Things were almost back to normal.

  For certain values of normal.

  A little up ahead, Harris got Nonee’s attention and pointed toward an obviously artificial plateau by the side of the road. The plateau looked perfect, large enough to hold them all, small enough they wouldn’t feel exposed. A lichen-covered slab of rock nearly as tall as Nonee held up the fall of the hill, the summer-browned grass was too short to hide large predators, and the three trees just off the road offered a welcome patch of shade.

  It looked like it had been designed for picnicking in happier times.

  Or for welcome visitors to wait in comfort while the traps up ahead were disarmed.

  Legs burning, sweat running down his sides, stomach pressed against his backbone, Ryan was all for stopping to eat, but Nonee shook her head and indicted they should keep going. He could see the wisdom in getting as far away from the water as possible, but it wouldn’t be long before Gearing would have to rest, giving them no choice about the location.

  Not wanting to bellow his protest, Ryan lengthened his stride until he’d nearly caught up, and snapped his mouth closed when he realized all three trees grew from trunks that looked like elongated bodies, feet stretching toward the ground, backs impossibly twisted, mouths open too wide.

  Except this was the Broken Lands.

  If they looked like elongated bodies . . .

  And one of them was—had been—a child.

  Branches reached toward the road as they passed. Leaves whispered. No one listened to Lyelee insisting they should stop, and she muttered under her breath about wasted opportunity until they reached a similar plateau further up the road.

  This rock was shorter, the grass a little longer, and there were no trees close enough to whisper.

  Another night, they’d have eaten, rested, then walked on until dusk, using the hours of summer sunlight that remained, but it was clear to Ryan that Gearing was done. The older scholar barely managed to eat a piece of jerky and a handful of raw peas before falling asleep. Keetin dozed, a mug of Harris’s mint tea clasped loosely between his hands. Satchel across her lap, Lyelee curled her left arm around the paper resting on it, protecting the notes she scribbled with her right from prying eyes.

  Ryan could feel a demand to see her work rise in his throat, pushed out by the growing suspicion that the Scholar’s Hall edited the truths they taught. Before he could begin another futile argument about the privilege of scholarship, he joined Nonee at the edge of the camp.

  Back toward the harbor, the lake shone silver-blue, deceptively peaceful, the fog still hugging the far shore. On the other side of the road, the swamp stretched off until it disappeared into a low-lying mist.

  “What you chased in the swamp,” he said at last, “was it someone like you?” When she glanced over at him, he shrugged. He’d put the pieces together while he climbed. “Big and gray and not an elephant.”

  Her mouth twitched. “Not an elephant,” she agreed.

  “Someone like you.”

  “Yes.”

  He reached down, pulled the seed head off a stalk of grass, and stripped it between his fingers. “Did you see it in the swamp the last time, when Petre died?”

  “No. He didn’t come close enough.”

  He. Not it. She. Not it.

  “But you knew he was there?”

  “Not knew; suspected.”

  “Did you tell the Lord Protector or was it omitted from his chronicle?”

  “Omitted?”

  “Left out.” When she frowned, Ryan realized she hadn’t been asking what the word meant. “It seems to have happened once or twice.” He glanced back at the two scholars, fully aware that Nonee hadn’t actually answered his question. He dusted grass seeds off his hands. “The Captain’s Chronicle says the other five weapons were destroyed. That only you survived.”

  “The Captain was wrong.”

  About a few things, Ryan thought, but before he could pull a question from the hundreds trying to form, Nonee’s gaze jerked to the sky and she held up a hand for silence.

  The black specks, the crows circling over the far headland, seemed closer, but still too far away to cause concern.

  Then Nonee crouched.

  Leapt up.

  Grabbed . . . a piece of the sky.

  The ground under his feet trembled when she landed.

  Her fingers had closed around the throat of a large, gray bird; talons reached to rip and tear, wings slammed against her, the beak opened and closed even after she ripped the head from the body.

  “I didn’t see it!” Ryan scrambled away from death throes that gouged furrows into the ground.

  Nonee kicked the bird over onto its back, exposing a mix of blue and white and pale gray feathers. A stroke of her foot and the mixture changed. Another stroke, it changed again. “You can’t see the hunters from below,” she said.

  “Mage-craft,” Lyelee declared, leaning around Destros, pencil still clutched in her hand.

  Only Ryan could see Nonee roll her eyes. “Boe Mah Sing created them to feed his flocks. Crows are carrion feeders. The hunters created carrion so his crows could feed.”

  “How . . . responsible of him.”

  “Eventually,” she said, staring off at the distant flock of crows.

  Ryan decided not to ask her what she meant; it would likely be worse than he imagined. “How many of them are there?”

  “Only Boe Mah Sing knew.” She shrugged. “Time for lots of eggs since then.”

  “Are there more up there now?” Captain Yansav held her sword again, although what use it would be against an essentially invisible bird, Ryan had no idea.

  “At least she has it out,” Donal scoffed.

  “Better Ryan doesn’t pull his . . .”

  “. . . so he doesn’t cut his own feet off.” The twins snickered together.

