The hidden band was at least smart enough not to set up their camp right on the edge of a river of molten rock. Instead they had set up a docking spot near where the river joined a vast lake of lava. I didn’t doubt that it was the lake of fire that Nerco, the tribe leader of the Red Hand, had spoken of in her tale about the Dawn Crawler. The lake wasn’t blinding but it was bright and the heat made my skin feel like it was being scorched just from the proximity. The lake didn’t seem nearly as big as First Shore Lake but no lake was. Still, even with the fog limiting our vision, it did feel like the lake stretched out far into the distance.

I looked for a giant scaled monster with wings but there wasn’t so much as an errant ripple in the slowly churning lake to indicate its presence. The closest thing to the storied creature were the crocodiles and they didn’t have any wings to speak of.

The crocodiles did pull us smoothly along the shore line and the guards on the shore quickly moved to steady our floating box and anchor it to the shore. Then one of our guides opened the door in the box’s side so we could file out and step carefully onto solid ground.

I held in a sigh of relief as I left the box behind. After everyone clumped up on the shore a couple of our guides undid the anchors that the guards had stabbed into the ground and then the four crocodiles that had pulled the box down the river pulled it up onto the shore. Little rivulets of lava streamed from them and the box’s bottom to run back to the lake or puddle on the ground.

The same guides put on large black gloves and stepped carefully around the puddles of molten rock to undo the crocodiles’ harnesses. A couple of the crocodiles took the opportunity to slip immediately back into the lake.

The guards didn’t seem surprised to see us but I didn’t miss the discomfort in their posture and expressions. I wasn’t sure if it was because we weren’t all men or because we were a sizable group that they were suddenly allowing into their hidden sanctuary or some mixture of both. They held their spears with tight grips and, truly, it was odd seeing the weapons in men’s hands with no whisper women to lead them nearby.

Nor could I completely hide my own discomfort at seeing the two buildings that made up their docking spot. They were permanent, something I had only seen with the communal hall in Grislander’s Maw and the Rookery. But even those buildings had been mounds of hollowed out dirt which was much more understandable than what these men had done.

Wood. The buildings were made out of wood. They stuck out in sharp angles from the ground with limbs—trunks—locking together at the corners. Clear evidence of the trees they must have chopped down. It made my stomach twist between horror and disgust.

It felt sacrilegious just looking at the things.

The floating box was one thing…but to push it even further and live inside cut down trees? That felt like a passionate plea for the goddess’s wrath.

And yet they were all still standing along with their wretched buildings.

Perhaps She truly did only care about Her pine trees, but I still couldn’t bring myself to look at the unnatural buildings for long and I had a bad premonition about what we would find in the band proper. Everyone in our group gave the buildings a wide berth and long judgmental looks if we deigned to look at them at all.

The hidden band’s main camp was a short walk through a forest of unnatural trees. When we reached it I saw it was more akin to the Rookery’s village than a camp. It also was and wasn’t what I feared.

The village encompassed two wide hills of about equal height and the narrow valley between them just before the slope behind the hills steepened suddenly to become the valley’s side. More wooden buildings broke through the fog, at least half the village that I could see, but it seemed not all of the band’s inhabitants could stomach sleeping surrounded by felled trees. There were also the homes of dug out mounds of dirt that gave the hills a lumpy quality and tents speckled between the more permanent structures.

The area bustled with activity as men hurried along paths worn into the ground by long use and they all worked to make the most of the warm season. Not even this place could entirely escape or ignore the long months of the goddess’s chill influence.

I felt like a dullard who couldn’t help but repeat the same thing over and over, but the sheer number of men without a single woman to break them up looked truly unnatural. One pair even deliberately caught Nine Claw’s attention before they wrapped their arms around each other and kissed each other sloppily.

Bold. Stupidly so, but their point was clear: we were in their home, their territory and they refused to bend to our expectations after they carved out their place here. Even for a whisper woman, one blessed and singled out by the goddess after a fashion. A position they could never achieve simply because of how they were born.

Well, all the eyes boring into us seemed to say, we might never had a place in your world but you will never have one here.

So many things all packed together that everyone knew the goddess hated. Men, with no women to balance the scales, that had certainly built up enough life between them that it could be considered a sign of disregard and a challenge to Her power. Especially when it seemed, from the open, deliberate displays of affection happening all around us ,many of them had come here to pursue their romantic or physical interests without condemnation constantly hanging over their heads. Not all of the men had gray lips but the majority of them did.

All of it amounting to more life than a single healer could ever have contained.

Dead trees, deliberately cut down and their corpses used for something other than the goddess’s gift of fire or a huntress’s necessary hunt to provide for the tribe.

Nothing about this place honored any of Her aspects. It was hot and muggy for Her cold and Her snow. There were shadows, though none stretched from pine trees as there was none of those to be found. The fog blocked out the stars at night and with every else wrong about these valleys I doubted they honored death in the same way as everyone else did.

Based on what I had been taught since birth all of these people, this place, should have been wiped away long ago after having thoroughly incurred Her wrath.

But they were still here. Muttering, glowering, gloating as we headed deeper into their midst.

Malady stopped short, seemingly ready to berate the couple making out and everyone else who dared taunt her mistress, but Nine Claws put a hand on her arm and shook her head.

“We will speak to those whose opinions matter.”

