With both the trading floor and the weapon unavailable, she glanced toward the rear of the stable. “The trader said there was a turn-out. Have you checked it?”

  “Not yet.” Servan’s shoulders relaxed. “Wasn’t sure when it’d be safe.”

  “The sun’s up. I’ll have a look.”

  “Thanks, Scholar.”

  Thanks for not arguing. Thanks for not heading up the stairs and forcing the guardian to choose between the rights of scholarship and the captain’s orders. It took so little to keep people amenable, and amenable people were significantly more useful.

  Lyelee pushed the back door open far enough to slide through, and stepped outside.

  The sun hadn’t risen high enough to have burned off the dawn palette, and the air remained comfortably cool. Although her observations so far this morning suggested they’d still be here wasting time when the temperature began to rise.

  The corral had been constructed inside the ruins of the building that had once extended from the back wall of the courtyard. Sturdy rail fencing filled in the two and a half sides where the walls had entirely collapsed. An enormous tree on the far side of the southern wall provided shade, and water filled a stone trough by the stable wall. Eroded corners suggested the trough was old, but Lyelee’d seen similar troughs in Marsanport. Its historical significance was minimal.

  She squatted to examine the lower, less exposed stones in the south wall. These stones had been here before the Mage War. These stones had survived the Mage War. This was history. She rubbed a finger over the discoloration, licked it—after a hundred and sixty-three years, it tasted of finger—and then rubbed the damp skin over the same area to no effect. Using what remained of her fingernails, she scraped up a bit of the surface.

  “If stone could talk . . .”

  Based on the small amount they knew the mages were capable of, the mages might have been able to make stone talk—if not participate in an actual conversation, at least surrender its secrets. “Think of what scholarship could expose if that was an option,” she muttered. How had they done it? What else had they been able to do? How much had been lost?

  “Dasa falere fuputard.”

  By the time she’d risen and turned, wiping stone dust off her fingers onto borrowed trousers, she’d pried the words apart.

  “Da says it’ll fall over if you push too hard.”

  The three children on the other side of the fence had skin ranging in shades from Ryan’s to Servan’s—nothing as dark as the captain nor as pale as Keetin. Unfortunately, with so small a sample size, it was impossible to determine if the extremes had been bred out of a small, static population. All three were barefoot, wearing sleeveless tunics belted with a strip of cloth. Hems flapped around dirty knees. Frayed edges and patches indicated either a lower economic level than Darny had shown, or parents who recognized how destructive young children could be and dressed them accordingly. The clothing was too simple to be historically relevant.

  All three stared at her with wide, brown eyes.

  Lyelee sighed and made the first move. “Hello.”

  The child with the long, dark braid yanked the smallest child back and made a garbled announcement.

  Lyelee understood two words—not and you. Although you sounded more like yee. She raised a hand then lowered it, palm toward the ground. “Speak slowly.”

  “Slur not slur to talk to you.”

  “Once more.”

  The braided child rolled their eyes. “Wore nog alloo ta take ta yee.”

  But Lyelee now had sufficient samples to work her way around the accent. They weren’t allowed to talk to her. “Are you allowed to be here at all?”

  They exchanged glances, then the braided child said, “No.”

  “Then you might as well talk to me if you’re going to be in trouble anyway.”

  After a moment, all three nodded. Scholars, past and present, agreed that children responded to logic better than many adults.

  “Are you here to take Nonee?” the braided child asked.

  “Nonee?” This was the first Lyelee had heard the name. Was Gateway intending to supply a guide?

  “She said you’d come.”

  “The olders watch for you.” The palest of the three told her. “Out there.” A grubby finger pointed toward the wall. “We’re not old enough.”

  The braided child picked at a scab on the back of their hand.

  “Open it and you open the way for infection,” Lyelee warned. “Is Nonee in charge?” she added when the child flicked the scab away and sucked at the wound.

