Nighttime at the edge of Adalaant and the Fade was as cool as the continent got, outside the Scoured Isthmuses. Inside a tent, the heat mattered a lot. At least Jadpers didn’t give off as much as non-Prisnidines. Still, Euffie found it difficult to sleep in the Steppe Hounds’ camp. She was surrounded by people she didn’t know, many of them men who seemed much larger than Derek in all their armor. She was sure they were smaller without it, but she wasn’t about to look to find out.

  At least back in Derek’s farmhouse, she had a room to herself when he let go of her so she could sleep. Here, she had to share space. They had their own bedrolls, but still.

  Jadpers is much better company than Derek, she chastised herself. Stop complaining.

  Oppzis told her she would be all right, but that only drew her nervousness to him instead. Could he see her down here? Did he always watch her? Even when she was alone and doing alone things?

  Oppzis reminded her that he couldn’t even give her directions from his place high in the sky. He only knew where she was, so he could think to her and help her cast spells. He could only see her body when she was on his surface.

  I didn’t seem to mind his presence when I was pocket-diving, she thought. I was literally laying on him. Maybe I shouldn’t care. He’s just a moon, after all. What even makes him a “he”? Did I decide that?

  Oppzis told her that most lunomancers seemed to treat their moons like males. He didn’t know why, but he compared it to how in the days before the seas went Everwhite, sailors would refer to their ships as females. Maybe it had something to do with a similar principle.

  Can I start calling you a girl? Euffie asked. Oppzis didn’t see why not, but as she went to, Euffie decided against it. It would just be confusing. Best to go with how she already knew him. She decided to pocket-dive again. She hadn’t done that tonight. But when she sat up to see if Jadpers was awake, there was the sound of a loud horn, followed by a sudden scuffle beside her.

  “Jadpers?”

  Jadpers had already hauled herself up and was quickly donning her Steppe Hound armor. She pushed down her helmet and tied the strap. As she dashed outside, she said:

  “We’re under attack!” she said. “Stay inside, Yoof! You have no legs. You’re a refugee, and an Ochre target. I’ll guard our tent.”

  As it happened, there wasn’t an inside to stay in for much longer. As Jadpers exited the tent, Euffie heard the familiar sound of fast approaching hoofbeats. Moments later, a horse trampled over and past the tent door. Euffie screamed and leapt away. The horse and its rider were already gone, leaving Euffie trapped in the collapsed tent.

  Euffie writhed for a moment before going still; she could hear battle all around her through the tent skin. She heard two heavy sets of footsteps go near her head, before she heard a horrid crunching sound and the thud of armor on dirt. A weapon clattered. She couldn’t see anything.

  One moment, Euffie had been tossing and turning in her bedroll, draped in the silent night. Now, she was trying to hold perfectly still in a collapsed tent, battle raging all around her.

  Oppzis was trying to tell her something. He was trying to remind her of a time when she’d remembered enough of her magic to bust out of her room and threaten to obliterate Derek’s skull. He was trying to remind her of the pulse spell that had done it. It wasn’t an acceleration spell; it was just a burst of raw lunomantic power that any witch could use to deliver a solid blow. She might need it soon.

  Arrows fell around Euffie, and she released a scream. She could hear them ripping tent skin, and she frantically checked her body to make sure she hadn’t been hit. But this drew attention from whoever had won the scuffle she’d just overheard. She heard heavy boots approaching. She went still, but it was too late.

  There was a painful tearing sound. Euffie found herself looking up at a man made a giant by his heavy Ochre-painted plate and helmet. Blood dripped from the mace in his gauntleted hand. Without a word, he raised the weapon and brought it downward.

  Once again, the snake was striking. Euffie’s eyes glowed silver, power channeled up her arm. Euffie wished time would slow down so she could aim better, but it didn’t. Without thinking, she thrust her fist up toward the man’s face. Nothing happened. This was a good thing; the man couldn’t seem to move anymore, and everything in Euffie’s vision took on a dim, silvery hue. The roar of battle became dim and muffled. Energy siphoned away from every part of the soldier that had been moving, stealing his acceleration and giving it to Euffie as a kind of fuel. Before she could wonder what spell Oppzis had just cast, she channeled the stolen energy into another thrust at his forehead, this time ejecting a silver bolt of concentrated lunoplasm.

