--------------------------------

  Evie

  --------------------------------

  “The skull and general body structure appear to have been typical for a young vanara,” she said, narrating into the speaking crystal. “A semi-prominent muzzle, brown-bck fur, and proportionally appropriate limbs, including the tail, though I suppose there is margin for error in my recollection, considering the supposed ‘child’ had been bound for their own safety.”

  “Mm-hm,” Garen hummed, quill scratching, “and what of the eyes? Did you note anything unusual with them?”

  “Not in particur, no. Standard for vanara. Bck, beady. The only physical abnormality I noted would have been the prodigious volume of thering sweat, which I took as a sign of severe fever.”

  “Interesting,” Garen hummed, this time accompanied by the sound of flipping pages.

  Evie frowned as she turned a piece of the demon over, holding it to the light. She was knelt in a pool of cooling blood, which she could feel slowly soaking into the leather of her traveling clothes. All around her was the quiet tick-tick-tick of the creature's eviscerated body, its needle-like structures still trying to fulfill some unknowable duty. Makeshift mops hissed and slurped as they were pushed across the blood-soaked floorboards. Per Sara’s orders, the Tulian soldiers were doing their best to clean up the spilled viscera, but their best was not going to be enough. The home would never be free of the stains.

  Just outside, she could hear the light sounds of Sara consoling the family, working them through their grief. Evie did not know what it took to help someone overcome the horror of seeing their daughter twisted into a monstrosity before their very eyes. She was gd that Sara was there to attempt it.

  “But you said it screamed?” David asked. “Even though you’re saying that beneath the outer yer of skin, there wasn’t any meat at all, just the needles, it still screamed?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then how? Actually, how did it even talk?”

  “It is a demon, Professor Brown,” Evie replied, flicking away one of the many nameless remnants which were trying to drag themselves towards her flesh. “I doubt you will find much success in your search for reason. They are, more than all else in reality, an empty existence. Barely able to mirror what they hate, they seek only to degrade and destroy.”

  “Sure, sure,” David said, agreeing in the way that told her he disagreed wholeheartedly, “but that sounds like a religious lesson, right? From some priest or pastor or whatever you guys have here. And while I’m starting to realize that those sorts of people aren’t like they were on earth, and I need to actually kind’ve respect them, their lessons are still gonna be all wrapped up in faith, not, like, actual science. What I’m trying to do is confirm the reality behind their dogma, you know?”

  “A sound approach, for all its daunting scope,” Evie said. “I must remind you, two high-Level Irregurs and eight soldiers took nearly a full minute to effectively disable this creature, and we did not come away unscathed. It is still not truly dead, if such a word can ever be used to describe a demon. The opportunities to study their kind will be few and far between.”

  “Which is exactly why we need to make the most of what time we have,” David replied. “But actually, that brings up a question. Dead. Are these things really alive?”

  “Oh, gods,” Garen grumbled, still leafing through pages. “That is a discussion best avoided, David. A thousand years of schors have argued that point again and again, and never has a conclusive answer been found. You may as well ask if intelligent life is possible without a soul.”

  “I mean, it is. It definitely is. Because there wasn’t any kind of magic back on Earth, and we had plenty of intelligent life.”

  “Did you not have spellcraft? Or did your home simply ck the Gifts of Tavan required to detect it? Were you to present your testimony to one who both pces faith in Tavan and believes souls are a prerequisite to true intelligence, your world proves nothing.”

  “Okay, so now we’re back on that argument,” David said with a ugh. “We’re gonna have to shelve it for now, because I want to hear about the cool demon my daughter just killed. Have you found out what kind it is?”

  “Possibly,” Garen replied, tapping a page. “Evie, you said that the imitive child was reportedly capable of speech, but this capacity devolved over time?”

  “Correct.”

  “Then I suspect that the Governess’s initial assessment is the most accurate. This was never a possession at all. Rather, it was a repcement.”

  “A changeling?”

  “No, changelings are of the fae, though the comparison is apt. This was likely a demon that abducted, replicated, then repced the original child.”

