“Hmm.”

  “She will learn much here.”

  Vertiline looked past him to the young woman and her long-suffering camel. “You’re sure about that?”

  “Perhaps we can continue this conversation after we’ve made camp and settled,” Amber offered. “When the sun is not so hot, our tempers will be cooler.”

  Vertiline thought of saying, My temper is just fine, and wondered why she wanted to needle the man. He’d offered a caravan on naught but the promise of potential wealth. He was brave enough, fighting the sand sharks two nights past alongside his guards.

  The rustle of dead grass made her turn. Sight of Day padded with deliberate steps toward them. The Feybrind could’ve walked across the dead field without making a noise but knew surprising a Tresward Knight a poor life choice. She smiled as he drew close. {You will not believe it, but the monster found a hole.}

  Vertiline blinked. “What? Where?”

  The cat pointed to the Artifice. {Beneath the broken machine.}

  She frowned, turning to Amber. “Will you excuse me? I’ve got to earn my keep.”

  That earned her the ghost of a smile. “Until the night falls and we share honeyed mead.”

  That sounds like something worth looking forward to. She almost turned, then lifted her chin fractionally toward Jade, before settling back on him. “You can come with, if you like.”

  His eyelid twitched again. “You make a handsome offer. Perhaps you are destined to become a sand merchant?”

  Vertiline shook her head. “This past week has involved enough sand for the rest of my life.”

  “A shame. Until tonight.”

  “Until then.” She turned, striding in Sight of Day’s wake. A hole, hmm?

  I have never seen the inside of one of these machines. The Artifice was larger on the inside than Vertiline expected. With the machines’ monstrous resistance to damage she’d expected walls thick as stone ramparts, but their skin was barely a hands breadth from outside to interior.

  The air within was a cool, welcome respite from the blasting heat of the desert outside. Vertiline kept her hand on her blade as she ducked through the door, but closed her eyes for a moment as the air kissed her skin.

  “It’s fucken chilly, ain’t it?” Armitage brought her back to the here and now. Her husband was toward the nose of the machine. Two seats sat before a wall of glass. The floor was on a crazy angle, so the Vhemin held onto the chairs, which didn’t even flex with his massive weight.

  “It is welcome.” Vertiline clambered deeper in. The floor canted upward, but it wasn’t broken or cracked. To the left, the window and her husband. To the right, a chamber beyond an open doorway. If Vertiline could think of a single word to describe the Artifice’s interior, it was sleek. The walls were smooth. What looked like cabinets held mysteries aplenty, but the latches were of exquisite quality.

  There was no life anywhere, though. This machine was dead, and its pilots with it.

  “How do you reckon they did that?” Armitage pointed to the window before him. “Can’t see through it from the outside. Wouldn’t even know it was a window. From this side, clear as day.”

  “Not quite.” Vertiline made her way to his side. The seats were padded leather, and before them sat panels of glass. I’ve seen their like. The control surfaces the ancients used on their devices. “See? The sun is calmer from this side. Darker, perhaps.”

  “You think that’s why it’s cooler?”

  Vertiline gave it some consideration. “I think the machine has magic still. A warding to keep the inside pleasant no matter what’s on the outside.”

  “No commander gives that much of a shit about their troops.”

  “They do if they are human soldiers, husband.” She gentled her voice. “Not everyone lived out on the sands.”

  He glared at the seats as if willing them to get in the conversation. “Maybe.” Not arguing with her, but maybe taking umbrage with the world.

  Vertiline straightened as much as she could, what with the sloping floor. “We had glass blades and Smithsteel armour. Tresward could’ve faced the world with iron blades and plain steel armour, but every little bit helps. If the ancients could control the weather, it would be a simple mercy, easily given, to ensure their soldiers weren’t suffering the small complaints of the flesh.”

  His shoulders bunched, but then he relaxed. “I don’t even know why I’m angry. They’re all dead. We won.” He stamped to the rear, leaving her with the empty chairs for company.

  I think I know why you’re angry. Your people were used as the shock troops to raid heaven and kill the very Three themselves, but the gods didn’t die. Your masters did, but their legacy remains. And you’re wondering who you mean by ‘we’. ‘We’ won, but against who, and why?