  It almost missed, smacking the very top of the soldier’s helmet, yanking his head back. There was a sound like a whip made of ribbons cracking with the force of a gale, and everything regained its color. The soldier lost his balance and collapsed on his rump.

  The body of the Steppe Hound whose head the Ochre soldier smashed moments before lay beside him. The Ochre’s weapon had not left his hand. His helmet was cracked down the front, and Euffie could see his Yaglid skin and one of his green eyes lock onto her with newfound rage.

  Tents fell. Horses cantered between them. Fires started. All around was the cacophony of battle and death and terror, and here Euffie was, beneath that wrathful gaze. She’d held him off once, but she didn’t like her chances if he kept coming after her or someone else ganged up behind her. Could she run away? Could she just keep doing that pulse spell? Not if her arm’s strained bones were anything to go off of.

  Where the hell was Jadpers? She must have been carried off by that horse that attacked the front of the tent, or her body was hidden under something. Wherever she was, the Steppe Hounds’ rescued witch was alone and vulnerable.

  Euffie untangled herself from the remains of Jadpers’ tent, tried to rise, and then remembered she had no legs. She fell over herself scooting away from the approaching killer, until she backed into another body and fell over that too. The man was almost upon her once more.

  Before he could reach her, a pair of men Euffie did not recognize, who wore ragged clothing like hers, charged into the armored soldier and knocked him down. They plunged a pair of hatchets into his chest, but these slid off his armor. The Ochre recovered. Before Euffie’s eyes, he butchered both of the refugee men who had come to her rescue. His mace was filthy with red and bits of brain when he turned to face her again. This time, he did not walk. He charged.

  Euffie held up both her hands and screamed. Her engram flared up, but she didn’t know why. Silver magic flowed up her arms, but she was too shaken to re-cast the pushing spell even with Oppzis’s help. Not in time, anyway. It was too much like seeing Marthera’s dead body all over again. Her terror was so great she could feel phantom pain beneath her knees.

  Her would-be killer raised a sabaton to deliver a lethal blow to Euffie’s face, even with her glowing hands raised to protect herself. But the blow never came.

  A few seconds of forever later, Euffie peeked and saw that the armored soldier was holding still as a statue. The same malice was locked on her from his revealed eye, and the same gore dirtied his armor and weapon, but while the world raged on around them, he was stuck in place with his foot aimed at her skull.

  The same spell as before? No, I’m not casting anything.

  There was a stabbing sound. A gloved hand pushed the soldier over and he toppled to the ground, bleeding from a knife buried in a chink in his armpit. There was a snap as some kind of engram released its grip on him. He looked down at his critical injury in surprise, gave a delayed grunt, and died. Euffie looked up at an offered hand of help from Kaanel.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “A paralysis engram,” she realized as he hoisted her up onto his back. He didn’t answer. Instead, he re-drew his glowing moon-shard and took stock of his surroundings. Holding tightly around his shoulders and neck, Euffie scanned frantically among the burning tents, fighting men, and horses with and without riders. An archer on horseback shot an arrow their way, but an engram on Kaanel’s sleeve activated and sent it veering straight down into the dirt.

  Finally, Euffie spotted her: Jadpers, fighting for her life against two Ochre soldiers. They weren’t as well armored as the one that had attacked Euffie, but they were giving her lots of trouble. She was constantly moving, preventing them from flanking, but she couldn’t keep it up forever, and she couldn’t attack back. One of them got in a vicious cut across her arm, but her oaken flesh handled the sword much better than the attacker expected and she returned an edgewise riposte on his leg.