More than a few in the crowd around us bristled at that but a handful of our guides made a subtle hand motion I couldn’t quite catch and they subsided again.

Sharp comments and cutting observations bubbled on my tongue at the sheer amount of audacity we were being shown, but I kept my jaw clenched and everything I wanted to say behind my teeth. If Nine Claws could show restraint at this display despite being a whisper woman than I could hold my tongue too.

Prevna and I still shared multiple looks of shock and incredulity. Compared to these people our guides had been downright deferent despite insisting we put on blindfolds and not treating Nine Claws with as much respect as expected. Our hands hovered near our weapons the entire time we traveled through the village.

Gard had Colm by the hand and while the boy looked around in wide eyed wonder at all the new things now that he gotten over being on the lava river, Gard seemed conflicted. Possibly enticed by this way of living he never could have dreamed of and disturbed by their clear hostility.

Kuma and Jika also kept close together and I wouldn’t have been surprised if they were at least somewhat relieved that they didn’t have to live here where they were unwelcome on sight.

The guides took us to the top of the right hill. The largest of all the buildings sat on its top with a wooden bridge stretching across the gap between the hills to the second largest building in village. Both made out of a mix of wood and earth. Perhaps if they didn’t seem to insist on using wood for everything I might been more interested in how they made their own bridge.

The building was made out of reddish wood and had the same sharp angles as the ones at the dock outpost. They still used an animal skin to cover the entrance, however, and once we stepped inside the thing we found that it was mostly one large room like the community hall though it was nearly comparable in size to that. This building might hold a fourth of the Gabbler Shore tribe comfortably while the community hall in Grislander’s Maw held all the the tribes who came to shelter for the winter. Nor did they have glow stones here to light up the space. Instead plants with glowing bulbs twined around the walls provided enough light for us to see. I wasn’t sure how they survived without sunlight and I wanted to get close to a wall to examine them but I kept myself near Prevna.

I wouldn’t be enticed by their strange plants and I wouldn’t admit that they were beautiful.

The guides stayed outside when they had us enter so it was just our group and the two people already inside together when the door flap closed. The two men sat on elaborate looking cushions near the middle of the room. One looked older with gray streaks in his hair, but he still had the build of someone who decided to carry rocks for a living. If he stood up I was sure he’d tower over Nine Claws and me without even trying. The other looked like he was at least two decades younger than the other man with long flowing hair tied partially back in a more elegant design than I would have ever expected to see on a man. He was thinner as well but he didn’t seem weak. Really, the look in his eyes reminded me of her: he had his resources and he would make use of them until they broke.

They didn’t stand when we entered though it seemed like they had been expecting us rather than us interrupting something. Malady tensed up at that as they should have stood of up out of common decency, if not respect.

The elegant looking one gestured to the dirt floor. “Please sit.”

I hissed out a breath.

No offer of cushions even after they refused to stand. Clearly these two stood alongside their people, though it was just as likely they were the source of the hostility and disdain. When they sat on plumped up, decorated cushions and expected us to make due with nothing…well, the power dynamic they wanted to establish was hardly subtle.

“You walk a narrow edge.” Nine Claws ignored his offer to provide a warning of her own.

The older brute crossed his arms and kept silent while the younger smiled in a way that couldn’t construed as anything but false. “You are the ones who bring us new people we will need to provide for and ask to explore our master’s lands.”

Malady was seething at this point and not even Nine Claw’s quiet rebuke could keep her from snapping, “Master?”

“The king of these valleys and the holy lake. Our master who watches over us and these lands even when gods gods are distant: the Dawn Crawler,” the younger man explained.

Nine Claws wasn’t drawn into the bait to ask more about the Dawn Crawler. Instead she fixed the two men with an evaluating look that found them wanting and asked, “And who are you to speak the goddess’s own in such a way?”

“Deamar.” The man who thought too highly of himself touched his chest before gesturing to the older man almost as an afterthought. “And Logar.”

He didn’t ask for our names before he continued, “You—”

Nine Claws took a step forward and cut him off, “Don’t mistake the goddess’s apathy for personal power. Do not think that my courtesy in allowing you to speak means your words have any meaning. How long do you think your Dawn Crawler would last should the goddess turn Her attention here?”

Her cats appeared around us between one breath and the next. Not a single one was in a threatening pose but the man’s breath hitched as he was suddenly hemmed in by spiritual cats. She turned her attention to the older man who had yet to speak. “I came here to speak to those whose opinions matter. If this farce continues then I will have no choice but to bring judgment to bear.”

Logar glanced over his shoulder and called out, “I told you, Morn. His head is too big after seeing nothing but these valleys. He’s got no idea what the world is like.”

There was a shocked moment as the tension splintered before another man bustled out of a hidden doorway. He was nearly completely obscured by all of the cushions he was carrying and his voice came out muffled, “Nothing better than this to poke a hole and squeeze all that hot air out of him then.”

Deamar turned suddenly pleading eyes on Logar, “Father—”

Logar gestured to the side of the room. “Go sit over there and watch. Silently. Try to learn something.”

The new man dropped the cushions in front of us to reveal a man who looked like an older, wiser version of Deamar. “Thank you for your patience with that little lesson, mistress. Our people might not take well to…outsiders but there are those of us who understand the goddess is only limited by Her own will.” He bent down to grab a cushion before offering it to Nine Claws. “Shall we begin our true discussion?”