Mythical Anna

It has come to our attention that some authors struggle to kill off characters in whom they have invested, even when it would further the plot and aid in character growth. In order to avoid this shortcoming, we present this study in killing characters. To prevent lack of investment in a given character, everything possible has been randomized. The eight principal characters represent the stereotypical members of a fantasy group, with roles randomly assigned to equal numbers of either sex. The perspective order (excluding that of Marya, whose perspective begins each section) is also fully randomized, as is the order of character deaths and the specific perspective in which each consecutive death occurs.

Marya hesitated, her hand poised over the switch that would turn on her Device. She had no choice, she knew, since this was both her job and her punishment, but still, unreasonably, her hand did not descend. It’s easy right now, she told herself. Easy. With a quick motion she pushed the switch and sat back, breathing hard. The Device gave a low groan and shivered to life. The grainy screen flickered and slowly zoomed in on a large blue banner, carefully embroidered with the king’s decree. He’s mad, Marya thought, then quickly pushed the thought away. It had been similar words to those that had gotten her thrown in jail in the first place. It was nothing to her if the king wanted to prove his ultimate power over everyone in the country, nothing to her if he wanted to use teens to feed his insanity, getting them to solve unsolvable puzzles, escape unescapable traps, find things that didn’t exist. Except it did matter. It mattered very much. But there was nothing she could do that would stop the orders from coming.
On screen, crowds of teens were arriving, their necks craned to look up at the blue banner. Marya watched as their numbers swelled. It was easy to believe that this was all the teens in the country between 14 and 16, as the king had commanded. Of course, some had probably stayed quietly at home, hoping their absence would not be noticed, but most would not dare to disobey. Marya’s hands trembled, and she pulled them away from the panel of buttons. Through the Device, she saw a tall, heavyset man step up onto the platform. It was Malcav, one of the king’s trusted advisors. He was the man who had led her to this station, and the one who would bring her orders. She hated him.
He had a long list in one hand, and teen after teen stepped up beside him, filling groups.
Her Device jerked, and she stiffened, but it only zoomed in, the audio crackling to life. This was her group, then.
Malcav’s voice sounded thin and strange through the Device, but Marya heard the names plainly, each cementing itself painfully into her mind.
“Annersap. Okner, Annersap.”
A tall boy, auburn hair cropped close to his head, mounted the stage.
“Arundasi. Joran, Arundasi.”
A short, round boy, skewed by the Device.
“Aztlán. Friya, Aztlán.”
A girl now, tall and blonde. Marya wanted to stop watching, but she didn’t dare. She’d have to be able to recognize these teens.
“Noy. Solldero, Noy.”
Another boy, dark haired and skinned. Neither tall nor short, she thought, though the Device made it hard to tell.
“Questel. Zinnia, Questel.”
A pang shot to Marya’s heart. Zinnia was her own sister’s name. But the girl was nothing like Marya’s sister; she had tanned skin and a curtain of long, black hair.
“Stern. Leera, Stern.”
A lovely girl made her way up to the platform. When she turned to face the rest, Marya’s gaze fell on the thick braid of black hair lying precisely over her shoulder.
Suddenly, Marya reached to turn off the Device, catching herself just in time.
Watch, she told herself. That’s all you have to do for now.
“Tonarych. Elle, Tonarych.”
There was a moment of confusion in the crowd as two teens started to ascend the platform. When the full name was called, the boy sank back into the crowd and a short, brown-haired girl continued to stand next to the others.
“Vojen. Cay, Vojen.”
A wide boy with a thatch of light brown hair ran up the steps to the platform, tripped on the top one, and fell flat. The brown-haired girl helped him up, and Malcav waited for the murmur of laughter to die away before announcing,
“Annersap, Aztlán, Noy, Questel, Stern, Tonarych, Vojen. You are Group Marya.”
Marya flinched violently. Malcav seemed to be staring directly at her as he named the oblivious group after her. She barely heard Malcav directing her group to their quarters to await instructions. The audio turned off, then, and shortly after, the screen went blank. The day’s work was over. Marya stared at the screen for several moments, seeing again each of the eight teens just named.
With a vicious jab of her thumb, she turned off the Device, covered her face with her hands, and cried.

Cay Vojen watched admiringly as the tall boy in front of him ducked slightly to go through the doorframe. It was unnecessary, true, but it lent an air of power to the boy. Cay himself made it into the house with only a bruised elbow, something of an accomplishment for him. Taking a deep breath, he enjoyed the musty, polished smell, so different from the sweaty stench outside or the earthy scent of his uncle’s farm. He stepped aside to allow the other teens to enter, rubbing his shin where he’d scraped it falling on the platform. One of the girls brushed a strand of long, straight hair out of her face.
“Are you okay?”
It took Cay a moment to realize she was talking to him.
“Oh, yeah. No. Uh, I sort of scraped my leg. But I’m fine. Unless you want to look at it. I mean. . .”
As usual, he’d said too much, too loudly. Embarrassed, the others looked away, and Cay bit his tongue. He should’ve done it sooner.
“My mother’s a doctor. I can help you, if you want.” The girl was still standing there.
“Sure. Please. Thanks.” Cay bit his tongue again, harder, and took a deep breath.
“I’m Cay.”
“Zinn,” the girl responded, opening her backpack and pulling out a large kit.
“Could you roll up your pant leg?”
Cay sat down in the entryway, ducking as another boy leaned past him to shut the door.
The scrape wasn’t too bad, but it was bleeding more than he’d realized.
Zinn worked quickly and efficiently, her tanned hands jumping from kit to scrape with practiced ease. When she sat back, Cay caught a whiff of flowers and sniffed appreciatively.
“Wow, thanks. That was really fast. And I like your smell.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and he hastened to correct himself.
“I mean, your perfume, or whatever’s on your hair. Or-”
She drew back, staring at him, and walked away.
Cay sighed. He’d have to figure out how to apologize, sometime soon. After all, they would be working together for the next week.

Joran Arundasi started to stand on tiptoe to see over the shoulders of the taller boys in front of him, but thought better of it. If he lost his balance and fell into one of them . . . he shuddered to think of it. One of the boys in front of him turned around, revealing a narrow face with a tiny, scraggly, auburn mustache.
“Quite frankly,” he was saying, “I do not much care for this particular invention of Joseph Antugne’s. Within the wide range of his ideas, the most useful was the idea of rolling stairs. Of course, rolling stairs were later perfected by the Ottern brothers, but Antugne…”
“Nice mustache,” Joran told him, grinning. “Without it, I might have thought you were a fish, but now I see you’re a catfish.”
The other boy, dark-skinned with tight curls, turned sharply.
“Enough. You’re Arundasi, are you?”
Crushed, Jor nodded.
“Know anything about locks?”
Joran flinched at the mention of anything mechanical, but he nodded again.
The boy stepped back and gestured to the door.
Joran bent over the doorknob. It was a modern lock, the kind his father had recently begun to use for his storehouses.
“What did the spy say to the ninja?” he began, a grin spreading over his face.
The boy coughed impatiently.
“It’s a detector lock,” Jor mumbled, the grin vanishing. “The key should be in a little box somewhere . . .”
He located it on the wall, uncomfortably conscious of his damp hair, wrinkled shirt, and scuffed shoes. He would have to reach up to get it. If only he weren’t so short. . .
“Did you guys hear about the giraffe who was too silly to wear a scarf in the winter? He was a real redneck.”
One of the girls laughed, more to be kind than because the joke had been funny.
“The giraffe – an interesting choice of subject for a joke.”
The mustache boy was leaning against the wall, looking meditatively up at the ceiling. “Although it once lived on all three continents, excessive hunting has caused a decline in the species-”
The curly-haired boy was examining the box.
“And this?” he said quietly to Joran.
Joran reluctantly looked at it.
“There’s a five-digit code.”
He hoped the boy wouldn’t expect him to remember it. He knew that someone had told the group the code, but he couldn’t remember even one number.
The mustache boy was still talking.
“. . . speaking of which, scientists’ attention has been turned to an unnatural surge of aggression between giraffes and elephants in the past year. Theories include-”
Jor opened his mouth to make another joke, but one of the girls, half hiding behind sweeping black hair, slipped past him and tapped in the code. The box fell open, and the curly-haired boy caught the key as it fell out.
“Nice,” was all he said, but Joran felt a pang of envy; he wished he had done something more than identify the lock. It occurred to him that with that simple word, the curly-haired boy had assumed the role of leader, taking on all responsibilities. It was a very human role, Joran thought, but he wouldn’t oppose him.
The boy unlocked all four doors. Joran peeked inside one, wondering if they’d get to choose their beds, but each cot had a placard on it with one of their names. Jor twisted his face into a smile, but they hadn’t been allowed to choose the other members in their group, nor select their living quarters. Assigning them their beds dehumanized them further.

Zinnia Questel followed the others from room to room, but she wasn’t looking at the furnishings or finding her bed. She was noticing little red-brown stains around the seams of the walls. They were like tiny flowers pricking through snow.
Her eye fell on a placard on one of the beds. She picked it up to look closer at it.
The edges were uneven, jagged as though they had been individually cut out. There was a small blister on the back of this one; a single drop of water had landed on it.
Someone touched her shoulder. Jerking violently away, Zinn spun against the wall, feeling individually the invisible bumps and hollows.
One of the other girls was standing there, a careful expression of surprise on her face. She was pretty, with black hair in a thick braid. Zinnia focused on that, her fingers subtly tracing the smooth curves of it as the strands ducked and curled around one another.
“That’s me,” the girl said.
Zinn looked up.
The girl gestured to the placard.
“I’m Leera Stern.”
Her nose was small and sharp, a few freckles sprinkled across it. Two shorter hairs had escaped from the braid and drifted across her forehead.
Zinn forced her mind away from details. Leera had just said something, Zinnia didn’t know what.
Fortunately, the taller girl didn’t seem to mind.
“You’re in the room across the hall, I believe.” She paused, watching Zinn.
“You have a good mind for details. If you see something out of the ordinary, tell me, all right?”
Zinn nodded.

Solldero Noy stood facing the front door. The pose discouraged anyone from coming up to him, but he was fully aware of their movements. At the moment, the seven other teens in Solldero’s group were accustoming themselves to their new living quarters. Solldero had slept in new beds before; his mind was on other matters. He was already considering the positions he would put the others in if they got into a dangerous situation. He’d have to drill them on their places – Solldero knew that crowds could turn into mobs in the blink of an eye, especially if they were half-drunk. He’d seen it happen before at various taverns on the Oceanfront. Maybe Annersap on his right – he was tall enough. Solldero didn’t fully trust him, though. Vojen would have to go somewhere in the back. Not the left, since that was a pivot point. The right, then. The one problem with Arundasi was that he was short. Also, he spilled jokes like a tired barmaid.
He wasn’t sure about the girls, except Questel. She was obviously the right choice for healer, so the center for her. Then there was the question of standing guard during the night. Solldero wasn’t sure the others would accept his authority if he ordered watches, and the only alternative was staying up himself. He yawned in spite of himself. It had been a long journey to get here, and he was worn out from staying on high alert for the past several hours. He didn’t trust that man, Malcav.
Footsteps dropped lightly behind him. One of the girls gave a polite cough.
“Yes?”
Solldero turned his head to look at her in his peripheral vision.
It was Leera Stern.
She nodded to him, clasping her hands behind her back, and moved up to stand at his side.
“I’d like to volunteer for guard duty tonight.”
Solldero took a moment before responding. He appreciated how she’d come straight to the point, no beating around the bush or unnecessary words. Her choice of words was intriguing, showing a mind that moved on a parallel track with his. She hadn’t asked if there was going to be guard duty, which would have devalued his leadership, or suggested that he appoint her to watch, which would have suggested that he wasn’t the leader here. Most importantly, she’d used the word ‘guard’, which implied that she, too, didn’t trust the king or his representatives.
“Fine. Take the first half, I’ll take the second.”
She flashed him a quick glance, and he noted with satisfaction that she understood his subtext. He was taking more responsibility in standing watch in the more dangerous time, and taking more leadership by being the one to be already alert when the others awoke. He was also tacitly admitting that he couldn’t be certain if the others had accepted him as leader, and that he didn’t fully trust them. Solldero held his breath, waiting to see what she would do.
She nodded crisply, waited a moment longer, then quietly withdrew.
Solldero faced the door again, analyzing the faint noises outside for danger. Yes, he decided, Stern would go on his left. It was his weaker side, but she could handle the pressure. Annersap would go on his right, where he could keep an eye on him. He’d tell the others in the morning.

Friya Aztlán turned back the covers on her bed with a shudder. Were most sheets like these? They were so . . . coarse. She’d noticed that the other teens, all working class, wore clothes of similar materials. The girl just coming into the room, Leera Stern, even used this dark, rough cloth to tie her braid. Friya couldn’t imagine tying her own hair with anything but the silk ribbons she was accustomed to. She opened her embroidered bag to take out a nightgown, wavering between dark blue and violet. Leera, Friya noticed, was wearing all dark colors. Some black, mostly dark greys and earthy browns. It made her look powerful, and Friya felt small next to her, although in reality she was a bit taller. Violet, Friya decided, was too fancy. With a jolt, she realized that she was the one out of place here, not the other teens or the rough materials and dark colors. She knew nothing of – well, anything they were going to do. However much she tried to fit in, she’d still be as flimsy as her nightgown in comparison with the others.
She admired the way the others were accepting statuses. Joran Arundasi, for example, seemed comfortable joking around all the time, even when he was repeatedly put down. Or Zinnia Questel. Zinn, she’d introduced herself to Cay. She was so ready to help the other teens. Friya didn’t know what help she’d be in solving riddles and finding oddities. She couldn’t even figure out what her place was in group Marya.
Frowning, Friya sat on the bed. It felt as lumpy and grey as it looked. Still, Friya was resolved not to complain. She wasn’t truly part of the group, but she certainly didn’t want them to look down on her. She looked over at Leera to see how she was coping.
Leera was looking back at her, waiting almost impatiently. For what? For Friya to go to sleep?
Friya tried to return the look, but Leera’s cool stare was quickly draining her confidence.
“What?” Friya managed weakly.
Leera looked away without answering.
Friya bit her lip and lay down. She was nervous, tired, and uncomfortable, and she was lonely. Well, she had been lonely before. This was an adventure. She might as well make the best of it.

