Time passed. Winds changed. And so too did the girl who was once Maiako as Arathou del Tachen. The morning after her second night in Nath, it began.

“What are we going to do today?” Mai asked Broken, as they woke up in the tavern’s spare room.

“You know what to call me, if you want an answer,” said Broken.

Mai remembered, and stifled her pride. “What are we going to do today, master?” she said.

“Character development,” said Broken.

He left the room, and, as Mai followed, went over to the tavern keeper, explained once more that he was down on his luck, and asked if there were any farmers in the area, who might need two extra farmhands. The innkeeper told them of a man he knew about a two day’s ride west, who owned a somewhat prosperous farm, and had made public his need for help.

“And tell Tevin I’ll vouch for you,” the tavern-keeper added. “He knows me, rather well, I might add, and I think he’ll trust my judgment.”

And so, on no more than a vague promise by a tavern-keeper, Mai and Broken set off. Aruith was loaded with all the supplies that had been purchased the day before, but, as Mai weighted little, the horse seemed to manage.

Over the next two days, they camped away from towns, using up the supplies. And until the end of the second day, when night began to fall, nothing happened. Broken rarely spoke to Mai, and she could think of nothing to say to him.

But on the end of the second day, they rode to a town named Hetan. It was a small town, with minor loyalties to the Vedil House. Some commoners pointed them to the Tevin Farm, which was only a short ride away.

Night was fully in the sky, when Broken and Mai reached the Tevin Farm. They dismounted, and left Aruith to his own devices as they walked up to the door of the farmhouse. Compared with much of what Mai had seen since she had left the Imperial City, Tevin Farm was in good repair.

Broken rapped on the door, and waited.

For a long time, there was no answer. Then the door flew wide open. A man with hair just starting to gray stood just inside the doorway, and held a large axe. Behind him, two young men with frowning faces also held weapons, one, a thick spear, and the other, a straight sword.

“Who be you?” said the older man.

“I mean no harm,” said Broken quickly. “I and Jess, here, learned that you were looking for farmhands, and so we came.”

“Who told you this?” asked the man. He did not set down his weapon, and he looked at Broken’s attire suspiciously. The pair of blades Broken wore were clearly evident.

“I was told by the tavern-keeper at Nath,” said Broken.

“Ah,” said the older man, finally beginning to relax. “But why are you dressed as a warrior? Why the girl might want a job here, perhaps I can understand, but you?”

“I am called Rassin,” said Broken. “And this is Jess. I am a warrior-errant down on his luck, and she is my partner. We are looking for the work you offer.”

“Ah,” said the older man again. He still seemed to be unsure.

“Can we come in?” asked Broken. “We have traveled far to get here, and it looks like it is about to rain.” A peal of thunder supported his argument.

“Fine then,” said the older man. “I’m Frac Tevin, and these are my two sons.” He put down his weapon, and slowly, his sons followed suit. “We thought you were bandits,” the Tevin patriarch elaborated. “This is Doner-” he pointed to the shorter son, “-and this is Pelt.” He gestured at the other.

Broken stepped inside, and Mai followed his lead. “I don’t mean to intrude any further,” said Broken, “but our horse is outside, and-”

The elder Tevin cut him off. “Doner,” he said. “Get their horse to the stables.”

Doner ran outside, just as it began to rain.

A few minutes later, Mai found herself sitting at a long table next to Broken, with Tevin at the far end. Doner and Pelt had returned to their beds.

“Forgive me if I am too curious,” said Tevin. “But what do you want from here?” He gestured around the room, which, while seeming to be the main place the family ate, was also filled with tools for farming. The entire farmhouse, Mai saw, was well maintained, but old.

“A temporary job for me and Jess,” said Broken.

“How temporary?”

“A month at least, maybe more,” said Broken. “Enough time for you to be able to replace us, once we are gone, with others who will be able to do the work better.”

“Seeing as neither of you have any experience, however,” said Tevin, “I’m not sure how I can hire either of you.”

“Our wages will be paid at your discretion,” said Broken. “If you don’t think we are learning what we need to fast enough, you can send us away, without paying us once. I say this upon my word as a warrior.”

“That is quite an offer,” said Tevin. “Regardless of how strange this whole situation is, I believe I would be a fool if I passed it up. You both can stay, at least for now.”

As Tevin seemed about to rise, Mai’s attention turned to the staircase, built into the corner of the room. A young boy wandered down the stairs.

