He wanted a lot of things.

  The meadow had been frost-touched. What had been lush green was now brown and scraggy, offering little cover. At this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if the ground itself attacked.

  He said, “Uvili. Let’s see what you can scare up. You two, arm’s length apart in case whatever it is isn’t scared enough.”

  Uvili could make the ground tremble, but she could walk quietly when she wanted. The only sound as she moved out into the meadow was the snap and crackle as she crushed dead weeds and grasses into a broad path. Malcolm was right, Garrett acknowledged. It was too quiet. She paused about a third of the way across, turned slowly and sniffed the air. He couldn’t make out her expression, but he’d bet she was frowning. Then she squatted and, head cocked, peered through the dead grasses. Stalks swayed, seed heads tossed in the cold wind that whipped across the open ground.

  “She’s unhappy about something,” Arianna murmured.

  Garrett snorted. “When isn’t she?”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . .”

  He could hear Arianna’s eyes rolling.

  “. . . maybe when she isn’t trying to save the life of the son of the man who kept her in chains while he carries a piece of the mage who tried to twist her into a thing with blood and pain.”

  “Tried,” Malcolm said softly.

  “Tried,” Arianna repeated.

  “She’s still a weapon,” Garrett cautioned them.

  “Only if that’s how she’s used.”

  “That wasn’t a judgment. She’s a weapon as you’re a healer. If you build a wall, or plant a garden, or weave a blanket, you’re still a healer. You can use a sword to cut fruit, but it’s still a sword.” When Uvili straightened, he realized he’d stood motionless for as long as he could. He had to keep moving. He had to get out. He had to get the fuel out. “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t look any happier when they joined her.

  “What is it?”

  She shook her head.

  Had the sun been out, they’d have seen them sooner, but with only the dull gray of the clouds to reflect and with movement hidden in the wind-tossed grasses, they got close.

  Halfway across the meadow, Uvili froze.

  Arianna clutched his arm. “Garrett.”

  “I see them.”

  Snakes. A dozen, maybe more, as big around as his thigh, coming at them from the north.

  “It’s too cold for snakes to be out.” She released him, although he could still feel the warmth of her touch, and brought her staff around to grip two-handed.

  “They look like they’re made of glass.”

  Malcolm giggled, high-pitched and nervous. “It’s too cold for glass snakes to be out.”

  And Uvili said, “Run.”

  Arianna was fast, even with the heavy skirt swirling around her legs. Garrett wanted to see her run in the summer, long legs flashing, skin glistening, tumbled mass of curls flying behind her. He wanted to see her in the Citadel, dressed in silks from Nerathee, cutting a swath through the posers and sycophants of the Court. He wanted . . .

  Uvili roared and stomped.

  The ground quivered.

  He half-turned in time to see her grasp two of the snakes under their heads, and as their bodies wrapped around her, she slammed their heads together.

  He got a hand on Malcolm’s pack and shoved him hard. “Get down!”

  Crushed grass caught in his throat as he hit the ground, but he’d worry about that later. Shards of glass flew over his head.

  His pack now empty enough to allow it, he rolled onto his back and saw Uvili throw the next snake. He didn’t hear it break.

  He was on his knees when a snake rose up where his feet had been moments before.

  This close he could see a faint pattern of scales, as though the glass had been pushed into an etched mold. Its head was the size of his torso, and its eyes were black. Completely unrelieved black, dark and rich and warm and he couldn’t look away. They offered rest. Peace.

  It couldn’t blink. He didn’t blink.

  It opened its mouth.

  What did glass snakes eat?

  Screaming, Malcolm slammed the snake in the side of the head with the flat of his sword. The steel rang and the snake’s head whipped around, undamaged. Garrett realized the boy had swung too wide and couldn’t get his sword around to defend himself. He struggled to stand.

  Arianna took Malcolm to the ground, under the strike.

  The snake ignored them as they rolled clear, head turning back to him with impossible speed. No longer playing, it dove forward. Living glass touched his chest and was snatched away to be spun around Uvili’s head by the tail.

  It landed too far away for the shards to reach them.

  Glass amplified the sound from the surviving snakes until it filled the meadow and Garrett couldn’t tell where it actually came from.

  Uvili scooped Malcolm up under her arm and said, “Run.”

  “Arianna!”

  “Right beside you!”

  And they ran, glass shards driven into the ground under their boots. When they reached the other side of the meadow, miraculously whole, he turned to see four glass heads rise above the grass.

  With Malcolm still under her arm, ignoring the way he struggled in her hold, Uvili turned as well and stomped. One. Two. The ground boomed under her feet.

  The snakes rose up, as high or higher than his head. They were beautiful, Garrett realized, although that made them no less horrifying.

  Uvili stomped again. A warning. A threat. You break.

  And the snakes sank out of sight.

  She held Malcolm close as he screamed and shouted and fought to get back into the meadow.

  Finally, he sagged and sobbed.

  Uvili shot Garrett a look that, for an instant, reminded him of his mother telling him not to be an idiot. Taken aback, it took him a moment to understand what he needed to do. Then he moved closer and called, “Malcolm.”

