The patient has displayed increasingly erratic behavior, and as such I am not confident in her fitness to continue in her current position with the militia. However, there is no denying that she has been effective and – if I am being completely honest – my psychological evaluation is not very relevant to a city under siege.

I don’t know if you see these letters. I don’t know if you are alive. But Zil-Antonin assures me that you are probably still out there, still breathing, somewhere, and that in time you’ll come back. I am… so deeply sorry for what has happened here. I know all you wanted was to be there for your children, and that has been denied to you by circumstance. Please do not hold it against us, just as I do not hold it against you.

-Letter written by Amire, addressed to Stepan Zelenko

245 YT, at the turn of Spring: Outside Kivv

Kamila had not, honestly, expected her trap to snap into place quite this easily.

Each time that she and Lucian and a few others snuck out of the city to follow the patrols at the edge of the Invictans’ siege-barrier, she had gotten the impression of a well-organized front. Every time one of the soldiers encountered something out of the ordinary they would first call back to their commanding officer’s tent and report the situation, then move forward to investigate – sometimes after receiving reinforcements.

When Kamila stepped into the line of sight of a small patrol, however, they reacted immediately.

Even more luckily for Kamila, the soldiers didn’t fire their weapons as they approached – they raised their guns, but there was no telltale gunshot nor cloud of smoke that would give away their position. They advanced step by step into the underbrush, moving toward the flash of movement they’d seen. In the intervening moment Kamila was already behind a nearby tree, signaling silently to the others waiting nearby. Lucian, lithe as he was and specialized in coming unexpectedly from above, had already secreted himself away in some boughs above when Kamila herself wasn’t looking. She gave silent thanks that he was on her side, and not an enemy.

There were four of them – a gang the size of two normal patrols. Perhaps they felt confident, therefore, as they fanned out to investigate the area. A few Adma fighters here and there – stray guerillas that could easily be caught and either killed on the spot or dragged back to camp – didn’t scare this bunch (as much as they should have).

Adma guerillas, as a rule, did not have access to weapons from the Memory Plague, nor did they know the terrain of the Wanderer’s Vale any better than did Gaurl soldiers who’d come up here expecting adventure, easy pay, and the chance for their names to go down in the annals of history – at least a certain kind of history, the kind breathlessly recited by wide-eyed youths who secretly wish that they themselves could have been those soldiers.

Though she steadied her breath, Kamila could feel her heart pounding – faster, faster, as the four soldiers came closer to position. She dared to tilt her head to the side, to push her weight further up against the bark – the faint scratching made her wince, although the footsteps of the Invictans were heavier by far than the sound she’d made. She didn’t dare draw her sword yet, for the obvious rasp of steel against leather it would make. The alarm would be raised instantly when she drew. With luck, she wouldn’t have to, but the fear, and the adrenaline, was already surging through her body.

She glanced south for further signs of Invictan approach. Nothing. The shadows overhead were moving, creating the illusion of things skittering around in the half-darkness of the woods – good. It would cover her movements, a little bit. As the dappled-light patterns danced over her arm, she was distracted for a moment – only a moment. There was, even Kamila had to admit to herself, a strange sort of beauty in all of this. The tension in the air only made that beauty more apparent, more tantalizing for how fleeting she knew it would be. Fear made her eyes fonder of the light, and of the shadow, alike.

When the time came, there was no need for a signal. Everyone knew to move. Kamila set her eye on the one who had stepped out from the patrol’s fan furthest to their right – closest to Kamila – while the others came down in heaps. Lucian dropped from above right on top of the next-furthest, flourishing his daggers in a way that reminded Kamila of descriptions of the Ufalme Syndicate bladedancers. Wallshaker’s whisper in her mind recalled it – in the days after the Aether War, and then – the confusion of the Memory Plague. There’d been so many of these blades still left over from the world, and they wanted to fulfill their purpose. Two cuts, opposite sides of the neck, severing arteries and reducing consciousness to a spark before the victim had a chance to scream. Lucian’s work was that of a poet. Stray droplets of blood landed on Kamila’s forehead as she rounded the corner, emerged from behind her tree, and crashed through the underbrush.

Step over the vine, twirl past the thorns. The voice of the past sang through her fingertips up her arms and told her where to go. She was wind – and the crashing wave became water that flows silently around each stone at the bottom of the stream, while the current above babbles. She ignored the Invictan soldier to her left – dashing past him, stepping high to avoid the brambles. Her voice would have reached Kamila if she had been paying attention, just starting to rise – but did not have the time to get to a shout. A surprised wheeze escaped the soldier’s lips when the first two crossbow bolts came, accompanied by the faint sound of a repeating crank, and collapsed her lungs. With the hiss of two balloons deflating, no gunshot-loud pop to accompany it, she collapsed nerveless at the knees and struck the brush.

Leather rasped against steel as Kamila bounded forward toward her target, ignoring the falling corpses around her. She struck – the hilt of her blade against the target’s temple, knocking him down instantly. He staggered, struggled to move coherently. Kamila could not imagine what he was thinking at the moment but surely he was seeing stars. She flipped the sword’s grip in her hand so it faced outward, grabbed him by the shoulder that faced up, and lifted him. “Come on,” Kamila hissed. And to the stunned soldier: “Silence. You’re more valuable alive. Don’t ruin this for yourself.”

The only sound that went in the Mirshalites’ wake was the rustling of underbrush from the feet of the stunned Invictan Kamila dragged alongside her – but the steps of the Mirshalites were, after the first crashing sound in the rush of first strikes, silent amid the buzzing of insects in the forest and the distance whistle of weapons and the hum of aircraft. A city’s worth of ambient noise, but outside the walls of the true, quiet city which stood still, waiting, with nothing really to do but hope that safety would come some day.