  “Coming?” Armitage’s gravel and anvil voice drew her attention to the back of the machine. “Only, there’s this hole, see?”

  She held back a smile. “I will come see what magnificent pit of hell you’ve found.”

  The pit of hell was just a plain ol’ pit. The sand was shored up with a rude mud until it hit rock. The hole was cut with rough tools; nothing of the ancients had bored through the skin of the earth. Just hard labour.

  The Artifice had a hatch open in its belly, and this was over the hole. It was a short step down to real earth, the cool of the Artifice leaving Vertiline as she returned to the outside air. A rope ladder had been tossed over the side of the pit. One end was anchored to an open cabinet in the Artifice above. Vertiline gave it a suspicious glance, because few cabinets she knew could take the weight of a human hanging off them, but she stood beside a marvel from beyond time. Perhaps the ancient’s hinges were amazing.

  Sight of Day was at the bottom of the pit. The Feybrind held a curious green glowing rod about the length of her forearm. Despite the sickly hue, it cast light better than a lantern. {There is a box of these here.} He waved the glow stick. {I hope they do not summon eldritch horrors.}

  Armitage slung himself over the pit’s edge, monkeying down the rope ladder. If you only saw his size, it was easy to forget his strength gave him grace. Vertiline waited until he was clear of the ladder then followed at a more leisurely pace. She was thankful she wasn’t wearing Smithsteel, because while her training kept her strong, twenty kilos of armour was twenty kilos she didn’t want hanging off her while she hand-over-handed down.

  The base of the pit was rocky, but with a coarse coating of sand. A tunnel she could stand in ran east to west. Armitage had to hunch. Sight of Day offered her a glow stick. It was almost weightless, and while it gave everything a chartreuse luminescence, it was easier than summoning light with the Sway. That still costs me more than it should.

  {There is a dead creature that way.} Sight of Day pointed west with his glow stick. {There is also sobbing from that direction. I suggest we go the other way.}

  Armitage gave him a hard, snake-eyed stare. “You going soft on me?”

  {I am merely exploring all options. West is where people have already gone and met excitement. To the east, there could be a surprise.}

  “West it is.” Vertiline peered into the gloom. “Sobbing means a living soul is waiting to tell me what happened to Evanne.”

  {Or a nest of spiders.}

  “Or that. What, you don’t like spiders?” Vertiline pushed into the tunnel. She caught Sight of Day’s eye roll, shoulders heaving in a sigh that screamed These stupid humans, then he padded in her wake.

  She heard the scrape of rock on scale as Armitage followed at the rear. “I don’t mind spiders.”

  Vertiline glanced back. “Even huge ones?”

  “Even then,” he rumbled. “I always like the part when they find out there are bigger things that go bump in the night.”

  {You are majestically terrifying.}

  Vertiline hid her smile and continued down the tunnel. It widened in parts, but without seeming pattern, as if cut by water long ago. Strange holes festooned the rocky walls at random intervals. She leaned close to one, peering into the black.

  A fursoft hand pulled her back. {I wouldn’t do that.}

  “Spiders?”

  Sight of Day shook his head. {Worse, I think. They do not smell like spiders. They smell like…} His hands stilled, then he turned to Armitage, but put his back to the wall so they could both see his Handspeak. {Do you remember the first time we crossed the sands together?}

  “Red wanted to kill me.” Armitage chuckled. “Broke my arm good.”

  {If she wanted you dead, you would be dead, brother. You are majestically terrifying, but Knight of the Tresward you are not.} The cat eyed the hole Vertiline had stared into. {Sand hoppers. We fought them on the sands. It was the first time we’d used steel together.}

  Armitage scratched an armpit. “I remember.”

  {This smells like that. But different, too. Older.}

  “Huh.” The Vhemin leaned into the hole. “Come out, fuckers!”

  Vertiline winced. “I don’t think that’s wise.”

  He glanced at her. “I reckon a front-on fight is better than⁠—”

  What it was better than was lost to imagination as a monster surged from the hole. Vertiline thought she saw teeth and claws as it skitter-dashed from the burrow. Glass was in her hand, incandescent Light welling from the blade as she lunged. Her strike caught rock and creature in one slash. The rock glowed red, while the creature’s flesh hissed as her burning blade severed a lot of legs from the rest of it.

