On the last day of Hol-Opah’s horten harvest, Tal was wrapping up the morning’s work and looking forward to joining Salomen for a celebratory midmeal at the holding. The end of the horten harvest meant the beginning of an entire moon of relaxation, and she wanted to start Salomen on that as soon as possible.

  Up in their quarters, three bottles of Valkinon waited in her bag. They were the finest spirits on Alsea, and a label that held special significance for them both. Her plan was to fly out with Micah, who had become close friends with Shikal, and send the two older men into the parlor along with Nikin and two of the bottles. She and Salomen would take the last bottle onto the back deck, where they would absorb the view and the lingering scent of cut horten, and let the world go on without them for a day.

  When Micah arrived in her office, she greeted him with a bright smile and a request for two more ticks. She had one thing left to finish and then they could go.

  “Tal,” he said gravely. “You’re not going to Hol-Opah yet.”

  His tone of voice made her pay attention to his emotions, a sticky blend of sorrow and horror. She pushed back her chair and stood, dread freezing her blood. “What happened?”

  He handed over his reader card, open to a security update. In typically sparse terms, it outlined a rescue operation at a fire in Melladin, a northern town whose name held no significance. Tal didn’t understand Micah’s reaction until she read further down.

  The fire had burned a producer caste house—with producers in it. Thirty-two had been taken to the local healing center for smoke inhalation and minor injuries; five more had been flown to Blacksun for specialized burn treatment.

  Three warriors were being held by City Guards for arson and mass murder.

  Twelve producers were dead.

  41

  Avalanche

  Salomen had planned to spend this afternoon exactly where she was: in a chair on the back deck, with her feet up on the bottom railing and a glass of spirits in her hand. She had known the scent of horten oil would still cling to her skin despite her shower, and that it would perfume the air of Hol-Opah in an olfactory sign of celebration.

  She had not planned to be alone, or for the spirits to come from a dusty old bottle of harsh grain spirits her father rarely drank, or for her heart to be broken open and bleeding.

  Shikal and Nikin had both tried to talk to her. You didn’t make those warriors light that fire, they said. You cannot take responsibility for the world.

  But she had, hadn’t she? She had taken responsibility while ignoring the advice of the people who did that for a living. Andira had tried to stop her, and Salomen had punished her for it. Called her toxic and walked away, only to return and do what she thought was best behind Andira’s back. She had used all the power of her title without the balance of restraint.

  Andira’s three days of anger, which had cut so deeply at the time, now seemed far too light a sentence for the suffering and death she had caused.

  “Yes, she’s still there.” Her father’s voice, at the open back door. “Well, if solace can be found at the bottom of a bottle of grain spirits, she should be feeling much better. But I’m afraid she’s learning nothing is there but glass.”

  Salomen sipped her drink and stared straight ahead. He must be talking to Corozen Micah. Andira wouldn’t need to ask how she was feeling.

  “I hope so,” Shikal said. “Neither of us are getting through. She’s lost in her own world.” A pause. “Good. Your usual chair awaits. We’ll see you soon.”

  He came out on the deck, his comfortable old slippers scuffing on the wood. “You can probably already sense this, but Corozen and Andira are on their way.”

  “I can sense it.” She kept her gaze on the long shadows trailed by the mountains in the late afternoon light.

  He leaned against the railing, facing her. “You have never looked more like your mother.”

  That got her attention. “Oh? When did she get twelve producers killed?”

  “At the same time you did. Never. But she took on burdens that were not hers to bear. I loved her dearly, but I do wish she hadn’t passed that trait on to you.”

  She dismissed his effort, well-meaning but mistaken, and resumed her perusal of the mountains. After a tick or two of silence, he kissed the top of her head and went back inside.

  The red-and-silver transport streaked across the sky a tentick later. Andira was flying faster than she should and made the landscape echo with the roar of her aerial braking. Her vertical descent probably had Corozen’s stomach in his throat, yet she set it down with the gentleness of a skilled pilot and was running across the yard before Corozen got his door open.

  Salomen watched her come, still in her State House clothes, blonde hair flying as she rushed up the steps. Her dress boots skidded on a bit of mashed horten, leading to the incongruous thought that even without working the harvest, she might still be brought down by it. In fact, that slippery bit of leaf pulp had probably fallen from Salomen’s own work boots.

  She didn’t want to think about the symbolism.

  Andira recovered her balance and came thudding down the deck, arriving with a breathless “Tyrina,” as she leaned down for a warmron.

  Salomen stopped her with a hand to her chest.

  “You won’t say I told you so, because you’re too good for that,” she said. “But I want you to know—” Her voice broke, and she carried on in a croak. “I’m so sorry. I was blind and arrogant and look what I’ve done, Andira, look what I’ve done . . .”

  Her hand dropped as Andira enveloped her in a warmron, fierce physical protection and loving comfort somehow existing side by side in this gesture she could accept from no one else today.

  “I’m so sorry,” Salomen repeated into her shoulder.

  “I know you are, tyrina, I’ve been feeling it all afternoon. I know you’re blaming yourself.”

  “Should I blame someone else?”

