The rolling uplands of Tinem Sjocel are some of the best country one could hope to travel through. The views are scenic, the air fresh and crisp without any of the swampy lethargy that pervades the coastlands. The land, it has to be said, is practically perfect. Now, as for its inhabitants...

- Tasjadre Ra Novo, Jesa Sagoja: Zhetam Asade

“This isn’t clothing,” Mark complained, “it’s a glorified bedsheet.”

Jackie shook her head, laughing. “It’s like a toga, I think,” she said, holding up the fabric to examine it. “The robes we saw most people wearing in Ce Raedhil were similar. If you don’t like it just wear the other one, that’s a proper tunic.”

“That’s a-” Mark cut off, thinking. “Damn, I don’t even know the right word in English for that one. It’s for wearing under armor, it’s got all sorts of padding stuffed into it. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, Jack, but it’s fucking hot out.”

“Hence,” Arjun said, plucking at the flowing white robe he was wearing, “the other clothing. I suggest you try it, it’s quite comfortable.”

“Ugh,” Mark grumped. “Give me a bit. I don’t mind that we’re staring down the end of the world and all, I’d just prefer to be wearing pants for the occasion.”

“When we get to Idran Saal we can see about finding a tailor,” Arjun chuckled. “As Sjogydhu noted, we probably won’t find our size on the rack.”

Mark craned his neck to look into the cab where Jesse was driving them down the wide road heading northeast, seeing nothing but a thick wall of trees to either side of them. “Hey, Jesse,” he called out. “You think we’re close?”

“No idea,” Jesse replied. “It’s just been forest for a while now.” He blinked and tried unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. “Hey, does someone else want to drive for a bit?” he asked. “I could use a rest.”

“I’ll take a turn,” Mark volunteered, rising from his seat as Jesse brought the truck to a halt. He looked at Jesse in consternation as the other man made his way to the middle compartment. “Yeah, dude, take a nap,” Mark said. “You look like hell.”

“Feel like it,” Jesse grumbled. “Just need some sleep, though, I’ll be fine.” He sat down in one of the open seats and closed his eyes, swiping a hand across his face wearily. He leaned back and tried to get comfortable, but a restless tension kept him shifting from position to position until he opened his eyes once more and leaned forward with a frustrated sigh.

“Sleep is funny like that,” Arjun said, moving to the seat beside him. “Can’t keep your eyes open until you try to sleep, then you’re wide awake.”

Jesse shook his head. “Still can’t keep my eyes open,” he grumbled. “Just can’t seem to sleep either. I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since we came to Ce Raedhil.”

“I wonder why,” Arjun said dryly, provoking a rueful chuckle from Jesse. “Now that we’re outside of the city I have a hard time believing any of it actually happened. I can’t imagine what it’s like to have someone tell you…” He trailed off, gesturing wordlessly. “It’s a lot to take in.”

“At least now I know I’m not going crazy,” Jesse said bitterly. “Driven crazy, maybe. Puppeted by something jammed into my head.” He clenched his right hand into a fist, then let his trembling fingers drift open again.

“Even Vumo didn’t seem to have any concrete answers,” Arjun reassured him. “There may be a way out of this yet.”

Jesse laughed darkly, looking up at Arjun with red-rimmed eyes. “None that I want to think about,” he said. “I’m not sick, Arjun, you can’t cure me. I’ve been infiltrated.”

Arjun nodded silently, leaning back in his seat with a contemplative expression. “There have been times in my life,” he said slowly, “when I found myself confronted with drastic, sudden changes. Realized there were parts of who I was that I had to leave behind, and that there were some things that I… things that were lost.”

“So, what - just accept that I’m screwed?” Jesse grunted sullenly. “That… she gets to do what she wants with me?”

“Accept that this is happening,” Arjun said gently. “That the shape of your life may not be able to go back to what it was.” He paused for a moment, and they sat listening to the low rumble of the tires against the road. “We may not ever get to go home,” he continued quietly. “We may be here a long, long time, and the longer we’re here the more we’ll feel the difference.”