Okner Annersap wondered vaguely why his roommate was watching him with glowing admiration, but his mind was working on remembering the author of that book he’d read on the history of bedsteads. The bedstead he was currently lying on was short and squat, with iron on the outside.
“It is probably hollow,” he went on. No point in wasting a good audience. “Beds were expensive and heavy around the time they came up with this style. The Count of Nort. suggested they make hollow bars. He also suggested that the beds be worked and assembled relay fashion, but the latter suggestion was adapted nearly a decade after his death.”
There was a knock on the door.
A boy – the tense, wiry one – put in his head.
“I’ll wake you tomorrow at first light. We want to get the jump on the other groups.”
“Ah,” Okner said. He had remembered the author of that book. He was the son of a more famous author, who had (unusually) written a sequel for a series by a third author, recently deceased.
The wiry boy was still speaking.
“I also want to do a few drills. Have you heard of Alar Solldero?”
Okner’s roommate shook his head silently, and Okner straightened with pleasure.
“He became famous when, after being captured by pirates, he-”
“After that.”
Okner was annoyed, but he mentally jumped thirty-odd years.
“When he received word of his wife’s death, he took up residence on a large residential harbor called Oceanfront, where he organized a small band into a group called ‘Solldero’s Arm’. It more than doubled in size within a year, due to local admiration and the pressing necessity of work under Governor Yilor. The group was known for keeping order and assisting in-”
The wiry boy broke in.
“He trained his men so well that at a flick of his finger they could be under cover before a knife could be thrown. Not one of his men died while under his command, except one who disobeyed his order to drop. Alar Solldero was loved and respected until the day of his death.”
“I was just coming to that,” Okner said, disgruntled.
The boy merely looked at him, the enthusiasm in his eyes and voice quickly fading to impassivity.
“At first light,” he repeated, and shut the door.
Okner considered getting up and slamming the door, like the erstwhile King’s Companion, just to make a point, but he decided against it. The King’s Companion had later been executed, as he recalled. . .

Leera Stern pulled her blanket closer around her shoulders, stifling a yawn. Soldiers didn’t fall asleep on duty; she’d learned that from when her brother Keern had done it in a week-long practice with her father as captain. He’d had to do chores all night the rest of the week.
Leera had been careful to do her best on every duty after that. Still, she rather hoped something exciting would happen during her watch tonight. It wasn’t that she was trying to gain favors with Noy – as far as she was concerned, he could use her as she was, or not at all – but it would be something to do. Her father had warned her that the king wouldn’t play fair, and sometimes the expectation of danger was worse than the danger itself. Also, boring.
She stood up and paced the hallway, ready to dive into the nearest doorway the instant an attack came. Nothing of consequence happened.
Leera pursed her lips as the time came near to switch shifts with Noy. She wouldn’t be surprised if the night were totally uneventful. How annoying.

Elle Tonarych stood in the dark hallway, blinking bemusedly. She would be happy to do whatever their leader – Solldero, she thought his name was – wanted, but they hadn’t had breakfast yet, and she was tired.
“No!” he was saying. “It’s got to be faster than that. See, if someone throws a knife, you can’t duck two seconds after I put up my hand. You’ve got to duck practically while I put up my hand.”
He looked around at their bleary faces, looking discouraged.
Elle felt sorry for him. None of them was doing very well, except the girl with all that hair coiled on one side of her head. Determination radiated from her.
“Well, let’s practice running,” Solldero said wearily.
“Why in the world should we go left when you point right?” the light-haired boy asked.
Solldero closed his eyes, and Elle closed her own in sympathy. He’d already explained this twice.
“’Cause left is right, and right is wrong!” cut in the shortest boy.
The light-haired boy looked confused.
“I believe it is intended to confuse the enemy,” the tallest boy explained thoughtfully. “Although I do not think we will encounter anyone who would fall under that category.”
“You never know-” Solldero began.
“That’s nonsense! The king would never tell us to do something dangerous. I don’t see why we should do this at all.”
It was the noble’s daughter talking. She had been the most awkward of them all at dropping and ducking, and now she looked hot and disagreeable, her blonde hair clumped into sweaty strands.
Solldero clenched his fists in exasperation.
“Look, I know we have different political views, but-”
The light-haired boy interrupted him, speaking to the noble’s daughter.
“My uncle says the king is crazy. He’s a blundering idiot, and spoiled and self-centered.”
Elle cringed. She could see the conversation deteriorating into an argument.
“The king? Crazy? That’s treas-”
The girl who’d been doing the best at the exercises leaped forward.
“All right, you two. Everyone, listen up! You were not invited to a political discussion, you were ordered to a drill. In a drill, you don’t talk without permission, you don’t walk without permission, you don’t do anything without permission.” She had been striding along their ragged row, hands clasped behind her back, staring them all in the eye. She jerked her chin at the tallest boy.
“And do you know where you get that permission?”
He looked offended.
“From Noy. If he tells you to drop, drop. If he tells you to run, run. Listen, people. If you don’t like the king, well, show him up by defeating every task. If you’re a loyal subject, fulfill the requirements he set out. But either way, you take orders from Noy. Got it?”
Elle sent her an appreciative smile and nodded. She’d adroitly averted the argument. The others made similar gestures of acknowledgement, and the girl marched back to her place in the line.
“Noy.” She nodded at their leader, who nodded back gratefully.
Elle took a deep breath and shook away thoughts of breakfast and her brother, living in a different group, and focused on preparing for the tasks the king would set them.
One week. Then it would be over, and they would all return home.

Marya looked up when the door opened. Malcav hadn’t kept her waiting long, but now he merely stood there, watching her.
“Well?” Marya finally asked with as much respect as she could muster. “Are there orders . . . from the king?”
She was fairly certain that Malcav came up with her orders himself, but she couldn’t say that, of course.
“Not yet,” Malcav said. “You are to watch them today. They will receive their first task of seven.”
Still, he stood looking down his nose at her.
“Why me?” Marya finally burst out. “Or are there other groups like. . . this?”
He smiled coldly.
“No. You were the only one to – speak out boldly. The most boldly.” He’d broken out of his chilly mold and grown angry. “You spoke out against the king and his advisors! No punishment is bad enough for you.”
He went out quickly, slamming the door behind him.
Marya sat watching the glass tremble in its frame. What had gotten him so angry?
You were the only one to. . .
What had she done that was different?
She remembered saying that the king was a puppet king, directed by puppeteers even sillier than the king. Had she been the only one to say that?
It seemed that she had struck home. Perhaps Malcav was manipulating the king and didn’t want the king to notice.
Regardless, she had no choice but to obey Malcav. For now, she might as well enjoy her reprieve. It would doubtless be short.

Solldero Noy waved a tired hand at his enervated group, and they stumbled gratefully to a stop. Annersap remained on his feet, dignified and aloof despite the sweat dripping down his face, but the others collapsed to the floor, all except for Stern. Solldero signaled to her, and she walked briskly toward him, showing no signs of fatigue. Solldero himself felt mildly strained, but more from corralling the others than his exertions.
“I think we’re about to get our first assignment.”
Her eyes shone with anticipation.
“Shall I intercept it?”
“No.” He waved her back, straining to hear past the noise the other teens were making.
“It’s too early. They won’t expect us to be awake yet. Tell the others to be quiet.”
She hushed them with a single hissed command.
He was lucky to have her, Solldero realized, even if he was a little disappointed about the others in his group. She was the ideal second.
Sidling up to the door, Solldero pressed himself gradually against it, listening for the noise he’d caught before. It was louder now, and much easier to hear. Hoofbeats, just one horse, he thought. And footsteps, rapid and even. The horse stopped, farther away from the door than Solldero had anticipated. He closed his eyes, focusing like the dolphin his sister had once compared him to on the sounds bouncing off the walls outside. It seemed to him that the footsteps were moving toward the horse – and there was a thump when the rider jumped down. He wouldn’t be able to hear if they started talking, not with the others whispering and panting so close.
Solldero snapped his fingers softly and waved his hand at the far wall. He didn’t have to look back to know that Stern understood.
When silence reigned, Solldero could just make out low voices. One of them sounded like the man they’d met when they first arrived. Malcav.
“. . . give it to them?”
“No. This is the death group. I’ll handle it.”
Footsteps approached the door, and Solldero threw himself back, forcing himself to turn and face the others, who were watching him blankly.
There was a clunk just outside the door, and a sharp tap on the door itself. Solldero closed his eyes, listening until he was sure that no one was there. Then he opened the door and picked up the package that lay on the doorstep.
He looked down at it, noting the clumsy knots that tied it.
Whatever the words he’d heard meant, Solldero resolved to protect his group. Even if it meant protecting them from the king.

Zinnia Questel hung back as the other teens opened the package. She’d jumped an inch when the knock came on the door, and her heart was still thumping. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was in the package.
A movement caught her eye, and she saw their leader stooping to pick up the discarded string. He turned it over in his hands, looking at the knot. Zinn looked at it, too, but she couldn’t make sense of the misshapen bump.
“It says, ‘Open the door,’” Cay said. He frowned at a piece of paper in his hand. “Door isn’t spelled like that, is it?”
Zinn’s gaze turned to Cay’s scraped leg. He wasn’t favoring it; probably the bandage wouldn’t even need to be changed. She let out a small sigh of pleasure – it was always good to heal someone – and stepped back, flushing, when their leader glanced at her.
The blonde girl snatched the paper from Cay.
“Door is spelled d-o-o-r,” she said scornfully, glancing down at it. Then she gasped. “This is court writing!” She turned triumphantly on Cay. “I knew the king cares about us!”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Cay protested. “It just means someone from the court wrote that note.”
The tallest boy, a clumpy mustache adorning his upper lip, laid a long-fingered hand on the blonde girl’s shoulder. She flinched away, but he didn’t seem to notice. He plucked the paper from her fingers and read it.
“The spelling would appear to be incorrect, my young friend,” he nodded at Cay. “But I believe the writer refers to the Doar blockade, which was constructed in the reign of our current king’s uncle, to prevent trade with Calcor’Bolad, a country with recently altered political principles. The blockade is four miles long, making it the second-largest blockade in history. It is supposed to be impenetrable, but scholar J. Pergaill commented that this is because of the guards constantly patrolling the blockade, not because of its building materials. The actual ‘Doar’ is set slightly to the right of the center of the blockade. It is made of prythaium, a type of-”
He was interrupted by the shortest boy, who was snorting with laughter.
“Do you know everything?” Cay asked, staring respectfully at the mustachioed boy.
“Not quite. I shall someday.”
He spoke with perfect assurance, without a hint of sarcasm.
“Maybe someday you’ll know how to keep your mouth shut,” muttered Leera, waving for him to come inspect the contents of the package.
Zinnia watched the shortest boy bite his lip and shake with laughter, a lock of his dark hair wobbling over his forehead. Her eye caught on a loose thread in his shirt, then as he sat down against the wall, a drop of blood on his hand. Straightening, Zinn hurried over to him, her kit at the ready.
Finally, something she knew how to do.

Leera Stern shouldered her way past the boy with the pitiful attempt at a mustache to stand next to their leader.
“What are we going to do?” she asked eagerly.
“We are only three miles as the crow flies from the Doar blockade, but it is inadvisable to attempt to open it. Pergaill had a humor section at the end of Countries and Their Defenses, and one of the things he joked about was the impossibility of opening the Doar. Of course, the ways he suggested were-”
Leera stared the tall boy down.
“I was asking Noy, not you. Show-off,” she muttered, turning away. Then a new idea struck her. “How many guards are there?”
“There’s always a platoon in the nearest town, but four to six at the actual Doar. Not including the guards along the rest of the blockade. ‘It is easy to pick out Doar guards from any others, because they wear the distinctive pirra-pirra feather-’”
Leera cut him off again. It irked her that he didn’t seem to be taking her not-very-subtle hints.
“We could take them! I’m good at fighting, and you. . .”
Noy looked back at her, waiting.
Leera didn’t back down. She had seen the muscles in his arms.
“You must be good at something. Dagger?”
“I can throw a knife,” he admitted.
“So what if. . .” Leera closed her eyes for a second, imagining the thrill of battle – real battle.
“I could take two.” She was sure of this. She’d beaten Keern and her father before, and extra adrenaline would make up for a true enemy’s aggression.
“And you could. . .”
Noy shook his head.
“Maybe you could, and maybe I could, but the two of us couldn’t take six. There’s also the business of getting a knife.”
Leera’s excitement faded. She’d forgotten that the king’s men had confiscated their belongings when they first arrived.
“Wait. Friya Aztlán still has her things. Do you think they let her bring stuff along because she’s a noble’s daughter?”
Noy’s eyes lit up briefly.
“Get her.”
Leera snapped a smart salute the way her father had taught her, and strode off. Friya was sitting on her bed, head down, tying her hair with a long blonde strand. Leera shook her head. The girl had worn silk ribbons the day before. Would she really rather wear no ribbons than old ones?
“Aztlán.”
The girl looked up, fear gliding swiftly in and out of her eyes.
“May I help you?”
You wouldn’t have thought she was anything but a contemptuous noble. Leera swiftly revised her opinion of her roommate.
“Noy wants to look through your things,” she said more respectfully.
“Look through my things?”
“You can take out anything that’s just yours,” Leera told her impatiently. “We just want to see if you’ve got anything useful.”
Friya blushed and pulled out her bag.
“I’ll bring it out,” she mumbled.
Leera closed the door behind her, but Friya opened it almost immediately.
“Here.” She thrust the embroidered bag into Leera’s hands.
Leera itched to open it, but she offered it to Noy. The boy shook his head.
“Go ahead.”
He stood with folded arms, watching as she pulled out – clothes.
Soft nightgowns, warm sweaters, shoes, hats, scarfs: an assortment of clothes with such varied textures and styles that Leera looked up at Noy in bewilderment.