  “Then what is its proper name?”

  “Few forms of demons have names, I’m afraid. Their individual variety is great enough to resist definition. What few nguages ascribe a name to demons exhibiting this behavior usually denote them as some form of ‘Abductor’ or ‘Impersonator.’”

  Evie straightened.

  “If they abduct, then they do not kill. Sara’s concern remains with the wellbeing of the original child.”

  Garen sighed. “Unfortunately, I believe there is faint hope for the girl’s fate. Demons of this variety were once believed to be remarkably intelligent, but it is now known that they are in fact among the dullest and physically weakest of the hellish spawn. The demon likely stashed the child away in some nearby location, well-hidden from sight and sound, and occasionally returned to experiment upon it.” There was the sound of a very, very rge book being slid across a desk. “Here, David. Read from this passage to this passage. I have heard several offhanded comments from you in the past that I suspect may indicate you are better equipped than I to comprehend the true purpose of this… behavior.”

  While David silently absorbed whatever Garen had found, Evie continued picking over the corpse.

  With it spread open before her, she was not surprised to learn there had been nothing human in the creation of this creature. Its skin was as thin as the finest of papers, stretched across a field of ft-faced crystalline ptes. Beneath each pte was a hinging series of the omnipresent red spires, each of which could raise or lower itself as necessary to mimic the tensing or twisting of mortal flesh. Before it had been torn to pieces, there must have been tens of thousands of the needles required to cover the entire thing’s body, each of them sprouting from one of the broken, twisting columns that occupied the approximate location of human bone.

  Evie was no anatomist, but she had become astonishingly familiar with the insides of human bodies over the st year and a half. Everywhere she looked, expecting to find one thing, there was another entirely. The blood that the body had possessed was not stored in any sort of vein or artery, but rather loosely pooled beneath the skin, occasionally sucked into a handful of fleshy bags which were regurly poked and prodded by yet more countless needles. The needles tending the blood sacks were different from the others. Their tips glowed, and their entire lengths were hot to the touch. She presumed it was how the demon’s child body had not been ice-cold; the sacks would inhale the blood loosely stored throughout the body, heat it to a near boil, then spit it back out to warm the greater whole.

  There were simir sacks of viscera all throughout its form, though most all were broken after the assault. Evie could only guess at what they had carried. Bags of bile, collected sweat, empty sacks full of air, and a multitude of other fluids she could not identify, they all had been scattered randomly throughout the thing’s body, pressed and kneaded by red spines so that their products could be excreted as needed.

  Evie pinched a shredded tendril of flesh from a bag that had held loose sweat, holding it to her eye. Unlike the exterior skin of the demon, which was obviously artificial and lifeless upon close inspection, this example was most certainly born of a living thing. It had pores, and thin, stringy hairs. She suspected it to have been harvested from an animal of some kind.

  In fact, she was becoming steadily more convinced that this was how much of the thing’s more ‘lifelike’ mimicries had been achieved. It replicated what it could recreate, stole what it could not. The demon was nothing more than a stumbling tower of sticks and excrement, powered by mechanical processes not unlike the cogs of Tulian’s newfound industry. That such primitive components achieved a nearly perfect replica of human life was… disturbing.

  “Jesus, man, I can’t read any more of this,” David suddenly announced, sounding disgusted. “Ugh. Yeah, I think I know what it was doing. At least, I know more than the original author did.” His voice was nasally, as if pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “Please, do tell,” Garen said. “I’m most interested to hear your perspective. The study of demons never appealed to me, for it seemed there was nothing to gain other than subjecting oneself to endless descriptions of mindless cruelty. Even the barest insight into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of their acts could be considered revolutionary by many a schor.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s cruel, I’ll give you that.” David took a deep breath, swallowing audibly to bite back his vomit. “Okay. So. Evie, that kid’s parents aren’t in earshot, right?”

  “They are outside with Sara.”