  “Blame the murderers. Not the symbol they used. You made yourself a symbol, and they twisted that to their own ends.” She pulled back, her eyes glowing in the slanted light. “I’m a symbol, too. I’m implicated as much as you are.”

  “But you didn’t—”

  “Light the fire? Neither did you.”

  “No, but you tried to stop me.”

  “I tried to stop this. Not you.”

  Salomen frowned. “I’ve drunk too much of these horrible spirits. I don’t see the difference.”

  Andira squatted on her heels next to the chair, still holding Salomen’s hand as she looked up. Behind her, Corozen quietly crossed the deck and entered the house.

  “What you asked for was fair and just. I never wanted to stop you from fighting for it. I only wanted to delay it until a safer time.”

  “Was there ever going to be a safer time? They’re so angry. It all went out of control so quickly. I’ve been sitting here thinking about it, and I don’t think that’s just the stress from the last two cycles, do you? It cannot be.”

  “No. I think that’s the stress from the last two cycles on top of three thousand cycles of resentment on one side and—” She took a breath. “Fear, on the other. Not that any warrior would ever admit that.”

  “Fear?”

  “In the High Council meeting, when you accused Yaserka and Ehron of being afraid to lose power—you were right. People express their fear in different ways. They talked about caste needs and caste services and everything but what truly drives them. Those warriors who lit the fire—they expressed their fear in violence.” Andira’s emotions darkened, dripping with contempt and shot through with a fear of her own. “They violated their caste oath and spat on the caste mission. No true warrior could do anything but condemn them. But I’m worried that too many warriors will condemn the act while supporting the message.”

  Salomen squeezed her hand. “This is going to get worse, isn’t it?”

  Slowly, Andira nodded. “I wish I could tell you otherwise.”

  They discussed it at the dining table that evening, during what was supposed to be a celebratory evenmeal but now felt akin to a mourning meal. Salomen said very little, picking at her food as she listened.

  “I don’t understand,” Jaros said for the third time. “How could any warriors do that? Warriors are good. They save people. They don’t hurt them.”

  “Warriors are still Alseans,” Corozen answered. “There are good ones and bad ones.”

  Salomen silently shook her head, sensing Jaros’s confusion as a tangled mass of broken trust. He was learning far too early that worship was bound to end in disappointment.

  Jaros looked to Andira for a better answer. “But you’re the Lancer. Why couldn’t you stop them? You stopped Shantu.”

  “I didn’t know about it. If I had, I would have stopped it. I’ve put out a directive forbidding any other acts of violence.”

  Salomen’s head came up. “You did what? Andira!”

  Jaros looked between them. “Why shouldn’t she?”

  “Because she’s tied her reputation to their obedience!” Salomen dropped her fork on the plate. “You’re depending on the worst dregs of your caste to respect your order more than they love their anger. You cannot possibly think that will work!”

  “What else could I do? Let it go unremarked? If I didn’t put out a directive, it would be read as implicit permission.”

  “And now that you have, it will be read as a test of your control over your caste. You cannot hold them back alone!”

  “Salomen—”

  “No! No, you—you—” She choked on the words that crowded her throat. “What happens when they do it again? Your title is at risk!”

  “It’s not. Salomen, it’s not. There is no Shantu waiting on the edges, ready to launch a caste coup at my slightest misstep. I have more room to maneuver than I did a cycle ago. And this is an unusual situation. The warriors on the Council won’t hold me accountable unless . . .” She trailed off, not wanting to finish the thought in front of Jaros.

  “They could take your title?” Jaros asked in a small voice. “Because some warriors hate us?”

  Salomen ached at that us. How many producers across Alsea were thinking the same? How long would it be before some warriors became the warriors and lines were drawn between their castes that could not be erased? Andira had said it would get worse, and if Salomen had learned anything in the last moon, it was to value her reading of the political landscape.

  Later that night, after Jaros had been put to bed and the adults could speak more openly, she broached the topic.

  “How much worse is this going to get?”

  Andira and Corozen looked at each other, as if deciding who should speak.

  “I think,” Andira said carefully, “that we’re seeing the beginning of an avalanche. It’s a few rocks and pebbles, bouncing along and raising a great deal of dust. It’s damaging and—” She hesitated but could find no other way to say it. “—and deadly. But if we stop it now, while it’s still small, we can limit the damage to what’s already been done.”

  “And if we don’t stop it?”

  “Then it grows.” Andira did not finish the thought, but Salomen heard it as clearly as if she had spoken the words.

  Then there will be a caste war.

  42

  Make them pay

  Salomen, Andira, and Prime Producer Arabisar attended the mass funeral pyre two days later. Due to the security threat, all three of them had left their breastplates at home and were wearing cuirasses. Salomen had never used hers before, though she had been fitted for it prior to her bonding ceremony. The addition of a backplate, throat guard, and shoulder coverage brought home her changed situation, and she resented the weight. At least the front looked like her breastplate, its shining golden metal bearing the shield of Alsea. With the ceremonial cape covering her shoulders and back, most observers would not realize she was armored.