Joran Arundasi shifted uncomfortably as Zinnia bandaged his hand. He’d already cracked two jokes, and she hadn’t even smiled, although the brown-haired girl next to her had laughed each time. They hadn’t been funny, Joran admitted to himself.
“I’m fine,” he muttered, and Zinnia let go of his hand.
“Now you are.”
It had only been a bitten fingernail, but Jor didn’t argue.
He stood up and looked over at the rest of the group. The noble’s daughter was saying something, gesturing shyly at the heap of cloth on the floor.
She plucked several items from the pile and disappeared into a bedroom.
Joran wandered over, wearing his broadest smile.
The pretty girl pushed away a metal box, tapping her fingers in frustration.
“Locked. We should have asked her to open it.”
Someone said something about patience, but Jor reached for the box, shuddering at the feel of cold metal. Still, it was surely more human to help other humans than to avoid any kind of technology.
He bit at his longest fingernail and used the sharp tip to open the lock. Flipping open the top, he began to laugh.
“Not much in there,” he chuckled, shoving the box across the floor to bump into Solldero’s feet.
Everyone in the room turned to stare at him.
“How did you open that?” the pretty girl asked, narrowing her eyes.
Joran lifted and dropped one shoulder awkwardly.
“I just, uh. . .”
“It appears that our short companion has hidden talents,” the tallest boy announced calmly.
Jor folded his arms, then unfolded them. He didn’t know what to do with them.
“I’m just good with any kind of technology,” he mumbled.
“Why?” the girl pressed.
“My dad makes robots. He-” Jor managed to grin. “He’s taught me all about that stuff. In fact-” To his horror, his smile was slipping. He fought to keep his face cheerful. “In fact, kids – people – from my village used to say I’m part robot.” He laughed, a little too loudly. The brown-haired girl smiled at him encouragingly.
“I think it’s wonderful that you have that talent. It will probably be very useful, don’t you think, Zinnia?”
Zinnia looked taken aback to be addressed, but it gave Joran the few seconds he needed to put his expression in order.  
“Hey, look!” he said as the bedroom door opened, and thankfully, everyone turned to look at the noble’s daughter.

Cay Vojen gasped, his attention shooting from the pungent block of wood that had been in the package to Friya, the rich girl he’d argued with earlier. Only now it wasn’t a noble’s daughter who stood shyly in the doorway, but a curious peasant girl, wide-eyed and confused.
“Sorry,” she said, her accent fresh from the country. Cay even thought he could smell the rough soap his aunt used to wash their clothes.
“I must have come to the wrong place.”
Cay’s jaw fell.
“Where’s Friya?” he asked in horror. “She went into the room, but you came out. Oh. . .” The others were staring at him. “I mean, it’s a clever trick. Or you look a lot like – you aren’t – you’re Friya. Obviously. I didn’t know you could act. And you can, very well. I mean, you fooled me, except I realized-”
The brown-haired girl put a hand on his arm, and Cay snapped his mouth shut while she took over.
“Friya, that’s a great disguise! We can hardly recognize you. How did you do it?”
The peasant girl melted away, but Friya’s face was so transformed with pleasure that Cay could hardly recognize her.
Across the room, Solldero held up a metal box.
“Can you use this, too?”
It was full of little bottles and tubes and what looked like cleaning supplies.
Friya nodded.
“Yes, but not as well as I’d like.”
“I might be able to help,” Zinn offered softly.
Solldero acknowledged this with a nod.
“In that case, it’s time to go.”
Leera stood up.
“To the Doar?”
Solldero nodded.
“We’ll need the wood that was in the package, and Aztlán’s clothes. Let’s go!”
Cay blinked as the other teens burst into activity. A salty tang hit his nose an instant before he saw Solldero at his side.
“Remember,” the dark boy said quietly, “You’re supposed to stay behind Arundasi, on the right. Keep a lookout for anything that might be dangerous. Do you remember the hand signals?”
Cay hesitated. All he remembered was that they were confusing.
“Left means right, right means left, if I raise my hand then drop, if I point forward, then scatter,” Solldero said rapidly.
“I still don’t see why they have to be so confusing,” Cay said. Solldero looked annoyed, and Cay bit his tongue again.
“Just remember them, all right?” Solldero was gone before Cay could answer.

Friya Aztlán slung her bag awkwardly over her shoulder. She felt curiously lightheaded. She should have been terrified that she was traipsing off to the Doar blockade to follow a plan that hadn’t yet been explained. Equally, she should have been thrilled that she was finally getting her life-long dream of a real adventure, complete with an opportunity to use her acting skills. Instead, her head and arms moved as if through water as she adjusted the hard strap, while her legs moved lightly and rapidly toward the door, following the leader.
The part of her that longed to become a peasant girl or an old woman or whatever she wanted was breathless with excitement, but the rest of her was still sheltered Friya Aztlán.
“Stay close, but not too close,” the leader was saying.
Friya shivered in the morning air, realizing that no matter how she felt, she was going on an adventure that was more dangerous than anything she’d ever done before. Why, she could be kidnapped, or threatened, or attacked. . .
Elle Tonarych gave her a friendly smile and squeezed her hand, and Friya calmed down a little. After all, she was in a large group, and nothing was likely to happen.
As her breathing slowed, she began to look around. Solldero had told them to look for danger, but Friya focused more on people’s clothes. One woman wore a bright red scarf, but the cloth betrayed her poverty; another wore mourning grey.
“Friya!”
Her gaze jerked to the other teens, who had stopped and were staring back at her. The leader gestured impatiently.
“Come on. You have a swivel point; pay attention.”
Friya didn’t mention that she had only the vaguest idea of what he was talking about. Instead, she walked up to take her place by the treasonous peasant boy.
He was still staring at her. She tried to ignore him, focusing on the colorful buzz around her, but eventually she hissed,
“Stop staring at me!”
“I’m just looking for danger!” he protested.
“Then look on your own side!”
They glared at each other, and this continued until they both smacked into the people in front of them: Friya into Elle, and Cay into Joran. The group, three quarters of which had stopped perfectly at Solldero’s signal, dissolved into chaos.
The leader whipped around furiously.
“Friya, Cay! What – why can’t you-” He groaned and buried his face in his hands.
“Leera, would you handle this?”
He swiveled slowly, apparently searching for danger, while Leera strode purposefully towards the guilty pair. Friya thought about telling him that the king wouldn’t allow the type of danger that might hurt them, but she caught sight of Leera’s face and remained silent.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Cay defended himself. “She keeps looking at me like I’m a traitor, when everyone knows that the king is too weak even to protect himself, let alone-”
He broke off with a yelp as Leera stamped on his foot.
“Be. Quiet.” She hissed through clenched teeth.
Friya scowled at Cay. Why was he so stubborn, so sure that he was right, with his coarse peasant clothes and yellow-blond hair? He hadn’t met the king like she had – well, seen him, anyway. They’d been at a banquet, with trays and trays of luscious grapes and exotic fruits just for an appetizer before the meal started. At the thought of food, Friya’s stomach rumbled.
Joran moaned softly.
“I’m hungry. Robots never get hungry, but us humans. . .”
Solldero, staring hard at a group of scruffy men, answered with a shrug.
“No money.”
“But surely the king would have fed us,” Friya protested, shocked.
“We’ll never know, will we,” Leera replied. “Our only chance of breakfast is in your purse.”
Friya glanced around to find the others all watching her. Did they expect her to spend her own money for the group? It wouldn’t last the whole week at that rate.
Elle moved quietly up next to her.
“Friya, you’re really important to our group. You’re wonderful at acting, and the way you can manipulate clothes – it’s like magic! We couldn’t do this without you. I understand that you brought your money for personal emergencies . . . but, well . . . we’re a group. I won’t abandon you.”
“Neither will I.”
The blaze in Solldero’s dark eyes startled Friya when he glanced over at her before resuming his guard. Friya looked back at Elle, who was smiling at her, not seeming to care whether or not Friya handed over the money. Friya had assumed that the others regarded her as an outsider, and she’d thought she didn’t care, but Elle’s words gave her the unusual feeling of both happiness and safety. She felt that she ought to pledge herself in return, but she couldn’t find the words. Meeting Elle’s blue eyes, Friya realized that Elle already understood, and she pulled her money out of her pocket and handed it over.

Elle Tonarych smiled her brightest at Friya. Poor Friya; she always looked so stiff and uncomfortable. It really was kind of her to give up her own money. Elle offered the money to Solldero, who glanced over the group and shook his head.
“You and Annersap can get us something. We’ll wait for you-”
Leera interrupted.
“By that building, where those bushes are.” She froze and looked guiltily at Solldero, who was staring at her. “I’m sorry.”
The silence stretched out, and Elle glanced from one to the other of them uncomprehendingly.
Leera shifted, biting her lip, and Solldero looked lost.
Elle began to understand: Leera had undermined Solldero’s authority, although it was probably more complicated than that.
“By the big tree where that family is sitting,” Elle blurted suddenly. She felt her face reddening. Too little, too late, probably, but she went on.
“Oh. . . I’m sorry. Where will we find you, Solldero?”
She tried to put as much respect into her voice as she could, and although the solution was weak, Solldero took it.
“Thank you for your suggestions, but phrase them as such in the future. We’ll wait for you by that building, near the bushes.”
Elle breathed a sigh of relief and turned to Cay, who was rubbing his foot, looking hurt and confused.
“What do you want us to get, Cay?”
He looked up, his bewildered expression changing to hungry anticipation.
“Meat pies! My aunt always made them for breakfast every other day. They-”
Seeing the expressions on some of the others’ faces, Elle hastily nodded.
“Sure. Yes, we’ll get some.”
She offered him a final smile, then turned and hurried after the tallest boy, whose long legs were already carrying him swiftly toward a cluster of food stalls.

Okner Annersap watched placidly as his companion bargained for a bag of small meat pies. He didn’t know who had invented those; he imagined that they had evolved from the common country fare. Possibly Gregar M’Sishon had been the first famous baker to serve them, or maybe that female baker, whose name he could not remember. Elle dumped a bag into his arms and said breathlessly,
“Do you think we have enough money for almond pastries?”
They looked doubtfully at the remaining money.
“This must last the week, correct?” Okner queried, adding it up in his head. “I doubt that our funds are sufficient to support many more purchases today. I suggest we buy bread and cheese.”
Elle nodded.
“I hope Friya will eat that. I think she’s used to better food.”
Okner shrugged.
“Unless she intends to mimic the Starvation Nobles, she will.”
Most of them were used to better food, but Okner was quite sure none of them would refuse to eat like the much-ridiculed nobles during a losing war where the only available food was coarse ‘corn bread’. Corn bread. . . now there was an interesting topic. Fritzlin, widely considered the country’s greatest expert on food history, had stated in multiple books that the first version of corn bread had been imported from Calcor’Bolad, but Okner disagreed. He’d noticed that at least two of the original manuscripts that made up Tarnn’s Book of Sky mentioned what sounded like the cheesy variant of corn bread as the food eaten by Arree and his birds. In fact. . .
Elle was clutching his arm, breathing hard.
“Okner. . . that man pushed me. Let’s go. . . let’s go! They’re coming. . .”
With his superior height, Okner easily verified this statement. There were at least seven men, and a few women as well – all looking angry.
“According to ancient legend, anyone who recites Savone’s Cloud Poem three times will be safe from danger,” Okner informed his companion. The angry group began to run, shouting and pointing at them, and the crowd around them drew back, leaving them exposed.
“However, I am not quite sure if that includes physical danger. Let us be off,” he concluded. They fled.
Unfortunately, more faces in the crowd were turning sour as the angry men and women shouted that the two teens were supporters of the king. Forced to slow, Okner waved his arms peaceably.
“Please, my good people. What evidence do you have that we support the king?”
“You’re part of one of them groups!” someone shouted.
This was true.
Okner lowered his arms.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a mounted group of the king’s soldiers trotting in their direction. The situation reminded him of an old saying: ‘Spear and javelin kill the same’. The soldiers would doubtless disperse the crowd, but there would certainly be a fight, and the two teenagers would be caught in the middle. In every direction, Okner could see only enemies – extraordinarily similar to the circumstances of the champion Vikdor at the Battle of the Thousand – and Elle’s grip on his arm was becoming painful.
What would Vikdor have done in his place? Okner asked himself. It was then that he recalled that Vikdor had had companions, which had fled. However, Okner doubted that his own group had done the same.
Elle’s breathing was close to sobbing; she was being crushed. The crowd was pressing closer, and they were not being gentle, even though the soldiers were now roughly peeling away the outskirters.
Okner smiled calmly.
“My dear Elle, have you ever heard the Therran battle cry?”
She shook her head dumbly.
Okner picked up the bag of meat pies.
He lifted his chin, arranged his lips, and pinched his nose.
Swelling his chest to its maximum, he rose to his toes and let loose the fearsome Therran howl.
As the pair burst from the crowd and sprinted toward the group of their comrades, Okner frowned. The last ‘ooahho’ should have gone up another half step.