The forest streaked by in greens and browns, all the branches blurring together. Kamila did not pay so much attention to the sights around her – her eyes were on her feet when she was looking at anything at all, or on the captive she held. A moment’s fear ran through her every now and then – was this the correct captive? – and every time she looked at his face and confirmed this was the very one she’d watched from afar. She hadn’t made a mistake. The operation was perfect, and now they were going to get away with the Invictans none the wiser –

Yet it did not feel right. There was still that fear sitting deep in her gut that wouldn’t let go.

It’s about time

She shut up the memory-voice, recognizing it as the one that did not come from Wallshaker, but from within herself. There was no time now, and besides, the time Karla Enok spoke of was long past.

Though she did not register the sights around her, her ears were sharply tuned to every sound. An Invictan scout-plane flew overhead – if it had been a higher, lighter, yet louder whine then Kamila would have thought it another attempt at a bombing run. But there had been no such attempts in weeks. Aleks’ guns were, in spite of everything, effective. The footsteps of her fellows Hunters were barely audible but every once in a while Kamila managed to pick up a footfall underneath the ambient noise. The blended humming of a hundred insects intensified as they ran deeper into the woods and Kamila wanted to clamp her hands over her ears.

In time, they came to the east wall of Kivv, to the little secret locked gate Antonin had secreted in the wall’s patch the last time it fell apart under the words of a foreign soldier. As Lucian scanned the area behind them and looked at the skies to see if they’d been spotted by one of the planes, Kamila pushed her captive up against the wall and set the blade of Wallshaker against his throat.

Finally, she got a good look at his eyes – they were deep brown, matching the youth’s walnut-brown hair. He couldn’t have been much older than Kamila herself, and his skin was bright, almost shining like he’d bathed in all the oils of the rich produce of Gaurlante. Only the insignia of Invictan special forces – set on the right side of his chest, a short distance from center – the mirror of his heart – identified him specifically. His armor was otherwise unadorned.

For nearly a minute the only sound the boy could make was a sputtering. Kamila glanced over her shoulder twice or three times during this period – expecting to see a scout plane overhead. Each time, she only met Lucian’s eyes – and Lucian shook his head, then turned his gaze back toward the distance woods or towards the sky, which remained – for the time being – blessedly clear.

Finally the Gaurl boy managed to speak. “Who – who are you? What do you want?”

“The former, you don’t need to know,” Kamila said, leaning forward. “But you can call me Karla. As for what we want…” She flashed a brief grin. “Do you think of yourself as a very important man, Resource Officer Cori Tember? Because you are – a very important man.”

He, giddy on adrenaline, gave a little grin before he realized the gravity of what Kamila had just said – then he shook his head vigorously as though to shake away the truth of it. “I’m not… I mean I don’t…” He was interrupted, suddenly, by Lucian’s voice – a reprieve as the younger Hunter locked eyes with someone at the gate of the wall.

Kamila had not even noticed it opening, intent as she’d been on her victim.

“You,” Lucian said. “What are you doing –“

“I could ask you the same question,” said a familiar voice that rattled Kamila – where she should have felt no distance, there was an unbridgeable gap. Hilda lingered beside the secret doorway, and when she saw the Invictan captive she hastily closed and concealed the gateway behind her. Kamila felt that strange charge in the air and the rise of heat as Hilda reached through the Veil’s weave and saw the glowing red at her younger sister’s fingertips.

“What are you doing?” Hilda asked, her gaze flicking completely to Kamila. Lucian scoffed, indignant – Kamila glanced up at her fellow Hunter. His right hand was on his hip, his left resting near the handle of a dagger sheathed in his vest.

Kamila had to bite back the retort – “I could ask you the same –“ but she didn’t say it. Her heart couldn’t muster the malice necessary. Instead she just shook her head. “I didn’t expect to see you today,” she said.

“You’ve put them on alert, haven’t you?” Hilda’s voice was small, and hearing it now, this way, reminded Kamila of when they were little. Once, long ago – though it did not feel so long, and yet at the same time she couldn’t wrap her fingers tight enough round the memory – Hilda Zelenko had huddled in a basement with the rim of her hat pulled down to cover her eyes and her whole body wrapped round the frame of an accordion she didn’t dare play for fear of attracting the wrong kind of attention from above. Her voice, then, had been small – then as now she would have been inaudible in a noisy room, but she still spoke as though she was afraid of being heard.

No.

Then, she’d spoken as though she were afraid of being heard.

Now, it was Kamila who was unworthy of hearing her.

Kamila bit her lip, forcing herself not to lash out at her sister. “We were careful,” she said. “More careful than you.”

“And we didn’t go alone,” Lucian said.

“Don’t try to make this about me,” Hilda snapped – to Lucian, not to Kamila, the older Zelenko realized after a moment of confusion. She kept the blade of Wallshaker against Cori Tember’s throat.

Over the next few minutes, Kamila paid little attention to the argument happening behind her – tone told her that Hilda and Lucian were each lashing out at one another angrily, though they did not wish to fight. They fought the kind of genuine fight pursued by opponents who are each defending themselves from the threat they see in front of them, heedless that if one were to simply stop, the other would cease as well, and be more than glad to do so. But she did not register the words anymore. She leaned in to Cori and whispered:

“It will go easier for you if you tell me what I want to know.”

“But they –“

“Don’t look at them. Don’t think about them. You and I are here together, now, and we’ll be the best of friends. If you tell me everything. You’re an important man, Cori. You’re a Resource Officer. Supply routes, logistics plans – I want to know all of it. How you’re supplying this siege. How your camp hasn’t starved to death by now. You don’t know how to harvest the fields in this land and Valers would never hand you our crops without a fight – not without enough of a fight it wouldn’t be worth it to you anymore. Even sister dear over there and her lover boy have seen it – you have secret paths. What are they?”

So finally, you have chosen to listen to me.

Kamila grinned as she forced Cori’s head against the wall – watched him gasp for breath, watched his chest rise and fall rapidly. “Don’t play dumb, I know you can speak.” She leaned forward until her own forehead was pressing up against his, the loose, sweat-beaded hairs in front of her eyes tangling with his own.