  “Nonee!”

  Nonee turned her head as the captain snapped her name and Ryan realized she’d been staring at him, head cocked, during his brothers’ commentary.

  “Are there more?” Captain Yansav repeated.

  “They were solitary hunters.” Nonee shrugged again. “They’ve had time to change. There’s been inter . . .”

  “Interbreeding to create the birds that attacked me! That’s what you meant by unexpected. Not that they attacked, that they existed.” Dropping to her knees, Lyelee flicked the feather pattern with her pencil, while reaching for the head with her other hand. “There is a visible similarity in the shape of the skull and the breadth of the chest. What birds did Boe Mah Sing use to create them?”

  “Only he knew.”

  “Raptor claws and wings, but that beak . . .” She held up the head—it was larger than Ryan’s clenched fist—and stabbed the long straight beak into the ground. “No raptor ever had a beak like this. There’s spurs on the wing joints and the flight feathers . . . Ow!” The hunter’s head hit the ground and rolled. “Those are sharp!” Glaring at the wing’s edge, she put her bloody finger in her mouth.

  Leaning past her, Captain Yansav used her sword to sweep the breast feathers back and forth. Then she squinted up into the sky. Then she turned to Nonee. “You can see them.”

  “Yes. When they come close enough.”

  “Can you teach Servan to see them?”

  Nonee studied the archer for a moment, but finally shook her head. “She’d need mage-crafted eyes.”

  Servan took a step back and held up both hands. “That’s a big burning no.”

  “No one survives to craft them,” Nonee reassured her. Servan didn’t look reassured.

  “So our survival depends on a mage-crafted weapon.” Gearing stumbled a little as he joined them around the body of the bird. His eyes were bloodshot and it didn’t look as though his nap had done him much good. “Except that I spoke her word and she didn’t obey. Captain Marsan’s notes explicitly stated that none of the weapons could disobey.”

  “I don’t remember that in the chronicle,” Destros murmured.

  “That’s not the point!” Gearing snapped.

  It was a point that needed making, but before Ryan could say so, Lyelee rocked back on her heels and stood, slipping three breast feathers into her satchel. Later, Ryan told himself. He’d deal with that later. “Did you pronounce it correctly?” she asked.

  Nonee answered before the older scholar could. “Close enough.”

  Gearing folded his arms. Ryan noticed his wrist bones had grown even more prominent. “So you heard me?”

  “Yes.” She made it sound like obviously.

  “Then why didn’t you obey?”

  “You don’t have to answer,” Ryan told her.

  “If she hadn’t run off,” Lyelee snapped, “we’d have known about the squid . . .”

  “It’s not a squid!” Gearing interrupted.

  “She’s standing right here.” Ryan shifted so he stood between the scholars and the weapon. “Talk to her instead of about her.”

  “She doesn’t need your protection.” Lyelee rolled her eyes.

  “And yet, she has it.” He felt the air currents shift as Nonee adjusted her bulk behind him.

  Gearing stepped closer. “I demand she answer!”

  “She doesn’t . . .”

  “It’s okay.” Her hand rested cool and heavy on Ryan’s shoulder, the sound of her exhale too impatient to be a sigh. “It’s not speaking the word, it’s holding the word, and only one person can hold the word at a time. Tanika Fleshrender gave the word to Captain Marsan just before the end. Garrett Heir gave the word to Arianna before he left.”

  “Which is my point!” Gearing waved the piece of paper he pulled from his satchel. “The healer is dead. I hold the word now.”

  “Not how it works.” Her tone slid into warning.

  Ryan frowned. His great-uncle had given the word to Arianna. Nonee had been with the healer when she lay dying. “Arianna gave you the word before she died.”

  “You weren’t there,” Gearing scoffed. “You’re guessing.”

  “Ryan Heir is right.”

  “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

  Ignoring his brother, Ryan turned under the weight of Nonee’s hand. “You hold your own word.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you obey the Last Command.” Captain Yansav still hadn’t sheathed her sword, the point resting against the dead bird’s breast.

  “Yes. The Last Command was given by Garrett Heir while he held the word.”

  “Years ago,” Lyelee said. “And you’re still bound by it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Nonee shrugged.

  “No,” Gearing snapped. “That is not a secret you get to keep. Not when our survival rests in your hands.”

  “She keeps what secrets she needs to.” Ryan drew himself up straight, as much as his aching back protested the attempt, turned back toward the bulk of the company, and met Gearing’s eyes. “How much more relevant information are you concealing, Scholar?”

  In the silence that followed, Ryan could hear Harris poking at the fire, Keetin’s congested breathing, and, although he was probably imagining it, the distant calls of Boe Mah Sing’s crows.

  Gearing raised a hand and stroked his beard, slowly, deliberately, as though he were cutting down a novitiate who’d dared to question what was known. “You have no authority over scholarship, Lord Marsan.” He turned on one heel and strode back toward the fire. It would’ve been impressive on the stone floors of the Scholar’s Hall. On a hill covered in summer-dead grasses, it was both wobbly and pretentious.

