The four wings of the municipal building of Koeiji surrounded Pen like the walls of a giant brick cage. To most of its staff, it was just that; for during the end of winter and the start of sunyear, two very different heats would haunt the hallways and offices, their reigns separated by the advent of the great rain. Only a meager twenty days had passed since the last cloud was spotted, meaning the worst of the dry heat was yet to come. Already though, Pen could hear the humming of a hundred fans, vents, turbines let into the thick walls spinning in unison. And it wasn’t just her ears that picked up on it. As she crossed the courtyard surrounded by a pale circle of guards, she could feel the machines’ vibration through her feet.

The main entrance was manned by two guards on the outside and four more in the high-roofed foyer, all of whom stiffened at the sight of Wellan. Fists held to their chests, they awaited his commands as he led his procession inside, but the head of guard plainly nodded and moved on to the broad wooden staircase.

Each floor was guarded by another group of fist-chested men requiring confirmation that their efforts were in line with Wellan’s instructions. Bold instructions they must have been, Pen thought, noting that after his passing, the guards’ fists quickly returned to their rifles. She’d known Wellan only as a man of resolution during the five years of his service, a bit paranoid at times, but never in danger of losing his head. Yet today, there was something off about him.

After reaching the third floor, Pen found herself and her protectors passing guards lined up along the gloomy northern murals, dozens of them, stretching down the entire hallway. This was different. Perhaps, Wellan had lied to her about the attack. Rannek was old for a prefect, and frail even for a pale. He could be less than fine, could be badly hurt, could be… She shook her head to expel the thought, but it stayed. An unwanted concern grew in her heart, one she still felt by the skin of arm where the ruthless sergeant Khron had twisted it. Glane wasn’t the only one of them she needed.

As if he’d read her mind, the Cursed patted her on the shoulder wearing a calming smile underneath his mustache. She slapped away his hand with a smack.

»Seargent Finnle at your service, commander Sersinyn«, a voice called out. Spying through the ring of guards, she spotted a meek man in beige and blue obstructing their path, his fist dug deep into his chest.

»What is it, Finnle?«, Wellan asked without slowing.

»Prefect Lorne has asked to be left alone while he be tended to.« Finnle’s eyes shot toward her just then. »I have to ask you to—«

»What you have and not have to do is up for me to decide.« Wellan’s refusal to slow down forced Finnle to start walking backwards before him. »And I decide you should report with sergeant Voss in the foyer. Step aside.«

»Sir, he was adamant that miss Penroe should not—«

»Did you not hear me, boy?« A silence lingered after Wellan had raised his voice. He’d done so to great effect, not only making Finnle step aside, but also straightening the backs of all the guards around them in an instant.

She should not what? Orders specific to her were never a good sign. Beside that, Pen couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Wellan riled up like this. Only it wasn’t worry that she heard in his voice—he sounded genuinely angry.

As they approached the dark wooden doors of Rannek’s office, a guard standing right beside it left his post, rushed to the door, and unlocked it in advance of their arrival. A curt nod was his reward. Then, Wellan flung open the doors, banging them against the heavy shelfs inside Rannek’s office.

”What the— is this a joke?”, a man bellowed in her native tongue. Pen couldn’t make out much inside the dim room, but somehow, the voice seemed familiar. More familiar noises followed, the spraying of disinfectant, the light clanking of metal instruments being put down. A dark middle-aged man with rings under his eyes stepped into the doorframe. She choked. Blood was spattered atop the apron around his waist. ”Explain yourself, corporal!”

»Calm now, doctor«, Wellan said. »Do not forget who’s in charge here.«

”It is I who’s” »in charge« ”here! The instant you call me in, this isn’t an office, it’s a surgical suite, and I won’t have you carry in whatever disease may dwell among your privates!” He threw a disdainful glance at the men surrounding her. Right then and there, she remembered. The hospital. He was the head of surgery, Eako Something, a ’righteous, but good man’, as father had called him often. She also remembered the nights waiting for father to come home from board meetings long overdrawn by righteous dispute. ”You made me operate in this cesspool, now let me operate.”

Of what he had said, Wellan would have understood less than a third. Yet the rage twisting his handsome face simmered down, which made for a far more frightening sight. Pen started pushing against the guards trying to get through. They withstood like the iron bars of a cell. “I have order to bring miss Penroe to our prefect,” Wellan said in his best Tahori. “Anywhere else she is in danger. Please, doctor.”

At his signal, the guards abandoned their formation, leaving Pen without bars to lean up against. She wobbled, but found her balance just as the doctor’s eyes found her. For only an instant, he was taken aback.

”… And where has miss Penroe spent her day?”, he asked.