“I… I can’t tell you.” Cori shook his head. “You can’t make me. I’ll…” He gulped, took several deep breaths, made another couple of false starts. His fingers were curled as his hands pushed back against the stone, so hard he was beginning to bleed from the fingertips. The skin, roughly scratched off in little patches, made dull streaks against the stone. “You can’t do anything to me as bad as what they’d do to me if I told you.”

“Maybe,” Kamila said. She sat back on her heels, gave a good stare into Cori’s eyes. Behind her, Lucian and Hilda were still arguing. The other Hunters were growing uncomfortable – Kamila felt the subtle shifting of their feet through the ground – which meant, too, that the skies were clear and the Invictans were not nearby. She sighed. “But I think you’ll forget about that quickly.”

She grabbed him by the throat. He barely struggled – instead he only laughed in her face. The argument continued behind Kamila, unabated. She lifted Cori up until his feet left the ground, and then he must have seen the strange fire in Kamila’s eyes – his legs began to kick ineffectually – Kamila felt the shifting of weight but her arm and back were strong, and she kept steady, holding on to the Invictan soldier. The hand that held the blade kept it close, its point resting near the wall, near Cori’s armpit. The hand that held Cori by the throat pushed back against the wall to steady itself against his thrashing.

The argument grew quieter. A voice cut through the sudden silence, but Kamila didn’t hear the words. She recognized her sister’s voice, and she recognized fear of a kind she hadn’t heard since her last day in Etyslund, but the words – they were away in another world. She paid no attention.

Finally, finally you have listened – the thought came to her, and she welcomed it from across the centuries.

And then several things happened all at once.

Hilda saw very little, but did not need eyes to perceive. The fraying she felt rip through the Veil sent her to her knees.

Within seconds, Cori Tember, the Invictan Resource Officer, was dead. But by then, he had already given Kamila everything she needed. In the course of those seconds, his eyes quickly became red and his hair fell from his head. His legs ceased to kick, his arms briefly rose up to try to force Kamila’ hand off his throat, and then his limbs fell to the side and atrophied. His mouth opened – but only a hoarse whisper came out, a long hoarse whisper that went on for each painfully drawn-out millisecond until finally the sound ended with a sudden drop, as though from a scream to complete silence, and his body went limp.

Kamila did not need to hear him to know what he was whispering:

Listen to me listen to me listen to me listen to me listen to me listen to me

And in the contours of the man’s mind – a well-ordered mind if one brushed away all the dust and the pain it kept from touching things directly – a memory given thought walked. Karla Enok would, of course, have imagined herself with hands in pockets, walking down old forgotten hallways as though she were in the Refuge again. She pictured herself with a hood pulled up over her head so often that it became an indelible part of her self-image.

Listen to me listen to me listen to me listen to me listen to me

There were pathways within pathways, a record of those plans the man had helped to draw out, encoded in chains of neurons that stretched and twisted around one another. Karla walked through the halls, delighting in her momentary freedom. After centuries of madness and imprisonment, taking a little agency over the nature of her own cage felt good – like running after an eternity of being confined to a bed. She could even believe, for a moment, the illusion that she was real – that she had a body and an existence of her own.

Quickly she made her way through the hallways – the visualization of synapses interpreted by her ancient mind, which had never been well-tuned to the abstractions of neuroscience. Yes, the halls were orderly, but thanks to the cracks in the foundation, the strain under which the whole structure was beginning to break, they led her inevitably to a single place.

In a grand hall, taller than Karla could see, there was a pool – a mirror-impression of waterlike glass built into the floor. Perfectly rectangular, surrounded by shifting pictures that vanished when Karla looked straight at them. When she knelt at the edge of the pool – just before a small set of stairs leading into the liquid – she felt the cold emanating from it. She ran her hand along the surface of the cool liquid glass, and thoughts bubbled up – tangles of string, each length interrupted at irregular intervals by knots. Karla took each string, fingered the knots one by one to be sure of what she needed, and passed the strings over her shoulders to the figure looming behind.

Kamila took the first string and looked at it. “What’s this supposed to be?” the Valer girl asked, with all the naiveite she must have thought herself incapable of after all she’d seen. Oh, the joyous arrogance of the young – Karla would have been jealous, if she’d possessed independent existence and been foolish enough to still believe arrogance was desirable.

Karla did not answer. She did not need to. She did not possess independent existence, and neither did the manifestation standing behind her – each was only a projection in a mind that was not truly their own. Instead, she took the strings in her hand as they rose up from cold liquid glass, ran her thumb along the knots, and handed the strings off, letting the encoded memories in to wrap around her own synapses and deepen the net, which combined and divided and spiraled and wrapped on, on, to the final depths of the prehistoric nodule of brain tissue that was at once her own and Kamila’s and everyone’s and no one’s.

The walls cracked and the ground shook, and liquid glass sloshed up from the pool with the force of an earthquake. It turned to shards and cut Karla’s face – pieces embedded in her eyes, making lances of pain through her entire body, but she did not scream. She tried to glance over her shoulder – through the blood (not real, nothing is real, I am not real) she saw that Kamila had already collapsed into sand and salt.

Listen to me listen to me listen to me listen to me

“Listen to me!” Kamila screamed as she jerked forward with the sudden return of proper consciousness, crushing Cori’s head against the wall. A crunch and a pop were all she heard, and then Hilda and Lucian – having ceased their argument – were dragging her away from the bloodstained wall, shouting something she could hear but not quite register.

In time, she returned to her own mind. “Kamila!” her sister was shouting in her ear, dragging her toward the door. Kamila thrashed and twisted her neck side to side, to escape from the tight grip – then Lucian wrapped his arm around her neck, elbow in her throat, and she became light-headed, her consciousness slipping out of her grasp. The last thing she saw before the world went dark was Cori’s body slumping to the ground – perfectly intact everywhere beneath his neck.

Karla Enok stumbled down from the bridge and walked slowly along the riverside. It was dark, and the blurring of her vision made it yet darker. With the fearful thoughts of the other riverside wanderers behind her, the pressure in her head had faded and with it clarity. Her breath slowed – painfully slowed – and she walked, hands brushing at her sides, swinging by her hips.