Once the boy reached the room, his little eyes stared at Mai for a moment, and then at Broken, much longer. “Daddy?” he asked, still not taking his eyes off Broken, or more accurately, the scabbard of Broken’s sword. “Who are they?”

“Two people who will be working for us,” said Tevin, seeming to make an effort to not get up out of his chair. “Go back upstairs, Gabin. You need your rest.”

And so it seemed. Black circles welled under the little boy’s eyes, as if he had already been awake for far too long. He started back up the stairs.

“That’s my youngest of the three,” said Tevin. When he said that, for some reason, he seemed sad. “He just turned seven this summer.”

The little boy’s the youngest by quite a bit, noted Mai. The other two of Tevin’s children were as old as Mai herself was. There had to be at least eight years separating Gabin from the middle brother.

“Now then,” said Tevin, changing the focus from his son. “The only place for you two to stay is in the barn out back, so I guess I’d better show it to you.” Now, he seemed much less forceful.

The accommodations in the barn were horrible, as Mai had expected, but still, the barn she and Broken were in now did not compare to the abandoned barn they had slept in a few nights ago. The infestations seemed to be at a minimum, at least.

Mai thanked the God-Kings for small miracles.

The next day was a day of work. Tevin, and even Doner and Pelt gave orders and instructions. They seemed initially hesitant to make Mai do anything, but once they realized that she didn’t complain about work, they piled it on.

Mai and Broken were separated, as Broken worked in the fields, and Mai was eventually left alone with Gabin. Together, provided care for barnyard animals Mai had never thought twice about before.

The whole experience was very curious for her. Mai hated the work, wanted to scream that she was a princess, and could under no circumstances do menial labor, but she was prevented. She couldn’t say anything.

Mai knew that those who had been her friends back in the Occluded City, if they could see her now, would laugh their heads off. But they could never understand.

Mai was person conflicted. She didn’t know whether, at one extreme, she should just forget everything she ever knew, or at the other, if she should just kill herself and be done with that.

And because she knew nothing, she did as Broken told her. This world outside the Occluded City was strange and alien to her, and even the parts she thought she knew were different. That had been proven to her.

The underlying reason that she subjected herself to the torment, to the humility was a simple one. If she left Broken, Mai wasn’t sure how she could survive.

Mai’s life was in a commoner’s hands.

At every interval in their work, Gabin chirped at her, commenting about one thing or another, in the typical childish slur that made things difficult to understand. He displayed none of the tiredness he had the day before, and Mai, though much larger, had to really struggle to keep up with him.

“Tell me a story, Jess,” said Gabin, as they worked, with childish arrogance. They were collecting eggs from hens. Gabin actually did the moving of the chickens, and then he passed the eggs off to Mai, who put them in a basket she carried.

“Maybe later,” Mai responded, and that was that. It wasn’t like she had any story to tell. The ones she knew, the ones she had been told when she had been younger, probably would go over Gabin’s head.

And so the day continued. Mai tried to separate her mind from the tedium of her body, but that task was difficult, more so than she could imagine. The times when she started to drift away were inevitably the times when one amongst the farming family was trying to teach her something. Then, when she was actually doing the job, she made mistakes, for she was not experienced, nor was her mind on her work. Mai noted that through it all, there was no sign of a woman besides her on the farm. Tevin was a widower.

The brakes she was allowed to take were not an instant longer than necessary to recoup her physical strength. She couldn’t believe that anyone, let alone her, had the strength to do that much work day in and day out.

Broken of course, disproved her. Mai had seen little of him, as their tasks had taken them to different places, but when the whole group sat down for dinner, Doner, Pelt, and the elder Tevin all seemed to be congratulating him. Him, and not her. Of course not her.

Soon the meal was over, and those at the table started to dissipate, heading to their respective sleeping quarters.

Just outside the door front door of the farmhouse, Gabin caught up to Mai. “Tell me a story, now. Please?”

Mai looked around. Broken was a distance ahead of her, almost at the barn, and Gabin’s brothers and father were nowhere to been seen. There was no one to take Gabin off her hands. Mai herself hadn’t the slightest idea how to get a little commoner boy back to bed.

Gabin sat down in the grass, and leaned back against the farmhouse wall, further cementing the idea that he was not going anywhere until he got the story that he had asked for.

And so Mai sat down beside him, and looked up at the night sky, thinking about what to say.

“All right,” she said finally. “Once there was a little boy.”

Gabin readjusted himself, leaning up, and eager to hear what she had to say next. His face looked up at Mai’s.

“And that little boy went to bed,” said Mai. “Story over. Go to bed yourself.” She got up and started walking to the barn, trying not to think about how Gabin’s eyes followed her retreat in disappointment.

