Three centuries of life and Berand was ready to cross the sea. He had risen to power. He had fallen in love, and he had just removed a king older than he was. The king had died bloated and bleeding while outside his country starved, hollowed rows of homes surrounding the opulent palace like bulging rib cages.

Berand had cursed at the witless king then, cursed at everything from the dragons on their black moon to the Errant in her marble palace. But now, in his own country of Kvashine, even as he faced the biggest failure in his century of service as Protectorate, no suitable curse came to mind.

The bandits were ruthless in their slaughter of the Victon merchants. Men and women lay collapsed in a meandering line, garish red smiles gaping from their necks.

A single covered wagon lay separated at the wayward tail of the caravan, careened off a travel-worn path that snaked down from the violet mountains that made up Dragonspine.

The wagon groaned beneath his weight as he entered, lopsided and precariously lodged in the sand. Oil ran along the seams of the floorboards, overwhelming the small space with the cloying fragrance of jasmine and sandalwood. And beneath it all was the iron tang of blood.

The canvas roof fluttered softly. The barking of his men outside seemed so distant he felt as if they were calling him from beyond the Weave. Desert sun filtered in through billowing white curtains, dancing across the darkest corners inside the wagon. Blood smeared across the walls and dripped from a wooden crate where pieces of flesh and hair decorated its sharp corner.

Tucked neatly away in the back of the wagon behind a large chest, two small dolls lay haplessly across a thin mattress. Berand paled. He picked them up. In his hands, they felt finely crafted: porcelain faces and soft silk hair. They weren't new. One of them was ruined, stained in sticky red ichor.

He staggered outside, his stomach turning on itself. It was too bright, the sands glaring white in the heat. He blinked rapidly as his eyes adjusted, scanning the ground for any traces of the previous struggle. The wind worked quickly. Even the deep impressions of his own boots were long gone.

“Fuck,” Berand muttered. The wagon groaned from where it was wedged against a small hill, sand mounding against it. He repeated his single profanity over and over as he swept his foot through the loose sand.

“Protectorate?” a lancer called.

Berand ignored him. His boot hit a dark lump and his heart leapt into his throat. If it had been a body, Berand might have been relieved. But the stench of baking horseshit assaulted his senses.

“Errant’s stone tits strike me now,” he cursed, shaking the foul matter off his boot.

Berand looked down to where he still clutched the blood-stained doll in his hand. He looked to his men where they had stripped the tops of the caravan. The thick canvases now lay over the ground, lumpen shapes underneath— all of them seemed too large. But Berand had to be sure.

Warden Ajorn knelt by the bodies. He held one hand in a fist against his chest and the other rested beneath the makeshift shroud. A blinding light grew before him as he muttered a prayer to their goddess.

Berand ran. He shouted for Ajorn to stop just as the light pulsed even brighter before fading. The warden looked up at him bewildered. Ash billowed from beneath the canvas and took to the skies as Berand tore the makeshift shroud away.

The remaining Victon faces, pallid in death and lighter than the sand itself, stared up at him. Among them were the bandits, all of them dark Kvash men and light of hair. Berand’s true father was Victon. It showed in his dark brown hair and olive skin. He knew for a fact that some of the lancers resented him for it—to be led by a foreigner.

“I’ve checked every bastard thrice over—” Ajorn said in distress. He raked a hand through his golden hair. “Not one sign of Kelgan among any of ‘em.”

Berand shook his head, eyes running over the Victon merchants once again. He could see their wounds more clearly now laid out as they were, savage in their art. This wasn’t an opportunistic strike.

There was a fury to the act of execution.

He never stopped shaking his head. As if the slow swiveling motion would gently jog something loose in his brain; break the cycle of thoughts as he gazed out on the southeastern horizon. Blue sky met with the amber waves of sand dunes. The air shimmered, making the land look wet. He imagined the sea and the crashing tides that made its call.

Ajorn had been talking: “... someone in The Order leaking our every move. That’s got to be it.”

There were so many reasons for him to have his men mount up and ride away after the ashes had settled. If Kelgan had been here, any traces of him were being wiped away with every baleful breath the desert breathed. The man could be laughing at them from the crest of a hill right now. But wardens were dying and Berand dared to hope.

Ajorn picked up his halberd and buried its heel in the sand. He leaned against it, squinting at Berand. “You hear me, Bear?”

“Search the area again,” Berand said hoarsely.

Berand had been ready to leave for a long time. He had stopped counting his summers and he was ready to cross the sea. Over three hundred years and Berand had fallen in love twice. With his wife and the daughter he had found in the sand. The girl was bold, strong, and loved by her people, ready to take his place as Protectorate when he left.

“What? Berand, we’ve already scoured the place.”

He could stand to do it a third time. After all, what was another century?

“Not for Kelgan.” Berand held up the doll still gripped in his whitened fist. “Search the sands for their children.”