  “No.” The smallest child shook curls cut as short as Lyelee’s own. “Auntie Raych.”

  “Your Auntie Raych is in charge?”

  “Uh huh. Till frost. But Nonee’s best!” The smallest child clambered up to sit on the top rail of the fence. “She brung all the stones for our house from houses what fell down.”

  “She brought the pole for the hall out of the forest.”

  “She found three lost sheep who were almost at the line and fought off a grr to bring them home.” Dark brows drew in. “One died. My da made sausages.”

  The braided child wiped their nose with a bit of tunic and said, “She tells the best stories.”

  More nodding from the smallest. “The flying pig!”

  If it was the story of the flying pig from the Captain’s Chronicle—and how many flying pigs could there be—Lyelee suspected Nonee had not told these children the ending. The pig had exploded. On the other hand, they didn’t seem too upset about the loss of the sheep, so maybe she had. Lyelee made a mental note to find this Nonee and see if she knew why the pig had exploded. Neither the chronicles nor the Archives had included what was inarguably an important detail. “What’s a grr?”

  “You know.” The braided child raised both hands to shoulder height and curled them into claws. “Grr.”

  “A type of shattered?”

  “Yeah.” The child wore a look as scornful as any elderly scholar. “A grr.”

  “If Nonee saved the sheep from a grr, does she go into the Broken Lands?” A positive response would support the theory that Nonee was intended to be their guide. Ryan needed all the help he could get.

  “She goes all the time.”

  “You don’t know that, Jisper!”

  “Do.”

  “Don’t. You only know she goes outside the wall. Lot of people go outside the wall!”

  The braided child sighed again and gave both companions a silencing shove. “Can we pet your horses when they come out? The traders let us pet their horses.”

  “We won’t be here long enough to turn them out.”

  All three arranged their faces in exaggerated expressions of disappointment.

  “Scholar!”

  Lyelee turned to see Servan leaning out the stable door.

  “Food’s ready.”

  The two children still on the ground rose up onto their toes as though standing a fraction higher would help their eyesight.

  “Is that your mam calling?” the smallest child—Jisper—asked.

  “No.” She thought of her mother with her rosewater and unguents and political ambition being mistaken for a common guardian and grinned. “I need to go.”

  “You in trouble?”

  “No. But if I’m late, I won’t get any breakfast.”

  They nodded in unison. That was a consequence they understood.

  * * *

  “Three days?” Standing by the empty fireplace, Lyelee glared at Gilsin Yeri-cer. “We’re to stay here for three days? No. That’s unacceptable.”

  Yeri-cer glanced over at her, then turned his attention back to Ryan, still seated behind the table, fiddling with a broken bit of biscuit. “Our eldest healer has died, and we mourn.”

  “That has nothing to do with us. Trader!” Lyelee snapped the word out like a whip. When scholars spoke they were not ignored and Yeri-cer knew that. He hadn’t been gone from Marsanport long enough to forget. “Are we being held prisoner here?”

  He turned reluctantly, but he turned. “No, of course not, Scholar. You can leave whenever you want.”

  “Even to the Broken Lands?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  Ryan cut him off. “But the weapon mourns as well.”

  “Mourns?” Lyelee glanced around the room. Captain Yansav maintained her professional, blank mask, but Keetin’s brows were up. Gearing looked as incredulous as she felt. A clang of pans in the kitchen broke the silence and she shot a glare at Harris. Ryan had sounded as if he understood. “The weapon mourns? For the healer? Are you aware of how ridiculous that sounds?”

  Yeri-cer met her gaze with a directness he had to have learned in Gateway. No one in Marsanport would challenge a scholar so blatantly. “And yet, she mourns. For the next three days, she guards against the shadows.”

  “The weapon guards against the shadows?”

  “Yes, Scholar.”

  “Shadows from the Broken Lands?”

  “Yes, Scholar.”

  Lingering mage-craft, Lyelee realized. Making the best of a bad situation, she reached into her satchel for her notebook. “Describe them.”