“So we each have to decide what we can bear to keep,” he said. “What we treasure too much to set aside, even if the pain it causes is constant - and what we can make our peace with, so that we can look past it to the wonders that are still in front of us.” He smiled faintly and shook his head. “You have a hard choice to make, harder than any I’ve made, but at least you know it wasn’t through any fault-”

He broke off as Jesse let out a soft snore, his head shifting restlessly against the seat back. Arjun looked at him for a moment with an expression split between sympathy and pity, then turned to look out the window. The forest whipped past them in a verdant blur as Mark drove them forward, and Arjun sat in silent contemplation with one finger tracing back and forth over the ring that sat loosely on his hand.

The sea wind gusted slightly through the open window, bringing the smell of brine and smoke to his nose. Dim starlight glinted off the silvered guard of Goresje’s sword, leaning against the wall in its scabbard.

Jesse sprang up from the bed, heart pounding, then spun to look back down at the mattress - but it was empty, the twisted sheets pale in the darkness of the room. “Goddamn it,” Jesse muttered, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “This is why I - why can’t you just let me sleep?”

“You are asleep,” came a sullen voice from the far side of the room. The pale-eyed woman stepped out from the enclosing shadows to stand in the glow of starlight from the window. Jesse tensed, but she did not draw closer.

Jesse sighed and walked away from her to the window, looking out at the nighttime view of Ce Raedhil. It was immaculately detailed, the clouds parted for once to reveal the stars. The lighthouse burned warm and faint in the midnight stillness, casting a drapery of shadows over the city and reflecting its own skein of stars from the wavelets of the harbor below.

“What do you want?” Jesse asked hoarsely.

He heard a faint rustle of cloth as she sat down on the end of the bed behind him. “I just wanted to talk,” she muttered. “You’ve been so angry-”

“Really?” Jesse snapped, turning to glare at her. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, head bowed. “You going to try and pretend you don’t know why?”

“Of course I know,” she whispered.

“Then why are we talking?” Jesse asked. “Why won’t you just let me sleep? Why can’t you just let me be who I was, before you decided to fuck around with that?” He turned away in frustration to stare out the window. “You say you can feel what I feel, so you have to know there’s no point. No point in talking, no point in any of this. So why?”

“Because I don’t know what else to do!” she shouted, rising angrily to her feet. She spun away from him to pace back towards the far side of the room, disappearing into the shadows.

“Can you imagine waking up in the dark and not knowing what you are?” she asked. “I was just fragments, pieces of something greater that I had no way to understand. All there was in my life was me, the dark… and you.”

She turned back toward him, lifting her face out of the pool of shadows in the corner. “I didn’t know what you were,” she said. “But you were the only other thing I knew, so I watched you. I thought I was supposed to be like you, so I tried. It helped me understand some of the fragments of me I had since the beginning, and those fragments showed me that I could do things for you. That I was there to help you.” She smiled, and tears glittered on her cheeks. “Can you imagine that bliss, that deliverance? I had been trying to understand what you were, and suddenly I did - you were my purpose. I was meant to stoke the bright flame that shaped my soul. So I used the fragments to help you, did what they said I should do even if I didn’t know why.”

“But as I grew further I began to realize you didn’t understand,” she said, walking back to the bed and sitting on it heavily. “You didn’t know what was happening. I didn’t understand enough of it myself yet to explain it, but I knew where you had to go. She Who Made Me had left a small, important fragment that told me somewhere you could learn.”

“I pushed you there, but they wouldn’t let you in,” she explained, her voice wavering. “And I didn’t know what to do, and you were still so afraid, so I pushed you more than I had thought possible. It was... agony,” she shuddered. “But it worked. They saw me in you. They let you in, and you finally had someone to tell you what was happening. I was so excited, so glad you wouldn’t have to be afraid anymore.”

She curled into a shivering ball on the bed, her voice muffled from behind her hands. “You were horrified,” she whispered. “Your first thoughts were of disease, violation. Of evil. I didn’t know what to do, and you were hurting so much - so I tried to explain. I tried to tell you that I was meant to help you, and that I didn’t want to make you afraid. That everything would be better. I could feel that you hated me, but-” She hugged her knees to her chest, burying her face. “I thought maybe they told you something that was incorrect. I thought you would understand, if I could just tell you myself, tell you the truth.”