  “Good. Look, apparently this thing, this demon or whatever it is, it abducts people for a reason. This writer seems to think it’s just to torture them, but I don’t think so. They take their victims back to some hidden pce, a cave or whatever, and start shoving needles in their brain. Mostly through the eye, but also straight through the skull, or the base of the neck. And then they start giving them these… these little pops of electricity. Static, basically, nothing that can do permanent harm, other than, y’know, the hole in their head. And it makes the victim freak out real bad, because they’re basically being tortured.”

  “As I have said before. Senseless. No one and nothing gains anything of value from this behavior.”

  “Not that I don’t hate it too, but I don’t think you’re right on that. See, the whole time, the demon is mimicking whatever the person does. So they give the victim a zap, the person’s jaw opens to scream, and the demon does exactly what they just did, a second ter. And they do it again and again and again.”

  Evie felt her own bile began to rise, a reaction she forced herself to ignore.

  “Over time, the demon gets… better at it. They start poking new holes, giving new shocks. The victim starts responding differently. The author thinks that it’s corrupting the victim, because they’re not responding with the same kind of pained reactions that they did before, but again, I don’t agree. The victim starts to talk, to say random things, and the demon does, too. So, like, here, it says that the victim began to repeatedly cim ‘It’s better to be with them. Our life will be better if we give in to them.”

  “Almost verbatim what the child was saying before it attacked Sara.”

  “Exactly!” Despite the macabre topic, David’s words grew eager. “Then there’s other stuff. I mean, I hate to know how long they locked someone in a room with this thing to watch all this happen, but basically the demon starts getting the victim to talk. To say things like ‘I love you,’ or ‘it’s alright, don’t worry about me,’ or even real mundane stuff, like ‘I think we need more bread.’ The author took this as a sign of the victim losing their mind from being tortured, but that’s not it, is it?”

  “You are making simir inferences to my own,” Garen said, “but I do not wish to prejudice your judgement. Please, continue.”

  “Okay. See, Evie, I don’t know if Sara ever told you this, but your whole nervous system, your brain, all of the stuff you use to think, it all runs off of electricity. Sara has a lightning spell, right? Have you ever noticed that when she hits someone with it, their whole body freaks the heck out? Like, shaking, jerking, tensing up or whatever?”

  “I have, but I never questioned it. Filing in panic is a reasonable response to finding oneself being burned from the inside out.”

  “Okay, fair, but in reality it’s more because the lightning is actually literally, physically activating their muscles. It’s highjacking their own ability to control themselves by providing way more electricity than should ever be there in the first pce. So what I think, what I think, is that this demon is basically putting these poor bastards in the Matrix.”

  A brief, anticipatory silence, as if David was waiting for a reaction to some great revetion.

  Evie frowned.

  “...What?”

  “Oh. Huh. Uh, I guess Sara hasn’t shown you that one, yet,” David muttered, briefly crestfallen. “I’ll have to get on to her about that. But basically,” he continued, steadily returning to his excited pace, “I think the demon is controlling what the person sees and feels. By the end of it, the demon this person was observing had hundreds of little needles stabbed into its victim’s brain. To me it sounds like the thing was feeding this person fake sensory data, making them see things that weren’t really there, then learning how they react.

  “By the end of it, it wasn’t even waiting to mimic what the victim did, it was just cycling through pulse after pulse, making the person jerk around like a puppet on a string. Then, all of the sudden, it pulled the needles out and turned to the author and started talking, calmly trying to convince them to let it out. If these things are really as stupid as you two say they are, I think that this is how they’re managing to convince people they’re still human. They can’t really talk. They’re like parrots. They just repeat trained phrases over and over again, trying different ones until they get what they want.”

  “Gods.” Evie looked down at the corpse she had been picking through. A renewed wave of revulsion washed through her, so intense that she wished to leap up to rid herself of its touch.

  “The child, then,” she said, dropping her voice even lower. She did not know how keen vanara ears were, and found herself wishing she had learned before this conversation began. Even the shelter of speaking a foreign nguage didn’t feel enough. “It is dead? Tortured to death?”

