Lyelee dropped a feather and piece of bone into her satchel. “I’m going with Nonee.”

  “You’re gathering wood.” She nodded at Gearing, who’d been able to pick up a beak without rising and was holding it up to the fading light. “Both of you. Since you both have two good legs.”

  “You, Captain, don’t . . .”

  “If you can carry books, you can carry wood,” Ryan snapped before Lyelee could say what the captain wasn’t. “And remember the fire will be protecting you along with the rest of us.” He breathed a sigh of relief as she spun on one heel and stomped toward the tree line. Gearing followed, moving considerably slower. “Stay in sight,” he called.

  She flicked fire over her shoulder.

  “Captain Yansav.” Nonee tossed the captain a corked glass vial. “Oregano oil. It’ll help if the bite’s infected.”

  “And if it’s infected with mage-craft?” Keetin asked, handing her the empty waterskins.

  Nonee nodded toward Destros. “Those axes will cut through bone.”

  Ryan clenched his teeth to keep from throwing up.

  * * *

  They’d had to leave the books, but what else had the Scholars hidden in their satchels? Leg throbbing, Ryan stared up at the stars. If he asked, they’d say it was none of his business. If he ordered the contents exposed, they wouldn’t cooperate. If he forced a search, how would the others react? Was he alone in his suspicions? He couldn’t be the only one who feared the scholars were teaching what they wanted known. Was he overreacting?

  “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Donal’s mean to me!”

  “Josan took my clothes!”

  “Corryn locked me in the root cellar!”

  “It’s too high. It’s too hard. It’s too cold. It’s too hot. The scholars are lying to us.”

  But they were lying. They were hiding parts of the chronicles. Adding their own words. And if the Scholars were lying, maybe it had been too high, too hard, too cold, and too hot . . .

  “You keep telling yourself that, slug.”

  “Maybe I will,” he muttered, grunted as Keetin poked him, and finally closed his eyes.

  He dreamed of the Heir’s Chronicle, words sliding off the pages as he turned them. He dreamed the fuel turned to flesh and blood in his hands. Then the blood wrote words on his hands, but although he knew it was a warning, he couldn’t read what it said. Then the blood turned to crows, rusty black feathers tinted red. He could hear water lapping against the stairs as their beaks drove into his flesh again and again and again . . .

  He sat up. Beside him, Keetin’s body shook as he coughed, not asleep but not awake. He could hear Gearing breathing heavily, each exhale almost a growl. Destros whimpered, Servan swore, and Captain Yansav whispered words he didn’t understand. Only Lyelee slept quietly. Leaning closer, he saw her mouth curve into a satisfied smile.

  Curtin wasn’t fidgeting with his vest. Harris wasn’t snoring.

  He’d failed them both.

  Kicking free of his bedroll, he got to his feet and sucked air through his teeth at the sudden stabbing pain. He limped past legs and packs and weapons to where Nonee stood, silhouetted against the sky, eyes turned toward the distant headland. Sweat plastered his tunic to his back and it took a conscious effort to unclench his teeth.

  “You should be sleeping,” she said quietly.

  “True, but I should be at home sleeping under a fan and my mother should be the Heir of Marsan,” he muttered. “Life burns us all.”

  “Coward.”

  “You’d send your mother to the Broken Lands in your place?” Nonee sounded curious, not accusing. Not like his brothers.

  Ryan snorted. “My mother would finish breaking the Broken Lands. She was . . .” Fading. Most of his memories of her were stories he’d been told. He nodded toward the bag between Nonee’s feet. “If we left that here, would it be easier to get out?”

  “Yes.”

  He knew that. “This is the last piece of fuel. The Black Flame will go out. It might as well go out now as later, right?”

  Nonee shrugged.

  “But then Curtin and Harris would have died for nothing.”

  She shrugged again. If he could see her expression, would it agree that they’d died for nothing? The Black Flame was the symbol of Marsanport’s strength, but in and of itself it was . . .