“So I tried. I tried to show you what I am, and you looked, and-” Her voice broke, and she began shuddering with quiet sobs. “I disgust you. You want to cut me out of you even if it means dying, and I can feel it every second of every day, feel you rejecting me with every bit of yourself, and I don’t know what to do!” she wailed, her outburst making Jesse flinch back a step. She froze at his sudden motion, then shuddered violently.

“I know I’m not bad,” she mumbled, repeating it to herself like a mantra. “I’m not bad, not bad.”

Jesse stood immobile, his mind spinning. He stayed there in the dark room for a long while listening to her sob, listening to the distant roar of the waves on the harbor breakwater.

The truck hit a bump, and he woke up with a start. His head felt fuzzy, groggy with the shock of his sudden exit from the dream. It was after sunset, and Mark was still at the wheel.

“Whoa, sorry!” Mark called out, looking back at the others. “Buncha rocks on this stretch. We may want to call it a night.” He turned back forward, muttering about the state of the road as Arjun turned to regard Jesse with an evaluating eye.

“You were out for a bit,” he said. “Looks like it did you some good.”

Jesse rubbed his eyes, unwilling to commit to speech just yet. He did feel better - the strained tension of sleep deprivation had lessened with the nap. True to her word, she had let him rest. He sat upright with a grunt of effort and looked around the truck. Gusje and Tasja were asleep even after the jolt, their heads lolling to the side as Mark searched for a good spot to pull off.

Jackie noticed Arjun looking at him and slid closer with an expression of mild worry. “Jesse?” she asked. “You all right?”

Jesse looked up at her blearily. “I, ah,” he mumbled. “Actually, I may have a problem.”

It was late the next day before they sighted the long, arcing walls of the northern passage to the desert. Unlike Sjan Saal, Idran Saal took the place of the south gatehouse for its wall. The city was nestled at the tight corner formed where the long border wall met the cliffs to the southeast, and as they came down from the pass into its scrubby outlands they could see the tall dry grass of the Vidim Vai spreading out to the horizon.

The differences from the sprawling southern towns they had seen prior were stark. Only a few structures stood outside the bare stone of the walls, and these were either abandoned or shabby enough to make the distinction academic. Instead, fields upon fields of tents carpeted the bare plains around the city.

The vast majority of them were large, orderly and well-maintained, making them easily identifiable as the encamped royal army even if Sjocelym blue-on-argent hadn’t been draped over everything that could hold a pennant. Another slice of land, smaller and off to the other side of the road, held a seething organic mass of tarps, tents and carts bound by a simple palisade. A ragged banner had been placed near the sole entrance, green-on-gold.

“The Aesvain?” Arjun asked, peering out the truck’s window.

Tasja nodded. “That’s their standard,” he confirmed. “Although I’d be surprised if that was the only camp of theirs. From what Rusve said there should be more of them, probably in other locations further from the border, closer to food and water.” He looked around the trampled grassland with distaste. “There’s not a lot up here. All of the books I read described Idran Saal as a small city, but they neglected to mention that it was so…” He waved his hand at the pitiful huddle of buildings, scrunching his noise.

“Shitty?” Mark supplied. “I think the word you’re looking for is shitty. They can probably get a pass on account of the whole region being in a state of warfare, but you shouldn’t believe everything you read in books.”

“They were accurate enough when they talked about Ce Raedhil,” Tasja grumbled.

“Where do you think the authors lived?” Arjun asked dryly, nodding at the sad-looking huddle of buildings within the walls. “Here?”

“...good point,” Tasja conceded. “Maybe one day I’ll write a book, set the record straight.”

Gusje snorted and shook her head. “That’ll be popular,” she said. “I’m sure people will be falling over themselves to read it. ‘Oh Wise Tasja,’ they’ll say, ‘Mighty Tasja, please tell people the truth! Insult our homes!’ An instant classic.”

Tasja scowled, looking wounded. “Just for that, I’m not going to give you a copy,” he muttered, turning toward the window to look out as they approached the city. The gate stood open, but there was a makeshift checkpoint erected on the road where it crossed through the encamped army. A small line of carts and porters stood wearily at the point where two wooden barriers had been laid across the road. They looked back in surprise as the truck rolled toward them, hurriedly shifting out of the way as a soldier with a halberd jogged forward to hail them.