She stopped by the imposing brick wall of the old factory, leaned against its foundation, and watched the river. Ducks were gathering, in the late stages of dusk, or perhaps they were departing – making their way placidly away from some gathering toward some other greater destination to the northeast. As she watched them, her vision slowly cleared, and her gaze flicked over to the distant dock. There was a small crowd gathered by the river – and on the dock, two figures. One held the string of a kite in its hand, and the kite – rising higher and higher in the sky now – spun and flew circles. The kite-flier stumbled and took a steadying step, almost to the edge of the dock – the other turned and started to walk toward the kite-flier. But the flier did not fall, and stepped back again as the kite continued to spin, and spin, and spin.

Karla smiled… and as the kite finally fell, as the wind died and cloth and wood submerged itself in the river, she heard the dial tone end.

“Hey who is this.” The familiar voice on the other side was weary and wary. But he was listening. He was listening.

When she came to a few minutes later – judging by the lack of movement of the sun in the sky as her vision returned in a flash of clarity - she was lying on the ground. Nearby, Lucian and Hilda stood, facing off. Kamila heard their voices as though underwater – distant and distorted by the space between. Hilda was still floating slightly off the ground, while Lucian held a hand on her shoulder, a little too tight. The wind was picking up around them.

The water became wind again. “I can’t believe you of all people are defending her.”

“And are you going to weep for an enemy who wants every single one of us dead? He got what was coming to him.”

“It’s not about him, it’s about what’s happening to her – that wasn’t normal.”

“Is this normal?”

The voices overlapped, and Kamila could hardly judge who was saying what. A great exhaustion weighed her body down, and her hands, stretched out to the sides of her body, stayed where they were, fidgeting with long, tall-standing blades of grass.

“We don’t even know what happened, okay? She was – I don’t know, having a fit or something. Is she…” Hilda glanced back at Kamila. “Is she alright now?”

“I don’t know. Is that what’s important right now?”

“Yes!”

“Why are you so concerned with her well-being when she’s never really cared about yours?”

Kamila sat straight up at that, the words like a lance through her heart. Four eyes snapped toward her immediately, and after a pause she turned to look toward them.

“What just happened, Kamila?” She couldn’t tell whether it was Hilda who asked – gently, hiding her resentment behind a thin piece of silk – or Lucian, glaring at his fellow Hunter as though she were his newest prey. She shook her head slowly.

“I got the information I needed.”

“But you can’t Scry, can you?” Lucian, keeping his center of gravity low, stalked toward Kamila. She moved slowly as she got to her feet, still wobbly after the choking she’d received from Lucian a moment before. His hand went into his coat for the hilt of a dagger. Hilda rushed up behind him, her feet still hanging off the ground, and she put a hand on Lucian’s shoulder.

Lucian brushed past. His normally-impassive face still held little in the way of a readable expression. That impassiveness held fresh terror for Kamila and she scrambled away from him, reaching for Wallshaker – but it was not there. The sword must have fallen by the wall. She’d have to retrieve it. But without it…

Lucian struck her – not with the blade of the knife, but with the hilt, though the impact still spun her and knocked her to the ground. Behind him, Hilda tensed, but didn’t move to stop him. Lucian raised a fist as he came down to the ground to meet Kamila, and Kamila raised her forearm to ward him away, used her other hand to press against his chest and force him to a further range.

Hilda abruptly lowered herself to the ground and Lucian rose back to his feet when another set of footsteps approached, and another voice. “What is happening here?” Antonin Voloshko, his hands still wrapped up together in their sleeve as he glide-walked through the tall grass, frowned down at Kamila. “I will not tolerate infighting in Mirshal’s ranks.”

“Kamila killed a captive,” Lucian said smoothly. “And there’s something wrong with her. She’s losing her mind.” Lucian walked up to Antonin, leaned in, and whispered something Kamila couldn’t hear. She could imagine what he was saying, though. Kamila wasn’t mentally fit for the Hunters.

Who could she trust, then? Not her fellow Hunter, not her sister… Antonin? She looked up toward him, hoping she didn’t look too pathetic with her face bruised and her eyes red and wild.

“I am learning…” Kamila said instead, slowly sitting up. “And I am listening. I am not losing my mind. I know the Invictan supply routes – I learned it from the captive.”

Antonin stopped – his frown deepened – and he knelt. “Did you Scry?” he whispered harshly.

“No,” Kamila said. “I don’t think I did. It’s…”

“So then what did you do?” Antonin’s hand suddenly emerged from his sleeve – it was strangely smooth and unwrinkled for the hand of a man his age, flushed bright red with blood under the skin. “What have you done, Kamila?”

“I just…” Kamila shook her head. Antonin grabbed the collar of her shirt with one hand, and with the other, he took her by the arm and helped her up to her feet. He did not pull roughly – he let her stand under her own power. But he did not let go of her collar.

“Come with me,” Antonin said, and began to walk. Kamila walked with him – what else could she do?

Lucian followed.

Hilda –

Kamila made eye contact with her from across the way, and Hilda looked away, lingering by the inside part of the wall.

“I left my sword outside –“ Kamila hissed to Antonin.

“Hilda!” Antonin shouted. “Would you go and get Kamila’s sword?”

Hilda nodded and turned away. She looked back for a moment and met Kamila’s eyes. Through the haze of her own vision, Kamila couldn’t read Hilda’s expression. They stared at each other, expressionless, for a long few seconds as Kamila struggled to keep pace with Antonin while he began to drag her away – toward the Mirshal Monasteries at the other end of the city.

Then Hilda turned away and went for the gate. Kamila saw something swoop down from the sky – a falcon, which then landed on Hilda’s shoulder as she approached the city’s secret, hidden exit.

Antonin did not pick up or lower his pace. He turned and said in a whisper to Kamila: “What did you see?”