Marya was surprised to find herself laughing. The audio had been off, but from the reactions of the crowd, whatever Okner had shouted must have been impressive. She paused to rub her eyes before continuing her vigil. Okner and Elle were returning to the group. . .
The door opened.
Marya turned quizzically. Malcav had made it clear that she was in an isolated location where no one but himself would disturb her, and he had already said there were no further orders for today. At her first glimpse of his tense, slightly smiling face, her heart sank.
“What news?” she asked, looking up at him. He traced the edge of the Device with his finger, his smile growing. Just when she was about to repeat her question, he spoke.
“News at last. Orders. . . from the king.”
Marya closed her eyes, her thoughts plummeting.
“And?” she asked. Now was the time. Oh, she hated Malcav.
“We have been observing the group. Not as much as you have, but plenty.”
And the king. She hated the king.
“It is time.”
Most of all. . .
“You will kill one of them today.”
Most of all, she hated herself.
Make some defense, Marya. It was not an order, but a plea.
She cleared her throat twice before she could speak.
“Wh-why? What have they done?”
“This particular one? Led the group away – held associations with –”
Malcav did not seem to have anticipated Marya’s question, and it made him angry.
“You do not need to know. It is the king’s decision, and the king’s order. Have it done by tonight, or we will know the reason why.”
He moved to the door. He meant to make her ask. She hated him for it, hated herself even more, but the question must be formed.
“Malcav.”
He turned, satisfaction pooled on his smug face.
“Yes?”
Marya closed her eyes for an instant. She was within inches of heroism, close enough to grasp it, but. . .
“Which one?”
“Ah, yes. One of the boys. Let me see, he styled himself. . .”
He was toying with her. Her fists clenched under the desk. She would scream if this went on much longer.
“. . .leader. Solldero Noy.”
The door shut.
Marya screamed.

Okner Annersap looked over his shoulder hungrily. The scent of meat pies that wafted from the bag as it was passed from hand to hand behind him prevented him from sinking back into thought. Solldero had insisted that they move on right away, and he had waved away the proffered food, which apparently meant that no one in the front row was getting breakfast. Looking away from Cay biting into his second pie, Okner caught a heavy stare from Leera.
“Do you require my assistance?” Okner asked politely.
“Noy does,” she replied, tilting her head dangerously. Okner was reminded of a painting he’d once seen of a goddess from a forgotten religion; Solldero’s voice caught him before he fell into a reverie.
“Those people who threatened you, was the crowd against them?”
Okner glanced at him. He sounded really worried.
“On the contrary. I observed that about seventy percent of the crowd sympathized with the instigators. I would hypothesize that this number will remain constant throughout our trip. The question is, must there be instigators for a threat to form? Using an efficacious formula that originated in the time of the-”
“The question is,” Leera broke in, “Can we defend ourselves?”
Solldero was silent for several more steps. Then he said slowly,
“The question is, can we avoid large groups of people? Every city has smaller markets, mazes of alleyways . . . frequented by the disreputable, of course, but we are more able to handle those.”
He nodded at Leera, who somehow exuded gratification without changing expression.
“The best thing would be to travel quickly and inconspicuously. We’ll have to find a way to draw less attention to ourselves, or at least make people less suspicious.”
Okner nodded thoughtfully. Elle had broken her position for a moment to pass him a meat pie. It tasted as flavorous as it smelled.  

Cay Vojen licked his fingers contentedly. He wasn’t used to having breakfast this late – on his uncle’s farm, they’d risen early – but at least there was breakfast. Cay had noticed the hungry pigeons waddling behind them. Dropping some greasy crumbs for them, he turned his head to watch them gobble the food, then hastily faced front again in case Solldero had given one of his strange signals. He hadn’t. The three in the front were talking earnestly, and Solldero and Leera kept glancing around and up as though they were looking for birds. Cay had often done this himself, and he was good at it. Leera’s scans were much too fast, he thought. Patience was essential in birdwatching. . . in anything to do with animals, for that matter. Food was useful, too. He watched as Leera’s steps clicked even more precisely in response to something Solldero had said. She looked rather like a bird herself, sort of strutting. She didn’t waddle like a pigeon, of course, but the way her braid swung reminded Cay of a pigeon’s bobbing head. He opened his mouth to make this observation, but fortunately tripped and flopped full-length in the street. At the abrupt thud and grunt of pain, Zinn gave a shriek and Joran, who had been whistling softly to himself with his hands in his pockets, crashed into Okner, who had stopped and turned with the others on Solldero’s quick signal. Cay had skinned both knees, but the embarrassment was worse. Scrambling up, he blurted,
“I’m fine! I’m just fine! Not hurt at all! I just tripped. Thinking too hard, I guess, or not enough. . .” He laughed nervously, eyeing the thunderous expressions on some of his companions’ faces. “But no harm done. I hope. Except everyone had to stop, but that isn’t harm. . .?”
Solldero tipped his head at Zinn.
“Zinnia. If you could assist Vojen. I suppose this is as good a time as any to discuss our plan.”
Zinn moved forward, her hand still pressed to her mouth, and the others drifted politely away. Cay shrank as much as possible and fixed his eyes on a nearby pigeon. It swallowed a crumb and tilted its head to one side, gazing placidly at him. Pigeons, Cay thought, had it easy.

Zinnia Questel frowned. She had always found it easiest to focus on one thing at a time – right now, Cay Vojen’s badly scraped knees and hands – but the others kept trying to include her in their conversation. In the middle of Solldero’s recap on their positions once the group reached the Doar blockade, she turned around and glared at him.
“I need supplies.”
Leera glared back.
“Did you hear anything he just said? About you staying safely in the middle and taking care of everyone else?”
Zinnia hadn’t.
“Yes. I can’t do that without bandages and herbs. And premade medicines, if possible.”
Solldero gave an almost imperceptible sigh.
“I’ve been thinking about that. I hoped Friya might have some extra clothing she wouldn’t mind donating.”
“In the best-case scenario, we won’t need it,” Elle pointed out hopefully.
“We can’t rely on getting the best-case scenario. Opening the Doar blockade. . . things are already not best-case. As for the herbs and medicines-”
“Fortunately, neither is this the worst-case scenario.” Okner mooted optimistically.
Leera whipped around.
“You’re not taking this seriously enough! We’re trying to do something that whole countries haven’t been able to do for years. What could possibly be worse?” Okner steepled his fingers dreamily.
“Ruling out all impossibilities, I shall begin by assuming that ‘worse’ scenarios involve death and serious injury. The difficulty of the task is also a factor, of course. The first area of consideration is crime. I do not mean to suggest that our ruler would order anything of the sort, but a few possibilities involve theft, assassination-”
“If you don’t mind.”
Solldero hadn’t raised his voice, but Zinn shivered at the unexpected accent in it that sliced through Okner’s rambling.
Okner’s eyebrows twitched.
“My apologies. Carry on.”
Solldero looked at Zinnia.
“I’m afraid we can’t afford to buy medicines. Will you be able to find herbs around here?”
Zinnia shot him an incredulous look over her shoulder, her fingers deftly wrapping Cay’s hands with the silk Friya had shyly given her.
“No. Most of the herbs I know are in the mountains. And this is a city. The only plants are these – these –” She gestured at the gloomy bushes looming over them disconcertingly. The plants and their soft, round seeds were all over the city, even taking over abandoned buildings. Actually, she might be able to use some of the seeds, but they couldn’t replace herbs for burns, numbing pain, and treating infections. “I could find them out in the countryside.” Probably. The free-spoken part of her dissolved as she moved away from Cay, who was babbling thanks and apologies.
Solldero looked at Okner, who nodded coldly.
“We will indeed pass through a portion of the countryside before we reach the town situated by the Doar blockade.”
Solldero extended a hand to Cay, helping him up.
“Thank you, Zinnia. We rely on you.”
For some reason, she blushed.

Joran Arundasi couldn’t believe his ears. Were the others actually planning a seed fight?
“…enable us, to use a colloquialism, to hide in plain sight,” Okner was saying, and Solldero was nodding along. Even Leera looked approving. A delighted grin slipped over Jor’s face. Granted, most of his experience with seed fights had involved twenty hostile village kids against himself, but having a good-natured battle would be. . . fun. That was something he never would have expected from a group like this, with the weird exercises and long marches. He looked over at Elle, who was smiling. It had been her idea.
“Hey, Elle, I’m not very good at making plant jokes, but thistle do.”
He waited for her laugh, then looked up at the sky and started whistling. Things had been getting boring, but now the bounce was back in his step.
When Solldero and Leera had finished plotting their route during the proposed fight, Solldero told them all to start gathering seeds. Joran headed for the nearest bush and crammed fluffy handfuls into his pockets. His hands full, he turned back to the others, itching to fill the air with seeds. No one moved. They stood awkwardly, clutching piles of seeds, casting sidelong glances at Solldero and Leera. Solldero motioned for them to start moving, and Jor’s face fell. Were they not going to have the fight after all? He was about to discard his seeds when Leera dropped back and fired a seed at Okner. It bounced off his shoulder and landed on Joran’s chest. There was another pause. Solldero looked around encouragingly. Then Okner threw a seed back at Leera, narrowly missing her. She gave a small smile, and the battle was on. Joran quickly depleted his pile, but there were plenty more on the ground and bushes nearby. He ran a bit ahead and ambushed Zinnia as she ran past. Leera and Okner joined forces and attacked Elle; Joran ran to her defense, finding that he had quite good aim, and Cay leaped in front of her, flinging handfuls indiscriminately. Okner peeled off and joined Zinnia against Friya, whose seeds rarely hit anyone. Solldero, remaining mostly aloof from the game with an eye for their surroundings, gently knocked Zinn and Okner’s seeds out of the air with impressive accuracy.

Friya Aztlán, covered in dust and fluffy white blobs, found herself giggling. Giggling! The others were no better. More than one person had tripped and fallen during the seed battle – which had turned into a seed chase – and they were all dirty and laughing. They were also out of the city. As the laughter died away and the eight teens began picking seeds off their clothing, Friya looked around nervously. It wasn’t that she had never been out in the country before, but when she travelled with her parents, there was always a carriage, and servants, and a certain time when they must arrive. Now it was all frighteningly free. For the first time, Friya was grateful for Solldero’s orders as he reformed the group. She watched as he restrained his exasperation, asking Okner if he wouldn’t mind explaining to Cay what dust was really made of after they’d both gotten into position. No wonder Cay was wondering, Friya thought. His blond hair and rough brown clothes had become a uniform tan. Still, peasants such as he were probably used to it. She paused to brush ruefully at her own dress, which had once been of Prime 2 silk. But it was worth it, wasn’t it? The thought startled her. She’d never before had the chance to find out. Everything was about appearances, in her family. Her parents were anxious about her father’s political standing, which went hand-in-hand with social standing for everyone except the king’s new advisors, whom her father disliked. You have the social standing you seem to have, her mother had always said. Chin up, dress well, court speech, and curtsey your finest. The curtseys had never satisfied her mother. Friya wondered what she would say if she could see her now.
“Fri-ya! Cay!”
Friya jumped guiltily and hurried up to the rest of the group, Cay following her. What had he been doing, anyway? She doubted he had gotten lost in thought; he was more likely to get lost trying to find a thought. Had he dropped back to stay with her?
“Are you two listening?”
Leera’s voice was much sharper than Solldero’s had been during the lecture Friya had ignored. Friya met her gaze and wished she hadn’t.
“Sorry,” she and Cay chorused.
Solldero looked at them wearily, then moved back to the front of the group.
“Stay focused, please. We’re almost there.”
Raising her eyes, Friya saw a low, black wall gleaming in the sunshine. It was partially hidden behind groves of trees, but the wild fields were beginning to flatten into the outskirts of the town. They were getting close.
“Friya.”
Cringing, she concentrated on Solldero, but he was still walking, looking straight ahead.
“Any more herbs, Zinnia?”
Zinnia was folding a bunch of plants into her pouch as she and Joran resumed their places.
“Something for burns. I don’t recognize anything else around here.”
Solldero nodded.
“Aztlán, with Questel. You will protect her and help her gather this herb. We will continue; rejoin us as soon as possible.”
Friya hesitated. Something about Leera’s ears. . .
“Er, yes, sir?”
She turned and followed Zinnia to a patch of spindly plants.

Elle Tonarych crouched nervously beside Zinnia, grateful for Cay and Okner’s presence. Joran and Friya were approaching the Doar, Friya dressed in the style of one of the country noblewomen, the sort that were shunned at court but put on airs around peasants. She looked uncomfortable, but her acting was good enough that she seemed merely put out.
“Really, to have to be called all the way out here simply because the Doar needs to be fixed. I don’t see why one of the peasant overseers couldn’t manage it,” Friya complained to one of the four guards, who looked suspicious.
Elle could tell by the way Joran’s head moved that he’d rolled his eyes at one of the guards, which was unscripted but a good move.
While Friya babbled imperiously, Jor set to work on the Doar, pretending to patch a section with the block of matching wood they’d been sent, but in reality picking the lock.
“We received no orders…” began a guard uncertainly. Solldero and Leera walked up briskly.
“Soldier?”
Leera had been disgruntled at the idea of Solldero taking the lead, but Elle now realized it was a good idea. Solldero’s air of confidence went perfectly with his natural authority. The guard hesitated.
“Orders from Commander Orgel. Sorry to be late; we had a bit of a problem. Repairs for the Doar and four other areas on the blockade begin today. You’re to keep a close eye on all workers, and by no means allow anyone through the blockade.”
Elle held her breath. It was dangerous, but perhaps the very rashness would allow the plan to work. For a moment the guards looked convinced, but then one of them shifted forward.
“Hey, look, they’re just kids. All of them.” He gestured at Joran and Friya accusingly.
Leera and Solldero tensed.
Suddenly, several things happened at once. Two of the guards tried to seize Solldero and Leera, who fended them off skillfully. Joran shoved open the Doar with a grunt and was yanked back by a guard. A man burst through, carrying a round copper machine under his arm. He ran straight up to Elle and dropped it into her hands.
“Clear the sky,” he hissed at the four of them. “King’s orders: clear the sky.”
And he sprinted off.
The guards had seized Joran and Friya, one was starting after the man, and then the sky seemed to darken and mist over. The device in Elle’s hands lifted and vanished. There was an explosion, thick red flames printed before her eyes. The world cleared, and stopped. Solldero lay moaning on the ground.
Elle’s thoughts retreated to the back of her head as her body rushed forward.
Friya and Joran stumbled away from the horrified guards.
“Let’s get out of here!”
Leera grabbed Solldero’s arms, and the others numbly helped to carry him away. The guards let them go.
The numbness was dissolving into terror by the time they stopped in a grove of trees and bushes. They lowered Solldero onto a patch of grass.
Friya was sobbing in quick, high-pitched gasps. Elle went up and put her arm around her, but she could feel a scream burning in her own chest.
There was . . . blood. A lot of it.
Solldero’s dark skin was turning waxy. His hand fluttered on the ground. Zinnia was working frantically over him, tears in her eyes.
Leera ripped the bag of clothes from Friya’s shoulder and dumped the contents next to Zinn.
“The purple herbs. Now!”
Okner, moving slowly as though through water, knelt next to Zinnia and rummaged through her pouch to get the herbs she wanted.
Solldero’s eyes opened for a moment. He was hissing in pain.
“Leera,” he said, then gasped and fell silent.
She went down on her knees next to him.
“Take. . .” He closed his eyes tightly, his mouth working soundlessly.
“Take. . .” He whispered. It sounded as though he were choking. “Take care of the others. The others. Leera.”He struggled for breath.
“Beware the. The. King. Malcav is against us. Trying to. Kill. Us.”
She nodded, her face frozen.
“Elle.”
Elle forced her trembling arm away from Friya and sat down by Solldero’s head, taking his hand.
“Tell. My mother. . . sister. What happened.”
Elle was crying.
“I’ll tell them. I’ll find them, Solldero. I’ll tell them.”
His head moved in the barest nod.
“C–”
He gasped, coughed. Blood sprayed from his mouth.
Zinnia lifted his head.
“Breathe! Breathe!” With her other hand, she was applying pressure to the wad of cloth on his chest.
A tremor went through his body.
“Cay.”
Cay, his eyes huge, ran forward.
“Sol-Solldero?”
It was hard to tell whether Solldero was coughing or choking. His eyes lifted to Cay’s face, his hand twitched as if he wanted to move it.
“Solldero?”
“Cay.” The word came out as a hiccupped sigh. Solldero’s head fell to the side, and his body went limp.
There was an awful silence.