”The vendor’s market”, she answered.

The doctor turned his back promptly. ”In your dreams.”

With another bang, the doors slammed shut. A beleaguered sigh from Wellan sang in tune with the machines’ hum before he silenced, and looked at her. »You take care of the old man, I’ll fetch some ice cream. Deal?«

»You don’t need to bribe me«, Pen said. »I’m not ten anymore.« She pushed down the smoothened brass doorhandles and entered Rannek’s office leaving behind Glane, Wellan, and his many guards.

The humming quieted down to nothing but a distant buzz the moment she set foot on the thick carpet. All sounds were dry and distinct. The shelves towered high along the walls. A dozen beasts appeared to her left as her sight adjusted, captured in clay, quartz, carved wood, sitting between maps and encyclopedias of a hundred sizes. Some of them she had not seen before.

Pen stepped past the multi-headed scorpions and hairy enophants toward the big oaken desk occupying the center of the room. A light appeared behind the shelf to her right, and she found the door to the private bathroom ajar, a neon flicker shining through the gap. Pen inched toward it fearing the worst.

She gasped the moment she opened the door without even having registered what lay beyond. Then, she saw. The pale prefect sat with his legs stretched in the bathtub wearing only briefs, undershirt, and shoes. The doctor was kneeling over his shoulder where a cut had been inflicted, spanning about a hand’s width, reaching from his collar bone over his trapezius. The worst of the bleeding seemed to have stopped; and the worst hadn’t even soaked more than the edges of his undershirt. When he lifted his hand, Pen saw a cigarette dangling between his middle and index finger.

”Is that all?”, she found herself asking. Both men turned their heads with surprise, though different kinds of it.

”I thought I’d made myself clear”, the doctor stated as he already turned back around, scoffing into the paper of his surgical mask. ”Don’t step any closer. The last he needs is an infection.”

”Pen!”, Rannek said in the light singsong of his Southgrale accent. ”I’m sorry, you should not have to see me like this. I instructed Finnle to—”

”Like what?”, she asked back, leaning against the doorframe. ”Comfortable?”

Rannek reached for his glasses and rubbed them against the clean part of his undershirt. At second glance, she could see that his wrinkled forehead did carry quite an amount of sweat. The white of his cheeks did look a little flushed. ”Dear, you seem distraught. There hasn’t been another attack, has there?”

”No, that’s not—” She stopped herself. ”You’re okay, then?.”

”Of course I am. Didn’t Wellan tell you so?

”… That’s not the point. If that’s all the attackers did, then there’s no danger, because Glane would eat them alive. So why am I here?”

”You’re careless with your words”, the doctor said. ”Two men of the guard were admitted to the hospital after saving your prefect’s life. They lie dying as we speak.”

Pen’s breath cut out shortly. ”So why are you here? Shouldn’t you be operating on them, instead?”

”I go where I’m needed, and they are past what I can treat. So, I treat the man whose orders got them killed.”

”Now, doctor, pleaaah!!!” Rannek winced in pain as the doctor pulled on his string tightening the suture. As his body relaxed again, the cigarette went to his mouth and sizzled softly. »Vohl’s mercy…«

Pen stepped closer, drawing the doctor’s glare, and quickly stepped back again. ”What is he talking about?”

”They were children”, Rannek said. ”Came over the roof of town hall. Wellan takes full responsibility, but the doctor’s right. And I stand by my decision.” He winced once more. ”I couldn’t let them open fire on children, Pen, least of all today. I’d be repeating my predecessor’s mistakes. Monstrous mistakes…” He looked up, and then down in shame. ”I’m sorry. Nothing like that should be brought up on Faroe’s day.”

He was right. It wasn’t his fault, though. Hearing about people celebrating father on the anniversary of his incarceration for the first time, she’d been naive enough to think they all felt the same way she did. Sorry, and tired of being angry about it. His day could have been one of mourning—if even Glane understood, why couldn’t everyone?

But they didn’t, and soon, a different meaning took hold of the date. Of the name Faroe Kyetana. Five years had passed, and she had to admit that her fears had been misplaced. No one ever lingered long on how he had failed and turned a murderer; instead, they declared him a martyr for their own causes, causes he’d opposed all his life, murderers, terrorists, even the Liberation. She’d seen the men hanging outside school when she could still attend, smoking, talking to her classmates, encouraging them to play ball…

Though those men themselves had likely been recruited the same way. They were nothing but links of a chain, and wherever that chain ended, she suspected it wasn’t in Koeiji.

”… I wanna help”, she said.

”You will step back and observe, little darling”, the doctor said.