“I told you,” Kamila muttered groggily, batting away Antonin’s hand on the collar of her shirt. She stopped a moment before jogging a few paces to keep step with Antonin. “I told you, I saw the Invictan routes. To maintain the siege, to keep them supplied. And I think we can use that to gain an opening for supplies coming into the city.”

“That’s good, but who will bring them?”

“Aleks didn’t tell you? He received word from some Crescian lady. Carla El-Kir?” The similarity of that name to a name she knew too well made the sentence stutter on Kamila’s lips, but Antonin looked surprised enough to hear it that he didn’t take note of the strangeness of Kamila’s utterance.

“Carla El-Kir is alive?” Antonin said. “I heard that the Invictans finally caught up with her last year. There were rumors she’d escaped yet again, but…”

“Who is she?”

“Founder of the Risir,” Antonin said. “A splinter faction from the Invictan Empire. They’re small and they’ve been on the run ever since the Empire was founded.” The time scale of that boggled Kamila’s mind, but she didn’t have time to think about it.

“In any case,” she said. Then she paused.

Antonin glanced at her. “You’re going to ask me something.”

Kamila scoffed at the remark, but he was right. “It’s kind of an odd name, isn’t it?”

Antonin shrugged, and raised an eyebrow at Kamila. “She is named after some important historical figures. Karla Enok, who was a Legacy Councillor, and the name El-Kir is from her supposed ancestor, the lover of Rumi Darbinian, another Legacy Councillor. How well do you know your pre-Desert history?” Antonin paused. “You are considering telling me something important.”

“I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,” Kamila muttered as she glanced up toward the imposing structures of the Monasteries nearby. “Where are we going?”

“I will let your evasiveness slide. You have important information, through which I can protect you, but others are going to want answers. What you just did – and I am assuming Lucian’s and Hilda’s description, which matches up with what I believed a moment ago, is correct - should not have been possible. You, Kamila, are an anomaly.”

She was growing uneasy, and the memory buried in the back of her head was stirring as well. For the first time in a long time, Kamila felt not contempt but fear from the remnant of the ancient mind in her own mind.

“You don’t think I’m going insane,” Kamila said levelly. “Do you, Antonin?”

“No.” They came to join with the central street of Kivv, heading straight west toward the Monasteries. “I do not think you’re going insane. But I do think that you are suffering, greatly, and I hope that you will one day be free of that which is ailing you. It should not be possible for you to do what you’ve just done, you understand. Naturally, some of us – we noticed the disturbance.”

Kamila’s heart thumped and blood rushed through her chest – she knew before words left her mouth that what she was about to say was not wise, would not help her in the least, but still she opened her lips and said – “so that’s what you and your old man club is doing right now, is it? Sitting in your rooms and meditating while people die and the city suffers and the Invictans continue to surround us?”

Antonin stopped walking.

“Oh, did I strike a nerve?” Kamila kept walking forward, catching up with Antonin, turning to face him. Over his shoulder Kamila saw another figure walking quickly, from the corner of her eye. Badem – the older of the refugee children she’d met in the camp. As soon as she looked at him, he looked back up at her. Though she couldn’t see his expression very well, she could guess by his body language the concern that he felt – slightly titled head, upward-facing and with his hands in his pockets. He bent his knees, hunched his shoulders – just a little – and disappeared behind a building.

“Kamila,” Antonin said slowly. “I tolerate your outbursts because I understand your feelings, and because I have an idea of what may be causing you to experience these… strange phenomena you’ve been experiencing.”

Kamila glowered. “Are you reading my mind right now?”

“No,” Antonin sighed. “It does not work like that.” He gestured toward the door of the Reaper Monastery. “Please come inside.” It was not a request, and Kamila – as much as she hated it – knew that. And so she obeyed.

As they walked through the doorway, Antonin continued. “I have spoken to Doctor Amire,” he said. “He was reluctant to share privileged information with me, but in time he came around – realizing that this is a matter of utmost importance to both your own well-being and to the security of the city as a whole. And the Vale, indeed. And the world.” He sighed. “Some things, in spite of all good intentions, become too dangerous when left alone.” He returned his hands to the inside of his sleeve. “Now I am given to understand that you have inherited the memories of one Karla Enok – and our records indicate that she was a powerful empath. When the Memory Plague came about, Karla was a resident in a Refuge – one which became z’Ark City, on the eastern banks of River Nullius, or the Nile, as it has been.” Adopting the voice of a detached historical narrator, Antonin continued talking, leading Kamila through hallways so winding – so far removed from her normal path up toward the apartments – that Kamila soon did not know which way she was facing. “She was killed – along with several other residents – and it is believed that her empathic powers were the cause of this. She became unstable, and so when she was dispersed into the unconscious mind of all, and became a memory, that memory remained unstable. It… developed certain properties that would prove problematic, in time.”

“I still can’t believe Amire told you about our sessions. Isn’t that… I don’t know, illegal? Unethical?”

“Kamila Zelenko, you just exploded a man’s head when he was your captive and defenseless against you. Do not presume to lecture me about what is ethical and unethical.” It was the harshest Kamila had ever heard Antonin’s voice get. They turned right. “How many people have you killed, then?”

Kamila snorted at the question. “I don’t know. This is a war. How many people have you killed?”

“Twenty-three.”

Kamila blinked. “That is definitely more than me.”

“And yet, I kept count. I didn’t let myself forget a single one of them.” They turned left.

“Where are we going?” Kamila asked aloud.

“We’re almost there,” Antonin said. “But listen to me. Kamila. You’re struggling right now. That’s good. But you have to be careful. I know that you feel you’ve hurt the people around you but you can’t let that make you push them away or you’ll lose what’s left of yourself.” He put his hands on her shoulders and leaned forward, half-whispering, hoarse: “and whatever you do, do not make peace with the part of you that you fear. Fear is good. Fear, and a sharp tongue, sharp eyes, sharp mind – will keep you going.” Antonin gestured to the doorway to the right. “I will make sure you walk out of here. Do not kneel, but do not show defiance.”

And they stepped into the room.