Jesse opened the door and swiveled in the driver’s seat to look down at the soldier, who stared up at him with wide eyes for a moment before schooling his face into a more professional mien. “Saset Rys,” he said deferentially, although there was a certain wariness in his tone as well. “What brings you to Idran Saal?”

“Passing through,” Jesse replied shortly, holding out the token Sjogydhu had given him. The red and gold was a bright mote of color in the sea of drab around them, and the guard’s eyes went wide once more as he took it gingerly from Jesse’s hand. He scanned the ornate golden lettering before hurriedly handing it back and waving for the other guards to clear the path.

He turned back to Jesse while the others dragged the barriers clear. “Saset Ce,” he said. “Please proceed, with our apologies for the delay. Do you require anything from the garrison?”

Jesse shook his head, keeping his face carefully neutral. “Just passing through,” he replied, pocketing the token once more and closing the door.

“Wow,” Mark observed as they rolled through the checkpoint. “I’d say we should pick Sjogydhu up a souvenir, but this doesn’t seem like the place for it.” He wrinkled his nose. “Shit, what is that smell?”

“Probably the refugee camp,” Arjun said soberly. The ramshackle palisade was just to their right as they approached, and the miasma of so many people forced to live in close quarters carried beyond it easily. Now that they were this close they could see the reeking piles of waste and refuse tossed over the wall to fester in the heat and draw swarms of buzzing insects.

Gusje stared with open disgust as they passed. “What are the Aesvain doing?” she asked, horrified. “What’s wrong with them? If any Madi kept his cerein in this state the other Madim would… I don’t know, I’ve never even heard of anything like this.”

“Gusje,” Jackie said gently. “Not their choice. Look at the guards.” She pointed towards the small cadre of guards standing discontentedly by the palisade’s only gate, their blue-silver cloaks wrapped around their faces to ward against the stench. To a man, they were facing inward. Through the gap in the palisade a mass of thin and listless Aesvain were visible.

The confused indignation on Gusje’s face slowly shaded into anger, and she rounded on Tasja before he could do more than blink in surprise. “Your people keep them like this, trapped in their own filth?” she hissed, pointing at the palisade. “We treat our tari better! It’s no wonder Rusve and his people fled!”

“I’ve never even been here before,” Tasja stammered, shrinking back. “Gusje, Rusve was the first Aesvain I had ever met. I don’t like this any more than you do.”

“Don’t like it? Tell me this is evil, Tasja,” she demanded, not allowing him to gain distance from her. “Denounce this, tell me this is not who your people are. Look in my eyes and tell me that in Sjan Saal they would never, would never-”

She shook her head angrily and Jackie moved over to envelop her in a hug, stroking her hair even as Gusje’s tears marked her shirt. “Hey,” she said gently. “They won’t do this in Sjan Saal. Your father would stop them, you know that.”

Gusje only shivered and did not reply as Jackie steered her to her seat, away from the windows. Tasja watched them go, then turned helplessly to Mark and Arjun. “What do I do?” he whispered. “I know why she’s angry, but why is she angry at me?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Mark said. “This isn’t about you. Don’t make it about you.”

Tasja glared back at him but didn’t respond. The road took them through the gate without further interruption, the one sleepy-looking guard apparently willing to take their passage through the army checkpoint as verification enough - at least for a chariot. The road through the center of town was dust over muddy ruts, and even the sparse crowd bustling at the sides of the main thoroughfare was enough to kick up a perpetual light haze over the buildings.

There was no more talk of stopping, tailors or other errands. Idran Saal’s stench and dust had robbed them of any desire to linger, and the vast plains of the Vidim Vai seemed like an awaiting paradise by comparison.

Mark sidled up to sit beside Jesse in the passenger seat. “How’re you doing?” he asked.

“Fine,” Jesse replied. “I… slept fine last night. Not so tired today.”

“That’s good,” Mark nodded. “No more, ah, intervention? Not since the last one?”