”I’ve stitched up cuts ten times worse than that one. Father let me help out in his clinic a dozen times.”

”His hobby room, you mean. I’ve seen it. Must’ve appeased his fans, but I never understood why he left us to work from that miserable tiny box.”

”Because that’s where he was needed.”

”… There was more than one place that needed him. He had promise, you know?”

”Doctor”, Rannek said, ”maybe you shouldn’t—” »Damn!«

Pen bowed forward to inspect the wound, though careful not to step closer. It looked even smaller than at first sight, but somehow crooked. Jagged. No wonder the doctor took his time. This wasn’t an ordinary cut.

”… Faroe’s eagerness to quit doesn’t run in the family, I take it.” The doctor raised his brows at Rannek. ”You’re fine with this?” A nod was the prefect’s sole response. ”Scrub up, you can hold his decrepit flesh in place.”

”What’s that wor—” Rannek’s cries into his palm were drowned out by the sound of the faucet. Pen washed her hands thoroughly, put on gloves and a mask from the doctor’s suitcase, and applied the disinfectant. Standing over the head of the bathtub, the doctor showed her where to put her hands, and she held together the wound while he stitched.

Something bothered her. ”How did they manage to kill two guards, but not you? Takes more than one stab.”

”Not if the blade’s led by a skilled hand”, the doctor said. ”Regardless, these assassins were far from skilled. The fatal wounds weren’t cuts, they were gunshots, and crudely placed ones, at that.” A grim look flashed across his eyes. ”They must’ve emptied two magazines before the others got to them.”

”It all happened in a flash”, Rannek muttered with his teeth clenched.

”That makes less sense even”, Pen said. ”Why wouldn’t they just shoot you?”

”A cruel question, but the right one”, the doctor said. ”We’ve been talking about that. My guess, it’s because of this darn cut right here.”

Pen kept waiting for a proper explanation as they made slow, but steady progress on the wound. Slight ebbs and flows in the neon light above the door made the walls flicker, disturbing her concentration. The doctor meanwhile seemed wholly wrapped up in tackling the belly of his foe, where the skin on both sides was badly torn and hard to capture. His breathing was slow, and sometimes interrupted by pauses that seemed to go on forever.

A wound like this she had never seen. Wood that jagged would have left splinters, and a metal blade she couldn’t even imagine the shape of. What was he talking about?

The doctor finally took a breath. ”Do you know about the Gwai?”

Every Tahori knew some things about the Gwai. A band of war tribes from the central mountain regions of Tahor, theirs was a history rich with death-defying victories, tragic defeats, and everything in between that made for a good book.

Yet it wasn’t their achievements alone that gave them a mythical quality. Once bonded under the Gwai name, the tribes took to attacking their surrounding regions in turn, reigning hell for a year or two before moving on to the next. The damages were severe, but nothing that the villages and the odd holdfast in between couldn’t repair during the time they were spared. And so, over decades, centuries, they came to accept the Gwai as part of their life, and learned to fight them well enough to sustain most of their population and cattle, and move on to another period of peace.

Only the warlords of the Gwai did not content themselves with this reign. Their realms were wide and fertile, but they hadn’t banded together to pursue land, or possession, or power. Their aim was to master war itself, the skill of it. And the war they led at home had become stale and predictable. Thus, a decision was made. Messengers rode out to the regions they’d besieged, many of whom were imprisoned, tortured, and killed. The surviving ones read aloud the only literary work ever known to hail from Gwai culture: ’Take these lands and flourish. We are leaving. Signed, Gwai.’

They did leave, and remained gone for another century before returning for what would soon be known as the first war to retake the motherland. Ballads were conceived. ’And flourish’ became a saying. Later attempts to stage a second retaking fell out far less fruitful, though, as no surviving tribe would fall for that scheme ever again.

During their travels across the peninsula in between retakings, the Gwai learned plenty about all kinds of war, many of which they hadn’t even thought of before. Wars without battles, wars of attrition, wars of nutrition, wars waged with words, whispers, and even just looks, vertical wars up near the southern mountain peaks, they saw it all, and despite fallbacks and losses lived to tell about it. So when the Gwai tribe closed in on half a millennia—counted not by them, but by the surviving tribespeople telling nightmarish tales to their children—, the warlords came to two conclusions. One, they had reached the peak of Tahori warcraft in every aspect. Two, there was nowhere to go from here.

Scouts were sent out once more to inquire across the lands where one could go to pursue mastery of war. They returned with two options: master naval warcraft and sail north, to the fabled lands where the merchants come from, or move south across the Tongue, to where the Kuuth lived. Having come to grips with them once in a dispute over territory past the Ito, the warlords could see the Kuuth as a worthy foe. Perhaps they’d see the blessings that war had brought the Gwai. Also, being rather sober of mind, they spent little time imagining more than a few scattered towns on those northern shores, exclusively containing merchants and the people who mixed those purple burning powders they sold.