  “The shadows?”

  “Yes.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve never seen them.”

  “Has anyone? Have they an actual physical presence?”

  “Lyelee.”

  “What?” She turned far enough to glare at her cousin.

  “The shadows have a physical presence.”

  “And did you learn this during your nocturnal wandering?”

  “You don’t put that much destructive force into . . .” Ryan tipped his chair back and waved, as though he could pluck the words from the air. “Into guarding against nothing.”

  “That’s what religion is,” Gearing pointed out calmly. “Nothing. And how much destructive force has been wrapped about religion over the years?”

  “Plenty,” Keetin answered.

  Gearing nodded approval. “Exactly.”

  Lyelee seethed. How could he be so calm? They were Scholars of the Broken Lands and they were being denied entrance to the Broken Lands. “Go to the weapon and tell it . . .”

  “Her.” The front legs of Ryan’s chair thudded to the floor.

  “What?”

  “Not it, her.”

  “It’s a weapon. The last great mage weapon.”

  “She’s the last great mage weapon.”

  “The chronicles . . .”

  “I don’t care what the chronicles say. She’s not a thing.”

  He was clearly going to be obstinate about it, but Lyelee had a more important point to argue. “Fine. Her. Go to her and tell her that we leave immediately. If necessary, use the Last Command.”

  “Command her to stop mourning her dead?”

  Lyelee rolled her eyes. “She’s a weapon. Her purpose is death.”

  He rolled a bit of biscuit between thumb and forefinger, his gaze unfocused. “That doesn’t negate her grief.”

  He was thinking about his brothers. Lyelee couldn’t understand why; they’d never liked him and their deaths had catapulted him into responsibilities he had neither training nor aptitude for. Logically, he should resent them. Unfortunately, when he retreated to their memory, there was no point in arguing. “Then we leave without the weapon. You can command her to catch up.”

  “Leave without the weapon . . .” Yeri-cer stepped forward, the movement drawing Ryan’s attention. “. . . and after the three days of mourning, she’ll retrieve your bodies from the Broken Lands.”

  “We’re not entirely defenseless,” Ryan snapped, pulled out of memory by pride.

  Lyelee hid a smile. The trader couldn’t have made a better argument in her favor if he’d tried.

  Yeri-cer’s brows drew in. “Due respect, my lord, but you have no idea of what to defend against.”

  Ryan shook his head. “The Black Flame has flickered. We can’t wait.”

  Excellent. Lyelee headed for the stairs.

  “If you leave without the weapon, you’ll die.”

  She paused, and turned back toward the others at the certainty in Gilsin Yeri-cer’s voice.

  The trader stepped closer to the table and leaned in, as though he spoke to Ryan alone. “She won’t leave for three days. You need to wait.”

  Lyelee waited for Ryan to tell him where he could stuff his three flaming days.

  Ryan, surprising no one, refused to show backbone. He sighed and said, “Then we wait.”

  “I do not agree to this,” Lyelee snarled, heading back to the table. “You’re deliberately delaying scholarship.”

  “Then study the burial practices of Gateway.”

  “I am a Scholar of the Broken Lands!”

  “Then maybe you should broaden your focus.” Ryan dragged his hands back through his hair. “If we all die, we can’t bring the fuel back to Marsanport.”

  She wondered at his emphasis on the obvious, discarded it as unimportant, and jabbed a finger toward him. “Then if I have to waste my time, I want access to the tenement in the west, near the wall.”

  “You want to study the warren?” Yeri-cer asked after a moment. “How do you . . . ?”

  “I’m a scholar, Trader. I make it a point to be aware of my surroundings.” There was something there, she knew it.

  He spread his hands. “The warren is abandoned. It’s been empty for years. I don’t know if it’s structurally safe and . . .”

  “We can determine that ourselves,” Gearing interrupted. He closed both hands around the strap of his satchel, folding the leather. “If we must delay, and it seems we must, we’ll use the time to secure knowledge.”