Leera Stern knelt frozen beside her dead leader. This shouldn’t have happened. She should have anticipated the attack. She should have stopped . . . whatever the thing had been. . . before it had fired at Noy. She should have jumped in front of him and died herself. But Noy had ducked. She’d seen him, in the split second when the device had materialized in the air and fired, throw himself to the ground faster than gravity could pull him. The shot should have missed him. He shouldn’t be dead. He shouldn’t be dead.
All her training with Father and Keern had prepared her for moments like this. She needed to pull herself together and organize the others. The noise Aztlán was making could bring soldiers on them, and their position wasn’t ideal.
“Listen, all of you.”
They turned pale, stunned faces to her.
“Listen!” She made her voice rough and angry so that they’d listen.
“You three. Dig a grave over there.” She pointed to Joran, Okner, and Cay, who mechanically began to obey.
“Tonarych. Stop Aztlán from making that noise.”
Elle was crying silently, but she moved over and sat down next to Friya.
“Questel. . .”
Leera hesitated. She could fight. She could give orders. She could handle death and injury. But Zinnia’s stony face disconcerted her.
“You did well.” She made her voice as matter-of-fact as possible.
Zinn turned to stare at her.
“No. I didn’t.”
Leera stared back. Noy would have known what to say, but Leera did not. She stood stiffly and walked over to where the boys were digging. Okner and Cay had found sticks and were loosening the dirt while Joran scooped it out of the hole. As she watched, they found a boulder buried in the dirt.
“Dig it out,” she ordered. They levered it out with their sticks in silence. Beneath the rock, the sticks splintered on the hard dirt.
Leera told them to stop digging, and she and Okner carried Noy’s body to the grave. As the boys filled in the hole, she felt her expression solidifying into grimness.
“Put the boulder on top.”
Everyone’s movements had become slower and slower, and now no one moved. Leera felt a slow wave of panic sweeping over her. Then Cay wearily walked over to the boulder and braced himself to push. The others, even Friya, went to help. It wasn’t necessary or even efficient, but Leera said nothing. It was the last thing most of them could do for Solldero.
Friya was crying again, but softly this time.
Leera turned and strode away.
The patch of blood-soaked dirt distracted her, and she had to wrench her eyes away from it.
“We’re moving on,” she snapped, more sharply than she’d meant to. It was for the best. There was only room for either weariness or pain, her father had told her. They would march until they were exhausted. They would sleep. The morning would be better.
It could not be worse.

Marya sat hunched in her chair, feeling numb. The hard edge of the desk pressed into her arm. She didn’t move. When the moment had come. . . she’d done it. She’d murdered a child. She had chosen her friend over Solldero, and now that Solldero was dead, it was crystal clear that Malcav would not free her friend as he had promised. Marya had exchanged Solldero’s life not for the life of her friend, but for a few hours’ reprieve for him. And yet. . . wouldn’t she do it again?
They’d showed her videos. Live footage.
Her friends, gasping and moaning, and their fear at the tortures promised them. Malcav had given her the choice, knowing that whether she killed a child or allowed her friends to be tortured, she would be destroyed from the inside. Guilt was already consuming her.

Cay Vojen plodded wearily behind Elle, who had one arm around Zinnia and the other around Friya. Friya was still sobbing softly, and Cay could see tears running down Elle’s face whenever she turned her head. Cay had seen death before, on his uncle’s farm. He’d even killed a few chickens. But this was different, and the smell of Solldero’s blood clung to his nostrils. Cay wouldn’t have believed the boy could be killed, but it must have been impossible to escape the strange machine that had vanished so quickly. And then Solldero had been so brave, thinking of the other kids in the group and about his family, rather than himself. And…
Cay realized he was blinking back tears. He sniffled hard, then looked around for Okner. Okner knew everything.
Joran was trailing behind, his shoulders hunched and hands stiff in his pockets, as if trying to block out the world. Even farther back was Okner, drifting distantly. His gaze, which had been on the setting sun, coasted down to Cay when the younger boy dropped back to walk beside him.
“Um, Okner? I was wondering, because you know everything — or not everything, of course, but a lot! Or maybe it just seems like a lot to me, ‘cause I don’t know much. But you do. I mean—”
“I will endeavor to satisfy your thirst for knowledge, so far as my meager abilities may stretch,” Okner said with dignity.
Cay took a deep breath. Okner even smelled like books.
“I was just wondering…what do you think Solldero was going to say to me? When he—I mean…”
Okner dropped his chin to his chest and stroked his mustache with one finger.
“As the great Hoi Lufernus so aptly suggested in the unfinished second volume of his On Induction, the information from our first two samples may assist us in comprehension of the third, although so poorly developed. First, in addressing Ms. Stern, our erstwhile leader issued a command and a statement. The command entailed protection for and leadership of the remaining six members of our group; namely, ourselves. The statement implied that our illustrious ruler is to be feared, an assumption with which I now hesitate to disagree. It also mentioned an individual by the name of Malcav who appears to long for our premature expiries. None of these assertions seem to have surprised Leera, so it is logical to assume that she had reached the same conclusions on her own; that is, she knew already or already planned to act on his communications. Second, our companion Elle being an inarguably considerate person, it is reasonable to believe that the idea of informing the Noy family of Solldero’s death might already have entered her mind, or at least would have done so in the near future. I would therefore surmise that Solldero’s intentions were not to reveal a sudden mystery but rather to emphasize some important fact that was either previously known or close to certain in veracity.”
He offered Cay a sad smile.
“What precisely this may be, in your case, I must confess I do not know.”
Cay wasn’t at all sure that he’d followed, but he nodded gratefully and tried to close his mouth. It was clear to him that Okner did know, however humbly he might phrase it.

Elle Tonarych looked up at Leera from the ground. This was the second time Friya had fallen, and this time she had taken Elle with her. Zinnia seemed not to care whether they stopped or went on, but a glance back told Elle that the boys were not in much better shape. But Leera’s expression was twisted in anger, and guilt too, Elle guessed. They were all feeling guilty, for what they hadn’t done – however impossible it might have been. Elle’s hands still felt the pressure of that machine in her hands, and somewhere in her mind her horrified thoughts tumbled over themselves wondering whether she’d done something, pressed some kind of button, even though she knew she hadn’t.
Friya wasn’t crying anymore; she was too tired to cry. Elle got to her knees and tried to help her friend up, but the girl just lay there. They were all exhausted, physically and emotionally.
Elle looked up again at Leera. Probably their new leader felt unsure of herself, both in her new position or as to their next steps. Elle hesitated, trying to think of what to say, but Cay straggled up at that moment.
“Oh, good, did Leera call a rest? I’m so tired I could sleep on coals.”
“That would be inadvisable, my young-” Okner began from behind him, but a look from Leera cut him short.
“We stop here and sleep,” Leera said, raising her voice so that Joran, standing a little apart, could hear. “Tomorrow we will discuss our plan.”
Elle nodded to show support, but Leera had already turned away, so she looked back at Friya.
“Here, use your bag as a pillow,” she suggested.
As she lay down next to Zinnia and let her weary eyelids close, she thought again of Solldero’s family. She would ask Leera to incorporate that in their plan, as early as possible.

Joran Arundasi couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t not sleep, either, but that only meant he tossed and turned in brief nightmares on the cold, stony ground. Finally, he sat up. Leera was keeping watch, pacing slowly around the little group, but Joran could see she was barely staying awake. Only natural, he told himself. Sleep’s like food and water. Humans can’t live without it. But he couldn’t sleep.
He watched her for a little, but the idea of her noticing him watching her made him self-conscious. A couple of half-formed jokes flitted to his mind; he brushed them away quickly. He’d have to break the tension another way.
“Um, Leera?”
His voice seemed to take a long time to reach her tired ears. She turned slowly.
“Arundasi.”
She was waiting, but at the last moment his courage failed.
“I can, uh, stand watch. Can’t sleep.”
He would have said more, but she merely nodded and lay down right where she was. In seconds she was asleep.
Jor hunched in place, thinking. He didn’t think about his mother, or the last time he’d seen a device like the one that had killed Solldero. Those things appeared in his nightmares more than their fair share anyway. But what Solldero had done…he’d sacrificed himself. Just like…he pushed the thought away. Sacrificing oneself was hard. Seemed impossible, if it involved dying. But, however badly he wanted not to believe it, it was certainly the human thing to do.

Friya Aztlán had already wrapped the shawl Elle gave her around her shoulders before she saw it was her velvet one with the embroidered hem. It was too late to save it from the mud that was drying all over her. She sighed and dropped her face to her bent knees. That short boy, the one with all the jokes, was pacing back and forth, edging his way over to Leera, who still slept on the cold, bumpy, muddy ground. Friya’s mother would be horrified if she knew where her daughter was now, and in the company of little more than peasants! Friya idly watched Joran tentatively shake Leera awake — the girl came upright in less than a second, less of a peasant than a soldier — as she continued to muse. What was she doing here? She was a noble, not a…suddenly, she remembered the seed fight, running and laughing through the streets (running! And laughing aloud!) with handfuls of fluffy seeds, and Solldero, Solldero defending her…
The tears she’d thought were gone rose swiftly to her eyes, and she turned her attention to Leera and Joran. The way Leera sat listening, one leg crossed under her and the other bent with her arm resting casually on it, instantly marked her someone powerful, a leader. Friya copied her, but pulled her legs back up after a second. It felt all wrong. The only posture she felt normal in was court posture, with a stiff back and hands folded in the lap, toes delicately pointed in her fine shoes. Would she ever be in court again?

Leera Stern was wide awake. She knew this because her father had drilled her into being alert the second she was woken. So why did the conversation feel like a dream? Arundasi was crouched next to her, his eyes flitting nervously from his hands to her face to the ground as he murmured. She glanced past him, taking note of the miserable teenagers scattered nearby. They were in poor form, although Vojen seemed to be on the lookout…or birdwatching. She suppressed a sigh and nodded slowly to give Arundasi the impression she was thinking about what he was telling her. It seemed entirely irrelevant, although a good leader didn’t jump to conclusions. Something about his mother dying, and machines, and…if this was the setup for a joke, she would kill him. Well, hurt him. Her thoughts might’ve shown in her face because Arundasi faltered and wound up lamely,
“So maybe there’s something I can do. If we see it again.”
“The device?”
“Yeah. My father called it his bodyguard-”
“Your father owns it?”
From the look on his face, he’d already explained all of that, but he merely nodded.
“He designed it, yes. I just thought, maybe, I could help. Like…”
Rather than say Noy’s name, he jerked his head sharply and sprang up in a quick movement that drew the attention of the others.
Leera pursed her lips. She could think later; now was a time for action.

Zinnia Questel didn’t care how close the nearest town was. She didn’t care that they needed to buy more food and bathe. She sat and watched a twitch in Leera’s face as she bossed everyone around, ordering Friya and Joran to purchase bread and galvanizing the others into planning their next moves.
Zinn didn’t care. She had failed, and someone was dead because of that. ‘You can’t help everyone,’ her mother would say, and Zinn put new meaning in the pain in her mother’s brown eyes. Her mother was a real doctor, licensed, but there must have been people she hadn’t been able to heal.
Solldero had called her a healer, but what was the point if she couldn’t save someone when it counted? She remembered the way his pulse had pounded under her hands as she pressed cloth to the gaping wound in his chest. The way he’d fought to keep his eyes open, say his last words, while she’d fought to keep him alive. She hadn’t done it. His blood was on her hands…metaphorically and literally.
After a moment, she realized she was rocking, staring at the dried blood cracked in unreadable patterns over her fingers and palms. Someone put a hand under her arm and pulled her up; she barely registered Leera. I failed him. Now he’s gone. There is no second chance.

