Saia approached the village alone, even if nobody looking in her direction would have agreed with that assessment: her small army of statues advanced with her. She made all of them step forward at the same time, since she was still far enough that any realistic movement would have been a waste of viss and focus.

Even after days of planning, she was still wondering whether she’d chosen the right animals: she had a few Arissian sheepdogs, a couple of smaller creatures like cats and squirrels, a small pack of antelopes with long horns, two crocodiles, and three creatures that looked like mixtures of all of them, with horns, hooves, long tails and protruding teeth. She had added them in the slim hope they would attract Mayvaru’s curiosity, despite Serit’s skepticism.

All of the viserite that hadn’t gone into shaping the bigger creatures contributed to the flock of birds that covered her head and shoulders and rested on the back of the antelopes. For the moment, they appeared to rest with their heads under their wings. The truth was that she was already using too much viss to move the other animals to worry about the birds as well. She was fine with people thinking they were just ornaments.

She tried to quell her anxiety by reminding herself that she could change any of the animals into a different species in a heartbeat, even if that risked revealing her nature to everyone. Besides, it’d have been complicated to find a different shape that would fit the furs draped around every animal: she had changed the viserite to match their color, so it wasn’t immediately visible where the statue ended and the fur began, but a change would have disrupted the illusion and possibly revealed the pattern sculpted on each animal’s back.

She couldn’t feel its smell, but Serit had reassured her that it was immediately recognizable as that of an animal. She’d sculpted the pattern on a piece of viserite and activated it at the market, and the alarmed reactions of all the dogs in the area seemed to prove them right. She’d followed Teormu’s suggestion when deciding where to place the patterns, but it had been worth it: every time she infused the animals with her viss to make them move, the flux activated the pattern too, without her having to focus on it. A crucial advantage, since the only resource she required more than viss was concentration, at least when it came to fighting Mayvaru.

But for now, she only needed to spread rumors.

She stopped right outside the village to observe the houses. During her voyage in the cart, she hadn't wondered why she could see endless fields but no houses, until Serit had pointed out that there were villages nearby. They were mostly invisible from afar, except for the small shapes of people moving in the distance. The houses were painted the same color as the surrounding land: golden, gray and green. A woven roof covered all of them, as if the village was made of just one building. It hid them from above, from shilvé attacks. She wondered how frequent they were in those lands.

The few people around in the heat of the late morning retreated when she approached. She still marched on, the animals in an ordered formation behind her. She caught glimpses of dark hair mostly without curls, skin tones that ranged from tanned to medium brown, hostile eyes. They looked similar to the Arissians she'd met, even if Aressea was much more hetherogeneous due to the people arriving from the sea. They wore the same kind of trousers, but the upper garment was more often than not a long shirt that covered shoulders and navel. Most of them didn't look at her, but she could see the hostility in the ones who did. She guessed that the animals reminded them of Mayvaru, their worst enemy. Spreading rumors about a person that seemed to have her same powers was the entire point of Saia's presence in the village, so she strolled on with a high chin, as if inviting further scrutiny.

It helped that she was still wearing her neighbor's face, even without the mane of hair. The clothes were of poor quality, but Arissian. The bag was the only thing in her attire that could have made her recognizable, but she doubted Mayvaru had paid any attention to it. Besides, it was so full at the moment that the original shape was unrecognizable.

She reached what could be considered the central square of the village, even if the houses were so close to each other that it just looked like the intersection of a web of alleys. She stopped, surrounded by her animals. Undoubtedly the news of her presence was already spreading, but she doubted Mayvaru would have considered it worthy of intervention. She could have sent her animals to investigate, maybe even some soldiers or officers, but it was unlikely she'd come herself, and that was exactly what Saia needed. Her plan was to leave a trail of rumours that connected that general area to the ruins, where everything was ready for the fight. Then, she’d have waited for Mayvaru’s arrival. She was still prepared to deal with her at any moment, but she needed to aim for the most ideal conditions if she wanted a good chance to win.

With her arrival at the village, the bait was ready: Mayvaru was a unique creature, but soon she'd have learnt of the presence of another powerful being with her same powers, controlling animals she couldn't get a hold of. And not only this creature was human, without the powers of Arissian sheepdogs, but she was on the territory that Mayvaru was supposed to protect. The only thing left for Saia to do was to give a demonstration of her might, but not in a way that was aggressive or destructive, or she risked Beramas's intervention. If she managed to sway the inhabitants' opinion in her favor, Mayvaru would have felt threatened, but not in danger, and probably compelled to reassert her authority. Or so Saia hoped.

So she looked around, examining the village in search of something she could do, like fixing crumbling buildings or saving children in danger. The houses were square and well kept under the layer of paint, sometimes covered in vines and decorated by geometric bas-reliefs under the ledges. She saw a few deerlike beastplants pulling carts. Plants in vases were positioned at regular intervals along the road, probably because normal trees might have disrupted the roofing. The light filtering through the woven fibers covered the streets with a thin layer of irregular shadows. The suffused light was pleasant to walk through.