  Lyelee paused, eyes narrowed, and before following said, “If you’re imagining you sound like the Lord Protector—you don’t.”

  Ryan heard a soft, disapproving huff of breath from behind him, although he wasn’t entirely certain who or what Nonee disapproved of.

  NONEE.NOW

  Nonee’s hand engulfed the mug of tea Harris gave her and the two of them looked down at the body of the bird.

  “Can we eat it?” Harris asked.

  “No.”

  He gave a noncommittal hum and her heart lurched, reminded of Arianna, who made . . . used to make a similar sound as she thought things over. “Can you eat it?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t have to, but she could. Should. Take it away once darkness fell so they couldn’t see her devour meat, bones, and viscera. So they couldn’t see how different . . .

  “I could send the boys for more wood and I could cook it for you.” Harris prodded the bird gently with the toe of one boot. “If I cooked it whole, it wouldn’t be ready until morning, but you’ll have to eat then too.”

  “Thank you.” He couldn’t look at her, but he still tried to erase what differences he could. “But no.”

  RYAN.NOW

  Ryan threw up an arm over his eyes to block the light and gave serious thought to stuffing dirt into his ears to block the high-pitched, three-part whoop rising above the calls of less annoying birds. After a moment, he sighed and rolled up onto his feet, fist shoved into his mouth to block a jaw-cracking yawn.

  He hadn’t slept well. He’d dreamed of water closing over his head. Of Keetin torn apart by tentacles, torn into pieces so small they became red/black currents in the water that twisted away from his reaching hands. He woke, more than once, to Keetin coughing.

  He’d been awake when Lyelee had risen to circle the camp before lying down again. It looked like she was talking to herself, lips moving, hands waving, but the only sound she made was a soft, dry cough that made Keetin’s wet bark sound worse in comparison.

  He’d seen Gearing rise twice to piss then drop back to sleep immediately after as though his world remained empty of monsters. He should’ve let Keetin push him into the water.

  And speaking of water, the waterskins were gone.

  “Nonee’s taken them to the lake,” Harris told him, voice low so as not to wake the others. “To fill them.”

  Ryan stared at Harris for a long moment before he found his voice. “To the lake?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The lake with the giant tentacled creature that tried to kill Keetin and reproduced inside Destros’s leg?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That can’t be safe.”

  Harris bent forward to blow on a nest of small sticks laid over last night’s coals. When they caught he said, “I believe Nonee’s in no danger.”

  Then Nonee was back. One moment she wasn’t there, the next she was, festooned with most of the company’s waterskins, a handspan at the bottom of her leather tunic dark and wet. “Nonee. You’ve got . . .” He waved a hand at the bulging skins. “We can’t drink that.”

  “Why not?” Lyelee argued. Ryan hadn’t noticed her join them. “The water was remarkably clear. I made a note of that at the time. If the creature’s offspring can be filtered out . . .”

  “Filtered out?”

  “The Great Lake drowned your brothers and yet continues to provide Marsanport with water,” she pointed out. “It’s a little late to get fussy.”

  The muscles of his back tightened. “Fussy?”

  She sighed. “When your conversation devolves to echoing words and phrases, you give the impression of stunned stupidity. If you don’t drop that particular vocal mannerism before we return home, the Court will eat you for breakfast. And speaking of breakfast . . .” She turned to Harris, who’d been building the fire into a hot, all but smokeless blaze. “. . . oatcakes again?”

  “They pack light, Scholar. There’ll be tea if we have water.”

  Lyelee folded her arms and raised a brow in Nonee’s direction.

  “All the water went first into this skin . . .” Nonee lifted the larger, ornate skin she’d carried from Gateway. “. . . then was poured through a piece of silk into the others.”

  “Silk filters mage-crafted squid babies?” Keetin asked.

  Ryan jumped.

  “Your situational awareness needs work,” Captain Yansav said on his other side.

  “And it’s not a squid,” Gearing added.

  Destros shook his head. “I don’t think I’m comfortable drinking squid-baby water.”

  Servan mumbled agreement.

  Seemed like everyone was up.

  “It’s not a squid!” Gearing repeated.

  Nonee glanced at Ryan. He sighed. Lyelee was right. The water had looked clear and clean, and under normal circumstances he’d have had no trouble drinking it. But these weren’t normal circumstances, even if he refused to say squid babies aloud. “Nonee, is the water safe to drink?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because of a piece of silk?”

  “No.” She shook the larger waterskin hard enough Ryan heard something thud against the inside. “Because of a purification stone.”

  “A purification stone?”

  Lyelee snorted dismissively. “You’re doing it again.”

  “Lyelee.” Keetin made her name a warning.

  “He won’t learn if I don’t point it out to him.”

  The problem was, however smug and sanctimonious she sounded, she wasn’t wrong. Ryan raised a hand to stop Keetin’s next words and Gearing jumped in.

  “It’s mage-craft!”

  Given how little her facial features moved, Ryan was impressed at how clearly Nonee expressed a silent doubt in Gearing’s intelligence as she said, “Yes.”

  “How does it work?” the older scholar demanded. “How did you manage to keep it functional after all this time?”