Prevna and the Picker band’s spokesman settled across from each other on the ground while the rest of our group and the two watchers made a loose circle around them. Close enough to step in if someone tried something stupid, but not so close that we were looming over their conversation.

I did my best to focus on it for the first handful of minutes, but it sounded like they were discussing the weather and small anecdotes more so than actually trading anything. There were also references and terms that were frustratingly difficult to follow as I hadn’t heard of them before. I’m sure there was purpose in it and Prevna was doing what she promised, but it didn’t take me long to decide that if I never needed to haggle with a Picker band again I would go for the more direct trade even if it was considered rude and I’d get a worse deal. Better that than hinting at skills and knowledge through half a dozen small stories, implied threats, and light bragging about our supplies.

Instead I turned my focus on everyone’s reactions as the subtle bartering continued. The big man who had answered for the Picker band looked more intrigued the more he spoke with Prevna. I ignore the small twinge that twisted in my stomach and instead took pride in the wary looks the other two got whenever they seemed to catch sight of black lips out of the corner of their eye. They also didn’t seem to like Creed’s size or trust Petra’s smile.

Our group was simply focused on looking as intimidating as possible while not being overtly threatening. A united front of the goddess’s favor and the uneasy possibility of drawing Her focus through our presence.

Nearly an hour passed before they came to an agreement that they both could stomach. Then they both touched their thumbs to their lips before pressing their thumbs together.

“Bone to bone.”

Something settled in the Picker band members as soon as their spokesperson and Prevna uttered the phrase together. Prevna smiled back at them before popping to her feet and coming over to report to Mishtaw.

“They’ll reach out to the band in fog on our behalf, so that we’ll be less likely to be attacked for entering their territory, and provide us a week’s worth of what that band uses to stay unaffected by the mist.” At Mishtaw’s expectant look she shook her head once. “He wouldn’t say what it is. Not yet. First they want four medium sized furs to help prepare for the cold season. He wouldn’t presume to take advantage of a whisper woman’s time, so he asked for Creed and Petra to help train their fighters over the next few days. Tensions are rising in the Cut.”

Mishtaw’s eyes narrowed. “Anything else?”

Prevna carefully didn’t look at me. “They have injured and the healer they normally used is now across enemy territory. There’s a violent band that’s been expanding. If we can escort their injured to the healer or bring another healer here briefly they would further assistance.”

“Violent band?” Eliss latched onto those words. “Death bringers?”

Prevna blinked, taken aback. “He didn’t say.”

Eliss’s focus snapped to the spokesman. “This violent band that’s keeping you from your healer—are they killing? On purpose?”

He held himself stiffly under the weight of her look, but his voice didn’t waver. “Two of ours have gone onto their second life prematurely in recent weeks because of the Fangs. One took a blade across the throat when she was already restrained.”

Eliss sucked in a sharp breath. “Mishtaw.”

“I know. The relic will wait.” Mishtaw gently squeezed Prevna’s shoulder. “You did good.” Then she stepped past Prevna to drag the Picker band’s attention onto her. “Your bargain will be honored but first, our honor demands we take care of those who encroach on the goddess’s domain. Peace must be kept before they drag everyone down with them.”

Somehow I doubted that they’d be given a lecture or locked away somewhere. This had happened once before. During a relic hunt, Mishtaw and Eliss had learned of a small tribe living in fear of a man who taken control through murder. Apparently, he had claimed the killing negated any life inside him, that he was greater follower of the goddess because he had embodied one of Her aspects. They had left and come back bloody.

Peacekeepers were the goddess’s spear. They were the divine punishment for anyone who thought they had the authority to take someone else’s life. Those death bringers did not. But the Peacekeepers did, and they were duty bound to keep the peace. Murder for murders, to keep the scales balanced, and fighting kept to nonlethal tactics for everyone else. Peaceful, by the goddess’s standards.

Mishtaw might not be a full Peacekeeper but her unique status and relationship with Eliss seemed to make some Peacekeeper permissions and expectations fall on her. So when Eliss was called to keep the peace, she could follow. As fire starters who trained to support Peacekeepers, Petra and Creed apparently had similar authority to help their whisper women end deadly threats.

“You will tell us everything you know about this Fang band,” Mishtaw said. “We will take care of the problem. While we do our apprentices will stay with you. If we return to find them not exactly as we left them, you will discover the goddess’s wrath as well.”

Mishtaw directed Eliss forward to start collecting information before she turned back to Prevna and me to speak in a softer voice, “Learn what you can. Don’t hesitate to use the shadows if you need to, but don’t waste this opportunity. They might open up to you more if we aren’t here.”