“I’ve brought her,” Antonin said aloud, casting glances around the room. A circle of robed men and women – all elderly, all with palpable auras of power about them, raising the heat and the winds in the room – surrounded the geometric mosaic in the center.

“Then what are we waiting for?” one asked. “She’s the source of the disturbance, we have to purge the disturbance.”

“She is a Hunter of Mirshal,” Antonin said coolly. “And she has brought back valuable information for us. Do not be so quick to dismiss –“

“Need I remind you, Voloshko, of the danger Enok poses?” The voice of another chimed in. “Her position is of no importance next to that danger. If she is the cage in which that cursed soul has found itself imprisoned, then the cage must be melted to slag to kill the dangerous thing inside.”

Kamila’s heart began to beat faster and she turned toward the one who’d spoken, her fist clenched. It was a kneeling woman, her stark-white hair tied back behind her head, streaked with blood-red. Her eyes focused, pupils dilated, on those three blood-red streaks. She thought of what Antonin had said a moment ago – twenty-three. She stepped toward that one, but when she tried to put her foot down on the floor – crossing off the central mosaic – she felt as though she was walking through a sea of pitch. The effort of putting her foot down was so great, and the air was sticky and thick, making her leg sweat intensely. She pulled the foot back. “What would you know?” she half-shouted, grinding her teeth painfully between the words. “I’ve never seen you out there – what have I been fighting for if –“

“I know where the Invictan Emperor is, and that he will arrive in the siege-camp soon. And I know that his power is so great that, without resistance, he will tear the Veil itself and bring this whole place crashing down.” The woman’s eyes snapped open and she looked up at Kamila. The eyes were red, bloodshot, and Kamila saw that the woman – the Mirshal elder – whatever she was – that her face was streaked with tears of exertion. “He – Aivor – wants nothing more than to go home. But to do so will destroy everything the Talisman built, everything the prophets documented, everything we have worked so hard to maintain. Do not mistake harshness for wanton cruelty, Kamila. We act out of knowledge, not out of ignorant fear.”

“And so, what? After everything I’ve done for you, you –“ She stopped, barely able to choke out the words. “You expect me to just lie down and die for you?”

“Yes,” the woman said.

“No,” Antonin said.

Kamila looked toward Antonin. “Is what she’s saying true, then? That I’m a danger to everyone around me? Unstable?”

Antonin shrugged. “Maybe. But you are not losing your mind. You are fighting for it. And I wouldn’t take that from you.”

“It does not matter!” shouted the other Mirshal elder, the one with red-streaked white hair, as she stood up and took a step toward Kamila. The pitch-like air enveloped her. The only thing that moved through it as through normal wind were grains of sand, too small to see, that stung her eyes and ears. “Kamila Zelenko has proven herself untrustworthy. And she might be a Hunter, but what good does that make her as a fighter?” The elder approached her, eyes narrowed. “Would you, Antonin, risk everyone for the sake of one girl – not even the best fighter in the militia?”

“If she is so dangerous, then she is a weapon!” Antonin shouted back – raising his voice higher. With each moment Kamila found herself revising her thought – this was now the angriest she’d seen Antonin. She’d felt the sting of his contempt and mockery in training but that had been cultivated, as much as it still hurt and drove her to hate him. This, though? This anger was real. “If she is a weapon, we can keep her on our side – but you, threatening her life like this, will drive her into the hands of enemies!”

“He does have a point,” another of the Mirshalites gathered there said. “But Voloshko, you understand that the risk here is not just to us. It would be better for the entire city of Kivv to suffer under an Invictan yoke than for the world to be torn asunder by the Desert. We would be as so much overheated glass…”

“I’m not giving up,” Kamila said, through gritted teeth, turning to the other one. It was a terrible effort to move, and her muscles burned with the exertion, but she pivoted, stared down the man who’d just spoken. He was old – even older than any of the others, his face wrinkled and scarred. Blood trickled perpetually from a cut in his forehead that looked old. “I’ve fought too hard to have the semblance of someplace safe. I lost my mother to these bastards and then they sent me fleeing here and now everyone is telling me I’m wrong for wanting to fight back? Do you think I have been too cruel, to the people who destroyed my family?” Her eyes stung with tears and a terrible realization came over her: that in all this time, she had been running too fast, pushing too hard, to let herself mourn what she’d left behind – broken by Fatih Karga’s spear – in Etyslund long ago. “And if what you’re afraid of is some stupid voice in my head – I don’t have to listen to anything it says. It’s a tool, you understand that? And if I’ve used it to get us what we need to win this war, isn’t that a good thing?”

“You’re a tool to her,” the man said, though he did not match Kamila’s anger – he only looked distant and sad. “But you don’t deserve death because of that.”

“We could simply take the information from her mind – the Invictan routes, their interception plans.”

“It’s already done,” the man said. Kamila tensed – in the heat and confusion, she hadn’t even felt the intrusion into her brain, her memories. Mine.

“How do you know so much, then?” Kamila hissed, leaning toward him. Then turning back to the woman with the red-streaked hair. Then back to Antonin. “This is… the Reaper monastery.”

“There is little difference in the end between Reaper and Sower,” Antonin said offhandly, waving an arm. “Two different parts of the same task, the cultivation and maintenance of the Veil. We see the paths differently, but the paths are still there. Chains stretching through time and twisting mist in the wind.” He sighed. And turned his face from Kamila. “The majority decision will have to stand, but before you make your decision, let me state my case –“

“Let me,” a voice said from nearby.

Devani entered the room, fists clenched at her sides, hood still pulled up over her head, sword slung over her shoulder in a new scabbard. She drew it and – to little reaction from the Mirshalites – flipped it, landing the blade in her hand. Then she smiled. “Ah, of course you would not object to my bringing a sword. You knew I would not strike you with it.” She smiled to the council members. “But I have no idea what she will do.”

And she handed the sword to Kamila.

Who held it, standing still.

Devani’s smile slipped a little.