  “Possibly?” David sounded unsure. “Probably. But maybe not. I don’t know. The author theorizes that this isn’t something the demons do just once. They think that it happens a bunch of times, over a period of weeks. That the demon goes back and tortures its victim again. Of course they think that they do it because demons need to ‘feed on malice and pain’ or whatever, and maybe they do, since they clearly have no digestive capability, but I’m not so sure. It may be topping off its knowledge on how to properly respond to people, or stopping itself from forgetting what it already knows.”

  “Which means the girl is almost certainly dead.” Evie sighed, more troubled by the revetion than she had anticipated. “The demon was first identified and restrained six days before our arrival. If these torturous rendezvous were the sole source of sustenance for the girl, she will have died of neglect.”

  David’s tone, which had been buoyed up by the excitement of scientific discovery, came crashing down.

  “That’s… yeah. Probably, yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “There was nothing that could have been done,” Evie said, half to reassure him, half for her own conscience. “All our arrival did was end the charade.”

  “I guess so. I mean…” David took a deep, sobering breath, blowing it out in a prolonged sigh. “She could still be alive, somewhere. Like, we don’t know how often it went back. It could have left her somewhere with food, or at least water.”

  “Do you believe that enough that I should tell the girl’s parents such?” Evie asked. “I do not want to provide them false hope.”

  “It’d be wrong not to, right? Like, if she’s maybe alive, we can’t just not tell them.”

  “Damn it all,” Evie cursed under her breath. With a determined grunt, she rose to her feet. “If that is the case, I will go deliver this information to Sara. She will be better at breaking the news than I could ever be. Before I go, do either of you have anything to add?”

  “Though I wish it were not the case, I do not have anything I might contribute,” Garen replied, as downtrodden as David. “Were I there in person… but no, I am not. I apologize.”

  “Yeah, I don’t have anything, either. Let us know if they find the girl, alright?”

  If such a remote fate was to be fulfilled, Evie knew that she would be long gone by the time it had come to pass. This would be a task for the vilgers, not her and Sara. Still, she nodded.

  “I will make certain of it. Thank you for your assistance.”

  “Of course, Steward,”

  “Talk to you ter, Evie.”

  She dropped the crystal back into her pocket, turning towards the door.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the partially broken face of the child. Just a fraction of the greater whole, the tips of its lips still squirming.

  Better with us better with us better with us-

  Evie crushed it with the heel of her boot, grinding it into the wood. She snapped her fingers to gain the attention of Second Squadron.

  “Forget cleaning this home. Find every st remnant of that thing and crush them. Leave nothing but dust.”

  A chorus of “Yes, ma’am!” answered her as mops were discarded and swords drawn. They had heard the discussion as well as she; Second Squadron took to their task with a vengeance.

  Before she left, Evie did her best to rid herself of blood. Sprays of it had covered most of her clothing, but she had the basic decency to wipe away what she could before facing the parents.

  Evie exited the home to find a rge crowd gathered around the stilted home, the vilge’s hundred or so occupants pressed into a nervous, shifting audience. Many of their eyes lit up as Evie emerged, leaning forward to get a better look. They were held back by a combination of Tulian soldiers, Mui’s squadron, and some of the local militia, all using the hafts of their respective weapons to form a physical barrier. She ignored them, moving to her wife.

  Sara was crouched on the ground where the two parents sat, speaking to them with quiet, understated gestures. The father chuckled weakly at something she said; a good sign. Mui himself was standing behind them, staring out at the crowd as if his slit-eyed gre could turn them back all on its own.

  Evie bent down next to Sara, whispering in her ear.

  “Did you hear my conversation with Garen and your father?”

  “Bits and pieces,” Sara replied in Continental. “Only when someone was near the front door.”

  Evie nodded to herself, standing. Her wife’s ability to hear and memorize the conversations in her vicinity was as fickle as it was miraculous, difficult to count upon in all but the densest of crowds. Such an advantageous yet easily countered Skill required the utmost secrecy to be kept for it to remain effective. That precluded testing its limits.