Okner Annersap was in favor of cleanliness. He’d studied hygiene in its various forms from when natural springs were converted into public bathhouses to when a foreign queen made ice baths all the rage (at least among the wealthy). He’d also read Nath Spyeman’s The Invisible Enemy and Ellana Torcoree-Bekser’s What is Dirt? after his mother told him three times to clean his room. However, he objected to abluting in public fountains. It was undignified to hurry over one by one and splash water on one’s face and hands. Zinnia had the right idea, he thought. She reminded him of the little-known knight Sir Willem Bestel who had refused to respond to an attack at dawn because he hadn’t finished trimming his beard. Granted, his men had immediately surrendered in disgust, but he admired how slowly she scrubbed her hands, especially given that Leera was already fuming under her breath.
A glint of copper caught Okner’s eye. Hadn’t the prolific author Lorienne Twol written something on early copper mining in Calcor’Bolad? He was trying to remember the title when Leera suddenly shouted, kicked his legs from under him and threw herself at the ground. The thought that she had lost her sanity and the sight of flames reached his mind at the same time. The same orb they had first encountered by the Doar was suddenly visible, hovering for a second in the air over their heads before zooming toward the fountain where Zinnia still sat. Leera shouted again, almost a scream, and Zinnia looked up, but she didn’t move. The attack on…? Dolimar’s tragic…? The traitor princesses…? That was it. Only one of them had been a traitor, for love of the general of the enemy army, but when her sister died at the hands of the army she had granted entry, she refused to leave and was eventually killed – purportedly through a miscommunication – by a soldier of her own country. Except when the copper device vanished again, leaving a trail of screams and smoke, Zinnia was still alive. Her arm was bleeding, though, rather heavily. Okner looked at Leera, whose face was grimmer than King Volar’s when his sixth child proved to be another girl. He rather had the idea that they were making history.

Marya had rebelled. She could not kill the girl with her sister’s name, and she’d meant to miss her altogether, aiming at a particular spot instead of allowing the tracker to work, only Zinnia hadn’t ducked. She’d seen the device, though, preparing to harm her, and she’d only stared, stony-eyed. She was still sitting now, but the image blurred, distorted by the tears in Marya’s eyes. Fall! She stormed inwardly; she wanted to be angry, or to grieve, or go mad, but the only emotion that she could feel was fear, slowly creeping up to shroud her heart in ice.

Elle Tonarych didn’t cry, because Zinnia was alive. Crowds of townspeople were shouting and running around them, but she and the others staggered up from the ground and hurried over to Zinnia, whose blood was dripping into the fountain. She had moved only to put her hand over the wound. Leera took a deep breath.
“You’re alive, Questel, and you’re going to stay that way. Tell Elle what to do to help you, and do it now.”
Zinnia looked a little taken aback, but she told Elle to bind the arm tightly. Elle sat beside her, trying not to hurt her and grateful for the distraction of Friya and Joran hurrying up with their purchases, eyes wide and scared.
Leera divided up half the bread evenly, ordering them all to eat. She looked tense, Elle thought, and she was staring hard at a group of teens across the plaza. Actually, the teens were staring at them. Abruptly, the other group started towards them, and Leera was suddenly on her feet, fists on her hips, her expression not quite aggressive but definitely challenging. The eight teens stopped a few feet away, and Elle realized they must be another group made by the king. Her twin brother was not among them, which was good because Elle didn’t want him anywhere near the danger and bloodshed that seemed to follow her group.
“How goes it?” asked a tall boy politely.
Elle’s group cast sidelong glances at each other. The question seemed absurd, but the boy went on,
“We are already on our fifth task, and we expect to finish them all by tomorrow. If you like, we can help you.”
He looked at Zinnia, raising his eyebrows.
“You seem to be in trouble.”
Cay ventured awkwardly,
“We, uh, just finished our first task. I think. I mean, right? Opening the Doar? Except…we were…well, it’s all because of the king, that-”
Fortunately, Friya froze him with a glare, and before either of them could say anything, Leera broke in,
“Each group has eight tasks? We were not told.”
“Oh, yes,” said a girl from the other group. “Our first one-”
And that was when the copper orb burst into existence again, spitting fire, and shot Friya through the head.

Leera Stern wanted her excuses so badly that it hurt. There had been no time. She could not have reached Aztlán even if she had already been moving. One of the others should have done something… but the truth was, she had not even called an order.
“Vojen!” she shouted, but again she was too late. He was already running towards Zinnia, who helped splash water over the flames charring his clothes. Eight tasks. One down, and two dead, one injured. Leera’s promise seemed more impossible all the time, but somehow, a spark of determination opened inside her. She would protect her group, or she would die trying. The prospect seemed not unlikely.

Cay Vojen was thinking about his aunt. Usually she was in constant motion, keeping the farm running with her patient energy, but there was one day he’d found her sitting in the kitchen, crying. Cay had said something to her, anything, to make her feel better, but it hadn’t helped. Later, he’d watched her wrapping burns on his baby cousin’s hands.
Guilt and fear and anger burned almost as much as the blisters rising on his arms and torso. He couldn’t bear to look at the body that used to be Friya, so he pulled away from Zinnia (who followed him, tying off a bandage) and rummaged through her bag for something to spread over her. She liked nice things, he remembered somewhere off in the distance. He picked a cloth that he guessed was silk.
Leera crouched beside him as he settled it over her.
“We need to move,” she said.
“She should be buried,” he replied, his eyes on the ground. “She’d want to be buried the way she…deserved.”
Leera hesitated, then nodded.
“According to her status, you mean. I agree.”
She stood and looked at the remains of their group, huddled together looking exhausted and scared. The other group was long gone, faster than frogs leap when you step into their pool.
Cay remembered the evening of the day he’d seen his aunt crying. She’d been serving them all at the table and his uncle, normally an undemonstrative person, had put an arm briefly around her and muttered,
“It was the right thing to do.”
His aunt had started crying again, but it was different from before, and Cay had been relieved. There was a comfort for pain in knowing the right path, Cay thought.
He stood as well.
“Let’s do this last thing, for our friend, like she would’ve wanted,” he said, and for once he didn’t feel self-conscious.

Okner Annersap was not given to reading novels, but it had occurred to him one year that the “popular” of today might become the classics of tomorrow, and he did not care to miss a reference when the material was so readily available to him. He had taken to heart the moral of The Wasteful Prisoner, another resolution of his being to not ignore folk stories, and had set out to read nearly two hundred popular works of fiction with selections for all imaginable genres. There had been an awkward moment when his mother found him reading Lillicent Powell’s Sally, Sweetheart: A Tragic Story of Dreams and Romance, but the book that came to mind now was one by an amateur author under the pseudonym Dour Black. The plot had been strewn with holes, and the ending rather obvious, true, but Okner found the parallels to their current situation uncomfortably visible. The book had had invisible man-eating monsters that had picked off every non-essential character one by one until the hero and his love interest managed to cobble together a means of escape and cemented their romance in the same chapter, leaving a horde of useless friends to throw themselves sacrificially (and wholly unnecessarily) at the monsters to aid their flight. In group Marya’s case, however, Okner reasoned, the deaths were not due to the voracious appetites of insentient creatures but rather to the will of someone with an astonishing amount of power. Also, that someone had just made a mistake. Up to that point, the logical conclusion would have been that the king had orchestrated Solldero’s death, since it occurred through the completion of his instructions. But Friya Aztlán’s devotion to the king was – had been – crystal clear. That meant that the killer was someone close enough to the king and with enough power and privilege to be able to use the king as a façade, and Okner rather thought that Solldero Noy had had the right idea when he’d mentioned one Malcav. One of the king’s advisors, wasn’t he? Okner retreated into his memories to consider.

Joran Arundasi vomited. Zinnia told him to chew purple herbs from her pouch, but she didn’t get up from where she was huddled on the ground, cradling her arm. The cloth that had fallen from Friya’s body lay soaked on the ground, where nobody touched it. Cay and Leera were standing with Okner, talking quietly, but from the distant expression on the tall boy’s face, Jor doubted he was hearing any of it. He spat to try and get rid of the acid taste before stumbling over. Elle was sitting listlessly nearby, and Jor hesitantly offered her a hand up. She stared at it for moment, then took it slowly and let him pull her up. Joran didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t a mood he could cheer her out of with a few jokes…or himself, for that matter. The gloom was almost too much to handle, reminding him of…
Leera nodded at the two of them.
“The townspeople will bury our companion as befits her station. We will honor her memory by continuing to complete the tasks given us with courage and acumen.”
The words sounded good, but the meaning took time to filter through their numbed senses.
“Okay,” Joran managed. “Do we know what the next task is?”
“That guy said the clue for it,” Cay reminded him. “He said something about the sky.”
“Clear the sky,” Elle murmured.
The four of them looked at each other sideways and then lifted their heads. There were a few fluffy clouds, but the sun was shining.
“Uh…” said Joran.

Zinnia Questel didn’t want to think about how much her arm was hurting, and definitely not about how she was going to sew it up. She would have done it for a patient, and she wasn’t in the mood to spare herself the pain. But she always gave her patients a distraction, and fortunately Okner was talking.
They had moved outside of the town to sit awkwardly on the banks of a small stream. Elle’s arms were squeezed tightly around her knees and Joran was repeatedly rinsing out his mouth, but Leera and Cay were focused on Okner.
“Um, sorry, I kind of got confused again-” Cay interjected apologetically. “The sky isn’t actually the sky?”
From the way he kept glancing up, he thought that was literal. Zinn started a half smile that quickly turned into a grimace as she pushed the needle through.
“I believe we can count on the relative constancy of the firmament, my young friend,” Okner said patiently. “My intention was to convey the probability of the word ‘sky’ not referring to that actual sky, but rather to the river Skye, which is the second largest river in this country and incidentally quite close to Oceanfront.”
Elle lifted her head.
“Oceanfront? That’s where Solldero lived; we have to go there!”
She didn’t seem aware of the tear trickling down her cheek, but Zinn watched its progress as she pulled the thread tight.
Leera narrowed her eyes accusingly.
“And ‘clearing’ the Skye would mean exactly what? Fishing out debris until we drop?”
“I am, of course, not privy to the wishes of the king, or perhaps more likely, his closest and most trusted advisor Malcav, who left the country with his parents when they were banished in his childhood by the father of our current king. This can perhaps explain his irreluctance to place his majesty in a poor light, as he has done on numerous occasions thus-”
“Okner.”
Leera’s tone left no doubt as to her meaning.
“My construance is that the clue will lead us to displace, if only temporarily, some of the… persons… who pursue their… occupations…in a series of tunnels under the Skye. The extent of the tunnels is unknown due to-”
Zinnia tuned him out and focused on tying the knot one-handed.
A doctor didn’t give up. She would do her best with the next patient to come along. Even if it turned out to be herself…

Marya listened in dull astonishment. Okner was talking about the Murdered Map-Maker, and somehow he’d remembered details from the (unfinished and unpublished) book…The Storm, he was saying, and giving the history of the name. The room just off-center under the Skye, where gangs came to choose peace or war. A neutral zone. How did the boy know all this? It might almost be possible for them to complete the impossible tasks Malcav set for them…if it weren’t that she had been set a task of her own, and she would not disobey. She knew that, now. Her friend’s blood still stained the floorboards by the device, and long after the stains were gone the echoes of her screams would haunt Marya’s head. She could not disobey again, but the guilt was destroying her from the inside out.

Elle Tonarych had never felt worse, not even when she’d pushed her brother out of their treehouse and he’d fallen and broken his arm in two places. Then she’d felt terrible for weeks, but she wished she could go back to that time. She kept wondering how things could go on, but the others talked and argued, and Zinn changed Cay’s bandages, and Leera gave orders that Elle couldn’t not follow, even though she wasn’t sure she could, either. Most of the orders were to keep walking, and then keep up, and then eat some of the bread on the way. In a way, it was easier to let herself be ordered around. But…none of the others had given up. They all seemed determined, in their own ways, to win, whatever that meant. Except Joran. He looked a bit the way Elle felt, with his head hanging drearily. When he glanced at her, she thought she saw panic in his eyes. Her grandmother had taught her to think of others when she hurt, and she’d run a hundred errands for her brother before his arm had healed. I can help someone, she thought. Even if it isn’t myself. And that will help me, too. It was odd to have to think out again something that was almost second nature to her, but she felt more grounded. It wouldn’t help to think of poor Friya now. Now Joran was the one who needed her at his side.
“Hey,” she began, stepping sideways to walk next to him. “I just…”
She’d meant to ask him for a joke, since he told so many, but the expression he turned to her was one of rigid terror, and she stopped short.
“Are you okay?” She put a hand gently on his arm. He laughed, although it sounded more like a gasp or the end of a sob.
“I- I- I’m still alive. Alive! She’s not. Friya’s not. My mother’s gone. I- I can’t do this. It’s because of me. But I’m not! Not a machine. I’m human, anyone can see that, anyone, no matter what they say. It wasn’t me; the device saved me and it was invisible, even though it sounds crazy, I know, I think maybe I- I am going crazy. They’re —!”
All six of them had stopped at that point, Leera’s brow furrowed, Okner raising his eyebrows in interest, Cay open-mouthed. Zinn started rummaging in her pouch for something, and Elle reached out gently and hugged Joran.
“It’s okay,” she whispered without letting go. “We’re working together to get through this. I’m so sorry about your mother, and we are all going to miss Friya. And Solldero. But right now, it’s okay.”
It took several minutes for him to relax and stop babbling enough to look self-conscious. Elle kept her arms around him and thought about her brother. Would it be okay for him? Would she see him again?