Kamila glanced over Devani’s shoulder and saw Badem standing in the doorway, watching with an expression of dull surprise on his face. Even in the presence of danger, he kept that air of cultivated obliviousness. Even though –

“Hilda told me what happened,” Badem said. “I… I brought your sword, we came as soon as we could.”

“Hilda… helped me?” Kamila tilted her head. “But I thought –“

“Your family squabbles are no concern of mine, Kamila,” Devani said. “Do not distract me with petty things like that.” She turned to the gathered circle of Mirshalites. All were standing now. “I have more important things to deal with.”

Devani took in a breath, and to Kamila it seemed she’d grown in height suddenly. “All of you – you stand here in judgment? You think yourselves mighty?” She chuckled.

Kamila blinked. Devani was projecting her voice, not whispering or muttering as she often did but projecting as though she were putting on a show – and the way she talked, like an actor on the stage reciting poetic lines from an old script…

“As you would judge her, I will pass judgement on all of you. Kamila is a more pivotal part of this all than any of you know or will admit. She has accepted the reality of war – use all that you can against everyone who stands in your way – and for that you condemn her. Are you truly any better than your enemies?”

Antonin shifted uncomfortably, but kept his hands in his sleeve, watching. The woman with the red-streaked hair reached her hand to her side, muttering words under her breath. Kamila recognized Hilda’s movements in the gesture – and expected for a moment to see a red-glowing glaive pop into existence in the woman’s hand. The man with blood perpetually trickling from his forehead lowered his center of gravity, like a snake coiling, ready to pounce.

“The Invictans claim to love peace as they drive to endless war, claim to love their enemies even as they slaughter them and burn their homes, and if you won’t recognize that, how can you do what’s needed?”

“What’s needed…” Kamila whispered. She glanced up at Devani. “What’s needed to make our lives possible?”

The memory of her own fist smashing, repeatedly, into her hated enemy’s head shot through her mind and sent her heart racing faster.

“Quite,” Devani said. “You –“ she turned to Antonin. “You are a defender of peace, no? But do you really love peace if you don’t know war –“

Antonin interrupted, stepping toward Devani. “You are out of line. And I know war well enough to know that we can’t just go out there and –“

“Yet you stay inside these walls, because you don’t know it as I once did!” Devani raised her voice to almost a shriek for a moment. “Do you remember what I remember, Antonin, on the mists of the Great Border?”

Kamila looked toward Antonin, still holding Wallshaker in her grip. Ancient memories of combat flowed through her arm, but she kept them held down. Antonin looked haunted – for the first time since she had known him, and that was so many years, even before the invasion and the flight to Kivv – at the mention of the Great Border.

Devani continued, voice high and harsh. “Do you wish to feel the teachings of all those wars, the ones that raged before the Desert and the ones that quietly sputtered since? Let me show you something. Let me show you, who see only the Veil –“ and she angrily cast her gaze around the whole room – “what the world looks like to the rest of us.”

Kamila did not feel what happened next, but she saw the effect it had on the others. The heat in the room dropped immediately, and the sandy wind ceased to whip around. Antonin was the first to put his hand up to his head. At the doorway, Badem stumbled, backed away from the rest. And the woman with the red-streaked hair turned and pointed at Devani, her mouth open wide, eyes empty of tears now. Accusatory: “Aether-Touched!” she shouted, and then her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell to her knees, mumbling. She began to weep suddenly. Antonin sat slowly down, his eyes open wide with dull shock.

“You wield this power to protect and heighten the physical world, do you not?” Devani stepped into the middle of the room, gazing around contemptuously at everyone there. “Then do so. Do not be so arrogant as to believe you can bury your heads in a world beyond the reach of the mind, only to call yourself a protector.”

As quickly as it had happened, it was over and the council all rose to their feet, and the heat in the air rose again, the wind whipped around.

Hilda rounded the corner into the room, glaive in her hand. “What just happened?” she shouted, pushing past Badem.

Antonin stepped over to where Devani is and seized her by the arm, shouting into her face, “What did you do?”

Badem pushed off of the wall next to the doorway and began to run. His footsteps retreated rapidly under the sound of wind and confused voices.

Kamila found herself dragged, along with Devnai, out the room. As Antonin brought them, passing Hilda, Hilda turned. Kamila stared back at Hilda, trying to make sense of what was happening – but Hilda was not looking at Kamila. She was looking straight at Devani. Her lips moved, but made no sound. But Kamila could guess by the shape of her lips.

“Aether-Touched.”

As he dragged them outside, Antonin muttered just loud enough for Kamila and Devani to hear. “Devani, you will not enter this building again, or I will kill you. Kamila, the others will want your blood even more now. I’ll do what I can for you, but as soon as the siege is lifted, you must leave the city. Indeed, it would be better if you left the Wanderer’s Vale entirely. And it would be best if you did not set foot in here again.”

The light of the outside blinded Kamila for a moment as she was dragged through the doorway. Antonin’s face was impassive, calm again, though he moved with violent suddenness.

Slowly, Kamila rose to her feet. By the time she’d stood up, Antonin was gone – back inside the building – but another set of footsteps, familiar footfalls, approached through the halls. Devani sighed.

“It seems they did not wish to hear what I had to say as yet. But perhaps I’ve given them something to think about.”

“What did you do?” Kamila asked.

“I merely cut them off from the thing they’ve defined themselves by for longer than they can remember,” Devani said, with a shrug.

“And are you… really what they say you are?”

Devani didn’t answer for a moment. She turned toward the south. Then, finally:

“I don’t know. Does it matter? And are you truly what they say you are?”

And like that she departed.

Hilda came out of the Reaper Monastery next, and walked straight up to Kamila. “Where did Devani go?” she asked.

“Not even a ‘hello, sister, I hope you’re okay after a room full of old people tried to kill you’?”

Hilda reached up and lowered the brim of her hat so its shadow fell over her eyes. “Kamila, I told Badem what was happening, he said he’d get help for you. But I didn’t realize he was going to bring an Aether-Touched.”