  Nothing.

  No easy way out. He’d bring the fuel home. Become the Lord Protector. Ease his people into believing they didn’t need the flame before it burned out one last time. But how?

  “Your leg keeping you awake?”

  “More my head.”

  Her noncommittal hum was vaguely comforting. “This would be the time to live in the moment.”

  “This moment, also not so great.” Actually, he amended silently, this moment was kind of nice. A light breeze blew in off the lake, the sky was clear, and nothing was trying to kill them. “Should we have kept moving through the night?”

  Nonee stood silent and motionless for a long moment. “No,” she said at last.

  But she’d considered it. Ryan sighed and adjusted his stance until only his left toe was on the ground, the new angle changing the pain. “There must be good things in the Broken Lands. Things that weren’t destroyed or polluted by mage-craft.”

  She cocked her head. “Why?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. Wishful thinking? Nonee, why did the tower let the scholars wander around?”

  “Let?”

  “Allow. You know what I mean. There were traps and impossible halls when we were trying to save Harris, but the scholars danced in and out again unopposed.”

  “You think you know why.”

  “No, I . . .” When she turned to look at him, he fell silent and shook his head. Picked out the archer in the pattern of stars. And the lion. And the olive tree. And the pomegranate. He’d only ever been able to see a formless mass of stars where the pomegranate was supposed to be, but considering pomegranates, maybe that was the point. “The chronicle,” he began. And had to begin again. “The chronicle says the Lord Protector left you behind because you could better protect Marsanport in Gateway. Maybe it wasn’t just physical abominations he wanted you to keep penned, but mage-craft itself. Maybe . . .” He turned the thought over. “Maybe the mage-craft wants out.” He waited for her to tell him he was wrong. Nonee’s leather creaked as she shifted. It was quiet enough beyond the camp; Ryan heard the soft splash of something breaking the surface of the lake. He bit back a hysterical giggle and said, “Nonee?”

  “No.” To his surprise, she kept talking. “And yes. The mages were powerful. People want power.”

  “And some will see mage-craft as a way to get it. I know. That’s why Marsanport keeps people away from the Mage Road.”

  She snorted. “Try to sleep, Ryan Heir. If the nights are short, the days are long.”

  LYELEE.NOW

  Lyelee dreamed of books piled on a table in the Scholar’s Hall. Familiar books.

  “I have reclaimed our history,” she told the faceless scholars surrounding her. “I have applied scholarship where others hid in fear and superstition.”

  The books disappeared, leaving behind a single sheet of thick paper.

  The surrounding Scholars began to fade.

  “No!” Lyelee slapped her palm on the table. “This is enough! With this I prove there is nothing inherently evil in mage-craft. With this I put together an expedition of scholars, only scholars, who will study the Broken Lands, not merely walk in and walk out again. Scholars who will study and learn and in time control the Broken Lands. The history of the Broken Lands is our history, and we will not be denied.”

  “The Lord Protector,” whispered someone in the crowd.

  “The Lord Protector does not control scholarship! Scholars remain separate, untainted by politics, unrestrained by fear. We are governed by knowledge alone and our very charter states we cannot be prevented from seeking it out. This . . .” She held up the paper. “. . . is the key that will unlock our past!”

  And the faceless scholars were in a wagon moving up the Mage Road pulled by the shadows of creatures that were not quite horses. And the wagon took them past Gateway, past those who benefited from their heritage even as they denied it, and into the Broken Lands. And those trapped in wood and stone were set free and in their gratitude threw open unseen doors.

  And she had the time to find the information she needed.

  And Nonee became again the weapon she was meant to be, commanded by scholarship, given purpose, guarding scholars from the fearful . . .

  Lyelee’s eyes snapped open as the Nonee in her dream grew to even greater size and smashed through the wall around Gateway, the roar of falling stone becoming Gearing’s snores. She blinked, shifted so a broken piece of the Broken Lands no longer dug into her hip, and focused on the dark stain of Nonee’s silhouette against the night sky.

