Saia observed the scene, her viss buzzing so violently it was staining the clothes of the people pressed to her sides.

“What's going on?” Serit asked.

She could not answer, because Beramas was marching straight toward her.

“You know his name,” he said. “Why?”

Saia moved her eyes as if to look at him, but still observed Morìc. He lightly shook his head, then immediately winced from the pain.

“I said 'morid’,” she answered. “It means 'boy' in my language.”

Beramas’s eyes narrowed.

“And what language is that?”

Saia looked at the cart.

"Why is he tied like that? Where are you bringing him?"

Why is he here? she wanted to ask, but figured that particular explanation could wait. She needed to free Morìc, with words if possible, using her viss if necessary.

“Who do you think you are to question us?”

“Wait, Beramas,” the dog person interrupted him. “Let me see her.”

They stepped forward with their animals. They all had a golden glint in their eyes.

“She's the one I was telling you about. The one made of stone who can control viss outside of her body.”

Saia recoiled. She observed the people around her for their reactions and didn’t find anyone, apart from Serit. The crowd had retreated.

Beramas relaxed a bit, still looking at Saia.

“So you’re interesting enough. Do you know this boy?”

“No,” Saia answered, keeping her voice steady.

Her whole attention was focused on his companion: they resembled the dog on the ship to the point she probably couldn’t have told the difference if they started walking on all fours. The only difference was that they were taller, and their eyes and hands had a human shape.

“Then why do you want to free him?”

“Because whatever he did, he's too young to be held like this.”

Beramas laughed.

“If you don't like it now, imagine when he'll be executed in front of the whole city.”

Saia grabbed the top of the cloth around his chest and pulled until he was on his tiptoes.

“You're going to do what?” she asked, face to his face. She saw Serit clutching the back of her tunic, but ignored them.

Beramas’s eyes narrowed again.

“Put me down.”

“We're not going to execute him,” the other one said.

Beramas looked back, eyes wide in disbelief. He violently tugged at the cloth to free it from Saia’s grip.

“Let me go. I’m not going to repeat myself.”

Saia wanted to keep holding him to teach him a lesson, but she also needed to know what was going on. She let him go and expanded her domain to listen to his conversation with the dog person. The rats' noses trembled, but they didn't leave the cart.

When her viss reached Beramas’s, she saw every portion of his body shine. He had a lot more viss than a human or a shilvé, the equivalent of two weeks for a sphere. It moved fast, faster than the one of a human, with extra turns and loops in the patterns it traced all across his body. It was mesmerizing to observe.

“What do you mean we won't execute him?” Beramas hissed in Arissian.

He started talking so fast Saia could only understand the general sense of his words, but it was enough.

“We've been waiting for ten years. This isn't going to be a simple execution, but a month-long celebration. Think of the recompense.”

“We still have to find his sister. What if she remained at the mountain? We can use him to force her to come here.”

Saia realized they wanted to find Dan. She hoped he was safe under some gods' protection on the other side of the sea, as unlikely as it was that he wouldn’t follow his brother.

“And I'm sure there is some other information we can squeeze out of him,” the dog person concluded.

Beramas was about to answer something, but raised his head instead. He looked around, as if following an invisible insect that was tracing circles around him. Saia realized he could perceive her domain in some capacity, even if he couldn't outwardly see it. She shrunk her domain, wondering once again what, exactly, he was.

It didn't matter, she realized. Morìc was chained to a cart and she was the strongest person around.

She stepped forward. Beramas whipped around as soon as he heard her first step on the cobblestones.

“You feel like you can do whatever you want just because you know some magic trick, I see?”

He stepped between her and the cart.

"Let me give you a demonstration of why you shouldn't mess with us. Hit me."

“Beramas,” the dog person said in a tone of warning.

“Hit me,” he repeated, louder. “Do you know how to throw a punch? Or do I need to teach y…”

Saia punched his face. She held back a bit, knowing she could easily kill someone if she went too far. Even then, she was horrified in feeling the flesh and bones give way under her fist. Beramas’s face crumbled up to the side, then it moved as if something was trying to crawl out of it. The skin pushed and stirred, repositioning itself exactly as it was. He looked back at her, no sign of damage on his face.

“Good. My turn, now.”

He grabbed her wrist before she could register the movement. She put the other hand against his chest and pushed so hard she heard his ribs crack, but he didn't budge nor seemed to notice. A trail of viss left his hand and snaked up her arm, forming whorls and waves. Once the pattern was completed, Saia's arm exploded.

The crowd ducked with surprised screams, then started running away. Luckily, most of them had been far enough not to be injured by the shards of rock, even if some drops of blood remained on the flooring once the square was clear. Saia immediately stepped back and away from Beramas, but stumbled on Serit, who had been crouching right behind her to avoid the fragments. Beramas laughed and stepped around, crushing pieces of viserite under his feet.

“I hope I explained myself well enough, but if you want another demonstration you only need to ask.”