  He flung himself out of Uvili’s arms and into Garrett’s. “It could have killed you!”

  “It didn’t. You saved me.”

  “I can’t lose . . .”

  “I know. Shush. I know.” They needed to keep moving, but he could no more lose Malcolm than Malcolm could lose him, so they stayed within the dubious shelter of slender trees. He heard Uvili stomp—one, two, a third time—and might have heard breaking glass, but he didn’t look up. When Malcolm’s sobs died, Garrett held him out at arm’s length, and traced a cut across one cheekbone with his thumb, the dampness below it a mix of blood and tears. At some point, he’d been caught by a piece of flying glass. “Arianna needs to have a look at this.”

  “Will it scar?”

  “Yes. But it’ll be the kind of scar you can tell stories about.”

  Malcolm shook his head, sucking air through his teeth as the movement pulled at the edges and a line of blood drew a darker line across his skin. “I’m never going to talk about this.”

  “And it’s not going to scar,” Arianna snapped, taking Garrett by the wrist with one hand and slapping a clay pot into his palm with the other. “Hold this.”

  They were so close to the line. They needed to keep moving.

  They needed to slap a temporary dressing over emotional wounds before they could go on.

  RYAN.NOW

  Ryan stared out over the meadow in disbelief. The lush grasses drooped, flower petals were limp and brown. The butterflies were gone and the buzz of other insects had been silenced.

  “It’s been hot and dry,” Keetin said beside him.

  “It’s only been . . .” He frowned. Tried to count how many times they’d slept, but the number kept dancing just out of reach. “Are we sure it’s the same meadow?”

  He hadn’t been entirely serious, but Nonee stepped out of the trees and drew in a deep breath, nostrils flared. “Probably.”

  “Not really helpful,” Keetin pointed out.

  “The tree is a fixed point, the line is a fixed point. The rest is . . .” She paused. Frowned. “. . . unsettled.”

  “Well, that dragon was certainly unsettling.”

  “Yes.”

  Even Nonee looked unsettled. That was . . . unsettling.

  “That’s a lot of open ground.” Servan tipped her head and squinted up into a cloudless sky. “What about the hunter birds?”

  “They’re on the other side of the tower,” Destros protested.

  “The tower that was stone when we went, wood when we returned, and dumped us at the feet of said dragon?” Keetin asked.

  Ryan hated that he had a point. “Nonee?”

  “Destros is right. The birds are too far away.”

  “What about the bird you killed in Gateway?”

  “They only hunt at night.”

  He didn’t quite touch the bulge of the fuel where the daypack rested against his hip. “Even now?”

  “Probably.”

  “Again, that’s not . . .” Keetin began, then lost the rest to coughing. Ryan tried not to see the blood on the back of his hand when he stopped.

  Destros reached for the captain. “If you need to be on guard, I can carry . . .”

  “You can.” The captain cut him off. “You could carry me across the meadow at a run if you had to, but you’d be shit in a fight afterward. What’s more, I trust Nonee to drop me if she needs to. You’d set me down carefully and die in the process.”

  “That’s not,” he began, then shook his head. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

  “Let’s get moving, then.” Ryan shifted his pack, much lighter now, thank the flame—he couldn’t carry a full pack plus the weight of the fuel. Although the fuel had seemed lighter this morning. He hoped he wasn’t growing used to it. Was that what it meant to be Lord Protector? Growing used to the weight of things beyond your control? “Once we’re across the meadow, we’re almost out.”

  “Distance is relative in the Broken Lands,” Lyelee stated in the scholar’s voice that refused argument.

  Ryan shivered, glad that Keetin would walk between them. The Broken Lands seemed to emphasize all the parts of his cousin that had terrified him as a child.

  LYELEE.NOW

  “Power,” said the bone, “must be fueled.”

  Something had already drawn power from the meadow.

  Lyelee’s eyes narrowed, her attention not on Keetin’s back, or his pack, or his admittedly fine ass, but on possibilities.

  “Release the fuel,” said the bone, “while the land can still help!”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Scholar?”

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Servan muttered something. Lyelee ignored her and stepped out of line.

  “Scholar!”

  “Samples!” she snapped, bent to pluck a seed head, and froze. The air was still, completely still, but the grasses swayed and twisted, the motion growing more violent as it moved away from her to join a writhing patch of meadow. She’d like to see the crystal snake again—she’d had no time to study it—but it wasn’t the snake that rose. It was a human-shaped form, at least as human-shaped as the weapon was, made of plants, and it left a patch of bare ground behind as it stood.

  “Incoming!” Servan yelled.

  It roared, the sound like a storm bending the tops of trees.

  The crossbow quarrel went through it, the tangle of green and brown that made up its body shifting to open a passage. Unless Servan managed to light one of her final three quarrels on fire, she’d do no damage.

  Servan had no time to light a fire.

  She didn’t need Servan. Or time.