Zinnia Questel was going to run out of herbs in less than an hour if Joran needed them at this rate. He was so jumpy that Zinn kept looking over her shoulder, thinking he’d seen the copper orb again. But before too long Leera held up her hand for them all to stop.
“Annersap?” She queried.
Okner looked around.
“I must confess I can remember only the first letter of the street, that being a B, and in any case it is altogether possible that Alar Solldero’s daughter lives somewhere else altogether. However…”
He struck off towards a row of merchants’ stalls.
“Why are we looking for someone’s daughter?” Cay whispered. Zinnia stared at the pale green slime that bordered the cobblestones beneath their feet.
“I think that’s Solldero’s mother,” Elle whispered back.
Zinn caught a few suspicious glances from the rough, bearded men around them. From the way Leera’s stance shifted, she’d caught them as well.
“But isn’t Solldero his first name?” Cay whispered.
Leera’s slow blink probably meant that she wanted them to stop whispering and keep alert. Zinn turned toward Cay briefly.
“Got married, maybe,” she pointed out, and turned back to watch Okner’s progress towards them.
He achieved by drifting what most people did with elbows, and he never seemed to look down. Zinn tried to follow his gaze, but it ended somewhere beyond the clouds.
He kept gazing up when he reached them, and Leera finally snapped,
“Well?”
“The myth of Elkey and Swiran explains that nothing can be understood that has not been experienced,” he began, and Elle cleared her throat gently.
“Sorry, Okner, but did you manage to find out where Solldero’s family lives?”
“Ah.” He stroked his mustache.
“Bell Street, in the same house. Although I believe they rent out, as well.”
Zinn stopped listening again and looked up. Okner had been looking at the clouds, not past them; they were a heavy grey, thick over Oceanfront. There would be rain. Lots of it.

Leera Stern was determined. She was also angry, and she used her anger to focus and control her determination. Zinnia had to be motivated, Cay reassured, Okner silenced…but first Elle needed to talk to Noy’s family, which brought with it a whole host of problems. There were a number of suspicious-looking people standing about in the street, notwithstanding the rain. Leera wasn’t afraid, but she knew people, and these were not the kind who only looked scary. She managed to scout out the interior of the house and guard the rear of the group at the same time only by diverting her senses away from Okner’s explanation to whomever had opened the door. Once they were all inside, Leera briefly put one hand on Arundasi’s shoulder and the other on Questel’s, hoping the girl would take the hint. The front hall they stood in seemed relatively safe…until you looked more closely. Then you could see the bullet holes, gouge marks, etc., although they all looked fairly old. In and out, Leera thought. Honor one of his last wishes, then keep on with the rest. Annersap wouldn’t stop talking once he got started, so she gestured for him and Cay to remain with Joran and Zinnia while she and Elle followed the young woman who had opened the door into a back room.
It wasn’t what she’d expected. She’d practically grown up in a training facility, and she’d expected similar from Noy’s impressive abilities. But the small suite glowed with warmth and vibrant colors. Seated on a low couch was a woman who could only be Noy’s mother. Two young girls leaned against her.
“Mrs. Noy?” Elle smiled sadly. “I am so sorry, but we have very bad news for you.”
“My son is dead.” The woman spoke softly, her voice shaking slightly. “I know, or Adana would not have brought you here. You…knew him.”
Elle’s eyes filled with tears; she stepped forward and hugged the woman.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “We all had so much respect for him. He was a good leader.”
Leera remained stiffly where she was. If she were the kind of person to shy away from unpleasant tasks, she would have regretted not sending Okner. But she was not. Raising her chin, she said,
“Your son died bravely, ma’am, an example to us all.”
One of Noy’s sisters whimpered, and the woman pulled them close as Elle stepped back.
“If there’s anything we can do…” Elle began, but Leera broke in.
“We are determined to finish what we were forced to begin, in your son’s memory.”
The woman looked up, her eyes hard behind the tears.
“You do that,” she answered quietly. “But be careful. This is not an easy place.”

Cay Vojen was scared, and unfortunately, he had good reason to be. Damp was all around them, the thick scent of mildew clinging to the moist walls and swept along in the current of the draining systems. Okner said that the structures under the river Skye had lasted for years and had been built by a famous architect…he’d started to say what had happened to said architect, but Leera gestured roughly for him to be silent, and for once Cay had to agree. There was no one in sight, but Cay had the feeling that that didn’t mean no one was around. And there were stains on the walls that he didn’t want to look at too closely, and the air smelt of blood…Cay pushed forward a little, wishing Leera hadn’t directed him to bring up the rear. He only managed to nearly trip up Elle, but she turned and patted his arm comfortingly.
“I believe we need only take the famed passageway where the fictional Young Rolly was supposed to have met his long-lost mother (whom he later discovered to be his aunt, her identical twin) and where he first realized-”
From the abrupt cut-off, Leera must have elbowed him.
The passageway was empty, although it smelled strongly of sweat and grime and something unpleasant Cay didn’t recognize. The circular room it led to smelled the same, with the addition of metal…
It took Cay several seconds to realize that they were not alone.
The rough men sauntered forward with grace that belied their bulk, their fists glinting ominously. There hadn’t seemed so many shadows, but the men just kept coming. Their little group could easily have been surrounded any number of times, but the men never entirely closed in, instead leaving gaps between groups.
“Ah, yes,” Okner whispered behind Cay. “The six factions, all represented in their hotly-disputed headquarters. One wonders-”
There was a blur of movement, and Okner stopped talking with a grunt. Cay glanced back, thinking Leera had tripped him up or something, but she was open-mouthed in shock, pressing her back against Zinnia’s and raising her hands in what looked like a knowledgeable defensive position.
By the time Cay understood what was going on, the man holding a knife to Okner’s throat was speaking menacingly, his accent so thick that Cay could barely make out the words.
“I’m not bargaining. I don’t bargain. But if you run you might just survive. Unlike this one.”
And he cut Okner’s throat.
They all gasped, and as Okner’s body fell in what felt like slow motion, they all moved forward to catch him. Cay managed to support Okner’s head before it hit the ground.
Blood welled up from the cut too fast to understand. Okner tried to say something, but the words gurgled in his mouth.
“…long been my dream…recite the hero Aldgar’s famous three-day death speech, as recorded…playwright…’Dearest companions, so faithful and true…’” The words were barely audible, but there was a spark in his eyes that made Cay smile, despite the circumstances. And then – it went out.
There was a shuddering breath from one of them; Cay was so numb that information from his senses jumbled in his mind.
“Last chance,” said a voice from somewhere above him.
The metallic smell of blood filled Cay’s nostrils. Distantly he heard a crash, and maybe running water…Leera was on her feet, face to face with the man who’d killed Okner and who still stood threatening them. Since all the other men were behind her, there was no chance she could fight.
As it turned out, there was no chance for anything.
A ringing boom so loud that it drowned out the man’s next words startled them all into a moment of horrified silence. There were successive crashes like waves in a storm, but a sudden glint of copper snatched Group Marya’s eyes to the man in front of them. His eyes had suddenly gone glassy, and Cay was sure he smelled smoke…then the man collapsed at their feet, and the teenagers turned and ran for their lives. The copper orb was floating there in the air, spitting flames at random.
Cay threw himself through the crowd of bewildered gangsters. A brief whiff of flowers told him Zinnia was right behind him. The orb was definitely following them! Perhaps just as important was the water rushing into the room behind them. As the four of them pelted up a passageway, a panicked stampede growing in their wake, Cay gradually realized that there was a tall figure running in front of them. For a soul-shaking moment he thought it was Okner, but just as they neared the staircase that led to the streets, the figure turned at the top and panted,
“Wash the rain, by order of the king. Wash the rain!”
They had barely slowed, and Cay was forcing himself into a final sprint when an explosion of flame and smoke behind them sent him staggering.
“Get down!” Leera screamed, and threw herself at Zinn, somehow kicking Cay’s feet from under him as she went.
Joran was slower, turning in confusion from the first stair just as the blast happened.
Elle pushed herself up from the floor to drag him down…they both fell…Joran twisted, his hand frantically patting her cheek…running footsteps behind them signaled a stampede of gang members, fleeing the flood.

Joran Arundasi tried to wrap his mind around what had just happened, but it was impossible.
“We have to go!” Leera’s voice had an odd quality to it, unconvincing and frail.
Elle’s eyelids flickered.
“Joran? Joran…it’s going to be ok. Don’t worry.”
“Elle!” He wanted to scream it, but he couldn’t pull air into his lungs. She hesitated.
“It’s ok. Jor? Just stick with Leera, she’ll keep you…safe…”
Leera and Cay were next to them, lifting Elle as the last of the gang members shoved past them.
She was moaning, and Zinn was shouting that she shouldn’t be moved, but Leera pointed in the direction of a rumbling sound that heralded a wave of water, and then it didn’t matter anymore.
Nothing mattered.
Elle went limp, her hand dropped from Joran’s, and he knew she was dead.
Seconds later her body had been washed away and the four surviving members of Group Marya sprawled on the street, drenched.
Before things had been bad, but they had mattered. So much so that Joran had wanted to die. He’d wanted to stop the endless fear, the rounds of panic and grief. Maybe he could join his mother, and Solldero and Friya and Okner. Maybe looking in the face of death would free him from this waking nightmare. But instead, Elle had saved him.
“You should have lived,” Jor whispered to the cobblestones beneath him. She’d actually had things to live for. Friends, parents…didn’t she have a twin brother? A pang of guilt swirled with the sorrow; Jor pounded the cobbles with his fist, begging the pain to drive away his emotions.
“Get up, Arundasi!” Leera was standing over him.
He hated her. He hated himself. Why had she saved him? He wanted to hate her, too, but that was unfair…everything was unfair. She was dead. He was not. Leera was…

Marya watched the fight with the audio off. Watching their anger from a distance felt very similar to her own emotions. Behind a daze, she knew the fear and hate and guilt raged, but she wanted to drift far away from them. Being numb was far better than accepting what was happening…what had already happened, what she had done, and what she had become. It was far too late to even hope for change.

Zinnia Questel focused hard on bandaging the mild scrapes on Cay’s arms and legs. They didn’t need bandaging, but she really, really didn’t want to see the way Leera’s arms bent taught around her knees, or the single tear rolling down her cheek.
The angry words still hung in the air, their bitter residue clamoring in Zinn’s mind.
‘…when Solldero died, our deaths were written too…I wish I were dead now…’
Leera’s usual impassive mask stripped away in the face of his words.
‘…show some gratitude for the last gift Elle ever gave…for once show some care for those of us who still live…’
Joran’s emotions shriveling to dust, his mouth setting hard. Striding away.
Zinn had thought they would move, especially since crowds of people were coming to stare at the flooded passageways under the Skye and not all of them looked friendly, but Leera hunched unblinkingly on the street and Joran was barely in sight, pacing indecisively at the corner.
Zinn looked at Cay and found he was already looking at her.
“Talk to them,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Talk to them. Make them figure it all out.” He just stared at her, and after a moment she said, “I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t either.”
He looked down at the bandages on his arms, then glanced briefly at the entrance to the passageways.
In an odd connection, Zinn knew he was thinking of Elle and Okner in their last moments. They had thought of Group Marya as a real group, not put together by the king for a fleeting few days, but as ‘companions, faithful and true’…’sticking together’. Cay got slowly to his feet.
“You talk to Joran,” he whispered.

Joran Arundasi wanted to do so many things, like kick the ground and punch a wall and crush Leera with a riposte, that he thought he might explode. He wished he could. Zinnia was walking toward him, her eyes averted in that awkward way when you recognize someone but he’s too far away to greet him smoothly. He waited, bitter, to see what she would say.
She said nothing.
Joran kicked at the cobbles. It hurt, but he did it again. He felt like he was back in his father’s study, wondering why his father had sent to him but not daring to speak until those sharp eyes finally lifted from the papers they interrogated. He felt trapped, he felt scared and angry, he felt…
“I killed her.”
Zinnia looked up slowly.
“She’s dead, because of me.”
He walked jerkily, without knowing which direction he went, burning off excess emotions.
“Okner, too. I knew, I knew about that orb, and I told Leera but not enough or she didn’t get it, I don’t know. I just – can’t!”
Zinnia followed him with her eyes but stayed motionless, listening gravely.
“I feel like this is all my fault, and I want someone to convince me it’s not, but even if it isn’t, it’s still all wrong! It’s all so bad that I hurt, all over. And I can’t think about anything else. I want to hurt someone else, I think, and make them take the pain, but I think everyone’s already feeling it, Zinnia! But they don’t know that it’s because I didn’t do enough…Zinnia, what are we going to do? How do we fix this? We have to fix it!”
He was crying, which was even more humiliating under her steady gaze, but somehow it eased the pain, just a little.
“Zinnia?” asked Jor. “What are we going to do?”

Cay Vojen sat down near Leera and fixed his eyes on the street.
“It’s not easy to lead,” he started, a little awkwardly. “I mean, I’ve never really led anybody except my uncle’s cows. But people like the king, and Solldero, and you…”
She stiffened, and Cay trailed off.
“What I mean is, every leader makes mistakes, because every person makes mistakes. What matters more is the things a leader does on purpose. Like, send a bunch of teens to their deaths. Or put everything into training those teens to keep them safe.”
She closed her eyes; Cay didn’t know if she was thinking about the king’s decision or Solldero’s, but he went on,
“Your decisions have been good ones, I think. And, um…Friya, Okner, Elle…it’s not your fault.”
Cay held his breath, and also bit his tongue so hard it hurt. He’d never given a speech like this before (at least, not without someone having to elbow him sharply or tread heavily on his foot), and he didn’t want to ruin it. Leera sat motionless, and after a few moments, Cay gave up hope of having been helpful.