  Would they allow such a weapon to roam free in Gateway if they had no way of controlling her?

  She, personally, had no emotional attachment to children, but scholarship supported the belief that no one would allow their children around such a weapon unless they could control it.

  When the scholars return, she decided, closing her eyes, they’ll begin by claiming Gateway’s archive.

  And then claiming the weapon.

  They’d be a force against ignorance.

  RYAN.NOW

  Ryan’s leg felt better in the morning.

  “Better being a relative term,” he admitted as Keetin checked the bandage.

  “Can you walk on it?”

  “Going to have to, I’m not staying here.”

  Keetin turned his head to cough, then looked up and grinned. “Atta boy.”

  Nothing attacked before breakfast, or after breakfast, or while they made their slow way back down to the broken bridge. Nonee remained outwardly placid. The guardians jumped at shadows, Keetin coughed, and Gearing kept his eyes on the ground as though his feet needed the incentive of sight to keep moving. Lyelee looked determined.

  Ryan didn’t trust that look. At ten, a determined Lyelee had pushed him off the end of the pier to see if his brothers’ taunts about his inability to swim were true. Had one of the women who fished his father’s quota not pulled him out, he’d have definitively proven it.

  “Why are you scowling at your cousin?” Keetin asked.

  “I’m not. I’m scowling at a scholar.”

  “Is that even allowed?”

  It was. But the scholars discouraged it. Discouraged criticism. Discouraged what they deemed to be unnecessary questions from the moment children sat down in their classrooms. Was that what Captain Marsan had intended?

  “Ryan?”

  Ryan shook his head.

  * * *

  They rested at the bridge. Ryan eased himself down onto a chunk of dressed stone he didn’t remember from their trip to Tanika Fleshrender’s tower. Hopefully it wouldn’t shift into a mage-crafted rock monster and eat his ass. He wanted to close his eyes and let the sun bake some of the pain away, but knew relaxing would be a mistake. He needed to be ready for . . . whatever. Propping his left foot on his right ankle to change the pressure against the bite, he looked at Captain Yansav’s knee, flesh swelling around the edges of the wrap that kept her from bending the injured joint, and wondered if either of them would be able to manage the hop, skip, and jump it would take to get across the break.

  About to suggest she sit as well, he closed his mouth as she snapped, “Servan, what the flaming hell are you doing?”

  “Feeding oatcake crumbs to a bird, Cap.”

  “Birds attacked us, Servan.”

  “Not this bird, Cap.” She flinched back from the captain’s expression, bent her head to the small speckled bird on her palm, and murmured just loud enough for Ryan to hear, “Off you go, little one. We’re tired and hurting and not too happy because of it.”

  Ryan watched the bird fly away over the swamp, half waiting for a tentacle to rise out of the water and grab it—although it would be less than a snack for the creature. Actually, they’d only seen tentacles; they’d assumed the tentacles were attached to something. He tried to bite back the snicker, but it slipped past his teeth.

  “Ry?”

  “Free-ranging tentacles.” He pushed Keetin’s hand away from his forehead, no longer amused. “I’m not feve . . .”

  “Nonee.” Servan pointed out into the swamp. “Fog.”

  Ryan couldn’t see fog, but if Servan could, it was definitely there.

  Nonee held out a hand. “Give me your pack, Ryan Heir.” The other hand reached toward the captain. “And yours.”

  The captain bristled. “I don’t . . .”

  “Give her your pack, Captain.” Ryan shrugged out of his straps. “You and I, we’re working on a leg and a half each and Nonee can’t fight fog.” He frowned as the captain waved Destros to the other side of the bridge, glanced into the swamp, then up at Nonee. “Can you?”

  “No.”

  He patted the bulge in the daypack. “Is it drawn to . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “However mage-crafted it may be,” Gearing grumbled as Servan helped him to his feet, “fog has no agency.”