  She spat and rubbed her hands together, the fire she created white hot at the core. She threw it as the creature charged forward, and if some of its plants were too green to burn in a normal fire, this wasn’t a normal fire. She half saw the weapon leap back as the creature burst into flame.

  The fire burned hot and fast. When it burned down to a dusting of white ash—it had been consumed much faster than Gearing, but given their respective compositions that made sense—she felt the weight of attention on her back. Scholars were used to attention. She turned.

  Eyes were wide. Mouths were open. Sword points and Destros’s axe blade touched dirt. Only Captain Yansav, on the ground, missing half a leg, held her weapons at anything approaching ready. The captain had never learned the respect for scholars drilled into the children of Marsanport from birth.

  Lyelee made a mental note to have incomers properly instructed by the Scholar’s Hall.

  The weapon’s eyes had narrowed.

  Ryan took a single step toward her. “Lyelee?”

  “Release the fuel,” said the bone again, “while the land can still help!”

  She flicked her satchel open. She’d pulled the fuel from Ryan’s daypack during the night while the lizard-dogs howled in the distance and the weapon paced a circle around the camp and the tree. The fuel had fit perfectly in her satchel, although it shouldn’t have. Clearly, she was meant to have it. Lying on her side, faking sleep, her body hiding her actions, she’d scooped up dirt, packed it tight, wrapped it in the silk, and slid the substitute back into the pack. Ryan would never notice. Ryan paid no notice to what he carried. Ryan was a fool.

  The fuel had warmed over the morning to almost body temperature. She drove her fingers into the greasy, yielding mass.

  “Feel it,” said the bone. “Open yourself to it.”

  “Imprecise,” Lyelee muttered. But she could feel it, rising up her arm. Open to it made sudden sense in light of this new information. It rose to her shoulder. She could more than discover the history of their people, she could recreate it. She could . . .

  NONEE.NOW

  Nonee lowered Kalyealee who-could-be-heir to the ground.

  “Is she dead?” Ryan Heir asked quietly.

  Not did you kill her. Nonee appreciated the difference. “No.”

  “Choked her out,” said Servan, nodding too fast, her voice too high.

  Ryan Heir took another step closer. “That was mage-craft.”

  “Yes.”

  Then slowly, testing each word. “She killed Gearing.”

  “Yes.”

  “On purpose?”

  Nonee glanced over at the ash. Did it matter? “She didn’t care that she’d killed him.”

  That mattered.

  RYAN.NOW

  Ryan assumed Keetin was too exhausted to pace, that twitching was as much as he could handle.

  “We need to leave.” Keetin’s face darkened and he forced the next sentence out before he began to cough. “We need to get across the Broken Line and into a place where shit like that does not happen.”

  “It’s not the place,” Nonee said. And then, “Not anymore.”

  Ryan nodded. “We need to know what we’re taking across the Broken Line. What we might be turning loose on the world.” He’d shaken the packed clump of dirt out of the silk, and used a fold to move the fuel back to the daypack, the weight settling on his shoulders again. He couldn’t believe Lyelee had been able to take it without him knowing. Not through use of mage-craft, but through his own inability to keep it safe.

  “You mean through your incompetence.”

  “And you’re supposed to keep Marsanport safe?”

  “Yeah, like anyone believed he could.”

  Keeping Marsanport safe was for after he returned. Now, he had to keep these specific people safe. “We need to get out of the meadow. We’re too exposed and . . .” He couldn’t say her name. “And this proved there’s mage-craft here. Let’s get in under the trees.”

  Feet braced, crossbow ready, Servan swept her gaze around the meadow. “Will it be safer under the trees?” she asked.

  “No.”

  Her gaze swept over to Nonee. “And yet I’d feel safer under a little cover.”

  Did it matter? Ryan wondered, looking down at his cousin. They were taking the danger with them. “Divide what’s in her pack.” Lyelee was taller than the captain, but less heavily muscled and wearing linen and leather, not armor. “Destros, can you carry her?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “She won’t stay out for long,” Nonee cautioned.

  “Get in under the trees,” Ryan repeated, trying not to read attack into every rustle of grass. “We’ll deal with it then.”

  * * *

  “She’d be more comfortable with her hands tied in front of her.” Still breathing heavily from his last coughing fit, Keetin leaned back against a tree and waved a hand toward Destros wrapping another loop of rope around Lyelee’s body while Nonee held her off the ground. “Look, I know we have to take precautions, but she’s a scholar and a Marsan and entitled to at least a little consideration.”

  “She has to see her hand to make the fire. There are rules.” Nonee set her down and tugged the rope tight. “She made the rule, she has to keep it.”

  Standing by the captain, concerned about the lines of pain around her mouth and eyes, Ryan frowned. “Lyelee made the rule?”

  “Kalyealee who-could-be-heir stared at her hand before the fire appeared. If this was only the second time, she’d have repeated what she did to make it work the first time.”

  “If?”

  “No way to know for sure.”

  “I think we’d have noticed another pillar of fire!”

  Nonee shrugged.

  “Doing something twice makes it a rule?” Keetin asked sarcastically.