Leera Stern scolded herself. Mistakes happened; Cay was right. But a leader didn’t sit around whining about them – not her own or anyone else’s. They’d lost two more team members, and it was a blow in many ways. But their next action step?
She took stock of the suspicious faces scattered in the street. They needed to move on and follow the next order. What had it been…?
She lifted her head sharply. Joran and Zinnia were gone.
Standing in a swift movement, she gestured for Cay to follow her and set off determinedly to the corner where she’d last seen Arundasi and Questel.
Cay scrambled after her, radiating bemusement.
Leera paused mid-stride.
“I appreciate your efforts, Vojen,” she acknowledged briefly but with the nod that meant so much, and turned the corner.
Arundasi looked like he’d been crying, but he and Questel fell in behind Leera without comment when she motioned to them.
“We don’t have much time until we’re killed.”
There was no point in trying to cushion her meaning; she was no good at it and they could all handle it after what they’d seen.
“We have two options: find the person behind our friends’ deaths and attempt to stop him, or finish all eight tasks. Whichever we choose, we must succeed before another of us dies.”
Leera let them walk in silence for a few minutes to consider.
Finally, Zinnia asked timidly,
“The clue…it was ‘wash the rain’. Does anyone know what that means?”
“There’s some kind of statue,” Cay suggested doubtfully. “In the city, by the palace, that my uncle told me about. Isn’t that a guy called Rain?”
“Reigner,” Leera corrected shortly. “His nickname.” Reigner, or Keern Doslayer, was one of her father’s heroes.
“Oh. Sorry.” Cay hung his head gloomily. “Okner would know.”
Joran brushed away the silence before it could become heavy.
“What about the person behind all of this? Who is it? And-”
Zinnia cut him off gently.
“Didn’t Okner say something about the king’s advisor Malcav?”
None of them could remember.
Leera listened to Vojen and Questel debating various theories for what ‘rain’ could mean, or ‘wash’ (Cay proposed that ‘rain’ was really ‘reign’ and they were meant to depose the king. Zinnia just stared at him until he changed his own mind); Arundasi kept muttering about the person controlling it all.
Leera let her voice slice effortlessly through the others’:
“We’ll go back to the capital. That’s where we’ll find our task, or that’s where we’ll find the person behind all of this.”
She could sense confidence flowing through her words and into her companions’ spines, giving them focus and purpose.
For the first time since Solldero’s death, she felt like a leader.  

Marya found that the only way she could keep from tapping her foot ceaselessly against the leg of her chair or drumming her fingers up and down her arm was to bite her lip until it bled. She refused to allow herself to feel even pain. She had lost the privilege of emotions.

Joran Arundasi was tired. The exhaustion screaming from his legs overpowered everything else, even the careful walls he’d set up long ago in his mind.
He thought of his mother.
She had loved to laugh…she had given him silly nicknames…she’d stormed down to the school, once, when she found Jor crying…
And she had saved him from the copper orb. His father had bought the rights to the thing, and had studied it, trying to figure out why and how it had attacked the two of them, that last day he’d had his mother.
She’d lured it away from him and never come back; ever since, Jor had refused to think of her for more than an instant, because the instant he did he’d have to consider the two possibilities that he couldn’t live with: that she was dead, or that she was alive but had never come back for him. Had she died for him? Abandoned him? The questions pressed down on his mind, shutting off his eyesight, unstoppable as his whole body focused on moving his legs…and then he heard it.
A soft puff of air. And a gentle flicker of heat…
The scream had barely left his mouth when Leera spun around, sending Cay sprawling to the ground and – in the same move – jerking Jor forward and down onto his face. She threw herself partly over Zinnia, shielding both their heads with her arms.
Jor would have thought time had stopped, but he could feel a trickle of blood from a graze journeying towards his chin. There was no sound. There was no time to run; Jor forced himself to lie still. None of them had a chance of getting away before the device killed them all, if it chose. Or whomever it chose. Then an explosion sounded over his head, and Jor closed his eyes and curled up into a ball. It was over.

Zinnia Questel choked on the dark fabric muffling her face but could barely move her arm enough to push it away. Something dug painfully into her back, then the weight lifted. Cay’s anxious face swam into view.
“Joran! Come help me,” he called.
“I’m fine,” Zinn gasped out. She was unhurt, although her face and fingers tingled as though she might pass out.
“Joran!” Cay called again, and after a long moment Zinnia was free to sit up.
Joran and Cay set down Leera’s body gently, turning her onto her back and folding her hands on her chest.
Zinn moved to bury her face in her knees but a fleeting memory of Elle’s still body gave her pause. She reached up and tugged Joran’s sleeve, pulling him down beside her. His head drooped into his hands. Cay slumped beside him, and the three of them leaned together in silence.
Sparks dwindled to black among the sparse brush lining the road.
None of them cried.

Cay Vojen let his shoulder brush against Joran’s arm as they walked. Zinnia was just as close on Cay’s other side, her arm glued to his. They didn’t want to separate for a moment, their hands still empty from leaving Leera’s body behind in a shallow grave. Grimly, they followed the road to the capital.
Plans, politics, even selves were left behind. They felt purpose and fear, mingled like the scents of a feast-day dinner. They walked on.
Time passed strangely; they had no idea how long it was before a rumbling sound behind them made them all flinch and press closer together. A mail coach trundled its way up beside them, slowed, and stopped a few yards ahead. Several faces appeared at the window, and the driver climbed down.
“You kids all right?” he called.
They stared back in silence. What kind of answer could they make? They were alive, but he could see that. Their friends were beyond help. Sympathy would not make a dent in their stony armor.
The driver took a step toward them, frowning.
“Is that blood?” he asked, gesturing at Zinnia. “Are you kids in trouble?”
The pause stretched uneasily. Cay focused hard on the man’s stubbly beard, refusing to allow the bloody images to draw themselves in his mind’s eye.
A passenger pushed open the window on the coach and put her head through to call,
“They may be one of the King’s Groups!”
The driver opened his mouth as though about to ask, then paused and shook his head.
“No, the King’s Groups are always eight, aren’t they?” He turned to the passengers for confirmation.
“And these are…only…three…”
He turned slowly back, fixating the blood stains on Zinnia’s shirt.
“What happened to you all?” he gasped.
A sudden breeze gusted behind them, and all three immediately threw themselves flat in the dust. None of them tried to shield another. There was no point in more than one of them dying.

Marya felt a painful peace settling over her eyes and heart. She was terrified, yes, and dread bubbled in her stomach, but she had come to a decision she’d never thought she’d reach. She had found a line of resistance so far into enemy territory that it scared her…because had she always known she could and would go this far?
But now she was done. More than done.

Cay Vojen squinted up from the dusty road. There were no flames, but the driver had fallen back a few paces, an expression of terror on his face.
“That…what…”
Cay lifted his head and looked back. The orb was fading to a menacing shimmer, and not a shot had been fired. What could it mean?
The driver was almost bent double as he approached them, but he held out a steady hand to help Zinnia up.
“Into the coach!” he offered.
They hesitated.
Cay looked into the driver’s face. The man must realize that the device they’d just watched disappear was more than a match for the walls of a coach, and given that only three of them were left of the original eight he must be aware of the danger, but he was offering anyway. The passengers, too, were nodding from the window, although they kept peering up at the sky anxiously.
As Cay pulled himself up, he watched Zinnia crouch again to put her hand on Jor’s shoulder, and for a brief moment everything was clear.
They couldn’t keep going like they’d been doing, just the three of them, struggling, or before too long Joran wouldn’t get up out of the dust.
For so long, Cay had wished himself something more than the clumsy farm boy who always said the wrong thing. Now it was finally true, but he realized that he hadn’t arrived. He, all three of them, needed keep going, keep growing, or they were doomed to failure.
He wasn’t sure what had gone through Zinnia’s mind, but after that split second their eyes met and acknowledged their shared fear and certainty.
“Thank you, sir!”
Cay hauled Joran up, moved toward the coach as Zinnia asked,
“Are you going to the capital?”
“Right to the center,” the man replied, glancing over his shoulder as he swung back up to his seat.
Joran, stiffening his spine resolutely, gestured for Cay to enter the coach first, which he managed without tripping on either step – only to fall over someone’s foot and faceplant into a lady’s shoes.
Wincing in embarrassment, Cay scrambled to his feet and sat down across from her, ignoring whatever Joran was mumbling.
“Er, sorry, ma’am. I’ve always been clumsy.”
She smiled at him over her glasses.
“There’s no problem at all, young man. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through if the three of you were part of a King’s Group. Is there any way we could help?”
Cay sat back in his seat, his shoulders relaxing a little for the first time in a long time.

Zinnia Questel climbed thoughtfully after Joran into the coach. Had he really just cracked a joke? She didn’t think he’d even laughed since Solldero’s death. Maybe he was healing. Sitting down across from him, she heard the lady next to her say,
“Perhaps I could help in some way?”
Cay looked instantly relieved, a tiny muscle that had been strained in his temple relaxing. Zinn wondered if he should be so trusting, but the woman’s next words removed all distrust.
“I am a cartographer; not especially good yet, I’m afraid, but perhaps I could help you with the clues.”
Zinn met Joran’s eyes. They both heard it, and Cay, too, from the way his eyes were widening.
The woman looked from one to another.
“Is something wrong? You were provided with clues, I assume?”
“Yes, we were given clues,” Cay responded slowly. “Uh, sorry. We just…it just seemed like…”
He trailed off, not sure of how to explain.
She tilted her head thoughtfully but didn’t speak.
The other two occupants of the coach, a young man and a somber, older gentleman, looked around uncomfortably in the growing silence.
The woman shook her head slightly.
“A good friend of mine and his wife are the royal librarians in the capital city. And I believe this gentleman here is a former soldier.”
“And I’m close to graduating from King Gejore University,” the young man added. “We may be able to help.”
“Wash the rain,” Zinna said to her folded hands. She hoped it wasn’t Okner’s parents the lady knew…but at the same time they needed the answers that only Okner had been able to find.
She looked up.
The young man was staring at her in confusion, and to her disappointment, both the lady and the older gentleman merely looked thoughtful.
“This was the clue you were given?” the young man asked in disbelief. “How could you possibly figure it out? You’re just, well, kids!”
Zinn just stared back at him. He wasn’t wrong.
“If I may ask,” the gentleman put in, “What were the previous clues and their solutions, if you found them?”
“’Open the door’ was the first one,” Cay offered. “And it meant to open the Doar blockade.”
“But that’s impossible! The blockade is heavily guarded by the finest soldiers at all times.” The gentleman seemed almost affronted; Zinn wondered whether it was at the idea of someone breaking through the Doar or that action being assigned to a group of teens.
Joran, looking pale, said,
“The second clue was ‘clear the sky’. We…cleared gangs from under the river Skye.”
The university student opened his mouth, then slowly closed it again. He looked from Joran’s face to Zinnia’s to Cay’s.
“I’m sorry,” he said, finally.
The silence stretched out again, but Zinn let his words brush gently up against the cluster of pain in her, feeling an inkling of something akin to peace.

Joran Arundasi didn’t want to return to reality. But he’d been sitting for more than a few minutes, head and wrists dangling, ignoring the others’ discussion, and now Zinnia’s foot – which had been tapping gently against his the whole time – was no longer comforting but warning. He lifted his head and followed her gaze to the lady.
“I’m sure this gentleman is correct,” she was saying, and Cay’s face was so open and wondering listening to her that Joran felt another joke tickle his lips.
“But if so, it seems unlikely that you all would be expected to know the acronymic name of a specific military group, especially given that it is interior and this close to the king. Does this clue seem more difficult than the first two?”
She paused, waiting for an answer, but Jor could only glance at Zinnia and shrug.
“I mean…it’s all about doing things, you know?”
He waited for someone to roll their eyes or laugh, but they all turned to him expectantly. Joran struggled on.
“I mean, we did something each time. Changed something. Maybe big things. And…that’s what the devices are for, aren’t they?”
The question hung in the air.

Marya paused with her hands full of items she wasn’t even sure she needed. The last few hours had been a blur of panic and fear, but Joran’s question reminded her that there might be more than one option in the new path that she’d chosen. Joran’s uncertain voice stumbled into her consciousness.
“My father, he, uh, bought the patent. For the devices. And he redesigned them…sort of…and sold them…No, I don’t know how they…well, he tried to teach me, but I, I, didn’t want to learn. That. That way.” Slowly, Marya set down her things on the hated desk.
“They have self-building technology, which can be programmed to create different things – like weapons and combustibles, or speakers or tools or almost anything. I mean, some things would require special parts that take up room, but there are options. And none of it can be taken apart without keyed tools, sometimes fingerprint keys. And the alloy on the outside is heat resistant and waterproof and pretty much everything.”
She had destroyed herself with her choices, but might there be hope of building herself new with more?
“…the control system is really complex, too. But it’s easy to use, just it takes up a lot of space.”
She sank back into her chair. It was a risk, a huge risk. But she owed four lives worth of risks, and more. Whatever it took, she would do the right thing.

Zinnia Questel had begun to zone out a little, but only from the conversation beside her. They were still quizzing Joran when she heard the device appear. Seconds later the coach jerked to a halt. The passengers, eyes wide, stared out the empty window without daring to lean for a better view.
She didn’t want to. She didn’t want to show her fear, or watch the light drain from their eyes, but she couldn’t not say goodbye – however the moment ended – so she met first Jor’s terrified gaze, then Cay’s.

Cay Vojen had never experienced as long a moment. He wasn’t sure if anyone in the carriage was breathing; he felt suffocated in his rising panic.
A gently grating buzz emanated from somewhere just outside his line of vision. If he leaned a little to the right, the device would see him, and that would be it.
That would be it…
Not once had the device killed more than one of them at once. Okner and Elle had died together, but Okner not directly because of the orb.
He hesitated. Zinn’s gaze was desperate, although he didn’t know her meaning. He had to do it, it was worth it, he was not ready – and as ready as he’d ever be!
Cay leaned slightly to his right.
There was the orb.
He’d never seen it, really, not close up like this, and his panicked mind stored in detail the curves and orifices on its sleek body.
Then it spoke.
“Hello, Cay Vojen,” it said in a woman’s voice.

Joran Arundasi let his eyes open just a crack. Cay was still sitting there, alive, his eyes so wide that the whites were visible all around the irises.
“Hel…” His voice choked off. “Hello?”
Joran shut his eyes again, ignoring the suppressed murmurs from the other passengers.
He could hear Cay swallow before repeating more loudly,
“Hello?”
The orb’s voice buzzed in Jor’s ears; probably dust in the speaker.
“I…I am…Marya.”