  It keened, struggling back into the dark, but Armitage roared and lunged. He reached into the hole, grabbing for it, then braced a leg on the outside and pulled. Vertiline waited, blade held in perfect half guard, edge level with gravity’s even insistence rather than the tunnel’s rough floor.

  The creature popped from the hole in a mad scrabble of remaining legs. Vertiline held ready, but she didn’t have to worry. Her husband knew the music and all the steps of the dance and had perhaps dated the conductor’s daughter in times past. The Vhemin slammed the creature into the ground once, twice, and when it kept trying to eat his face, he went to town like a logger splitting wood. Even, hefty strikes laid on each other like bricks, until the thing he swung had the boneless pliability of wet laundry.

  He dropped it with a wet slop. The three looked at it. To Vertiline’s eye it was too much spider and not enough sand hopper. A mouth held many, many teeth. Two proboscises ran from under the jaw, severed clean near the maw from her strike. The body was like a dog’s, if a dog had twice the regulation count of legs and a second body attached at the back end.

  Armitage grunted, not breathing hard at all. “That’s an ugly fucken spider.”

  “I don’t think it’s a spider.” Vertiline eyed the holes along the tunnel. “I think it has friends.”

  {Explains the moaning and sobbing ahead.} Sight of Day scratched behind an ear. {Imagine a nest of these things. They injure a creature, attracting more, and here we are, ready to answer the dinner bell.}

  “Hey, cat. What was that thing you were trying to teach me about?” Armitage frowned. “Something about the biggest, baddest monster?”

  The cat blinked gold. {Apex predators?}

  “Yeah.” Armitage bared shark teeth. “There’s a new apex in town.”

  {That’s not how … never mind. Sure, there’s a new apex.} Sight of Day fussed with his satchel for a moment, checking inside. Satisfied, he looked to Vertiline. {Deeper?}

  Vertiline glanced at the rock above. She imagined the sand merchant, his sister, and their men. Thought about what would happen if the three of them didn’t stop the ‘spiders’ from carrying them off in the night. The Knight Champion gave a thin-lipped smile. “Right to the bottom.”

  The wailing got louder the farther they travelled the tunnels. Vertiline killed another two ‘spiders’, with Armitage beating her number by one more.

  Sigh of Day hadn’t killed any. The Feybrind had grown sombre the deeper they’d gone, saying only, {I smell something else,} but hadn’t been drawn on it. Vertiline knew him well enough to give him time to work it out. He wasn’t some recruit so young he looked like his balls had dropped last week.

  They found a Feybrind before they found the moaner. She was laying on the tunnel floor beside a dispatched spider, another three nearby. Her breath was ragged, her ochre eyes dim with pain. Vertiline drew closer, wary, because something felt off. “Caution, friends.”

  Sight of Day padded to her right. {That’s what I smelled. She is like me, but not.} He looked at his hands, then folded them together, holding his peace for a moment. {Something has changed her.}

  “She looks like you well enough,” Armitage rumbled. “Eyes are a different colour, but that’s just how it is with you lot.”

  “She needs aid.” Vertiline crouched before the injured Feybrind. Her wounds would’ve been fatal on a human, but Feybrind were a little tougher. Still, there was a lot of blood on the stony ground. Vertiline held her hands up, drawing that wonderful ochre gaze. She wasn’t as good with Handspeak as Geneve, but she could get by. {We are here to help.}

  Sight of Day crouched by the woman, rummaging in his bag. He withdrew medical supplies: gauze, linen, mosses, and a capped jar of unguent.

  The wounded Feybrind eyed them, then her gaze rose to the hulking Armitage lurking behind them. Her fingers fluttered like moths. {Strange times make strangers of us all.}

  Weird, but okay. “I’m Vertiline.” She pointed behind her. “This is Armitage. And he is Sight of Day.”

  The cat watched them, her breathing laboured. Even after a lifetime of seeing Feybrind hurt but silent with the pain, it unnerved Vertiline to not hear them whimper. {I am Sands Apart.}

  {Hold still.} Sight of Day uncapped the unguent, spreading some liberally on Sands Apart’s wounds. The injured Feybrind bared teeth but lay still enough. {How did you come to be here, little sister?}

  “Little sister?” Vertiline blinked. “She’s regulation size.”