  While Andira gave one of the most difficult speeches of her career, Salomen stood beside her, trying to keep the guilt off her face and wondering how long it would be before a grief-stricken family member vented their anger on her. None did, but several cast dirty glances at Andira. That was worse, for being so undeserved.

  At the end of the ceremony, she and Arabisar left Andira behind and approached the first of the still-burning pyres, discreetly trailed by six Guards.

  “I am so sorry for your loss,” Arabisar said to the family, and touched palms with each of them one by one. Salomen followed suit, letting Arabisar take the lead. It was her right and responsibility as caste Prime, and this was a charged situation that Salomen did not want to inflame with a poorly chosen word.

  They worked their way through eight pyres without incident. At the ninth, a grieving bondmate gripped Salomen’s hand during their palm touch and would not let go. Red-eyed and desperate, her agony searing through her skin, she said, “He was pregnant.”

  Salomen froze. “Oh, Fahla. I’m—”

  “They keep saying there were twelve dead,” the woman interrupted. “But there were thirteen. Our child died with him.” Her grip became crushing, though Salomen refused to show it. If she did, Ronlin would pull the woman away, and that she could not allow.

  “I mourn that loss with you,” Salomen said. “If I could do anything to—”

  “Make them pay!”

  “They will. Lancer Tal already asked for the maximum sentence. I know it’s no consolation, but they’ve ended their own lives as well.”

  “But it wasn’t just them, was it?” The woman released her grip, and Salomen forced herself not to flex her aching hand. “They were just the ones who acted. It’s all of them. All the warriors who think we need to be put back in our place for daring to ask for our high empaths.” She wiped her eyes and glared at Salomen. “Make them pay.”

  “Bondlancer, I’m sorry to interrupt.” Arabisar appeared at her side. “But we must move to the next pyre.”

  “I’m truly sorry.” Salomen offered a farewell nod to the grieving woman and stepped away. “Thank you for rescuing me,” she said quietly.

  “I was expecting something like that,” Arabisar said, and then they were greeting the next group.

  When they walked away from the twelfth pyre, Salomen was ready to drop from the emotional overload of touching palms with so many deeply wounded people. But she had one last task to do. Once they were far enough from the mourners to guarantee privacy, she stopped and said, “Prime Producer, may we speak?”

  Arabisar inclined her head. “Of course.”

  “I couldn’t do this until we got through that.” She lifted a finger toward the pyres, a gesture that would be hidden between them. “I wish to formally apologize for my behavior toward you at the High Council meeting. You gave me the gift of your honesty, and I . . . didn’t appreciate it then.”

  “You threw it in my face,” Arabisar said coolly.

  Salomen had not been particularly mindful of their age difference and Arabisar’s authority before. She was keenly aware now.

  “I felt betrayed, but that’s not an excuse. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for putting you in such a difficult position afterward. I’d say you were right all along, but—” She shook her head. “That would be stating the blindingly obvious.”

  Arabisar looked back at the twelve pyres. “I admit I was angry when you forced my hand. I didn’t get here by letting myself be out-gamed, and you danced right around me.” She met Salomen’s eyes and offered an unexpected smile. “But I felt better when I realized you danced right around Lancer Tal, too. I doubt that’s happened to her more than a handful of times in her career.”

  With Andira’s anger still sharp in her memory, Salomen could not return the smile.

  “You made a mistake, Bondlancer, but you made it because you believed in the integrity of our people. Because you’re new to this level of government and you lack the cynicism the rest of us have acquired. I can hardly fault such innocence. I can only mourn the loss of it.”

  Salomen swallowed the tightness in her throat. “Thank you for being so gracious.”

  “Thank you for your apology. I didn’t expect it, but perhaps I should have.” Arabisar held up her hand. “Shall we start over?”

  When their palms touched, Salomen sighed with relief. “I never realized how taxing it could be to touch so many grieving people. You’re like putting my hands in cold water after a whole day of swinging a soilbreaker.”

  Arabisar bit back what would have been an inappropriate chuckle, given their location. “I haven’t used one of those in a long time. Haven’t missed it a bit, either.” She dropped her hand and turned toward Andira. “She’s looking nervous. Shall we get her out of the danger zone?”

  It should have been a joke, the idea of Andira being at risk in a crowd of producers. The fact that it wasn’t sent Salomen sliding back into her guilt.

  The whole world had gone wrong, and she had pushed it there.

  At the State House, Salomen walked off the state transport and straight to the smaller one waiting to take her home. Andira kissed her good-bye and promised to be there by evenmeal, then took off again for Blacksun Base.

  Salomen’s transport lifted off immediately after, heading west while Andira flew east. It was an appropriate metaphor, she thought morosely.

  She hadn’t bothered to take off her cuirass or cape, and Shikal let out a whistle when she found him in the parlor.

  “There’s a vision!” He offered a double palm touch and added, “I mourn the reason for it, but it certainly is bracing to see you in that regalia. Jaros will be sorry he missed it.”

  “She could always keep it on until he gets home from school.” Nikin had come into the parlor from the front entrance, having been working in the office. “Did you have the conversation you hoped to with the Prime Producer?”