  “Help her!” Euffie cried, pointing. Kaanel’s gaze swiveled, and he pushed forward over bodies and ruined tents. A horseman coursed past them, shouting orders in a voice Euffie recognized: it was Heemlik, declaring that they were winning and to stand ground. Euffie saw his bird descend from the sky and land on the head of an Ochre soldier in the act of cutting down cowering refugees. The bird severed the chin strap, ripped off the man’s helmet, and started digging its beak into his eyes. Euffie wanted to puke.

  Kaanel reached Jadpers in time to once again bury his knife in the back of an Ochre soldier. He kicked the man to the ground and helped Jadpers back to her feet. Sap oozed from a few places her armor didn’t cover. When she saw Euffie, she smiled.

  “Glad to see you’re all right.”

  “No thanks to you,” Kaanel scolded. His head was on a swivel for any other attackers. “I found her by herself near your tent. Other refugees came to her aid and died.”

  “I got hauled off by a horse that knocked our tent down,” Jadpers snapped. “And it’s not like any of the other soldiers rushed to my aid. I’m sorry, Euffie, but you can fuck right off, Kaanel.”

  Kaanel sighed. “Sorry. Hurry, let’s move. The other refugee tents are mostly safe, but I’m needed. You take care of Euffie.”

  As Euffie was maneuvered from one person’s back to the other, Heemlik’s booming voice rang out once more over the chaos:

  “Steppe Hounds, our reinforcements have arrived! Stand your ground! Look north and see that the enemy has fallen into our trap!”

  ***

  Heemlik trampled over a man with a terrible rattling of his armor and cracking of his bones. He brought his cavalry sword up and through another man’s shoulder as he burst back into his own embattled campground. Fallen tents surrounded him. A few fires were starting. His eyes found Kaanel, and he kicked his horse’s sides for the soldier swinging a spear at him. His horse ran into the man, and Kaanel swung up and into the saddle behind him with martial Adalaantian grace. The sounds of engrams being written and cast sizzled behind Heemlik’s back as they rode on. Heemlik was wearing a standard Ochre helmet, not his own captain’s helm, so that the enemy wouldn’t pick him out from the other cavalrymen. His men would recognize his voice.

  “It’s a mess in here,” Kaanel grunted with a snap of his moon-shard. To the side, Heemlik glimpsed a man getting halted mid-stroke like a statue, a written symbol attached to his back plate.

  “We have the advantage,” Heemlik replied. “It could’ve been a lot worse.”

  Heemlik turned back around to make another pass through the camp, dripping cavalry sword in hand. In the distance, the Fade was roiling angrily at the shedding of blood. Heemlik knew that if they weren’t in Adalaant, it would be rushing toward them.

  The Gaar keeps Adalaant safe from the Fade, his father’s voice echoed in his mind, beneath the roar of battle. One day you, my son, will take up this honored mantle, and do what it takes to protect our people.

  Here Heemlik was, once again indebted to the Gaar for his survival. They would travel along the Fadereach, right where the Fade could swallow them, unharmed because his father was willing to do what he wasn’t. The Fade had held almost entirely still for decades before the Steppe Hound rebellion began, but once he’d started trying to change things, it became so much more active everywhere else.

  Now was not the time for doubt. Heemlik had a battle to win.

  “Jadpers!” he called. “Get back!”

  Jadpers stepped aside, and Heemlik’s horse bulldozed her opponent. She had grouped up with two other Steppe Hounds, and was fighting with Euffie on her back. With Jadpers protecting her, Heemlik knew the witch was safer than anyone else in the camp.

  We need to iron out finding Jadpers a permanent rank in Adalaant when this is over. The soldiers will learn to respect her as I do, and that is that.

  “Finish them!” Heemlik bellowed to the camp, sword raised high. It was moments like these, where Abadir was not around, that Heemlik didn’t have to hold back. He could show his men their leader was a capable and decisive warrior.

  Overhead, Sun-Beak gave a caw of triumph.