  It also meant that Sara could not risk showing knowledge she should not have, so it fell to Evie to address the parents, bowing her head.

  “There is a little, little hope that your daughter might live,” she said, praying her stumbling Kemari did not butcher the message too much.

  Their eyes brightened as they began to scramble to their feet, but Evie held up a hand.

  “Again, very little. You can’t… they may already be…”

  She gave up, turning to Sara with a pleading expression.

  “It was an Abductor, then?” Sara asked, speaking with the expertise and confidence expected of a Champion of Amarat, nevermind the fact that she hadn’t the faintest clue what that meant a handful of minutes ago.

  “Yes, it was,” Evie confirmed.

  “Then that means the demon didn’t kill the girl. It kidnapped them.”

  “What? Why would it do that?” Siang asked.

  “It’s complicated. There’s much debate, but it’s widely agreed that…”

  While Sara began gently guiding the parents through the horrors their daughter had suffered, Evie’s attention was drawn upward, to Mui, who was drawing a whistle from a belt pouch.

  The catfolk put the whistle to his lips and blew a quick three-note bst. The members of his squad immediately fell out of the crowd-corralling line, returning with a sharp salute.

  He began giving orders without preamble.

  “Keo, Lim, begin searching the river northward. If you find a shallow crossing, take it and search the opposite bank. Chhet, Meng, you search the southern riverbank. Prak and San, you will search the vilge’s perimeter for hidden paths into the jungle. Do not explore them without informing me first. I will be interviewing vilgers for–”

  “Mui?” Sara asked, looking up from her conversation with the parents. “What’s up?”

  “Organizing the search for the child, Governess,” he tersely responded, flicking his attention to her only for the brief moment required to answer her question, then turning his narrow gaze back on his soldiers. “Squad, when you have something to report, you will return directly to me. I will be interviewing the vilgers on potential hiding locations. This demon may not have acted alone, and it was capable of wounding the Governess. Evaluate it as a Warrior of the fifth kyu. Engage only if the Chosen and her wife are present, the entirety of the firearm-equipped Tulians are with you, or the child is at risk. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, sir!” the squad barked, saluting once again. Despite having been seen by the Northern Expeditionary Taskforce as the dregs of their army, they broke to their assigned tasks with a precision at least equal to Evie’s hand-picked troops.

  Evie found herself impressed.

  But not as impressed as Sara.

  While Mui rattled off orders to his soldiers, Evie caught her wife observing him with a very particur, very dangerous, intimately familiar glint in her eyes. Evie could not recall many individuals who had so honestly brushed aside the Champion of Amarat that wished to speak with them. Truthfully, she could only think of herself, Hurlish, and Sara’s father.

  And now Mui.

  Sara licked her lips, slowly, as she watched the catfolk go.

  “Dear,” Evie whispered.

  Sara blinked several times, coming back to herself. She dazzled the child’s parents with a reassuring smile.

  “I apologize. As I was saying, while there is only the faintest chance your child may still live, it’s only right that we begin to search for them. I’m not sure how long my troops can stay, but it is already looking longer than I expected.”

  Siang and Song-lep began showering Sara with the effusive thanks and praise Evie had grown familiar with. While her wife muddled through the barrage of weeping tears, Evie began scanning the crowd, looking for anyone of suspicion.

  Mui’s observation that the demon may not have been acting alone had struck a nerve. She would have to ensure Sara surveyed the vilgers at a distance, using that keen eye of hers to pick out potential monstrosities in their mix.

  The Champion of Amarat was anathema to demonkind; would they all respond as this first did? With uncontrolble, violent rage? Or were their keener varieties, who could choose the moment of their ambush? She would have to speak further with Garen.

  “Three days, Master,” Evie muttered in Continental. “I will give you three days in this vilge. If the child has not been found by the morning of the third, they will have most certainly perished.”