Hilda remembered a moment, only weeks ago, when she’d felt a presence in the city. A weak one – one she couldn’t pin down to a specific place. Only now, when its influence was active, could she feel its presence more directly, and the trail of the way it had departed. Devani – Hilda had seen her with Kamila and with Badem. She should have guessed Badem would have gone to tell her, out of all the people he could have gone to, about this, but –

“And so… what? Now you hunt her?” Kamila crossed her arms, head angled down to meet Hilda’s eyes – though she couldn’t quite make contact due to the brim of her hat covering her eyes. “She hasn’t done anything except help us. She’s on our side.”

Hilda heart beat fast as she looked up, through her eyebrows, past the brim of the hat. She took a slow breath. “Get out of the way, Kamila.” The joints in her fingers ached. She wanted nothing more than to turn around and run away, back into the safety of the inside, and curl up in a corner and wait for the war to be over, whether it meant her death or not. She stood still in front of her sister and did not raise her voice or let herself quake.

“Why should I?” Kamila took a step forward. “You agree with them, don’t you. You think I did wrong, I’m dangerous?”

“I mean…” Hilda shook her head. “We all saw what happened. Out there. You were…” She trailed off.

“I was what?” Kamila snapped, taking another step forward. Hilda didn’t move. “Hilda, don’t you of all people understand? That man had information we needed, and I got it. And Mirshal still wanted me dead. And you’re going to stand with them, and what – think you’re so much better than the Adma? Antonin isn’t publicly spurning them – while he continues to accept their aid, I would add – because of principles! It’s because of ambition! Can’t you see that?”

“It doesn’t matter, Kamila,” Hilda said. “You are out of control. Ever since you became a Hunter, you’ve been getting worse. I thought you were getting better but now I see all along you’ve just been making peace with the worst parts of yourself.”

“And what would you know about it?” Kamila shouted. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper, “and you didn’t seem too surprised to see me out there, now that you mention it.” Leaning in close to Hilda, she went on, her face red, her rage high enough that she couldn’t contain herself. “The Hunters are a secret… even from you. So who told you? Couldn’t have been Antonin. Did you get that from your fuck toy?”

Hilda flinched. “Why are you so cruel.” She still didn’t left her eyes or raise her voice. Kamila felt the anger rushing through her alongside the anticipation of regret, but she was too caught up to care yet. She knew she’d feel awful enough soon. Her own sister wouldn’t even look her in the eye --!

“Of course it would be Lucian who would spill everything. Man doesn’t have his head sewn on straight. As long as I’ve known him he’s never been able to keep his eyes on target. No wonder you two get along so well.”

“Shut up –“

“I’m going to make him regret opening his stupid mouth!”

By the time Kamila began to swing her fist, Hilda had already ducked the blow. Kamila, face and shoulders flushed with rage, threw her whole body into the right hook, twisting from her hips to her shoulders as she threw out her elbow perpendicular to the rest of her body, but already Hilda was out of the way. If she’d had her gauntlets, the blow would have been twice as fast, and even then she wasn’t sure it would have landed true. It was not that Hilda was faster than her – Kamila had always been one of the fastest kids in Etyslund, and Hilda had never been as athletic as the others. But Hilda knew what Kamila was going to do before Kamila herself did.

Yet she did not strike back.

Hilda simply shrank away, fell into a seated position in the cold dirt. She threw her arms up over her face, and Kamila heard a strangled sob from behind those arms.

“Oh, no,” Kamila whispered, as the pain of muscular exertion went through her arm. She adjusted her stance, relaxed, bent down. “I’m so sorry. Hilda, I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it I swear. You know I – I mean – Hilda, please.” Hilda was already backing away, hands behind her, heels dug into the dirt. She rose to her feet, one hand planted down to her side, legs swinging back to add distance, eyes never leaving Kamila. Eyes! Finally Kamila could see Hilda’s eyes – bright green and shining, tears in them. Too wide. Wide like someone staring into a lamp. “Hilda, please. Please.” And then Kamila was crying too.

Karla stared across the rift torn through the tower, glass and steel melded into a gaping hole that led hundreds of feet down to the concrete earth below. Ofer stood on the other side, one gloved hand holding on to that stupid little pea shooter handgun. “God damn it, Ofer!” Karla shouted across the gap. “I thought you understood!”

Ofer’s voice sounded, by its tone, as though it were barely above a whisper – but Karla heard it just fine. Telepathic murmur-echo or acoustics, or the adrenaline, she wasn’t sure. “I understand just fine,” Ofer said. “You would rather side with the people who tried to have you killed, who did have your father killed, than face the fear of having to build something new. And now you’re in my way.”

“You’re the one who would rather turn your back on me than do what needs to be done when it comes to those you call your enemies.” Karla flicked her toe into the switch inside her boot and leapt across the gap.

Stem-green eyes and steel-grey eyes stared into one another until they could not see each other through tears, and Hilda was so far away Kamila knew there was no point in following.

Hilda ran, followed by the resentful voice inside her own head, the voice of her sister. “I’m better than you. I’m stronger than you. I’m faster than you. I’m worthy. I’m better than you. I’m stronger than you. I’m faster than you. I’m worthy. I’m worthy. I’m worthy. I’m worthyImworthyImworthyImworthyImworthyImworthyImworthy”

When she came to rest, finally, in her apartment with her back to the door and the deadbolt locked, Zoe Bari was there with her – and Fatih Karga, and Cigdem Nacar, and Plato Arap. They shouted at her, from all around, and she buried her head in her arms and put her hands on her ears as though that would drown out the terror, and she sat on the floor, pushing her back hard against the wall, and waited for the panic to go away.

Kamila lay down by the canal through the center of town, watching the horizon, replaying the pathways the Invictans would take to supply their siege. Across the way, she saw Zoe Bari, Zoe and her squad. They were sitting around a campfire. Hands passing tankards between them. Blood sloshed from the rims of their cups.

Kamila rolled over so that she faced the half-frozen dirt, and cried.