familiar face with the name Richard, though she was sure the name was misspelt.

‘Would you like a herring?’ continued the servant.

‘Only if it’s red,’ quipped Jullee.

‘They’re out back,’ he motioned before returning to the person he had been serving.

Jullee approached another bar in the same building where a girl with moon phases, hand painted in white on her dark cotton shirt, was being served. The bar counter was covered with discarded coins and Jullee was inspecting a jug of white liquid covered with cloth, when the barman with long white socks finally turned to greet her.

‘Poppy.’

‘What’s this?’ she chuckled.

‘Milk.’

‘You mean that weird sea monkey shite that’ll give you diarrhoea?’

‘They say it’s good for your health.’

‘They say brussel sprouts are good for your health,’ speculated Jullee.

‘Well they are,’ asserted the barman.

Jullee makes an unconvinced grimace, as he serves her beer in a glass with a knitted holder.

‘What’s this?’ asked Jullee cheerily.

‘Clouds, the missus knitted it just for you.’

Jullee beamed thankfully, admiring the handiwork.

‘You staying the night?’

Jullee sculled the beer, and waved for another quickly saying, ‘I wasn’t,’ as she pulled the rucksack from her shoulders behind her and dropped it on the ground.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Missus’ll be pleased. You gotta take her out sometime for me, would you? But you also gotta bring her back… in one piece.’

‘Always,’ promised Jullee innocently as she started drinking the second.

He reached around behind him and opened a cabinet, before handing over a key with a wooden tag carved with the number twenty three.

After quickly finishing the second beer, she said, ‘I’ll be back soon,’ took the key and headed deeper into the tavern with her belongings. She noticed something metal lying on the floor in a doorway and picked it up; the number three had fallen from a score board. She sat the piece in a pool cue holder on a nearby wall, while absently nudging the purple four into a pocket opposite, as a girl limping between tables caught her eye.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine… I rolled my ankle, I’m okay.’

‘You should put it in the cold river water out back for a while to control the swelling and strap it firmly with bandage afterwards. You want me to help you down there? And we’ll bring your drinks to you.’

‘Oh no, don’t go to any trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble, really. What’s your name?’

‘Mikaela.’

‘Who you here with Mikaela?’

‘Just me.’

‘Of course. Hey Billy,’ called Jullee, ‘Mikaela here is gunna sit out back with her feet in the water for a while. Can we watch her, and send her drinks out there.’

‘No worries.’

‘Done.’

Jullee helped Mikaela to the water, where two men and a woman were happily fishing on a little wooden pier. Then she headed back inside to a disguised door in a lonely passage that opened into another collection of rooms comprising a building almost equal in size to the tavern. Unpacking her bag in a room with a window view to The Sitting Duck several alleys away, she changes out of her travelling clothes into something more comfortable; for an evening of deliberation before mourning.

Once back downstairs, Jullee discreetly hands over one deck of cards to Billy the barman, saying, ‘remember, we keep one each –whole.’

Producing another packet, she removes two cards and cuts one into five equal pieces.

‘Freshly minted,’ she smiles, smelling the ink. ‘I gave Phaeona several decks earlier today, so we should expect to see these in circulation tonight,’ she explained, holding one of the little tabs against the full card. ‘You’ll make it happen?’

‘Our take-one-and-pass-it-on system takes about an hour or so to hit every tavern in this city.’

‘Fantastic.’

‘Who’s the girl in blue?’ asked Billy, referring to the girl standing by a bear in the picture.

‘The Last Empress.’

Billy raised his eyebrows and smiled, noting a Regalian councillor and his clerk were just entering the tavern behind Jullee. ‘Take care chief,’ implored Billy quietly as he turned away to drying and polishing glasses.

Glancing the uniform behind her, Jullee swiftly swept up the cut pieces of card from the counter and left the room promptly without looking back.

~

Richard is sitting on his bronzed throne as Prue, the daughter of a baron and baroness from Reagan engaged to council him, enters The Hall. She treads the length of dark green and red carpet, watched by rows of Armin on both sides, as well as Lonigan Drey, already comfortably seated at Richards right hand side. No sooner had Prue seated herself, than Roderick Mann entered behind her with two nervous Armin and Cornelius of the Norwest Woods.

Prue had not been expecting anyone, but anxiously refrained from questioning what was happening.

‘Commander, welcome,’ said Richard pleasantly. ‘Roderick tells me you have urgent news.’

Cornelius, much taller than average, with bushy eyebrows and a bulbous nose, drew himself up to his full height. ‘These men,’ he began, motioning to the Armin he had brought with him, ‘claim to have seen Nibwaw Ariods moving across the northern Paper Plains.’

A long silence settled throughout The Hall as everyone anticipated Richards’s reaction. Finally, he moved –descended his throne and slowly approached the Armin as Cornelius stepped aside.

‘I appreciate you safely escorting them to me directly,’ smiled Richard politely up at Cornelius, before moving to stand face to face with one of the Armin brought to him.

‘What is your name?’

‘Two four nine seven four six.’

‘No, your first name.’

When the Armin fell to his knees, wavered and dropped to the ground, his mate knelt quickly beside him and tried to rouse him awake, thinking he had fallen in a faint. He looked into his widened, unfocused and vacant eyes –thinking he was dead, but he wasn’t. Confused, he looked up at Richard.

‘Oh he’s alive, he’ll live for quite some time yet…as will you,’ assured Richard.