  “We can search for three days,” Sara smoothly informed the parents in Kemari, “but after that, we’ll have to continue to the city. I’ll pass on word of this event to the appropriate officials, and try to encourage any priests of the Pantheon of Bonds therein to hurry your case along, but I still wish we could stay longer. That’s all I can manage. I’m sorry.”

  Eventually, Sara managed to extract herself, if only after one st bout of sobbed relief and blubbered gratitude overwhelmed the family. She returned to Evie’s side, making as if to walk into the crowd, likely intending to join Mui in his interviewing of the vilgers.

  Evie stopped her by putting a hand across her chest. “Mui was right, Master,” she whispered. “Where one demon has arisen, others might follow. I will go into the crowd and begin organizing them into a line, so you may spot any imposters from a safer distance. Only once we have assured ourselves that the vilgers are free of taint can we begin organizing a search.”

  “Going in by yourself? What if it attacks you while you’re walking through the crowd, though?”

  Evie smiled tightly. “Then I will have the pleasure of a good fight. I was taken by surprise, earlier, and was unfamiliar with the advantages lent by my opponent’s unique anatomy. This mistake will not be repeated.”

  “Alright. Just make sure your guns are loaded.”

  Sara stepped back from the crowd while Evie moved forwards, slipping between her soldiers as she followed after Mui. Each face she passed was one she subjected to intense, dehumanizing scrutiny, but she found nothing of note. She wasn’t sure if she ever could; before the demon had revealed itself, the illusion had seemed fwless.

  While she walked, her mind turned back to the way Sara had been watching Mui. She knew what her eternally-cynical wife would have already assumed: that Mui would insist they leave the vilge immediately, that her visit with the Imperial hierarchy far superseded one measly child. it was what Evie had expected the Sergeant to say too, because it was only reasonable. Dealings between Empires and Nations outshone one small vilge as the sun did the stars.

  Yet Mui had not, for even a single moment, considered it as such. He had unknowingly agreed with Sara not after careful consideration or internal conflict, but as a matter of course, without sparing the smallest breath for an alternative. Not only that, his conviction was such that he seemed unaware of the possibility that someone might disagree.

  Then, finally, he had begun his task by demonstrating concern for the safety of his troops, simultaneously preparing to expand the scope of the operation to ensure its success.

  Calm, confident, and decisive.

  Damnit, Evie cursed, hiding her frustration. Hurlish is going to win the bet, isn’t she? It hasn’t even been a month.

  --------------------------------

  Mui Thom

  --------------------------------

  Two fruitless days were spent scouring the jungle for the missing child. Two exhausting, bleak days. Marching up and down the riverbank mud that tried to steal his boots from his feet with every step. Two days of calling the girl’s name into the remorseless vines without even an echo for an answer. Two nights where he and his squad had dragged themselves into the vilge with the st of their strength, only to summon up one st drop of energy to look into the eyes of Feng’s parents and tell them that no, they had not found a trace of the girl.

  Yet somehow, when he thought that his mental and physical fatigue had consumed all he had left to offer, the third day began.

  It was the day of Stewardess Evie’s imposed deadline, when it could no longer be assumed the child had survived their imprisonment. Mui had woken early to ensure their transport arrangements with the riverboat crews still stood, then had begun a solitary march down the eastern riverbank, seeking one st vain attempt at finding Feng. Mui knew he was breaking his own orders that all had to travel in pairs, but the hourgss was empty and he was desperate. His st hope had been that this eastern portion of the river, with its occasionally exposed sections of sturdy rock, might harbor a cave in which Feng had been secreted away.

  The sun was not yet an hour risen when he turned the corner of a thicket of trees, expecting the same long, straight stretch of brown river that he had seen a dozen times over.

  What he found was anything but.