Saia didn’t answer, clutching her empty shoulder with her other hand. She could feel the fragments if she expanded her domain a bit, but couldn’t repair her arm without revealing too much about her powers. She’d have to return at night, and hope that in the meantime most of the pieces would be still inside the square.

“Let’s go, Beramas,” the dog person said, slightly annoyed.

The animals started moving with her, the cart rolling away. Morìc was looking at Saia with wide eyes. She realized he didn’t know about the spheres or her statue and felt guilty for not revealing anything to him and Dan.

“Wait,” she said, stepping forward.

Beramas flexed his hand, but before he could reach for her again, Morìc spat at her. Saia barely registered something clinking against her statue. She looked at Morìc, trying to understand the reason for his gesture, while Beramas burst out laughing. Morìc’s face wasn’t angry or resentful. He mouthed something without emitting a sound: ‘Please’.

Saia watched the cart roll away, Beramas and the dog person at the front, talking about something. She looked around for the object that had collided with her when Morìc had spat: a fragment of tooth stained with his viss.

She held it in the palm of her hand, remembering the dog person’s words: they wanted to keep Morìc alive to extract information from him, including how to find Dan. She couldn’t imagine him revealing anything, unless they employed violence.

She sent a bit of her viss into the fragment. Morìc’s distant figure relaxed completely, an arm dangling from the border of the cart. Beramas had enough viss to awake him, sure, but she could nullify his influence, and maybe save Morìc from the worst of it. The main problem would be remembering about it often enough to matter.

She showed Serit the fragment.

“That boy is my friend,” she said straight in their ears. “I think they want to torture him. I can prevent it, but I need your help to check regularly.”

“So that’s why you provoked someone that everybody fears without even bothering to check what they were capable of?”

Their voice was trembling with barely restrained rage. Saia was too focused on the conversation she had just heard to answer. She needed to save Morìc and find Dan before those two monsters could. She didn't know what was more urgent, nor where to start with either task.

She saw a man watching the scene, half-hidden by a cart abandoned in front of a house. She turned as fast as she could and walked toward him. He was startled, moved as if to escape, but Saia cut him off.

“Who were those people? Where do they live?”

He worriedly looked in the direction where Beramas, the dog person and the animals had disappeared.

“They're illustrious servants of the weavers. I don't know anything else.”

He squeezed past her and broke into a run. Saia didn't even try to follow him. With Beramas’s ability to hear far-away conversations, nobody in the city would have risked angering him.

She walked back to Serit.

“We need to find the weaver’s palace.”

“Are you insane? What if there are more of them where they come from? That man made your arm explode without a pattern!”

Saia put away the fragment of tooth in a cavity on the opposite shoulder from where Aili's shard was. She thought about Beramas’s viss snaking up her arm.

“He did use one. He traced it directly with his viss.”

“That's impossible. It’s completely insane. I've never read or heard of someone doing anything like that, and I'm an expert in my field.”

Saia didn't argue further: people were slowly entering the square again, looking for a commotion and finding the two of them standing at the center.

“Come on,” she said, walking toward a dark corner between two buildings.

Serit's face scrunched up once they reached it. Saia guessed the area was empty because of some sort of smell she wasn’t able to perceive.

“What now?” they asked. “Apart from entering their palace, which I hope you realize is a suicidal idea.”

“Now I need to talk to my friend back home,” Saia answered, taking out the shard. “And ask her why in the world Dan and Morìc are here.”

“Maybe he came alone.”

Saia shook her head, but didn't elaborate. She sent the first message to Aili, hoping she would reply as soon as possible. The answer was almost immediate, and it kept going for a bit.

Apparently, she'd talked with Morìc: his carpets could fly, and he wanted to use one of them to go home with Dan. She'd stopped him, but after the attack they'd been separated, and she couldn't keep track of him or stop him anymore.

Dan eating sea snakes, she added, Wanted to swim across sea.

Saia felt her viss buzz faster.

Where are you now? she asked.

Suimer. Protecting inhabitants.

And Zeles?

The message was delayed for some instants.

He lost a lot of viss. Lausune under new god.

“What is she saying?” Serit asked.

“They arrived with a flying carpet. If we find it, we might…”

They pointed up, and Saia focused on her surroundings again. Two carpets flew over the roofs, occupied by two passengers each. They were all dressed in the white and blue uniform of the guards, the upper garments decorated with golden brooches at the top and the long trousers stuffed in high boots. They held weapons, even if they flew away so fast that Saia couldn't distinguish anything besides blades and staffs of metal. Judging by the way most people in the square didn't even look up when the shadows of their carpets flew over their head, Saia guessed it was a common occurrence.

“Sea snakes, then,” she said. “There can't be too many people with their traits, and the ones we have at the mountain are a variant.”

“If I remember correctly, there are a lot of animal people families inside the city, and some nearby villages are inhabited exclusively by them. It’s a lot of people to weed through, though. I would guess sea snakes aren’t that common here.”

Saia looked toward the descending street. The sea was out there, mostly hidden between the houses.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “I’m good at catching them.”