  ***

  The battle was over minutes later. The Ochre ambush had killed dozens, but they had not accounted for this being a rendezvous point with Heemlik’s next set of soldiers secretly patrolling this route. His men had been set to arrive earlier today, but he had them wait just out of reach in case Heemlik was being followed. He was, and when they sprung their ambush, Heemlik sprung his own trap. It was all a horrible, nasty scrape that left a quarter of his refugees dead and the rest terrified and angry. But it was still no place for a mutiny or abandon ship. Not this far from settled Adalaant, and not this close to the Fade.

  Dirty and exhausted, Euffie hung on Jadpers' back, watching over her shoulder as Heemlik assessed the aftermath. Around them, people worked to re-pitch tents that had been knocked down and tend to the wounded and dead. Euffie’s calloused hands itched to help, even if there was a lot of blood involved. But instead, she hung uselessly from Jadpers' back.

  The worst part was that even if she’d had legs, she would’ve been useless in that fight. She didn’t know how to protect herself. She only knew how to run away. Pushing that soldier back had been nowhere near enough. At least two people had died protecting her. Part of her worried that they’d keep dying for her until she figured out how to take care of herself.

  I’m a witch, she thought bitterly as she forced herself to watch the bodies being piled. I should be able to threaten armies and princes. People who aren’t freaks like Derek should spend their fortunes on witchbinders to eliminate me.

  Marthera shouldn’t have had to die for me. Neither of those refugees whose names I’ll never even know should have either.

  Euffie glanced at Kaanel, who stood at Heemlik’s side as they worked. She related a lot better to him now; they both lacked a teacher. Maybe this Saangra woman could teach her a few things.

  There were no surviving Ochre troops. Heemlik did not take prisoners unless they defected, and he didn’t take defectors who’d just killed a quarter of his refugees. The whole place stank of blood and everything else that leaks out of corpses. Euffie hated everything about Adalaant that she’d seen so far. Everything except the brave people armed with hatchets and spears and rags, who’d come to her rescue without knowing who she even was. The people who’d stood and met a cavalry charge head-on so whoever survived could flee this dreadful place.

  “Do you need anything, Euffie?” Jadpers asked. “I think I’ll set you down by the tent, if that’s all right. You can start putting it back up while I sort out the mess.”

  “Why?” Euffie asked suddenly. “Why does Heemlik think Abadir is redeemable?”

  Jadpers sighed, covering the slash across her arm with her other hand. She regretted bringing this up with Euffie on their ride today already.

  “I don’t know, Yoof. I really don’t.”

  “He wants you dead,” Euffie persisted. “Abadir, I mean. He wants you, and Kaanel, and me, and everyone else here who isn’t dead already to fuel that stupid Fade. Heemlik could’ve killed Abadir before now. Why doesn’t he just do what he’s got to do?”

  Jadpers turned and started making distance from Heemlik and his husband, heading for their tent. “I don’t know, Euffie. I’m not him, and neither are you. It’s not like I haven’t been telling him that since the start.”

  “Do you ever wonder if he’d do it if Abadir killed you?”

  Jadpers stopped. Euffie felt the tension in her body, but she didn’t regret saying it. Euffie was angry. It wasn’t like Jadpers would hurt her.

  Actually, that does make me feel bad, she realized. Euffie cared about Jadpers. Not like a lover, and not like a parent, but as the best friend she could remember having, even with patches of her Aleb memories. Jadpers was forward and foreign, but she was Jadpers no matter what, and Euffie liked that about her. It reminded her of Marthera’s advice to be herself, her best self. In another world, maybe Jadpers and Marthera were best friends.

  “I don’t know.” Jadpers said eventually.

  “Do you hope he would?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Yoof.”

  As they neared what was left of their tent, and Jadpers spotted her horse grazing nearby, Euffie turned east toward the Fade. The wall of mist was miles away from this spot, but she could see it roiling at the scent of so much blood in one place. Everyone knew the Fade would surge forth if a bloody battle happened too close to it, but this was Adalaant, and the Fade was bound not to come here.

  They were too far to make out any details, people were only dots at this distance, but she could swear she could see a silhouette with lots of extra limbs standing somewhere high in the purple mists before Jadpers set her down.