Thus it was set. Gwai troops would restock weapons and food, then move to the new motherland. Who knew, perhaps after their conquest, the northern merchants would have evolved to present a new foe. For now, the warlords decided, they sufficed as suppliers of arrowheads, spices, oils, and the powders that some of their underlings had developed intriguing ways of perhaps one day employing on the battlefield.

This of course gave the merchants something new to sell. There were fortunes being paid on the northern continent of Rhon for the sizes and locations of Gwai troops, fortunes that forbade the seller to ask about their origin. All the merchants knew that payment was immediate, and that the buyers were men of unusual paleness, with eyes like clouded skies.

The Gwai’s error wasn’t the only one enabling the Empire’s invasion to take place, but certainly the most tragic. When all their attention had been directed south, the very foe they’d been looking for came lurking up from behind ending their four-hundred-and-change years of warfare in a measly five. It was maybe for that reason most Tahori historians dated the end of the First War at the day the last unyielding Gwai warlord found his death.

”None of which explains the cut, though.” Pen looked at the doctor as he continued to stitch.

His breath stopped once again. When it set back in, he sighed. ”Then did you have to regurgitate all that? How about asking?”

”Good to know she keeps reading her books… Pen’s self-tauoooh!!” Rannek mumbled Gralinn curses into his hand as the doctor kept stitching in complete ignorance of his pain. A red drop ran down Rannek’s shoulder and spread into his undershirt. As he lit another cigarette, she saw blood that had rubbed off onto the old doctor’s arm and dried there, only revealed by reflections of the light tube. Without them, it was near invisible on his skin.

”I’m self-taught”, she explained.

”I figured”, the doctor said. ”I assume none of your books talked about Gwai hunting rituals.”

”Yes, they did.” Pen paused. ”I think.”

”There was a specific poison they used on the game they hunted. Shudderleaf. Smeared it all over their weapons. Word is, their best hunters could wound any animal deep enough that the poison would take effect, but never so deep that it bled out. And the weapons they used were designed for just that purpose.”

”How did they look?”

”Monstrous and impractical, with a motherlode of spikes. But they sure tore up the tissue.”

Rannek groaned. ”That sounds about accurate.”

”But if that’s so”, Pen asked, ”shouldn’t we administer the antidote? What if they used shudderleaf?”

The doctor chuckled. ”There is no antidote. There rarely ever is. Doesn’t matter, however, since prefect Lorne here has not turned into a state of excruciatingly painful stasis. Which by now, he would have if he was in fact poisoned.”

»Hurray for me.« Rannek closed his eyes in expectation of the next pull on his suture. Instead, he heard a click.

The doctor put away pin, thread, and scissor, and pulled out gauze, a sponge, and pale adhesive tape. He cleaned the wound and the surrounding skin. Pen held the sponge in place while he taped it down, after which he rolled out bandages until Rannek’s shoulder was wrapped up securely.

Grunting, the prefect rose to his feet, and stepped out of the bathtub. ”Thank you, doctor Mireri”, he said shaking the other man’s hand.

”I’m needed back at the hospital”, Mireri stated. ”If you don’t mind…” He turned, then took his leave without waiting for Rannek’s approval. Pen followed him out of the bathroom and its flickering lights into the office, and again felt the carpet swallow up that incessant hum. Pulling open the door, doctor Mireri stopped with his head bathed in the corridor’s light. ”How old are you? Sixteen?”

”Fifteen”, Pen said.

”In a year or two, perhaps give me a call. The hospital always needs skilled hands.”

Flattery she hadn’t expected. ”… I’m not planning to step into father’s shoes.”

”Who said anything about doctoring?” He turned and slipped out of the office. ”Nursing is just as honorable a profession.”

The door closed with a thud leaving her no time to retort. Rannek joined her at his desk and knelt down to browse the drawers. As she sunk into one the plush armchairs put out for visitors, Pen made out a piece of clothing lying atop the dim workspace. When Rannek switched on the glass lamp at the edge of his desk, she was startled to see a shirt less beige than burgundy, dried pools collecting where it touched the wood. The amount, the spray—it couldn’t have been just his blood. She stopped herself from staring at it further and instead scanned the novelty items and figurines atop the monsters’ shelf throwing warped shadows against the ceiling.