  “Mage-craft does,” Nonee told him, taking his pack as well. She snorted when Lyelee offered hers. “You’re young enough to carry it.”

  Unless you’ve other things weighing you down, Ryan thought, using Keetin’s arm to rise.

  “And now you’re talking to yourself,” Donal mocked.

  First Destros. Then Nonee with the packs. Then the scholars—Gearing reluctantly releasing one hand from its death grip on his satchel in order to keep his balance.

  When Nonee wrapped an arm around his waist and scooped him up against her side, Ryan gritted his teeth and kept silent. The captain, on Nonee’s other side, did not.

  “You ask first!” she snarled as Nonee set them down.

  “No time.”

  He could see the fog now, skimming the top of the murky water connecting the swamp to the lake. Keetin had nearly cleared the break, Servan right behind him.

  Ryan felt Nonee’s hand on his back, pushing him gently toward his pack. “Keep moving up the road.”

  The fog was noticeably closer. Ryan had seen a lot of fog in his life; it could come in off the Great Lake surprisingly fast. But not that fast. “The chronicle said it can only move over water.”

  Her nostrils flared. “Go!”

  “Sir.” Destros lifted his pack and Ryan shoved his arms under the straps, his eyes on Keetin.

  Neither scholar had paused after crossing the bridge, although they hadn’t gotten very far either. Gearing, still without his pack, held Lyelee’s arm, and Ryan would have been reassured to see she hadn’t shaken the older scholar off if he hadn’t been concerned about her interest in the fog.

  As he and Captain Yansav limped away, Destros behind and between them, Nonee moved back toward the bridge. He heard Keetin shout, tried to pivot, and would have fallen had the big axeman not grabbed his pack and kept him on his feet.

  “She’s just speeding things up a little, sir. They’re fine.”

  “Picked them up?”

  “Scruffed them like kittens. It’s adorable.”

  “I am not adorable!” Servan shouted.

  Keetin called something Ryan couldn’t make out, but Destros laughed, so he assumed Keetin had protested that he, at least, was adorable.

  They stopped again by the old pier, gathered on the far side of the road, as far from the water as possible. Ryan thought of how the cold water would feel against the bite on his leg and took a step toward it that he turned into an awkward pivot back the way they’d come.

  The fog had engulfed the bridge, a roiling tail trailing back into the swamp.

  “How does fog look menacing?” he wondered.

  “Like that,” Keetin muttered. “Just like that.”

  “Nonee, there’s another patch of fog moving in across the lake. You sure it’ll stay over the . . .” Servan stuffed her toe in the stirrup of her crossbow, yanked back the string, loaded, snapped it up, and fired, muttering, “Too flaming slow and the range is flaming shit.”

  The hunter hit the water not far from shore and floated, wings spread. Ryan heard crows cry out, but the flock stayed high.

  “It hasn’t taken it because it’s trying to lure them closer. It’s what I would do,” Lyelee added when Ryan turned to look.

  “If you were a mage-crafted tentacle creature?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Keep moving,” Nonee said.

  * * *

  Ryan stumbled into the old campsite, let his pack slide off his shoulders, sat on one of the rocks Nonee had placed when they were there . . . two nights ago. Two nights. He didn’t quite believe it.

  “. . . and eventually, we’ll set up a research facility in the tower.” Gearing’s voice drifted over to him. “The Scholarship of the Broken Lands will gain novitiates when we return.”

  Nonee grunted and Ryan glanced up at her face. “Research facility not happening?”

  “They can try.”

  “Without your help.”

  She didn’t respond, but he supposed that was so obvious a statement she didn’t need to.

  Something with too many teeth charged out from under a bush and a crossbow bolt pinned it to the ground. It had fur, the body looked vaguely like a rabbit, the head was enormous. Nonee pulled the arrow free and stomped the writhing body flat.

  “Good shot,” she called to Servan.

  “Thanks, I hate this bow. Can we expect more?”