Jesse hesitated, bringing the truck to a stop so a harried-looking merchant could shift his cart out of their path. “She’s been quiet,” he said. “I haven’t noticed anything.”

Mark gave him a tolerant look, and Jesse sighed exasperatedly. “Look, I don’t know,” he said. “You didn’t hear her at the end. She was devastated. I was so… I hated her so much that it hurt her, maybe even broke her.”

“Dude, how are you getting fooled by this when you’ve watched Correia with his ex-girlfriends?” Mark groaned, rolling his eyes. “Of course she’s trying to get you to feel sorry for her. She wants you to accept her because she wants to take your life over.

Jesse looked uncertain, but grunted an affirmative and guided the truck forward past another row of half-empty market stalls. The traffic on the street thinned as they moved towards the eastern gate, and soon they were driving down a nearly empty road.

“Second gate,” Jesse called out shortly. “Another checkpoint.” Mark looked forward and saw another cadre of Sjocelym soldiers huddled in the few shady spots where the town ran up suddenly against the monolithic black wall of the northern pass. A soldier waved them down as they approached the gate, and Jesse popped the door open once again.

The guard performed an inspection of Jesse’s credentials and gave his apologies much like the first, but when he heard their intent to leave for Sjatel the man cracked a broad smile. “Saset Ce, don’t trouble yourself,” he said cheerfully. “No need to worry, our troops all got out of there. As far as we’re concerned the city is empty.”

“What?” Jesse asked in surprise. “They let the Emperor take it? I thought they had volunteered to hold it against his attack.”

“Well, sure they did,” the soldier replied amiably. “But they’d be fools to stay and die when a bunch of sunstruck idiots wanders up and offers to do it for them - and Saset Ce, that’s just what happened. Whole regiment of Aesvain gold-cloaks wandered in from the grass and volunteered, so Tiro Qa let them do as they please and did so himself. He’s back out at camp now with the others.”

The soldier startled as Mark stuck his head forward to glare at him. “Sjatel is Sjocelym,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they stay to help? And why would a regiment of Aesvain soldiers volunteer to defend it?”

“On account of it’s full of Aesvain,” the soldier replied, looking nonplussed. “We pulled all of ours out ages ago, and the ones we turn away at the gate have to go somewhere, I suppose.”

“The ones you turn away,” Mark said slowly. “At the gate.”

The guard snorted. “Well, sure,” he said. “Not like we’ve got much more room in the Shitpile with the-” He stopped and paled as Mark and Jesse both got out of the truck to loom over him expressionlessly, drawing themselves up to their full height.

“Soldier,” Mark said quietly. “Return to your post and open the gate.”

“Saset Rys?" he asked, a tremor in his voice.

“Ry.” Mark corrected him. “Open it.”

The guard hastened to do so, and Mark strode back to the truck. He returned seconds later with his hammer and Goresje’s sword, which he tossed to Jesse. The two stood there as the guards slid the ancient black-stone gates open. When the doors stopped Mark stepped forward and let the Fragment’s head drop to the ground with a reverberating thud, resting his hands on the pommel as road dust billowed up from the impact.

“Listen up!” he shouted. “We’re heading through that gate to Sjatel. Until we come back, you will let anyone living through this gate that arrives from the other side. Anyone.”

“Saset… Ry,” one of the soldiers said after a hastily whispered conversation with the soldier that had greeted them. “Our orders are to bar all comers. We have no place to put them.”

Mark looked at him and nodded. “I can’t override your orders,” he conceded, causing the soldiers to exchange relieved looks. “That said, if you turn anyone away from this gate I’m going to hit all of you with my hammer.”

“You - what?” the soldier stammered. “But, our orders-”

“I can’t do anything about your orders,” Mark repeated agreeably. “But I can do plenty of things with my hammer if you don’t let them in. Call it a personal choice you get to make. Oh, and tell your relief too.” He picked up the hammer and slung it over his shoulder, turning back towards the truck. The soldiers didn’t say a word as Jesse guided the truck through the gate and into the grasslands, and only when they were some distance away did Mark let himself sigh and slump back into his seat.

“I hate this place sometimes,” he said sullenly, looking up at the roof. “I really, really do.”