  For all the years he’d been in Gateway, Gilsin Yeri-cer had been raised in Marsanport. His shoulders slumped. “As you wish, Scholar Gearing. I’ll find you a guide.”

  Gearing shook his head. “No. A guide will distort research with common knowledge.”

  “Unfortunately, the warren is . . .”

  “If we must have a guide . . .” Lyelee cut him off, unwilling to waste yet more time on pointless arguments. “. . . then Darny will do. Early teens, thin, straight dark hair cut short, medium complexion. Chickens dislike him. I spoke with him yesterday,” she added. “On the way in from the gate.”

  “He’s young enough to obey instruction,” Gearing contributed. When Lyelee glanced over at her mentor, he shot her a look of bland agreement that covered both the boy and the pointlessness of arguing with a mere trader.

  “While you’re arranging for Darny,” Ryan pushed his chair away from the table and stood, “I’d appreciate it if you could find a second guide. I’d like to take look at the Broken Lands. From the wall,” he added, before anyone could protest. “Unless your council wants to speak with us this morning?”

  “Given they have the time, they thought tomorrow would be best, my lord.”

  They want to take your measure first.

  It was some of the loudest subtext Lyelee had ever heard. Did Gateway’s council think scholars wouldn’t realize what they were doing? She folded her arms and barely kept from tapping her foot as Yeri-cer thought things through. “As Darny has already spoken with you,” he said at last, “there should be no problem having him accompany the scholars. As for the Broken Lands, my lord, I’ll escort you to the wall.”

  Because we want to minimize your contact with our people.

  Ryan had the analytical abilities of a gnat, but Captain Yansav’s expression suggested she’d also heard what Trader Yeri-cer was saying and wasn’t happy about it.

  Isolationist cultures always had a reason—historical if not current. Lyelee knew it could be as subconscious as we don’t want you to lead another five thousand away or as immediate as we’re hiding something. The weapon must have a certain amount of control over Gateway if they’d risk three days of potential contamination until it . . . she was willing to leave.

  RYAN.NOW

  Ryan listened to the sound of Darny explaining an unlikely shortcut fade into the distance, and thought the boy might actually be up to spending the day with two scholars. He was smiling at the thought of Lyelee having to answer a thousand questions for a change when Gilsin Yeri-cer stepped out onto the road.

  Yeri, Ryan corrected his mental voice. Call him Yeri, as you call the guardians by their family names. Even if he is the Lord Protector’s spy, he has no more rank than they do. And using his full name, even only inside your head, is ridiculous.

  “Whenever you’re ready, my lord.” Wire woven into his beard glinted in the sunlight.

  Donal had worn jewelry in his beard. Only a single pearl had remained when they pulled his body from the water.

  Ryan had taken a blade to his beard upon rising, shaving off the messy edges he’d allowed to grow in on the road, his skin dark enough the difference in color where the sun had been blocked barely showed. He trimmed back the remainder until it covered just his upper lip and chin, forgetting it was a style portraits showed the Lord Protector had favored in his youth until Keetin reminded him.

  “My lord?”

  He fell in at the trader’s right, willing to be escorted, not led. Keetin and Captain Yansav fell in behind. The Mage Road was wide enough they could’ve walked abreast an arm’s length apart, but, in spite of a lack of obvious threat, he felt more comfortable with the captain at his back. Not guarding necessarily; just there.

  In the dark, focused on the dome, he’d missed the small, empty spaces where city land had been repurposed. From one of those spaces, a trio of shaggy, red, long-horned cows watched them pass. Just beyond the cattle, three adults leaned on a fence and watched them with the same intensity. Wearing his own tunic and tabard, the seams still damp, but both pieces miraculously cleaned, there could be no doubt of who he was. He didn’t want them to doubt who he was. He didn’t think he wanted them to doubt who he was.