At the farmhouse, there was Broken. “Did you tell a story to the little boy?” he asked.

“No, well sort of.” She explained.

As Broken looked at her, Mai noticed two things. First, he was not wearing his warrior raiment, and seemed to have on borrowed clothes. And second, the cut on his face seemed to be healing at a prodigious rate. It could barely be noticed anymore. Broken looked for all the world to be a simple farmhand, and his look betrayed nothing of his intellect, or other skills.

Broken then turned from Mai, and started up the ladder for the loft, where he had set up his sleeping area the night before. “Apologize to Gabin,” he said.

As he disappeared from sight, Mai lay down in her little corner of the room. “Why?” she asked, through the darkness.

There was no answer.

“Why, master?”

“Because connections are important to forge,” floated down a disembodied voice. “The little boy likes you.”

“Why would he like me, master?”

“The reason is unimportant,” came the voice again, as Mai closed her eyes. “But you should not let a friendship go to waste.”

“What kind of friendship can I have with a seven-year-old commoner boy?” asked Mai. “Master.”

“Find out.”

Mai began to get frustrated, and more than that, angry. “What are we doing here?” she asked.

There was no answer, and Mai grew angrier. “I’m not going to call you master again, until you tell me why I must!”

“To learn humility, of course,” said Broken. “It is a lesson I am giving you, seeing as we have nothing better to do.”

“Why must we stay with these commoners?”

But that was the last Broken said. No matter how many times Mai asked him to explain what he meant, Broken stayed silent.

And dawn soon came again. The next day was easier, far easier than Mai would have thought, and it blended together. Tevin went into town for supplies, and he came back with tidings, rumors that the land would not be bloodless much longer, and House Makini was issuing a challenge to the mandate of Emperor Ehajdon I.

But in the Tevin Farm, all that seemed far, far away.

Later that day, Mai found herself alone with Gabin again, as they were at the table, just before the rest came in for dinner. The boy seemed to be deliberately ignoring her.

“I’m sorry for telling you a bad story,” Mai said.

“Telling me no story,” Gabin reminded her.

“I’m not good with stories,” said Mai. “I don’t know any.” But somehow, that did not seem to be enough.

That night, in the barn, Mai railed and railed at Broken, furious that somehow, he seemed to be integrating more and more with the Tevin family, while Mai remained an outsider. To all her complaints, he said nothing.

The next day, Mai stopped behind a doorway, when she heard Broken and Tevin chatting.

“I just don’t understand why you’re so good at everything, Rassin,” said Tevin. “I couldn’t have asked for a better farmhand than you, even though it seems you’ll want on to greater and bigger things. But the one you travel with, your lover, she’s, to put it plainly, awful.”

“Jess is not my lover,” said Broken.

“I’m sorry. Your sister, then?”

“I owe her what you might call a favor,” said Broken. “A huge favor. And so I must put up with her. I’ll take any pay reduction you see fit. She must stay here.”

Mai had suspected how differently the Tevin family considered her from Broken, but now, she had actual words as a statement to that effect. She didn’t like listening by the door, especially since this was the second time she had done such a thing with Broken, but the conversation was too alluring to pass up.

“What kind of favor?” asked Tevin.

“I owe her my life,” said Broken.

Mai nearly started to laugh. For someone who had said once that he never spoke an untruth, this was an example of the opposite.

“That would be an interesting story to hear,” said Tevin.

“Yes it would,” said Broken. “Probably more than you would think. “If Jess were here now, she would not want to be here.”

“You mean the story’s embarrassing?” asked Tevin.

Mai, however, caught the real meaning of Broken’s odd comment. He knew she was here, and he wanted her to leave. And so she did, going about her duties, as a peal of laughter escaped from Tevin’s mouth inside the meal room.

She was worthless at doing farm work, and only kept on because Broken, for some reason, wanted her to suffer.

That was what Mai thought about the entire rest of the day, as she interacted with Tevin’s two older sons, and his youngest. Gabin still seemed to hate her.

She was worthless.

The day moved on, and once again, that night, Mai asked Broken why they were at the farm, to no response. If she had even the faintest inkling of where she could leave to, Mai would have gone, but she did not.

And so, she had not choice but to stay.

Two more days passed as the ones before them did. Work, tedium, and the feeling that her efforts, however hard she tried, were not being appreciated in the slightest.

Mai wanted to give up, but she wasn’t sure what she could give up to, since nothing seemed to be fighting her.

Nothing except life.