  Sight of Day half-smiled. {She is young. I guess perhaps fifty summers, so she is my ‘little’ sister.} He looked down. {She still has many roads to travel.}

  “Fifty. By the Three.” Vertiline shifted, her squatting position less than comfortable. “She looks great.”

  {As do you.}

  Vertiline sighed. “It is the Light. The Three have me caught like a fly in amber.”

  Sands Apart twitched as Sight of Day wrapped her arm with gauze. {You are…} Her hands stilled for a moment. {You are Tresward?}

  They don’t miss much. “I was,” Vertiline admitted. “I’m not so sure anymore.”

  Sands Apart reached beneath her sash and pulled out a knife the length of Vertiline’s hand. She lunged for Sight of Day. The golden-eyed Feybrind shifted like wheat before the wind, the blade passing by his ear. Vertiline lunged, grabbing not the blade but the hand that held it.

  Sands Apart didn’t skip a beat, dropping her knife to her other hand, blade reversed, and swung at Vertiline’s face. Vertiline shifted her squat, a pattern holding her hand, leaning toward the Feybrind, forearm pivoting into the other woman’s elbow.

  Bone cracked. The knife chimed as it hit rock. Ochre eyes widened in pain, Sands Apart’s mouth open in a silent scream. Vertiline turned from her, arm against her shoulder, and stood, bringing the other woman up, only to swivel back, fist swinging, and smash the Feybrind woman to the floor.

  The cat lay still.

  “That was unexpected.” Armitage shuffled closer, giving Sight of Day a raised eyebrow. “You give her a little boom boom?”

  {I do not have ‘boom boom’.} The cat frowned, picking up the fallen knife. He turned it over a few times, then handed it to Armitage. {I have calming medicines.}

  “What about that insect that bit me?”

  {I keep telling you, that was a dream. You imagined it.} But Sight of Day didn’t half-smile, glancing instead to the fallen Sands Apart. {She will not survive this.}

  “She tried to kill you.” Vertiline took the knife from Armitage. It was a plain enough blade, but well-made in the Feybrind style. No Tresward Smith put hammer to anvil over it, but it would hold its edge until the sands took them all. “She tried to kill me.”

  “To be fair, a lot of people do.” Armitage crouched beside the fallen Feybrind. “What’s interesting is she didn’t try to kill me.”

  {Our enemy uses humans, Feybrind, and Vhemin.} Sight of Day shrugged. {Her clue was the Tresward. I don’t think you belong to the same knitting circle.}

  Armitage grunted, then dragged the fallen Feybrind’s bag toward him. He upended it on the stone floor. Vertiline spied a few knick-knacks. A length of rope. A little jerky. Another blade much like this one. Some parchment, a stoppered inkwell, and a brush.

  Sight of Day flipped through the parchment. Most was blank, but one carried a picture of exquisite penmanship. Vertiline took it from him. The picture was unmistakable. A woman with strong shoulders, rust locks wild as she fought both Feybrind and Vhemin. The pen’s nib had bitten the parchment hard as the fallen Feybrind were drawn, but the artist had taken no shortcuts in the detail on the woman’s face.

  Evanne. My baby girl.

  Armitage glanced at the parchment, said, “Right, I’m getting some answers,” and reached for the unconscious Sands Apart.

  {Hold, brother.} Sight of Day offered a half smile by way of apology. {She will not speak to you.}

  Vertiline’s husband glowered. “It might feel pretty good to ask, though.”

  {It might.} A shrug. {Perhaps a different approach?}

  “What did you have in mind?”

  The cat turned golden eyes further down the tunnel. {Don’t you want to know who’s making all the noise?}

  They trussed Sands Apart like a hog. Armitage carried the unconscious woman like she weighed less than a thought. He wasn’t kind about it, and Vertiline winced as the Feybrind’s head knocked against the tunnel wall from time to time.

  The passage opened into a vaulted chamber. Vertiline held the green glow stick high. It gave back an impression of rocky walls and a semi-even floor. In the middle was a spire that rose to the ceiling. It was thin, made of shining metal. Without doubt, a relic of the ancients, but its purpose was a mystery. Attached to the spire was a clutch of perhaps fifty gently pulsating sacs bound together with a glistening resin.