Lying flat in the dust, for fear of being seen, he watches the small distant figures of several giant Nibwaw Ariod hastening across the Plains far away. Their long robes of earth and sand flow in the wind, and a woman wielding a gemstaff is leading this group –they are not NibAri.

Half expecting to suddenly see another giant, he is squinting at a figure standing at the top of Mount Echo Waterfall at dusk. He soon realises they are human in size, but discerns only bones and a pale skull. Terrified it is a ghost, he freezes, afraid to take his eyes off the silent and unmoving figure until it disappears –lest it be a diemon that takes to following him.

Richard is standing over two Armin lying slumped on the ground, their faces turned to the empty ceiling of The Hall, its oak beams once littered with the figures of winged warriors.

‘What did you see?’ pressed Lonigan, aware that Richard appeared more troubled than usual.

‘Draunken?’ mumbled Richard, to Prue’s disbelief.

‘Here, near Asher?’ protested Prue.

‘That’s not possible,’ shook Lonigan, ‘we know how they move, and we’ve got the coasts covered. There are no Raken of any kind near Asher.’

Richard turned and started walking back to his throne, his mind racing as Prue and Lonigan were anxious for answers.

‘And Nibwaw Ariod –but not NibAri…another kind,’ continued Richard vaguely.

‘Are they controlling, or being controlled by the Draunken somehow?’ pressed Lonigan, panic rising. ‘What’s going on… why are they here!?’

Richard reseated himself on his throne, as the words of his Father floated back to him.

‘Chaise and Freeman,’ ordered Rauman. ‘Follow the Ariod, and without being discovered bring word of where they gather, that we may join with them.’

The two Armin lying on the floor roused, sat upright, and stood slowly. Prue and Lonigan saw their blank faces before they turned around without acknowledging anyone, including Richard, and walked out of The Hall.

‘Send a contingent towards the Shadow Mountains,’ ordered Richard to Lonigan. ‘And remind me, do we know where Milo and Jona are exactly, right now?’

‘Yes, and no,’ breathed Lonigan as he looked to Cornelius.

‘Why are they here?’ repeated Richard to himself.

~

Nel and Polt were standing together, looking out over Netech.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ asked Poltauramy.

~

He went with her to the topmost stone ledge, and they peered at the marble floor below surrounded by bluestone arches. She nuzzled into his body full of love as he warned her –but you could be punished in the next life for trying to change the order. And despite that, she went over the edge.

.

~

‘If you go, you go alone,’ Drishti had asserted, and so young Rauman left the Tekah Ahn that had found him wandering, and he entered into the Ashen populace with his different gifts. Rauman fashioned himself studiously and quickly entered the council chambers of Nahul –the second largest of five cities established by the Song dynasty before its collapse. When Nahul’s populace and resources were threatened by war in the broken city of Asher, Rauman made his way to Asher and became Richard.

Paid by Richard, Lonigan led the Armin created for godless Ashen Thebes: to pacify the followers of Gondor; and drive out the last of the violence organising Raken, and temperate but equally feared Draunken –both dissidents of the Daugn. Breaking the deprivation that The Raken-Daugn War had brought to the city, establishing an order through commerce, and befriending influential Gondor figureheads, Richard quickly assumed control over Asher with Lonigan at his side.

Lonigan had been present when one-by-one, as a Lord Mayor, Richard had sought the surviving Chieftains of Asher’s surrounding forest peoples, charmed and bediemoned them to enter Gondors Hall of Slain Warriors upon a blue moon, usurped their spirits, and created the first hollow men – who became the seat of his power, a throne.

As Lonigan looked at the two Armin at Richard’s feet, lying slumped on the ground facing the empty ceiling, he remembered the smoky smell of hundreds of years old oak, snowing in The Hall. He remembered the loud creaking and cracking of heavy timber as the severing began, and the ground trembling against the soles of his feet as the enormous carvings of slain warriors fell from above –their bodies crashing and wings splintering upon the cold stone.

Lonigan glances Prue as she brushed her forehead with delicate, ruby tipped, fingers, and surreptitiously admired her heavily painted white face, smooth as porcelain with foreboding red lips that could piecemeal a man. He pictures her expression would have been more than stone-faced at the sight of carved figures blazing away in what became the city centre, while hanging coffins were torn down from surrounding cliffs, houses built over Song dynasty pictographs, and skulls fastened with blood and mortar into Asher’s new walls. Intended to ward off unbidden guests, the macabre walls also reminded the city’s inhabitants of the theologically sanctioned violence that had passed; and children now decorated the faces that gazed upon the Ashen as they moved through the streets refuse, bartered with vendors at markets, and filled their dwellings with manmade things.

After the Armin’s revelations regarding the presence of Ariods and Raken within the Ashen realm, an inkling of doubt in Prue and Richard’s abilities passed through Lonigan –increasing his weariness and longing to rest with his newly garnered wife, currently sitting at home on his Estate. He was unaware of any existing documents regarding historical conflict between humans and Ariod, and knew not how to face them, other than with greater force.

It occurred to Lonigan that the empire would need hundreds more men to become Armin; he considered suggesting reallocating their mineworkers, and probably even gathering those scant survivors of previous Ashen annexations on the edges of their empire. Lonigan knew neither would be obtained willingly –considering the ties that had been severed under Richard’s governance to create their desert generating oasis.

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