Captain Dinnae put her on first watch. And second watch.

And, when her watch had ended, Baccus came to her and said, “I don’t know what you did to piss her off, but she wants you to take the first recon.”

His face was full of pity for her.

Maybe it was because of what Agra had done, back in the canyon. Or maybe, it was just because a few of Agra’s scales were shiny.

“Who knows,” Agraneia said. “Who cares.”

She was just glad to be doing something - away from Witch Patrol, and all their whispering chatter. It reminded her too much of all her other patrols. Broken apart by the swamps and the forests and the wet, rainy fields of Thrass et Yunum.

This one, too, would suffer the same fate. Soon, there would only be her.

Two other scouts went with her. One was green, one had done this before. They were supposed to map the enemy’s positions. Reporting on numbers, on gun emplacements, on fortifications.

But the Captain was shy about where she placed the soldiers. If Agraneia was going to find anything meaningful, she’d have to leave the other scouts behind.

“Northwest,” she pointed through the trees, where a stream, lined with boulders and gravel, wound through the thick vegetation. “Stick to the rocks, but not the caves. They have a hard time seeing color against the rocks. Go slow and I’ll catch up with you when I return. If you see anything, stay quiet.”

If they were careful, if they used their brains instead of their guns, she’d find them on the way back.

One of them spat as she walked away. “She thinks she’s so much better than us.”

“Shut up,” the other one said, “She’s about to do all the work for us. Okay? Just shut up, and let her do her thing.”

Agraneia didn’t hear the response. She was already deep in the forest.

The suns above guided her way. One red, and one a pale, dull brown. They chased each other through the heavens, peeking at times through the red and violet foliage. Black and brown branches were determined to slow her path, and a few times she heard rustling in the bushes. Saw movement, in the leaves.

Animals, most likely. But Agraneia had not been north of the temple lands in a long time. She didn’t know what was up here, anymore. The lassertane were like the jungle: ever changing.

Tracks only lasted a day out here, before the rains washed them away. Broken branches and the scuff of metal on wood disappeared quickly in the thick undergrowth.

As she walked, she tried to quieter than the insects. They were in the trees, chirping and vibrating and singing single-note songs to each other. Something croaked in the distance, a longing, painful sound. She was uncomfortably warm, the sweat staining her uniform as she moved.

Hard to walk in the jungle. Harder still, to go swiftly. Silently.

The shadows sometimes looked like faces. Agraneia ate up the miles until, suddenly, the tree line changed.

She could hear the rush of water. Three great hills stood at the edge of the forest, each one covered in their own kind of trees. Agraneia crouched down into the mud, and stared up at the hills for a long time.

Finally, she saw it.

A fort, sitting at the top of the middle hill. It was so overgrown with bushes and moss, that it blended in with the forest. A waterfall crashed next to it, and the mist became clouds that obscured part of the fort from view.

It was an old stone thing, build by the people who had tried to conquer Thrass before them.

The bottom of the waterfall was a long, slow-moving lake, covered in red and brown algae and leafs shaped like pads. She stayed motionless a while longer, trying to count the distant cannons up on the walls of the fort. Some kind of fly settled on her face, and she let it sit there, not wanting to brush it away, in case she was being watched.

At the far end of the lake, there was a splash. That was the only reason she saw them, three locals, farmers in their bamboo hats, fetching water from the falls. Their scales were almost the same color as the foliage, so that she had to wait for their movement to really see them.

So the fort is active, she thought. There must be a village nearby. If I can get the child…

...leave it, in the middle of the night.

It would be easy, as long as she wasn’t spotted. As long as the blackmouth infant didn’t cry.

Agraneia pulled herself back into the foliage, letting the forest swallow her. Moving only with the rustling of the leaves.

When she was satisfied that nothing was watching her, she turned around and began the long hike back. This time, she took a different trail through the forest, in case someone was following her tracks. The two scouts were sitting behind a clutch of boulders, well hidden except for their left flank, which was exposed to the sunlight above. They had moved only a mile or so up the stream.

“Find anything?” one of them asked her. “We haven’t seen anything. Just one old blown-out hut.”

“Map,” Agraneia held out her hand. And when they passed it to her, she drew out the hills, the lake, and the fort above.

One of them furrowed his brow at her. “Are you sure? How could you even get that far out?”

“Go and look for yourself then,” she said back. That seemed to satisfy him.

They went back to camp, with Agraneia leading the way. It wasn’t hard to find the rest of Witch Patrol. Someone was shouting at the top of their lungs.

At first, she thought they were under attack, so she ducked into the bushes and brought her rifle up. Then she saw what was happening:

The scribe was shouting, “Get back! Get BACK!”