Prevna asked the question I didn’t want to voice, “Will you be fine?”

Mishtaw nodded back, eyes clear and cutting. “We’ll learn their numbers and bring in more Peacekeepers if we need to. Be smart, be safe.”

We echoed her last phrase back to her before she turned and walked over to rejoin the interrogation of the spokesman. A short while later, one of the watchers edged around the group to reach us. She looked to be around Prevna’s age, maybe a year or two older, dirty blonde hair, tall and lanky, a bone stud sticking out of her nose. I immediately didn’t like her.

She gestured to the trees beyond the bloody hand mark. “I’m supposed to take you to camp. Show you around.” Her gaze couldn’t quite settle on me as I glowered at her but she latched onto Prevna’s slight smile. “I’m Jika.”

I settled a bit more into my glower, only letting up to my previous intensity when Prevna slung an arm around my shoulders and introduced us. “Prevna, and this is Gimley. You might not believe me but that look is a sign of affection.”

Jika clearly didn’t believe her. Prevna let her arm drop back down when I shifted and crossed my arms, but I stopped trying to scare the other girl into running away. Better that than take the chance she might take Prevna’s words at face value, even if I did note Prevna didn’t mention affection for who.

Jika led us through the trees, seemingly eager to get her assignment over with. It didn’t take us long to come upon a small camp of a dozen or so tents, two cook fires, and what looked like most of the band working on a variety of chores in the daylight. She explained that their band, the Red Hand, was made of three main family groups and where we could set up our tent before she scurried away to explain everything again to everyone else.

I ignored the stares and got to work setting up the tent with Prevna. Neither of us enjoyed the thought of being left behind with a bunch of people we didn’t know, but this was hardly the first time this had happened either. Mishtaw expected that we could handle ourselves, and not all the times we had watched the squad’s things had been alone out in the wilderness. Most people didn’t really distinguish between us and the whisper women because of the black lips but sometimes they were more willing to talk to Prevna and sometimes I overheard things. Just like they’d often seek out Creed and Petra to give information to instead of confronting Mishtaw or Eliss.

It didn’t take us long to get the tent in place though or to store our things securely inside. Which was when I caught Prevna absently touching her lips as she glanced towards the camp just beyond the tent flap.

“Does it still bother you?” The question slipped out before I could bite it back. Of course it did. Changing her lips to shadow black had been akin to me cutting off my healer’s beads. Even if she still smiled more easily than me.

She gave me a knowing smile but it was more pinched than normal. “It’s…odd. Some things are exactly as I remember them, but they use some different phrases here—I’m glad I could follow along well enough during the Exchange. And we don’t use marks in the hills, but Milwa told me about them, pointed them out when we would come down to trade in this region.”

I looked at her, shocked. “You’d travel all the way down to the Cut from the Folds?”

She shrugged. “We’d go where there were resources and we didn’t have a shelter spot to go to every cold season, so sometimes we’d range farther than the tribes do.”

“And the storms?”

“We’d make do.”

It hit me then how little I had considered what Prevna must have been through as part of a Picker band. They wouldn’t have had the shelter of Grislander’s Maw or other shelters, not even for the changing of the seasons, because the tribes that made use of them would have kept them out. I paled a little further as I considered what the spokesmen had said about two band members dying and the clear lack of a Grandmother in the band.

“What did he mean by that those two had ‘gone on to their second life’?”

Her features pinched further together as she sat back with a sigh. “Blood speakers don’t abandon their tribes, and our prayers don’t reach the goddess or Her whisper women on their own. Whisper women don’t carry the Carver’s Mazes to us like I hear they do in the tribes. So we—the bands—would spend four days mourning and honor the dead’s second life on the fifth when they rise again.”

I didn’t make her elaborate. That was the true horror of being turned out from the tribes. Years of struggle for survival only to become a shamble man in the end. No chance to enter the Silver Forest or be sent off in a proper funeral pyre. Instead it sounded like Prevna had seen multiple people, people she had known, transform into something horrible.

She pressed her thumb to her lips again. “Bone to bone.”

I swallowed.

Bone gray lips to bone gray skin, like a hint or a promise of what they couldn’t escape.

Except for Prevna. Who mourned the loss of those lips even as it meant she had gone from being doomed to turn into…one of the goddess’s truest children to being one of Her blessed chosen.

Not that I couldn’t understand to some extent given the beads I still wished were in my hair despite the pain they had brought—and a bitter, very quiet part of me whispered that in the end, no matter what we did we were Her servants anyway. Black lips or gray skin.

All we could really do was try to end up on the better side of the scale.