As much as she looked for debris or signs of decay, she found none. The houses were meticulously taken care of, the paint looked fresh and there weren't any visible cracks. The village was small enough that she found herself back at the central square without even trying to, and yet she'd already seen every single building. All the inhabitants must have had a glimpse of her by then, so she resolved to approach one and ask.

She chose a woman that was watering a plant through a window, holding a slender vase. Her free hand was on the shutter, ready to close it. Saia stood some steps away and produced a voice loud enough to carry without becoming a yell.

“Excuse me, can I help you with…”

The woman returned inside without raising her eyes.

Saia had half-expected that, so she left with her animals to look for someone who couldn't run away so easily. She found a man who was filling a basket with the clean clothes hanging from a string between two houses. Saia approached just as he was trying to fold a long sheet. At first he tried to ignore her, then to send her away with glares.

“Excuse me,” she began, but the man didn't give her time to continue.

“What are you doing here, with all those animals?” he asked. He spoke Arissian fluently, even if the accent was heavily different from the one of the capital. “We don't even have bread for ourselves. If you want to steal food, go somewhere else.”

“I’m not here to steal anything,” Saia said, but the man had wrapped the sheet around an arm and was making a hasty retreat. “I just want to help how I can.”

The door shut close, leaving Saia standing there with the hanging clothes and the statues. Maybe it was a good thing, since she'd been about to say that her animals didn't eat anything, which would have immediately revealed her ruse.

“I’ve seen the fields,” she yelled instead, to whoever might be listening. “They're ready for harvest. If you need more people for that, I can help you."

She wasn't actually expecting an answer, but it came anyway.

“It’s not that easy, foreigner.”

She had to turn the corner of a house to see who was speaking. Between the building and the one behind it, there was a low wall of gravel and clay, seemingly uncomfortable to sit on. Maybe for that very reason, the elder was sitting on a cushion of an undefined gray-green color. He was dressed differently from everyone else in the village, with a dark blue tunic decorated with small diamond patterns. The diamonds were golden and all of different sizes, and some of them had a dark circle at the center that looked like an eye. Among the mimetic paint of the buildings, he stood out like a sea snake in a school of sardines.

“Why?” Saia asked, uncertain about getting closer and risking frightening the only person that seemed willing to talk to her.

“We're doomed. People here are starting to talk about gods that don't exist. Even if they did, they would be on the Arissians' side, not ours. We should focus on the strengths and consciousness of our villages, instead.”

Saia didn’t entirely understand what he meant, but any follow-up question would have caused a delay she wasn’t sure she could afford. Plus, his words reeked of religious stuff, and she’d had her share of it for the rest of her life.

“What about the fields?” she said. “Why can’t you harvest?”

The elder munched on something that might or might not have been there.

“It was all the resistance’s fault. They changed the pattern of the wheat during the sowing without even consulting the people who took care of that field. They knew the Arissians didn’t know our techniques, so they took advantage of their ignorance. But our wheat isn’t like theirs, it grows fast. As soon as the pattern was complete…”

The elder raised both hands, fingers that looked like roots tightly crossed together.

“The field collapsed.”

He let his hands fall on his lap. Saia dared to approach the wall, and since the man didn’t seem to retract, she sat down an armlength to his right. Her stone body didn’t adapt to the irregularities of the surface, scraping a bit through the cloth of her trousers when she changed her position. The elder didn’t seem to notice.

“There was an outpost nearby,” he continued, eyes focused on Saia again. “They’re everywhere now, especially where our wheat grows. It crumbled with all the Arissians inside. People cheered.” He shook his head. “They should have known the Arissians would have retaliated. They forbade us from harvesting and sent even more soldiers to guard the fields.”

Saia felt her viss buzz.

“I can fight them,” she said, not caring anymore whether it was part of the plan or not.

The elder smiled, looking at her as if she was a child determined to kick down a mountain.

“They say it’s to protect us from the other fields, in case they sink too. Everyone knows the truth: it’s a threat, and extortion. They want to know our secrets. They want to know how our patterns work. The resistance didn’t achieve anything, they only gave them the pretext to drop the appearances.”

Saia was reminded of some conversations at the market.

“What about the gardeners?” she asked, since she couldn’t recall the name of that specific governing family.

The elder scoffed.

“Extortion. They pretended to welcome our lands under Aressea’s control, even if we want to be free. But some people thought it would be a good thing: we’d have one of our most respected families make decisions in our favor, right?”

He looked at Saia as if to expect confirmation. When she nodded, he shook his head and looked away.