He was surrounded by the rest of Witch Patrol. The Captain had her hand on her hip, ready to unholster her firearm. Her face was a mask of rage, tight and anxious. She was talking over the scribe, saying very slowly, “Drop that thing right now.”

“It’s not hurting anyone!”

“Scribe, this is an order. You drop it, or I will shoot you where you stand.”

“You can’t!” he was sobbing, his voice was heaving, “I’m cyran! You can’t shoot me!” But he fell to his knees anyway, carefully placing the child rest on the ground. Still shielding it with his body, trying to hide it from them. He was wracked with sobs. “This isn’t right. Gods be damned, you know this isn’t right.”

The child was crying, a shrill, hissing sound.

Agraneia’s heart did not beat. Not once during the moments that followed. She could hear every sound, every branch creak. Every uncomfortable, fidgeting footstep from the soldiers standing around the scribe and the infant.

When Taeso stepped up in the middle of the circle, a bird that had been roosting in the trees took flight, squawking like mad.

Red.

He pulled out his rifle. And aimed it at the scribe’s hunched form, who only a few paces away from him. “I got this, Captain. I’ve got a clear shot.”

But Taeso most certainly did not have a clear shot. Still, he hefted the weapon up to his shoulder. Aimed down the sight.

Red.

Agraneia could see his finger calmly slide over the trigger.

“I got this,” he said again to himself. Licking his lips. One eye pressed against the sights.

And then, she couldn’t see anything.

Everything was red.

When had she pulled out her gun?

When had she loaded it, and cocked it?

When…?

Agraneia’s bullet disappeared into Taeso’s skull. His neck jerked strangely, pulling his body with it. The skull exploded outward, and his body tilted to the side. Crumpled, with the rifle still in his hands.

The scribe was screaming, his whole body shaking as he covered the infant.

All the soldiers tensed, wheeling around to find the source of the gunshot. It took them more than a few seconds to realize it had come - not from Taeso, not from the trees, but from Agraneia.

But those seconds were all she needed.

She was standing over the scribe now, pulling him up. He flailed weakly against her, screaming, “No!”

“Give it to me,” she said.

He blinked up at her face. Confusion. Terror. Acceptance. And he handed her the infant, without a word. With tears streaming down his face.

And she held the small, fragile, crying thing in her hands. Swaddled in rags, soaked with rainwater.

Nothing about this moment would stick with her. A blur in her memory, like all the others. Red, and empty. Except, she would remember the child. The way it stared up at her, with those glossy, black eyes.

It had a smell, too. Sour, but not unpleasant.

Agraneia did not wait for Witch Patrol to collect themselves.

Baccus was still staring at the corpse there. The Captain was trying to understand what had just happened. Someone was down on the ground, hovering over Taeso’s corpse. Not touching him. Not searching for a pulse. The parts of his skull that were intact were covered in bloody flesh.

“Emperor’s breath.”

“What is this?” Baccus said, “What have you done?”

“Move,” Agraneia said.

And Baccus did. The other soldiers moved, too. But not the Captain. She had her pistol out, and was aiming it at the child. At Agraneia’s chest.

Agraneia said nothing. Her chin was high, and her thick, muscular arms were wrapped around the child.

Do it, then. She thought.

That pistol was steady. Not a hint of tremor to the Captain’s grip. But she did not pull the trigger. The barrel of the pistol followed Agraneia as she stepped past the Captain, out of the camp, where she disappeared into the trees.

And the jungle welcomed her whole.

***

The nightly rains had not yet begun when she reached the foot of the fort.

She moved in a daze. Not caring how loud her footsteps were. Not bothering to hide herself from their sight.

She was not in control of herself anymore. Had not been, for a long time. Her feet moved themselves, pulled by someone else’s strings. Lifting. Stepping. Bringing her closer to that village at the top of the waterfall.

How long had it been since she last slept?

The rising buzz of the insects did nothing to stop the infant from crying, but Agraneia didn’t hear it. Didn’t hear anything.

By the time she reached the back of the fort, it was starting to drizzle.

The town hugged against the fort, all those ramshackle buildings struggling to stand up, just like her.

This was how Agraneia came to them: soaking wet, covered in mud, and someone else’s blood. Carrying one of their own infants in her arms.

She walked through the center of the town. She did not see them, though there were many of them staring out at her. From the windows, from their guard posts. From the gaps between the slanted houses.

A rasp caught her attention. A lassertane with a rifle, telling her to stop. His rifle - an ancient piece of gear, rusted but well-kept other than that - was aimed at her. It was the kind of weapon that had one shot, and that was it. Even the cyran soldiers on the backwater worlds had better guns.

She turned around, slowly. The child crying in her arms.

More of them were coming out now. More soldiers. More guns. More people, ready to defend their homes.