  The brown waters were hidden beneath a wave of wide, wooden barges, dozens of them pressed side to side, each dragged forward by teams of men and women shoving twenty-foot poles against the muddy river bottom. Each barge was dangerously overfilled, the water pping just at the edge of the wood which protected dozens, no, hundreds of soldiers, all of them sitting or standing between an uncountable number of supply crates. He saw wagons with their colorful tarp covers and wheels removed pressed side to side until there was not a spare inch across the entire vessel, ready to be unloaded at a moment’s notice. From the slight vantage point afforded him by the rock he’d hopped upon, he could see that these barges stretched and stretched into the distance, equally dense throughout the entire line, until the river twisted and carried them out of sight, where untold numbers more were assuredly making their slow way forward.

  And yet still there was more. Beside the rising tide of the barges was marching an army. Polished metal and shining spearheads bounced under the morning sun, hundreds of banners tied beneath the heads of long, deadly pikes.

  Mui did not recognize all of the colorful symbols drooping in the breezeless morning, but he recognized enough.

  They were the banners of the rebellion.

  His boots skidded and scratched against the rocks as he threw himself into a headlong sprint, charging up the river as fast as he was able. The solemness in his heart was crushed under a tidal wave of primal fear, blood roaring in his ears as he scrambled desperately through the harsh terrain.

  There was no time for the careful, plodding walk that had driven him over the st few days. His feet snagged on vines, throwing him to the ground, only for him to leap back up just in time to slide across a patch of moss, nearly smming his jaw into the ground before his cws caught on a low-hanging branch to steady himself. As if attracted to his panic, the insects of the jungle began to swarm, their barbed legs tugging at his fur as they burrowed in, seeking the skin beneath. He swatted at them as best he could, but did not once stop running, not for one solitary moment.

  The bugs finally fled from him as he reached one of the vilge’s rge burning torches that marked the furthest edges of the fields, still dimly lit from the night prior. He took only a moment to lean against the wooden post, panting hard as the fme and smoke scattered the contemptible insects, and then took off yet again, heading for the vilge’s pier.

  The soldiers of Tulian were already waiting at the water’s edge, a fact for which he gasped out a thanks to the many gods for. They stood as they saw him coming, trading concerned gnces with one another as they shouldered their weapons.

  “Did you find her?” One called out.

  Mui managed to drag himself to a stop just before he plowed through their lines, instinct still screaming at him to run, run, to keep running and to never stop.

  “No,” he gasped. He would have said more, but even the effort of choking out that single word sent him into a fit of hacking coughs. He felt a canteen hit his palm and, when his lungs stopped trying to burst through his chest, threw his head back, drinking deeply of what might have been the crispects, coldest water of his entire life.

  “Rebels,” he eventually managed, wiping his muzzle of all the water that had missed his throat. “Their army, their real army. Tens of thousands. Don’t know how many, but they’re coming up the river. Here in… here in minutes.”

  The Tulian soldiers looked at one another.

  “Ah, shit,” one of them swore. A rge, older orcish man, whose quiet nature meant Mui had never quite learned his name. The orc grabbed his smoking pipe and tossed its contents over his shoulder into the river, then swung his musket off his back as he began loading. He fshed a cocky, sloping grin at the other soldiers. “So which one of you wants to go break the news?”

  “I will,” Mui managed to force out. Speaking a foreign nguage while he could barely breathe was proving a challenge he had never anticipated. He shoved himself off his knees, forcing himself to stop bending double. “I will… I will tell her. Where is she?”

  “Back thataway, talking to the boatfolk,” the soldier responded, their words muffled by the packet of bckpowder they had clenched between their teeth. They yanked it open, spraying a small puff of the stuff into the air. “Alright! Let’s get our shit sorted, boys and girls!” The man stepped forward, pointing. “Two ranks here and here, first kneeling, second standing, and be damn sure to keep ‘em pointed down the way. If y’don’t have your sidesword handy already, go get it.”

  “You can’t fight them,” Mui insisted, astonished. “They number a hundred thousand or more.”

  “Yeah, we know we can’t,” another man said, even as he took his pce kneeling in front of his comrades, musket at the ready. “But y’know what’d be even worse than getting killed? Pissing Evie off. Now hurry up and go tell her, goddammit, or we’re all gonna end up hung up by our balls.”