“Fools, all of them. The gardeners can’t govern because they don’t have a god to guide them like the other families, or so they said. They can’t sell their artefacts because they haven’t proven that they’re safe. The Arissians want to know how the patterns work before they fully accept the gardeners as one of the families. Fortunately, they haven’t betrayed us yet. They cling to what makes them powerful, like everyone else. So now the Arissians are threatening us with starvation.”

Saia dared to cover the distance between them with a hand, fingers hovering at a short distance from the elder’s arm.

“I can stop them,” she said, hoping her stone eyes could project enough confidence. “Just tell me how. Do you want me to fight them? Buy the wheat? Steal it?”

She flicked her wrist in an exaggerated gesture and made one of her owlets land on it. The elder’s smile wavered when he saw what she was capable of.

“I’m not with Mayvaru,” she added, realizing why he was suddenly wary. “I’m her enemy. Tonight I will leave your village and never come back, so if there’s anything I can do to help… Please tell me.”

The elder seemed somewhat reassured. He raised a finger toward the owlet’s beak, and Saia focused on keeping up the pretence, ruffling the few feathers attached to the stone and moving the viserite around them. It wasn’t a completely fluid movement, but the elder didn’t seem to notice.

“If you’re so powerful, maybe you can figure out something. But don’t be rash: you’re a foreigner, the Arissians will find it suspicious if you help us. They’ll think we sent you, and they’ll punish us after you’re gone. Whatever you do, don’t let the fault fall on us. They still have weapons.”

Saia nodded.

She left the village through the shortest path, even if it ended on the opposite side from where she had entered. She knew she had to focus on the fight with Mayvaru, if not for herself at least for Dan and Morìc. For Serit, who had accepted to help her despite the risks. But she couldn’t leave without seeing how bad the situation was.

She walked toward the fields. Now that she was closer, she noticed that the wheat was considerably taller than the one at the mountain or around Aressea, reaching the height of a person. There was a fairly trafficked road not too far from the village, constantly traveled by carts, and beyond it a stretch of golden fields that followed the curve of a hill. She saw people standing between the plots of land, and even if they were far enough that she couldn’t distinguish the color of their trousers, she knew they were Arissian soldiers.

A structure caught her attention, too tall, colorful and visible compared to the rest of the landscape: a tower painted in light blue, with narrow windows and a wooden fence starting at its sides. It sectioned off some of the fields from the rest.

She’d seen enough Arissian architecture to recognize the building as a stray piece of the city. She approached, following a branch of the main road. The guards at the side of the door stirred while she was still far away, probably because of the animals that followed her. Saia wanted to break in, take the wheat and leave, but the words of the elder kept her in check. She decided to leave half of her animals behind and go on only with the antelopes, cats and birds. The rest of the statues became unnaturally still as soon as her domain left them, an improvised display of taxidermy. She could still change the ones following her into something more lethal, if needed.

She thought that the gods at the mountain would have never let someone starve, or let the people of a village starve another. Not even Vizena.

She accelerated.

“Stop!” a guard yelled.

She slowed down, but didn’t obey until she was a few armlengths from them. They were two, plus two more looking from a window on the first floor. It didn’t matter, because she wasn’t there to fight.

“Who are you and why are you here?” a guard asked.

“I’m a farmer,” Saia said, letting her accent confuse their ideas on whether she was Arissian like her clothes suggested, an inhabitant of a village of the Golden Lands that nobody had ever discovered, or a foreigner from a different land entirely. “I was going to Aressea with my animals, but I need to buy some food for my birds.”

She made the flock stir all around her, most of them jumping down on her shoulders and extended arms, the rest on the ground. There was an empty cart to the side of the road: the only beastplant tied to it was standing almost still.

The guards glanced at each other.

“We’re not a market,” the one who hadn’t spoken said. “We don’t sell anything. The fields are dangerous, didn’t you know?”

The other guard smiled without teeth, leaning on their weapon. It was a spear with a thick handle, covered in various patterns curled inside of each other, without touching.

Saia wanted to put them to sleep and step through the door. Or yell straight in their ears, to see how they liked it.

“Can I talk to someone in charge?” she asked. “I have vissins and don’t require much. I’m sure we can figure something out.”

The guards looked at each other again. Saia could feel the refusal coming and didn’t know what else to do to get the wheat. Before they could say anything, the heavy wooden door opened from the inside.

“Thank you again, commander,” Saia heard the person on the doorway say, “The monastery will remember this.”

The guards stepped a bit to the side, even if the people leaving the tower had more than enough space to step through. Saia was about to take a couple of vissins out of her bag, cursing herself for not creating some more precious ones, when a group of four people stepped through the door. Each of them was holding a woven basket. They bowed to the guards and to Saia as they stepped in front of them. Despite the heat, their gray tunics were so long that they almost touched the ground.

“Send my regards to the abbot,” said a voice from the inside, then the door closed.