An old man stepped into the middle of this milling crowd. His voice was clicking, gesturing softly at Agraneia. He came out into the narrow road that wound between the huts, up to the foot of the fort. And he held his hands out, calming the others.

Agraneia did nothing as he approached her. She did nothing, as he held his hands out, asking for the infant.

And when he reached for her, she flinched back. She did not understand what he was asking.

He gestured again, clicking softly.

She blinked. And held the infant out.

When it cried, he made a kind of guttural clucking sound in the back of his throat, and the infant seemed to like that sound.

When the old lassertane bowed his head at Agraneia, she didn’t know what to do. She stood there, stiff as a tree.

Agraneia was still wearing her rifle. Still wearing those long knives at her hip. She slid her rifle off her shoulder, and unstrapped her belt. Letting the knives fall to the mud around her. Everything but her uniform came off. And she stepped away from it.

And she waited for them to kill her.

They didn’t.

They wouldn’t.

Gods.

That would’ve been so much easier.

***

Lucas the scribe was sitting in the captain’s foxhole. Rope, made from dried vines, was wrapped around his wrists so tightly he was starting to lose sensation in his fingers.

At least they had stopped hitting him.

He didn’t hate himself for protecting the child. But he did curse himself for crying. For breaking, like a worm.

It’s wrong. All of this. If the gods could see what we’ve done here...

There was still no sign of Agraneia. The Captain had gone scouting herself, and come back a few hours later. Tired, covered in mud and cuts from the forest. She kept sending scouts out there to comb the land. Looking for their rogue soldier.

“Make a guess. Tell us which way she went,” Baccus said for the hundredth time. He wasn’t angry, not anymore. They were, all of them, tired. A few of the soldiers had buried Taeso somewhere in a foxhole not far away, and someone put up a post with a holy inscription on it. But now all they could do was wait.

“I told you,” the scribe said. “You know far more than I do. I barely knew her name.”

“Then why did she save you? Why did she do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did she give that thing to you? Did she tell you to hide it?”

“No!”

“Then where did you get it?”

“Don’t you know what you’re out here for? Don’t you know why the military is on Thrass? It was a child, Emperor damn you. It was a living child.”

Baccus shook his head. He was far more patient than the others. Far more patient than the Captain, who was still silently seething in the far corner of the foxhole. Her head over the edge, constantly scanning the trees, as if Agraneia might appear out of thin air.

“You have no idea what they’re capable of,” Baccus said. “You have no idea what they’ve done to us.”

“And what is that? What have they done, that we didn’t do first?”

“Captain!” a voice called from the next foxhole over. “It’s her!”

Baccus’s head turned so fast, the scribe could hear his neck pop. The Captain was already up and out of her hole, shouting orders. Telling the soldiers to defend their posts, to get their weapons ready.

“But Captain, she’s unarmed!”

Agraneia walked out of the forest, like some kind of jungle ghost. Her clothes were in tatters. Her weapons were gone. The moonlight silhouetting her broad shoulders, and the wild mane of her fins. Her face was hard, dull. Her eyes were wide and empty. Staring at nothing.

“Tie her up!” the Captain growled, and a few of the soldiers rushed to surround Agraneia. They were hesitant at first, but she did not resist. Did not seem to even see them.

Someone kicked her down in the mud, and still she did not resist. They tied her arms behind her back, getting rouch and spitting on her. Someone called her a traitor. And that was the nicest thing they said.

So frustrated and enraged were the soldiers, so full of anxious energy from being in enemy territory, they might have beaten her. But the Captain would not let them.

She wanted to talk to Agraneia. She told the soldiers to get back on watch, ordering two of them to drag Agraneia down into the foxhole. They threw her in, her body splashing heavily in the puddle at the bottom of the mud.

Agraneia moved only to keep herself from drowning. Even her lips were covered in mud.

The Captain lowered her face to Agraneia’s. But the Captain didn’t look angry. Mystified, but not angry.

“Where is it?” she asked.

No answer.

“Were you followed?”

“No.”

“Did you tell them where-”

“No.”

And that was it. After that, all the anger seemed to drain out of the Captain. She just shook her head, and said, “You know where you're going, right?”

Agraneia only nodded.

“And yet you came back?”

Again, she nodded. As lifeless as a corpse.

The Captain turned to Baccus. “Keep her here, with the other one. Don’t let the soldiers do anything to her.”

“What if she tries to leave again?”

“She won’t.”

Lucas had to wait for his chance. Had to wait for Baccus to get bored, to get distracted. To finally leave his post, early in the morning. Then, Lucas looked over. Agraneia was staring at the ground, as still as a statue. Her feet were soaking in the puddle. She could have moved, but she didn’t.

“Why did you come back?” he whispered to her.

“Why did you save the child?” she answered.

The scribe could not answer her. There were no words to explain why.