Rannek stood up groaning a persistent groan and took off his undershirt. Pen had never assumed him to be in great shape, but what she saw worried her. Wellan could save his life no matter how many times, the old man would barely make it past sixty lest some changes were made. A better diet, exercise, sufficient sleep—as devoted a prefect as he was, his body was being neglected. As he took a fresh undershirt from a drawer and pulled it over his pale formless skin, Pen remembered how Wellan had put it: the old man needs a wife.

She’d felt too bad to tell him that ’Rannek’s wife’ was a name secretly used to describe him by more than a few of his guards. ”You’ve got shirts in there?”

Rannek chuckled. ”I do, though they’re usually reserved for wine stains and ash smears—the wounds of diplomacy.”

”… By the way, I was wondering.” Pen watched him tussle with the undershirt. ”The Gwai wounded their prey, poisoned it—and then what?”

A smile flashed across his face, one only seen when he was allowed to display his knowledge of her people. He still remained a scholar at heart even after five years as prefect. ”That’s what I asked. Apparently, they would let the animal escape, wait for the poison to take effect, and then use their tracking skill to find and kill it before it recovered.”

”And if they didn’t?”

He put on a fresh blue-striped shirt and closed the drawers. Pen watched him cross the room and scan a row of books in the shelf standing left of the door. ”Then they did not deserve to eat”, he said. A thick volume was found and delivered to her. ”They had a peculiar sense of fairness, the Gwai.”

Pen read the title page. ’A Study of Tribes’. She knew the book, but abhorred the writing. True, it was more exhaustive than the ’Myths & Tales’, but at the price of being void of life and a pain to read. ”This my punishment?”, she asked.

”What is there to be punished?” Rannek looked at her with curiosity.

Of course, he didn’t know. The news of the riot that wasn’t had arrived with Wellan, and he was still outside. No reason to change that. ”Dunno. Dad’s assassins?”

»You hurt me, little one.« He did seem hurt. But before Pen could think of something better to say, Rannek slumped into the chair, winced, and then resumed brooding while giving her an uncertain look.

”… Sorry?”

”It’s fine. I imagine you’re having no more fun on this day than I am.” He drew out the pause. ”Pen, I need your help.”

She was stumped. Despite all the words and sayings Rannek had acquired in his quest to master her language, this phrase she didn’t know him to possess. He received her help on numerous occasions, the help of her counsel on matters too deeply Tahori for books to explain, but asking for it outright was simply… ”Why?”

”Because you’re growing up, and despite my reservations, the truth is, there are places you can go where I can’t.”

”I feel that.”

He ignored the tone. ”I’m asking you to escort me there.”

”You’re… you’re wounded.”

”I’m grazed, and besides, I don’t have a choice. We’re facing a crisis. If there is any voice that can prevent armed conflict, it is—”

”Mine? You can’t be serious.”

”—your father’s.”

Pen leaned forward in the chair, clenching the armrests. ”Excuse me?” The pain must have clouded his mind, but even so, she would not let him use her like this. Being a prisoner was a wholly different thing than being a puppet. ”I’m not him, and I won’t play him.”

”You’re you, yes. But the fact that you are you to begin with is a reminder to the people that his legacy lives on.” He looked his most earnest speaking the words. ”A legacy of peaceful fortitude rather than war. Of compromise, on both sides.”

”That’s not what they remember of him.”

”Then who better to remind them than you?” He let the pause linger. ”With your uncle gone, nobody’s left who truly knew the man. And they want to know! Every week, letters arrive on Emair asking for audiences with him even though the Empire’s policy is known. In every district, jins paint his name and likeness on the walls. And the only Tahori who even worked up a sweat today were my assailants.”

Wrong, Pen thought. She had been quite sweaty from her botched escape. But Rannek’s words still weighed heavily on her. He wasn’t the first to bring up the fact that her family had shrunken until only she was left. Imprisoned or no, father would never again be anything better than a fugitive in his native land. But who was Rannek to tell her about father’s legacy? Who was he to pretend he understood? ”Watch what you’re saying”, Pen hissed at him.

”I’m saying you can do good.”

”Do you some good, that is. By doing what, calming protesters? Being a shield?”

”By helping us save lives. If calming is what’s required, I’ll take it.”

Pen leaned back in the chair and stared at Rannek. Something inside her didn’t want his misstep to go unpunished, but that wasn’t the only thought voicing itself. Whatever he wanted of her, it seemed to require a journey. A different place. For the first time, there was more than mount Itai and the Burnt Fields on her horizon.

So, she let silence set in, sitting in her chair unmoving. Rannek showed no desire to add to his proposal. Looking at each other through the dust motes dancing in the lamp’s light, they played a game she couldn’t win. Wouldn’t win. Yet she’d always try.

”… What lives?” Pen asked.