  “I ain’t got balls,” one of the women called.

  “Well I got extra, and she’ll take a spare pair just to nail on you to keep the line looking symmetrical, Private. Now shut up and load!”

  With so many more questions swirling through his mind than he had anticipated, Mui had no option but to retreat, running for the piers.

  By the time he arrived, Sara and Evie were already marching his way, deep frowns on their faces.

  “I take it you didn’t run up here because you found the kid?” Sara asked.

  “No, I am sorry to say,” Mui replied, a persistent wheeze tinging his words. “Rebel forces are advancing in strength up the river, on barges. We have no more than a half hour until they arrive, maybe half that. If they choose to send riders ahead, they could be here any moment.”

  “Hot damn,” Sara said, throwing her fists up on her hips. “That’s a pain in the ass. I really wanted to deal with them ter.”

  Mui stared bnkly at her. “What?”

  “I mean, you guys won the fight for control over southern Tulian, so I was really hoping to try and cut a deal with your group first. Guess I’ll have to go talk to these shits ahead of schedule.”

  “Ma’am,” Mui insisted, taking a step forward. “Governess, I do not think I expined myself well. This is a true army. It is… maybe a hundred thousand strong, maybe many more. There is nothing that can be done.”

  “You want me to hide your squad?” Sara offered. “I could probably cook up a decent illusion that would do the job, if they’re fine keeping quiet in a ditch or something. Amarat’s bullshit made me a better mage than I have any right to be, considering how I’ve literally never practiced.”

  “Wha- hide? Governess, we need to run.”

  “Mui,” Evie said, stepping forward. “You think my wife, and therefore Tulian, are already your empire’s allies. We are not. Tulian is not at war with these rebels. They are exactly as much a prospective friend as they are a prospective enemy.”

  Mui could not believe what he was hearing. It was incompatible with his notions of reality. He had spoken to Sara, worked with her for weeks and weeks, had done his best to teach her wife the Kemari nguage. He knew she was as intelligent and empathetic as she was cold and logical. How could she not see that the rebels were just pretenders, unfit rulers seeking to usurp the holy throne?

  Perhaps she does, Mui thought, surprising himself with the sentiment. He thought back to all the conversations with her, all the tiny bsphemies she had so often uttered. He had thought little of it; she was a deeply profane woman, using curses like punctuation. That she would so often use the word ‘king’ as a synonym for a fool, use ‘emperor’ as a pejorative description of those of little value and high self-esteem, it had all seemed natural. Just another one of her habitual, meaningless jokes.

  As he watched Evie kneel before her, beginning to polish her armor, Mui was forced to realize that it was anything but. She truly, wholly believed all she said. He did know why it had taken him so long to accept what she so frequently and directly stated: that an Empire was, to her, as cruel and rotten a thing as any demon. And that she would kill one just as happily as she had the first.

  In the distance, he heard the Tulian soldiers begin to chat with one another. The usual talk of soldiers, making sarcastic bets about who would kill the most, should things come to blows. They thought as little of the vast and grand Empire, of its millenia of gentle shepherdship of the people, as their Chosen did.

  Nausea crept up his throat. It was his duty, given to him by a duly appointed representative of the Empire, to bring this woman to the Adjutant.

  Did they understand what they were inviting into their midst?

  In the distance, the first of the barges rounded the bend. Sara stopped polishing her armor and instead began stomping forward, rattling the boards with her every step. She paused to look down at the spotless equipment she wore and, after a moment of consideration, stepped to the side, so she would be walking through the grass. Just enough to muddy her feet, and then she returned to the cleared path.

  “Squad!” He called, his voice cracking. He knew they were around, somewhere. Most likely already hiding, so they would not be found as ‘traitors’ and left dangling from the eaves. “With me. We will… we will stay with the Chosen. It is all we can do.” Evie gnced backward, meeting his eye. He did not know if it was his imagination, but he thought he saw the tiniest, slightest glimmer of approval.

  Mui swallowed, hard. The next few hours were going to be difficult.